Tag: politics

Is it possible for a fundamentally bad idea to receive broad support?

TUESDAY, 5 OCTOBER 2021

I saw this satirical headline on Twitter: “Parents who think that their children don’t belong to the State are dangerous, explained.”

Of course, most people won’t accept this idea (right?) and the headline itself is from a non-existing website with satirical headlines. Yet, if an article like this were to appear on mainstream media like CNN or BBC, I bet at least 20% of readers would support the idea.

Imagine being the editor of the online media that publishes such an article. The person truly believes in the concept that children belong to the state. They are committed to pushing this idea.

Now imagine this editor is not alone. Hundreds of other editors, journalists, reporters, and presenters at high-profile media outlets agree with them.

Imagine thousands of academics also support the idea. So do TV and movie stars, and other celebrities – once it has been convincingly framed as “progressive”.

Parents who believe they have a right to educate and raise their children as they see fit, and that their rights supersede any claim the state has over their offspring, are presented in hundreds of TV shows, talk shows, academic journals and newspaper and magazine articles as “traditional”, “unbearably conservative”, “radical” and even “fundamentalist”. Because the idea that children belong to the state is being presented as cool and progressive, teenagers increasingly show their support to the idea, and in timeless fashion influence their younger siblings to do the same.

And yet, is the idea good? (Remember: the state claiming your kids is just a useful example.)

Is it possible for a fundamentally bad idea to receive broad support amongst those with the most powerful voices and with access to millions of minds through social media and educational spaces? And how many millions of readers and viewers would support such an idea simply because of its favourable framing?

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Media and other voices creating a narrative

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Even the cruellest behaviour and the most senseless policies can be justified

TUESDAY 21 SEPTEMBER 2021

15:00

Someone puts a plate with something that’s supposed to be edible in front of you.

You look at the plate and try to work out what it is.

“This is not a banana,” you then declare. “It’s not a piece of meat. And it’s definitely not a potato. I don’t know what it is, but if people claim it’s a banana, a piece of meat, or a potato, they are definitely trying to deceive you.”

[click here if tweet doesn’t load]

Are all these mandates and regulations part of an evil conspiracy to regulate ordinary people with an ever heavier-pressing iron thumb? I don’t know. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that this is not about Covid-19, or people’s health.

15:12

The Nazis justified it in academic works at university, sermons in the church, lessons at school and in public speeches, and clearly explained why Jews should be deprived of their German citizenship, and why the government should come up with … a final solution.

For decades, the Soviet government justified why dissenters should be thrown into prison, deported, or executed as enemies of the state.

In South Africa, white governments for decades convinced the public that Apartheid is the only solution for South Africa’s racial relations. Pastors justified it to congregations from the Bible, and teachers explained it to pupils.

In Mao Zedong’s China in the 1960s and early 1970s, teenagers with red booklets in their hands could justify why teachers should be humiliated, and why it was absolutely necessary to kick people’s doors off their hinges in the middle of the night to search for Western musical instruments and books which could undermine the revolution.

Fact is, anything can be justified. Words are extremely useful means of spinning just about anything to make wrong look right, and right wrong.

Be aware of what you are saying. Express, as a matter of principle, the other side’s argument in such a way that that person must admit that you understand it correctly.

Can’t do it, or don’t do it because some crisis currently doesn’t allow the luxury? Then I have bad news for you: Your opponent is also inventing excuses as to why your argument is not worthy of proper consideration.

Do you furthermore find that you increasingly think of your ideological opponent as a caricature, not someone with a complex personality and dreams and fears just like you? Guess what? On the other side of the dividing line are people who make a similar caricature of you.

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In short, the Individual, the Community, and the State

MONDAY, 30 AUGUST 2021

A personal manifesto on political beliefs should begin with your view on three concepts:

1. The Individual

2. The Community

3. The State

Without consulting a search engine or a dictionary, I’d say the State is an organised effort by adults within a geographic area with historical and other ties to manage common interests. These interests include infrastructure, education, international relations, military defence, and the drafting and enforcing of laws that represent the values of the community.

Community can be your neighbourhood, but also people who share a particular language, ethnicity, or religious belief.

And the Individual is a single child or adult.

Your personal political manifesto will need to pay attention to the relationships between Individuals, between the Individual and the Community, and the relationship between the Individual and the State, and relations between respective Communities and the State. It will also set out the rights of the Individual and duties of the Individual (if any) towards both the Community and the State, and the duties of the State towards Individuals and Communities.

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Two possibilities and a few questions about accepting responsibility

SUNDAY, 14 MARCH 2021

Possibility one:

We are largely responsible for how we experience life. We don’t usually choose what happens to us, but we have to a significant degree control over how we respond to what happens to us, and therefore we have some control over what impact it has on our lives.

This would mean that people who were on the wrong side of government policy, such as during the apartheid years in South Africa, or similar periods in America, also had a significant degree of control over their reactions. Other people were responsible for the unethical and sometimes cruel policies, but the people on the wrong side of it had control over how they reacted to it, and this reaction – from acceptance to armed opposition – in turn influenced their experience of reality.

Possibility two:

We have no control to any significant degree over how we experience life. We have no control over what happens to us, and our reactions have little impact. Plus, our reactions and attitudes towards what happens to us are anyways largely dictated by our culture and how we have been programmed since childhood. This means people on the receiving end of unethical policies and cruel governments and other institutions that exercise power over them are victims who have to take what comes their way. That’s just how it is. Sometimes you’re on top, and sometimes you get crushed, and then you die.

The questions:

Which of the two views on life would ideologues of Apartheid South Africa have preferred black and brown people embrace in the decades prior to the 1990s? You have the power to do something about your suffering, or accept your fate?

Which of the two views on life would ideologues of the resistance movements during the apartheid years, people like Nelson Mandela and Steve Biko, have preferred black and brown people embraced? What about civil rights leaders in America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – people like Frederick Douglass, Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. du Bois, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King? Did they think people had the ability to improve their experience of reality, or did they believe people simply had to accept their fate?

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For the record, the person who commits a crime, or who plans or executes an unjust political or social order, does so out of free will. He does not have to do it. He chooses to do so and is therefore morally and legally responsible for his actions.

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A fundamental aspect of this whole discussion was articulated by Scott Adams a few years ago after Kanye West made headlines over his remarks about slavery. In response to someone else who said Kanye West was guilty of “disgusting victim blaming”, Adams said: “I believe the proposition on the table is that giving yourself a victim identity is less productive than looking forward.”

* * *

Steve Biko, Malcolm X and even W.E.B. du Bois were not exactly non-racial integrationists. One could even argue that especially Steve Biko and Malcolm X (at least earlier in his career) were Black Supremacists. What I say about victim mentality, historical oppression, accepting responsibility even for your own suffering as a way to empower yourself is not affected at all. If you think non-racial integration is more ideal, you might have a problem with Biko or X. But at least they had a positive outlook on the future, right? They looked at a future where black and brown people would do better because they would actively create a better future for themselves, which included convincing white people with political and bureaucratic power that a more just order is better for all.

Quotes from Steve Biko (1946-1977)

“Obviously the only path open for us now is to redefine the message in the bible and to make it relevant to the struggling masses. The bible must not be seen to preach that all authority is divinely instituted. It must rather preach that it is a sin to allow oneself to be oppressed.”

“So as a prelude whites must be made to realise that they are only human, not superior. Same with Blacks. They must be made to realise that they are also human, not inferior.”

“The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”

“It becomes more necessary to see the truth as it is if you realise that the only vehicle for change are these people who have lost their personality. The first step therefore is to make the black man come to himself; to pump back life into his empty shell; to infuse him with pride and dignity, to remind him of his complicity in the crime of allowing himself to be misused and therefore letting evil reign supreme in the country of his birth.”

Quotes from Malcom X (1925-1965)

“Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it.”

“Any time you beg another man to set you free, you will never be free. Freedom is something that you have to do for yourselves.”

“No, we are not anti-white. But we don’t have time for the white man. The white man is on top already, the white man is the boss already … He has first-class citizenship already. So you are wasting your time talking to the white man. We are working on our own people.”

Quotes from Marcus Garvey (1887-1940)

“Ambition is the desire to go forward and improve one’s condition. It is a burning flame that lights up the life of the individual and makes him see himself in another state. To be ambitious is to be great in mind and soul. To want that which is worthwhile and strive for it. To go on without looking back, reaching to that which gives satisfaction.”

“The man who is not able to develop and use his mind is bound to be the slave of the other man who uses his mind.”

“The white man has succeeded in subduing the world by forcing everybody to think his way. The white man’s propaganda has made him the master of the world, and all those who have come in contact with it and accepted it have become his slaves.”

“Liberate the minds of men and ultimately you will liberate the bodies of men.”

“Before we can properly help the people, we have to destroy the old education … that teaches them that somebody is keeping them back and that God has forgotten them and that they can’t rise because of their color … we can only build … with faith in ourselves and with self-reliance, believing in our own possibilities, that we can rise to the highest in God’s creation.”

Quotes from Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)

“We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.”

“No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.”

“I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”

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What is the ideological basis of your thinking?

MONDAY, 20 APRIL 2020

16:00

What is the ideological basis of what you think, say, or write, or what you believe or argue?

For some people, it is a belief that we live in an unequal, unjust world, and that it is everyone’s moral duty to do everything in their power to make things more equal and more just. People who argue from this basis divide people into groups: primary offenders and accomplices to injustice; victims of injustice; and people (like themselves) who used to be complicit in injustice, or who reckon they benefitted from injustice, but who now try to make everything better – and make up for the sins of their ancestors.

My ideological basis is that adults who do not suffer from mental defects are free agents responsible for their own lives. This includes the son of a wealthy industrialist, as well as the poor daughter of a shoe shiner who grew up in a slum. Of course, these two individuals grew up in radically different environments, with different programming, and different ideas and feelings about the world and their place in the world, and about their future. Is the poor person a victim of circumstances? Yes, she is. Does she nevertheless have the ability to make decisions every day – from small decisions that will accumulate into significant improvements over time to big decisions that will make a radical difference to her life in the short term? To believe that she does not have this ability is to see her as a pathetic child who will not survive if she is not helped by people more fortunate than her.

21:49

Am I saying you should shrug your shoulders and tell the person in a bad situation, “Your problem. I did not tell you to flee from your city torn apart by armed conflict”? No, what I am saying is this: Help anyone get out of a burning building – no discrimination; not in terms of skin colour, political opinion, or religion. And when you’re out of the building and it’s within my means to assist you, I’ll give you shelter and food and water, and whatever else you need to get back on your feet.

But from Moment Number One, I’m going to look at you as an adult capable of moving mountains if the will is there. And if the will is not there, and you decide to become dependent on other people’s goodness in the long run, I will make the argument that limited resources should rather be used to save other people from burning buildings.

Fact is, I see people as fantastic creatures that can do incredible things if they decide they are going to do something. I believe we create our own reality to a great extent, and then we experience this reality and have feelings about it. There are people who look at certain individuals and see them as pathetic creatures who need to be saved and taken care of. I see people who sometimes need to be helped out of a burning building, but then only need to be supported to continue taking responsibility for their own lives. And if they don’t want to take responsibility for their own lives, it’s their business, not mine.

* * *

If someone knocks on my door on a particularly cold night and asks for shelter, and I know there is no facility for this purpose nearby, I will offer this person a warm bed, food and something to drink, and a place in the living room so he can watch TV with us. If it dawns on me that it won’t be for just one day, I will explain that if the person is going to stay on in our home, it will be according to our house rules. Examples of rules will include time when lights will be turned off and everyone will retire to their rooms, and the volume at which music can be listened to. Reasonable stuff; nothing draconian. If the person flouts the rules – for example, if he watches TV until the early morning hours or have loud phone calls after midnight, I’ll explain the rules again. If he is still unwilling to comply, I will show him the door. Why? Because he will have shown a lack of respect for me and my household. Because he does not believe it is his responsibility to make his own life better.

Here’s an alternative scenario: I offer him shelter. At the end of the first week, he mentions that he sees I take out the garbage twice a week, and he offers to do it from then on. Or he notices that I go out every day to buy dinner and mentions that he can cook, and that if I give him X amount of money, he will go to the supermarket to buy ingredients and cook for everyone in the household every day. If he also respects the house rules, chances are that he will be able to stay until he feels things are of such a nature that he can return to where he came from, or until he is ready to get his own place. Even then, I will help him however I can – if he needs my help.

It is also possible that this person is religious. Let’s say he is a Muslim, and I notice that he goes to his room five times a day, rolls open a rug on the floor, and prays. I will respect that and make sure I don’t disturb him at that time. However, if he insists that my wife and daughter cover their heads when we all go out, I will make it clear that this is not our custom. If he becomes agitated about it, he can look for another place to stay – that same day.

WEDNESDAY, 22 APRIL 2020

What type of ideology gives the most hope to a young man in, say, El Salvador, or Afghanistan? The ideology that says you are responsible for your own life, and that you are capable of creating your own happiness, well-being, and positive future … or the ideology that tries to convince the young man that his dilemma is not his fault, that he is a victim of structural racism, that rich people, or white people, or people with more power than him, owe him happiness, well-being and a positive future?

If I were that young man, I would take the aforementioned ideology any day of the week. I would try to sneak across the border in the middle of the night, and if I arrived in Texas, or in Arizona or California, or Italy, Germany, or England, I would do everything in my power to stay out of trouble; I would stay away from criminal groups; I would try to get a job and save money. If I met a woman and we like each other, I would get married and start a small business with her. This is what I would do if I believed I was responsible for my own life, and that I had the ability to create my own well-being and prosperity.

Would there have been hardships? Of course. Would there have been obstacles? Yes. But I would have used my mind and my energy to survive hardships and overcome obstacles. Would I end up back in El Salvador or Afghanistan if the authorities arrested and deported me, as they have the right to do? That would always be a possibility. But would I still rather dare to believe in my own ability to create a good life? Definitely. Would I prefer that to believing other people owe me something, and that I just have to wait for political pressure groups to bring about a good life for me? Absolutely.

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