Damn the Man, Contemplations on Authority

How do you feel about being told what to do? I only ask, because I’ve realised that I’ve done a full 180 over my 4 decades, transforming from a goody-two-shoes-teacher’s-pet who bowed and scraped to authority into someone who is prepared to flout all sorts of social rules. It’s taken its time, but I am finally a (borderline) rebel. I’ve noticed this independence of mind and resistance to rules—to the letter, if not the spirit of the law—brewing, but it was a recent trip to the country of my birth, Germany, that has really crystallised how far I’ve fallen from grace.

Berlin is culturally known as a hive of transgression and home to über liberal thinkers, creatives and a fair number of alternative individuals. It is also in Germany. Back in Munich, where my family is based, I’m used to people trying to tell you what to do all day long. It might be an older lady chastising you for dressing your baby ‘incorrectly’ for the weather, or someone running out of a café to tell you that you’ve parked in the wrong place. Or just the general tut tutting at every corner for some minor breach (returning your beer glass to the wrong window, not completely washing out every speck of yogurt from a container placed in a recycling bin, putting a parasol up yourself at a Biergarten. All verboten). I definitely bristle, but I expect it. In Berlin, however, you get a false sense that everything must be a bit more easy-going what with all the facial piercings and NIN T-shirts. Leider nicht.

Whether it was the total lack of flexibility at the airport (to the point of inefficiency), the tyranny of a karaoke master who shouted at me for pointing at something on his desk, being told not to speak in the gym, or the comical rudeness in the city’s Soho House, where I was informed they don’t charge phones and physically manhandled off of a seat (I’m both a member and was staying at the hotel), the total lack of chill sent me to boiling point. Like F off, let me live!

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the value of rules and their power to enable society to function. I’m not suggesting we throw out the social contract. But the truth is that I’m pretty used to avoiding lots of them that I don’t really like. I’ve been working for myself now for nearly a decade and professionally I am under no-one else’s yoke. Sure, I have to follow client briefs and write books that editors like. But because there are so many different projects going on at any one time, I feel confident to push back and set a lot of my own boundaries. Freedom in this life is multiple revenue streams. Having worked in office dictatorships for years, there is not a day that goes by that I don’t consider my fortune in being my own mistress. I work all the bloody time, but on my own clock, have no one to ask for leave, no one to approve any of my business plans. I just do whatever feels right and I guess I hadn’t quite taken on board how little I now enjoy being pushed around. I am now officially un-manageable, so let’s hope these AIs don’t get too good at doing all of my jobs.

On top of that, I feel like our generation has drunk the Kool-Aid of disruption and has been educated by and now raised on the successes of companies which broke a lot of the rules—Facebook, Uber, Deliveroo, Modena. The appeal of keeping your head down and doing what is always expected of you has waned significantly. As a younger woman, I believed that my only option was to play by the rules of the game in order to win, because I had such little agency. Now I feel very differently, and I believe in my power to dictate at least some of the terms of engagement. I have learnt from watching others that the rulebook, which I had believed to be set in stone, is actually imaginary.  We have been coached and incentivised to think outside of the box; it’s now impossible for some of us to get back in it.

Our pandemic experience is definitely another factor in my shifting attitude towards authority. After doing everything right for so long, leaning into my history of model citizenship, I was just as appalled as everyone else to see entitled, poorly dressed bozos breathing in each other’s faces over cake. I confess it did break my resolve and while I continued to be responsible at all times (I may be a rebel, I’m not a total asshole), I did start to question the stupid shit. My trust and respect in the powers that be definitely took a powerful hit and I’d say that hasn’t really recovered. When you add in the abhorrent police and emergency service scandals, cases of rampant misogyny, racism and barefaced abuse of power, I’m sorry to say I am far less inclined to play the good citizen in every circumstance.

On a more personal level, I also live with a man who has an almost non-existent relationship to authority. He is sceptical of the police, has his own moral code (something along the lines of finders keepers), is distrustful of schooling and doesn’t really believe in any kind of ‘system’. He has always been blind to hierarchy, which is fortunate as he was, for most of his life, at the bottom of it. But his total lack of awareness of so many social rules has served him extremely well. He is a native disruptor. I have come to appreciate that a lot of the things I was brought up to believe are just not true and depressingly can now see I spent years of my life trying to attain all sorts of things that I didn’t actually need. Sometimes he flies by the seat of his pants and the ‘what rules?’ goes too far for me. But there is no doubt it has rubbed off and I can see my kids pushing boundaries that I would never have dared. Sometimes my instinct kicks in and when they ask why they shouldn’t do something I want to say, ‘because that’s not what we do.’ But I stop myself, because if it’s not hurting anyone, actually why the f not?

I have definitely put all of this under the microscope and considered whether it’s all a reflection of my increased privilege and even arrogance. After all, the rules are for everyone, what’s so special about me? What I will say is that rule-breakers can be found in every section of society, it’s the consequences of the breaking that differ so drastically. I am in a fairly financially secure situation, and I have 20 years’ worth of professional experience behind me. I’m also a mother and white, cis and straight, plus English is my first language. If I break social rules, the consequences are minor. I might lose a client or be barred from an establishment. There are plenty more of both to be found. This is obviously not the case for everyone and obviously does not apply to more serious infractions. Here I’m talking about jaywalking, smuggling a cheese sandwich to France, using an out-of-date covid pass because the NHS made an admin error, telling old ladies who criticise my parents to push off, talking back to officious officials and generally standing up for myself in the face of self-importance, bureaucratic nonsense and general prattishness …So not quite GBH.

I definitely do think it’s still very important to draw a distinction between railing against authority and breaking rules which disadvantage your fellow man. The minute my desire to do what I want might have a tangibly deleterious impact on someone else, it’s time to rein it in. I may have become a more difficult woman to berate and placate, but that doesn’t mean I’m ignoring the boundaries of common decency. I’m not throwing a wheel of Brie at Pink. Or taking work calls on the train quiet coach, quelle horreur. The pandemic may have eroded our blind conformity and many of us are no longer ‘falling in line’ because that is just what you do. But just doing what you fancy, hell to any consequences? That brings us right back to the Tory part(ies). Instead, I think it’s a case of nuance. Would I kidnap my second paper recycling bin from one rental to another because Hounslow Council fosters computer-says-no culture when it comes to rubbish collection? Yes obviously. Am I flytipping outside someone else’s house bc I can’t close my own bin? Absolutely not. The key factor is the questioning and weighing up, not just accepting that rules are rules. It’s going to take a lot to get me back to unconscious acquiescence, let’s just hope Big Brother isn’t reading.

Thanks to my ever patient sub-editor Sam Ormerod, without whom this newsletter would be riddled with typos. LUV U x