High life | 11 August 2016

Gstaad

  ‘He flies through the air with the greatest of ease, that daring young man on the flying trapeze.’ As everyone knows, life’s unfair, but this is ridiculous. An American daredevil falls out of an aeroplane at 25,000 feet without a parachute and manages to land on a postage-stamp-size net without a scratch. The poor little Greek boy falls off a balcony ten to 15 feet high, lands on gravel and breaks many bones in his body. Being encased in plaster is similar to living under a strict dictatorship, North Korea, for example. There’s no crime, no muggings, but as far as doing what comes naturally, fuggetaboutit. Self-doubt and cultural pessimism are twinned to physical immobility and pain. Radical multiculturalists imply that the western way of life produces hate and social inequities. Are they all encased in plaster, or is their brain in a cast? Modern society provides economic affluence and equality of opportunity, yet is systematically deprecated and vilified by its direct beneficiaries.