Uncertainty

Years ago you could look up into the night sky and say ‘that’s a shooting star, I know it is because it’s 1818 and the Wright Brothers won’t invent aeroplanes for ages yet.’ In short you could be certain. Certainity was head-and-shoulders-above-the-water-zeitguyst. And that’s the way people liked it. They’d say, “Margaret Thatcher might be a complete psychopath but at least she says what she thinks.” Certainity was a vote winner, everyone felt the same about it – and they were certain.

 

Yawn! That’s like so ancient history and not even zeitguyst history like with Ringo Starkey on Channel 4, it’s just dead, old history. Uncertainty is now the zeitguyst and that’s not even up for argument, I don’t think… or is it? Um… SEE! It’s totally Z to the E to the I to the T to the gusyt! I’m not even certain and I’m the Zeitguy!

 

Uncertainty is everywhere. Ever heard the phrase “we live in uncertain times?” You bet your pre-ordered blu-ray DVD recorder you have, so there’s your proof right there. And, that’s a good rule of thumb – if people say it, it’s zeitguyst.

 

And it’s not just everyday folk like newsreaders who think uncertainty is totally zeitguyst, check out this hot off the presses lyric by Brandon Flowers from glamorous indie rock n roll band The Killers:

 

“Can we climb the mountain? I don’t know.”

 

That’s uncertainty all right, but is it zeitguyst? We ran that lyric through a computer to see what it would have been in the 1980s:

 

“Can we climb this mountain? No we’re all unemployed and consequently too depressed to embark on a mountaineering expedition.”

 

Wow! Certainity alive and well and living in the 80s, but what about the 90s? We submitted the same line again and this we got:

 

“Can we climb this mountain? We’ve already done it and Tony Blair helped us. Woo.”

 

So we see another case of certainty, what we in the trade call ‘vintage zeitguyst.’ So uncertainty is happening now and it wasn’t before, so even with all this uncertainty we can be ceratin that uncertainty is zeitguyst. Eek, that was a tough call.

 

Now, one of the most powerful weapon in the arsenal of a Zeitguyst analyst is the ability to look at stuff that isn’t zeitguyst, it can tell so much about what is zeitguyst. In this case we have an obvious example – certainity. By looking at what’s happening to certainity we are able to see just how powerful this particular zeitguyst of uncertainty is. Take for example Jim Davidson. Jim Davidson knows he is racist and homophobic. He’s so certain about it he makes jokes about it that can in NO WAY be passed off as being ironic. As a result Jim Davidson is about as un-zeitguyst as you can get. However, on the other hand, and to look at it inversely from the other side of the fence so to speak Jimmy Carr is uncertain whether he is a bigot, so he makes bigoted jokes in a way that can be perceived as ‘ironic.’ Consequently he’s really popular with institution likes The Guardian and Channel 4, which by default make him totally zeitguyst. It’s all down to uncertainty.

 

The same thing is happening in politics. Tony Blair keeps telling us that he’s convinced he’s made the right choices with Iraq, and that he adamant that the British army’s presence in Iraq is working. ‘Convinced?’ ‘Adamant?’  Uh-oh, that’s the language of certainity – which as we all know is totally out right now. All of a sudden his unpopularity with British voters is starting to make sense. This is surprising because Tony used to be quite a Zeitguy (see 90’s lyric above) but the zeitguyst is like a beautiful woman – she likes to be made love to, but don’t cry when you do it.

 

However, the head seat at the head of the table that is zeitguyst is never empty and as Tony finds himself on the Beast’s Wing of popular culture along comes Dave Cameroon to take his place. Dave is so totally zeitguyst he’s named after an African country. Unlike Tony, Dave is really uncertain. He has NO policies, because he knows that by having some he’d have to be certain about stuff and he’s not going to do that; he’s all like “hey I’m on a hot date with Lady Zeitguyst and she’s gone to the loo, but I’m not going to steal a fiver from her purse, get me.” Yeah, Dave’s the ZEITGUY right now, he’s almost as totally Zeitguyst as me, but not quite. People keep thinking he’ll slip up, but he’s way ahead of their game. Like the other day everyone was all like ‘ahh, he’s lost it. He said he was going to cut taxes. He sounded pretty certain.” But then Dave was like, “yeah but I still think Post Offices should stay open even thought it’ll cost more money. Ha!” And everyone was like, “huh? But those two things are like polar opposites or something, what the fuck Tory Boy!” And then they were all like, “Fuck, that’s just him being uncertain. Yo Dave, big your bad self up!” And everyone remembered they still hated Tony more, although they were uncertain. Boom! Full circle.

 

Until tomorrow Zeitfans! (I think)

 

The Zeitguy