The Motorway Formula
We will start with a test: create a drama about the construction of a motorway through the pleasant rolling hills of the British countryside. I can already visualise the cast of characters. There’s the angry homeowner forced to leave his cottage, where his family has lived for over two centuries, as the bulldozers move in, the environmental activists determined to do anything to protect nature, the apologetic and slightly incompetent government official trying to appease all parties, and then the ruthless owner of the construction company who quotes the need for progress while cutting corners to make as much profit as possible. The reason this appears with such ease is I’ve already watched this scenario, or there abouts, unfold in a number of TV dramas, usually where the nefarious builder comes a cropper, murdered and un-mourned, while the remaining cast become the chief suspects. The crime inevitably has nothing to do with the motorway and the murderer will turn out to be the embittered son of a woman the builder drove to suicide when, despite being the lad’s father, he forced her to give their child up for adoption, but I digress. My point is, it is hard to present the components of such fiction in any other way. The only time you might get the road-builder presented as a hero is in some 1950’s Soviet propaganda film, where all the workers sing and laugh as they swing their pickaxes in the hot sun, while the peasants greet them with flowers and kisses as the concrete artery brings ‘paradise’ to their sorry lives, all under the giant poster of the beloved leader: the reality somewhat different, but the actual suffering of the workers and peasants is a worthwhile sacrifice for the ‘greater good’ and does not need sharing to sully the revolutionary march towards utopia (every government had similar promotional films during the early days of the motorways, though minus the kissing in the UK).
The truth is both these representations are driven by a core ideology: the latter a highly centralised, forward-looking one and the former a conservative, individualistic viewpoint. Yet, the strange thing is both groups will ultimately be grateful for the motorway, albeit a generation or two down the line. While not everyone likes motorway driving, it’s good for trade and we do like to get where we’re going as quickly as possible, avoiding congested towns and narrow, winding country lanes with the risk of getting stuck behind a tractor. They are the arteries of a modern, prosperous nation. In Britain we have a term, NIMBY, which gets applied to those objecting to construction projects impacting on their home or neighbourhood. It’s an acronym, standing for Not In My BackYard, and is often used as a criticism, inferring a selfish motive. I dislike the term and think those objecting take a perfectly natural and rational position, but the majority of people for whom it’s not in their backyard, will either not sympathise or not invest in objecting because they don’t have the emotional connection. So, motorways will still get built because protests remain containable with not enough people objecting.
Now, this blog is not about the pros and cons of motorways or large building projects, but rather the world we present through our imaginations and in the form of dramas, against the reality. For some reason, we are willing to sympathise and invest in the fictional victims’ situation more than those suffering in real life. Why?
Is it because it’s a non-consequential emotional commitment? We naturally sympathise with the underdog, those fighting authority, and don’t like to see the suffering. If we’re watching a drama with a family driving along a motorway, we’re not thinking about the lost trees or evicted homeowners over which their wheels metaphorically drive. But when the destruction is visually presented to us, albeit through the interaction of a set of characters, we subconsciously recoil from the conflict, siding with the comfort of continuity, consciously aware no trees or homeowners will be harmed in the making of this drama.
Are we afraid that if we did instinctively side with the fictional road-builders then it will give the green light to government to go crazy and let loose the real road-builders to tarmac anywhere the whim takes them, including our neighbourhood? Our inner NIMBY recognising the threat that exists, a small smirk curling on our mouth with the murder of the fictional construction boss: a victory over those fears.
Even with the news, a window on the real world, we seem able to compartmentalise the suffering, distinguishing what is not in our backyard. A war in a distant land you have no connection with may impact you less than a fatal train crash in your own country, even if the death toll is a thousand times greater. Culture plays a part. The reach of empathy seems to require numerous elements of familiarity, even if we believe all lives have equal value. Would we sympathise more with a road-builder in a drama set in the Gobi desert, because we can’t relate to the disruption to the lives of local nomads or fauna and all we see is a barren landscape?
Our brains don’t want new and dangerous concerns keeping us awake, so they detach us from many terrible things, rationalising that spatial and cultural distance means it’s not a direct threat. When make-believe enters the frame, our brain gets a little confused, the visual information received suggesting one thing, while another part reassures us there’s no threat. However, if the drama fits a particular template the brain is appeased. So, just like the accordion will always be required to evoke a scene set in France, our dramas will depend on stereotypical formulas to fit our emotional needs. They must shield us from our fears, present the characters subsumed within our psyche and deal with them like a therapy session, bumping off the figure threatening our emotional neighbourhood, letting the good guys (our ego) win, reinforcing our comfort (our id): our inner NIMBY is satisfied.
Of course, the motorway construction never gets stopped in these dramas, but the credits roll before such a disagreeable reality comes to light. Such is life!
Nathaniel M Wrey