PART II

By: Kindah Mardam Bey

January, 2008

One of Bywater's solutions to acting like Big Babies, indicated in the book, is good manners....

What is so important about manners in order to be a grown-up?

"Well if you go to the other end of the spectrum and ask what is it that an infant can be characterized as? Well an infant lives off its desires, it wants food, and its nappies changed and if it doesn't get it, it will likely have a tantrum. An extreme egotism, it's not being nice to the other guy who also has needs and wants, just as you do. No smoking in public areas has just been enforced in England, which smokers have brought upon ourselves (Bywater, informs me he smokes a pipe). It's our own fault, because when I was growing up, before you lit a cigarette you would ask those around you ‘do you mind if I smoke?' And if the non-smoker had a problem with it, you would smoke somewhere else, now we don't consider the non-smoker and we smoke everywhere we want. We've lost our manners, and everyone who didn't like the smell of smoke thought ‘right, there are more of us then you....your banned for being rude.' There is something to be said for civility and good manners. It's really just a question of not making the other guy feel small, or stupid or uncomfortable, or ill as ease. That's what good manners are all about. If I come over to your place for dinner and I'm shovelling food into my mouth, and I'm belching all over the place, why is that rude?" Bywater asks me.

I say "Because it's offensive to me to watch you eating in such a way and I'm on the receiving end of that image."

Bywater continues "Exactly. If I come to your house and I eat like that, then I have no consideration of you as a human being and am infringing on your rights. If we are a social species, which we are, a good starting point is not ‘f-- you,' its ‘hello, how are you' and when people don't consider other human beings, they are making the former comment and not the latter. In French culture you have the terms ‘Monsieur' or ‘Madame' used when greeting someone. Whether you are a millionaire or a fishmonger, you are all addressed as Monsieur."

In that case, I questioned whether manners should be taught in school? Are we at a point where children aren't being taught social manners at home and now we have to categorize and institutionalize it to ensure manners are implemented in everyday situations?

"When I was growing up my parents were big on manners, so when did it stop being taught? That's a tricky one, if it's not taught at home, it either means that the parents don't care, or if they do care and they don't like themselves, then why are they not teaching it? Why are people not educating their children on manners? I wonder if this has something to do with the Baby Boom generation wanting to be liked by their children. We want them to think of us as their friends. I never thought of my parents as friends. They are supposed to be you parents. Now the lengths that children have to go to declare their independence from the parents is ridiculous. It was much easier when parents were stuffy; all you had to do to rebel was listen to rock music. Now parents are listening to the same music, know the bands names, are usurping teenage attire, parents who really like Eminem, and the kids are thinking ‘your not supposed to like Eminem, that's the whole point of it!' So what lengths do kids have to go to rebel, because we all have to rebel, it's the natural course of things."          

Then one has to wonder whether the opposite will happen. Will preppie come around again as a counter-act to parents wanting to be like outspoken teens?

"Quite possibly a group of monstrously civilized people could be produced. Interestingly, at the University where I teach, the students, who are 18,19 and 20 are far more decorous then they used to be. At Cambridge, we have Hall, where you would have dinner, and you would have to wear a gown to do so. Now we have a thing called ‘Formal Hall' which is basically the same thing, but now the kids love it and they wear suits, and scrub their faces and shave, and bring their girlfriends who are in smart little cocktail dresses. It's almost as if they are little old people. What will these people do with their children? I think present day is a historical blip and that the tides will inevitably change, they always do."

Bywater continues, "I don't think in many ways, we are doing too badly. Yes we have a threat of terror, but it is a very small problem in the grander scheme of things, after all, we have a much better standard of living and substantial parts of the world are not at war. What we do have is a desire to want more. Why do we want more? Well partly because we are being sold more, but partly because we feel ourselves inauthentic (a great theory in Bywater's Big Babies book)"

So in a society of Big Babies, what is safe from being infantized? What does society take a mature approach towards nowadays?

"I think scientists still take a mature approach to their craft. I think writers take a fairly serious approach to their work. People tend to act mature in the relationships with the people they are closest to. It's just our relationships at large and things within ourselves that we find to be childish. We find it very hard to say ‘I'm a grown up, I demand and give respect. I have autonomy and I will not be beggared about with.' Matters of fundamental belief and how the world works, I think we take that seriously. I think it is all about autonomy really, the difference between being a big baby and having accountability. Autonomy is mistaken often as meaning to do what you want, but what it actually means, if you look at the root of the word, is to be self-governing. I don't need you to tell me what to do, not because I can do whatever the hell I like, but I don't need you to tell me what to do because I am a grown up and I can acknowledge what the right thing to do actually is. At the core of autonomy is the acknowledgement of consequences to your actions."

I ask Bywater if he can think of a public figure who is a good example of a grown up?    

Bywater thinks for a moment then says "isn't it terrible that nobody springs to mind immediately? The late Stephen Jay Gould who was an evolutionary biologist is a good example, he was not angry that other people believed that Darwin was all nonsense and that God was the one who did it all, he was not angry that people disagreed with his interpretations, he was fun, he was as intelligent about football as he was about hereditary and social organizations, now there's a grown-up. My goodness, grown ups are few and far between aren't they! The obvious grown-up political figure would be Nelson Mandela. I don't actually know enough about him, but he does seem to have sat it out quietly in prison, he has held himself with dignity, he doesn't advocate violence, he seems to be an old-fashioned statesman. I'd say that was a grown up."

Read Big Babies and you are afforded a plethora of cultural examples that perpetually confirms Bywater's theory about Big Babies. Bywater tells me that finding the information he does is a lot like strolling around London "When I lived in central London, I browsed around all day for hours just looking, and the internet is the same way. You have an idea that's always in the back of your mind, and searching out this way might look utterly aimless from the outside. It's like having a choice between searching out information in the Cambridge Library (which is the nearest thing to heaven on earth) and gathering information as if you were writing a doctorate, or you could search your information out at random, and what you discover by doing that is an extraordinary amount of information is just hanging around on the sidelines waiting to be found. I'm not a very directed researcher, it's really about picking up trifles of information and taking a deeper look at them."

Along with the many hats Bywater wears, l he also has an extensive history in technology "I was a futurist when PCs first came into place. It was thoroughly exciting in the 80s and early 90s, following that revolution. I'm not so impressed now with the evolution these days."

I was curious as to whether Bywater's tech background had helped facilitate in his writing?

"If you structure your thinking too much when it comes to writing you tend to go off the page anyway. Take a great classic such as Dickens' Our Mutual Friend and you say to yourself, what is this all about? Like a patient going into the doctor explaining symptoms and the doctor says ‘well you probably have anaemia, but we have to figure out whether your symptoms might be related to these other problems first.' It's a way of thinking, really, because something's aren't always what they first appear to be. Someone sent me a picture of a sign the other day at a railway station, which said ‘Beware of Trains,' like the ‘Beware of the Dog' sign, as if the train will rear up and bite you. Why do we have a sign like that? Is it being infantile? Then you take another look at the sign and you see it's a cast iron sign from the Victorian era and you realize the sign was relevant back in the 1800s because people didn't always associate a train station with trains rushing through."

"Like I said in Big Babies, I was coming through Heathrow airport, and I counted between the airplane and the immigration hall, over a hundred signs telling me off for things I hadn't even done. Things I hadn't even thought of doing. One said ‘Warning. It is an offence punishable by imprisonment, to take photographs inside the customs hall.' How many people on a long flight...miserable, bored, leg cramp, stomach ache from the horrible airplane food they give you, and think ‘at least I'll be able to take pictures of the customs hall. It's the one thing that keeps me going. Thank God.' I mean, who goes into a customs hall and thinks ‘This is photogenic. I'd like to have a snap of this for the album.' By the time you actually get to the customs hall and see the sign you think to yourself ‘bugger it, I'm going to take a picture of the customs hall and I don't care if I go to prison for it."

Michael Bywater's favourite books?

"What is the one book I would not have liked to have died without reading? I'm very glad I haven't died without reading the Origin Of Species, I'm very glad I haven't died without reading Moby Dick, and I'm equally glad I didn't die without reading Aristotle's Poetics. There are lots of them. I'm very glad I haven't died without reading, Boswell's Life Of Johnson which is a masterpiece of bringing a human being alive."

"At the moment I am reading two things which are quite wonderful one is a book by Vic Gatrell , called City Of Laughter: Sex and satire in 18^th Century London, and the other book is called London in the Nineteenth Century by Jerry White. I'm rather into London at the moment."

Best advice ever received?

"Percy Hoskins, chief crime reporter for the Daily Mirror, said to me ‘whenever you are interviewing somebody, always have this question in the back of your mind ‘Why is this bugger lying to me?'"

"The other one was from my first editor and he said ‘no one is ever a bore, people are only bad listeners. Everyone has a story to tell and it is your job to find out what it is, not just as a journalist, but as a human being.'"

What Bywater is working on now? 

"I've been writing a book about male friendship and men being nice to each other. I think my next book will have to be about misanthropy, on why the human race is so awful. I'm all friendshipped out."