Inertia

Even at the best of times I am not a model of decisive action, but I have to say that it feels more and more difficult to set goals and maintain personal momentum in the present environment.

It’s not just me. The bureaucracy in which we are all increasingly enmeshed is failing. A wave of indolence or “quiet quitting” is washing over the white-collar workforce.

Case in point: earlier this year I applied for a new passport. Since then I have rung the issuing office twice. Twice they apologized; twice I was told that the process would be fast-tracked. Nothing. No communication from them. When I handed in my application I was assured that the passport would be ready within six weeks. I have now been waiting more than four months.

I had hoped to begin my travels some time ago. The lockdowns, curfews and travel bans may finally have been lifted but it is difficult to make concrete plans without a passport – especially when one has no clear idea of what is causing the delay. Only when I have the new passport in my hands will I think seriously about booking flights, etc..

This passport business is relatively trivial – in my case at least. No grave implications. But it is certainly emblematic, and indicative of wider problems.

Here is a short list of some of my current (non-travel-related) preoccupations…

Health concerns are always there, even in the absence of (known) serious illness or disease. This is particularly so as one ages. Personally I am prone to health-related anxieties and, consequently, try to minimize my interactions with Dr. Google and the medical profession. So long as I can function more or less normally and have no new or alarming symptoms, I feel justified in putting my focus on other things than the inner workings of my body. One health-related area I do take an interest in, however, is preventive medicine, and especially the effect of diet on health.

I had expected (or hoped) that the SARS-CoV-2 virus would be fading from the scene by now but it continues to spread. Worse still, bad news is coming through on the long-term effects of COVID-19. If (as seems to be the case) the virus was a product of gain-of-function research conducted under the auspices of various national governments and official agencies, this is not only a tragedy of epic proportions (it obviously is that) but also a scandal which, by further undermining trust in ruling elites, will have deep and lasting political implications.

Though they don’t concern me in a direct or personal way, I am following geopolitical developments closely. I am concerned by the belligerent stances being assumed by all major powers, and by the lack of leadership and intelligent diplomacy being exhibited by major Western powers.

More generally, I am appalled by the transformation of our media into an integrated propaganda machine. News has always been propaganda to an extent but the balance between propaganda and hard (factual or critical) content varies from time to time and from place to place. What we are seeing now in the West is somewhat reminiscent of old communist and fascist models and of World War 2-era American and British newspapers and newsreels, etc.. But arguably the situation is worse now than it was back then because of the intrusive nature of current technologies. The combination of digital news services and social media has produced an integrated – and insidious – framework of communication which is being effectively exploited by governments, powerful corporations and other favoured organizations.

As a preparation for possible future writing on social, economic and geopolitical themes, I have been reading (or rereading) the work of some early 20th-century thinkers, including Louis Rougier. Born in Lyon in 1889, Rougier was an intellectual historian and social philosopher who, unlike many intellectuals, had a good grasp of fundamental social, political and economic principles. In his best writings (from the 1930s and 1940s especially) he takes a refreshingly down-to-earth and non-ideological approach to political and economic questions. More on him later perhaps.