On the Tragic Necessity of Other People

A Misanthrope Resocialised

YOU HAVE PERHAPS HEARD THE PHRASE THAT HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE?

Yes. Yes, of course.

Death Nodded. IN TIME, he said, YOU WILL LEARN THAT IT IS WRONG.

Terry Pratchett. Small Gods.

[After a long night discussing this article’s subject] I’d sell my own mother for a garlic bread – community be damned.

- Me

When I was younger, I remember being in churches fairly often of a Sunday morning. After all, being seen there on another day might imply an unhealthy level of enthusiasm and it’s best to get the troublesome tasks of the day (the mowing, the washing and one’s immortal soul) out of the way before the heat of the day. In one of my last visits to my local church, I remember being surprised to learn about the number of payment options available for the parishioner on the go who had neglected to withdraw cash for the weekly tithes and offerings.

Multiple payment types accepted. Don’t have cash? That’s all right. We accept cash, cheque (with photo ID, naturally), credit card and, of course, direct debit and direct deposit.

Now, much ink has been spilled by authors with much better credentials than myself on the vexed question of the spiritual ethics of plying vulnerable people for money in a creepy circus of guilt, greed and gratuity. So, have no misapprehensions, gentle reader, that what follows will be a mean-spirited tirade about the economics of religious belief by a misanthropic agnostic. Rather I want to talk about what the EFTPOS machine and the direct deposit mean for the Christian community and what they might actually mean for all communities.

Why You All Deserve to be Shot

We’ve all been there. Standing – in my case, hurriedly clothed – at the threshold, held hostage by a neighbour who wants to discuss the vexed question of the placement of the bins. This is, after all, the seventh time you’ve defied community expectations regarding the precise ordering and orientation of the bins. What did you expect? Justice has come to you at last, the Bloody Bin Baron of Bell Close, in the form of a tragically interminable conversation. And as you stand there, transfixed by the pulsing forehead vein of a man with strangely evangelical refuse positioning predilections, you reflect again on what terribly small-minded things human beings are.

People are, for all in intents and purposes, terribly annoying. For one thing, they aren’t me and they haven’t the good taste to be ashamed of it. Other people are petty and childish and want things all their own way, regardless of how much sense it would make to do it the sensible way – you know, the one you laid out for them last week.

Human beings - there can be no living with them.

A Stay of Execution

Except I rather like some of the benefits I gain from living among people. There are conversations, and peccadilloes and jokes and faux pas. After all, what do we live for, except to make sport for our neighbours and laugh at them in our turn. We need – I need – others of my own kind in ways that animals clearly don’t. It is a matter of supreme indifference to a wombat how another wombat arranges its burrow. (I assume. I mean, have you seen one of their wombat hovels? It’s no surprise that they’re on the endangered list. They’re no better than they should be, I’m sure).

Which brings me back, by a meandering route to those EFTPOS machines in that church. For a long time, I wasn’t able to put my finger on precisely what disturbed me about those EFTPOS machines. Was it just a general technophobia? – a retrograde desire to return to an imagined better past?

No, I believe my objection to EFTPOS machines and direct debit tithing is rooted in a recognition of the transactional nature of that method of giving. Transactional giving that is, perhaps, indicative of transactional relationships, where nothing genuine is exchanged and no true connections established.

A Digression Regarding Crockery

I remember giving my mother a present one year at Christmas. It was a terribly ugly, functional, metal mug that I had picked out for her. It was bought with what little pocket money she was able to afford me as a single mother. As a sycophantic 13 year old, very much desirous of praise and adulation, I had chosen a gift of sufficient frugality to ensure my coffers would be able to stretch to a chocolate bar immediately afterwards. I remember the lavish praise that was heaped upon that mug by my mother when she opened the crudely wrapped gift – praise most undeserved by such a utilitarian and ugly thing. I fancied it to be the best present she must have ever received. Her true opinion on the topic hardly crossed my mind. Parenting, I am led to believe, is a pursuit best prosecuted with a sort of kindly deceit.

It was a good gift, for all my present criticism of it. It was a gift given lovingly from what I had to a person with whom I shared a deep bond who received it with enough good grace not to point out its obvious flaws. The gift was personal and implied a deep connection. As the song so nearly goes, you say it best when you say it with metallic crockery.

Gift Giving & Community

A gift received from someone unfamiliar to us is an excruciatingly uncomfortable thing. A gift received from someone with whom we have no connection is close to meaningless. For example, I don’t know anyone who has been moved to tears by the champagne the hotel gave the on check in. In the same way, when giving to community no longer carries connection, it will cease to be meaningful either to the givers or the receivers.

When I hear modern, large churches pleading (cajoling?) with congregations in the most manipulative of terms regarding the need to deliver unto the lord one-tenth of the harvest, what I hear is the funeral dirge for community. The sine qua non for community is connection. Community engagement can’t be reduced to anonymous participation. You can’t transmit genuine human connection through servers or contract for it through solicitors. Community engagement can’t be found through a memorandum of understanding between organisations. Community is a much messier thing than that. It involves human beings, after all.

Community is a word that is spoken about a great deal, usually by people (like me) who are contemptuous of modernity and long for the good old days that never were. To look the matter in the face, community has always been difficult and support for community always hard to generate. It is good to recognise that community will be terribly noisome and that community ties have only ever theoretically implied universal brotherhood and altruism.

For better and for worse, community was never meant to imply anonymity. Community is about neighbours coming together in recognition of the ties that bind them together (voluntarily or otherwise). Community is about personality and frustration and disturbing conversations. If community isn’t annoying, you’re probably doing it wrong.

When I stand in front of you as your neighbour and give you something that you need, I affirm the relationship that stands between us. I acknowledge your need (perhaps smugly) and affirm your value. After all, if I could just ignore you, I would have no need to support you. In your turn, you (resentfully) accept my condescension and, with your pride at last choked down, offer your closest approximation of sincere gratitude.

In the modern multi-payment method congregation, BPay numbers have replaced needy neighbours. EFTPOS machines have replaced recognition of our role and place in the community to which we’re giving. When precisely nothing is confirmed in the tithing and offering process but the account number of the church, something has gone badly wrong in the community of giving.

Learning to Live With – If Not Love – Your Neighbour

Let the reader understand that the author (for all of his obvious affection for the human race) is the leader of no community organisations and the participant of few. I have, however, come to recognise that this is a dysfunction of mine rather than a virtue. Being remote, disaffected and aloof is most of what modern society is about. Speaking to others has become a sort of exertion from which I need several days to recover.

I have come to recognise that the buffeting and bouncing of my ideas off other people is necessary to refine them. I understand that I must set aside my vanity about being the cleverest and smartest and deal with others. I have come to value the roughness and imperfection of community. The often-uncomfortable acknowledgement that I am one of many. Special, certainly, but not in a way that elevates me above the playful, kindly ridicule of my fellow companions on life’s journey.

And in exchange for the humility that must come from having to recognise my place as part of a larger whole, I am in turn recognised as having a place myself. A voice in the chatter around the dinner table. That voice isn’t always the loudest. It’s not always agreed with. Sometimes it’s not even listened to. After all, one’s opinion, however cherished, is never quite so important as the placement of the bins.