Schadenfreude is, we can assume, a universal human emotion. Barely had the first Iranian strikes been launched towards the U.A.E., than some social media users felt the need to point this fact out to the country’s expats. Yes, the weather may be nice, the lack of income tax attractive, but neither were worth finding oneself at the epicentre of WWIII.
Defensiveness is, we can assume, a universal human emotion. Barely had the first wave of internet strikes been launched than Dubai’s expats hit back, a fleet of social media posts mimicking the country’s missile defences. People were going about their business – working, exercising, going out – as if nothing were happening because nothing was happening. The nation’s armed forces were keeping the threat at bay, allowing its residents to enjoy the weather and the low tax rate.
The latter is understandable. No-one likes to make a mistake and choosing to move to what was always quite likely to be a war-zone would meet most people’s definition of an error. No-one likes having their blunders pointed out publicly, particularly not when those doing so give every impression of enjoying it.
But the former is understandable too. Those who have moved to Dubai have not, in many cases, been shy about displaying their lifestyles and doing so in a way which seems designed to prompt the maximum jealousy. One could change the word “influencer” to “flaunter” and not really lose any of the sense. The high-and-mighty being taken down a peg or two is something theatregoers have flocked to see for millennia.
There is though, I think, something deeper going on. A desire for punishment.
It is common to assert that humans are tribal animals. Born into specific communities, we derive meaning and identity from belonging to those communities and, in turn, owe them duties. Our view of the past lends itself to a Hobbit-like understanding of humanity wherein people live out their lives in a small geographic area with a small number of people with whom they form strong, deep bonds. Those who choose to leave are betraying the group.
With, at least temporarily, the upper hand, those who stayed are keen to press their advantage, some suggesting that expats pay to be repatriated. They are not contributing to us, so we should not contribute to them. No matter that the entitlement to government protection is a core part of citizenship, nor that individual expats may have been substantial net contributors in the past, they have defected and must suffer before they can be re-admitted to the group.
But framing the issue in this way causes problems. I moved country when I was eleven and, as such, had paid no tax. Had anything gone wrong, would my parents (who had contributed) have been entitled to our government’s protection while I was left to fend for myself? Or are contributions, to some extent, transferrable? Having lived abroad, have I acquired some duty to that country? Since I have received fewer benefits from my birth community, do I owe it less than I would had I stayed?
Stories like mine are not that common, but neither have they ever been that rare. We have records of Assyrian communities of expatriate merchants dating back 5,000 years. So many Vikings went to serve in the Byzantine army that laws had to be passed to stem the outflow. Those who did go would have seen the exclave in the Second Rome specifically for Venetian expatriates, ruled by Venetian expatriates.
Human history is just as much about movement as it is about stability. There are “Farmers” who benefit from strong ties but lead geographically constrained lives and “Merchants” who wander around, developing looser links wherever they go.
This would suggest that the need to belong is not constant across the population – people who leave are people who are willing to leave. Indeed, it appears to be a mixture of nature and nurture. It correlates to some of the “Big Five” personality traits which are known to be largely heritable and survey evidence suggests expat children are more likely than the average to become expat adults. The social media war over Dubai is just the latest front in the age-old scuffle between two human tribes. One side thinks the other has done wrong, the other cannot see why that should be the case. Neither is mistaken exactly. But neither can persuade the other they are right.
If people’s positions are dictated by a mixture of genetic tendencies and life experiences then it is always going to be difficult to persuade those who share neither. My international school, like all such places, saw a high degree of pupil turnover. Like all such places, it existed in opposition to its environment – the inmates spoke a different language, studied different subjects and sat different exams. To someone of that sort of background, life is a series of fluid relationships which run parallel to mainstream society, but never really intersect with it. Telling them that they are part of a stable community from which they should derive their identity, and to which they owe perpetual duties does not map with their life histories and so makes little intuitive sense. It is not leaving a community which is strange, it is staying.
Thinking this way is not a choice. It is an outcome, the product of a particular set of experiences, possibly mediated by a particular genome. Life gives us an understanding of how the world and society work, and we derive from it a viewpoint which coheres with it. A less peripatetic childhood would probably have produced a “me” which thought that moving around was a faintly odd thing to do. And probably been quite defensive about it – what’s wrong with a Scottish fishing village? It’s good enough for me, why isn’t it good enough for you?
But in this, it is no different from much of our activity. For we choose much less than we think we do. I did not, for example, choose to go to university. I just went. It was the sort of thing people like me do, so I did it. I didn’t even really choose which university to go to. I saw it win the Boat Race at the age of three or four and announced that I would be going there. Fortunately, they were kind enough to let me in. When I left, I applied for the sort of jobs people from that institution apply for, and I took the one I was offered.
I don’t regret any of these choices, but I slightly quibble with the notion that they were choices. At no stage did I sit down with a clean sheet of paper and reason things out from first principles. The lines were already on the page. I just coloured within them. At most, I sometimes chose which colour to use – History or Classics? Law or Banking?
It couldn’t really be any other way. A world in which we each decided to reinvent the wheel according to our own personal whims is not a world that would function. As an analogy, consider how long it would take you to leave the house if, rather than relying on habit, you had actively to choose everything you did after getting up.
But we are happy to accept that our habits are habits, less so to accept that our beliefs and actions are often just as unthinking, just as dependent on the circumstances which produced them. We will continue to see them as true, not just true for us. Realising that our intuitions are products not choices might not bring peace to the Middle East, but it might spark a truce on the internet.
You may (or may not) have liked this piece. But did you choose how you reacted to it? And can you say why you reacted the way you did?
Stewart Slater works in Finance. He is now also on Substack, where you are welcome to follow him.
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“For we choose much less than we think we do. I did not, for example, choose to go to university. I just went.”
I understand that. I get it. It’s a very good point and much of what the writer says is true. In the above example about university, it seems to be more about what we hear from others, and we may fall in line with their thinking, for any number of reasons. OR, it might be that we find a peer or friend who, it turns out, has the same leaning as we do, towards this or that profession or university and we take things from there. I remember in my early secondary school days finding that my ambition to be a lawyer (not fulfilled, I hasten to add, and would further add, thanks to the grace of God!) was shared with another pupil at the same school, so that became our common ground, so to speak, the topic of conversation that saw us through our bus ride to and from school for quite some time.
However, while she DID study law at university, I didn’t. So, we don’t all necessary “just went”. Life, as they say (ridiculously) these days, “happens” and things change. So, a key reaction to the article was an almost instinctive, “a bit too inflexible” in its assumptions about “choices” (if that’s not a contradiction in terms!)
And that inflexibility was brought home to me when Stewart (if I may be so informal, Mr Slater!) wrote:
“But we are happy to accept that our habits are habits, less so to accept that our beliefs and actions are often just as unthinking,”
Without making distinctions, it is difficult to really critique this sentence. Of course, habits are habits, that’s why we are encouraged to develop good habits and rid ourselves of not-so-good habits, which in the days before we had psychiatrists telling us that using the word “bad” was damaging, especially for children, so encouraging children to avoid bad habits is obviously not a good thing. Sarcasm, I know, is the lowest form of wit, but I’ve chosen to indulge my sarcastic streak – a not-so-good habit!
Beliefs, however, are not just “beliefs”. We can hold beliefs which are true and we can hold beliefs which are false. Hence, the person (probably an atheist, God bless him) is correct who argues that if all religions claim to be equally true then they all may be charged with being equally false. Exactly right. They cannot possibly all be true. Impossible.
That’s why my instinctive reaction, perhaps not a choice but a reaction – possibly described as a habit ingrained because since my teenage years I’ve investigated the “true religion” question, and come to the conclusion that my religious beliefs are true. Not out of unthinking habit but because a teacher at school taught us some clear theology and ecclesiology, so at fourteen years of age I decided I had to check it out. Being a (probably arrogant) teenager, I wasn’t going to belong to the wrong religion, not if I could help it!
Then again, at the mention of the Middle East towards the end of the article, I chose to allow my irritation to surface. This is because I’d just finished a lengthy anti-Israel/anti-Jews article and asked myself why nobody is suggesting that Israel just stop defending itself and leave the rest of the Middle East to continue on its way. Once that, I thought to myself, the world sees what happens when the Jews sit quietly by and allow the Islamic world to “share” its beliefs aware that the west will soon get into the habit of accepting the inevitable, things might change and a sort of “peace” will descend. Who knows? As for sparking a truce on the internet… not me! I’m accused of sparking trouble – everywhere, on and off the internet!