The Wasp Illusion

I was throwing my glass into the recycling thing – I love the sound of breaking glass… and I suddenly realised that there were no wasps – or flies – or any exciting insects – circling round the bins or coming out to attack me – miffed at having jars thrown at them…

This seemed strange…in my world a hazard of recycling is circling insects…and the glass containers are particularly terrifying with wasps charging out, angry, intent on revenge…

And I thought of a recurring conversation that I have had with many people over the last few months… perhaps it’s the company I keep… about the mild winter and how we are going to be besieged with winged creatures of every description , making our lives wretched, leaving us feeling hounded…

This conversation seems to be very popular, and we all agree dire times loom ahead…

But it occurs to me that we are almost at the end of May so these dire times should be here…with us…

And this leads me to wider thoughts…about conversations in general and how we love to talk about things going wrong, times being bad… and where my mind goes is this: we love to belong; when we have conversations – mostly – we love to be in agreement with people – we love to have our world view reaffirmed  … to find people who agree with us … to have a sense of being at one with others … not separate…

And I think, if I wanted to have a conversation with someone who wasn’t an intimate friend, and I wanted us to find common ground  – that I would be far likelier to say, “Isn’t the new Waitrose dreadful?! Aren’t the isles narrow and the shelves too high?!”     Than to say, “I think life just gets better and better!  Isn’t it wonderful that we have all these road works and that our local council is looking after our roads so assiduously?!”

And that reminds me of a programme that was on BBC2 a couple of years ago called “The Politics of Nightmares” which was fascinating,  and had as its central premise that  people had lost faith in politicians and so politicians could no longer promise us a better life – better schools, hospitals, standard of living – because no-one believed them anymore ….

So what they started to do instead was to emphasis what a dangerous, threatening place the world is: strikes, communism, nuclear threats, terrorism – whatever was current flavour of fear and paranoia – that was the thing that this party would protect you from…

And as we all know, a newspaper is far likelier to sell a bumper load of copies with a scaremongering – mendacious – headline “CANCER RISK IN PORTION OF CHIPS” (front page of Daily Express 28.9.12) … than by telling us a heart warming story of everyday kindness…

I may be wrong – but I believe my theory is convincing – that we reach out to people, attempt to connect with those around us – more often by criticising, being gloomy, pessimistic that we do by taking a risk and speaking about the beauty, the kindness, the things that go well, the things that get better…

I am generalising – as a nation we do also say, “Isn’t it a glorious day!” – not just “Raining again!”   But if we just avoid – or turn round – a gloomy remark for a joyous one once a week – and we all did it… wouldn’t we all be having a better time – and wouldn’t it be as true – or truer – than the doom and gloom version?! 🙂

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Emily MumfordView all posts by Emily Mumford