When, in 1986, I spent six months crossing Africa by what might loosely have been called public transport, I discovered on my return that I hadn’t missed much as far as the news was concerned—or perhaps I should say, I didn’t feel that I was greatly the worse informed for having been incommunicado for that length of time. What was going on in the world at the end of my journey seemed to me very much like what had been going on at the beginning of it.
Ever since, I have not followed the news with the assiduity of some of my peers, who are constantly fretting over the latest developments in some far-off country of which, before those developments, they had previously hardly heard, and to which, once those developments are over, they will not give another moment’s thought. If something terrible happens (or very good, for that matter), I will eventually get to hear of it; and since I have found that my ability to influence world events has been limited, a delay of a few hours, days, weeks or months hardly matters.
Therefore, I rely on others sometimes to send me interesting items from the news, among whom is Mr. Charles Norman. Recently, he kindly sent me a video clip of Greta Thunberg in Berlin. I did not at first know when the original was taken and these days, with the ability of artificial intelligence to manufacture scenes out of whole cloth (or is it whole silicon?), one is always slightly anxious that believing is not seeing. Moreover, in short clips, context is all: As I know to my cost, though admittedly not a very great cost, words torn out of context can appear to mean the very opposite of what they were intended to mean.
Nevertheless, the video clip that appears to show Greta Thunberg being greeted in Berlin by a filmmaker, Hubertus Koch, somewhat older than she, is genuine. He says to her that it is “kind of symbolic” that she should arrive in Berlin on the day of the Fridays for Future demonstration, and Thunberg (and the young woman accompanying her) go off into peals of uncontrollable laughter. “Really?” says Thunberg. “You still do that?” She can hardly contain her hilarity at those silly Germans who took her so seriously and have failed to move on since.
It seems an eon since she was hysterically telling the world that her elders had “stolen her future” by having caused climate change. It really does say something about the state of the world that it listened to her, coddled and applauded her, as if she were one of the babes out of whose mouth came wisdom. But then, of course, news of impending catastrophe (though not catastrophe itself) is always welcome: It staves off the boredom that is always stalking the human soul.
At any rate, Thunberg illustrates rather well an important distinction, that between earnestness and seriousness. One might say that earnestness is inner emptiness trying to achieve seriousness. For the earnest, seriousness is a matter of clenching or jutting the jaw and staring straight ahead, trying to look penetrating, determined, and deeply thoughtful, expressing oneself in a dramatic or melodramatic manner. How could anybody who, like Thunberg, in a state of angry tearfulness, demanded to know how her elders had dared, yes dared, to ruin her future, have been other than deadly serious?
There is inflation other than in currency and monetary matters, but in language and emotional expression also. And, of course, where there is inflation there is the possibility of hyperinflation. Where verbal expression is inflated, there is a tendency to inflate it yet more in order to attract attention. Anyone who has attended civil courts knows that plaintiffs are apt to exaggerate the harm or harms they have suffered by the act or omission of which they complain, for the most obvious reasons; activists and intellectuals are apt to exaggerate to gain attention and to feel both virtuous and important.
There is no gold standard except the truth, and as Bertrand Russell (I think it was) once said, there is no reason why the truth when found should be interesting. Where it is found to be uninteresting or insufficiently dramatic for the tastes of those brought up on films, videos, etc., of constant dramatic movement, exaggeration is very tempting, as it is for those patients who exaggerate their symptoms in order to obtain the attention of the doctor and a prescription for powerful medication.
Where such exaggeration becomes widespread or general, it can exert harmful effects on the real world and be difficult to counter, for if you deny its assertions, or any part of its assertions, you become a denier, on the model of those who say that the Holocaust never took place or was a hoax. Exaggeration becomes orthodoxy and orthodoxy becomes dogma, such that (I hope I am not exaggerating) doubt or the slightest dissent becomes not disagreement but heresy.
Of course, witch-finding and heresy-hunting are fun, and since we have a natural tendency to binary thinking—either you are for me or against me, there is no other possibility—we too are tempted to exaggerate, especially about the wickedness or stupidity of our opponents.
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At the risk of exaggeration, I would say that earnestness is a deformation of our time. (I almost wrote plague of our time, but that would be a little too earnest.) Earnestness eliminates irony and does not admit tragedy, that is to say the existence of some dilemmas both horns of which lead to results that we want to avoid. In the world of the earnest, there are no trade-offs, no betterment or worsening on the whole, but only perfect or catastrophic results.
Since earnestness fulfils a psychological need, it is restless, because one cannot usually go on being earnest about the same subject forever, or even for long, because boredom supervenes. Earnestness is a little like the grin of the Cheshire Cat: It remains when its subject disappears and then attaches itself to a new subject. Therefore, someone like Thunberg may in effect laugh at those who take the subject of her past earnestness seriously but not laugh at her current earnestness.
The earnest are like the jealous, according to Emilia in Othello: The earnest are not ever earnest for the cause, but they are earnest that they are earnest.
