You're welcome Michael
Upon hearing the news of the “No” vote, Michael Greenwell has graciously said “Thank you Ireland“. As I think has become clear, though, I’m rather ambivalent about the whole thing. Rejecting the treaty was emphatically the right thing to do, don’t get me wrong. My ‘X’ went in the correct box. But the question of what happens next is a pretty durn perplexing one.
See, here’s my thing… I’m a European.
I don’t mean that in a mundane geographical sense. It’s something I actually feel, and quite deeply too. I’m aware that this makes me somewhat unusual, but it’s just a direct consequence of my personal experience. During my life I’ve lived throughout Europe and called three other continents home at different times, as well as working for a spell on a fifth. If Europe and Europeans have something that genuinely unites them, then I would humbly suggest that I’m probably one of the people in a position to have spotted it.
And they do.
Obviously when you move around a lot, this is something you get to thinking about. As far as my experience of Europe goes, in my life I’ve lived in Greece, Ireland, Spain, England and Germany (for a 5 month project, but it involved dealing quite closely with German businessmen, local government and workers so I got fairly immersed during my short stay). Now, just for a moment I want you to consider how different those cultures all are. London to Athens. Cork to Berlin. Madrid to Dublin. And from personal experience… they are indeed very different. But despite this, they all share something intangible that you only notice is missing when you live in Cairo or — perhaps most intriguingly — Chicago, or when your local supermarket and dry-cleaners have a Sao Paolo address.
I can’t tell you what that “something” is. It doesn’t have a name. It is whatever property is possessed by a place that prevents the onset of culture shock. It runs far deeper than mere “familiarity”. For me… call it European-ness.
Culture shock, in case you’ve never felt it, is defined as “that sudden sense of vertigo experienced when you think ‘shit! that’s different over here’ more than seven times on each of two consecutive days”. It is quickly followed by a total loss in your own confidence to complete even the most simple and apparently mundane of tasks, and becomes chronic culture shock the moment the terrified rhetorical question “is this my home now?” crosses your mind. Chronic culture shock can involve severe agoraphobia and a worrying urge to watch BBC costume dramas on video.
Don’t get me wrong though, it’s completely temporary and is usually overcome when you discover something apparently trivial but nonetheless extremely pleasing about the place that makes you think “that is utterly fantastic… why don’t we do it that way back home?” After which point it lessens and eventually becomes a vague ambient exoticness that lingers in the strange voices on the radio and the way people move their hands when they greet one another.
I mean, without a doubt, some of the very best memories of my life are of the time I spent in Egypt; probably the place I felt most alien when I first arrived, but which I eventually fell in love with. And I am deeply smitten with Brazillian culture… the music, the people, the sound of the language, the landscape, the mango… oh god, the mango… South America is just fantastic. On the other hand, North America didn’t agree with me at all, which I found quite bewildering given how much American culture we’re all exposed to (New York is one of my favourite places in the world for a short visit, but living in Texas and later spending a year in Chicago damn near drove me insane).
None of which — by the way — and I think I’ve been pretty explicit that this is merely personal experience and observation, is meant to be taken as some kind of weird European “We’re Number One!” chant. Or a kind of eurocentric xenophobia. Far from it. Europe is screwed up in more ways than I care to mention. Maybe even more so than other places (and here I think specifically of South America, which has it’s own set of different problems of course, but there’s a certain attitude to the people which suggests that, in the long term, they may do better at dealing with theirs than we’ll do with ours). Certainly while experiencing the immediate effects of culture shock, a person is — in the most literal sense — xenophobic; scared witless by the alien-ness of the place they find themself. But that’s just an emotional / psychological reaction to a moment of extreme stress.
Have you ever left a party… a bit worse for wear… and decided that you can’t be arsed to wait for the night bus because your place is just about within walking distance. You’ve got your buzz on, and a couple of cans of beer to keep you company and you start hiking. At some point, vaguely frazzled by what seems like hours of walking (including that one estate that seemed dodgy and freaked you out a bit) you turn a corner and you see a familiar landmark… the shop you walk to when you run out of bread, and a momentary sensation steals over you. That’s the very same sensation I felt when I returned from Chicago to London… from Egypt to Greece.
Because of all this. Because I experience a very specific sense of dislocation in North Africa et al, but not anywhere in Europe; because of this, I’d go so far as to say that I feel more European than I feel Irish. Certainly I can’t say I feel any more “at home” in Dublin than I did in London (or even in Athens, despite the myriad massive and obvious differences).
What am I trying to say here? I guess I’m just saying that it saddens me that I had to vote against the Lisbon Treaty and I don’t feel any sense of jubilation whatsoever that “we won”. As comically surreal as the referendum was, I’m in no mood to celebrate. See, I wish it had been a document I could have supported. I really do. Elsewhere I’ve read the argument that the major failure of the Lisbon Treaty was it didn’t recognise the vast differences between the nations of Europe and instead proposes a one size fits all solution to the problem of how we organise our collective affairs.
There may well be something to that, and as I pointed out earlier, Europe is indeed a collection of very different cultures. I’m most definitely not suggesting that contrary to clear evidence we possess a single pan-European culture. Not at all; just that all these different cultures share common aspects and attitudes (as well as a geographical proximity) that make close cooperation possible and potentially very fruitful. So when nosemonkey writes:
while I can’t disagree with the strict wording of the statement, I feel compelled to disagree with its spirit. It’s been my experience that 90% of what divides Europeans is history. If anything it’s our “hopes, dreams and aspirations” that unite us.
i don’t know if you ever looked at my ‘about’ section but i find europe to be variations on a theme.
from this… “i have called three other continents home at different times” i assume you have been there.
asia is wonderful because as douglas adams said ‘assumptions are the things you don’t realise you are making’. when you go to asia there are a lot of things you thought were obvious that get turned on their head.
this is a half response.
i understand browbeating about about being away from home, i really do.
more tomorrow.
June 14th, 2008 | 1:46am
by michael greenwell
But there’s Europe the continent (where does it end, by the way?) and then there’s this… thing… called the EU. Or more precisely the EU project, and the group steering it. I’m not saying they’re agents of anything sinister, just that they’re profoundly unaccountable and uninterested in accountability (Hugo Young’s book is called This blessed plot for a reason). Frankly, any time those people give us a vote I’d be inclined to vote No – particularly in a case where the vote’s called to ratify decisions that have already been made without any real attempt to explain their implications, let alone to allow input from below.
June 14th, 2008 | 9:18am
by Phil
I have to admit, as someone who has also lived and worked in a number of different countries, that I feel entirely the other way around.
Living here in Portugal is wildly more different than the UK than living in the US was for example. And I find a greater similarity between Portugal and Russia than I do between either and the UK.
Language is of course a part of it….but there’s more than that. To use an old phrase, the “White Commonwealth” (and no, I’m using it as a description only, not as a racial description, meaning Canada, Australia, New Zealand and I’d include the US as well) and the UK share a great deal more of the underlying culture, the attitudes to government and society, than do say France and England.
June 14th, 2008 | 10:19am
by Tim Worstall
Michael… “Europe as variations on a theme”. I love it. Succinctly sums up what I was struggling to express. Nice one.
Phil… I agree of course. And that’s really the source of my chagrin. I want to see Europeans working closely together on a large number of issues, but the bureaucrats and politicians of Europe spend their time manipulating that desire so that it’s leading us down the wrong paths. I don’t see any reason why that can’t be changed though (not that such a change wouldn’t be difficult to achieve).
Tim… yeah, I’ve met plenty of people on my travels who feel just as you do. That’s why I took such pains to communicate the fact that my post was based almost entirely upon personal, and very subjective “feelings” about the places I’ve lived, and wasn’t some kind of cultural analysis.
I honestly expected North America to be a “bigger Britain” or a “shinier Ireland”; you know the kind of thing. But I didn’t find that. In fact, after Saudi Arabia, the US is probably the place that I found most difficult to adjust to on an ongoing basis. Once I’d found my feet in Egypt — despite the initial culture shock — I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that I never “found my feet” in America. The place remained an alien culture to me, despite — as I said above — having been exposed to American culture (like everyone else) for years prior to moving there.
But yeah, I’m well aware that my position is an unusual one.
June 14th, 2008 | 12:38pm
by Jim Bliss
Oh and Phil, you ask “where does it end, by the way?”. That’s a great question and one I’ve spent time considering. If I fall back on my personal feelings; Turkey doesn’t feel European to me (now there’s a controversial statement… but if a writer isn’t going to be honest about their personal experiences then they should probably stop wasting everyone’s time and seek an alternative occupation). Never spent enough time in Scandanavia to really know whether they share whatever it is that central and southern Europe appear to. I only spent time in Russia when it was The Soviet Union — and that was as alien a place as you could wish to visit (only went there for a short time, but it was far too powerful a sensation to miss even with that limited exposure). Definitely not Europe. Definitely “it’s own place”, cos it sure as hell wasn’t Asian either.
So yeah… that’s my (very very subjective) response to the question of the geographical extent of Europe.
June 14th, 2008 | 1:04pm
by Jim Bliss
[…] I vote No to Lisbon? Like a shot – as I wrote somewhere else, “any time those people give us a vote I’d be inclined to vote No – particularly in a case […]
June 15th, 2008 | 11:08pm
by I know when I’m wrong « The gaping silence
Identity is a personal thing, I sense it to be a set of concentric rings; I feel European too, but also definitely English, and also Northern.
None of these excludes the other to me, nor does it assert any kind of supremacy over those who are from elsewhere.
It’s just that when I’m in my home I’m, fairly obviously, most at home of all. In the south of England there are a few twinklings of difference. Once into Wales or Scotland, I get that fairly constant sense of ‘being somewhere else’. Further into Europe that sense gets stronger. And, like you, I have found it a big jump stronger anywhere outside Europe (like you in America, I was really caught out by the foreignness of Australia).
It’s not that voting No was ‘anti-europe’ in any way. As I understand it, Gerry Adams led the only significant party in Ireland that wanted a No vote. Yet as soon as the result was declared, he made clear that the Lisbon Treaty had been rejected, but the project for the ‘social Europe’ should push onward.
Time and again i return to the sentiment of Niki Kortvelyessy in the article Our Europe, Their Europe. It was one of those great moments when a writer articulates your feelings and makes something solid and sensible out of what you thought was your own personal confusion.
Phil nearly hits it with the distinction between Europe and the EU. Actually, it’s that the EU is running two separate and largely opposed grand projects.
There’s the social vision; bringing all member nations up to the highest standards in a varietry of areas – welfare, human rights, environment and others – and promoting peace and co-operation between nations that have a very long history of enmity and bloodshed.
Then there’s the business vision; one internal capitalist freemarket. This demands a diminishing of workers rights and a concentration of power to the wealthy.
So when anyone tries to say they are for or against the EU, they are declaring themselves to be in favour of completely opposed ideas.
This isn’t just on the level of the whole EU project, but within the Lisbon Treaty itself.
As George Monbiot ,
You surely did the right thing, to vote against a mixed bag containing some things you firmly oppose. It still retains the possibility of getting the things you like in future.
June 16th, 2008 | 10:43am
by merrick