At 12:21 7/09/97 -0700, you wrote: > > I had urgently hoped that pen-l might be one place on earth, > a tiny niche, where one would not discuss Diana. Not so - > and the level of the texts I find in no way surpass the > tabloids.................... Marianne Brun ______________ I don't understand why you think the Di issue is beneath pen-l? In my opinion this whole thing is of historical proportion, at least for United Kingdom, if we think of history in terms of decades and not centuries. The remarkable and probably unpresidented thing about the funeral of Diana was the show of collective grief by the ordinary people. This is a people which is known to not express its emotion publicly. I heard many common people say that they felt the NEED to come out and participate in a collective experience of loss and grief. Words like UNITY was also quite often used. I wonder what kind of mass psychology this represents. It seems people felt a strong need to identify themself as British--a subject of a nation--and touch each other in order to assure each other of a collectivity and a collective identity. This may be the last gasp of the national identity in the face of growing European identity. But definitly a very interesting historical phenomenon by any account. I would like to hear more about this phenomenon from our British comrades. Cheers, ajit sinha > >
