1976 was a banner year for flag-waving, which seemed a bit odd at the time. After the turbulence of the Vietnam War protests and Civil Rights demonstrations, it was strange – to me, at least – that there was so much hoopla surrounding the nation's bicentenary year. After months of artificially-generated excitement, Elektra and I were getting tired of it, and frankly dreading the event itself. So we booked a vacation to Canada to escape the Fourth of July. We were planning to spend the holiday quietly in Stratford, Ontario, watching Shakespeare.

The first mistake we made was staying in a bed-and-breakfast. The woman who ran the place no doubt needed the money. She'd had a bait of tourists already, though, and wasn't very friendly. The landscape was nice, but exactly like what we'd left behind in Pennsylvania, where at least the natives were less indifferent. The plays were good, though: I remember seeing Maggie Smith do some hilarious scenery-chewing in Measure for Measure.

The second mistake we made was in popping into a Baptist church that Sunday. We'd hoped to avoid the inevitable patriotic sermons at home. Alas, we were betrayed by our ignorance of our neighbour to the north: it was Dominion Day weekend. Instead of 'hurrah for the red, white, and blue', we got all the verses of O, Canada. Followed by a tirade on the declining morals of the modern day. If Canada wasn't vigilant, intoned the pastor, it would go the way of the Roman Empire. . .

We managed to keep a straight face. Apparently, everybody was worried about perishing like the Roman Empire. Even Canada.

What makes civilisations decline? Good question.

This morning, I read two stories on Twitter that reminded me of the question. The first was a reminiscence by Rudolf Sabor, a Jewish teacher who fled Berlin in 1938. It is a fabulous story, beautifully told. If you're on Twitter, do follow the Association of Jewish Refugees Archive. Their personal stories will blow you away. Sabor tells how he rode the Berlin U-Bahn for three days and nights, packed and ready to go, until his visa finally arrived. He sat in an outdoor restaurant for a final meal.

Raindrops fell into his beer, but it wasn't raining. He looked up at a cat in the tree. 'And that somehow sealed my leaving Berlin when the cat piddled in my beer,' he said. It's quite a story.

What struck me was that Rudolf Sabor, obviously an educated and intelligent man, started his story by saying the same thing I've heard over and over from witnesses to Nazi Germany: 'The people who produced Dürer, Goethe, Kleist, a cultured people like the Germans, would wake up any day.' He added, 'Total delusion. . . '

Yes, it is a delusion to believe that a civilisation will always live up to its best moments. Renaissance Italy produced astonishing works of art – and horrible violence. The Romans reached great heights of creativity and awful depths of depravity. The nations of Europe and North America have all done things they're proud of, and things they should be ashamed of.

Guess what? It wasn't the same people. I know we like to think that 'Germans are this, and Romans are that, etc', but it ain't so. Every spot on the planet has good people and bad people – and wise ones and foolish ones. It's when the fools take over that you have to worry.

The second story I ran across on Twitter today was from our own time zone: in fact, it happened last year. In Waukegan, Illinois, USA. A woman's Volkswagen Atlas was hijacked – in her own driveway, with her two-year-old inside. The woman, injured from the encounter, called the police. The police called the Volkswagen company and asked them to locate the car using built-in GPS, Satnav to some of you. Here's where it gets interesting.

The company's representative refused, saying that the introductory offer on that system had expired. To get the information, the customer – bruised, battered, in shock, and missing a two-year-old – needed to pay the company $150. A policeman used his own credit card to pay the bill. The baby was found due to an observant person in a car park.

Is this sort of thing happening a sign of the decline of civilisation? Before you answer that one, consider the replies on Twitter.

What the [expletive deleted]?

We can echo that one.

This is the innovation that capitalism offers.

Getting right to the ideological argument.

Or more likely the system doesn't have an easy override. This is an issue of compliance and privacy protection or bad code, not corporate greed.

Ah, siding with the company as a knee-jerk response.

Of course they should have cooperated, but this is also a slippery slope for cops to access cars electronically.

'But what about my freedoms?'

That's how Germans role[sic] though. They're autistic like that. It's just normal to Germans. Follow the rules.

O-kayyy. . . interesting. Please note that the next quote was in the same tweet, and by the same person.

And, there's another problem here, legally. For a person whose sub ran out, they might not know who legally owns the car, and that's a legal issue.

The discussion goes on and on. I gather from various coverage – at least, the coverage that wasn't behind a paywall – that yes, the company was concerned when they heard about this. Of course they are: it will affect their reputation. That they didn't do it, because they outsource the GPS responses to a third-party company. Of course they do, and we all bet that company and its phone banks are somewhere far, far away, possibly on the moon.

Is the bad behaviour of the Car-net operator a sign of the decline of civilisation? Yes and no, I'd say. Civilisations throw up problems. Not all problems are handled well. Whether this particular attitude – and the less-than-thrilling responses of just about everybody except the policeman who whipped out his own credit card to expedite a rescue – will lead to the end of the world as we know it, kind of depends. Depends on what, you ask?

On whether we let the dummies or the smart people lead. And whether we let the smart people know that we've got their backs unless and until they start behaving unethically. Then we'll fight them. Yep: eternal vigilance is the price of your civilisation, so remember to vote.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

01.04.24 Front Page

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