Complaint: From Minor Moans to Principled Protests (11 page)

At the end of the survey each participant’s result would be compared to those of others. Those
kvetchers
in the top ten percentile of complainers earned the label
über-complainer
(
Homo querulus maximus
); the above average mere
com-plainer
(
Homo querulus
); the average
Goldilocks complainer
(
Homo pondera
); the below-average
patient type
(
Homo patiens
); and the bottom 10 per cent
Zen doormat
(
Homo placidus
). As the monikers emphasised, these were not to be taken too seriously (so please don’t get upset if the Latin is wrong). Nevertheless, self-assessment tests like these exert a strange power over people. The results seem to take on a kind of bogus objectivity.

I thought that the people who would contact me to say that my categorisations were wrong would be those who came out as
über-complainers
. In fact, this is not what happened, partly perhaps because anyone would see the self-defeating nature of writing to complain that you have been falsely labelled a complainer. Instead, a fair number of people told me that they thought the test had
underestimated
the extent to which they complained. ‘I do complain quite a lot, but not about the things you listed’, the protest would run.

This surprised me, since I had assumed people would prefer to be seen as non-complainers. Perhaps this response was merely a by-product of the category names: ‘Zen doormat’ implies an excessive passivity. However, another feature of the results makes me suspect that this is not the whole explanation. The results enabled me to compare how much people thought others complained about thirteen different things with how much they thought they themselves did. Again I had assumed that people would think others complained more than they did, and I still suspect that if you asked the simple question ‘Do you think you complain more, less or about the same as other people?’ more would answer ‘the same or less’ than ‘the same or more’. But my survey did not ask for an overall impression; it actually got people to focus on particular types of complaint. The result was that people thought that they complained significantly more than they thought others did. Expressed as a percentage, where 0 per cent would represent no one ever more than rarely complaining about anything, and 100 per cent everyone regularly complaining about everything, the average ‘complaint factor’ scorer for how we perceived others was 48 per cent, whereas it was 64 per cent for ourselves. For every complaint bar one, on average, people thought they complained about it more than others did.

The exception to this rule was religious leaders: for some reason people have the perception that others complain about them more than they themselves do. This was true in both the USA and the UK. I’m not sure why this would be so, except for the fact that the ‘new atheists’ – such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens – have got so much attention in recent years that people perhaps have the false sense that religion is more under fire than it is. Since religions thrive on persecution, they themselves have a stake in buying into this impression. My survey suggests, however, that this perception is false.

I want to stress that the nature of my survey means that its results have to be treated with extreme caution. (See the appendix for more about this.) But even if the reality is not quite as it seems, combined with my other observations, at the very least it suggests to me that people have some sense that to be fully human is to complain. No one wants to be seen as a moaning minnie, but even worse is to be seen as someone who doesn’t complain enough.

However, as I have suggested earlier, it does seem that we expend too much energy complaining about the wrong things. The highest rating subject of complaint, for ourselves and others, was ‘bad luck or fate’, which scored 85 per cent and 71 per cent respectively. But this is an example of the most basic kind of wrong complaint: one directed at something that simply cannot be changed. At best, such complaints are cathartic; at worst, they divert our energies from things which we could actually do something about.

In contrast, the least complained about, again for how we perceive ourselves and others, were ineffective politicians (30 per cent and 48 per cent). Interestingly, ‘corrupt politicians’ scored more highly (43 per cent and 59 per cent). This seems
odd to me: I would rather politicians were effective but a little corrupt than ineffective but blameless. It is true that corruption can make politicians much less effective, as has sadly been so often the case in Africa, but that is beside the point: if effectiveness is what we want, then corruption at the scale which would interfere with this is automatically ruled out.

Also low down the scale of things we complain about were two things we can do something about: poor service (51 per cent) and bad-quality goods (59 per cent). It seems very odd that we complain more about things totally out of our control, such as the weather (68 per cent), the cost of living (60 per cent) and how things have generally got worse (73 per cent). Of course, the fact that these things are beyond our control is what makes them more frustrating, but it does not make them worthwhile objects of complaint, save as catharsis.

But I don’t think this entirely explains our propensity to complain about things we know we cannot change. It also seems that complaining is a kind of leisure activity. We often complain because we enjoy it: if to complain is to be human, then it reaffirms the fact that we are alive and still sensitive to the myriad ways in which life is not as it ought to be. A man who is tired of complaining is tired of life.

And there is so much that is not how it ought to be. When I kept my complaint diary, I found that on the whole the complaints I heard concerned the small irritations of everyday life. For instance, taking a train, the first complaint came from the ticket seller, whom I had asked for a complicated combination of tickets in order to avoid paying the standard full fare for my route. He lamented the passing of the supersaver ticket class and the general rise in prices. Once on the train, someone had to complain, very politely, that someone else was in their seat. Others complained about problems they’d had with their
reservations, while others talked about non-communication in their office.

A particularly interesting couple were on their way to a meeting of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a Christian non-violence group. They were pretty good grumblers, lamenting, among other things, the fact that one of the fellowship’s campaigns was called ‘Living by the Sword’ and that the person collecting rubbish on the train was not separating the different items for recycling, as well as expressing some dissatisfaction with who was either already on the committee or up for election to it. What they never once complained about was violence in the world.

What I think this shows is how even those who embrace the nobility of complaint cannot give up its more frivolous variants. Even when we’re on our way to discuss matters of life and death, the pull of trivial, quotidian complaints is as strong as ever. This is partly because the truly important things that are wrong with the world weigh too heavily for us to shoulder them all the time, and partly because we can’t seem to switch off the sensor which alerts us to what is wrong all around us. And why should we? Human beings did not get where they are today by being sanguine about imperfection. The meek would have no world to inherit if the more petulant did not set about building one fit to last.

Understanding the nature of everyday complaint helps provide a counterweight to the more lofty ideals of complaining that I have been advocating. It is true that we spend too much time complaining about the wrong things, wasting our most human and divine of capacities. But it is also true that there is plenty of complaining to go around, and we should not get too puritanical about purging complaints which are pointless from a utilitarian point of view. Complaining is a
social activity, something we enjoy for reasons I only partly understand. It’s a capacity we feel almost compelled to exercise, which is perhaps also one reason why complaint can feel cathartic. Since there is only so much of real substance that we have the energy for, most of the time we’re doing the complaining equivalent of working out, keeping in shape for the times when it really does matter. Recovering the nobler nature of complaint requires not abandoning its more mundane varieties but simply getting them in proportion.

So far I have talked about complaint as a human universal. But isn’t it likely that there are differences between what different groups of people complain about and how they do it? I think that’s almost certainly true, and the main purpose of my survey was to try to find some clues as to what these might be.

I say ‘clues’ because I do not pretend that my survey was scientifically rigorous enough to provide anything like a definitive verdict. But there are reasons for taking seriously what it shows about
variation
in answers depending on country of residence, gender and age. Even if the total sample set is skewed in some way (which it almost certainly is), differences within this set which hinge solely on one of these factors probably are indicative of some more general trends.

Most respondents to the survey came from the USA and the UK, and their answers point to some intriguing similarities
and differences. Americans and Britons were strikingly alike in one respect: their overall levels of self-reported complaining were very close indeed, with their complaint factors varying by only 2 per cent, which statistically speaking is as good as identical. Given that there were other real differences between the two nations, this may lend more credence to the view that, although what we complain about and how we do it may vary, the need to complain in some way is a constant.

One trivial factoid from the survey is that, contrary to stereotypes, the British complained less about the weather and public transport than the Americans, both relative to other complaints and in absolute terms. A more significant difference was the gap between how much people think they themselves complain and how much they think others do. In both countries people judged others to complain less than themselves, but that gap was 4 per cent larger in the UK than it was in the USA. This may reflect the persistence of the ideal of the ‘stiff upper lip’. It is still seen as not terribly British to complain too much, and hence Britons tend to assume that their fellow countrymen are a less grumbly lot than they really are.

However, the truth that underlies this perception may be that Britons really are less likely to express their grievances in public. This interpretation is reinforced by a question in which respondents were asked to choose which of two statements they thought more accurately described their country: ‘people tend to complain to others if they are not happy’ or ‘people tend to keep their complaints to themselves’. In both Britain and America most thought people were more inclined to voice their complaints, but this was much more marked in the USA, where 10 per cent thought their compatriots kept quiet about their protests, as opposed to 29 per cent in the UK. Similarly, twice as many Americans as Britons agreed that ‘People tend
to complain to the people responsible for their grievance’, rather than that ‘people tend to complain among their friends, but not to the people with power to change things’.

I think that this reflects one of the biggest cultural gaps spanning the Atlantic. Put simply, America has an optimistic culture, Britain a pessimistic one. The distinction is not as boldly binary as this, but the difference in emphasis is, I think, quite clear. Complaint is a revealing lens with which to look at this distinction, since it starts with the observation that things are not as they ought to be. Given that, what happens next? An optimist thinks that they can be better, a pessimist that we’re stuck with the imperfection. This is what the survey results suggest about the USA and the UK: Americans complain because they want and hope things can be better; Britons complain largely for the hell of it. Americans believe in the perfectibility of the world and look confidently towards the future; Britons have an Eeyorish sense of life’s grimness and a conservative attachment to the way things are, no matter how flawed.

The survey again backs this up: the British complained more than the Americans about ‘how things have generally got worse’, both in absolute terms and in comparison with the other complaints they could rate. But the main evidence for this interpretation comes not from my little survey, but from what we can see for ourselves in American and British life and culture. For example, time and again American foreign policy has been based on the hope of spreading freedom and democracy around the world. Sceptics say that this is never more than a rhetorical cover for the real intention, which is to promote American interests. I think that to take either view as the whole truth would be naïve: motives are almost always mixed, and I think US foreign policy makes more sense if you
assume both sets of considerations (and others) have a part to play.

However, this kind of Utopian belief in a free world strikes the British as frankly barmy. Many Americans may find this hard to believe, but when Britons hear US presidents talking about spreading freedom and justice, most of them just laugh. To the British it seems fake, so they’re very ready to believe that it really is fake. But this betrays a lack of imagination and understanding of America’s past. American optimism seems unreal only because the British have become so cynical they could never imagine anyone saying this sort of thing with sincerity.

These differences were played out in the build-up to the second Iraq war. Americans seemed more willing to believe that the liberation of Iraq would be welcomed with open arms by the Iraqi people, and that bringing democracy to the Middle East would be, if not easy, the most probable outcome. Selling the war in Britain on these lines, however, was never going to work. Britons were impressed by the moral imperative to remove a nasty dictator but were even more impressed by the idea that, if we didn’t, Saddam would pose a real threat to national security.