The Politics of Dancing

There was a joke current in the early stages of the great depression of the 1930’s in the United States. ‘For God’s sake please don’t tell my mother I’m a banker, she thinks I play the piano in a brothel.’ The joke I think no longer works. Just last week I witnessed a London based banker justifying the return of large scale bonus payments in the City. This in an ‘industry’ responsible for catastrophic failures in both judgement and risk assessment. Of course payments of large sums to people of mediocre talent are not new, however there existed at one time a mechanism by which outrageous behaviour could be controlled, and it was called ’‘shame.’ To conduct one’s affairs with avarice amidst, to put it no stronger, the odour of venality, was one thing, never uncommon, but to emerge exposed in the full light of day and to feel nothing more severe than irritation is I think something new. We now have the phenomenon of the truly shameless. Shame, embarrassment, a feeling of one’s frailties e...

He lost all heart his brother said, And looking at the rippled torn back pages of his unmade bed, I think I understood. He lost all heart his brother said; Not an organ much commented on in the meetings, conferences Assessments that examined the rate of risk, The rate of change, Afterwards there was talk of Chlorpromazine, Of borderline psychosis imbalance in the brain. He lost all heart his brother said And looking at the crumled pages of his unmade bed I think I understood a little of why he was now dead.