Melancholy Mondays: Archives of Pain

We are all the children of murderers, rapists and war criminals. To think any different is to ignore the guilt of the past.

We are also the children of altruists, iconoclasts and serene kind-hearted peace-lovers. To believe any different is to lose the hope for the future.

Any fool can regret yesterday, as the Manic Street Preacher correctly says.

The potential for pain is infinite.

The capacity of the sufferer is finite.

Thus, there will always be pain in the world.

An individual's ability to suffer is limited.

While there is being there is pain.

Only in death is there freedom from pain.

Death is the endless 'experience' of nothing.

Existence is the constant suffering of pain by degree.

Pain is infinite.

The sufferer is finite.

Alleviation can therefore only be partial or temporary.

The can be no final escape unless one believes in rebirth or existence post-death.

Pain is being within the world. It is an excess of contact.

Managing pain is control of the circumstances of the world.

Something that can never be total. Although it is the dream of every dictator.

Pain is the outcome of existence. It is the proof of the passage of time.

© Jenny Saville

Filosophy on Friday: The Emerging Online Ochlocracy

The Mob cannot be reasoned with, because it is not rationality that drove them in the first place.

This is to very loosely paraphrase Jonathan Swift, who actually said, "Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired..."

In either case, I've been thinking a lot recently about how we might remove people from toxic environments and/or cultures that they themselves might not see as particularly damaging or dangerous while they are part of them, but that could represent an existential threat in terms of how we would wish a civil society to behave. The secondary thought to this, is rather larger, and is of the scope of 'what exactly is this civil society we are trying to bring people into?' which as suggested is actually much more complex than the first intuition of 'rescuing' those that might not actively request help.

To put it another way, how do we convince the stupid that they should become intelligent?

This is, of course, poorly put and motivated by not a small amount of frustration about many peoples seeming willingness to embrace unreason and eschew fairness, balance, impartiality and kindness for antagonism, cruelty, dishonesty and fanaticism.

However, we have to be careful about who the 'they' are as we can too quickly forget that as participants in modern society that this will include us to, and further to this that we should watch for making too simple a description of things as only black or white, that is, an 'in group' and an 'out group' distinction with ourselves as 'in' and whatever enemy of choice we and our group like as the 'outsider' whoever that may be.

I think that this need to create social groups and within those create divisions are both a strength and a weakness in how we approach things and by 'we' I really do mean all human beings.

So, to begin at the beginning, who or what or where are these 'People of ill Opinion' and what are their toxic cultures? Now, I don't want to look at any of the usual groups of concern, because I'm not sure that these sorts of groups are liable to suddenly and permanently remove themselves from humanity anytime soon. People have been hideous to each other throughout time, so I don't feel the need to scrutinise a particular 'bad' group today. Instead, I want to describe the medium of their collectivism and how this is affecting all parties negatively. We are being drawn into a system of interaction and it is one that has many dangerous qualities, not least because it has been designed specifically to prey on human frailties. I'm describing, of course, the Internet and the recent development of Social Media. Particularly, how this has changed how people think.

Sidenote A.

An apology. As will soon become apparent I don't accomplish or indeed investigate (m)any of the things I set out here, at least, not in the manner I've described them above. I give reasons at the end, but I just thought you should know...

1. The Ironic Youth

I could, of course, look at the alt-right and particularly after recent events seek to portion blame at them and their 'culture' indeed, in part, I already have, but the point of this piece today is not to point out all the negative, unreasonable and cruel things that 'they' do, but to shed a light on the negative, unreasonable and cruel things that we all participate in when we interact online.

As I have said before, the best way to gain an entirely negative view of people online is to purposely look into all the dark places wherein they congregate. However, what is perhaps more sickening is when one sees the aggressively emotional performance that the white supremacist makes being co-opted by other online groups as merely an 'aesthetic'. That aesthetic being irony of a form, diluted through capitalistic ritual, pieced together with immaculate deniability and crowned with an attitude of disdain.

Not that this form of youth culture is anything new, punk was itself a nihilistic rejection of the corruption of the wider 'adult' world in a sense, which fed through the materialism of the 80s and 90s neo-con generations and became (if there was anything like a trajectory at play) the ironic detachment of Generation X throughout that time and particularly in the 90s. David Foster Wallace has made insightful commentary about the corrosive effects of this 'irony' in several essays, one of which I have already quoted on this blog.

 2. Groups of Disdain

So, I've already labelled one group the problem (however naïvely) then surely all that needs to be done is to co-opt this group into acceptable behaviours and otherwise expunge them from the body politic and all will be right with the world again, right?

Well, no, probably not.

As fans of history might note, there is a certain type of behaviour that comes about in many different ways but the end result is almost always the same. The self-described outsiders, the radicals, the free-thinkers, the champions of (true) justice, the defenders of... etc. That is, those that start out at the fringe, later come into acceptance and power after struggles, and then with this power that they eventually wield, exert a massive revenge on the society that spawned them or, more correctly, the scapegoats within (or without) that they blame for their woes.

What is common in these ideologies that leads to totalitarians horrors? Well, actually very little. Looking back only a hundred years of so, there is very little at the outset in common with Russia's Soviet Revolution and Germany's NSDAP movement, or any of the other authoritarian governments in Eastern and Southern Europe at the time following the Great Depression.

This leads me to the conclusion that apart from outright advocating for violence that there is nothing inherent in any ideology that is meant for this purpose. Whether this be a form of religion, of political theory, even of nationalistic identity, that none of these are by themselves seeking to carry out the subjugation and disenfranchisement of an 'other' within or without society that the ideology has designated enemy.

Unless we proclaim that all ideologies lead inexorably towards a dehumanising outcome, in that they have a singular mind-set and outcome. Perhaps. But let's set this aside for now and make the argument for this at a later date.

3. Outliers of Culture

So far a lot of what I'm saying might be understood as, 'those who question accepted society are wrong and they lead towards only bad ends'.

This is not what I mean, as I have a great sympathy for those outside of normalcy that seek to question and challenge the status quo. Indeed, I sometimes think that I am part of this cabal.

It is not then that we question, but how we question and for what reason.

Starting with the second, the motivation behind criticising pervasive everyday behaviours might be that there is some perceived injustice or grievance that is going unchecked or unrecognised that the group or individual seeks to bring into the light. Let us call this the 'activist' reaction, in that there is one certain topic that is the foundation of this evaluation and that otherwise the group or individual is largely in line for how society is structured and functions.

A further reason might be that the group or individual feels that there is some wider error or fault within society that needs correcting. It might be a pervasive mode of thought, a political doctrine, or even a dominant religion. Let us call this the 'rejectionist' reaction and is obviously of greater scope than the 'activist'. Indeed, depending on the focus this sort of motivation might be an endless struggle for wider acceptance. However, some of these views may themselves be taken on-board by wider society and become themselves part of the status quo.

Differing from these specific goal-orientated reactions, we might also think of the analytic outsider, who uses their perspective to critique wider social structures. Let us call this the 'theorist'. In this mode, the 'theorist' is not motivated to a specific end point, but seeks to bring contemporary practice into a type of practice that is more in line with some other motivation. This may be for a more efficient political structure, or one that is more fair and just, one that is instead perhaps more secular or devout. It is less specific than the previous two motivations described and is therefore more changeable for that, to the point that the culmination of their theory might never be fully achieved.

Lastly (and it should be highlighted that this is merely the very briefest of sketches, which holds in itself the possibility for almost infinite variations and arrangements) there is the sort of motivation that wishes to halt or change a perceived path that society has taken. This motivation seeks to bring about social change in a different direction what the 'critic' feels is currently taking place. Unlike the 'rejectionist' there is not a specific error that the 'critic' has their focus upon, they are not seeking to build anything in particular, they are simply of the belief that general betterment can be reached with keeping an analytic focus on those 'norms' that we take for granted.

In summary; a focus on what they want, a focus on what they do NOT want, a focus on a particular theme of society, or no focus outside of ongoing societal criticism.

4. The End of Civility

"Facts don't have Feelings" is a common rebuttal to claims of a particular opinion being overly harsh or cruel or unrealistic. However, a more true depiction of the statement would be more like, "feelings don't have facts" as this is really what is at play.

Seeing your opinion as a 'fact' is the first step into a wider and more damaging delusion.

'But wait! This is not just any divisive personal commentary, this is personal commentary with stats and citations!'

Have we checked these so-called statistics for accuracy, have we looked into the perspective and motivations of those that we cite positively, and where are those that have voiced opposite opinions and made arguments counter to this intuition of ours?

'Well, there's not enough time to consider every angle. Eventually we all have to decide whether this is the hill you want to die on!'

As I've said before, it's becoming all to easy to find a constant barrage of agreement on the internet, which is I think a dangerous way to conduct yourself. Not that we should consider the unending negativity of the 'critic' to be absolute either. We might agree that there has to be a point in which we say 'enough!', but neither do we need to pin ourselves to this last-theory-standing attitude (you don't need to pick a hill to die on, not yet).

For most people, their attitude is to make do with whatever seems the most appropriate mode of existing in general acceptance. Not to say that the majority of the population does not consider existential questions ever, of course they do, all people will do so at some time in their lives, but neither do they spend the vast majority of their time considering them. This is were the activist, rejectionist, theorist and critic are truly outsiders.

All well and good, but how are we dealing with contrary perspectives? In public, much as we ever have. On the internet, with increasing rancour and animosity.

5. The 'Fickle' Crowd (see image at top of post)

An Ochlocracy is itself a pejorative for majority rule people's Democracy as used by Autocrats, but I am also thinking of it here as a threat to Democracy itself. The 'dark-side' of democracy perhaps, one that emphasises herd behaviour, mob violence, and populist crowd control.

However, this fear of the mob, also hides an advantage in that what constitutes a 'free' Ochlocracy is that it is defined without hierarchical structures, which some* think leaves it easy prey to despotic populist rulers. Indeed, history tends to favour this cynical appraisal of majoritivist rule, but I think that on the Web there is a possibility to escape the clutches of these tyrants. At least in the optimistic, borderline utopian, idealism of the original architects of the Web there were similar thoughts.

*This was my assumption. However, doing some brief research into the history of 'mobs', that is, what tends to be working-class group action against the state without a larger leadership or political influence, you tend to see that rather than the control of the group being corrupted by a demagogue with an alternative agenda, that instead there tends to be two distinct phases employed by the antagonistic government against the 'mob'. First, to disparage the group and their motives, directly or indirectly through state-sponsored media outlets (or online!). Secondly, to increase the persecution of the group with 'lawful' arrests and if possible wipe them out but thankfully this choice is less possible by governments and their enforcement arm of the police or the military (mostly).

That the corporate internet has instead used this generation's great technological innovators, not to dream of new horizons for online interaction, nor about developing creative solutions to communication and implications for global online societies, but rather that this intellectual talent has been squandered in creating what is possibly the greatest system of advertising ever conceived. A system that has real practical benefits in the application of how governments can observe and influence their populace covertly. Rather than develop the Web along the lines of an anarchist's egalitarian dream they have instead created another system of control, we have escaped from the 'real world' machinations of controlling governments to an online space where we have again developed these structures of control, surveillance and coercion.

There are still plenty of free spaces online, if one knows where to look. The success of free-to-use knowledge spaces like Wikipedia, the influence of investigative whistle-blowing against corrupt governments by Wikileaks (not matter what one thinks of the individual Julian Assange) and crowd-funding sites that have given artists and intellectuals who would otherwise go unsupported (by companies and governments) the funding to create new works. Not least to mention the benefits of online charities and funding made more immediate and impactful than traditional methods, giving people access to healthcare that would otherwise be denied them due to location or poverty. All of these examples give some hope that this originating anarchic Ochlocracy might yet become a future possibility, but first we have to break with the dictatorship of wants that Social Media has created for us.

6. The People of Ill Online Opinion

While some might point to a shadowy 'human nature' as the reason for belligerent and cruel behaviours exhibited in people online, I instead believe that it is something that is cultivated by repeated cycles of interaction. With these engagements being defined, their boundaries and expectations set, by a commercialised Web space that prioritises competitive individualism over co-operative understanding. It is the capitalistic influence at play in the social sphere again.

Who then are the people of ill opinion?

Those of us who peddle in closed ideas, who keep only within their particular bubble and indeed wear this identity as the product that it really is. Those of us who have forsaken true individual identity for one sold to us online, either by communities who wish to use us, or companies that simply want our money. Both want to drain us without any actual concern for who we are.

What makes an opinion ill is a failure to effectively perform self-criticism, through a misplaced need to belong and a fear of 'being wrong'. This mobocracy, the dark-side of our positive anarchist egalitarian people's Democratic Ochlocracy, is the other possible road that the internet can take us down. Although there are certainly groups online whose attitude and actions makes them more culpable, still, all those who have embraced unreason carry the same hubris for their failings.

7. Summary

Probably you had thought that this post would mostly be a critique of the negative unreasonable mob behaviour by groups on the internet, well, that was certainly my intention in the introduction and I really thought it would be that too, but perhaps I'm getting a little disinclined with the constant stream of negativity that that investigation entails. So, rather than thinking about this subject in purely oppositional lines, and focusing on the collection of hate groups online, I seem to have drifted into what positive things can be taken from the ideas of collective thinking. And the positive manner in interpreting an Ochlocracy seems to me to be very apropos to the hopeful ideals of the Web, which make for more optimistic thinking than focusing again on the dangers of group-think, because we all know this by now. Yet our collective apathy and complacent cruelty has not vanished, so why is that? Look, I know, that I shouldn't be raising more questions in a supposed conclusion, but this isn't an end point for me. It's a spring board for other ideas, as this blog was always meant to be. There are several things I've mentioned here that I will allow to percolate before returning to them, either as a blog post or more privately. As always I welcome comments, questions and suggestions, should anyone ever actually read this that isn't me...

Sidenote B.

A brief mention about Jonathan Swift and that epigrammatic Quote at the outset. It might have been thought that the initial paraphrased quote from Swift was to indicate the tone and the writer's own general opinion on the matter of 'mobs'. Well, it might have been that at one point, but now it seems instead to highlight the view of any non-hierarchical group that has self-organised by a dominant power. And although Swift is undoubtably a great writer and satirist, his politics are hardly what one would describe as 'progressive', for although he often railed against political corruption, he was also a firm believer in the state as was, being a Whig and later a Tory. So, the reason for the mob's apparent lack of rationality might be no more complication than our own failure or lack of understanding as to their motivations, as well as a certain unwillingness to entertain their perspective. Indeed, it's easier to dismiss a contrary opinion if we discount it's validity as an argument at all. Much like we can 'deal with' certain groups if we allow ourselves to engage in and absorb dehumanising rhetoric about them. The 'mob' is comprised of persons, each of whom can be reasoned with if all parties are willing to be reasonable.

P.S. This has been written both in haste and while being distracted on many fronts and while I do not seek to make excuses for whatever errors this post undoubtedly contains, I will use this post-script to highlight any later adjustments, insertions or corrections that I make. [26/4/19] Some spell checking, edited my assumption about the weaknesses of 'mobs', and also an additional 'summary' [27/4/19] Added sidenotes A and B [28/4/19]

Filosophy on Friday: What is the web becoming?

Tim Berners-Lee in 1994

https://webfoundation.org/2019/03/web-birthday-30/?

A few days ago (on March 12th) the World Wide Web Foundation launched a what's next #ForTheWeb campaign to mark the 30 year anniversary of the web. It is essentially a link to the campaign for a Contract for the Web.

Sadly, I can't help but see it as an optimistic, but ultimately futile gesture for something that has gone so far down one style of being that only a total restart could bring it back to what Berners-Lee and others had originally hoped that the Web would be for.

This isn't to say that some of the fundamental principles behind the formation of the World Wide Web are no longer present, indeed, most are, but it is just that they have become so corrupted, so toxic, that simply existing 'online' is a constant challenge and can only really be achieved by some effort to ignore or fight-back against all the negative influences that permeate throughout.

The web was designed to bring people together and make knowledge freely available.

It has brought people together alright. Terrorists, racists, fascists, religious fundamentalists, child pornographers, scammers, organised crime gangs, and many other forms of extremists and criminals can freely meet online and exchange their ideas, they are free to isolate themselves within their ideological echo chambers and further radicalise themselves without any pressure to analyse their thoughts or consider their actions, they are free to manipulate online resources to exploit, harass, and steal from others.

Communication, we are told, is quicker and easier than ever, but it is also more shallow, emotional, and duplicitous than ever before. After all it is easier to lie when you can't see or hear another human and often you will never face any repercussions for what you say, no matter how vile or blatantly false your words are. When there are so many statements being constantly made the only way to be noticed to say something so incendiary, so hideous, so dramatic, that people simply have to pay attention.

Although information is widely available, access is not always free. To gain access might mean something as simple as spending your time watching an advert, or scrolling through adverts, or signing up to receiving adverts, in order to gain access. Or, more straightforwardly, if you want some information that has actually taken some effort, some work, then you will meet a pay wall, "and why not?" All us good capitalists say. However, the web is a flood of available information, most of it promoting, directly or indirectly, some other ideology. Truth is only of secondary importance (if that) to many of the suppliers of this information.

Knowledge is not freely available if the people accessing the information do not have the skills to analyse and discern between what is false and what is a 'sales technique'. Between what is objective fact and what is emotional supposition.

Watching and reading the general reaction to horrible events online is possibly the best way to obtain an entirely negative and cynical view of the Web, I hold my hands up to this, as I know that there are many good people who work tirelessly to promote positive projects for the public good on the Web and they do so without consideration to financial benefit. Those people, however, are easily imitated and replaced by corporate copies who take their ideas and make them a money making scheme instead. Watch, for example, the #MeToo movement become an advertising and film/entertainment promotional technique, see the power of an anti-abuse campaign reduced to corporate promotion.

I've spent today looking at; the alt-right rubbing their hands with glee on the Breitbart News Website comments section, posting videos of Hitler speeches ("it's alright once you get past the 3rd Reich stuff"), blaming the Left, blaming Muslims, suggesting a hoax or 'false flag' operation, and countless other lies and defamations (also, a link to this page was originally posted by the POTUS), then dredging through Twitter where people are all to happy to make whatever personal capital out of a horrific terrorist attack that they can, to twist whatever part of the narrative best suits their particular worldview and fail to consider the actual lives lost and the evil behind the motive.

Sometimes it is difficult to see the goodness in others and the Web only makes this harder to do by distancing and flattening what a person is into merely a hyperbolic sound bite. Let's make the attempt to treat people as complex dynamic beings and as deserving of fair treatment (until proven otherwise) as it states here:

Build strong communities that respect civil discourse and human dignity so that everyone feels safe and welcome online. 

Thoughts on Thursday: A Genuine Question...

A genuine question,

Why is there not a larger scale Green Conservative movement?

Further. Why is it that those who would otherwise set themselves up as defenders of tradition, not want to defend the tradition of having a breathable atmosphere?

Or to put it another way, why would those that are adverse to sudden change, be okay with sudden climate change?

Surely, Conservative is only a few letters away from Conservation?

Alright, seriously though, why must it be that those of us who consider the continuing survival of the ecosystem an important thing to be considered radicals? I would have thought that there's nothing more traditional than being able to provide a safe and sustainable living environment for our children and future generations to live in. Aren't these the people that love inheritance?

If you want it to continue to be a 'Green and Pleasant' land in more than just words, you would must also believe in doing your utmost to protect the natural landscape from unnecessary and dangerously damaging exploitation.

However, to do so those on the Right must make more than a small movement towards environmentalism without getting caught up in their own little England. For although the environmentalist of the past might have been concerned with 'saving the Hedgehog' or 'protecting the Church's duck pond from the Bypass' the problem nowadays is that our environmental problems are of a much larger, much more global scale.

The problem isn't that Mr. Popescu isn't doing his fair share in the bottle recycling drive at the Rotary Club, the problem is greater than the individual and greater than the small town mentality of the countryside Conservative who pays lip-service to Environmentalism but refuses to criticise the collusion between governments and corporations. Such are the problem with Roger Scruton's otherwise commendable efforts in Green Philosophy, 2012.

And this might be the crux of the matter in the current debate. The Left posits views and solutions that most of the Right can seemingly dismiss in otherwise ridiculously stupid ways. Although the view 'across the pond' in much different, perhaps due to green politics being effectively excluded from the mainstream political debate for generations, whereas although it is often downplayed and dismissed, at least there is a stream of environmental politics in Britain that has never gone away and does do good work in communicating it's message to the wider public (however difficult the media continue to make that). So, it is for that reason the 'leader of the free world' can make the monumentally stupid statement, "when the wind stops blowing, that's the end of your electric."

Although, the currently prison-free POTUS has a long acknowledged inability to understand green energy or issues, his famous opposition to wind farms was based on the turbines "ruining the view" from his hideous already-an-eye-sore golf course that was build on a SSSI mainly due to the 'bung' he paid Alex Salmond (allegedly). I'm pleased to say, his opposition failed, but mainly because he became 'otherwise occupied' than a change of heart.

Anyway, keeping this to British politics, as we drive inexorably towards the cliff-edge of Brexit I can't help but wonder if this will provoke a greater interest in our longer-term survivability as an energy producing nation (our renewable energies market has grown massively in the last few years and could spell a certain freedom from being tied to foreign gas and oil) or whether we'll be drawn to making whatever short-term deals are 'needed' to keep the rich wealthy and in power at the expense, not only of the poor (because it seems we've never been that bothered about the poor) but also at the expense of the natural landscape of Britain itself.

And don't you want to save the British Hedgehog?

Still, think tanks like Bright Blue do exist... so, I'm more hopeful for the general British political consensus to consider and react appropriately towards environmental matters. I just worry about (1) the speed of this action, and (2) our inability to fight a stronger anti-environmental pro-corporation message being promoted by the US, Russia, and China. This will only be harder to fight against outside of Europe...

Filosophy on Friday: Learning to be Rational

This will be a wee bit more 'stream of consciousness' than my usual posts, so apologies for that. And additional apologies if you thought that's how I write normally, but I'm actually trying quite hard to sound reasonable in my posts, even when I'm in fierce opposition to something I will try to give it a 'fair shake'.

Talking with pdb on my recent 'sensitive' topic post made me think some more about how people are treated in society, but it also made me think about why I'm trying so hard to be rational about things. Especially when everyone about me is acting so... irrational. Some it seems are just too willing to be led by their emotions, others are led by a desire to control or dominate others, or at least, to exploit them for financial gain or for social power. Still others have equally ill-thought-out reasons for their behaviour, like why would you support a politician like it's a fitba team? Makes no sense to me.

It's fair to say that I've a bad temper, but this isn't to make me sound like a hard man. No, what I mean is, that once I lose my temper I'm utterly useless, mostly if I need to communicate something. I can remember this being a problem when I was little. Like my parents would think that I'd done something wrong and (if I hadn't) it would make me so cross that I'd been falsely accused I'd just go mental; crying, laughing hysterically etc. Which, of course, just made me look guilty as anything and I'd then get unfairly punished for it. Conversely, when I had done something bad, I was able to play it off really cool and they wouldn't suspect a thing. In this manner I was able to get away with all sorts. I think that this might sound like the beginning of the diary of a psycho, but I didn't do anything really bad. Not really.

Sadly, something like this has continued until adulthood and even now at the 'mature' age of 40 I still go 'dumb' with rage. This has been particularly harmful in relationships. However, the difference from being a lad is that now I can put a hold to my anger if I get there soon enough. In this manner I've been able to remain reasonable in the face of quite extreme provocation (like talking with a Tory).

I suppose then that this abstraction led me to appreciate philosophy's attempt at objectivity, flawed as that might be in actuality, still it's the attempt at something like neutrality that is appealing. Most likely it's just that I'm easily overwhelmed by my own emotions and that the lack of control is frightening to me, or something like that. Except, that can't be it, because I don't really worry about control. I'm well aware of how little actual control we have over our lives. Also, as someone who was extremely interested in art and the lives of artists, this led to various attempts to get 'out of my head' in one way of another. Hallucinogens were really helpful in this regard and not something that someone with an overly developed need for 'control' would experiment with, I would suggest. An attraction to surrealist dream and sub-conscious automatic works and the inter-relation with the mystical experience would be another example of my interests that I could cite as evidence of my lack of fear about being in control.

Know thyself, is really quite tricky when you start looking at it. Because there's nothing there, or because we're always making stories about it all? Both perhaps.

Something else that occurs to me is the type of masculinity I was exposed to as a child in 80's Scotland. It's a style of manliness that is rather old-fashioned nowadays, but still lingers about like a bad smell. I assume that this smell is tobacco, alcohol, and B.O. Anyway, the main thrust of 'being a man' when I was younger was not to show your emotions, and certainly don't get 'carried away' by anything, unless it's fitba of course. At that point screaming, crying, hugging strangers, fighting, everything was allowed. But, as a rule, men didn't get emotional, they got angry and when they were angry it was righteous male anger, not bawling and greeting about being treated badly. And they got their way, they got revenge, they were always in the right (somehow, this was always the case even when two men disagreed, normally you could tell who was right because he knocked the other guy out).

Perhaps I could tell that this was nonsense. It doesn't take a genius to figure it out after all. Perhaps because I wasn't willing to be that sort of man. There were plenty (well, several and not all of them 'real') of male role models who didn't fit into this archetype and I latched onto them. Still, it took me some time to figure out that I could be something other than whatever was expected of me, because those expectations weren't coming from my parents.

The main problem, as I see it, is that everyone thinks that they are rational and it's the other guy that's being unreasonable, if only they'd just agree with me... It's not so much that, although I certainly feel that that's one way of taking it, but that people won't give someone who starts as 'different' a fair hearing. The fact is, most people don't even try to understand the other person's perspective and some times you'd have to say that that's the best course of action. Why am I going to try and analyse why some random kid thought it was alright to shout abuse at me, a total stranger, let's not waste our life with considering that rubbish. Still, it bothers me, that we willingly blind ourselves to HOW they got to think the way they do, which is more insightful than WHAT they are thinking. Perhaps it's because we all feel this pressure of time, like I don't have the time to find out about why this person feels this way, it's easier to just write it off as something that X group of people think and move on.

Ah well, I'm rambling now. I'll just end this chat by trying to describe it once more in as simple a way as I can, the reason I try and treat people they way I do, is because it's how I'd like to be treated. I guess I took that Bible lesson to heart. Shame it isn't true then. Still, it's worth trying to be decent even if the world doesn't care.

Remedios Varo (1955) 'Transmudo'

Secular Sundays: Misdirection, or Whataboutism as Political Expedience

Misdirection, or Whataboutism as Political Expedience

Bosch (c. 1500) The Wayfarer

My previous post could have been made at any time in the last year really, especially as pertaining to the Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn. However, this has been made current by a recent split in the Labour Party and the formation of the Independent Group, many of whom cited Labour’s Anti-Semitism (some felt they didn’t need to prefix this with ‘Labour’s failure to deal with…’ that prompts a tone change in the conversation) as their reason for leaving. However, it also begs the question, “WHY NOW?” Why now, when we are less than a month from a potential No-Deal Brexit? Why now, when the Home Secretary is making a British citizen stateless?

There is a real need for a legitimate discussion about issues caused by the actions of foreign states and our part in them, about our relation towards religion and liberalism in the UK, about certain types of bigotry being effectively ‘authorised’ by our Government in their unwillingness to act, something that calls into question the usefulness of liberal democracies when dealing with fascism. However, is that time now? Or this is just a helpful distraction from the ongoing and unfolding crisis of inaction by the UK Government in relation to Brexit?

I would suggest that based on the lack of actual attempts to make this discussion about apparent anti-Semitism an all-party debate, and the general tone of media ‘scandal’ that has accompanied such reporting that is this another in a long line of recent distractions perpetrated by Governments to shift the public’s attention from a larger problem within the ruling party.

This is something of a speciality by the Trump administration, whose constant barrage of new outrages means that the press, let along the public, barely have the time to react before something new has overtaken the previous story. This technique means that there is not sufficient time to perform a proper analysis of the situation, place it in context, research facts, and so forth.

However, more useful in its level of distraction, would be a different crisis that has no simple or immediate end in sight (if at all). So, raising the spectre of the failure of multiculturalism and liberal ‘double standards’ (this despite rabid anti-Islamic feeling in the British press and in various political parties, as well as recent actions by the Tory Government in the ‘Windrush Scandal’) gives a potentially limitless supply of ammunition in moving the public’s gaze from Brexit to criticising and distrusting one of the only party’s that could actually offer a solution from the Brexit crisis.

In today’s edition of the Observer for example there were; 12 articles about anti-Semitism in Labour and Corbyn’s failure to deal with the split that created the Independent Group, and 4 articles about Brexit and the potential economic problems that a no-deal exit would cause, and all of former pieces were critical comments on Labour and Corbyn. I suppose that scientifically I should look through ALL the Sunday papers... but I'd really need to be paid in order to spent my time with anymore of that...

Secular Sundays: Hypocrisy, or double standards relating to criticism of the State, Religion, and people.

Hypocrisy, or double standards relating to criticism of the State, Religion, and people.

George Grosz (1918) The Funeral

Recently a political figure in the UK was swiftly expelled from their party for making the following comment on Twitter, “Islamic people with any sense of humanity need to start speaking out publicly against the ruthless murdering being carried out by Saudi Arabia!”

No, wait a minute, perhaps I’m getting confused. Wasn’t it, “Muslims must do more than just condemn terrorism.”?

Although stateless terrorists and a state-sponsored murder of a journalist (amongst many other wrongdoings) are obviously totally different. In that… answers on a postcard please.

No, there is no real difference, because in both cases one group of people is rendered guilty by association. If they do not do X, then they are without humanity or are not being truly ‘British and Muslim’, what follows for a minority group stripped of human rights has played out throughout history with various despicable consequences.

Actually though this didn’t really happen. The second quote was indeed made by Sajid Javid, Conservative politician and current Home Secretary, but he received no sanction for it. He might have received a little criticism from the left-leaning press (very little) but in general his views were welcomed. No, the difference was the first quote which was actually, “Jewish people with any sense of humanity need to start speaking out publicly against the ruthless murdering being carried out by Israel!” and was made by Labour’s Derek Hatton, whose return to the Labour party, after previously being expelled for Misogynistic comments, was very brief indeed.

Now, I have no wish to defend Hatton (whether the comment was six years old or not), but simply to point out the great disparity in reaction to similar comments made about Islam and Judaism in Britain. Both statements (Hatton’s and Javid’s) place blame on a minority that implies the removal of ‘normal’ privilege by their failure to act in a specified way. Obviously Hatton’s, both coming in the form of a character-limited tweet and being made by a stupid bigot, is worse and comes to worse conclusions that the lengthy statement made by Javid, but then Javid is not a stupid man.

No reasonable person would wish to defend fundamentalist Islamic terrorist groups and would not therefore complain about such groups being criticised for various failures in rationality and humanity, but any such criticism of Israel’s Zionist ideology is counted as being a form of anti-Semitism and I would seek to make a clear distinction between being critical of Zionist ideology and being a person who hates Jews unconditionally.

For a start, let us remove the comparison with current or historic groups of terror as this is an unneeded emotive ‘accelerant’. One that draws a false comparison, as would comparing Israel with Nazi Germany, something that is so distasteful as to be an obvious inflammatory tactic. Instead let us compare my own criticism of the Trump regime of the US with my relationship with America and Americans. Hold on you say, this is merely an argument from experience and therefore a logical fallacy. One might as well say, “Some of my best friends are Tories.”

Well, alright then, let’s start again. People often use something like the argument that, “Jews are the only group of people who do not have the right to aspire to their own nation state in their historic homeland. The same people (who do have a problem with this) have no issue with Kurdish, or Catalan, or Nepalese, or Palestinian peoples making similar national aspirations. Anti-Zionism is then the political wing of anti-Semitism and the hidden desire to remove the Jewish people from existence.”

Under this argument it is therefore contradictory to say that one is anti-Zionist but not anti-Semitic in the same way that it would be to say that, “I’ve no problem with the Japanese, I just don’t think that Japan should exist as a country or that the Japanese have any right to a country.”

There is comparison to be made with Zionism and that is with a similar argument made by the BNP that, “Britain belongs to the British” which means something quite different to them than it does to me. I would, for example, agree that Britain does indeed belong to the British (although it does strike one as a bit of a redundant comment to make) but among the British I would count; Muhammad, a Sudanese-born Muslim who came to the UK to train and work in the NHS and has now married and had a child here (although name changed this is an actual person and not, I would suggest, unique in that), and many others that the BNP and their current representatives, UKIP, would not allow to be counted as ‘British’. The comparison to be made between Zionism and the white Nationalism of the BNP is that both are Ethno-Nationalistic ideologies.

Perhaps then this is why ethno-state advocate Tommy Robinson also talks of being a Zionist and not least because he has received funding from Zionist organisations, but also because they have similar World views. However, I suspect that the ‘enemy of my enemy is my friend’ attitude between white nationalists and Zionists only goes so far. Were the far-right to come to power in the UK their ‘connection’ with Zionism would be dropped and all Jews would either be expelled to Israel or have to cease ‘being Jewish’.

To call an ethno-nationalist ideology ‘regressive’ would probably be the least one could say about them. As a product of ‘turn of the century’ anxieties about ‘living space’ as well as pseudo-scientific ideas of race propagated at the time, followed by the collapse of Empire(s) brought about by ‘the Great War’ (WWI) I would suggest that ethno-nationalistic ideologies belong in the past. Although the replacement of such ideas cannot come about without some intellectual and political work taking place. Again we look to the new generation to do the work that we and our parents have failed to accomplish (or even start).

Anyway, let’s bring this back to the false equivalence already mentioned. So, I don’t have a ‘problem with the Japanese’, but I’m critical of their actions during WWII and their lack of proper apology to Korean and Chinese victims during this time, does this make me anti-Japanese? I mean, I say I’m just anti-Shōwa but really I must just be anti-Japanese.

However, you could just dismiss this argument as me being disingenuous, because nobody is arguing for the reconceptualisation of Japanese WWII Militarism, this is purely historical and an abstraction. It was be as nonsensical as someone still hating Germans for having been Nazis, and no one does that!

Okay then, let’s criticise Shinzō Abe… He is a lapdog of Trump, having being told to put Trump forward for a Nobel Peace prize for two years in a row he has done just that, more than that he is a regressive Business before People’s Welfare politician, a corrupt leader who gives preferential treatment to his political friends and allies (i.e. Cronyism). Would such a criticism be evidence of anti-Japanese sentiment? Well, perhaps it might, but does this stop my criticism from being valid?

I suppose you’d have to ask me more to find out. Of course, one clue might be that I haven’t implicated Japan in a global conspiracy to run the banks and Hollywood and bring about Multiculturalism to create a downfall in the ‘West’.

What if… Abe decided to persecute the Ainu people? He reverses the 2008 ruling recognising the Ainu people as indigenous to Japan and instead strips them of their rights, removes them from their land in Hokkaido, land that he claims is properly Historically Japanese, and houses them in settlements elsewhere in Japan without providing proper amenities. What then? Would my forthcoming criticism of these actions hide a secret desire to exterminate the Japanese people? Or would it be a criticism of brutal dehumanising actions of a Government? Could it be both? Without reading minds how could you know for sure? A person's words AND actions perhaps? Therefore, to bring it back to the initial case (Hatton etc), what action(s) of the Labour party suggest anti-Semitism?

What if... We consider Zionism as an understandable reaction to the building anti-Semitism of the time in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Why shouldn't the Jewish people have a homeland, a homeland that they once held? And, of course, I would agree with this. How could a compassionate person think otherwise? But, how was it done, how was it arranged? Empire builders cutting up a land and a people that wasn't theirs and creating countless problems because of this. Consider, as comparison, the Partition of India that created a massive crisis at the time (in 1947) or perhaps the foundation of Iraq (in 1920) after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and (again) controlled by the British. And then, regardless of what we think of the formation of a country (all are an 'artificial' imposition in some way) we can then critique it's Government and leaders for their policies and actions, can we not?

P.S. If it needs saying, I think that anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic and Misogynistic and anti-LGBT+ and racist and fascist and, indeed, all forms of hatred and bigoted views are ALL wrong.

(or do I? how do you know? maybe I hate the Finnish, you don't know)

Songs on Sunday: Introduction to Zen Buddhism

First, there is a mountain,
Then, there is no mountain,
Then, there is.



The caterpillar sheds his skin to find a butterfly within.



Would you like more of an explanation?

No? Fine. Have some philosophy of politics and some logic.

Yes? Okay.

As I see it, we begin with our natural habit of labelling. This here, this is a mountain. Once we have been properly socialised, when we therefore see said physical manifestation (hills notwithstanding) we 'see' the label of mountain.

After, we have analysed this thought process, this socialisation of identification, we might then see the landmark and having unlearned what we have learned 'see' no mountain. Seeing instead what is there, which is not what the human language label says, it is not literally mountain as this is merely our language code for identification. Nor is it der Berg or le Montagne or Yama or any other language's term. What it is, is not a linguistic term. Through philosophical thought you have negated the linguistic mountain, now there is now no mountain.

But it is still there. It is after all existent reality. There is a large rock* there, you see it. (*Yes, it's not just a 'rock' but 'rocky shape' sounds no better) You have not made the mountain by naming it, it always had existence as it has existed, and one way of taking the 'third phase' here (as many do) is that the Zen Buddhist has 'over-intellectualised' matters and has now (in the third phase) returned to 'true' direct reality.

I think that this is not the case. It is not a matter of returning to the status quo unchanged. When we return to the 'there is' we are returning now (having been through phases one and two) as one whose usage of 'mountain' now accepts that it is a human label used merely as a tool for communication (i.e. what language is) rather than the true meaning of the existent 'object'. Existence lives around us, with us or without us, with language or without. There is a mountain.

Quotes Worth Saving (25): Andrew Greig, "Excellent advice."

Part of the reason I've been compiling this list of interesting quotes from books (and so forth) is that there's a particular thrill in coming across something and saying to yourself, "yes, that's how I feel about that too!" A bit of validation I suppose that someone else shares your thoughts. Not many of them however have been quite on the nose as this from Andrew Greig's memoir about the folk music scene in the 1960s in Scotland and, in particular, the Incredible String Band. Former ISB member Mike Heron writes the first 100 pages or so, detailing his teenage years and starting the band. Greig then continues the tale with his own story of his attempted band and finding his own way in the world.

Andrew Greig

You Know What You Could Be

riverrun, London: 2017

'In the Footsteps of the Heron'

pp.322-323

Sufism, Maoism, Divine Light, the Maharishi, TM, the Hare Krishnas, Scientology, anarchism, psychoanalysis, life-coaching and, in younger days, the Seaside Summer Mission - there has been much on offer in my lifetime. I have felt the pull of them all. Who does not wish to be saved, to be made whole? Who would not want to shed this burden? 

But even the less preposterous precepts of humanism, Buddhism, the Quakers that my mother joined in her later years - in the end I've turned away from entirely signing up to any of them. Anthea Joseph was opinionated, loyal, generous and darkly troubled, but on this she was right. You must not hand over the burden of yourself to anyone else, not even to your beloved if you're fortunate enough to have one. 

There's a handwritten sign by the A82 on the way to Fort William: Bag your own manure. Excellent advice.

I have also investigated many avenues of thought and routes of potential escape; mysticism, Hermeticism, Taoism, Zen, and others more close to home. However, I've never quite managed to fully commit myself to one cause and for some time I wondered if this was a failing on my part. That this certain unwillingness was in fact a fear of dedication. In the end, I think I would always eschew duty to any one meta-narrative for the responsibility of continued striving. It is better, I would say, to commit one's self to being an always unfinished work in search of, rather than a devotee to any one thing in particular.

Happy New Year to all.

Sports on Sunday: Football Lads

Yesterday, 'my team', Chelsea beat Manchester City 2-0 at Stamford Bridge. During the match Manchester City forward Raheem Sterling reported that there was racist abuse directed at him from among the home supporters. That this is not surprising to me is much to do with the history of Chelsea's support, a portion of whom have been long acknowledged as violent racists. Indeed, like many firms, for them this is a badge of honour.

It has been a recent fantasy that since 1990 the 'bad old days' of hooliganism had been expunged from football. That it had instead been replaced with a family-friendly inclusive and modern way of supporting teams and following the game. Something that meant that 'being a fan' was paying for a Sky Sports subscription, rather than actually attending matches and experiencing the game itself. A more distant and impersonal attachment to sport, something that allowed for a global reach, that was more like marketing a brand, and was to many something that started to feel plastic and hollow. Football support, that is watching and not playing, is about the crowd and belonging. This is something that Bill Buford recognised.

'Among the Thugs' (1990) by Bill Buford captures a certain restless self-destructive energy that describes the society of the hooligan. A willing giving of the self to the crowd, to throw away individuality into a nihilistic ecstasy of frenzied togetherness. The wish to belong, to be part of something, and to feel that you are special in that. What makes you worthy is ironically that you have given up your personality for membership of the crowd, you have ceased being singular and are now part of a collective. That this collective is dedicated to violence is bizarre, irrational, even utterly foolish, but more than the collective wish to enjoy music or sport or be together in some ideological spirit, instead the hooligan embraces their outsider otherness, their wilful destructive hate. It is more enlivening, more thrilling, more real, because it is so anti-conventional. A line has been crossed. It is this 'line' that Buford seeks to describe in other crowd behaviours; the Yugoslav protest turned violent, the football crowd pushing themselves to cross the street, and in doing so make a physical sign that they have transgressed the rules of normalcy and that now, anarchy rules, the mob rules. Standard practice is being, temporarily, abandoned in favour of; self-abnegation, public destruction, social disorder, and the joy, the thrill, the excitement of violence. Whether an individual participant threw a punch or not, they were there when it all "went off."

Joe Kennedy's 'Games Without Frontiers' (2016) also points to another development in this resurgent hooligan attitude in football. That it is the working-class man's game and that the behaviours that they, the ultras, engage in are those that are 'true' to the authentic British male's experience. This experience rejects the hollow and plastic commodification of the game, but it also rejects the perceived middle-class gentrification of what is 'theirs' in another way. It labels the social improvements (as I would see it) of anti-racism, anti-misogyny, anti-homophobia (in short, anti-bigotry) as itself being unauthentic to the British working-class. A nonsense that effectively denies the fact that any working-class person could ever be anti-racist (f.e.) without being either a class traitor or a fake. So, something that started being about rejecting commercialisation of sport is now about the definition of what 'real' British maleness is, or at least, this is what the politicisation leads towards. And what counts as 'real' is the anti-feminist, anti-Islam, anti-immigration agenda of the far-right, which portrays itself as the 'real' voice of the working-class.

Racially abusing a black player on the other team therefore is, in this mindset, merely a case of a 'bit of banter', as it wasn't directed at all black players on both sides, it was just 'part of the game', just a bit of ridiculing the opposition and what if the middle-class PC SJW snowflakes don't like the language used, it's 'only words'.

Something that Buford also highlighted in his book was the attempted politicisation of these football firms in the 1980s by the National Front. He describes attending a gathering at a remote country pub that was organised by Nick Griffin. Then of the NF but who would later lead the British National Party to their, thankful, demise after a modicum of political success. However, although the BNP has dissolved back into the shadows. The people involved and, more importantly, their ideas did not.The attempts to hold influence over various different football firms coalesced into the English Defence League, which was founded in 2009 with 'Tommy Robinson' soon becoming the group's leader.

The Football Lads Alliance was founded in 2017, but represents only the most recent part of this ongoing politicisation of football fans, or more expansively, of the white working-class male. That this has also come on the rising tide of nationalism and of anti-Islamic feeling in Britain is no surprise. It was no surprise, because this has always been their intent. Our contemporary Nick Griffin, 'Tommy Robinson' is today participating in the Brexit betrayal march in London and like the attention parasite he is, this has particularly prescient timing. The ongoing 'yellow vest' riots in Paris (to which many in the far-right have added their support), and planned for only two days before a major vote on the future of Brexit in parliament. This march represents another attempt to infest one cause, Ukip's obsessive "Will of the people" hard Brexit, with the opinions and attitudes of the far-right.

Let's bring this back to the original case, which I see has now already turned into a 'one bad fan' story and carries with it the ubiquitous allegedly. It is also unhelpfully tinged by the excessive reporting on Raheem Sterling, who is a somewhat controversial figure in football, in that he seems to have opinions and the ability to articulate them (and he's black). Of course, it will be a simple enough matter to dismiss this as one rare occurrence and not in the 'true spirit' of the everyday fan. Well, of course, this is the case, it is not as if the far-right's opinion of the British working-class is in fact true. Worryingly though many other (non-working-class) people seem to buy into this depiction and (f.e.) blame Brexit on this stereotyped view of the thuggish racist working-class, something aided no doubt by sensationalist media coverage.

Certainly the attitudes and behaviours of many 'everyday' football fans don't help their case in the public eye, but then this is confusing an ebullient, albeit aggressive, atmosphere at football matches with something inherently dangerous. Much like the conservatives reaction to punk, or rock n' roll, or anything that seems counter-cultural (to them). In short, it is partly motivated by a fear of the working-class, something that only helps strengthen the far-right's attempts to show that they, the white working-class men, are the 'real victims' or other such falsehoods to gain recruits to their agenda of hate.

I will be writing more about Stephen Yaxley-Lennon AKA 'Tommy Robinson' and the recent soft coup of Ukip and the general 'crowd behaviour' dynamic of many online communities, but this story felt like it needed an immediate response and it's been a subject on my mind for some time.

P.S. Although this should really have been titled 'Secular Sunday: Football Lads' I couldn't resist.

Both are recommended reading.

Filosophy on Friday: Vegetarian or not

Non-ethical Vegetarianism. Written and unpublished in 2009.

Vegetarianism is often described as an ethical lifestyle choice. I became a 'vegetarian' primarily for health reasons, this is something other vegetarians have a tough time figuring out. First, let me describe my position. My diet is not correctly vegetarian, but pescetarian or what is amusingly called 'semi-vegetarianism', basically, I occasionally eat fish. About twelve years ago I decided to stop eating all other meat, I did not have to provide a reasoned argument to myself, but I have since had to retrospectively provide one for other people who cannot understand either; why I wouldn't eat meat or why I wouldn't call it an ethical position. Before that, let's look at what other proper vegetarians are likely to say about their reasons.

A less-than-common ethical vegetarian position is “animals are people too.” The argument of this position is that animals have complex emotion lives, feel pain, are in other ways similar to us and therefore they should be respected and (presumably) cared for in the same way we care for other people. This argument is based on a flawed premise (several actually), it is the fallacious position of 'argument by analogy'. This argument has also been used to describe why we would react to seeing a person in pain or to put it another way, 'how do we know that that person is in pain and not acting?' The argument from analogy says that because they seem to be in pain and we have experienced similar pain we can then surmise that they are probably in pain. This argument is extremely problematic (which is polite philosophical term used when something is obviously wrong) for a number of reasons, so I'll just stick to the ones that help our human/animal picture, it presupposes that every perceptual experience of an event requires a mental process. Now, science may describe something like a process, light in the form of radiation effects the eyes and neurons fire in the brain inciting memory and so forth, but this sort of 'subconscious' activity isn't particularly illuminating in how we phenomenologically encounter things (whether they be people or animals in pain) in the world. I'll summarise my position as “we see pain.” We might say that we simply recognise another in pain and our reaction to that may be called ethical, i.e. we don't start on the assumption that she might NOT be in pain (unless we have grounds for that conclusion) but that she is and the decision to help or aid them (secondary to the recognition of pain) depends on who we are and where we are (to simplify matter). Our reaction to other life forms is more complex, we would (I assume) react with more emotion to the death of a horse or dog than we would to the death of a rabbit or pigeon. This shows that our reactions to animals in pain is somewhat cultural convention and leads to a more sensible vegetarian position.

A more common-sense vegetarian position is that “animals are living beings that do not deserve to suffer.” This is further elaborated with the argument that we, as the dominant intelligence, do not need to kill animals for food anymore. Of course, the 'we' in question might only be the developed 'West' as in developing countries there really isn't always much choice over what to eat. If you have meat and the other option is starving, then it isn't much of a choice, although the poor in the developing countries also tend to have a 'vegetarian' diet as well, but this isn't an ethical choice either (more of an imposition). So, let's just focus on people with enough food to make a choice of what to eat.

A common argument against vegetarianism (and that we do not need to eat meat to sustain a healthy diet) is simply, “I LIKE eating meat and dislike vegetables, why should I give it up?” One might reply with moral or environmental (more common nowadays) reasons. The environmental position for vegetarianism is that cattle (etc.) use up so many resources in their rearing and adversely effect the environmental in the process that it is in our best interests to cut down the amount of cattle we have. The simple-minded reaction to this (carrying on with the theme) is, “what would you do with all the cows, kill them all?” Well, no, it wouldn't need to be immediate. The amount of cattle born would simply be controlled more rigorously. However, an appeal to environmental grounds is unlikely to convince our steak-loving friend to whom the prospect of Global warming is seen as an opportunity to work on his tan. For the environmental argument to be more persuasive there needs to be a cultural shift in the acceptance of environmental issues, however this still does not address the practice of rearing animals for meat as a moral wrong. So, let's return to that position.

We might say, with the common-sense vegetarians, that although animals are not equal to people that they ARE fellow life-forms and that we, as intellectually superior beings, have a duty to protect and not exploit them, especially when the vegetarian or vegan diet is show to be more healthy and sustainable than a meat-based diet. Let's call this the 'guardian' position. First, the claim for vegetarianism as a more healthy and sustainable diet is refuted by other claims, also backed up with scientific 'evidence', only going to prove (I think) that science can pretty much prove anything (especially if properly funded). The guardian position leads back into the environmental picture quite easily, "our reasons for adopting this ethical stance are due to a holistic understanding of the planet." That is, accepting our place in the Global ecosystem is also to realise the importance how we source our food and how that effects every other structure. Perhaps, this guardian position leads not to total vegetarianism but to a more balanced diet. However, in this holistic picture a certain religious view also becomes apparent. A new-age, pseudo-buddhist/hindu, that advocates vegetarianism as a 'higher' calling. To this, as with most religious views, there is little argument (that will be heard).

Of course, we might say “are we the ones to protect the planet, can't it look after itself?” However, this position probably just looks cavalier and arrogant (if not slightly ignorant). A less extreme version of this could be to say that "we kill as we live, everything we do adversely effects the planet anyway." I say, less extreme, but this nihilistic position is really just the reverse of the guardian position. That is, “it's all fucked anyway so let's have a burger and fuck 'em.” To these young men (as they mostly are) I would reply that, it is true that everything we do effects others in some ways. Even sustainably sourced food (vegetarian or not) might be construed to have negative implications, but that it makes more sense to try and limit one's impact than to simply wave one's hands in the air and give up.

Finally then, what are my apparent non-ethical reasons? As I stated at the beginning it was for 'health' reasons, now, that's not particularly true. Since I've stopped eating (most) meat my diet HAS improved, and I've become a much better cook too, but I was never overweight or had any particular reason that my diet needed to change radically for health reasons. In fact, my position might just be the opposite of the man that loves his steak and chips. But that's not quite it either. Really, I suppose, I just don't have a reason. If you ask me, I might tell you something, but there's no great philosophical reasoning behind it and why must there be? Must we have a complex set of reasons behind every benign choice (or seeming 'choice') we make with our lives?

My 2018 Reply: Non-ethical Morals

I stopped being a vegetarian, or more correctly a pescetarian, in February 2012. The defining meal was not as impressive, it was a reduced to clear chicken sandwich from Tesco's in Coventry, but the action was a total rejection of the 'lifestyle' I had lived up until that point. There were several resons behind my change, some of which I had been internally debating for some time, but the final push came about because of the death of my close friend. It should be noted that after Thomas died, I also fully withdrew from my PhD and made other decisions that were more or less motivated by grief. Some of which, I retracted from (that is, I didn't kill myself), others I regretted, and others (like this decision) I did not change from. In the case of vegetarianism, it was because, as I said, there was an already exisiting conflict within myself concerning my 'lifestyle' at the time, as well as a cultural shift (as I perceived it) towards what would become known as 'virtue signalling'. Although that term has been quickly corrupted by the alt-right and is now merely a term of abuse rather than anything worthwhile. For a contemporary history of the term 'virture signal' watch the informative youtube video by hbomberguy.

You might wonder how could I proclaim (in 2009) that I had 'no complex set of reasons' behind my ethical lifestyle and also state that I was conflicted about said choice. Perhaps I would have been less conflicted if I had adopted a more militant ethical position? It would have at least given me a stock answer to every time as I was challenged about my behaviour, which was almost constantly.

However, as I have said in other discussions on other topics, to do so would not be to act as I am. Being in state of anxious self-questioning is my default position. Why then cease to be a vegetarian?

If my reason to stop vegetarianism was to have an end to the repeated questioning about why am I doing such-and-such then it was a monumental failure. As I now have the question 'why did you stop?' as well as people expecting that I am vegetarian (because they have forgotten or, more interestingly, they are simply assuming it in me) and then having to describe both why someone might want to be vegetarian and why they would not. Luckily that was not the reason.

Did I miss eating meat? Well, not really, certainly not at any point while I was a vegetarian, although it is true that I have found several things that I ate before and have only recently tried that I do now enjoy. We never used to eat roast chicken when I was younger, for example, something that I now quite look forward to. However, I felt constrained by my choices certainly and as someone who at that time (in 2012) was living on very little money, I found it difficuly to get a proper meal within my budget. Potatoes, lentils and cabbage only provide so much.

It was such that when a vegetarian meal would always cost the same as a meat-based meal despite being essentially the same meals, but with one of them including meat, it started to highlight some social attitudes. The fact that by weight tofu would cost more than chicken, or that some cheeses would cost more than beef, or that asparagus would cost more than fish. That the former 'peasant' staples of polenta, bulgur wheat, couscous, and quinoa would also find their value increasing as the demand for such items increased, showed that vegetarianism had become profitable.

Once a 'style' has shown itself as a marketable commodity we can expect saturation, followed by a backlash and then either a return to a previous early state (and it's later revival) or the disappearance of said style. As fashions have always been about more than clothing and music, but also hold a particular worldview, then their cultural appeal and limited lifespan can be well expected. However, when these 'fashions' were (or are) about rejecting this commodification it is something of an abhorrence to find them comercialised in such a manner. In a sense, it can be seen as the further success of 'capitalism realism' in the cuture wars, in that all perspectives are shown to be reducible to capitalism as such there is no other possible way of existence. At least, that is the perspective being sold to you.

However, even if we bypass this aspect of the effect of capitalism and anti-capitalism (there is yet no such word to successfully encapsulate the opposition as no such opposition has yet been successfully formed) upon our 'lifestyles' there is the more generic position to be considered. If you want to belong to such-and-such a group then you must be prepared to pay for your membership.

Although the cynical perspective is to dismiss such-and-such a lifestyle as a 'fad' (something in itself unarguable) this does not lessen their present cultural impact (not unless this view becomes the majority view and even if it does counter-cultural is very marketable right now). Although it might draw some attention to the shallowness of the actual lifestyle being portrayed. That is, as a performative cultural display of a lifestyle, rather than one that holds onto any actual ethical values. Those who are vegan today for stylistic reasons are unlikely to have the moral wherewithall to withstand even a slight cultural shift against their 'beliefs'.

You might now turn this argument upon myself. Was then my own dissolutionment with pescetarianism because my beliefs lacked the certitude of a definite background argument? Was it, in fact, nothing more than a performance of having a identity, one that I lacked the backbone to critically support when placed under any sort of pressure?

Perhaps. Perhaps I've never really cared. Perhaps my environmentalism is rather born out of my own fear of death. Perhaps people do not really care for others, but only for their own sake, but then the thief also believes that everyone else steals. However, I believe in the truth and value of care.

My personal perspective does not refute or deny vegetarianism, nor is my argument with capitalism one that denies others a moral life within capitalism. I do believe it is possible to be a moral being in even the most non-ethical states of being.

So, when I eat my burger now I do not say “fuck 'em” but neither do I interrogate my own actions for moral reasoning at every step. I do retain an awareness that allowing these 'breaches' in moral culpability is the slippery slope of middle-aged acceptance of dogma. I try and eat a balanced diet within my budget, I consider my environmental impact, but I do not punish myself for when I cannot live up to certain ideals.

Tangentially Related Photo of a Favourite Public House

Thoughts on Thursday: Empty Words, then and now

Empty Words: April 2009

The manifold problems of our present day cannot be solved with a return to the 'good old days', and a reintroduction of the religious attitude into work-life. This puritanical desire to flush the system clean is understandable considering how corrupt World society is presently, but the abolishment of decedent entertainments and of a refocusing upon work, the family and the soul (whether worldly or individual) would fail almost immediately. The problem is not in what our practices are but in how we approach them. Put simply it is a matter of how and not of what. Losing an arm changes what one is, but not how one is. A good man who loses an arm is still a good man, but is now a one-armed good man. This is only a recent belief, of course, for a long time the persecution of those born or made 'different' was positively encouraged, e.g. “the disabled are paying for sins in past lives.” This rhetoric is hateful nonsense.

The problem resides, I believe, in language. This is not to say that if we cleaned up our grammar we would clean up our souls. Not exactly. It is not so simple a matter, however, language is still a part of it and part of the problem. The problem lies in its use, or rather, its misuse. A phenomenon I will call 'empty words' pervades our experience of the modern World. Governments and the media are adept at using them, as is academia and the 'man on the street', that is, the public in all its generality. Politicians talk and talk, academics write book after book, and people engage in seemingly endless gossip about everything, but nothing ever seems to get said. All those hours of interviews with sportsmen, celebrities, politicians, people 'having their say' and all ultimately worthless, because nothing is actually being said. There is no acceptance of fundamentals true to human existence. Even the greatest work of art that attempts to deal with these vital subjects is diluted and dismissed in the public arena of empty words. That we engage in idle speculation and chatter is not a new phenomenon, indeed, it is as important as any other part of what goes to make up being a human. It is as important that we can sometimes brush over the dark and weighty issues that could otherwise drag us down into a nihilistic stupor. The problem is that this 'sometimes' has now become the norm and any other engagement is an extreme rarity. It was in a time that we may call 'the past' (setting an actual date for the birth of the totality of empty words is itself an empty gesture) that words were acknowledged as powerful, but we can not go back to this idealised past, we can only go forwards or collapse entirely.

A young man I know replies when asked how he is with the same answer every time, “good, extremely good.” He is neither a fool or a liar, but has grown up with these empty linguistic structures all around him. Even the fact that I ask him 'how he is' is testament to this society-wide acceptance. So, I would plead with you, the next time you ask someone how they are to actually mean it, if you are to ask them at all.

This might seem an ill-founded concern to some, but in the use of these 'empty words' we stop actually communicating to each other. This can only mean that governments hold more power over us, by dissolving language (whether purposive or not) to such a low-level that it is now almost impossible to get anything heard they effectively remove any resistance. Such is the constant noise of millions of empty words echoing across the all-encompassing moronic media coverage, it's like screaming into a storm. And this is freedom? The freedom to say absolutely anything, no matter how shallow or banal, but who is actually listening if everyone is talking? Everyone wants to be heard, but no one wants to listen. This will all change, in time, but what it will become can only be hoped for or dreaded.

Empty Words: November 2018

You might have guessed that I recently found some old writings of my own on a previously lost USB. If so, well done for paying attention.

This is another from a fairly prolific period that came with the completion of my Masters dissertation. What followed was what felt like a very difficult period in trying to best convey my ideas for a PhD, something that I never managed to do clearly enough to those that provide funding and this lack of financial support was the main reason I gave up in my research. Although there are essays totalling around 50,000 words (or more) from that time and I'm surprised in the breadth and depth of my researches. A lot of the writings about the 18th century merely passed through my head and I've utterly fogotten them, so that reading them now is akin to an out-of-body/mind experience.

However, let's deal with the subject at hand and not my own personal historic digression. It seems that with this topic of 'Empty Words' what I am decrying is the lack of intentional seriousness within our conversations in society, perhaps not at every level at every occasion, but that an occasional slackness has now become the norm and that a failure to even attempt to communicate something truthful has taken root. Certainly in 2009 this might have seemed far-fetched, but it seems like I might have been onto something, if not a something that I described with very much precision.

Let's look at today's 'Humpty Dumpty' POTUS, who uses words to mean exactly what he means them to mean, except that this linguistic failure on his part is not merely in his use of 'hot air rhetoric' or 'salesman diatribe' or my own 'empty words' that pepper his every speech (just look the difference between a live performance and reading a transcript of one of his 'speeches' to see what I mean) that I was concerned with. It is his, and many others, constant 'hiding in plain sight' or 'dog whistle' comments within their public speeches that are of greater present concern.

That being said, the rise of fascism back in 2009 seemed like a historic concern. It felt like although perhaps we weren't quite getting the promised future from our counter-cultural days in the 90s (my own perpsective) and that New Labour had, in fact, turned out the be The Man, but in another form. Despite that, things seemed alright and even the threat of militant fascist Islamism represented by Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda was sufficiently distant or alien as to be a thing to unite against and that the threat from inside our own cuture was an unthought-of possibility. This might explain my focus upon 'the religious attitude' meaning the medieval authoritarianism of the Taliban for example.

Who was indeed listening? As I mentioned. Well, the extremists within every culture apparently, who took this freedom to say anything, to say the most vile and inciteful things possible in the open space of the internet (to begin with). To stir up what they consider necessary, a race war, another one of their final solutions. But, of course, none of them now will use this language. Many of our words might be hollow, but they (the fascists) do know the power of certain words and even in denying the 'left-wing academic' focus on language use, they will use very specific phrases to 'dog whistle' their supporters.

I remember a conversation (around 2008) with an American Zionist who was convinced that secular Europe's fading Christianity (it's "spiritual void") would be replaced with Fascist Militant Islam (if they weren't careful!). He was only partially right, but I suppose I should allow him that foretelling, it's just that it wasn't Islam but Fascism (the distinction between Fascist Islam and Islam will be saved for another day, but it is hoped you can already see it) and they are doing this through our own Empty Words, turning them into Meaningful Fascist Words right in front of us, albeit one's that have eminent deniability built into them.