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...

Quotes Worth Saving (26): How to make a terrorist

"Isolation is the most effective way to radicalise people because one never gets corrected by others."

Anders Behring Breivik

Edvard Munch (1892) Melancholy

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)