Irritations and the Limits of Tolerance

My present work dictates the need to travel regularly around the UK. Some of my most interesting conversations have been those with taxi drivers. They range from incisive observations on politics and politicians, strong reasonable views on religion, to anger at the downward spiralling and breakdown of a variety of aspects related to propriety and community life. Many of the taxi-drivers I have journeyed with on my short trips from train station or airport to venues for meetings have been helpful, courteous, friendly and wise people. Sometimes, I think that the views they express on religion, politics and culture would do some of us a whole heap of good to listen to!

There are, however, a number of instances with taxis and taxi-drivers that have left me with much irritation. I find it irritating when taxis do all sorts of acrobatic bobbing and weaving through the traffic, rushing through pedestrian crossings and rarely wanting to give way to other vehicles. I know they make a living from it, but that is no excuse for being discourteous. It is also irritating when a booked taxi turns up, keep their car engine running, remain seated in their vehicle and expect you to open the boot of the vehicle to place your luggage in. Then after all that effort to get into the taxi and then having to help some of them find on the map where you want to get to – even though you have never been to the place before.

One recent example where my sense of tolerance was tested to its limit, happened on the way from a meeting to a railway station in a large city in Britain. Three of us joined a taxi we pre-booked. The greeting from the driver was more like a grunt. And while trying to fix a seat belt that was not properly “releasing” to hook up at the other end, I was shouted at to pull it gently. I felt like a schoolboy! Still it did not work and the driver continued his rudeness in shouting instructions my way. I eventually gave up. Upon reaching our destination, the rudeness continued as he demanded that we must have the exact fare, claiming he was not a cash machine (you would at least expect him to have change). By then my other colleagues were also much worked up; but the more patient one among us decided she was going to pay, and then proceeded to take out all her coins and leisurely started to count them, with us chipping in. Later she explained that the driver was so rude that she deliberately wanted to find the exact amount by taking as long as she could to do so. It later transpired that he was hoping we would not have been able to muster up the exact amount and would leave him a full ten pounds (when the fare was only metered for £6.30). We agreed that this was the rudest taxi driver we have ever met – a total let down in comparison to the other wonderful ones we have met!

The incident got me thinking about the many other instances of recent when I got irritated. These seem to be increasing! For instance, it is irritating to purchase an espresso coffee at a train station and then having your drink poured in a large coffee cup, struggling to down it with your whole face in the cup and head flipped all the way back as If you are either in a pub or trying to swallow the paper cup! The other irritating thing is usually at some supermarket checkouts: being rushed through to get your purchases in your rucksack and then after paying, either having your card or change piled up together and handed back to you, with no time to sort anything out, before the purchases of others push you off the checkout point. Why can’t I be handed my card/change first and then my receipt? And why can’t some supermarkets give their cashiers basic guidelines about the importance of the customer?

The list of my irritations is quite long and may be pointing more to my impatience, shortcomings, and unrealistic expectations. Thank God, for grace! I cannot help wondering, however, why we easily accept behaviours that diminish our sense of humanness and what it means to be people in community. Or why are we so hestiant to even to name some of unhelpful behaviours and discourteous practices around us? What should I do with my commitment to respect, tolerance and values when these irritations keep piling up day after day? Should I stop buying espresso coffee from these shops? Should I stop travelling with such taxi-drivers (as noted above)? Should I find supermarkets where the customer calls the shot? Or should I just stop moaning, take all the crap and get on with life? And if I wish, how and where do I express my views in a way that will not smack of arrogance and intolerance?

Just-living, morality and the common good - are all pushing us to agree that there must be some core vision or values to help us operate with civility and in constructive ways. What I perceive from my irritations may be more than personal. There is something larger – a moral vacuum – only partially reflected in some of these small irritations. Something is wrong with us! Perhaps, there is a need to re-discover the habit of generous magnanimity that will move beyond being tolerant, that is, tolerance that is only about putting up with each other. Tolerance is not a private matter: it should part and parcel of our public lives. There is a need for us to challenge each other in an effort to live core values that put people, relationships and the common good first -over our selfish proclivities!

© copyright February 27, 2010

Dissecting Lies and Trafficking Truth

Try doing online search related to “lies” or “world of lies” and you will be surprised by the number of hits you are directed to. We live and float in worlds of deception. “Lies” seem to become so common-place that we are not surprised when the deceptions around us are uncovered. Truth, it seems, does not make us free as we are fearful of the consequences.

Recent developments on the UK’s public square and in our political system bring to the fore – questions about truth and truth-bearers. The Iraq War Inquiry, the case of the torture of a British subject and our government’s complicity, the corrupt financial practices of some of our politicians, the case of huge kickbacks for arms contract, all highlight the web of lies and deception which we have been subjected to by public servants and corporate functionaries. Indeed, the cynics among us may wish to give up on any sense of fairness, justice, fair-play and good old propriety. Redemption, however, may be located in the fact that an inquiry is going on, some politicians are before the Courts and it is through a sense of justice that our government’s complicity in the torture of one of its own citizen has been revealed.

It seems as if we do not need a war to “make truth the first casualty”. Wanting to stay in power, greed and the art of deception are just as good enough reasons to nail truth to the stake. From current evidence one is reasonably led to deduce a pattern for most governments: when confronted with specific claims of injustice – their tendency is respond with generic denials drowning the real issue in polemics and deflections. In the case of the charge related to torture, forget the legality for a moment and concentrate on the ethical issue: how can the UK government confront the abuse of human rights around the world, if its own hands are bloody? With what integrity can we speak?

In our postmodern world, when facts and situations are manipulated by the powerful for their benefit and as means towards their own selfish ends, then it becomes challenging and difficult to rehabilitate confidence in integrity, justice and the systems we have in place to ensure law and order and the building of the common good.


As we follow parliamentary debates, watch the proceedings of the Iraq War Inquiry, and listen to bankers and “corpo-crats” defend their patches – we can sense and locate the lies. Sometimes, I try imagining what it would be like if we are all wired up to a set of traffic lights, where green will signal I am telling what I honestly believe to be the truth (though it may only be my perception of truth); where yellow will point to some truth but that which I am not wholly sincere about; and where red means that what I am saying is blatant lie and that people should read the opposite as truth. Others may suggest that a lie detector may also serve the purpose!


With the upcoming elections in the UK and the promises, arguments and counter arguments bombarding the public, this may not be a bad idea. I am already imagining how the traffic lights will be flitting back and forth from red to yellow, with few rare moments of green coming to our rescue!

© copyright February 14, 2010

Exclusion and Border Control: Rediscovering Protest

More of us (including myself) need to urgently get involved in protest movements. I mean actively protesting, as generations in the not so distant past have done and as some dedicated groups continue to do. There are so many things to protest against that we really need joined up thinking in our protest strategies (to ward off protest fatigue) against the many manifestations of evil taking hold of institutions that ought to work for our common good.

One modern incarnation of evil that comes across as necessary for our own protection is that of the institution called the UK Border and Agency (UKBA). Now, I am of the view that every country has the right to monitor and control movements in and out of its space. Notwithstanding, I would have to be very desperate to be working for such a body whose ethics and operations rarely seem to display a sense of what is human in carrying out its task of monitoring movement to, from and within the UK. This does not mean that morally good people cannot work with such an institution. I would, however, find it difficult to rationalise any semblance of a moral reason for wanting to be part of a structure that in my view lies, dehumanises people (read their reports to see how people are represented as statistics) and displays racist tendencies, as a recent whistle-blower has revealed. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_east/8496759.stm]

We are informed that from January 6th skilled workers outside of fortress EU became another group to need biometric identity cards in order to extend their stay in the UK. By 2011 all foreign nationals will have to possess an identity card with digital photos and fingerprints on it – along with loads of other information about the person. All the fingerprinting and digital photos will then be stored on the National Biometric Identity Store costing taxpayers about £265 pounds. Imagine how this could have helped to alleviate poverty right here in the UK and do some good work making us a more “civil” society!

Think of the possibility of errors, the improper use of large amounts of info about an individual which will be shared across borders and groups and the likely possibility of tampering/stealing of identities. Besides, all of this will make data protection look like a joke! However, the real issue at the heart of all of this is the designed ways we are using to justify a certain logic of exclusion that will result in more racism and more non-Caucasian looking people having to prove that they are actually British – born and bred here. Going through the window would be any compassion for people who are really in need or the recognition of peoples skills and gifts. There is a theological issue here that people of faiths may wish to consider: If citizenship and immigration status are the governing principles around how we understand hospitality and what kind of hospitality we can offer, then we have degenerated into such depths that our humanness is at risk. It is certainly a reflection of how impoverished and insecure we have become – all signs of an imploding society.

And, lest we believe that this is only a matter that will be affecting “undesirables" from our shores, we would do well to remember that it is only a matter of time before the surveillance will take over the lives of all of us. Service providers are already involved in verifying who are in their employment, as imagined fears continue to drive us to believe that this will make our country and our lives safer. The irony is that we (for instance the church) will end up doing the state’s dirty business of monitoring all who are working for them and then to all those attend our churches or are using our premises. The likelihood that surveillance would take over our lives is a reasonable deduction given that most of us seem to have relapsed into a servile habit. As one writer puts it (writing in a different context): “We have become so accustomed to being administered and managed by official power that many in our society have no other principle of motion than oscillation between impulse on the one hand and external control on the other, without much of an inner core of self-direction in between. The classical Greeks called this condition “servility”.” [Kenneth Minogue in Standpoint (July-August 2009), p.69]

Are we able to counter this force and kick the habit of servility? We are in danger of losing all the “freedoms” so many others have fought dearly for! Or to paraphrase Heidegger: “Has everything been already decided for us, so that nothing is left worth discussing or more appropriately worth protesting against?”

© copyright jagessar February 7, 2010