My thoughts on current politics in the UK

I think it was Noam Chomsky who said that we are given the illusion of freedom by being allowed free speech on the topics the elites want while being denied any form of speech on the topics the elites don’t want.

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As a preface statement, I want to say that I am NOT telling anyone else how to vote; merely explaining what I’m thinking at the moment and why. 

Firstly, I want to suggest that there is very little point reading any of the political manifestos. There is no legal requirement for Parties to put their manifesto pledges into action and there is no legal comeback if/when they don't. As we all know, they put in place the bits of their manifesto they want to, ignore the bits that they just put in to get votes but never had any intention of doing, and do things which were not in their manifesto but which are brought in so quickly that it was obvious they planned to do them all along. Political Party manifestos are and should be treated like simple propaganda and, as we know, propaganda is a form of lying.

In my view, Labour will be no better than the Tories. Neither Party deserve my vote.

They are two sides of the same coin. Like a coin, the sides may look different at a quick glance but in practice give you the same outcome. The direction of travel is the same, the only difference may be in the speed.

The huge Conservative majority in 2019 was ridiculous and undeserved as will be a Labour huge majority this time. 

Swinging wildly between two useless, entitled, and highly outcome-similar Parties shows the poor state of our democracy.

What? They aren’t similar?

Let’s look at the big topics.

Economy – no change. The global economy, particularly that of the USA which will drive the performance of our economy at a macro-level. Taxes will continue upwards with no discernible improvement in services. All the increased revenue goes on the yearly servicing of our massive national debt plus the automatic annual increase in administration costs of the State (wages, product procurement, pensions etc). There’s none left over to actually improve the services given. The cost of living will continue to rise via increased taxes, increased prices & continuing poor economic productivity, thus continuing to widen the gap between the top & bottom 50% which will end in tears.

As usual the tax increases will affect the middle 70% most. No government will increase taxes on the bottom 20% (other than indirectly). And neither will they increase the taxes on the richest 10% in any meaningful way as they will simply leave the country which will lower the overall tax take since they pay way more than 10% of the overall tax.

NHS  – There will be no change overall. A new Government may choose one or two areas to throw money at and improve but it will be at the expense of other areas they deem less politically harmful. Like the economy overall, any extra money is swallowed up by increased annual administration costs. Neither of the two main Parties will dare suggest structural change to a sacred cow. If we continue as we are, the NHS will become, in a real sense, unaffordable in a generation or two but who cares? That’ll be for them to sort out; not our problem – thanks grandad!

Education – Again, it’s the same here as with the NHS. There will be no meaningful change. Extra money will not translate into better education for the same reasons as the NHS  - increasing costs & lack of political will. There appears no appetite to address structural issues, only ideological ones.

Immigration – huge increases in the last 25 years. The last 10 years make the difference between open borders and sensibly managed immigration a purely theoretical one. 

The levels of immigration (legal and illegal) we have witnessed over the last decades is a sleight of hand to appear to be growing our GDP. 

Pretending our GDP makes us 6th in the world when per person we’re down at 27th!!

The only difference between Labour & Conservatives is the latter does it for cynical hard-nosed economic reasons and screw the societal problems, whereas the former think open borders is morally the right thing to do and screw the societal problems. The outcome is the same and will end in tears.

Climate - whether Labour or Conservative there will be more doom and gloom and ‘the end of the world is nigh’ predictions that we’ve had since the 1960s justifying more climate related taxes, more restrictions on movement, more laws, rules and regulations justified ’cos climate, obviously’, with no improvement to the actual climate and continued increases in the cost of living via rising energy & food prices. More tears on the horizon.

Understand that China has more carbon emissions than the developed world combined. But let’s blame it on ‘western’ farmers & cows, plaster solar panels on prime farmland, fill landfills with wind turbine blades & use electric vehicles with batteries that include rare elements like cobalt mined by child slaves in Congo, all for the greater good, apparently.

I have a separate piece on climate change policy and its effect on society here. https://rantsramblingsremembrances.blogspot.com/2024/06/my-thoughts-climate-narrative-both.html

Utilities/Energy – is nationalisation the answer or is the real problem net zero policies & lack of energy security via insufficient storage capacity? 

Anyone old enough to remember the s**t show of the 1970s will understand that nationalised or privatised, the end result (i.e. quality of service and cost of gas, electricity and water) will be the same – always going up over time. Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. 

Nationalisation is not a silver bullet solution here and it’s a lie for politicians to say otherwise and naïve of folk to believe it. 

I do though think that allowing foreign companies to own our utility companies is plain daft and asking for trouble.

The important stuff little discussed by politicians and the BBC

The even more important, if less obvious, societal issues is where the bigger choice of policy is and is where my decision will be made.
after all, if our society collapses, the economy won't save it!

So things like:

Identity politics generally

Trans rights & racial politics in particular

Islamism/Anti-semitism

The change to a purely digital economy & the control that gives the State

It's actually these less discussed but in reality vital societal issues that should be deciding this election as that’s where the real differences are between all the competing Parties. 

So for example:

Are you happy with the current high immigration levels or do you want less? 

Do you want trans-rights to mean biological fact can be circumvented at will in the name of inclusivity or do you agree with J K Rowling that inclusivity must stop when the existing rights of others are eroded?

Do you want Islamism (including blasphemy laws and by almost unavoidable extension antisemitism) to increase out of fear of being labelled Islamaphobic or a false belief that minorities or the losers of a fight MUST be the good guys irrespective of other considerations or that speaking honestly about the lack of integration, particularly of Islamic communities, makes you a bad, as opposed to sensible and honest, person?

Do you agree with the steady removal of using cash & forcing the use of online banking & digital currency with the control over your money that gives the State via the banks & credit card companies? 

Do you agree in principle with a Chinese style societal-credit system in which what you can do, where you can go, and access to your own money is determined by how obedient you are to the State?

[We’ve seen this already with governments around the world, not just China but Canada(!) ordering banks to deny people access to their own money if they don’t obey the government]. 

Are you content with those who run our national civic & political  institutions in bed with the mainline media and large corporations to force conformity by propaganda and removal of rights & services if they don’t like your views? 

None of above important societal issues are discussed in the mainstream media and, however we as individuals would answer these questions, we all know why. 

But pretending problems don’t exist doesn’t make them go away. Worse, ignoring real societal problems just allows them to grow and anger to fester bringing civil strife.

The way I see it, it’s not about Left and Right anymore. That’s out of date thinking.

This is the grey technocratic elite class in our society getting a controlling stranglehold on the majority.

Simplistically, it’s about the top 10% income bracket and their wannabe apparatchiks in the 75%-90% income bracket deciding that liberal democracy has had its day as the plebs keep giving the wrong answers. 

It’s ‘we know best’ technocratic managerial elitism trying to prevent any further use of very annoying democracy to de-rail their self-righteous and self-serving plans for the world. 

It’s a modern day regressive throwback to the medieval feudal system where the elite and their immediate underlings do as they please, decide what’s right and wrong, and everyone else just has to do as they’re told or be punished.

How can these real issues that affect many in their daily lives now and will be unavoidable for all soon, not be discussed openly by politicians and in the media as vital issues which should inform people’s choices? 

The fact that they’re not, merely emphasises how ‘guided’, propagandised or  rather ‘conned’ we are being by those happy with the system as it is.

I think it was Noam Chomsky who said that we are given the illusion of freedom by being allowed free speech on the topics the elites want while being denied any form of speech on the topics the elites don’t want.

Voting either Labour or Conservative just aids and abets this rise of the predictable anti-democratic technocrat with the demise of liberal democracy and I for one will be voting against more of the same.

My thoughts the climate narrative: BOTH extremes are wrong

As an opening statement, I want to say that climate change is real. My concern is the exaggeration, as I see it, of the human causation of it and the reason/agenda behind that exaggeration.

My opening question is, why are so many people willing to believe catastrophe narratives?

I understand why people want to believe good news that they're told, that's obvious. But it's much less obvious to understand why people are so willing to believe potentially really bad news, apparently uncritically.

We have been given, via politicians, global unelected quangos and the media, climate catastrophe ‘the end of the world is nigh’ predictions since the late 1960s. For example, in the 1960s we were assured that overpopulation would mean we ran out of food before the end of the century; in the 1970’s we were told that oil would run out before the end of the century; we were told in 2017 that the Great Barrier Reef is dying, then in 2023 that it has recorded the fastest growth of coral in 40 years; and there are scores of like examples. None of them have come true but we’re continually promised they will or a new one will soon. The predictions of catastrophe keep coming and vast swathes of the population keep believing them.

I can only think that there are three issues in play. 

Firstly, people simply cannot believe powerful and influential people/organisations would lie about something as important as this. Therefore, they aren't lying and it's all true. This well-meaning wilful credulity is being used to alter society in ways which under normal, (i.e. non fear & panic) circumstances, would be deemed unacceptable.

Secondly, and this picks up from my previous comment, there are people who have ideological agendas which benefit from keeping people permanently on the defensive, worried, frightened;

Thirdly, and extending the previous point, the climate industry is worth £billions which will not be given-up easily.

People will object to me saying that those people making climate catastrophe predictions are lying and I suppose it depends on how you define lying. If, for you, something has to be 100% untrue for it to be a lie then you are correct; they aren't lying. However as in a court of law where you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, then yes, they are definitely lying. 

Let me put my cards squarely on the table. Climate change is real but the extent to which humans are causing it is exaggerated and they know it. The science, to the extent that highly complex multi variant models can be called science, does not support the level of concern which those responsible for communicating on this matter choose to message out.

To me, that constitutes lying because they are not telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Of course we shouldn't be putting raw sewage into our rivers; of course we shouldn't be chucking plastic into the oceans; of course we shouldn't be deforesting & should be planting trees; of course we shouldn't chuck litter and fly tip in the countryside; of course we shouldn't over fish and kill animals to extinction. 

The stopping of these things is sensible and obvious.

But as we know, the Net Zero Policies being enacted, both in our country and around the Western world, go much further than this and directly impinge on freedom of movement, freedom of speech, financial security and energy security via unreliable pretend green (think of the rare elements that go to make them and the short working life plus disposal costs) alternative energy sources.

China has more carbon emissions than the developed world combined. But let’s blame it on ‘western’ farmers & cows, plaster solar panels on prime farmland, fill landfills with wind turbine blades & use electric vehicles with batteries that include cobalt mined by child slaves in Congo. Let’s flagellate ourselves while China laughs at us. But it’s all for the greater good, apparently.

All of which brings me on to the political philosophical question of just how austere and restricted we are prepared for our lives to become in order to supposedly (we hope) do something which will benefit humanity on the planet longer term. As in all things in life, there comes a point at which the lack of enjoyment, the lack of freedoms, the lack of civil liberties, the stifling control that the State apparatus has over your life will simply make life so grey and drab that you question whether or not it’s worth living, at least for those who can remember when we had the freedoms. Just ask those who lived behind the iron curtain of communism.

Now I understand that comfortably off people, especially those living in cities with good public transport, will not see many of these things as a major issue because it will be some considerable time before such creeping restrictions on freedom of movement and freedom of what we can do, where we can go, what we can & can't eat etc will hit home to them. 

But surely we are intelligent and unselfish enough to project ahead and say that, as usual, restrictions that affect a relatively small number of people in relatively small ways initially, will increase and escalate to the point where it affects a huge number of people in major ways, and it's really only the top 10% or 20% of people who will be in a position of financial strength and/or political influence such that they can continue living as they wish. Everyone in the bottom 80% downwards will find within a generation or two that they'll have lost many freedoms and civil liberties compared to their grandparents and great-grandparents (i.e. us). That where people can go, and by what means (car and plane travel) and how often etc are all severely restricted except for the rich and powerful and there will have been no change from a positive point of view to the climate whatsoever because it's too big, too complex and we cannot alter it unless we set off hundreds of nuclear weapons in one go or something like that. But otherwise we cannot alter it meaningfully either for good or for bad and we should stop allowing this myth to  be used as an excuse for giving the State apparatus and unaccountable unelected global bodies like the UN, WHO etc control over our lives and allowing them to restrict our freedoms and civil liberties all based on an exaggerated problem with a series of unachievable goals using civil liberties reducing & financial independence reducing solutions.

I think that the likelihood that those pushing climate change as a human made catastrophe rather than an historically continuous variable and by extension, pushing various policies which just so happen, purely by coincidence of course, to reduce individual freedoms and civil liberties and accrue more power and control to the State & global quangos; the likelihood that those people have only the best motives and intentions, that the increase in State & Global quango control and power is simply an unfortunate accidental by-product as opposed to the reason they are doing it; I think that will turn out to have been a naive and credulous viewpoint.

If I'm going to be criticised for being too sceptical, for being too distrusting of politicians, too wary of large and remote powerful and influential bodies, a conspiracy theorist (see addendum below) then all I can say is that I would rather be criticised for that than being a credulous accomplice to the slow but steady removal of freedoms and civil liberties which our forebears fought so hard for, over many centuries. 

After all, someone who is heavily sceptical, who wants to closely question authority and hear opposing views, is merely asking other people to think more closely and more deeply before deciding whether to believe and do what they’re told or not. 

What’s wrong with that? 

Whereas the credulous are allowing a small number of powerful people with their own selfish agendas to subjugate the majority, which ironically will eventually include themselves, in a modern form of the mediaeval feudal system. 

As Huxley said, ‘we'll all be slaves and be happy about it’. 

Well, I won't be, and I encourage everyone else not to be either.

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Addendum

In order to try and shut people up or get other people to ignore them and certainly to avoid having to have a sensible conversation about the issue, the derogatory term ‘conspiracy theorist’ is bandied about. First of all, just as a technical point, they aren't theories they are hypotheses; they are conspiracy hypothesists.

Hypothesising is observing what is happening and then putting causal scenarios together that seem to fit that observed evidence. 

That just seems sensible to me. 

That is properly engaging with what is happening in society rather than just either ignoring it or believing whatever you're told. 

The strange thing is, nobody seems to ever discuss what the opposite of a so-called conspiracy hypothesist would be. 

Someone who either focuses on their own life to the extent that they really neither know nor care about what is happening (i.e. if it's not affecting me, it's of no importance) OR someone who is happy essentially to go along with whatever is the mainline view given out by, for example, the BBC as long as their life is cushy (i.e. I’m all right, Jack, don’t rock the boat).

If a conspiracy hypothesist is something you shouldn't be (but you should!) then a blind adherer to mainline political narratives is definitely something you shouldn't be. 

Perhaps the derogatory term for them should be something like ‘complacent sheeple’? And as I intimated above, I would rather be criticised as a conspiracy hypothesist, for being too sceptical of State & Global quango sanctioned authority via tame ‘experts’ while alternative experts are silenced, than being not sceptical enough, or indeed, at all. 

It’s the complacent sheeple who allow those with power and influence to behave just as they like, while telling the rest of us how evil & selfish we are for not agreeing to continually tighten our belts and accept reduced rights, reduced freedoms, reduced services and reduced financial & energy security.

Narcissism, victimhood and social media: the bane of Western societies

A few years ago and in a different town to where I live now, there was a letter in the local paper castigating the local community for not supporting a concert of some sort in a local venue. 

The message was that this group had worked hard to put this concert on, it was excellent, and we (the local people) should be ashamed of ourselves that only 15 or 20 people showed up to watch. How can we expect groups to bother putting entertainment on in our town if we don’t support them?

The fact that a) this was not a local group but a touring group of some sort; b) there had been almost no publicity for it other than a poster on the notice board of the venue; and c) people neither have the time nor money to attend all the entertainments put on (such is our fixation on constant entertainment these days), seem not to have occurred to the writer.

I am often reminded of this episode as I see social media posts along these sort of lines. Something I care about didn’t or doesn’t get much support, how unfair/immoral/unkind this is, how awful you who disagree are for not seeing how important/necessary this is etc.

My specific problem with these sort of posts?

It’s a distasteful cocktail of narcissism and arrogance (everyone should agree with me on what’s important) trying to hide behind a highly dubious if not downright false claim of victimhood.

Social media makes these sort of instant emotional rantings very easy. 

Again, many years ago, I learnt the hard way about NOT sending Mr Angry/Offended replies to emails. 

For the last 25+years now, if my knee-jerk emotional response to an electronic communication is to type an accusatory or ‘how dare you’ or ‘you’re an idiot’ response, the first thing I do before typing anything is to delete the address of the recipient. This allows me to let off steam as I like without the danger of hitting the send button, only to regret it later. 

I allow time for my better self to re-establish the dominant position and re-write the email using less emotive language, while still getting my view across.

My suggestion for everyone using social media is similarly to write a post or response out not on the platform itself but in a separate word document. This allows time to calm down and allow your more rational reasonable self to re-establish itself before cutting and pasting the better reply across into the social media post.

The issue that instant social media replies shows is that there are some who  think their knee-jerk highly emotional first thought is normal rational thinking and others who seem more than happy to be whipped up and to whip others up into a frenzy on a regular basis.

This is no way for important decisions to be made, topics discussed or attitudes to be formed.

Finger-wagging or ‘how dare you’ posts, along with using aggressive language or personal insult or blocking people who disagree with you politely, are all signs of us not being in control of our emotions. Not allowing our better judgement time to dominate our instant emotional reactions.

Note that I am NOT saying that you shouldn’t say WHAT you think. I AM saying that HOW we say things matters enormously both to personal and societal harmony and instant emotion-lead reactions to reading posts you don’t agree with is both your enemy and by extension that of our wider society.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) - a personal perspective

I was talking to a friend the other day and we were reminiscing about our youth and various events that were to the fore in those days. So I thought I may give you my view of some of them at the time, albeit remembered 40 years onward.

I progressed through childhood to adulthood in the 70s and early 80s when CND was at its height. But even as an impressionable youth, I never understood the logic behind the CND campaign; at least not beyond the obvious for all of us that no-one wants any war, let alone a nuclear one.

But you can’t uninvent something.
So even if, in some utopia, you got all nations to agree to get rid of their nuclear weapons in the now, someone would find a pretext for making them again in the future and the arms race would start all over again.

Also, on what planet did they expect to get Russia & China to give up their nuclear weapons, when they saw them as essentially the only thing guaranteeing the survival of their dictatorial regimes?
Or for the likes of North Korea to stop trying to get them?
And therefore, on what planet would the USA, the UK, France etc do so unilaterally?

On what plane of existence did they think ‘the West’ giving up their nuclear deterrent would result in all other countries following suit in joyous harmony as opposed to laughing and knowing they now had a strategic and blackmailing advantage?
Not the plane of existence we inhabit on this earth for sure.

The whole thing was a naïve emotion-based wishful thinking exercise on a level you would expect from young children.
Worse, the child-like naivety and shallowness of thought was also tinged with what we now see more openly & widely expressed in parts of society, namely, a detestation for their own country, it’s history, its achievements and its values.

So I wasn't a supporter at the time, and time has done nohting to change my mind.

A short talk for my old school: BOTH/AND - NOT - EITHER/OR

Preamble

I was reminded the other day that at school, we would have guest speakers brought in once a term to give a short address to a whole school assembly. That school was Bristol Cathedral School and the full school assembly took place in the Cathedral.
If I was asked to do this, I may say something like this.
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Since the Age of Enlightenment started in the late 17^th century; [perhaps with hind-sight better called the Age of Making Science God], the mistake has been to see the ‘old’ God, the religious God, as a person; like us just with super-hero powers; a physical entity; an old man with white beard in the sky;
a ‘thing’.
And because the new God, Science, can’t see, analyse or measure that ‘thing’, then de facto, the ‘thing’ doesn’t exist.

The old God is dead; long live our new God.
[Shhh - we mustn't let the cat out of the bag by calling it that!]

But let’s consider one of the (supposedly) biggest arrows in the ‘God and religion is nonsense’ quiver - evolution.
That’s not a physical entity; not a ‘thing’ either is it?
You don’t walk down the street and trip over evolution or spot it on the other side of the road nipping to the shop for a pint of milk. You can't point a telescope at it or put it under a microscope, can you?

Evolution is a process within Creation.
It does not tell us how life began only what happened after it began. [Even our most prominent professional atheist, Richard Dawkins, admits this – see his interview on the Within Reason you tube channel].

God is a process within Creation.
The process doesn’t tell us precisely what God is but it can move us toward a better understanding of our possibility; a better, wiser way of thinking and acting that makes us more-rounded, thus more useful people.

‘Oh’, the atheist says, ‘but we can see the outcomes of evolution. Some outcomes of evolution seem bad (e.g. creatures went extinct or lost their ability to fly), others seem good, (they adapted and have thrived)’.
But it’s the same with God. There are many who say they can see the evidence of God in the world both in an abstract way (beauty, love) and directly in their own lives. Like evolution, some things that happen in life are bad and some are good.

We need to understand that ‘God’ is just a word; just a name; just an inadequate label we use to try and describe something we cannot and can never wholly understand.
Namely, the infinite transcendent. The Oneness of all creation; the origin and Being of Life, the Universe and Everything.

We are only human; and just because we think of ourselves as being the most marvellous cognitive beings in creation, doesn’t mean we are anywhere near being able to understand the infinite transcendent; the Oneness of all creation. That’s just our arrogance.

All holy writings, for example but not only, The Bible, are attempts to describe & explain ways of seeing and moving toward that Oneness.
Some of it is literally true and some is allegory, parable, symbolism.

We, to the essence we label 'God', are like ants are to us. Some ants are aware of our existence and some, say they live in a desert or the Brazilian rainforest, are totally unaware of our existence. But even the ones that are aware cannot possibly fathom our Being; our greater cognitive ability; our greater knowledge and understanding of how creation works; our different sense of time and place.
How can they?
Their only metric of ‘knowing’, however much evolved from their starting point, will never be able to match ours.

Similarly, if your ONLY metric of ‘knowing’ is human-derived material science, you will never realise the existence of the Oneness, OR you will mistake it merely for what we know via scientific materialism, and thus will miss out on the benefits of embracing the whole essence of our possibility.

A little tale to make this point:

A scientist enters the laboratory one evening and finds a single rose on her desk. She takes the rose and conducts all manner of experiments on it to find out its biological & genetic properties. The following morning, when her research assistant arrives, she thanks him for leaving the test exhibit, saying she thoroughly enjoyed working all her experiments on it. The research assistant is dismayed. It was St Valentine’s Day yesterday, he reminds her. That rose had a totally different meaning and purpose to the one you ascribed to it. The research assistant leaves the room, clearly upset. The scientist is non-plussed by this turn of events. It had never occurred to her that there was anything of any true worth outside the purely scientific way of considering anything. She now had a choice: To shrug it off and continue with her narrow focus or to embrace the things outside of that focus and integrate them into her way of life for the betterment of both her scientific work and her own Being.

Here’s another thought along the same lines.

Why did Sherlock Holmes move into 221B Baker Street?

One answer is that he was looking for somewhere to live and wanted a room-mate to share the cost, bounce ideas off etc.
Another answer is, because the author, Conan Doyle, needed him to do that in order to advance the plot of the story.
These answers are both true depending on the resolution of thought with which you consider the question, and importantly, they do not compete against each other.
But to claim that only one of the two ways of considering the question is valid, and the other invalid, is narrow-minded and thus restricts your ability to properly consider all aspects of the question to your own detriment.

What’s my point?

Science and Theology are not in competition unless your focus on either of them is too narrow, too up-close for you to see the wider, bigger, far more important and far more exciting picture.

It’s BOTH / AND.
BOTH science AND theology or religion or spirituality, whatever inadequate descriptive word you feel comfortable using.
But it’s NOT either/or.

I urge you to open you hearts and minds to do just that; have the courage and wisdom to seek and find that bigger BOTH / AND experience.

As much as anything, it affords far greater personal growth opportunities and very importantly, with those greater opportunities comes much more fun!

New Year thoughts

 At a time traditionally said to be of peace and goodwill to all, here are my New Year rambling thoughts, which to some extent are a re-hash of some previous posts with added extra wanderings.

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Does anyone else get fed up with posts telling everyone to be nice or kind and care more for others?

Firstly, the implication is 'be like me and I am all these things', which is pretty self-righteous and narcissistic;

Secondly, how many of us know anyone personally of whom it can reasonably or honestly be said that they are not a nice person? That they wouldn't help an old person who fell over in the street or try and help someone knocked off their bike or wouldn't lend their neighbour some milk?

For 90%+ of us the answer will be NONE!

We can't all agree on larger socio-political issues, largely because they are complex and there's always more than one way to tackle complex issues, none of which are perfect.
As Thomas Sowell cogently commented, ‘there are no solutions, only trade-off’. And I often think it’s the naïve or arrogant idea that we can create a perfect world that is behind a lot of strife we see.
Utopian idealism has a flaw in that it only sees the bad of the current system and assumes only good from itself. Unintended consequences from huge and rapid social change are ignored, all ‘for the greater good’. Change is necessary but HOW you change is vital.

But this moralising at everyone issue is worse in the age of social media.
Even more than in the past, media is not objective journalism, giving you facts to weigh-up, it’s entertainment; and entertainment doesn’t need to be honest, it just needs to grab your attention, stir your emotions (negative emotions do best, sadly) and get you coming back for more.
These days media is both a means of distraction (via entertainment & negative emotion triggers) and control (propaganda).

We can cope with complexity, but only if we can agree on the basics. But we simply can’t agree on basic truths any more. And that’s because we can no longer agree on what has taken place.
Here’s an example.
The pandemic.
There are those who think the virus was responsible for killing millions who otherwise would not have died and importantly, we ourselves were only saved from death or serious illness by the swift and decisive action of the government, the authoritarian nature of which was entirely justified.
Others think it was a total hoax and was just an excuse for a test exercise in seeing whether fear on a mass scale could be used to control the behaviour of the population.
Others think the virus was real but the adverse effects were exaggerated due to institutional group-think and cowardice to admit error, and others think the virus was real but the policies put in place to combat it took no account of the damage done to important other areas of society resulting from those policies etc etc.
So we can’t agree on what actually happened or why and we have so many differing stories and opinions available to us these days that that isn’t going to change.
There are other examples of course around climate change and the trans-gender debate where we have a similar plethora of differing opinions which all add up to us collectively, as a society, not being able to agree on the truth or even the basic premises on which the truth may be gleaned.

Anyway, back to my original thought on the ‘be nice, be kind’ posts prevalent these days – as if those words mean the same thing to everyone in every instance or that life is as simple as that.

Can we stop the attempts to accrue virtue to ourselves by telling others how they should behave in order to fit our definition of 'niceness' or 'goodness'?

But if you really need to, try this.

Assume that everyone means well; that they want the best outcome for as many as possible even when their view of what that looks like or the path to get there is different to yours.

Note I said to ASSUME that everyone means well i.e. have an open mind until they behave in such a poor way that they no longer deserve your good will.
And by poor behaviour I do not mean simply having the temerity to disagree with the all-knowing and wholly righteous YOU!

I mean that abusive/rude comments are unacceptable.
The deliberate and known telling of lies either by commission or omission are unacceptable.
But reasonable and polite discussion, acknowledging points of agreement or good argument along with points of disagreement reasonably explained should be encouraged and engaged with.

Good faith dialogue means that we can learn from each other and move forward as amicably as possible in a complex and imperfect world.

Closed minded self-righteous 'I'm right & you're wrong' thinking leads to authoritarianism through the dehumanising of anyone outside our tribe.
This is so even though the beliefs and dogmas of our tribes are rarely if ever put to anything but the shallowest test; that of thinking just enough to tell ourselves why we’re right and ignoring views/evidence to the contrary. i.e. we allow ourselves to be part of what is closer to a cult than a society that combines rational empiricism and the human need for spirituality and morality in fair good-faith honest discussion.

And for those who don’t like the description of us falling into dehumanising cults, just consider this. If you insist on fighting to the death (literally or metaphorically) you will either win and become a tyrant or lose and become a slave. These should not be and are not the only options but they become so when we stop assuming the best intentions of anyone ‘not agreeing with me’.

We can and must do better than we do now, but it has to start with the humility to accept that we might be, at least partially, wrong and that we are not automatically the moral superior of anyone that doesn’t agree with us. So much strife and aggression can be sourced back to moral self-righteousness.

But it’s so hard not to think this way isn’t it?

"A man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe." — Euripides

Of course if what we’re told happens to coincide with what we already think or what we would like to be true, we give no further thought to it. Unless the subject is something we have currently no knowledge about at all, or perhaps, a subject we don’t care enough about to have any view one way or the other, we don’t decide whether to believe something based on the arguments for and against, it’s often simply, ‘does it agree with my current view or not?’
And we rationalise from there why our current view is, obviously, the correct one.
We do this mainly by ensuring we only get information from sources our experience has shown will tell us what we already think is correct.
So much of the evil in the world comes from people believing things that aren't true but which, for their own reasons, make them feel comfortable or good about themselves.

How much of what we think we know, do WE actually know, as opposed to having been told by someone else in one form or another.
WE on an individual level know very little.

Rather we outsource our knowledge, views, opinions to various others, many of whom themselves get their information the same second-hand way.

Can the sources of our information be trusted?

Do we enquire as to the motives and biases of those who provide much of our information?
Well, I suggest that we do if what they say makes us feel uncomfortable; we give them a very hard time, or simply refuse to engage with what they say at all, which is cowardly but psychologically safer.
But if what they say makes us feel comfortable, we just nod along unthinkingly, patting ourselves on the back for our intelligence and virtue.

Of course, I understand that we can’t personally get to the bottom of everything ourselves, even if we had the ability to do so, but we should and must understand the danger of manipulation, of propaganda, that outsourcing information and opinions to others, particularly a small but powerful sub-set of others, puts us in.
And I accept that we must take a view, we can’t just sit forever on the fence, but that view should be held lightly, so as to be changed without too much prideful agonising when better information becomes available, not cast in stone never to be questioned.
The latter is just pride and very much the bad version of pride.

We can ignore realities but we won’t be able to ignore the consequences of ignoring those realities.
We ignore realities from cowardice or for personal gain, (for example, convenience).

And worse, it will be our children and grandchildren that bear the brunt of our cowardice or self-righteousness because many bad decisions take decades to come back and really bite us.

For example, birth rates are declining almost globally but especially in the West and Westernised countries.
In South Korea for example, on current trends there will be a 94% drop in population in the next 100 years and this cannot be reversed easily other than by immigration because 60% of the population is already over 40. Yet, it is not a mainstream discussion. Heads are in the sand.
Why?
Because the causes are the selfishness & short-term pleasure-seeking that comes from decadence which are not things to be proud of; but it suits many of us to behave like that, so we’ll look the other way.
And the rest of the world, particularly what we think of as ‘the West’ is not far behind on the same trajectory.
[For more on this see this you tube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwIeDuHwXJY ]

On a whole range of vital societal topics, are we heeding our better selves clearing its throat in the room next door? Or are we convinced of our own intelligence and righteousness such that we have closed our eyes, and put a set of headphones on shouting ‘la la la, I’m not listening’ to anything or anyone who casts doubt on our stone-cast axioms that we erroneously believe must be defended at all costs?

Again, is it pride messing with us?
Whatever, the cognitive dissonance (holding opposing views at the same time) we all engage in is dangerous for ourselves but importantly for society, especially now social media is making us ever more tribal and ever less prepared to discuss and converse calmly and open-mindedly with the assumption of good faith in the other.

"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." Orwell

As we are currently finding out with our history & culture being trashed, negatively interpreted and mocked, mostly by people who have directly benefitted from it and who think it makes them morally superior to do so.
It doesn't!

“People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient then repent”
Bob Dylan (a true although hardly original thought)

But we're excellent at convincing ourselves that those two, what we believe in and what is convenient for us to do, are the same. It certainly saves all that unpleasant self-examination stuff.

Oh, and even the repenting is rarely honest. It's usually a short-lived bit of guilty conscience which we tell ourselves is sufficient atonement to wipe the slate clean, ready for us to behave the same way again whenever it suits.

I just think we can do so much better, indeed we must, to create a better and stable society.
But it must start with all of us as individuals. We can’t say, ‘I’ll only do it if everyone else does’. That’s just an excuse not to change.
But we have to want to. We have to see the need to. We have to realise that looking the other way if, at the moment, the nonsenses of the day happen to make us comfortable is foolish, not wise.
For those powers and forces of influence and control will one day switch such that the boot is on the other foot.

It’s the behaviours that should be the priority, not the outcomes.

If the behaviours (the process by which outcomes are obtained) are good, it’s much more likely the outcomes themselves will be good; or at least better than those arising from a selfish dictatorial Machiavellian ‘the ends justify the means’ attitude.
If the behaviours are poor and self-serving, the outcomes will be less than optimal and not be acceptable to many, and then we’re back into tyrant or slave territory.

Here's an example:

Democracy (even the weak version we currently have) is under threat across the world. Politicians impose huge societal changes on spurious, often purely ideological grounds without proper public consultation. Also, the high and wholly undemocratic influence of massive corporations, wealthy individuals and un-elected global bodies that use money and propaganda to sway attitudes and opinions.
And as I say, if you wave this away saying it’s not a problem because they are currently doing things you like, you are being foolish.
If you give them the power to decide what ‘ordinary’ folk can do and say and think; if you remove political power too far from the individual voter, one day things will change and they’ll be forcing YOU to do, say and think things YOU don’t agree with. And what will you do then? Because it may well be too late to reverse the process, at least without a lot of strife.

IT MUST BE GOOD BEHAVIOURS THAT WE WORK TO CULTIVATE FOR THE BENEFIT OF SOCIETY AS A WHOLE, NOT SIMPLY PERSONALLY DESIRED OUTCOMES

___________________________________________________________ 

And finally, something to consider for the New Year.

Is the lack of certainty about the future (whether personal or societal) energising & exciting to you or is enervating and frightening?
Do you seek adventure (on whatever scale is right for you) or do you seek certainty and safety at all times and at all costs?
Do you risk failure for the excitement and potential of unknown possibility?
Does the fact that success and failure are so close together that at any moment something can happen to tip you from the one into the other frighten you or do you see it as a vital part of being alive; a challenge to be met?

These things will matter to how your life pans out because they will govern the choices you make and thus are worth proper consideration.

A thoughtful and peaceful New Year to you all!

Better answers?

I’ve been struck recently when watching interviews on various subjects that I would have given different answers or at least made additional points to the ones the interviewee gave.

For example, the idea that certain forms of comedy should be banned because they are offensive.

One interviewee was a comedian, I forget his name (no-one famous), but he had been banned from certain venues because of his supposedly offensive material. The other interviewee was talking about hate speech and punching down and victimisation of powerless groups etc.

The comedian responding started talking about free speech and the wrongness of censorship by a small number of zealots basically threatening trouble for the venue if it didn’t prevent the comedian from performing there. He said that this sort of authoritarian mob intimidation is how the NAZIs started off in the 1920s and that the number in the audience should decide whether his comedy is too offensive to listen to or not.

And look, there is validity to what he said but I would have started from the basic principle of how humour works in the brain, which is step 1, not at step 2 which is where the critic started and to which the comedian felt compelled to respond.

Step 1 is that the trigger inside your brain that decides if something is funny or not is an instant reaction.
It’s not a careful post-hoc analysis of the precise words used plus subject matter and then whether on balance, you think it is in some way helpful or harmful in a socio-political sense, and then based on that you laugh or sit stony-faced. If you do this, whatever it is, it’s no longer comedy, even if in the end you decide it was funny.
Neither are you correctly dealing with humour if you pre-determine that you will or won’t find comedic material funny based on the socio-political standing or reputation of the comedian. 
Such agenda-driven analysis, whether before or after the event, is politics; nothing to do with humour, with comedy as such.

Some people are like Jack Point in W S Gilbert’s The Yeomen of the Guard, ‘For, look you, there is humour in all things, and the truest philosophy is that which teaches us to find it and to make the most of it.’
Others are like Margo Leadbetter in the 1970s sitcom, The Good Life, where in one episode she says that she can tell when she’s supposed to laugh but doesn’t know why it’s funny.

Both these extremes, the laugh at everything and the utterly humourless, are a bore and most of us are somewhere happily in the middle.
But it’s not wrong to find something funny if the joke has been well-crafted, even if it the subject matter is close to the bone and may offend someone.
Firstly, the taking of offence is a choice;
Secondly, someone will be offended by just about anything said, joke or otherwise, if it suits them to be; and
Thirdly, why is any individual’s or group’s taking of offence justification for depriving others of the opportunity to decide for themselves if the comedian is funny or not?
Everyone is entitled to their opinion and to voice it, but no-one should feel entitled to use mob intimidation tactics, which threatening boycotts or disruption of venues certainly is, to coerce the actions of others.
This is the attitude of authoritarians and dictators through the ages.

Then you can say that in the end, the number paying to be in the audience would decide whether the comedy is too offensive to listen to or not and if you don’t like a particular brand of humour, you are entitled simply not to go.

I’ve posted before about the mistake of starting discussions/arguments at Step 2 and taking Step 1 for granted. In this case, that there is comedy that is, without question, pre-determinedly offensive and thus worthy of censorship, so that the discussion is merely about what comedy is on the ‘right’ side of the dictator's arbitrary line.
It’s an old trick but we shouldn’t fall for it.

Bring any discussion back to Step 1 and often the criticism becomes more clearly and blatantly weak or biased or absurd.