After an emotionless John Prescott admits he never shows affection to his son... Why don’t men hug their kids?
By THEODORE
DALRYMPLE
Well I never
thought I should come to the defense of John Prescott but I am on his side when
it comes to his failure to hug his son (as he revealed on Desert Island Discs)
or tell him on air (during the Jeremy Vine show) that he loved him.
The very fact
that he should have been asked to do so demonstrates how our increasing
tendency to express emotion in public, both in word and deed, actually
undermines our ability to distinguish genuine from bogus feeling. There is no
reason to suppose that Lord Prescott is other than a loving father. He does not
need to hug his son or tell him he loves him for his love to be evident, it is
clear from his whole manner of treating and being with him, not from gestures
such as hugs.
One of the greatest works of our literature, Shakespeare’s King Lear, is (at least in part) about the difference between real and bogus emotion. Lear, you remember, having reached old age, intends to divide his kingdom between his three daughters Goneril, Regan and Cordelia. Before he does so he asks them how much they love him The two wicked daughters are able easily to deceive him with extravagant expressions of love that they do not feel but Cordelia refuses to “use that glib and oily art”.
Lear’s adviser
the Earl of Kent warns Lear that: Thy youngest daughter does not love thee
least, Nor are those empty-hearted, whose low sounds Reverb no hollowness. Lear
takes no notice of this timely warning that empty vessels make the most noise,
he assumes Goneril and Regan love him because they say so. The subsequent
tragedy results from his failure to understand that words and emotion are not
necessarily connected in a simple fashion. He learns the lesson far too late.
If I had to
describe our age I should call it the age of reverberating hollowness. We no
longer accept the implicit – for example, the fact that John Prescott’s love
for his son is evident from his conduct towards him over many years.
No, we want
him to hug him and even tell him in public, in front of an audience of
millions, that he loves him. If he refuses to do so, well then, he does not
really love his son because we think that there is no love without public
demonstration of it. The problem with this is that it makes us crude and
exhibitionistic. It sets up a kind of arms race in which people have to express
themselves more and more extravagantly in order to persuade other people, and
perhaps even themselves, that they feel anything at all.
YOU can see
this even in our advertisements When an advertiser nowadays wants to persuade
us that his product will make us happy he shows someone leaping, screaming
mouth wide open, punching the air like a footballer who has just scored a goal,
rather than someone smiling or being quietly content. But the problem is that
words and gestures are easy to fake.
Nothing is
easier than to hug someone but it is much harder to be a true friend to him or
her, to be prepared actually to sacrifi ce something for his or her sake. I do
not need to tell my friends of 40 years that they are my friends: they know it
by now. In my generation (the same as Prescott’s), homes varied in emotional
warmth just as now but not in the numbers of hugs or open expressions of love.
My home was cold to freezing point, the homes of my friends nice and warm but
the difference was not in the number of hugs .
Of course I do
not mean to say that everyone who hugs someone else is insincere, nor do I mean
that acting and speaking coldly is best. Physical gestures and words of
affection are often consoling, though usually more so if they are infrequently
employed, just as swear words mean more in the mouths of the polite than in
those of the foul-mouthed. But real human warmth consists of far more than hugs
and declarations of love .
Let us resolve
then to reverb hollowness no more and to demand it of no one else either,
including John Prescott.
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