I’ve just finished reading Hans Fallada’s 1946 novel Alone in Berlin. If you haven’t got there before me, it’s a thriller of a read and a moral/political exploration of resistance in the face of tyranny – in this instance the tyranny is provided courtesy of the Nazi regime in Germany. Even though the resistance is hopelessly ineffective, there’s an argument for the potential redemptive power of resisting, holding to moral decency (an idea much used by Falada – a translation of anständig), even in the face of a regime fuelled by hatred, drunk on power, which has withdrawn any inhibition that might temper the terrorising of a people. Meanwhile, there you are on the high seas attempting to reduce unbearable pressure in the heads. You do what you are told. You obey the rules. No? Then, off with your head!
But it is possible to think about things differently. One (perhaps banal) example would be the new(ish) traffic/pedestrian interface at Oxford Circus. Gone are the iron railings channelling, controlling, forcing pedestrians into prescribed patterns. Instead, they have been replaced by nothing at all – except a different way of thinking. So, us pedestrians can cross in whatever way is convenient for our purposes plus allowing for the traffic lights. That’s right, we don’t need corralling and controlling; we know what we are doing and where we are going and if we don’t then we can wander in our own sweet fashion. This is because somebody or other has taken the trouble to observe, to look carefully, putting preconceptions on one side, at how we behave rather than following the authoritarian impulse. The critical mass cycling movement takes the same idea – how do we manage when nobody is controlling us; how do we respond to the power and authority of the motor vehicle.
This is all to do with democracy lurching on as we wait and observe and tinker and think and walk and talk.