Just the one teacup, then

It must be some­thing to do with the sheer pro­lif­er­a­tion of stor­ies out there on the net — this can be the only explan­a­tion as to why I seem to keep read­ing news items telling me that, for the first time ever, more people are liv­ing alone than in tra­di­tional fam­ily units. How many times can some­thing be “for the first time ever”? I’m sure that I’ve been read­ing about the rise of the “adult singleton” for three or four years. (Oh, and someone should go and shoot the per­son who thought of the term “adult singleton.” It sounds like some sort of quaint name for mem­bers of a social club. “Are you an adult singleton?” “No, not me — I’m with the junior singletons, who are meet­ing in the club house shortly for tea and cucum­ber sand­wiches. Care to join us?”)

In a long art­icle entitled Singleton soci­ety, Frank Furedi looks at this phe­nomenon in fright­en­ingly aca­demic detail, under such intriguing titles as:

• People fear pain and disappointment
(Hey, thanks!)
• Cul­tiv­a­tion of the self has a destruct­ive impact on com­mit­ment
(Mar­vel­lous, more please!)
• Today, the story of love is about ‘me’
(I’ll give you that one — because you’ve got a cheeky smile!)
• The rela­tion­ship industry is devoted to cool­ing pas­sions
(Oh, stop it! You’re spoil­ing us!)

I trust that you’re get­ting the tone of this by now. Mr Furedi is a pro­fessor of soci­ology, and although it doesn’t neces­sar­ily fol­low that he would there­fore pos­sess a bleak out­look on this par­tic­u­lar social change, it has to be said that he doesn’t see much that’s pos­it­ive. Everything he writes seems to be about dif­fi­culties form­ing intim­ate rela­tion­ships, lack of com­mit­ment, the desire for inde­pend­ence above all else — and very little about people mak­ing their own life­style choices for the changed world of the late twen­ti­eth and early twenty-first cen­tur­ies. I don’t com­pletely dis­agree with what he says, but I do think that it’s prob­ably an inad­vis­able art­icle to read if you’re spend­ing the even­ing alone with noth­ing but a gas oven and ITV’s Monday even­ing sched­ule for com­pany. If you, er, get my drift.

Con­sole your­self with this thought, instead. The writer of this art­icle is a pro­fessor, wrapped up in the stuffy world of aca­demia. What does he know, eh? Don’t for­get that his chosen spe­cial­ism is soci­ology, which means that he prob­ably exam­ines his theme far too deeply and doesn’t allow for simple facts like … well, like liv­ing life without con­sid­er­ing the soci­olo­gical implic­a­tions, for instance. It’s just pos­sible — per­ish the thought — that not everything in the world can be ana­lysed soci­olo­gic­ally. I know, I know — crazy heretical idea. So kill me.

A quick digres­sion. For those who aren’t aware of Spiked, it’s a web­site full of very sound journ­al­ism and pro­voc­at­ive think­ing. There’s no argu­ment about that. How­ever, it rose from the ashes of the magazine LM; those two let­ters stood for Liv­ing Marx­ism. Have you noticed the way in which they have care­fully moved away from the dreaded “M” word? Clever, isn’t it? It almost mir­rors the way that the Labour Party has gradu­ally moved from the word “Social­ist” to the far more cuddly “New” (or even, if you’re utterly con­tem­por­ary, “Blair­ite”). It’s almost uncanny.

Now, Marxism’s good for a lot of things, but insights into the soci­ology of rela­tion­ships versus solitude? I think not. How many couples do you know who have based their lov­ing part­ner­ship upon a thor­ough know­ledge of the writ­ings of Karl Marx? Exactly.

Right, so that’s soci­ety, rela­tion­ships, aca­demia and Marx­ism dealt with, all within the space of a few short para­graphs. I’ll prob­ably retract all this tomor­row. Unfor­tu­nately, this par­tic­u­lar art­icle just happened to catch me in an irrit­able mood this even­ing. Don’t take it per­son­ally, Pro­fessor Furedi.