He kept himself to himself

It is inevitable that, in the aftermath of the latest shock discovery of women kept chained in basements for thirty years, or the Black Widow with half a dozen husbands stuffed up the chimney, that a bewildered neighbour will say “He was very quiet. Never any trouble. He kept himself to himself.”

I just want to scream at the TV, “Why are you so surprised? That was the warning sign!”

Our heads are dangerous places; we should not keep ourselves to ourselves. Our personal internal realities were put together by Microsoft; they are not naturally stable, sane or well regulated environments.

People selling unlikely products with the dubious quality of not being available in stores know this well. Like vampires, they lie in wait until dark, until the wee small hours of the morning when you’re watching TV because you can’t sleep, the house is quiet and the world outside seems a long way away. Then they come at you out of the shadows and tempt you with the unearthly delights of tightened abs, knives that will take the front of your shoes off or vacuum cleaners that will not only suck up everything - including unwanted party guests - but will turn your home from black and white to colour and give you a sexier set of legs to match. While you’re in their unholy grasp, they lure you into three easy payments of $39.95 (plus $466 postage and handling) and you’re theirs. If you had someone to check this idea with, it would never have passed the laugh test.

Rare indeed is the person whose own company is good company. For those few, the internal heavens explode into coruscations of brilliance and wonder and we get the likes of Cavendish, Einstein or some of the authors of our finest works of literature. For many though, the internal realm is haunted by dark shades of self-recriminations, unrequited desires for power, simmering, acidic pools of vengeance and untamed, stalking libidos.  And it’s made worse by access to the Internet where one can choose to see only what one wishes so see – and disregard the rest.

Even for those whose sanity has not been forced into involuntary redundancy, living life informed only by a computer screen and never being contradicted by another human being has some unhealthy consequences. Anyone who has a manager can confirm this:

“The report said the project has missed its milestone!”

“Yes, but it’s only by a day and we’re back on track now. If you come out to the site you can see …”

“I don’t care what I can see on site, my report says we missed a milestone. I can’t give that to the board!”

“Well, the reporting template was due three days before month end and the milestone came in one day late.”

“Just fix the report. I don’t want to hear excuses, I need to meet my KPIs.”

Early Christian mystics and Himalayan gurus also, famously, kept themselves to themselves, sitting atop poles or in high mountain caves, occasionally dispensing wisdom - probably in exchange for gifts of haemorrhoid cream. And they came up with some pretty peculiar ideas, but nothing that might have had some practical use like elevators, telephone advice lines or what to do with the growing pile of sh*t at the bottom of the pole.

We need to feel like we’re being watched. Not in a creepy NSA kind of way but just enough to keep us in line. For most people, knowing that someone’s watching keeps them from such minor transgressions as picking their noses, running around without their daks on or buying yet another “Best of the 80s” album in the hope that the music will bring back the intense emotional experiences and joie de vivre that characterised adolescence. For others, they need the angel on their right shoulder to keep the devil on the left from taking control and talking them into becoming a taxation auditor or other acts of iniquity.

Dawkins et al argue that we don’t need God or religion to behave in a moral way, our own informed consciences should be enough. Maybe so, but some consciences are informed by demons and, without Don Camillo’s Christ reprimanding them sometimes, bad things ensue.

We are, to quote Sir Terry Pratchett, not naturally paid up members of the human race. We need to be bounced around some by the Brownian motion of society to remain sane. “Keeping himself to himself” is a symptom of a deep and disturbing problem, not a neighbourly virtue.

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Notes:

“daks” is an Australian slang term for pants.

Don Camillo is the lead character in a series of eponymous short stories by the Italian journalist and author Giovanni Guaresci. Don Camillo is the parish priest of a fictitious village in Piedmont (Italy) and the crucified Christ over the altar of his church speaks directly to him and regularly admonishes him for his sins. Very funny and worth reading – here’s a sample http://www.peteyandpetunia.com/DCamillo/Don%20Camillo.htm

The Terry Pratchett reference is to “Men at Arms”