Ben Fincher got into a bit of a Twitter discussion about Civic Pride and The Culture Vulture asked him to expand on it … Morley readers best look away now …
“Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it.” – George Bernard Shaw
Shaw’s witty adage is one I frequently recall, most often whilst debating with Americans on the Internet. It strikes me as odd to be proud of the nation in which one was born. The arbitrary demarcation of bits of soil has a gigantic influence over our lives. Governments are built atop the notion that ‘this bit is mine and with my rules and that bit is yours and with your rules’. My default conclusion on the idea of civic pride, then, was that it was exactly the same, but on a smaller and more tribalistic level. That argument is particularly strong when focussed at Yorkshire. Or should I say YOOOORK-SHUH, YOOOORK-SHUH, YOOOORK-SHUH. The fanatical devotion of Yorkshirefolk to what (face it) is a pretty grim place much of the time does come across as boorish and daft, and I say that as someone who occasionally participates in it. But like, ironically, yah?
Is civic pride really equivalent, though? For one thing, whilst I was born in LGI, I think the spirit of Shaw’s quote implies that the subject has permanent residence in the country for which they are patriotic. I spent most of the first 18 years of my life in Morley of all places – a wretched town, too close to the city to have any points of interest or amenities of its own, but too far to visit Leeds for more than an afternoon every few weeks, at least for my younger self. It’s only when I was exiled from Morley a few years ago and moved to Hyde Park, a 20-minute walk from the city centre, that I really started considering myself a city-dweller, and the way I experienced Leeds, as well as my feelings towards it, began to evolve.
Nowadays I know central Leeds well enough to navigate on autopilot. I may not be able to remember the street names, but I know which shops are best to find more or less any given item, and where they are. I know which parks are nice and quiet, even on sunny days, so I can avoid being driven to distraction by the despicable littering that so many students seem to think is acceptable. I know which pub to visit to suit my mood (my mood is usually ‘cheap’). The more esoteric knowledge about Leeds I acquire, the more enriched my experience of the city is, and that’s important because it creates a welcome rift beyond the patriotism I condemn and the civic pride I’m coming to appreciate. If I were proud of Leeds solely by virtue of being linked to it by birth, I’d have been proud of it my whole life, which isn’t remotely true.
Civic pride is like friendship. Once you start to discover and appreciate a person’s best qualities, you appreciate them as an individual. They aren’t just a face in the crowd any more, you identify with them. And in the same way that I’m proud to be associated with my friends, I’m proud of Leeds. I can still be critical of the city, but I know there are great things going on here.
The true acid test of my theory of civic pride will be seeing if, when I leave Leeds in the coming months, I can develop the same feelings for my new home. But how do I go about doing that? What changed in my life at the point where I started to appreciate Leeds? Living closer to the centre of activity was a part of it, but I think that the real key is engagement. Particularly since I started volunteering at Temple Works and writing for Culture Vulture, I’ve met lots of great people, and have been immersed in the thriving cultural undercurrent of activity which the casual observer could neglect to notice but for those willing to search for new things and take steps into the unknown is incredibly rewarding. And I doubt it’s specific to Leeds. I’m hoping that there will be just as much action in my new home town. If there isn’t, I’ll try to make it so that there is.
Statements like that would have been completely alien to me a few years ago when my social anxiety was at its most crippling. I’ve come a long way as a person since then (if I do say so myself) and it makes sense to me to link these three elements together. As my engagement with the city rose, my civic pride followed and my social anxiety declined. It isn’t easy to throw oneself into unfamiliar situations, particularly alone. But I’ve decided that a comfort zone isn’t like a balloon which can be inflated from the inside. It’s more like a fishing net; only dragging it from the outside expands its boundaries.
Maybe I’ll report back from my new town in a few months time and declare whether or not I’ve grown to have civic pride for it too. This whole article and all the assertions herein would be rather a waste of time if not. But in Leeds at least, putting myself out there, being willing to learn all the little secrets and find all the hidden gems about the city, not only built civic pride, it developed me as a person.