cultural chained

‘The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free’ ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

cultural chained

I recently had to renew my passport. I went to the Post Office nearest my place of work, which isn’t really a Post Office, rather a glass-fronted cubicle in the local Morrisons (see also: WH Smith, Costcutter etc). When I was a kid, such places were often a focal point of the community – especially if you lived in a village. No more.

I walked in and noticed the shelves were being emptied, ‘It’s closed mate’, came the voice from behind. Turns out the entire shop was closing down. I didn’t ask why, but I suspect the rampant anti-social behaviour in that part of town had something to do with it. I carried on to the next nearest ‘Post Office’, this one being in WH Smith in the centre of town. There was a long queue – all the self-service machines were out of order, which left two poor cashiers to serve an ever-growing line while Skynet was on strike.

The headline of that day, I kid you not, ‘UK Supreme Court Rules “Woman” Means Biological Female’. I remember thinking, ‘Is this progress?’

I began reflecting on this odd feeling in the UK – a curious mix of melancholy and decay: roads increasingly look like the surface of the moon; buses don’t run on time (if at all); cities don’t seem to have bins anymore (the streets are horribly filthy); shops and pubs are closing left, right and centre – half of our high streets are boarded up; then of course there is the massive boom in the homeless population (and the inevitable increase in anti-social behaviour that comes with it), and yet we are building more houses that turn out to be… a) ugly, b) shit quality, and c) no-one who needs a home can fucking afford. Essentially, Britain feels like living in a depressing, rain-soaked shithole.

This all got me thinking about the little things; stuff that you never used to think about, basically because you didn’t need to: going to the Post Office was as straightforward as it gets; you could happily kill time window shopping in town and not immediately feel profiled by some pudgy security guard; you could go to Sainsbury’s and not find yourself under surveillance for doing what you’re supposed to be doing, i.e., actually paying for your fucking groceries. It wasn’t Mission Impossible to see your GP, and NHS dentists didn’t always used to be a rarer sight than unicorns. Rivers and beaches weren’t so brazenly contaminated with sewage as water company fat cats continue to collect their bonuses unchallenged by our toothless politicians and judiciaries. And you didn’t need to win the lottery to buy an ugly, shit quality house. Qualitatively, life used to be a bit harder to be sure, but still I feel there was a richness experienced that is entirely lacking in the 21st century’s automated malaise.

The irony is everywhere: the more we talk about therapy and well-being, the more miserable people seem to be. The more we progress technologically, the more degraded society seems to be getting, and the less stuff seems to work. The more connected we are via the Internet, the more divided and hateful our society becomes (anti-immigration riots, racial politics etc). The more we talk about health, the higher the rates of obesity and diabetes. The more alarming the climate situation appears to be, the more we’re encouraged to buy throwaway shit we don’t need and take holidays abroad. The more we talk about ‘diversity’, the more homogenised, manufactured and predictable has our artistic and cultural landscape become. Moreover, there doesn’t seem to be any shared experiences connecting people via cultural movements. For me, it was coming of age surrounded by the UK dance scene and before that it was indie and grunge. Generations before me had techno, hip-hop, punk, new wave and before that it was the swinging sixties, funk, soul, jazz and rock ‘n’ roll. Nowadays, it just seems to be a neurotic fusion of social media vindictiveness and the banality of memes. I guess that would explain the nostalgia for bands spanning an era when there were cultural movements – from the Rolling Stones and Black Sabbath to Oasis?

2025