Richard’s Spirit Level book comes out this week. I’m proud and jealous. Proud because it’s a good, important, timely book, and because he’s my brother. Jealous because he’s made a name for himself and I have not… (Why this craving for distinction, when I know that’s not what matters most, for day to day happiness or in the long run of history – where big things sink without trace and any little straw may break the camel’s back?) This book of Richard’s, with his partner Kate Picket, is about inequality, and the damage that does to health and society. The publication, after thirty years of dogged research, comes at an opportune moment, what the old Left would call a Crisis of Capitalism. Rightly as often.
The book’s appearance also coincides with these first blogs of mine. No mere chance: although I’ve been wondering for a long time what to do with my writing, his book prompted me to launch a virtual counterpart. Not to be outdone, a case of inequality driving emulation, but in counterpoint, not counterblast!
Equality is crucial, but I don’t much like the word. Set among Love, Freedom and Truth, it stands out as a latin sore thumb: the first three translate into Liberty, Equality, Fraternity and I wondered about Fairness in place of Equality. But a lot of people think of themselves as fair – not to mention free and loving – without much movement towards Equality.
Fraternity? I’m happy with, and committed to, the broad thrust of my brother's argument. Any criticism - and what else would you expect from an overtaken elder brother? - is aimed at adding to, not taking from his work. What's needed now is:
1. To get the information out to those who have most to gain for it: have-nots and have-lesses, the people who do not keep up with social sciences, read the Guardian or listen to Radio 4.
2. To broaden the campaign medium beyond statistical reasoning to a more emotive - and motivating - range of experience and image, art and literature, comedy and song.
3. To nail Capitalism as main driver of economic and social inequality – setting haves over have-nots, dependent on differentials and binding us all to its rack of Profit and Loss. (We'll never all be equal, but Capitalism feeds and feeds on inequality.)
In this blog of mine, I will relate Equality to those other LEFT words above, not so much in argument as through my own life, and occasional other reading (but I read so slowly!). Maybe I’m like the Moliere character who suddenly realises he’s speaking Grammar, but it seems to me that I’ve been wrestling with Equality – or rather Inequality – for much of my life. Both in my work and in my family, where class and income differences come home to roost. I am White Anglo-saxon Protestant Middle Class. Ada, and my first wife Kath, both come from working class Irish families. How far can a Wasp change his stripes – to red and green for instance?
And Humour - GSOH? Like Beauty, that didnt get a mention on the banner, but may also pop up, if only by mistake.
Friday, 6 March 2009
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