The Sleep of Reason

The novel entitled The Sleep of Reason is the penultimate novel in C P Snow's sequence Strangers and Brothers. It is set around the trial of two young women, living in what we would now call a same-sex relationship, who had kidnapped a young boy from a city play area to a country cottage one weekend and subjected him ill treatment before killing him. The crime appears clinically planned, and the two women are duly found guilty of murder. The central point at issue in the trial is not the events of the crime themselves, but the question of the responsibility of the two women for their actions, as their defence lawyers argue for a diminished responsibility that would mean they were guilty of manslaughter rather than murder.

The question of responsibility for actions, and particularly responsibility for actions of a most evil kind, is therefore a theme of the novel. It particularly reflects back to an earlier novel in C P Snow's sequence, George Passant. I have yet to read that novel, but George would appear to have been the centre of group of young people encouraged to reject all societal limitations and live in a complete freedom from any constraints whatsoever. The two women on trial in The Sleep of Reason were around the edges of a later generation in this group, a group with which Snow's narrator, Lewis Eliot, was associated in his younger days. The narrative of The Sleep of Reason speculates as to whether or not Cora and Kitty would have behaved differently if they had not had the association with George Passant's group, whether that association with a lifestyle lacking in any constraint could have any causal link to their actions against the boy they kidnapped. The insistent answer given is that one could never know one way or the other, though Lewis asks himself whether one of the two might have been the leader of the other.

The novel gains its title from the following passage, towards the end, when the protagonists are reflecting back on the outcome of the trial:

Reason. Why had so much of our time reneged on it? Wasn't that our characteristic folly, treachery or crime?

Reason was very weak as compared with instinct. Instinct was closer to the aboriginal sea out of which we had all climbed. Reason was a precarious structure. But, if we didn't use it to understand instinct, then there was no health in us at all.

Margaret said, she had been brought up among people who believed it was easy to be civilised and rational. She had hated it. It made life too hygienic and too thin. But still, she had come to think even that was better than glorifying unreason.

Put reason to sleep, and all the stronger forces were let loose. We had seen that happen in our own lifetimes. In the world: and close to us. We couldn't get out of knowing, that it meant a chance of hell. [Both at the time of C P Snow's writing and in the setting of the novel, this reference includes the events of World War II.]

Glorifying unreason. Wanting to let the instinctual forces loose. Martin said - anyone who did that, either hadn't much of those forces within himself, or else wanted to use others' for his own purpose. And that was true of private leaders like George as much as public ones.

(Were others thinking, as I did, of those two women? Was it true of one of them?)

To move to a different context, one wonders whether, since the legalisation of marriage between people of the same sex, those who have praised the consequent freedom to "marry the person they love" have really considered the relationship of reason to the life of passions and emotions. How does the readiness of the great and good to use the word "love" in a way that lacks substantial definition compare to a reasoned study of the affective life such as that proposed by the recently produced programme of the Pontifical Council for the Family, for example? Have we, in this context, also put reason to sleep?

Taking a Stand on Sexual Health

This is the title of a press release from the Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust, my local NHS hospital trust. It does not refer to the adoption of a policy position. It refers to the fact that the Trust is spending some of its money to have a stand at an "erotic exhibition". I can't quite think of the best way to describe the Erotica exhibition, though I suspect that the most honest way is to describe it as an exhibition devoted to different degrees of the pornography industry (though I expect that some of the exhibitors would deny this description). The offiicial descriptor is "consumer adult life style" show.

Let's try and apply some logic.

The BHR University Hospitals NHS Trust think it is a good use of their (public) funds to have a sexual health stand at this exhibition. In the words of their press release (my emphasis added): "The stand at Erotica is the first step to confront sexual health head-on, to move with the times and to go outside of the mainstream to find specific audiences". Therefore, they are recognising that "consumer adult life styles" carry a higher risk of infection with an STI and so provide a "specific audience" that needs to be targeted with services.

So why not discourage people from taking part in "consumer adult life styles"? Rather than helping to publicise them, using public funds?

Now one does find it difficult to take seriously a press release which squeezes "first step", "confront sexual health head-on" (oh, dear!) , "move with the times" and "go outside the mainstream" into one and the same sentence. If any readers wish to take on a challenge, perhaps they could try to do the same with a sentence in the comments box (nothing rude please!).

In the 2008-9 financial year, this NHS Hospitals Trust announced  a deficit of £23 million. One would have thought that their advertising budget would have been a key area to be targeted to achieve savings ....

Street Dance - a fragmented art form?

There were two street dance acts in the semifinals of Britain's Got Talent, and their performances can be seen here and here, courtesy of Youtube.

My first reaction to watching them was to think that, from a musical point of view, the performances are incoherent. They cut and paste together different music in such a way that no unity results. I did not initially react to the disjointed movements of the performances - though the smoother movements of Strictly Come Dancing or Dancing on Ice did go through my mind. The idea that dance movements change over time, though, is only to be expected.

But, as an afterthought, I wondered whether street dance is an art form that can be described by the word "fragmented"? And does this reflect a fragmented society?

Teacher union conference motion on "social dysfunction"

The following motion appears in the agenda of my trade union's annual conference, due to take place in the week before Easter:

Impact of social dysfunction and family breakdown

17 THAT Conference urges the Executive Committee to press the Government to recognise fully the extent to which social dysfunction and family breakdown are damaging the educational attainment of children and the performance of schools and colleges.

I suspect that the concern lying behind this motion is that schools and teachers are being marked down during inspections/self evaluation processes when the real cause of the underachievement of pupils does not lie with the work of the schools and teachers themselves. But it will be interesting to see what definitions of "social dysfunction" and "family" are used in the debate. What the union will expect Government to do in order to deliver the "recognising" called for in the motion defeats me - particularly since the present Government has done plenty to remove those fixed reference points, both social and ethical in nature, that would support stability in the home lives of children.

The full agenda for the Conference can be downloaded in pdf format from www.atl.org.uk.