In Praise of Cancel Culture

Phrases such as ‘cancel culture’ and ‘woke’ are thrown around nowadays and everyone understands what they mean. This is incredible as the words themselves have never been clearly defined. It seems that everyone has their own interpretation of the words and shifts them to fit their own subjectivity. The other day, I was using a Facebook page to talk about the football (soccer) team I support. One person was so enraged about an opposition player ‘diving’ (falling over to win a free kick or penalty without having contact made on them) that they expressed that they wanted the person to fall over and die like ‘Marc Foe’. For those who don’t know, Marc Vivian Foe was a Cameroonian international football player who had a heart attack during a match at the World Cup and passed away on the pitch. The response to the post was along the lines of, ‘I don’t think you really mean that?’ and the post was removed. The person then reposted to say that cancel culture was alive and well and that it was now impossible for anyone to express an opinion.

Admittedly, you and I may have different reactions to such behaviours/posts, but personally I think that this is what ‘cancel culture’ should be. as society develops and grows previously normalised behaviours are looked at in a new light. The fact that men and women don’t like being sexually assaulted or bullied, the fact that it is not funny to abuse someone due to their skin colour, seems to have come as a big shock to a lot of people. Whilst there are elements of ‘cancel culture’ which I oppose, for example, we cannot look back at people acting in the moral norms of their times and condemn them. yes, we can say, they should have known better- and if they had actually thought about it, maybe they would have. However, as Voltaire notes, very few people can rise about the prevailing opinions of their time. Whilst it is understandable that people would want to tear down monuments to people who did great things due to some of the not-so-great things that have emerged, or were known but no longer fit into society, we cannot spend our time relitigating the past. Surely these ‘giants’ can serve as a lesson in context? Yes, X freed the salves from Egypt, but the killing of the first-born sons and the genocide of an army but using the sea were bad behaviours. At the time it was seen as acceptable to have slaves and to kill your former slave masters, and in these times that was that, however, having moved on in history, surely, we can see more clearly the sins on both sides and agree that slavery and genocide are bad things?

That bad behaviours became normalised over time; it is now ingrained in society that these are acceptable behaviours. Many of the prominent people who have been ‘cancelled’ (or claim to have been cancelled) have been done so due to misogyny, racism, bullying, and other things which we are now accepting should not be part of culture. Whilst those who have always lived these ways will shout and scream that they are being cancelled for ‘having an opinion’ or ‘doing what they have always done’, it is interesting to note that their behaviours are objectively bad and to stop them is objectively good, yet they claim that what was being done to them is bad and what they were doing is good- why? Because they have lived in a morally inverted world and so if we can stop normalising bad behaviours and start normalising good behaviours, society can finally grow, after all no one likes being called for what they do- even if it is to tell them that their behaviour is bad- because there are few things people dislike more than being made the victim of senseless stupidity.

‘till next time      

The Weight of Others

Often, in these pages, we have spoken about how our lives are, for the most part, subjective. We have spoken about the notion of putting ourselves in other people’s shoes, to use the native American saying, before passing any form of judgement. However, what we have not looked at is the impact of others upon us. As most people live their lives unaware of their subjectivity, it means that they make the assumption that their way is the only way, their way is the right way. People will happily act in one way for themselves and then violate it for others. For example, the other day I made a phone call and was asked to phone back when it was convenient for them. I acquiesced. Later, I received a call from the same person. I said it was a bad time as I was busy, and the person then went on a tirade about how they had made the effort to call and I should be grateful.  Another time I was told to be more assertive, so I was in a way that made the other person come over to me and tell me not to be assertive around them again. This, as you can imagine, confused me. On one hand behaviours were clearly set out, indeed I was penalised for not following them, but when I did follow them, the response was that I should not. When I spoke about this with the people, their response was confusion, and confusions little brother, anger. This opens up a wider conversation: If people live subjectively and believe that they are objective (Nietzsche notes: ‘there is your way and there is my way, as for the right way, it does not exist’) then what impact does this have upon an individual?

Life is hard, we are born without any masterplan, without even the awareness to breathe until we are hit- pain, our first teacher, and so we try to construct a life for ourselves. The artist Michelangelo said that he saw David trapped in a block of marble and so set him free, which is a beautiful metaphor for life. We start of as indeterminate blocks of stone and gradually, through experience, chip away at our outer shells until we start to take form. As you can imagine, this is not easy- it is hard, it is painful, and it leaves scars. The writer Kahlil Gibran notes, ‘Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.’ And this is true. However, due to the difficulty of such creation, many would rather shy from the challenge and bury themselves into their dogmas and claim to know the great, holy, truth and see the world through the limits of their own vision, burdening others with the unbearable lightness of their being.

‘till next time   

How the Framing of Our Lives Limits the Understanding of Other Lives

One thing that I have noted over the last few weeks is how the expectations that people have of me are not based on my abilities or situation, rather it is based wholly on their notion of what is right. I recently went into a new training course. The course was something of which I have no prior experience in this context yet the expectation was that I would be flawless instantly. One time I was giving a presentation and my supervisor kept interrupting me to counter what I was saying. This, as you can imagine, undermined my authority and my confidence. Afterwards it was explained to me that I was ‘jeopardising’ futures and it was right that I had my legs cut out from under me, so to speak. Even though the person was aware of the context i.e. my inexperience, to the person it was irrelevant, I should be at their level already.

The term framing is often used to talk about perspective- for example making a negative into a positive. However, a while ago I was doing work on the philosophy of time and found myself reading Einstein. In Einsteinian Relativity, how it differs from Newton’s, is the introduction of arbitrary frames of reference. Two points will be created and everything that happens within that frame of reference is correct. However, what few take into account is that it is correct, only within that frame of reference. After a day thinking about this, I was walking home and noticed the streetlights. Each light (the apparatus not the actual light) was creating a frame. As an individual I could see from two lampposts ahead and two behind and thusly my frame of reference was these four lampposts. Anything that happened without the frame would be wholly unknown to me. With this I took Einstein’s theory and introduced it to psychology. The sum total of my knowledge was limited by my field of vision. Whilst it was not physical as the lampposts and whilst it could not be measured as Einstein’s, it was still limited to my life experience.  If I met another person and they told me of their life, all I would know was what they had told me, as in the facts- if indeed I could accept and understand them- but I could not know the nuance. One might say that their shoes were too small and I would think, ah, that’s not good, however for them it might be ok or it might be torture. It might link back to a childhood trauma or they might think it amusing. In short, I cannot know another’s experience as I haven’t experienced it.  Why haven’t I experienced it? Because I exist within my own frame.

The trick is to know this and try to expand one’s own vision through education- talking to people, reading, experiencing life. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said, ‘Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world’ and the Chinese philosopher, Zhuangzi wrote,

‘A frog in a well cannot discuss the ocean, because he is limited by the size of his well. A summer insect cannot discuss ice, because it knows only its own season. A narrow-minded scholar cannot discuss the Tao, because he is constrained by his teachings.’  

but goes on to say that this can be overcome if one is willing to try, ‘now you have come out of your banks and seen the Great Ocean. You now know your own inferiority, so it is now possible to discuss great principles with you’, the secret being humility. It is only through the humility to say that we do not know- those words which make others lose respect for us- that we can attempt to transcend the limits of our vision and embrace the other as what they truly are- unique and whole in their self.

‘till next time  

The Occasional Non-Existence of the Foundations of Knowledge

The other day I ran afoul of someone. We were discussing a poem and it was attributed to one author. I noted that there was no evidence that it was by that author and tons (e.g. the original copy) that it was by another author. The person replied that they were an expert and that I was being too ‘blunt’ and rude to question them. I smiled and apologised and lost a lot of respect for that person.

Anyway, it got me thinking about the foundations of our knowledge and how it is often built upon acrocephalia yet, as it is considered ‘true’ it is never questioned.

The Reformation in Germany was when the people of Germany moved away from the Catholic Church and religion became something for all people, not just men in robes who spoke a dead language. The Reformation began when a monk, named Martin Luther, nailed his thesis to the door of a church. In it he outlined everything that is wrong with the Catholic Church and how religion was now of the people, for the people. However, if one was to question this story, and look for evidence, then one would encounter a couple of problems. 1) In Luther’s extensive writings he never once mentions the event. That he finds time to constantly complain about his bowel movements and never once mentions how he changed Christendom seems rather peculiar. 2) The eye-witness to the event has been placed, by historians based on evidence, to have been at least 3 towns away when it happened. This raises the question- if he was 3 towns away, how did he see it happen? How credible is he as a witness? The answer is, of course, not at all. And so, we are presented with the foundational belief of an event without any evidence whatsoever to support it. Now, you might be thinking, so what? There are many things which are true for which there is little or no evidence, and you may be right. However, what is interesting about this situation is that there is evidence to disprove it. Some may be circumstantial- yes Luther never writes about it but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen, however, that the only witness in a large city has been shown to have not even have been there is more interesting as his lack of locational validity suggests very strongly that this is evidence that it did not take place.

You might be thinking that this happened 100s of years ago, now we are smarter, yet if we look at society and the core beliefs then many of these seems to be created of foundations that are either insecure or non-existent. The Big Bang Theory explains how the universe came into being, however there is no evidence that it even took place (the false discovery of primordial gravitational waves had us all hoping), nor does it answer the question- what came before the Big Bang as nothing cannot exist in it-self as it the negation of something- and so we have a theory without evidence to support and veto it. More mundane are beliefs that smoking cigarettes is a good thing and that vape pens are not addictive, despite evidence saying the opposite. Meme Theory says that gossip is an essential part of creating a healthy environment. Anyone who has spent time in such environments knows this to not be true. Only now is the evidence of the toxicity of the behaviour coming out, yet those who speak up are silenced or destroyed as the evidence they present is discarded for a truth upon which one could not even build a house as there is no foundation, sand or otherwise, to build upon.

This, of course, is terrifying, for if our truths are built upon nothing, then to accept this would be to say our entire lives have been standing over an abyss like a cartoon character who knows that once they look down, they will fall.

Meep Meep

‘till next time

Why You Should Take into Consideration the Context Before Judging Someone

The UK has a new Prime Minister. Much to the surprise of Australian commentators during the Queen’s funeral, Liz Truss is now the Prime Minister. Ms Truss, best known for her outrage at cheese being imported (‘a disgrace’) and her desire to ‘open pork markets’, something former PM David Cameron in an expert on, is now the PM. Ms Truss is setting herself up as Thatcher-Lite has moved quickly and decisively. Of course, this has led to a backlash from, well, everyone, even, surprisingly, those who don’t like her.

Before we get to that, we should consider the wider context. In 2016, then PM David Cameron decided that he lacked the support of his backbenchers (those who sit on the back seats of the House of Commons and snore and throw paper aeroplanes at the kids at the front) and so called for a referendum on the UK’s membership in the European Union. When the shocking outcome came that the UK is racist and voted to leave (the sea between the UK and France rose 6 feet as Europe pissed itself with laughter at the stupidity of it all) Cameron grabbed his bag, literally whistled his way from Downing Street and hid in a shed writing a memoir no one read, and those who did forgot as one forgets a bad meal with the next bowel movement. The place was then taken by Theresa May whose hands were tied by Brexit. Many philosophers state that in order to understand anything, terms must first be defined, with this, Mrs May’s Government stated that ‘Brexit means Brexit’ and so with the confusion cleared up went on to thrive and make great trade deals, only to wake up and realise that although ‘Brexit means Brexit’, no one in the UK or abroad knows what Brexit means. Her catastrophically mediocre tenure came to an end with lovable ragamuffin Boris Johnson becoming PM. As it is well known that spending time with Johnson results in infections, so it was for the country with Covid-19 fed up of human arrogance wanting to show why nature kicks ass every time.  After a numberless number of scandals, Mr Johnson was ousted from power, only to linger on like one of the infections he leaves with the women he cheats on his wives with, but, luckily for the country, he decided to spend that time on holiday as the Cost-of-Living Crisis, Energy Bill Crisis and Putin’s latest invasion weren’t really things worth concerning one’s self with.

So, anyway, after the antibacterial creams were used, Ms Truss found herself as PM. Voting Ms Truss as PM during a crisis is the equivalent of calling a pyrotechnic when your house is on fire, however, Ms Truss became the PM at one of the worst points in UK history as all of the years of shooting one’s self in the foot (Brexit, ignoring Putin’s prior invasions, not regulating energy companies, not seeking alternative energy sources, etc.) finally caught up. Ms Truss was faced with a catch-22- either try to spend and borrow to help people causing uncontrollable inflation or not help causing, in most likelihood, more food and heating poverty than option 1. Were I in her position, I would have explained that the falling value of the Great British Pound currency was due to the Queen dying and there being a new King and so any currency with the Queen’s face on becoming worthless and to use it an act of treason, however, Ms Truss lacks the political savvy as one such as my self (as you can tell from my genius idea above- Michael Lewis, where’s my book?!) and so tried to find a solution within the realms of reason knowing full well that she was dammed if she does and dammed if she doesn’t.

Whilst I am not a fan of any of the policies of UK since 2016, nor am I a fan of the Labour party who seemed keener to make finishing third in a two-horse race and being antisemitic cool again than trying to win elections, one must realise the impossible position that Ms Truss finds herself in. History may view her appointment as a mistake, but, given the wider context of her rise to power (i.e. last one standing as the bottom of the barrel was scraped so hard you can see through to China), she is in an impossible position and one can only hope that the checks and balances (e.g. the Bank of England which was made independent by Gordon Brown the last time Labour knew how to win elections) means that it is not the people of the country who play the price for almost a decade of aiming grenade launchers at one’s own feet.

‘till next time