On boundaries and making changes

I don't know whether or not you've ever seen knots flying along the banks of the Wash. I hadn't either until tonight's Countryfile. The knot is a type of bird (apparently), and as the tides come in so they 'take to the skies in search of food'. The end result looks like this:

On the TV it looks very much like those pictures of the schools of fish you see. The flight moves almost as one organism, reacting to the world around it even though you know that none of the birds within can be conscious of that fact. Instead, without realising what they're doing, each bird creates or has created for them their own boundaries. Within these they move and adjust - shaping and being shaped by the general whole. 

It's a jump, but not too large a one I like to think, between nature and society. After Countryfile, via some time spent with the Top Gear crowd, came Upstairs, Downstairs. In that show there was quite a pertinent line from the driver to the lady of the house's sister. 'There are rules Miss', he reminded her as she sought to flout them, 'And you have to obey them just like us'. 

Of course rules are sometimes there to be broken. The 20th century, at the very least, is ripe with those who sought to overturn unfair and unjust regulation for the common good. Yet one fact remains. We keep on, no matter what, constructing rules for ourselves. Naturally many of these are necessary. Views on why it is important change and are disputed, but all the same most societies hold fast to some sort of generalised edict against wilful private killing. I still think though that given the option most prefer conservatism to radicalism. 

Know your audience

Now you may look at that, compare it to the injustices you see in society still, and argue that we are still too judgemental, too prejudicial. 'Viva la Revolution!' - and all that jazz. Perhaps you're right. In many ways you may just be. We are too inclined to consider that once a major change is made then that's it. Women have the vote, and a legal right to equal pay chaps. All the major demands of the suffragettes have been met on paper. Let's pack up the equality bandwagon and cart it off round the back. If calls for 'equality' mean anything (and I'm not entirely sure what they do mean), then surely it is an ongoing process. Much like conversion to religious faith, converting society to a new position takes time, effort and does not stop with the signing of the forms. It is an ongoing process, one that needs constant change and development and may involve some backsliding from time to time. When it does, we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and try all over again.

I forget who originated the phrase 'going with the grain of society', but it's one that I like to remember when thinking about things like this. Society is in need of change constantly. If nothing else it keeps it alive - a culture that ossifies dies. Given my faith this is something of a hypocritical point, but I doubt the ability of people to enact sudden, lasting change in society though. Eventually as far as I can see something will snap back. Forces will rise that insist that we keep on the old, known path. 

One of the points that gets overlooked quite often to my mind is that Christ was an artisan. Well, probably did carpentry at some time. In truth we know nothing much of his life between when he preached in the Temple aged 7 and when he began his Ministry aged 30. As I understand it though the Greek tekton - which is how Joseph is described in the Bible - indisputable means some form of artisan or builder. It seems fair enough to me to assume that at some point during those 23 years, he either joined Joseph or observed him doing some work. This seems a fair metaphor for enacting change. 

The picture to the left here is of the new Reading Room at the British Museum. The columns you can

see behind it, if memory serves, are made from marble mined on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset. The marble here would be our social change - taken from its original place and adjusted, through constant, hard work to take up a new and important role. Trying to enact social change should be something we strive for. Churchill apparently once said that 'What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?' (though I got that from Wikiquote, so it needs to be checked). There is a reason though, I think, why a maxim often attributed to him is still repeated: 'If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain'. We all shape, and in turn are all shaped, by the society in which we live and work. That is unavoidable, even if one does take inspiration and refuge elsewhere too. Societies though are big, cumbersome things that often take time to shift and alter. They can wobble when 'hit' strongly, but tend too often I find to reset not long afterwards. Our temporary revolutionaries meanwhile find that they too are ultimately forced to fit within the mould. Sometimes they 'mature' in their faith, sometimes they find that they prefer power, and sometimes simple family circumstances force them to settle rather than overthrow. Lasting revolutions are rare, and too often bloody. 

Well this has been a long rant, and I'm in need of sleep. A summation? Alright - it is easy to be a revolutionary with a song in your heart, a chant on your lips and a slogan on your posters. Often such people are necessary, but to my mind a necessary evil. By this I don't mean that they themselves are 'evil'. Sometimes people do just need to openly, and firmly, buck the system - Rosa Parks, for instance, or Ghandi. If this blog post is a rallying cry for anything, it is for the long-term, quiet revolutionary who tries to change the world not with a gun or a rallying cry, but with a phone book and a pencil. 

To conclude, then, Merry Christmas to you all and a Happy New Year - and an example. 

In 1963 John Profumo was a rising star within a dying Government. Secretary of State for War, he was married to an actress, independently wealthy, and big things were spoken of his future. Then he went and had an affair with Christine Keeler, a model and essentially a high-class prostitute. Affairs during this period were reasonably common. Dorothy MacMillan, the Prime Minister's wife, had had a long-standing affair with the Conservative backbencher Robert Boothby. Profumo though had a particular problem. Keeler had not just been seeing him during this period. She had also been having a relationship with Yevgeni Ivanov, the senior Soviet Military Intelligence officer in London. 

Being a naughty boy was one thing. Being a naughty boy and endangering national and international security quite another. Profumo resigned in disgrace, leaving both the Government and Parliament. He was 47 at the time. 

John Profumo is widely judged nowadays (he died in 2005) to have had a very good retirement. A few months after his resignation he arrived at Toynbee Hall, a charity in London's East End devoted to solving social problems. He worked initially as a volunteer cleaning toilets. He was there for the rest of his life; ending up as the Hall's chief fund-raiser. He almost never spoke of his work, and resolutely refused to publicise the fact that he had by 1990 been at Toynbee Hall for longer than he'd been in Parliament. 

John Profumo did not change the world, except vicariously and in ways that he'd never wanted. He did however work quietly and conscientiously to change a corner of it. You may argue that he did so to appease his conscience. I prefer to think that he realised his mistake, and sought in a small way to make a difference as a result.