24

Waiting for the Barbarians

WHEN YOU TAKE a strong dislike to someone, everything they say or do becomes irritating and suspect. Once you have decided, either due to something you’ve read, something you’ve been told or a direct interaction you’ve had, that you can no longer abide a certain someone, you begin subconsciously building your case against them. It might not even be a person but a place, an institution, an idea or a belief. No matter what form the source of your annoyance takes, you will hold it in a progressively lower regard and find common cause with others who’ve arrived at a similar conclusion. Those who appear to show sympathy, solidarity or support for the subject of your contempt will be exiled from your consideration and recategorised as mere extensions of the thing you’ve grown to hate. This is the emotional reality in which much of our current political debate is rooted. Given the sheer scale of bad faith exhibited, in debates on any number of issues, across the political spectrum, it’s a bit rich to pretend it’s only racists and xenophobes who are unfairly dehumanising sections of the population. I grew up calling Conservatives ‘scum’ and genuinely believing it, oblivious to the broad spectrum of Conservative opinion that exists. Others in my community claim ‘all cops are bastards’ – even the ones who run towards knife-wielding terrorists to protect the public. From a very young age, we are all inculcated into the mores of a tribe and adopt those values often without thought, later mistaking them for our own.

The biggest feature of the tribalism that has come to characterise our culture is the belief in the legitimacy of our own resentments. We see ourselves as complex thinkers, arriving at conclusions through careful reasoning, believing those with whom we disagree to be motivated by stupidity and prejudice. Oddly, we miss the fact our mental process is almost identical to theirs, regardless of the nobility of the cause we believe ourselves to be advancing. Belief in the virtue of our own hypocrisy is one of the few things we have in common in this increasingly divided society.

Recently, I saw a striking example of where this kind of thinking leads when I attended an additional needs school in Scotland. I was invited there to work with two teenagers who were presenting a challenge to youth workers. The boys had been refusing to take part in any tasks and persisted in scrolling through their phones during lessons.

This school, tucked away in one of Glasgow’s many schemes, is for young people whose ‘additional needs’ can be physical, such as using a wheelchair, learning difficulties like dyslexia, or stress related conditions like ADHD. Today, my job is to ‘engage’ two young boys who are already well on their way to complete social exclusion.

The energy in the room is flat. Everyone has reverted to type: the boys are confrontational, the staff are resorting to the language of disciplinarians. I’m here to shake things up a bit, but I am in a foul mood.

A house move and working multiple jobs while trying to finish a book is extremely stressful. I have barely slept, my stomach turns like a washing machine full of grievances; some justified, some unfair, the rest baseless. For two weeks, I have been privately fantasising about using drugs. Today the reality that I am an addict seems so distant. Almost like a dream. Memories I would normally cringe at in sobriety, like drinking on a bus or raiding a bin for a cigarette butt, now warm my heart in a sudden rush of nostalgia. It’s the same process of delusion that landed me in McDonald’s earlier today, or on a porn site last night, or with a pocket full of chocolate this morning. A sense of emotional discomfort or stress creates an urge I find hard to disobey. I am considering the very real possibility of a relapse.

I am stressed out, tired, angry and absolutely fed up, so I know exactly what these boys are going through. My ability to bring all of myself to work, and not just a professional persona, is why engaging with difficult people like this is something I know I am really good at. To try and build a rapport, I firstly ask them to draw a mind map – a spider diagram for gathering ideas. Given I don’t know a lot about them I suggest a topic they are likely to have some foreknowledge of: Glasgow, the city in which they live.

‘It’s a shite-hole,’ says one, giving the standard response from children of this age and from this kind of area, who regard their own communities as dysfunctional, dirty and defective.

‘Fulla junkies,’ says the other.

‘What else annoys you about Glasgow?’ I ask.

‘Immigrants,’ says one, to which the other nods in agreement.

‘What is it about immigrants that annoys you?’ I ask.

‘They come here and take jobs and houses when we have enough homeless people on our streets.’

‘They rape people.’

‘They shouldn’t be allowed to speak in their own language.’

‘If they are running away from a war then maybe they should stay in their own countries and fight?’

‘If they hate Britain then why come here?’

Within two minutes, these normally mute, unresponsive, passive-aggressive boys suddenly spring to life and reveal to me an issue they are not only passionate about but clearly believe themselves to be knowledgeable on. It’s just a shame they are racist.

Racist attitudes like these, often learned at home, are carried into adulthood before being passed on to the next generation. Which is why many are anxious about conceding ground to people with ‘legitimate’ concerns about immigration.