Noose Options

a little bit of context

It is very easy to be angry about Brexit. It’s very easy to despair about the most monumental act of self harm in history. It’s very easy to pack up and leave….. but, like everything else, Brexit needs to be put into context! 

We live in a strange time in history, especially in the so called West, which seems to have been stripped of any belief, ideals or sense of belonging, where an aggressive form individualism has become the norm. We are constantly bombarded with simulated realities in which the individual has to fight the world single-handedly under immense pressure to be ‘happy’… outwardly, anyway. This happiness is more or less comes to very basic aim: validation by conforming to the norms of superimposed consumerism. 

Since the 60s, and much more aggressively since the 80s, a weird post-modernist culture has enveloped every aspect of life. It’s become a firm of hyper-reality, which blurs the lines and aims to be more exciting than reality! It’s a culture that has increasingly become more voyeuristic, snoopy, judgemental… conformist and isolating in equal measure, where struggling individuals are constantly bombarded with images and messages which simulate a reality in which we have to achieve, grow, stand out in a world of unlimited possibilities!!! In so many ways, people are forced to live a double life: an inner, hidden life full of anxieties, questions, dilemmas… and a public life in which we are constantly beaming with ‘happiness and achievement’… weakness is either punished or fetishised in a perpetual state of victimhood. We have become a schizophrenic society, full of confusing and conflicting images that so many people are finding difficult to navigate and you can’t blame them. 

It is clear that wild capitalism propagated by Neo-Liberals as the new religion that has no other ideal but personal wealth has failed in its own game. This cut-throat capitalism that only believes in the sanctity of the markets has created a culture of vulgarity, spite and fear. We have stopped believing in or striving to build a better future collectively… all we are forced to believe is unbridled consumerism that is both ugly and soulless… 

So how is a struggling guy on minimum wage in Rochdale or Scunthorpe going to fit in this brave new world? Well, he isn’t meant to fit in. He or she is surplus to requirement. He or she has failed to be happy and it must be someone’s fault - a perfect territory for little fascists like Nigel Farage and a shameless opportunist like Boris Johnson to step in and offer them a very simple solution - leave EU so that we can build a Britannic Utopia of milk and honey where English people can be proud again (falsely creating a narrative that this is currently not possible)!! Brexit is a particularly British response to a global problem of an economic and cultural ideology, it would be unfair to say that it’s worse in the UK… Fascism is creeping back in all kinds of forms in Europe and in America. Russia has already fallen into the claws of rabid nationalism, which is pure fascism in all but name.. 

I wish I could guess how it will all go… it feels we are in the edge of a very deep ravine but it also feels like we just need to reach the next turn that will take us into a new, fairer, kinder, reasonable future.

It