(Still) afraid of the big, bad wolf

Do we ever grow out of our childhood fears? And can fear ever be a good thing? Stephanie Milsom takes a long, hard look at the trouble of being scared.

When I was a child, I pulled up a fallen branch in the garden and was swarmed by Killer Bugs (woodlice); I had a dream that a skeleton popped up at my window in the middle of the night; and I convinced myself that Transformers were horrific creatures that controlled your nightmares. I’m still wary of them today. I’m not sure what’s so formidable about hairdryers and hand-dryers, but the sound still makes me uneasy. Even compiling some of the short stories for this term’s edition was tough going.

Essentially, I’m plagued by an active imagination and an annoying knack of being scared – a dangerous combination, if ever there was one. I’ve also probably seen too many horror films. I’m often slightly worried that my childhood fears haven’t – for want of a better word – stopped; I don’t think my dad’s scared of anything, and he’s a perfectly normal adult. But then, I don’t think dads are supposed to be scared of anything.

I’m sure if I spoke to a ‘professional’ they’d tie it all back to some deep-seated emotional trauma/need to be loved/mental instability (delete as appropriate), but I wonder whether it’s just … well, me. It might sound far-fetched, but my fears, just like the old ‘likes and dislikes’ subsection of the questionnaire, make me who I am. I’m not too keen on the dark, so I’m light and bright and bubbly in the day, and annoyingly clingy at night. My fear of seeing something behind me in the mirror’s reflection means I don’t go the bathroom at night, so my bladder has almost super-human strength. Maybe I shouldn’t look for a ‘cure’ for my ridiculous fears and just accept that that’s me. And I’m ridiculous.

I’m also scared of normal things too, like spiders and having to clean behind the fridge. Granted, most of my ‘adult’ fears are less fantastical, but they’re just as valid. A credit card bill won’t scuttle up my arm and eat my face, or jump up behind me in the dark, all white eyes and giant fangs, but I came terribly close to destroying my credit rating last week and it was truly harrowing. After fifteen minutes of frantic googling and trying all manner of ways to work out HSBC’s online banking repayment system, I finally managed it, and sighed a not too dramatic sigh of relief. Late payments = extra surcharges = poor credit rating = no mortgage/loans/anything for me.

Okay, perhaps ‘anything’ is a little extreme, but the fact remains that the responsibility of paying your way and keeping on top of things can be just as scary as the giant arachnid/zombie hyrbid under the bed. I’m not even certain that they stop being scary as we get older, unlike said monster. Our parents and surrounding adults are only good at life (some of them, at least) because they’ve made a habit, where possible, of avoiding scary, grown-up stuff. So maybe being scared is a good thing; it stops us making stupid mistakes (ahem) and helps us to stay on track. It also gives us incredible wonder-bladders.

Moral Dilemmas of the Foreign Tourist

Active contribution or passive consumption? Anisha Wilmink reviews the uncomfortable issue of the modern tourist, following her recent trip to Kenya.

To be a traveller was, in times past, to possess a lauded title. Historians, philosophers, and explorers, sustained by wealthy patrons, returned from their travels with exotic tales and theories about foreign civilisations. Only rich men could afford the luxury of desiring such knowledge, and it was the bravest and cleverest men they chose to seek it out. To be a traveller was to be a guest at banquets, to be honoured by the Queen, and to be the hero of children’s dreams. Yet the title ‘traveller’, as ascribed to Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, and David Livingstone, has morphed into a word laden with negative connotations: tourist.

I had never felt ashamed of my desire to travel until I travelled with eleven of my school mates to Kenya. I think I have always felt so comfortable with my desire to explore other countries because I identify most strongly with a culture and country that none of my family call home. They, like me, have always had “itchy feet”, never desiring to be in one place for too long. I’ve always been a ‘foreigner’ in both the country in which I reside, and in the native homes of my parents; it simply depends on who is asking. People are prone to pity this fact, but I love that it allows me to derive pleasure from secretly calling myself a “citizen of the world”. My proverbial itchy feet mean that the moment the doors of an airplane hiss open my heart skips. It’s the lively local air forcing its way into a stale cabin that is first real clue that the whole world has changed around you. Everything about the air is different; its weight, its smell, and its texture, and within this intoxicating mixture lies coiled that first twinge of excitement: the awareness that the adventure has begun. While I savour that moment, for some people it harbours an unnatural sense of fear, the fear of stepping out of that airplane door and becoming a tourist.

On that Kenya trip, even whilst we were still allowing our lungs to acclimatise to the new, humid air, a friend of mine confessed to a swelling mixture of uncomfortable feelings inside her stomach: she was ashamed of being a tourist. As she watched the unfamiliar landscape lurching past, she was uncomfortably aware of her ‘Western’ status and of her alien presence in this foreign country. At that point in time I couldn’t understand her feelings. I wondered how a visitor could be ashamed to enjoy why people are proud of their country. If you speak to someone about their homeland, more often than not they persuade you to promise to visit and share their culture, food, and hospitality. Yet, somehow, Rosie had hit on a prominent tension so often ignored, or at least shamefully swallowed.

When travelling to Europe or North America, a tourist is at worst an annoyance; they have come to marvel at the history, culture, and sights of a developed country and they’ll leave their money in exchange. There, tourism industries are well-developed, profitable, and geared towards funnelling money into the economy. In developing countries, however, the methods are often exploitative of the locals, lucrative mainly for foreign investors, and present a dishonest – or, at best, pre-packaged – view of the country. This dichotomy between the romanticised view of safaris and ‘ethnic culture’ and the harsh realities of life is starkly evident in so many countries in Africa. English-speaking countries with a coastline and national parks such as Kenya are well versed in this narrative of double standards.

Much later on that trip, zoning out the sounds of my card playing friends and the South African MTV watched ceaselessly by the Kenyan girls who occupied the hostel, I felt similar discomfort to that my friend had confessed to earlier. I was not ashamed of being a tourist – we were not oblivious foreigners in five star hotels or isolated resorts, nor the expats in their Land Rovers and gated communities; we walked the streets and took public transport, ate in local establishments, and shopped in local markets in Nairobi. In fact, it was my brush with the volunteer sector that made me ashamed of my possessions, foreign passport, and money. I was becoming aware that to combat the potential discomfort of educated foreigners visiting Kenya, a new and uglier brand of tourism was taking root: a merger between the volunteer sector and the tourism sector.

Thousands of students, families, and couples are engaging in ‘altruistic tourism’. In my mind this is far worse than enjoying a Kenyan coastline without ever venturing out of the resort.  It is far more exploitative to pay thousands of dollars to spend a week painting a school, or playing with children at a nursery for AIDS orphans, or teaching a disjointed English course. That money could be far better spent employing a local contractor to paint the school, or funding the salary of a social worker or teacher for a year. Instead, the money goes to a middle-man: somebody getting rich off the warped conscience of the Western tourist. The tourists seem to desire staged photos cradling the ‘famous’ African babies to show their friends at home what an amazing and life-changing experience they had in ‘Africah’. Taking into account the inordinate cost of the trips, these digital images equate to hundreds of dollars. The name of the country does not matter; neither does its whereabouts in the vast continent, and what happens to the child after those pictures are taken is irrelevant. For one week or ten days, the fortunate Westerner gets to realise how ‘privileged’ they are and the feeling of satisfaction will last a lifetime. All this happens at the cost of the human dignity and respect for the condition of the lives the local people are leading.

My initial joy had turned suddenly murky. My multi-national group and I had come to Kenya, just after graduating from an esteemed international school, to build pit latrines for a Maasai tribe in the Ngong hills outside Nairobi. My camera was already full of pictures of cheerful, paint-splattered students and laughing children. I did not want to return home and proudly profess that I had been in Kenya on a ‘humanitarian mission’, or that we, the privileged students, had briefly brought ‘peace and love’ to the world by building four pit latrines. The trip was led by a Kenyan student whose mother’s hostel we had stayed at, and perhaps it would have been better simply to fundraise and give her the money to spend locally. She could have hired a contractor and sent us pictures of the Maasai tribe with the finished product of the sanitation project.

A few days after my uncomfortable realisation, I sat with the other members of my group excitedly rehashing the events of the day. I smiled at a night guard who waved back at me and I realised my feelings of discomfort and guilt had entirely disappeared. I understood that I wasn’t there to assuage my feelings of Western guilt, or to provide help to ‘the poor of Africa;’ my being there to travel was what mattered.

For most people it is never possible to have the experiences we had spending each day with a Maasai tribe. I don’t know how many people can say they drank goat’s blood from a chipped tin cup or pushed a minibus from the Ngong hills to Nairobi in a rainstorm. I still laugh and treasure the memory of how a one and a half hour journey back to Nairobi turned into a four hour exercise in determination and spirit, where eleven students soaked to bone and singing camp songs pushed their minibus through quickly-forming rivers of viscous mud. Admittedly, we could have fundraised from the safety of our college, but what good would it have done us? I learned so much, I experienced adventures that will stay with me for the rest of my life, and I came into contact with people whose day I was lucky enough to share. There was a complete exchange: we were able to help support a basic need of a community, and they were able to share with us culture, reality, and adventure. I didn’t walk away from the trip feeling noble; I felt excited, lucky, and eager to share my stories.

I still take issue with altruistic tourism and sometimes I prefer not to share those ‘Africa’ photos I have. They are a great memory for me and I don’t want them misunderstood. When people ask me if I have visited Africa, I will never tell them that I went on a volunteer trip to Africa; I will tell them that I travelled in Kenya. My time with the Maasai was part of my Kenyan travels, and I have Kenya to thank for some of my best anecdotes and memories.

independence.

Exemption from external control or support; freedom from subjection, or from the influence of others; individual liberty of thought or action. Rarely in a bad sense: Want of subjection to rightful authority, insubordination.

Rarely in a bad sense.

Rarely in a bad sense.

Rarely in a bad sense.

As children we are forever breaking boundaries, doing the complete opposite of what our parents say and do, promising ourselves that we will never turn into them. My particular childhood, spent travelling between parents locked in the bitterness of divorce, demonstrated the multitude of ways a person can exert control over another. A lot of ‘independence’ is about realising that you’re better than the situation you’re placed in – Marx would be proud. For many people, it’s a gruelling marathon of injustice; for others, it’s simply a light bulb over the head. But there are so many different types of independence, swarming around like leaves on the wind. The concept – the idea of breaking out – becomes ‘freedom’ and ‘openness’. There a simple freedoms, ones that I’ve fought for in my life; the freedom to run to the shops with my friends, the freedom to paint my room whatever colour I want (I went for magnolia …), the freedom to choose my life path and take myself to university. The small ‘independences’, which of course quake in the face of such enormous campaigns as black rights or a nation’s sovereignty, are still important to our lives.

And it’s not just about knowing that the world is your oyster. There’s a small and quite perfect pleasure in knowing that you can read what you want, eat what you want, throw your clothes where you want; in short – you can be who you want. For the first few weeks, you feel like you’re finally being you. The you away from midnight curfews and responsible behaviour and all things grown up. The you where university is the best thing that’s happened to you.

Normally, quite soon after this realisation, comes the maddening awareness that ‘independence’ is basically a posh word for ‘alone’. Yes, you’re surrounded by friends, housemates, course-mates, but sometimes you realise, whilst struggling against boundaries and rules all your life, that this structure is what keeps you together. And I complain and I tell myself that things will change when I live alone – and then you’re placed in a house with ten others who all feel exactly the same. There’s no one but ourselves to make us do the dishes, to wash our clothes, to cook our food. But this is independence. This is ‘finding our own way’. A small freedom, it would seem, but monumental in that this process will make us who we are. I myself rarely miss anyone, whether family member or otherwise, but the looming, empty vacuum before me is terrifying. We nurture the utopian ideal that once out of our parent’s houses, we can live our own lives free of arbitrary rules and curfews: we can watch what we want on television, we can eat Pot Noodles until we double in size, we can live our own lives.

This sudden removal of the proverbial rug from under our feet, however, can leave us feeling lost. For all my talk of wanting to live my own life and be my own person, I’m even desperate to be told I can’t do something, purely because as an adult living away from home, I can technically do anything – and the idea scares me. It’s almost as if, as humans, we need some walls to bash our heads against, otherwise we simply stagnate. We need something to engage our brains and emotions, to enrage us, to make us passionate, even violent. We need to feel like something is stopping us from where we want to be, otherwise we will realise that we are not there for a reason. We need something to fight for, and someone to fight against, otherwise we’re lost.

Quicksand

“Ever closer union.” With that phrase from the Treaty of Rome, the European Union set out its terms. Within living memory Europe had endured two wars, the rise of Communism, fascism and the Cold War, and the deaths and maiming of millions of its soldiers and civilians. Some greater step had to be taken to ensure prosperity and affluence for the people of Europe, whom America’s Marshall Plan had given aid only ten years before to prevent France and Italy electing Communist governments. And it worked. Bar the ugly tribal massacres in the Balkans in the 1990s – who have never been part of the European Union – Western Europe has enjoyed its longest period of peace in history. Overall the EU has the biggest economy in the world, many of the wealthiest nations within it.

Yet this expansion is under threat with the sovereign debt crisis. Countries such as Greece, Italy and Spain have huge debt problems, exacerbated by stagnating economies and the shaky worldwide recovery. Unable to borrow money from the market place without punitive levels of interest, they are close – especially Greece – to running out of money. In previous times this was no issue; the countries would debase their currency, meaning it was worth less, as Italy has done many times before with the lira, and as the UK is doing with quantitative easing. However, with the euro that is not possible. Many people have labelled the euro a step too far: though the current interest rates are beneficial for Germany’s booming exports, they are less so for the struggling southern economies. Such inequality cannot work. And if Greece – which, constituting 2% of the EU’s economy, is, ultimately, vestigial to the grand European project – can upset the markets so, is it not proof that the EU is built on a house of sand?

Well, yes and no. Greece defaulting on its loans and being kicked out of the euro and being forced to re-adopt the drachma is not the big concern, it’s the precedent that it would set – in particular, Italy. With ten years of a stagnant economy, endemic political corruption exemplified by the farcical buffoonery of Berlusconi, markets do not trust the current Italian government to enact severe enough austerity measures. If Italy, the eighth largest economy in the world exporting nearly half a trillion dollars of goods a year, defaults, then banks that have taken on Italy’s debt would suffer a liquidity crisis equal to or worse than the crisis of 2008. And this touches on the main problems of the EU: a general trading agreement has become a monolithic monstrosity. Its aim to speak for the people of Europe, though laudable, cannot trump the nationalistic identity, to the extent that the USA and China note with increasing exasperation their frustration in the reticence of European officials. For the EU is in a quandary. It lacks the power of a supranational organisation to run its affairs, because what is sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander.

The outcome of the financial crisis will have a striking result for sovereign independence within the EU. If the bailouts are sufficient, and Greece and the other Southern European countries recover, it will have come at a cost of independence. France and Germany hold the purse strings and will have made clear that bailouts are done on their terms. However, if Greece totally defaults and takes other countries with it, that great conciliatory spirit of the Treaty of Rome will be lost. The EU will become a broken entity, far less politically powerful domestically and internationally, unable to stop countries pursuing destructive policies, whether in diplomacy, militarily or environmentally. For those of us in Britain, watching smugly from the sidelines as growth forecasts for our economy are cut and cut again, going ‘I told you so’, now is not the time to be complacent. Our banks, our manufacturers, our tourisms, are too finely intertwined with Europe to think of saying goodbye now. It’s the way we eat, what we watch, even how we think, that is influenced by Europe. Our viable independence as a nation, paradoxically, is tied to our continuing involvement with our allies across the channel.

Trousers

“FEMINISM IS NOT SIMPLY A STRUGGLE TO END MALE CHAUVANISM, OR A MOVEMENT TO ENSURE WOMEN HAVE EQUAL RIGHTS WITH MEN; IT IS A COMMITMENT TO ERADICATING THE IDEOLOGY OF DOMINATION THAT PERMEATES WESTERN CULTURE ON VARIOUS LEVELS”

Bell Hooks

If I am a woman, I am seen as irrelevant and aggravating. I am peddling an agenda out of touch with life and the needs of the modern woman, compromising the current position of women everywhere by maintaining a radical stance that damages the relationship they and I have with men. I am undermining all the successes of women who do not agree with me by suggesting that they still suffer from oppression. Because of this, I exist outside of the reasonable discourse between the genders and occupy a space of segregation that is simultaneously forced upon me and self-created. I am a man-hater and men-and- women-hated.

If I am a man, I am seen as paralysed by a shallow liberal guilt from acting as a member of my gender. I am trying to atone for the mistakes made by men in the past to make myself feel better. I am selfish and insincere. I am the kind of man that feminists love to enter their discussions because I legitimise their debate. Other women are uncomfortable with my views and feel patronised that I am telling them that they are oppressed when, really, this oppression doesn’t actually exist. But I can’t really be a (pro)feminist because those women hate men.  If I disagree, I’m trying to sleep with somebody.

If I acknowledge that I am one gender or the other, I know that some people will see me in a particular way. Cliché affects understanding. So I refuse to be seen. I am without sex. My gender isn’t important to you, but it is to me, as both genders’ interpretations of feminism are valid, but differ. This discussion is informed by my position within the wider discourse, and as a consequence there will be gaps. My denial of gender isn’t an admission of failure or disavowal of my position; it is an exploration of my relationship and understanding of feminism without necessarily revealing it to you. However, what I write won’t necessarily be true for other people, man or woman; this is a personal understanding of feminism, as all are. Question everything I say.

Perhaps increasingly, if a woman is a feminist, she absents herself from a patriarchal society by refusing to take her place within it. In such a society, feminism is a kind of non-identity, a disavowal of cultural enforced views on womanhood and femininity. By refusing your femininity, you are essentially giving up your voice within a society that will only accept you if you accept its view of you. This is why so many women are reticent to talk about feminism, let alone adopt it as a cause. Rather than allow a discussion to exist that may be damaging to the male-driven society that women have to engage with to retain their identity, many women are complicit with their male counterparts in rejecting and undermining feminism and its advocates, and push them into a hinterland where they lose legitimacy and relevance.  Feminism isn’t inherently irrelevant or flawed, but has been made to be so by members of a society that still values “wearing the trousers” as a symbol of power, that still pays women, on average, 10% less than men in full time jobs paid by the hour, and still uses confused, but ultimately subservient language in women’s magazines (“How To Make Him Want You!”). As a woman, it has been accepted that one must sacrifice some power and independence in their lives and accept a place within an unfair society in order to have any say over what happens in their lives at all due to a dismissal of feminism from both sides of the gender divide.

The idea of power within society can affect those supposedly in control as well as the oppressed. Men can feel trapped and powerless by the position that the gender/power binary dictates for them. Men are under pressure to be men, and exist in just as much a predetermined way as women, sans the surrendering of power. This can be deeply affecting for men, whose identities, much like women, are created through an engagement with the society that they occupy. A disconnection from this society results in a rupture from identity, from history, from other men. This is what the power binary based on gender does; perpetuates a powerful man and a subservient woman.

This supposition, in my opinion, is the key to the emancipatory qualities of feminism. The man/woman divide is based on an understanding of a symbiotic relationship between power and weakness. One needs the other to exist. If man no longer has subservience, you no longer have power. This frees members of both genders from the shackles of their enforced positions and allows a more flexible discourse between the two. The idea of feminism being in opposition to a white, male patriarchy also implicates issues of class and race within the male/female divide which are part of an iceberg of societal conflicts that this position alludes to. Women’s rights alludes to men’s rights (but does not equivocate the two very different beasts) and allows a meaningful and relevant discussion of many different ideas pertaining to freedom and oppression.

It is vital and necessary that women understand their position within a patriarchal society and inspire other women to do the same. Men, without claiming feminism as your own cause (the word pro-feminist is helpful here, suggesting that you support the cause without presuming yourself a member), should help create a climate of openness and acceptance of such ideas, perhaps allowing the existence of feminism within the confines of society. Women’s rights will not and should not come from men, but should be acknowledged as possible and welcome. We’d all be freer for it.

Inhumanities

“Come on, mate, you do science…”

It seems to be general opinion that, because someone studies a science subject, they can calculate how much pain a squash ball to the arse would cause. Joking or otherwise, this is an example of that fabulous – and only a little bit ironic – general student opinion. That those studying humanities are well adjusted and normal, and those who wear lab coats are not to be approached; that science as a whole should be left in its cage. Do not feed the nerds.

But why does this ingrained image persist? Robert Boyle was referred to as the father of modern Chemistry, but held the title of a Natural Philosopher. There were no distinctions between philosophy and science back then. It seems that science and scientists are wrongly set apart from the rest of normal life. I think that blame instead falls in large part on one photograph: the iconic portrait of Albert Einstein with his tongue out. A quick Google image search of ‘scientist’ brings up a myriad of lookalikes, most of whom have white hair, glasses and lab coat, and generally don’t look like sociable chaps. It’s a shame that this is the enduring image that symbolises this prejudice, as it could so easily have been the rather well dressed Einstein at the age of twenty-six, when he published his really ground-breaking papers. Back then he was somewhat of a ladies’ man, so I’m told.

“The sciences don’t need more money…”

Science is big in Britain as well. Statistics that came out of the Department of Business, Innovation, and Skills in mid-October are being loud-speakered by UK science bodies, and show that Britain has 11% of the world’s global paper citations, and 14% of the world’s most highly cited papers. All this from a country with 1% of the world’s population, and 4% of its researchers. In the same way that York science is prominent in Britain, British science is distinguished among its international peers. But, unlike the other 60% of York students, un-scientific UK citizens can reap in the benefits. A £6 billion annual investment in research, which is 1.8% of the GDP, fundamentally supports around 30% of the country’s economy. This is clearly fantastic value for money. But the astonishing thing is the current government plans to cut the science budget. Would this obvious solution for a boost to the recovering economy be given the time it deserves if party politicians had more time with science?

“It can’t be argued that scientists would make better politicians…”

Margaret Thatcher is a chemistry graduate from Somerville College, Oxford. She, naturally, was on the research team that helped develop soft-scoop ice cream. Such transferable skills can come from an education that gives an analytical and logical mind to the same extent as from the multitude of barristers and humanitarians the House has. One can highlight a better grasp of issues such as research funding priorities, animal research moralities, and of course global environmental change, something that right-Thatcher was surprisingly very much on the ball with. And with environmental change and its humanitarian consequences being more and more taken up into the political sphere, wouldn’t a better grasp on the situation by scientifically minded decision makers make more sense?

“Science isn’t culture…”

Ideas thrown up by the development of science permeate culture, both at an inspirational and fundamental level. That is to say, George Lucas conquered popular culture in 1977 with his fantastical scientific-inspired ideas, while blowing viewers’ minds with special effects that were themselves a triumph for computer graphics. Quite the stereotype for a science student to reference Star Wars, but Mary Shelley, The Beatles and Van Gogh couldn’t have done without genetics, music technology and oil paints. The whole exhibition of modern culture – the Zahir’s website is a great example – has seen seismic shifts as regards to developments in science and technology. Here, culture is working with science, and this is an example that the rest of the world should be following.