big. small. not clever

A piece of Ian McEwan's Saturday resonated with me last night. It's a bit where he's talking about the protagonist's son's aphorism -- "the bigger you think, the crappier it looks."

And:"When we go on about the big things, the political situation, global warming, world poverty, it all looks really terrible...But when I think small, closer in -- you know, a girl I've just met, or this song we're going to do with Chas,...then it looks great. So this is going to be my motto -- think small."

I used to have a few grand narratives that coloured my perception of the world: scientific progress; a belief in a meritocratic, just society; Marxism; socialist politics.
Science, I used to think, was an objective activity, predicated on the desire to advance the human cause. It had an inevitability about -- the more you know, the better things will get.
Meritocracy was rooted in my naive belief that anyone could get anywhere if they had the talent. But race, class, accent, conformity, background, and lack of nurture/valuing of every individual human life gives the lie to that. When you offset education and health with the profit motive, I think you narrow the chances for people from the bottom/from the margins;
Marxism was my intellectual tool for getting into a structured analysis of any issue. But my faith in that instrument has faded, even as the tainted dream/nightmare of the Soviet Union fades.
Socialism. In the 60s and 70s, it felt like there really were possibilities that something fundamental could happen. But that's gone: the atomisation of society, the destruction of the postwar corporatist consensus, the 'universal acid' of global capitalism, and the removal of barriers to the cross-border flows of capital have created a new, seemingly entrenched model of instrumentalism -- you're here to act as a unit of production and consumption...morality and justice must bow to the inexorable logic of the markets. Everything is in flux, and everything/everyone is so fragmented. Power -- in the form of the impersonal rules and dictates of the markets -- cannot be reasoned with, and most governments have no desire to do so. Most of us in the West/North are content with our consumption-oriented lives. Happy enough, at least, to not risk speaking out, or speaking out of turn. We keep our heads down, grumble quietly, blame foreigners and outsiders, don't see that its something more fundamental that's wrong.

So what do I have left? The local. The personal. The belief in doing right by people, of making a difference in the spheres where my morals and values can change something, or help somebody.

That's where I'm focused now. I don't think I can deal with the big stuff. I'll chip away at the base of the cathedral with my little chisel.

(Quoted material Copyright Ian McEwan, 2005; Jonathan Cape Ltd; ISBN: 0224072994)