A Thinking Man

Isolation can be a mixed blessing. At times we may choose to be cut off and separate from those around us and enjoy the greater peace and freedom and tranquility. At other times it happens by accident or ill-health and we may regret the loss of potentially enriching contact. But if isolation goes on for too long, it can destroy our sanity by continually corroding a healthy perspective.

I am watching this happen at the moment in my family. I have an elderly sister who has recently become a widow. The shock of that loss, together with too many years of alcohol abuse, and a fall down a flight of stairs (caused by the alcohol abuse)resulting in head trauma, have left her a prisoner in her home. She cannot drive, can barely walk, and understandably spends a lot of time preoccupied with her deteriorating health. The tragedy is that the blinkered vision, encouraged by her isolation, is destroying her awareness and concern for others. It is a vicious circle. She is making life so difficult for those who care for her (and is oblivious to the real pain she is causing others) that she is contributing to further likely isolation.

At the other end of the scale we see people becoming isolated by wealth, or power (or both). If you can afford a taxi you lose sight of the humdrum of the tube; if you can afford a five-star city hotel you tend to forget the boarding house by the sea; if you have people to do things, you forget the effort of having to cut the grass, deal with the bills, and find out the time of the train. And as this new normality becomes stronger, you forget that what is normal for you, is not normal for most other people on the planet.

And of course, fundamentalism is dangerous to. It imposes very rigid blinkers on the mind, and it gives you a religious reason for not taking them off. I personally think that have blinkers with a religious reason for not removing them is a very dangerous combination.

And so to the Sheikh. Last Thursday a Sheikh from Qatar held up a British Airways flight in Milan airport for nearly three hours resulting in nearly half of the 115 passengers missing on-going flights when they finally reached London. The cause of the delay was that the Sheikh discovered that three of his female relatives had been given seats next to men that he did not know.

Although I may profoundly disagree with his views, I understand that he may have wished to uphold traditions in the conservative Gulf Arab region that bar women from mixing with unrelated men. What I really have a problem with is his desire to try to uphold those Medieval views while travelling on a Twenty First Century Aircraft owned by a company based in an enlightened democracy. It appears that the blinkers of fundamentalism, wealth, and power lead him to crash against the brick walls of some passengers who refused to change their seats to accommodate his request and a pilot who refused to be servile. He just didn’t seem to get it, and was ordered off the plane with the rest of his party. Surrounded by people he was isolated because people with a different perspective regarded his behaviour as abnormal.

The incident reminded me of something I heard recently about the Queen and John Bunyan. Apparently in her Golden Jubilee Year, Queen Elizabeth II decided to give a gift to the children of the workers on the Royal Estates. I am sure that many of them were delighted when they heard the news. What seemed slightly odd was that the gift turned out to be a copy of John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” - a Seventeenth Century work by a Bedfordshire preacher.

I suppose it is understandable that the Head of the Church of England may wish to promote the faith by distributing a religious tract - a Christian Allegory vividly warning of the dangers of straying from the straight and narrow (especially in the light of the behaviour and views of Prince Charles, soon to replace her as the Head of the Church of England). But what seems to be either an unpardonable sin, or evidence of extreme isolationism which has warped her perspective (and that of her many advisers) was the extreme unsuitableness of the gift. Doesn’t she, or her advisers know that real children rarely read, and if they do, are extremely unlikely to read religious text in dated language? Would any other normal adult consider giving such a book to a modern thirteen year tractor-driver’s son? If you ask any young teenager what they would like to receive from the monarch - a gift to engender fond memories - they are not, believe me, they are not, going to say: “Please can I have a book from a country preacher who died three hundred years ago warning me about hell.”

The blinkers are on. The religious reason for keeping them (the divine right of the monarchy) may have passed (in theory). Nevertheless, they are kept there by tradition, and wealth, and class. The first of those may have served a historical purpose, but the justification seems very thin now. If isolation goes on for too long, it can destroy sanity by continually corroding a healthy perspective.