Coming to terms with the world
I approach my subject for today – the current “Let’s contextualise, or preferably rid the world, of every symbol that could be deemed to represent or celebrate a nation’s historical past that is contrary to – or out of touch with – modern sensitivities” movement that is sweeping the world – with slight hesitation and my usual caveat [or should that be ‘declaration of interest’] that I arrive at the computer this morning with all the prejudices and (what youngsters these days might regard as) old-fashioned views of the world that you might expect from someone who is approaching the age of seventy far quicker than he’d like.
I’m fundamentally in favour of respecting everyone’s right to live a decent life and also ridding the world of anything that detrimentally affects an individual’s life chances in terms of where their talents, personality, hard work, ambition and life goals might eventually take them.
In an ideal world, I guess, every human being would begin from exactly the same place and then get provided with a similar education and ‘opportunities’ as everyone else – and then be left to achieve whatever they can.
However, it’s not an ideal world.
We all start ‘somewhere’ in life and have to deal with the fact.
It’s why you get both Etonians who end up being Marxists and people born in extreme deprivation who become high-flying capitalist fat cats.
It’s why there have always been lifelong campaigners against poverty and deprivation railing against the ‘Establishment’ and all the inequalities that exist here the UK when, arguably – as with any Western First World nation – and however inadequate the funding of the NHS, the social care system and the various other benefits potentially available to those who don’t work, or work in low-paid jobs, or have disabilities and other issues might be – there is barely a man or woman in this country who isn’t very fortunate indeed compared to those who have had the misfortune to be born and live in disadvantaged and deprived circumstances in the tens of Third World countries that could be listed.
My personal distance from creeds and political beliefs that take UK ‘inequalities’ to task – presumably on the basis that “all human beings should share equally in the goodies that a nation produces irrespective of the extent their personal contribution to them, or indeed even if it should amount to zero” – springs from the very fact that (so often) it metaphorically stops at the White Cliffs of Dover.
Arguably, the logical extension of the political principle that “all should share equally” is that in theory – and probably practice too – it should properly apply to all the 7.8 billion (and counting) people who currently inhabit the Earth.
And if this is not the case, perhaps someone who espouses the creed of “equality for all” in the UK context could explain why.
Coming to the Black Lives Matter phenomenon, nobody with a brain cell could fail to be horrified at what befell George Floyd at the hands of a local police department in the USA or indeed react adversely to the global reaction to it.
Popular movements that campaign to right perceived wrongs are part of any civilised society.
I’m all in favour of them – after all, down through history many of them have brought about or facilitated many of the advances (including free speech) that have made the 21st Century the best possible time for a human being to be alive.
Where I step off the proverbial carousel is when such campaigns begin denying those who disagree with their views the right to express them, e.g. instances of universities ‘de-platforming’ prospective speakers at lecturers or debates.
For me, free speech and open argument are or should be inalienable plusses, not an opportunity for ‘virtue-signalling’, especially when a ‘mob rule’ factor is part of the equation.
Which brings me – partly to my own surprise, I might add – to the current public row engulfing J.K. Rowling over her statement “coming out” (as I think the expression is) in defence of those females who believe that, from a biological point of view, gender-wise, human beings are either male or female … and that those born male who happen to ‘identify’ themselves as female (whether they transition or not) are distinct from those who menstruate.
This view is contrary, of course, to the fashionable “orthodoxy” that anyone can ‘change sex’ if they decide they want to. And Rowling is being vilified for holding it, in my view unfairly.
My parting shot today is the thought that we may be some way from hearing the last of the ‘contextualising and/or revising history’ arguments.
For all the tens of thousands now jumping on the bandwagon of the Black Lives Matter movement – and the organisations both corporate and administrative currently responding to it either out of perceived practical necessity or decisions of principle – I’d venture to suggest that there are equal numbers whose instincts are to resent the notion of statues being pulled down, movies and TV series containing aspects ‘out of tune with current sensibilities’ being mothballed or de-listed, and populist witch-hunts being mounted that seek to identify, challenge and/or destroy totems of a nation’s past.
The latter may represent a Silent Majority that at some point in the future will have its day at the ballot box.
