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feature JUNE 2020
I grew up in Northern Ireland. At the time that country was going through a civil war. Or more to the point, a very civil war. What do I mean by ‘very’ civil? Surely a civil war is a civil war because it kills civilians? Well let me explain myself.
A VERY CIVIL
In the entire 30 or so years of the last round of violence in Northern Ireland, a mere 3,000 people were killed, with several thousand more maimed or injured. That sounds bad, and it was. But some perspective: it wasn’t a civil war like that in Liberia from 1989 to 1997, where a quarter of a million were killed; it wasn’t a civil war like that in Sri Lanka in which 150,000 people were killed. It wasn’t even like the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, which resulted in 140,000 slaughtered, and through which places such as Sarajevo and Srebrenica became bywords for horror. No, Belfast and the towns and cities in the north of Ireland conducted a very civil war. By that use of the word ‘civil’ I am being a bit cheeky. All things considered, given the sheer horror in those other places, it wasn’t all that bad. Not bad enough for major, drastic intervention that would upset the complete fabric of society and ensure that whatever grew up to replace it was palpably different. The Northern Irish conflict was civil enough to keep people in a constant state of unease without the dam wall ever breaking. Civil enough to kill people and foster insecurity and pain without
demands for immediate change being heeded. Civil enough to expose people’s true natures, highlight community divisions and keep everyone guessing which way things might go, without every falling into fullscale apocalypse. Civil enough to mean that we went to divided schools – Catholic and Protestant – but still studied economics. Civil enough to ensure that some towns were full of Union Jack flags, while others were full of Irish flags of green, white and gold, but allowed us to shop in the same grocery stores. Civil enough, in other words, to be exhausting in the daily grind without any pressing solution. And over time it changed people in Northern Ireland more than they would realise. Post-traumatic stress disorder is a real thing in that country, and not just among those directly affected by the terrorism and responses to it. What have we stored up for this mini apocalypse? The coronavirus is in Australia at the moment. We do not know where it will head, but from where I sit at the moment it is a very civil virus. Not a
full‑blown pandemic – yet. Not a zombie apocalypse – yet. Not like that Netflix series that we’re refusing to watch at the moment because it’s too discomfiting. You know the one: with freeways jammed with empty, burnt out cars and supermarkets full of rotting fruit. Not Liberia, Sri Lanka or Sarajevo. That’s completely uncivil! And that’s too much to take in right now. The term ‘apocalypse’ simply means to reveal, and what we are getting in our mini apocalypse is a mini reveal. What we have – indeed probably the only thing we can cope with right now – is a very civil virus revealing what we are like in ‘fun-size’. One that bites us, but not too deeply. One that challenges us, but not too much. One that exposes us, but only a little bit. A bit like Northern Ireland’s very civil war. Here’s why a very civil virus is all we can handle: because you can only take out of the bank what you have put in. In other words, we haven’t stored up the right things prior to this event. And we’ve got no supplies to draw on should this go beyond civil. And I don’t mean toilet paper. We haven’t stored up enough of the communal, societal
and spiritual vital supplies that will help us deal well with anything other than what we are experiencing at the moment. Sure, we might get out the other side of this after the Southern Hemisphere winter and things will go back to normal. Or maybe not. People have been writing and speaking about the loss of communal and societal strength for years, warning us that the cracks are getting wider and deeper. And we’ve simply gone, ‘Meh, it’ll be alright.’ You can store up as much of those three-ply bad boys as you want, but the fact is the current very civil virus threat has exposed too much of our panicky selves. There doesn’t seem to be much other person-centredness in our responses. We are focused on us and ours. It’s fisticuffs at five paces, it’s panic buying, it’s onselling at exorbitant (exSorbitent?) prices, it’s empty shelf after empty shelf. In the movie About a Boy, the rich playboy played by Hugh Grant disputes the famous John Donne statement that “No man is an island”. He has enough influence, money and status to retort, “I am an island, I am Ibiza.” He is the famous
pleasure island (Northern Hemisphere equivalent of Bali), which needs no others, which sees those around him as there to serve his interests, and which is hermetically sealed off from the misfortunes, or indeed the concerns about the misfortunes of others. We also haven’t stored up much resilience. In a decade in which everyone has the capacity to be a victim, or be triggered, or be at risk of killing themselves on the basis of someone disagreeing with their lifestyle choices, we have few stores of resilience. Add to this the constant media cycle of alarm, whether that’s over the climate (newspapers were instructing their journalists to call it a ‘climate emergency’), or over the political views of those we disagree with, the sexual views of those we disagree with, the Twitter responses we disagree with, or whatever else we disagree with, we have weakened our ability to stand firm on something we believe in without being shattered. The 24-hour news cycle – whether mainstream or online – is designed to keep us
