Mind the perceptual gap

It is fundamental to the human condition to see ourselves in a more flattering light than others do. So, too, do nations. And as with people, that gap between self image and reality makes for often hilarious and sometimes disastrous results.

Like Walter Mitty, there are nations whose adventures are mostly imaginary. Think Belgium and New Zealand for starters.

These are pedestrian little countries, but they spend much time imagining themselves as star performers bestriding the international firmament. Fortunately, every now and then reality reasserts itself and arranges a pratfall that dunks their faces in humble pie.

Then there are those whose mythologies are on a more Olympian scale and consequently more scary, especially to their immediate neighbours. Think Germany and Russia.

Writing about the self image of the United Kingdom, Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman this week argues that not only is there a massive gap between the way that the UK sees itself and the reality of its circumstances, but that this “is no longer simply embarrassing — it’s becoming dangerous”. He singles out four aspects to Britain’s construct of itself: a view of itself as a serious world power, “punching beyond its weight”; having a “special relationship” with the United States; being “at the heart of Europe”; and exerting national influence by being a “global hub”.

Rachman lays out the varying evidence for woodworm in each of these pillars of self regard. He concludes that as old certainties have crumbled, the UK’s response to its dwindling power has been one of denial.

Each of these four British slogans is “now increasingly detached from reality”. Yet they “are still heard in Whitehall and still shape policy”, with potentially disastrous results.

Rachman points out the obvious dangers of self delusion. But arguably, as long as the gap between image and reality is not unbridgeable, some degree of myth creation is both inevitable, as well as necessary, for both individuals and nations.

It acts, after all, as spur to our better instincts. Our self construct is something that we try to live up to. No matter that we are secretly acutely aware of our inadequacies, it is our self image of being good children, good parents, good neighbours and good citizens that drives much of our manifest behaviour. And so, too, with nations.

It was Britain’s depiction of itself as doughty bulldog that sustained it through the dark years of the Second World War to eventual victory, just as the construct of an all-suffering Mother Russia soaked up the brutal Nazi invasion. In similar vein, it is the acting out of the mythology of can-do, free-riding frontiersmen that underpins the United States’ extraordinarily long reign as the world’s innovator.

Like all nations, South Africa has its own mythology, that of the “miracle rainbow nation”. It’s an imagery, first articulated by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, that all races embraced with enthusiasm, especially since it followed the country’s previous incarnation as the world’s polecat.

The happy upside of this was a virtuous circle. For a variety of reasons, South Africans in 1994 abandoned entrenched positions to reach compromises; in doing so they reaped an instant reward of peace, investment and world admiration, tilting the balance towards a continued process of political pragmatism.

The downside, as with Britain, is that with the passage of time there has grown a dangerous gap between SA’s perception of itself and reality. A once-off fortuitous escape from disaster through a unique confluence of circumstances almost two decades ago is no reason to imagine Houdini-like powers.

Yet this is what SA is doing. Instead of confronting new realities that have every potential for disaster — poverty, racism, lawlessness, ignorance and populism, to name a few — we shut our eyes, fumble for our rosaries and intone our mantra: “We are the miracle rainbow nation, no harm shall befall us.”

Maybe it’s time for SA to step back from its comforting mythology and face the corrosive reality.