Book 15 pt 2 - Tony Judt, The memory Chalet

It was one of those stories that for a few days was everywhere. Young backpackers, for the dare, for the experience, for the memories, for the excitement, for the anecdote, strip off on top of a sacred mountain in Malaysia. Thoughtless of anything except the fun of being socially free whilst enjoying the hit of cold air on bare flesh, there would have seemed little danger of consequence. Instead after the picture was posted on Facebook  there was an earthquake. They were blamed for upsetting the gods with their act of disrespect and they certainly outraged the sensibilities of the locals. Like many thoughtless youngsters they paid no heed to the opinion or feelings of others. They were not malicious. It just didn’t cross their minds. It could have happened to anyone but fate singled them out and they were arrested, spent time in prison and were deported.

On a personal level I am sympathetic as I know we all do stupid things and being thoughtless does not make us morally deficient. I am sure they are good kids. But it does illustrate a wider point of cultural imperialism and how we in the economically favoured West can see the rest of the world as our playground and that we are entitled to arrive with our own values and beliefs and carry on as normal, without heed of local sensitivities.

This chimes with an anecdote in ‘The Memory Chalet’ dating from the late 70s, when as associate dean at King’s College Cambridge, Tony Judt had to a mediate between students who had cavorted naked on the college lawns and a bedder who had been offended by their immodesty. The bedder was upset not only be the nakedness but  because there were girls in the group, they had made no effort to pretend or cover up, and they had laughed at her discomfort. She thus felt humiliated.

This was a breakdown of social understanding. The students unused to the idea servants and service (the antecedent of the Cambridge system of bedders) thought of her as a paid employee and misunderstood the requirement for forbearance and respect. They thought that in an age of equality the institution was a throwback to indentured servitude. She ought to have been better paid and in return not have the right to call-out their bad behaviour. The purely commercial transaction would  release them from the obligation of consideration.

“But, as I think back, it was the bedder who showed a more subtle grasp of the core truth of human exchange. The students, unbeknownst to themselves, were parroting a reduced and impoverished capitalist vision: the ideal of monadic productive units maximising private advantage and indifferent to community or convention. Their bedder knew otherwise. Semiliterate and poorly educated she might have been, but her instincts bought her unerringly to an understanding of social intercourse, the unwritten rules that sustain it, and a priori interpersonal ethics on which it rests. She had certainly never heard of Adam Smith but the author of ‘A Theory of Moral Sentiments” would surely have applauded.”

That was well over 30 years ago and since then the hold of that economic reductionism has increased and understanding everything in terms of self interest has become so embedded it is not even noticeable. So of course you can go to a sacred mountain and take your clothes off.