Translate the following paragraphs into Chinese
In an age of anger and cynicism, let me make the case
for worthiness
At a gathering earlier this week, I made a terrible social gaffe. I was
enthusing to friends about a project I’ve been working on when the atmosphere
curdled and the conversation faltered, as if I had spilled wine on someone’s
favourite skirt or accidentally squashed the cat. “You’re making it sound
worthy,” two of them chorused, as another quietly sidled away.
Until that moment it had been going so well, and I found myself puzzling through
the wee small hours as to the precise moment at which it all went wrong. Was it
when I said the project was an anthology of writing on and about London,
containing poetry as well as prose? Was it when I explained that it placed
pieces by well-known writers alongside those by refugees? Or was it when I
admitted that part of the aim was to raise the profile of, and perhaps even make
a little money for, one of the charities working with those refugees?
The next morning, a kindly colleague suggested I might have appeared to be
“virtue signalling”, described in a Guardian article two years back as shorthand
for “a form of vanity … dressed up as selfless conviction” (the author of the
piece, David Shariatmadari, rightly called time on a cuss that, he argued, had
become nothing more than a trite form of cyberbullying).
I’m as hostile as the next person to finding my Facebook feed choked up with
Just Giving prompts from well-meaning almost-friends. But my conversation was in
person, not online, and I don’t think for a moment that the reaction was
malicious. It wasn’t virtue signalling I was being charged with, but worthiness:
a slight with a far longer pedigree, and much more pernicious effects.
Nobody, after all, is going to accuse themselves of virtue signalling, whereas
the power of the W-word lies not in the fact that it is often used by the right
to ridicule the social agendas of those on the liberal left, but that we have
internalised it to such an extent that we now unthinkingly deploy it against
each other and ourselves.
It’s commonly associated with charities, but at this of all times it is
important to remember that “worthy” is the part of every such organisation that
involves passionate and committed people dedicating their own lives to making
those of others bearable or even possible.
Like its snarky sibling “do-gooder”, it is often applied to those connected with
religious institutions – to people who, at least since Mrs Jellyby espoused “the
brothers of Borrioboola-Gha” in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, have been mocked
for putting the needs of others before those of their own kind.
But consider the work that is currently going on in churches, mosques and
synagogues to plug the chaotically widening gap between the haves and have-nots
– here, now, in one of the richest countries in the world, in this age of
austerity. I live close to the Finsbury Park mosque, where, in a spontaneous
reaction to last year’s van attack, trestle tables were set up along the street
for a communal feast to which everyone, regardless of colour or creed, was
invited. Furniture and catering were no problem because feeding people is part
of what members of the mosque – worthily – see as their mission.
My local church hosts a weekly drop-in session for migrants that draws hungry
people from across London and beyond, to eat food donated by local shops and
cooked by local volunteers before sitting down to free help and advice from rows
of (largely retired) lawyers, counsellors and health experts.
One of my friends – a defiantly atheist political activist who has spent decades
leafleting and doorstepping – now spends every Wednesday morning chopping
vegetables in a parish hall. What could be more worthy than that? What, in other
words, could be more pragmatically, effectively political in a society so
feverishly globalised that it is no longer plausible to think in terms of “us
and them”?
My anthology is structured around the startling fact that at the time of the
most recent census, in 2011, 37% of people living in London were born outside
the UK. One of its better-known contributors is Jon Snow, who wrote a response
to last year’s Grenfell tower fire asking why the media had failed to anticipate
a disaster that many of those who lived there had long predicted was going to
happen.
It’s not simply a matter of reporting the facts but of finding ways to create
space for that 37%, among others, to develop their own voices and tell their own
stories. That’s what I have tried to do, and was attempting to explain, when the
room went cold.
It’s not a major aid operation, or even chopping vegetables, but it has been a
fascinating intellectual challenge that has uncovered some moving testimony, and
raised all sorts of questions. If that’s worthy, then I’m going out tomorrow to
buy the T-shirt. I hope others will join me in embracing the mighty W.
• Claire Armitstead is associate editor, culture for the Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/24/anger-cynicism-worthiness-london