CATCHING A GLIMPSE

There was a piece in the media recently about ‘mysterious structures’ out in the Gobi desert, constructed by the Chinese for who knows what nefarious purpose. A certain breed of cranky American got alarmed about this development, and for some reason decided to correlate the shapes of these unusual structures with the overhead views of American cities. Presumably they were worried that the objects would be picked up and superimposed somewhere downtown of where they lived, keeping cops stuck in donut shops and preventing anarchists from getting into their homes, thus fomenting panic in the streets. Hey, if the Americans get to stereotype the Chinese as out to get them, then I get to pick on the Yanks. Fair’s fair, right?

Well, no, as it happens. The presumption that my wilful ignorance is allowable in the face of someone else’s is just as cranky as the insistence that a random template in the desert must have a sinister function. As it turns out, what’s going on in the Gobi is the creation of a system for calibrating spy satellites. Never mind for now the issues concerning such nosy technology. What interests me more is the theories people came up with about it. The idea that the Chinese were constructing a scale model of someone’s hometown to no clear end is a fabulous example of the mind’s ability to create something out of nothing, and then get anxious on the basis of it.

There was a glorious and characteristic example of this in the Daily Mail some years back. The supposed story featured a man of uncertain origin found floating off the English coast on a homemade raft. Nothing was known about him, but somehow the Mail still found reason to believe that he was an illegal immigrant, not coincidentally one of its favourite bugbears. People are scrambling to get into this blessed land, and they are faking amnesia in order to do so. Never mind that he could have been an innocent British subject who’d suffered a mishap, or that he needed some kind of help regardless of his ethnicity…no, clearly it was time to repel boarders, and the Mail was in the front line to do so. What made the whole thing even more fabulous was the piece on the next page, an offer for some royal family themed tat that godfearing Mail readers would presumably line up to put alongside other patriotic memorabilia.

The continuity between the paper’s perception of the world beyond the white cliffs of Dover, and what it wanted to offer to placate its supporters, was striking. Look! Someone trying to sneak into the country! But don’t worry, here’s a cushion with an embroidered Princess of Hearts. Not that other publications are much different: I’m always entertained by magazines like Monocle, aimed at well-to-do types who travel a lot, and accordingly crammed with ads for stupidly expensive watches. I know someone who has a fascination for such timepieces, and he told me the thing isn’t that they tell the time well. They don’t. Connoisseurs buy them because of the sophistication of the mechanism, and take for granted that they’re inaccurate.

Well, you can spend good money to get a skewed worldview in all kinds of ways. Public school education is one version. There was a piece in The Guardian recently – beloved of those who have heard of emotional intelligence – stating what beasts Eton types such as David Cameron are for their ability to freeze out those they disapprove of. Like it takes a belief in the free market to produce people who can signal their disapproval. Liberalism is based on doing exactly that in passive aggressive forms, as you’ll soon discover if you express taboo views among those same Guardian readers. The paper’s letter pages often feature people so sensitive that they are unable to tolerate the juxtaposition of an article on exploitation of cocoa farmers, say, and an ad for a Cadbury product. I wrote suggesting that such delicate flowers should stay indoors, lest they be exposed to the kind of scenes that can occur in a typical street when people with views opposing their own may be found, doing who knows what.

Thing being, reality takes whatever forms it takes, and pays scant regard to our sensibilities. No use projecting our neighbourhoods onto whatever’s out there when something altogether other is happening before your very eyes. Peek beneath or behind or beyond whatever you’ve labelled as familiar and have the cojones to experience something fabulous and novel and beautiful and strange. You’ll be a better person for it.