I take a lot more photos in the countryside than I do in towns, but I took this one recently while out in Limoges. Like so many French towns and villages there remains a medieval heart which can give you feeling of stepping back into the past. But it’s not like visiting a museum. Oh well, yes, there are dying and almost dead villages in France where it’s hard to get in touch with any sign that you are in the living present. Those places are not so comfortable to visit. Move along now, nothing to see, keep on going. But in places like Limoges the old is inhabited. It’s alive. What I like most about a place like this is a certain character. This isn’t a “high street” of chain stores, replicated like some kind of parasitical virus which replaces individuality and diversity with monotony and sameness. It’s alive with small restaurants, bistros, boutiques, and shops selling art materials or hand crafted works.
This second photo, also taken at night (just for the atmosphere, you see) shows a huge mural covering the gable ends of two buildings near the covered market (‘Les Halles’). This is one of the best examples of this kind of art I’ve ever seen. I love not just its scope and size but the playfulness of the details. Look carefully at the two windows, bottom left, and you’ll see both a model, and an artist painting her.
Why am I thinking about these images of a town at night? Well, in ‘Le Monde’ at the end of last week there was an article about cities. Right at the start of the article they mentioned Wellington Webb, former Mayor of Denver, Colorado, who apparently once said
“The 19th century was a century of empires, the 20th century, a century of nation states. The 21st century will be a century of cities.”
The Huffington post has an article which takes the same quote but talks about “the decade of the city”.
I thought that this idea was pretty interesting, not least because I’ve become increasingly troubled by the rise of inward-looking populist “patriotism” recently. The constant barrage of hatred and negativity towards “the Other”, especially “immigrants”, “asylum seekers” and “foreigners”. The kind of narrative which seems particularly strong in England now as it walks away from its neighbours and colleagues in the rest of Europe. Indeed, some commentators who try to explain how the Leave voters won, suggest it was a particularly English issue. After all Scotland, Northern Ireland and Gibraltar all voted strongly to Remain, but the English and Welsh went for leave. This particular take on the issue which is focused on issues of England suggest there is a strong sentiment of patriotism in England which has still to heal their loss of Empire. Whatever you own take is on the Brexit issue, it was this particular thesis which came to my mind when I read Wellington Webb’s analysis.
Yes, indeed, the 19th century was a century of empire for the English (portrayed as the British), and the 20th saw two World Wars of nation state against nation state. But isn’t it true that as the 20th century came to a close and the 21st began, the multicultural, innovate hubs of development and power increasingly became the cities? In fact, isn’t that one of the other critiques of Brexit, and populism….that the populations who live outside of the great cities feel ignored and forgotten by an urban elite? London, for example, voted to Remain, whilst most of the rest of England voted to Leave. Why was that? Was that something to do with the multicultural nature of a big city?
The other thing that popped into my head while thinking of cities, was this poem –
T S Eliot in his “Choruses from ‘The Rock’ 1934” wrote
When the Stranger says: ‘What is the meaning of this city?
Do you huddle close together because you love each other?’
What will you answer? ‘We all dwell together
To make money from each other?’ or ‘This is a community’?
Well, yes, some people are attracted to a city to make money from other people, but for many it does indeed become “a community”. But aren’t all towns “communities” in the same way? What makes a city any different?
Early in my career I worked as a GP in a small village in Scotland. There were three villages in one valley. The one I worked in, the next one a mile away, and the third one at the top of the valley about three further miles away. All very close in other words. I’ll always remember an old lady telling me that she came from the village a mile away, but when she got married she came to live in my village. “But I couldn’t stand it. I had to move back”. And she did. A mile away, but a BIG difference. And when I left that village to move to Edinburgh to live and work a young woman patient asked me what Edinburgh was like. I was surprised at the question because she was almost thirty years old. Then I remembered that many in the West of Scotland stick with the West of Scotland, so I said, oh you don’t know Edinburgh, maybe you know Glasgow better (about half an hour away)? She said, no, she’d never been there either. I asked her if she’d been to any big towns in her life and she replied that she’d been to one on the coast once for a day trip. (It was a town, not a city).
So I’ve known for a long time that people identify with the places where they are born and many are fiercely loyal to them. People, like Londoners, or Parisiens, or Edinburgers (???) might be intensely loyal to their cities, but are they any more so than those who live in towns and villages?
Well, that’s not really what I got to thinking about actually. What I got to thinking about was the idea that their was something potentially progressive about the idea of an era of empires, then nation states, and now, the cities. What I wonder is whether or not the cities offer us an opportunity to shake off the “patriotism” of “nation states”, many of which in the world are just lines drawn on maps. We don’t put lines around our cities in the same way we do our nations. We don’t give rights to certain citizens in a city but not to others on the basis of whether or not they began their lives in this particular city. Isn’t there something to learn from that? Can’t we all just be human beings living together in a particular place instead of dividing us up arbitrarily into “immigrants”, “expats”, and “citizens”? Couldn’t we say that everyone who lives in the same part of the world is an equal? With the same rights and responsibilities as the others? Do we need to divide the world into “us” and “them”?
Because it’s not that cities are the best way for people to live together, not at all. But maybe there are principles from city living which are distinctly different from those of empire-living or nationstate-living which might help us find ways for us all to share the whole planet in less divided ways?
I don’t know. I’m not proposing any answers here……just wondering.
Interestingly, today, after posting this I came across this article about London in the NY Times – https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/04/11/world/europe/uk-london-brexit.html?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email&_r=0
Did you know there are 270 nationalities living in London?
Loved your contemplative post. Plus it was beautifully written. Glad to have stumbled across your blog. Cheers.
I believe we can’t just “say” that everyone is equal because “everyone” does not *feel* equal. Sometimes with justification as in the farmer in Sahel looking North towards distant shores of wealth and a life where basic needs are supposedly met, since nobody seems to care about him where he is. Sometimes with less justification as when a majority of rural Britons vote to leave EU despite farmers losing 55 percent of their agricultural income derived from the EU Common Agricultural Policy, but because they may feel estranged from the wider world for other reasons and don’t see or believe in this (very concrete) benefit.
Human behavior is strange and paradoxical, though, and definitely not easy to put in a box. The research I’ve read shows that the middle-income whites in the US actually voted more for Trump than the poorer of their class, despite the meme that it was the ‘unemployed’ who put Trump in the White House. I saw on a video the other day a man living alone in the Rockies for 40 years contributing to climate science by measuring snowfall. I know of very urban, very cosmopolitan people who are perhaps the greatest net moochers of the world, hoarding stocks, wealth and rigging the financial system to serve their ends. The list goes on.
I have some faith in the Internet – that it can help overtime bring us more together, by letting us connect in new ways that give value to our lives, no matter our economic backgrounds or geographies. An engineer in Boston may feel that her single life is enriched by sharing recipes with a housewife in Brighton. A janitor in Johannesburg may befriend a fellow online gamer from Yekaterinburg … and the list goes on again.
Those are some of the small miracles compared to 1957 or just 1987 the impact of which, I feel, are not fully appreciated. Yet.
Thank you for your comment Christopher. I agree we can’t make everyone equal by just saying they are. What I do wonder about however is how we decide that some people who live in a particular country should have certain rights and responsibilities and others shouldn’t. What criteria should be used at a country level to decide who is “us” and who is “them”?
How do we decide which group we belong to? The group of humans who live in the same city or town? The group who live in the same nation state? The group who live on the same planet?
I know we all identify with a number of groups. But which groups should we have compassion for? Which groups should we care for?
Of course it can all change when we get personal and your observation about how technology is allowing us to create personal relationships across the boundaries of cities, nation states, races and religions.
By the way I tried clicking through to your blog but it seems to be set up “invitation only”. Yours is the first blog I’ve come across that’s set up that way. I’m interested in that…would you share your reasons for keeping your blog invitation only?
Because my theme has a bug, which you just made me aware of. I’ve had comments fields open backend for months. This might explain why no one bothered to comment before now, ha. And I call myself a webdesigner. I’ll have to have a look at it in one of the breaks today …
In any case, and as regards the topic at hand, I can only say that I think our emotions will decide for us as they always have. So until people, somehow, become more emotionally connected, not much is going to happen. ‘Rational criteria’ such as those espoused by various political parties (this group is dangerous, that group are moochers, etc.) – they are still controlled to a big degree by emotions, such as your sense of foreboding about the world in general. Whereever that comes from. Nature or nurture.
I have worked in the humanitarian business in my younger years, collecting money for Africa and whatnot, and honestly I think we should all be “us”. But I’m unfortunately one of those progressive, liberal, cosmopolitan types (probably with a number of faults, too), so I can’t speak for the majority. I hope, though, that I can contribute, somehow, to helping people see my POV down the line – namely that we should all be more “us”. Then it’s only a practical matter whether or not we can help someone on the other side of the globe and not a matter of lack of will or sympathy.
I hope that one day my blog and other online projects will help in that process. But I guess I better get the bloody comment field fixed then …
Ha! Well I hope you get it fixed soon. I support your values. I share your values. I’d welcome your contributions to the world!
I couldn’t agree more – we need to open up and nurture the feeling connections with others if we are going to change things for the better
I got it now. Nothing a little house-cleaning won’t fix 🙂 I’ll see you around in the blogosphere, Bob – you have a thoughtful and very personal blog. I really like that.