National Disservice
National Disservice
A modest proposal for a greater Britain.
During my late teens, we pleasure-seekers drained three-day weekends by flooding our not-yet-fully formed brains with serotonin. Thousands of like-minds, posh and poor, black and white, swarmed a secretly disclosed valley in rural Wales. On the agenda: Swallowing magic pills and pretending to enjoy repetitive dance music set to a thundering 140 bpm.
Drenching your brain in serotonin—the happiness chemical—solves all the problems which have plagued humanity since Plato. MDMA dissolves our primitive origins. From a few thumb-sized dabs of Molly emerges Utopia. No envy. No classes. No strife. No status-seeking. No problems without consensual solutions. This idyll reigns for a day or two. Word soon travels too far.
Sooner or later, a battalion of police officers garbed in Hi-Viz and sharpened into an arrow formation would cascade down the valley toward Elysium. As they edged closer, they'd strip their identification badges from their lapels. The screech of ripping Velcro would cut through the dum-dum-dum bursting from the amplifiers. Then came the pneumatic hiss as thirty extendable batons sprung into community policing mode.
Most had the good sense to know when the party was over. Shuffling toward the cars clotted atop the hill, we'd wade through a technicolour of hastily abandoned pills and potions.
Some did not receive the memo. Those who'd travelled from afar as Holland or Germany were spiritually committed to their right to take horse tranquilizers in soggy fields to a soundtrack of dum-dum-dum-dum. The dreadlocked element would stream toward the police lines like iron filings to a magnet. Their resistance lasted about as long as it takes a human arm to raise and descend a baton upon a human skull.
"Fuck this…" was the unanimous consensus.
Free from the ubiquitous screens to which most are now beguiled, we’d emerge from these shindigs a little more developed, a little more independent.
That's not to say ingesting Class A drugs in skanky fields with overgrown anarchists, dreamers and misfits is essential to one's development. But thoughtful rebellion is much more than a crude expression of youthful vim. Our petty transgressions were a rite of passage toward provisional adulthood.
According to everyone, youths don't rebel like they used to. Generation Z drinks less and takes fewer drugs than older generations. (Ironically, the stark collapse in teenaged pregnancy plays a leading role in the fertility crisis worrying religious pro-natal types and Elon Musk.)
The young are also beset with record rates of anxiety and depression.
According to Prime Minister Sunak, British teens lack direction and focus. His solution? Throw them in the army.
Last week, Sunak announced that 18-year-olds will be required to serve for one year of National Service. They'll get the choice between twelve months in the armed forces, or weekend placements in the NHS, emergency services, or working with charities.
Sunak claimed national service would 'restore pride in Great Britain' by bringing together youths from all classes, races, and backgrounds. National service, they say, will promote social cohesion, and teach youngsters vital skills as they emerge into a proper adulthood. No illegal raves, and no MDMA required.
Though fashioned into a strawman and ridiculed to inventive, hilarious effect, Sunak's lads army is rather popular. The blimpish types who patrol The Telegraph's comment section love their caricatured vision of lazy, entitled British youths leeched of their exuberance through discipline, structure, and the cracking of whips. The young love it, too. Two-thirds agree with the plan. Perhaps they envisage twelve months of ready-made content for their Instagram feeds. The stuff of Morphean dreams.
That's unsurprising. Adolescence no longer has its perks. The sad decay of Great British rites of passage such as drinking White Lightning and enduring teen-pregnancy scares are in terminal decline. Young people are bored to death. So bored, in fact, they'd happily spend twelve months digging trenches or painting fences at their local hospital.
I can't blame them. University no longer promises the good life. Buying a house is a crack-addled fantasy. In modern Britain, the ordinary is increasingly extraordinary. By the time today's 18-year-olds hit 30, this country will be the world's first nuclear-armed nursing home.
But all is not yet lost. Amidst the chatter swirling around Sunak's national service announcement, I heard the sweet words I've longed to hear. Senior Tories and their parish magazines echoed in unison: It works in Scandinavia.
Yes, it does. In Norway and Denmark, national service is more selective than Oxford University. Just 13 percent of applicants make it through the battery of psychometric and cognitive tests. A stint of national service does wonders for one's resume.
Then again, Scandinavian kids live in the most functional of liberal democracies. The Nordic Model gets almost everything right. They're richer, happier, healthier, more productive, and freer than us.
It works in Scandinavia because everything works in Scandinavia.
If only we could admit it. Our Empire Syndrome forbids us from admitting that countries we once looked down upon do things better than we do. Such an affliction befalls formerly great nations. (For American readers, see: America, United States of.)
Sunak's plan doesn't go far enough. A paltry 30,000 places just won't do.
A modern National Service would compel all 18-year-olds to live for two years in a civilised country. These missionaries would serve in nations in which affordable trains run on-time and at high speed. This youth army would study the ways of advanced civilisations in mystical lands where schools teach, where houses home, and where hospitals heal. After two years, their notebooks groaning with ideas, these pioneers would return to Britain to report their findings.
In France, they'll observe unashamedly rigorous schools in which 11-year-olds read and discuss The Odyssey, their hands aloft clamouring for their teacher's attention. In that same country, they’ll discover a healthy appreciation for adultery, that most unappreciated of human institutions.
In Germany and across Scandinavia, they'll witness unionised workers and business elites working together to fatten the wallets of both sides.
They'll marvel at French and Swiss hospitals and Dutch care homes.
Italy and Spain will provide the biggest of shocks: smiling people eating delicious dishes prepared from real ingredients, often late into the night—whilst talking to each other in real-time.
Through their eye-opening travails, they'll see life in healthier, happier, slimmer, more cultured, more productive, more socially mobile, more liberal, and richer nations.
Such a utopia is within our grasp. The only problem is this. No matter how hard they try, no matter how diligent their study, they cannot change the Great British weather.
What an entertaining and incisive read. Thanks. Will watch out for more.
I was in the car with my 17 year old (who was armed with a bag of cans and a ticket to Wembley) when we heard the headlines about little Rishi Sunak’s national service idea. His reaction? “They can fuck off” Never been prouder.