Matthew Parris
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It was around 7.30 on a grey December morning and I was lying in bed with only half an ear to the Today programme. A business news announcer came on. He said the Pacific markets had reacted badly to something or other overnight. He said all eyes would be on the FTSE 100, the CAC and the Drax when they opened, and that they had closed the day before lower than they had started it.
‘Aha,’ I noticed myself thinking, now alert and with full attention to the radio report, ‘I must remember to check at nine o’clock to see how things are going.’ And why? This was when I caught myself, momentarily unawares.
I could not deny it. There was no doubt about it. I wanted the financial news to be bad. I glimpsed in my unsupervised response the same glee I’d felt on hearing that house prices across Britain were still falling; the same small inward smile I’d noticed on hearing that the yields on Italian and Spanish bonds were approaching the ‘psychologically ominous’ 7 per cent mark.
But this was crazy! The greater part of my savings and pension plans depend upon global stock markets. My comfortable retirement will depend upon the markets and upon the value of my real estate. By no means have I bunkered down, provision for my own needs proof against the external storm, able to watch others less prudent or less fortunate founder. I’ll founder too.
Worse, my sister’s and my lifelong project, the restoration of a great and ancient house in the Catalan Pyrenees — a project upon which she, her husband and children depend and for which they’ve taken out an enormous loan — depends upon the Spanish economy staying afloat. The family’s business is supplying commodities to the construction industry. What if nobody wants to buy lead any more?
I’ve a little money in bullion (whose price movements I check reflexively online every day, like some kind of gambling addict, hoping for a lucky strike) but the financial security of my life and the lives of all those I love — and of almost all my countrymen too — rests squarely upon the European and world economy. And in that moment of self-awareness I had understood that I’d wanted it to fail. I want the apocalypse. Inside, I know I do. I cannot help it.
This is sick. It’s like taking a ghoulish interest in a road accident in which one is oneself involved. It’s like sitting slavering on the edge of the cinema seat during a disaster movie which is actually about one’s own family and friends. It’s like that recurring dream I have where I’m watching a great passenger jet lumbering along the horizon apparently in difficulty, and I’m thinking ‘crash! Crash!’ — but I’m also in the plane. And then I think of all my friends with children; of my younger friends, full of youthful hope, their careers still ahead and in the balance; of my little nephews and nieces whose lives may turn upon those world markets; and I feel ashamed.
The shame is appropriate. But what is this weird instinct, this malignant lust, of which I need to be ashamed? For heaven’s sake, Mr Darwin, explain it to me: where’s the instinct for self-preservation in all this? What is this going to do for the species? Why, Mr Dawkins, the potency of a meme whose impact could be the extinction of the minds who entertain it as a guest?
I would not trouble you, the reader, with my personal psychological problems were I not convinced that they are shared by millions in my own country, and hundreds of millions more across the planet; that they are very prevalent among media commentators and analysts, especially those on the right; and that their modern currency amounts to a fashion, taking the world of contemporary ideas by storm.
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