I’ve been reading  a review of a book by Iain Sinclair, called London, City of Disappearances, a collection of the regrets and recollections by some sixty-odd contributors.  They talk about long-gone people, bookshops, locations, urban myths and memories.  But one huge, vanishing aspect to this swarming beehive of a city, and one that pains me, is the disappearance of public manners and consideration for the feelings and convenience of others.

 When I was growing up, visiting my grandmother in Notting Hill Gate (a London village at the time), the shopkeepers knew her, the neighbours greeted her, and people stepped aside for her with a smile and a tip of the hat on the street.  There were fewer people then, and warfare had had the effect of bringing people together. Older people were to be looked after and others respected. Now, gaggles of youngsters walk at you blindly, forcing you onto the roadway, loud-mouthed people yell into cellphones, people wearing I-pods barge into you, lost in the wonder of the music. Noone knows where anything is, has the time to pause and direct you (or can speak grammatical English if you speak to them).  There just too many people, too much hurry, anxiety and frantic activity.

Surely, the day of the Epiciurean must return.  Consideration and thoughtfulness for others has to be the stamp of civilization, and thus must be a modern keystone of Epicureanism.    Capitalist free enterprise, as interpreted by Anglo-Americans propagandists, may have positive merits, but civilizing it is not. If you doubt it, and you can remember what England used to be like before Thatcher and her grabbitariat took over, experience it now.  Sad.   Hunter-gatherers, for all their lack of education, were very probably more civilized than modern city-dwelling man.