Sailing with a Conscience
Vega
Hugh and Annie
Mon 14 Mar 2016 21:08
Also from a Darwinian perspective I can see how, in the struggle to live and reproduce, those most fitted to do so will prevail - but only to a point. Our gift of consciousness and a degree of altruism necessary for enhanced chances of survival mean that we can stand back and reflect upon our lot. We have a choice of behaviour not available to any other species. For example, if we have wealth we can choose whether or not to share it with others. If we are in a position of power we can choose whether to exercise it benignly and so-on. For the most part our post hunter gathering human history has been shaped - and written - by those choosing to make their mark on the world through personal ambition. You could argue that history (and therefore life) would have been less interesting without Alexander the Great, Richard 1st, Ghengis Khan, Hitler and so on. Certainly millions of people might not have suffered subjugation, hardship or death without them. Tony Blair can inflict death on thousands of people and create political mayhem in the Middle East with a clear conscience because he has “made his peace with God”. A “just war” or the ravings of a psychopath? When religion becomes a motivation or a conscience salve then God help those who will suffer by it. Why are we powerless to stop these people? Not only do we not stop them we support them and even, to add insult to injury, revere them (ok, not all) and for example make Tony Blair a “peace” envoy to the very place on which he has inflicted death and mayhem. My point is that this cascades down through society so that at every level we are altruistic only to the point of what is necessary to survive. To counter this we need government of some sort to protect the interests of those less able to do so for themselves and also to the extent required to ensure a tenable existence for everyone through the provision of infrastructure, law and order and so-on. To be born is amazing. To be born into a position where you can prosper even more so. To be born into hardship compounded by religious and political subjugation is pretty bad luck.
Many of us in the UK and most Europeans and Scandinavians believe it is the responsibility of Government to redistribute wealth through taxation to provide public services and infrastructure for the benefit of “society” in which there is a shared sense of common wellbeing. In the UK and USA there is much more emphasis on the individual and a distrust of government to spend our money. There is a weaker social ethos and more emphasis upon individual rights than collective wellbeing. As a result public infrastructure and services are poorer and social outcomes worse than in those countries in Europe, Scandinavia and elsewhere where economic and social equality is greater.
Why am I writing this in a blog about sailing around the world? I belong to that post war baby boomer cohort of state educated people who, in the words of Shirley Williams, are educated enough to know what is going on but powerless to do anything about it. Although I have loved my life living and working in the UK, have a wonderful family and good friends, there are aspects of life that I have become increasingly frustrated about both personally and in a professional capacity. I therefore decided that if have tried and failed to do anything about it directly I could at least write about it! On this trip I want to see how people are living in other parts of the world and to work out whether I just suffer from old age grumpiness or whether there are things genuinely, in my view of course, amiss and that I can comment upon. Incidentally my theory of grumpiness is learning from experience what works and what doesn’t but then being marginalised and unable to share this “wisdom” in any wider or political sense - unless you happen to be one of the great and the good. This is why the House of Lords should be full of people who genuinely have wisdom to offer rather than be political appointees or even elected. I also need to distance “wisdom” from prejudice and can quite see how the two could overlap.
When we left England I was nervous about swanning into many of the places we would visit on an expensive yacht and where we would expect to find poverty and real economic hardship. What I had not also expected to come across was the scale of the wealth we are encountering. In the Caribbean much of it is American but there is no end of privately owned super yachts and mini cruise liners the great majority of which we come across are flying some derivative of the Red or Blue Ensign.
When I was working It was clear from the major construction projects we were supplying in London and the south east that the economy there was booming while the rest of the country was in recession. We couldn't give away unwanted industrial property in the north of England just to get it off the books. Anyone spending a day or two in the South Hams will see the impact of London money in the big new and renovated houses, the walls and security gates, the second homes, the private estates. Houses that you might think would be sold locally I would see advertised for sale in Mayfair estate agent windows. I sold a property to a hedge fund owner whose annual salary was several times what I would earn in my entire working life and with annual bonuses that would make even that pale by comparison. If you believe Robert Peston he will be paying significantly less tax as a proportion of total income than anyone on PAYE. My point is that everywhere I look I can see that rampant free market capitalism is not working for everyone. The USA is the most glaring example but the world would be a better place if wealth was more evenly distributed (the wealthy paying their fair share of tax would be a start) and that is becoming as clear in the UK as it is everywhere else we visit. Income inequality in the UK is now back to levels not seen since the 1920’s and we can all see the impact of the low wage service economy. I have a lot more to write about the UK economy and its effect upon people at another time but it does seem to me that a stronger social ethos and a shared acknowledgement of the need for common public services and infrastructure might make the UK and much of the world a better place for the majority of people.
One of my favourite writers is Jonathan Raban, lone sailor, writer and journalist. His first book is called Coasting and it nearly broke my heart. The words flow across the pages like a beautiful yacht in a gentle breeze. Raban makes the point that there have been many lone sailors over the years who have written books and most of them are and I paraphrase, odd balls with a chip on their shoulder. Joshua Slocum, Hilaire Belloc, Bernard Moitessier and of course Jonathan Raban immediately come to mind. Not only does Raban write the kind of book I can only ever aspire to I could, some might say, fall into the chip on shoulder category. Nevertheless I am going to persevere which is why anyone reading this is getting a weird mixture of sailing and social conscience.