Labyrinths of the mind

I woke up at twenty past four this morning, looked at some news headlines on my smartphone, felt sad and angry, and decided to get up and have some tea. I’d also had a very vivid dream again - my night times are very intense since I started taking prozac nine months ago - and wanted to process what had been going through my head.


I went outside and got some fresh air. It was still pitch black. The cats were confused. But the flats being built next door were all lit up, like something out a science fiction movie. Rather surreally, at half past four in the morning and still in my pyjamas, I found myself standing on a chair and photographing a brightly lit building site with its illuminated skeletal scaffolding...

My dream was typically strange but as usual not a sequence of random surreal events, but more like a slice lifted out of a film. I was working as a plain clothes detective, on an undercover project for a famous retired detective (all very Agatha Christie this). Oh and I was in my twenties again. Probably important to mention that. In fact now I think of it the whole thing was a bit Life On Mars and 1970s retro.

Anyway I had been told to grab a coach to a small Cornish village because there was a rich kid having a huge birthday party and I was supposed to get in there and find out what was going on within his social group. Someone had committed suicide the previous year but there was a suggestion … well you know how it goes with these things … Actually it was more PD James than Agatha Christie now I come to think of it … 

So I get there and it really is a rich kids fiesta and I am just a working class lad from South London who is having to blag my way through it (story of my life). The village is small and very old and I am greeted by some young guys acting as stewards who direct me into what looks like a farmyard that has been done out with a marquis, sound stage etc. The beer starts flowing and I start talking to people and being a new face I am having to explain that I am a friend of a guy called Christian who is a friend of a friend of someone who knows the guy whose birthday it is. This isn’t just a one nighter by the way its a festival over several days and all the food booze and accommodation is free. These are seriously rich, attractive young people committed to just partying long and hard. I am wearing my favourite shirt from 1973, the one with psychedelic pink patterns and a huge collar with rounded corners (that bit it is true, I really did own the shirt - you had to be there). The sleeves are rolled up and the top three buttons undone. I was young, manly and confident (alternative facts I’m afraid - I was shy, scrawny and old before my time). Then suddenly there is a lot of screaming and yelling and hysterical laughing and dozens of women appear all dressed like 1920s flappers, with beads and straight hair and skinny dresses and cigarette holders. They are all madly high. One of them stares at me and smiles. I know instinctively that she is my contact on the inside of this social group, my undercover liaison. But before we can do anything the screams of laughter turn to real screams of fear and horror. I look up and people are crushing into a doorway and yelling. There is something the other side of this mass of people, something the other side of that small doorway and it isn’t nice …

The headline on my smartphone that made me angry was from The Independent. 

World faces four famines as Trump administration plans to slash foreign aid budget.

The world is facing a humanitarian crisis bigger than any in living memory, the UN has said, as four countries teeter on the brink of famine. Twenty million people are at risk of starvation and facing water shortages in Somalia, Nigeria and Yemen, while parts of South Sudan are already officially suffering from famine. While the UN said in February that at least $4.4 billion (£3.5 bn) was needed by the end of March to avert a hunger catastrophe across the four nations, the end of the month is fast approaching, and only 10 per cent of the necessary funds have been received from donor governments so far…The crises are growing at the same time that the US looks to slash its foreign aid budgets under the protectionist revisions of newly elected President Donald Trump. 
In 2016, the US was the UN’s biggest single donor and also provided more than $2 billion (£1.6 bn) to the World Food Programme (WFP) - a quarter of its total budget…“The more dramatic cuts in any aid budgets… the more suffering there is going to be,” WFP’s Africa spokesperson David Orr said in a statement last week. 

So … what’s the connection? Well maybe there isn’t any but I keep thinking about the audio course I am listening to which is called “Redefining Reality” The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science”. This is actually a tour through the history of scientific and social science and is in particular aimed at trying to bridge the gap between the very big and the very small. It talks about everything from black holes to behavioural psychology and in essence is trying to offer a context for what it means to be a human being in an inexplicable universe. And I keep thinking about my own small selfish life, where in my dreams I am a slightly heroic figure at a party, and in reality waking up to a headline about twenty million people dying of famine in a world full of expensive guns and obscenely rich people.

The latest bit of my audio course describes the famous (and oft repeated) Milgram Experiment from the 1960s which showed that most ordinary people - and by most I mean between 75 and 85 percent - will do bad things if they are in a situation where they are afraid to confront authority and the prevailing norms. Specifically, it is often linked in terms of the psychological behaviours it describes to the trial of Adolf Eichmann who was a mild mannered bureaucrat responsible for sending millions to their deaths in the death camps. From this is derived the famous phrase “I was just following orders”. 

But actually it goes bit further than that

If you have seen the many photographs recently of Trump signing Executive Orders with a big grin, surrounded mostly (and often exclusively) by men of his own ilk, you will recognise the people who are just following orders. But if you look in the mirror you will find yourself in the territory of the following famous quote: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Notwithstanding that in this enlightened age we should say “people” not “men”, the point is not even what we do but what we don’t do. We don’t care about the plight of people dying from famine. We don’t care about destroying the planet by denying climate change. We don’t care about the gross inequality in the world. More specifically - I don’t care. Or I don’t care enough. I obsess endlessly about whether my smartphone is fully charged. I worry about my cats and my work. I get angry about the traffic on the M25. I don’t do anything. 


I have no right to point the finger at anyone else. I am the problem. And I really need to do something about it.