Poverty Knocks

Austerity and a New Aesthetic


With the fortunes of the global market looking more and more bleak by the day, we are all waking up to a world with far less money to be had. And even if the current trends are gradually redeemed, if not reversed, the long term situation with the oil reserves makes it highly probable at least that, when all the turmoil settles down, we will never again in the West enjoy the levels of material comfort that we have today. To many, this seems unimaginable and there is a general tendency to think that the problems will be temporary, however harsh and that sooner or later we'll climb back out. Which we probably will but I doubt that, in the long run, we'll remain where we are now; the old world fading out, something far less certain rising in its place. We have been in an economic bubble for a generation and it will probably take a generation to get over it. Certainly life in a less affluent era seems inconceivable to many; we have grown accustomed to so much. It looks like we are in for a very heavy dose of cultural cold turkey.

But it's interesting where things meet, where hopes for a better future overlap with seemingly bleak current circumstances; what happens from here on in, however ugly it could get, might be what saves us in the long run. Some very fundamental values are unexpectedly coming home to haunt us; having enough to eat, a roof over our heads, being able to keep warm, and even these are slipping through a lot of people's grasp. And while the lessons may be harsh, they could also bring the shock to our senses we so desperately need if we're to steer ourselves clear of the wider climatic disaster.

At times like these, perhaps it's as well to look at some positive implications of the crisis and there are certainly things to be grateful for. This in no way denigrates the very real suffering that many are now going through but we are perhaps less likely to be contributing to climate change the less money we have. Most of us would now think twice about buying stuff at the higher end of the scale; electronic goods, new sofas, refitted kitchens, new cars; there will be less upgrades of every description, one or two more hand-me-downs, a greater chance of valuing what we already own. But thrift is now almost a dirty word; a pride in prosperity has led us to some very sticky waters. And why wouldn’t it? The human story perhaps for all our history has been one of striving for improvement in our circumstances. Perhaps the only set of circumstances that can alter this are the unnegotiable terms of pure necessity.

And ours is a double-edged kind of richness; so many of us are like hamsters on the wheel, struggling to keep up with mortgages and expectations. Contentment can be elusive as we so rarely have the chance to sit and take stock, or we seek to buy our way to satisfaction, or into other's hearts. By way of contrast, to take the example at the far end of the scale, hunter gatherers - where they are not being driven from the face of the earth - enjoy a very different kind of wealth; rich in social depth and quality, rich with time to enjoy their friends and family, their tribe. I don’t suggest for a moment that we in West can make some of mass transition to this way of life any time soon. But there are courses in between and those who still enjoy the privilege, albeit a precarious one, of carrying the mantle of a supposedly more primitive lifestyle can help us set our compass, can inform us in steering our own way back to something that can carry us in the long run. Tribal peoples, perhaps above all else, enjoy an emotional immediacy to their surroundings of such a pitch that it can be almost impossible for us to comprehend, cooped up in our boxes, half fearful of the outdoor world. So perhaps, all things considered, a shake up has been somewhat overdue.

Maybe the most valuable thing we can hold onto isn't something that can be easily be defined, something that perhaps we've lost sight of with all our ipods, dvds, plasma screens, surround sound, media stacking, our ability to seize whatever we might want with just a few clicks, the imperative to acquire just for the sake of justifying extra income. The point perhaps is not to utterly demonise these things out of hand, but when they become over-riding, a first port of call that defines our sensibilities, our lives, then perhaps we've lost something vital somewhere down the way.

The other extreme of course now stares us starkly in the face – austerity. Sober, abstemious, austerity looms before us like some old paternal monolith of near genetic, postwar memory. We writhe away from its bitter implications, its denial of high times, of entertainment, its scouring of any kind pleasure to be had in life. But there is a counter argument of course, however hard it might be to broach; any attempt to describe it doomed to sound like lecturing, a scree slope of sanctimony, where any stance is seen as posturing, where the merest observation castigates us as do-gooders, where – above all – no one has the right to raise their voice as we are all implicated and the highest minded are invariably the biggest hypocrites.

And yet; the sense of something higher still remains for all our failings, like some scrap of human kindness remembered in the greyness of November. And do we ever remember, or are we willing to believe that life stripped away from excess can be the doorway to some other kind of wealth? Perhaps there is another kind of austerity, one that perhaps entails a change in our perspective as much as our habits, where one leads into the other without any need for denial, or where at least the new world offered up is not without its call, albeit in a wholly different way.

If we called it a shift in our ascetic compass then we could perhaps discard the need for any moralising. It concerns our relationship to the world itself, not just in terms of what we do or don't consume but in the sense of how we'd like our world to be, the kind of place we'd like to work towards. And here environmental considerations and the stark realities in the looming shortage of resources can – potentially – tie in with the utmost harmony with this vision of how things could be.

I make the following suggestions somewhat tentatively; they are the merest attempts to circumscribe some feeling, some instinct which I may have the clarity and opportunity to describe in more detail at a later date. But imagine, or try to entertain, a world where wood, for instance, plays an ever more important role again, both in terms of fuel and structures, managed on a sustainable and traditional footing. Imagine a world where highly processed goods of every description become less and less common, outside of fields like medicine, where more and more daily items are produced closer to home, and are less removed from their natural state; some satisfaction returning to regional characteristics, craftsmanship, a flowering of cottage industries. Where technology is valued for the miracle that it is, not some inroad to a consumerist dystopia where apparent obsolescence feeds an ever growing mountain of discarded wonders formed from precious materials and precious energy in their manufacture, deposited on some unsuspecting third world hinterland. Where lighting can revert to more natural forms if not needed for reading or work; the warmth of lamp and candlelight, or any simply softer form being once again discovered as the means to a far richer world. Where streets are no longer rendered sterile by people making journeys at great speed that in their heart they know they have no time for. Where localities thrive as they take on their true place as more than dormitories and through roads. Where the whole mode of transport shifts to something either slower or more sociable, a thing with more respect for places and our journeying spirits. If horses ruled the world again, both on track and field; can we dare to even picture that?

None of this is meant to deny for a moment the great gifts of modern technology but equally, so much of what was once good about the way that we lived has been cast to one side in the name of nothing but inevitability. The challenge is to rediscover the joy and wealth of reconnecting with some sense of elemental harmony in the things we have around us and in the way we relate to the world; a state of affairs that even a century ago was so widespread as to be largely taken for granted.

Perhaps we'll even become less dependent on technology to fulfil our every wish for entertainment. The worlds that we can carry in our minds hold all the richer currency; we've almost lost the art of remembering and sharing stories, have forgotten what it means to make a song or poem our own. Too many of us are unfamiliar with the stories and sagas that connect us over thousands of years to the people who once held our place, and who knows what it means to bring the best of those stories to life?

Cities will remain, industry won’t disappear any time soon but the sense I wish to communicate with all of these specifics is that a simpler, more frugal world can be the door to something truly beautiful; not some stark utilitarian place that has no time or room for the things which can enrich our souls. And visions can keep us together, can affirm our sense of what humanity means as the things we've grown accustomed to are taken from our grasp. The times ahead could be like coming home, if we can only see where we want to be going, one illusion taken from us, a dream of wholeness planted in its place.

As the old saying goes, what we do to the land we do to ourselves; if we can enter into a deeper relationship once again with the places around us, beneath our very feet, then perhaps we can feel more keenly the need for harmony between our lives and that of the country that sustains us.

So this gives some sense I hope of the ascetic I'd seek to propose. And yes these are just dreams; no one can say with any certainty what lies in store, and there are perhaps many ways that things could go from here. But if we can cultivate some sense of the world we’d like to see, then we would have at least something to navigate by. And the world that waits, despite whatever challenges may lie upon the way, could still be a rich one, richer by far then the many pyrrhic victories the industrial world has left us. It isn't some utopia; many of these things require work, a mettling of our spirits towards the elements, towards a little more spartan way of life. But we can still enjoy the good things; beer and wine and music, company and warmth and dancing, good medicine, the chance to travel and to learn but they need not come at such a heavy cost; the simple pleasures are perhaps the greatest after all, they can connect us to something deep within ourselves and can only grow all the richer for it.

I see the world ahead, though not without perhaps considerable hardship, as one of potentially great beauty, something that could at least ameliorate the changes we shall all have to adjust to and which may yet make our world a place that once again rings true with some kind of more natural order. But first we must see our way past the paradigm that keeps us in check, that masks the fire within our blood, keeps us on the wheel and makes us seek our compensation in the lies that have grown up around us and which are daily offered to us on a plate, so that our eyes and ears - our very hearts - are choked with it, we are crippled by despondency, or confusion, while the new world, the world we've lost but not perhaps for good lies waiting like a track behind the hill, a patient lover who knows we have it in us to come back.