Why we must listen to words being used by those in power

My column in this week's print edition of the Herald Express

I’ve always loved bookshops. There was a time when even small villages often had a bookshop. As a young man I spent far too much time flicking through titles and chatting with booksellers. All those years ago buying a book was almost a sacred act and drifting through the pages quite spiritual!

My local bookshop closed last year. It was an independent bookshop and like so many was simply ‘washed away’ by the Internet traders and national chain shops. I would like to say that I had always kept the faith with independent booksellers but that would be an untruth.

I’m writing this article using my computer whilst sitting in my little study surrounded by books. My mind has been restless for a few days and sleep tonight elusive. In many ways my books have the ‘shape’ of a quirky bookshop. The books range from light popular light fiction to weighty tomes that are hard to lift and even harder to read.

There is something quite therapeutic for me in simply holding a book. I like the feel and texture of the paper, the colour of the cover and the scent of a page opened for the first time. My electronic Kindle, whilst easy to carry around, doesn’t offer that moment of atmospheric pleasure.

I have recently attempted to ‘cull’ my collection of books but to be quite honest it is a difficult thing to do. So many books remind me of occasions, times and places. I worry that in giving the book away I will perhaps lose that magic of the moment. Some are gifts from people with little inscriptions and seem to be part of me.

Over the years I have collected a number of older books that have reached me by often circuitous routes. Three very beautiful books I rescued from a bonfire! An old house was being demolished and three ancient books were about to be tossed on a merciless fire. I was only twelve or thirteen at the time and they have been with me ever since.

The books are pen and ink travel journals published in the late eighteen-hundreds and have inscriptions inside the front covers. The inscriptions capture the magic of giving a book as a gift and that thought warms me.

The rescue of those three books has always made me think of the loss of literature over the years. Books that were deliberately consigned to the fire because they contained words that to the ‘powerbrokers’ of the time deemed unpalatable. Iconoclasts have always worried me because the destruction of literature is horrid.

Many years ago I found myself sitting on the floor of a little bookshop thumbing through a small book about existential philosophers. Suddenly names like Sartre and Camus came crashing from the pages. I bought the book and scurried home with it. Sadly it seems to have been one of the books that I have either given away or ‘loaned’ to others.

I say sadly because the word ‘existential’ appears to be being used quite regularly at the moment. You may not have noticed that but I tend to listen out for word patterns. It seemed to me that flicking though the pages of that little book might have been a good thing to do as a sort of balancing act, but sadly I can’t find it or remember the title. After all these years it is probably out of print anyway.

Three people specifically have recently used the phrase ‘existential threats’ in the way that ancient prophets might have addressed a community. The three people are all well known. The first was a senior council official with a national reputation. The second leads a charity with an international following and the third is a famous broadcaster.

The word ‘existential’ is a tricky little thing and often used too lightly. You might simply think about the state of existing without overegging it. But the phrase being used is ‘existential threats’ and that makes me very uneasy. A threat is likely to cause damage or injury and none of us will warm to that thought!

Of course it may be that the term ‘existential threat’ has simply become a cliché but my worry is that it might be prophetic. For certain sectors of our own community that threat might already be a reality and if that is the case then we must all pay attention.

Let me give you an example. We hear time and time again about the underfunding of community resources. Local councils face unprecedented funding cuts and I remember reading a financial projection for Torbay that really worried me. Usually the first people to feel the impact of financial cutbacks are the most vulnerable.

There has to be a limit to what can be cut before whole structures start to fall over. I worry that the term ‘existential threat’ isn’t simply a cliché, but a warning of a future event. When people that I respect start talking about existential threats then I start to research the context in which the term is being used.

Locally we worry, quite rightly, about the number of rough sleepers and the homeless. As I write a cold wind is battering the house but I am warm. The thought of hiding under blankets in some dark corner of the town makes me shiver. The step from losing a job to losing a place to stay isn’t as far away as you might think.

The complex nature of any community is fragile and adopting a position of wilful blindness to the impact of funding cuts to essential services is dangerous. We still, it seems to me, live in a society where the gap between those that have and those that have not is getting wider by the day.

So here we are at the start of 2018 and the annual listing of good intentions. One resolution that seems to make sense is listening carefully to the words being used by those in power and challenging constructively decisions that do not work for the good of all!

Meanwhile we do our best to keep the smile………………….