Opposite side to the ‘rights are a wrong’ argument

And why it fails (or, don’t worry, be happy (and sad))
Whenever human beings put a name or number to some experience we have, or object we find within our environment, it essentially defines an absolute characteristic or quality of that environment. The more defined these names become the closer we get to this absolute.

The better we are able to arrange these names in sequence the better we understand the environment and the better we are at manipulating it, being as it is not the really real but a collection of names arranged in sequence.

We are special in the universe because only we perform the activity of naming. The goal is to name everything and record all possible sequences of names so that we may master the universe. Once this is achieved there will be no more pain for we will simply eradicate all such sequences from the story we have thus far uncovered.

Imagine a well-managed train station. Materials have been taken from the environment and changed into tracks, rolling stock, a platform, waiting room and ticket booth. Humans have been trained for the various roles of conductor, manager, driver, cleaner, engineer etc.

Once people use the station they become customers. They may form a union to protect their interests, much as the drivers and conductors may do. The special roles and status gained by these people may define them over and above their simple existence as humans (which of course they all secretly still share).

The station will take on special meaning itself as the source from which rules and regulations (laws) are generated. Its very existence may variably be worshipped, protected, feared or honoured.

It will begin to take the shape of a reality for those who now depend on it yet underwriting it all is the same basic environment which must be now be managed as just another resource required by the station: the station is still a product of the natural environment and not a self-reproducing environment in-its-self. 

The station grows and requires more of the basic reality. What must be denied is difference or any other form of reality that can challenge the stations existence. Change must be halted and all matter given over to the stations perpetuation. This can be accomplished through language – through the naming of things: a tree becomes a resource for coffee stirrers. Humans become customers and managers and the two differentiate themselves by these titles over and above what they share in common.

The question is: at the point at which the station accomplishes its goal and no evil can challenge its benevolence in providing all these people with meaning and purpose in their lives; with nothing to measure the station against but faded memories, how can we tell, any longer, whether it is good?

The station (language) becomes the reality, all is aligned to its needs and anything that is ‘other’ disappears. The universe crystallises into a substrate of inert data. The story is complete.

There is no possibility of argument against it. It is justified and western civilisation cheers! Unfortunately it ends in inertia by denying the very possibility that brought it about: it ceases to function.

The universe is not a complete sentence but an open dialogue.

Simon Leake

Defending Human Rights - Impartially

Well, I was writing about Jeremy Clarkson in the last issue – from Belgium even – and if it doesn’t rain but it pours.

In the last issue I discussed him calling his dog ‘Didier Dogba’. He has now had a final warning over racist remarks, having been caught using the n-word under his breath:

Eeny meeny miney mo / *atch * n***** *y *he *oe

the second line mumbled. On the 1st May he contacted the Daily Mirror ‘begging forgiveness’. However two days later he re-opened the issue and ‘attacked them for making him issue a public apology over his N-word shame.’

A lot of people protested that it wasn’t racist in the context, including some black people. Indeed it appears to many to be a matter of legitimate disagreement. Now the problem is that the BBC has to oppose racism and sexism, but nevertheless be impartial in any debate concerning what constitutes racism and sexism. It is highly problematic whether this is logically sustainable. Therefore one has to be pragmatic on the safe side.

I argued in my last article that it was often intuition that mattered. And in this case black people have that intuition but others don’t. Therefore for white people the only acceptable policy is never use such controversial language, ever, not even in quotes to dis racists, since usually such an attempt at humour or irony is clumsy. And what makes you think everyone understand irony?

If indeed the BBC had spelt that out, then they would have a cast-iron case for ‘setting JC free’, not least because he retracted the apology two days later. But the fact remains that he, and indeed his lieutenants, would not see it this way. As Hugh Muir said in his Guardian diary on Tuesday (6/5/2014), “the Clarkson war on so-called political correctness goes back a long way.”

But here we have precisely the problem for the BBC that I have just mentioned: they have to be anti-racist, but must be impartial in any debate concerning what constitutes racism and sexism. To say that JC is not being racist to take sides, and indeed giving Jeremy Clarkson a platform for his ‘war’ on political correctness.

After all this, it is easy to research this war: it is easy to google or merely search the Daily Mirror to unearth his war crimes - a string of unpleasant jibes pertaining to ethnicity and other factors:

In December 2005 he gave a Nazi salute while presenting a Top Gear piece on German car-maker BMW, suggesting that its satnav “only goes to Poland”. (Daily Mirror, )

Clarkson is well known for courting controversy - last year he was cleared of breaching the broadcasting code by watchdog Ofcom after comparing a Japanese car to people with growths on their faces.

He had previously faced a storm of protest from mental health charities after he branded people who throw themselves under trains as "selfish" and was forced to apologise for telling BBC One's The One Show that striking workers should be shot.

[The team having built a bridge over the River Kwai in Thailand] As a south-east Asian man walked over it, Clarkson said: “That is a proud moment, but there’s a slope on it.” / The Ofcom investigation, announced today, will look at whether the clip counted as a breach of content standards.

This is not a war on correctness, it is a war of harassment against victims of non-correctness, and the BBC would certainly lose its impartiality if it controversially condoned such harassment.

One might call it anti-anti-racism, anti-anti-sexism, etc. And I said in the last issue:

There is something known as mock disrespect which displays actual respect or actual affection (and respect): you avoid it if there's real disrespect.

If there is real disrespect, one might say that here we have not mock disrespect, but mock-mock-disrespect.

And we haven’t even started with his anti-anti-pollution attitude re motor-cars. The BBC has to be anti-pollution: to tolerate his anti-anti-pollution attitude means they are not so much either partial or impartial, as partial to two conflicting attitudes... so much for the profit motive creeping in...

Post-script, on golly*ogs -

The said word is a compound word, of which the second element is a racist word, which I have sanitised in the usual way. That aside, are these dolls racist? We may note that the first occasion for them to be banned was in Nazi Germany. It is said that they depict an inane grinning black person, implying black people are inane.

In Wiki:

“Florence Kate Upton was born in 1873 in Flushing, New York, the daughter of English parents who had emigrated to the United States three years previously. … she moved back to England … when she was fourteen. There she spent several years drawing and developing her artistic skills. In order to afford tuition to art school, she illustrated a children's book entitled The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls and a Golliwogg. The 1895 book included a character named the Golliwogg, who was first described as "a horrid sight, the blackest gnome", but who quickly turned out to be a friendly character, and is later attributed with a "kind face." A product of the blackface minstrel tradition, the Golliwogg had jet black skin; bright, red lips; and wild, woolly hair. He wore red trousers, a shirt with a stiff collar, red bow-tie, and a blue jacket with tails — all traditional minstrel attire."

“Upton's book and its many sequels were extremely successful in England, largely because of the popularity of the Golliwogg. … Upton's Golliwogg was jovial, friendly and gallant, but some later golliwogs were sinister or menacing characters.

“The golliwog contributed enormously to the spread of blackface iconography in Europe. … ”

It is useful to have the history of the doll, not least when s/he took on a variety of characters, where unfavourable stereotyping was not at all obvious. On the other hand it is connected with the black-and-white minstrels, who are nowadays labelled as racist.

According to wiki, the doll may sometimes be female when home-made but is generally male. This is interesting, in that I associated the big eyes with lots of white showing, with a black nanny. The expression does not to my mind associate with stupidity, but with the faces one makes with children.

Why not have a golly-poppa or golly-momma, perhaps with a streak of grey hair? Perhaps produced under Fair Trade.

I make this suggestion precisely because it is an example of something where a white person has no intuitions. Maybe Robinsons are totally compromised and should keep their heads under the parapet, but any such suggestions have to be subject to the intuitions of the potential ‘victim’.

And again, the BBC and other public organisations have to be both anti-racist and impartial.

According to wiki, the doll may sometimes be female when home-made but is generally male. This is interesting, in that I associated the big eyes with lots of white showing, with a black nanny. The expression does not to my mind associate with stupidity, but with the faces one makes with children.

Why not have a golly-poppa or golly-momma, perhaps with a streak of grey hair? Perhaps produced under Fair Trade.

I make this suggestion precisely because it is an example of something where a white person has no intuitions. Maybe Robinsons are totally compromised and should keep their heads under the parapet, but any such suggestions have to be subject to the intuitions of the potential ‘victim’.

And again, the BBC and other public organisations have to be both anti-racist and impartial.