On Chivalry

Today I had a very remarkable 'unremarkable experience', which restored my faith in human beings, and healed something quite deep inside me. It was so very unusual that I have to share it.

Buying my lunch in Sainsbury's today, I obeyed the English way and queued obediently. Near the tills, a woman reached over to take an item off the shelves. In the ruthless cut and thrust of London, I could have gazumped her place, but why should I? Without thinking, I said 'after you'; she said 'thank you' and I said 'you're welcome'. Apart from the 'thank you', a very ordinary experience... Except that the lady turned to me and said 'that was very chivalrous'. To set the scene, she was probably in her late 20s or early 30s, with long blond hair and pretty to the point of being beautiful. Waiting to be called to the til, she told me that she didn't care what anyone said: she loved 'chivalry'. Men were the larger 'species' (her hilarious term) and despite all the media storm about women saying they hate doors being held open for them and so on, she thought it was natural and she loved it.

I could think of nothing to say that wasn't stupid so I merely smiled and said something inconsequential, but as she left the shop she turned to me again and said 'keep it up'! Five minutes before this, as I was getting off a bus, a young boy of about 10 had tried to push out of the bus before me. When I didn't flinch from the aggression, he made a show of waiting for me (implication: see I'm waiting, not pushing you out of the way, if that's what you want). I just waited, curious as to what this was all about. He then got off the bus and glowered at me.

Variations of this kind of experience happen most days to me in London. In London, people do not know how to behave with each other any more. Partly this is because, at any one time, the centre of town is full of people who do not speak a common language. You need a critical mass of people who agree on tools of etiquette like 'excuse me' and 'thank you'. Below this threshold, city life becomes a kind of war of all against all, in constant tension. A world of faceless resentment of inarticulate animals fighting for food and clothes. People do not speak or link to others: they 'vibe'.

I walked to the supermarket musing that I was brought up to certain standards of etiquette, yet I am increasingly the odd one out. I was, quite rightly, told as a boy that one naturally gives up a seat for certain kinds of people, holds doors open, apologises where appropriate and shows social grace. Apart from a period of about 7 years where in churlish pique I refrained from these things on principle and acted out my stored up resentments in often petty ways, I have usually done my best to be courteous. And never, in 40 years, can I recall having been thanked by a woman for any of these things. Nor expected to.

But was I a Victorian 'chivalrous gentleman'? Alas, dear reader, I was not! Brought up in the 1970s/80s my generation fell between the old fashioned gallants who may have been considered sexist but still have the confidence to be old charmers, and the younger men who came to maturity after the most vicious periods of the sex wars were over and are more relaxed with women. But I was of the generation for whom asking girls out was risky - you were aware you might be accused of harassment; for whom holding a door open might warrant an accusation of sexism or being patronising; who were urged to be sensitive 'new men' while it was obvious that 'old men' were still the men that got the girlfriends. I and others of my generation felt awkward about such gestures, worried I would be hated or scorned on political grounds. And I noticed on the occasions where I did it, the attitude in the glance was not infrequently 'you had no choice but to give that place for me, it's the rules', not 'thank you'.

How sad! How did we get to a place where we had to moderate our natural impulses in fear they would be misconstrued. It was a painful time for women and men alike, as we negotiated the aftermath of the original feminist movement to discover the new balance of the sexes. We learned to be friends, to be unisex, to be 'mates'. And it must be said there is still a long way to go until women are given a fair deal in the workplace and in wider social attitude. It was inevitable that my generation of men absorbed a lot of hate. I am a white middle class male. In the eyes of many politicised to identity politics I exemplify the 'oppressor class'. I personally oppressed women for 6,000 years and enslaved the peoples of the world!? Yet it was the only way.

Hate and resentment may seem to be useful fuel for social change, but ultimately it is love that makes the world go round. I am no 'knight in shining armour' yet there is an undeniable frisson in moments like mine today, a benign recognition that men are men and women are women. They should be utterly ordinary. This is much more natural in European countries, particularly Catholic ones where the cult of the Mary was not suppressed. Yes, it has its shadow side in silly machismo and the eternal triangle of mama, mama's boy and resentful wife who will turn into mama - but it is a joy. I have seen old men flirt with young girls in Latin countries - with no agenda but with the undeniable flow of that 'thing' that makes the world go round.

I was brought up almost exclusively by women, and I know all about the reasons why the old fashioned maleness had to change. But in honour of the anonymous blonde, and of my wife who would entirely agree, I intend to 'keep it up'.

Book Review – The Children of Men by P. D. James

For the first of my new series of book reviews I have chosen a curiosity. A futuristic, uncharacteristic sci-fi work by a well known crime writer. Now many have been trained to regard science fiction as for nerds, a clever way of keeping people reading about consumerist materialist values if ever I saw one. But P. D.  James' 1992 work The Children of Men is close to a masterpiece, definitely out of its time when written, and well due a revival of interest.

Like many children, I loved science fiction and fantasy. Most contemporary art concerns itself with the present, especially the banal present. Without penetrating into the depths of what makes life interesting and worth living, just regurgitates it. I'm not even having a go at Big Brother or other celebrity 'reality TV' fiascos. At least those can be entertaining, in a slow-motion car-crash kind of way. The self-referrential empty fiction of the Martin Amises of this world is far more poisonous. Give me pop culture over most 'high art' any day.

Our culture is dying through universal sterility, and The Children of Men, in a way is all about this. It is possible to test contemporary reality so deeply and so bravely that reality is transfigured. Then you have the great novelists, like Dickens or Dostoyevsky. But its a rare gift, and getting rarer. To get context on the present, humans love to trace current preoccupations to the past, or extrapolate to the future. We seek our cultural and spiritual origins in myth, and our future in technology and its social consequences. Some of the most interesting works blend the two – a trend most obvious in Star Trek and the associated TV and film genre of mythic sci-fi. A future blog will concern Ursula K Le Guin, who is one of the great masters of both genres.

The shocking premise of The Children of Men is a world in which, mysteriously, human beings become infertile. The last children were born in 1995 and all the nations of the world gradually realise there will be no more people, no future. James' portrayal of the effects of this universal sterility is shocking and believable: Britain becomes a dictorship run so that the last generation of humanity can live out its existence in meaningless comfort, with criminals exiled and menial work done by mistreated foreigners. The desire for sex gradually withers as people realise that, even if they did not want sex to produce offspring, knowing that it never could destroys the erotic impulse. People lose interest in politics, leaving power in Britian in the sole hands of the narrator's cousin.

Theo Faron, the self-centred and cold narrator, is a memorable creation. An Oxford History don who has never known love or intimacy, but held a privileged position through his relation to the dictator, or Warden, he is drawn into a surprising position of challenge to the State. It is typical of P. D. James' skill that the absurd and depressing scenario of the book becomes fascinating and we empathise with the unlikably protagonist caught in the Middle Class establishment world she draws so aptly in her crime fiction.

Of course, the reason the book is so haunting, and prophetic for 1992, is that we do indeed live in an age of sterility. The 'First World' ethos, which wants few children, lots of money and comfort, where all pleasures are available but meaningless, where we live in an endless war with mysterious nature, is what passes for reality, but it is life without a future. James digs deep into the roots of the religious image of the Virgin and Child. Although it is the men whose sperm is believed to be infertile, women respond psychotically by bringing up dolls, baptising them and taking them around in prams. 

There is much that could be said about the waning of science fiction and what it says about out loss of faith in the future. In 1980s Britain, at the same time that tradition was being destroyed with unprecedented speed, Television was filled with nostalgic portrayals of British life, the conservatism that Thatcher's Toryism, ironically, was busy abolishing. The Children of Men is a short read but I came away from it determined to keep my imagination fixed on the future, yet never forget we cannot control the simplest forces of our life, those of procreation, and without gratitude and awe there is only sterility and slow death. Read the book and the surprise ending will stay with you.