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May 13, 2010
Making the coalition work
Marzena's questions concerning self-labelling are topical of course, as we experience the first few days of a coalition government when old labels have had to be thrown quickly out the window:
Clegg: 'I really really hate the conservative party are the future of this country and its an honour to work with them.'
While Cameron is now saying that when he called Clegg a complete joke he was only joking. 'Comedy, eh?!!I mean, hey, labels - we toss them about. It's what you do! Let's not get too hung up about it all! Let's just, like, move on, this is the new politics! etc etc.
In the light of all this, i was interested to hear an interview with Bel Mooney, the Daily Mail agony aunt. How shall we label her? Well, she has a statue of Buddha in her garden, reads the Hindu scriptures, but calls herself a Christian and attends her parish church, finding support in the community there. She likes the teaching of Jesus as well, but isn't quite sure about the after-life. And she finds God in people coming round for Sunday lunch and in her dog. Oh, and she works for the Daily Mail, which for some is Satan's chosen read.
Quite a coalition, really, reminding us that we are each a crowd in ourselves; each a fragile coalition of hope and despair, warmth and cold, meanness and generosity, nonsense and truth, cobbled together by life.
It's not always easy to handle such dissonance and contradiction in our being, so many different voices, such a crowd of different labels; and when we struggle with this, it quickly becomes self-hate, and inevitably the hate of others. We always project our inner fracture outwards in the end.
Labels have a superficial allure, of course, and like cheese slices, are handy to use. But in the end, they are the refuge of the insecure, and an act of panic. They give us a home, which is what we most want -
- but there's a smell of death in the room. Labels attempt to define that which is indefinable. And that is why they limit; that is why they belittle us, and that is why they kill.
Posted by Mr Bojangles at May 13, 2010 09:56 AM