Yesterday morning, i turned on the TV, and accidentally caught some live broadcasts before checking on the previous night’s recordings. And i was horrified by what i saw: a woman, with a class of single-figure-aged children, telling them that they must respect diversity, and encouraging them to embrace and enclothe themselves in the attire dogmatised by various malevolent ideologies. [1]
I shall clarify that i had, and still have, no reason to believe that she was a BBC employee, nor that she was doing this under BBC instructions. However, it is still the responsibility of a broadcaster to smother deceitful material in caveats, to make sure the audience isn’t deceived into thinking: 1) that the deceptions are true, 2) that the broadcaster condones the deceptions.
The woman in subject was giving them a rather stereotypically fake-progressive speech about embracing diversity, so you can probably use your imagination to effectively fill in the gaps (though she didn’t have blue/red hair) of what the scene looked like. Kids sitting on the ground. Deluded moron standing. Leaning over them, and talking patronisingly. Lots of silly hats in a box, as props. Her telling the kids that all the silly-hat wearing is just fun and frolics. And then getting the kids to wear the silly hats themselves. Indoctrination out of the 101 book, basically.
This is a common and generic method of indoctrination: 1) lies by omission, in leaving out the crucial details that might lead to the audience making an informed decision, in which they will avoid that superstition as far as they can afford to; and 2) ridiculous happy-clappy attempts to associate the superstition with happy thoughts, so even in the face of evidence of harm, the indoctrination victims will still embrace the perpetrators of said superstition, because it makes them happy to do so.
I do not object to acknowledgements of diversity. And i do not object to embracements of diversity, when there is evidence that that diversity is beneficial. Biodiversity, for example, is excellent for mitigating the spread of disease – all of the massive pandemics of the last century have been fomented in homogeneous environments – Spanish Flu, that killed more people than WWI, evolved in the trenches, where there were only young men and rats; various avian flus have evolved in the bird markets of the orient, where birds are stacked high, in cages; and swine flu evolved in the sprawling pig farms of Mexico.
And then there’s the species itself – sapiens – every one of the 7.5 billion humans who live now, is a descendent of the humans who lived during a populationary bottleneck, just thousands of years ago, when there were only 3000 humans around. In other words, this species is highly inbred, and so people should be encouraged to embrace other people, with markedly different ancestries to themselves, for breeding purposes! It’s not just pretty – it could be a saviour of our species.
But there is a big problem with embracing diversity, when that diversity is destructive. It remains a fact, that there is almost always only one answer for every one question.[2] All of the others are wrong. Wrong. That means incorrect. And it doesn’t matter how obstinately you insist upon it, if your ‘explanation’ does not agree with reality, then you are wrong, and your actions based upon those beliefs will not have the beneficial effect that you intend them to have.This is the same with any superstition, whether it dogmatises clothing or not. What’s the harm? Whatstheharm.net
The vast majority of evil perpetrated by the species that calls itself ‘sapiens’ is as a result of good intentions, that motivate the application of superstitious beliefs. Writ short: superstition causes suffering.
And it is with this acknowledgement, that i find the wholesale indoctrination of primary school age children so horrifying. Plus, the awareness that this kind of child abuse has still not been stamped out. To tell kids that superstition is all fun and frolics, is a dangerous lie. And to tell kids that the items of clothing that are dogmatised by those superstitions are only indicators of fun and frolics, is also a dangerous lie.
The items of clothing were not limited to: a rasta hat, a hijab, a kippa, and a turban. Rather conspicuously, there was no big pointy white hat with a burning cross motif. Oh no! Because they couldn’t be that stupid? No – because they were more than sufficiently superstitious. And not smart enough to see the commonality of motive by which they are worn – ideological.
All of the items of clothing kept in that woman’s box are not mere items of clothing. They are not saris, clogs, or anoraks. They are not worn to keep cool and safe in the summer sun, or to keep your feet dry. They are items of clothing deliberately worn by superstitionists, in order to declare to the world that they are ‘a believer’ of those respective superstitions.
Do you recall that mantra popularised a decade ago, when the exposure of the RC Church was commencing? It goes like this: “Treat your religion like your penis. Don’t get it out in public, and don’t shove it down children’s throats”
But what is the point of a rasta hat, a hijab, a kippa, a turban, or a dog collar? The purpose of a dog collar is to make known to all and sundry, regardless of context, that you are a professional god-botherer, and a paid-up member of a set of sects of a faction of one form of factionalistic superstition.
In short: its purpose is to shove your superstitious beliefs down people’s throats. Including children’s. That’s what it’s for. It’s not just fashion. Do you think Churches would be happy if a bunch of hipsters started going around with dog collars on, because they thought it looked cool? And where do you think the motive comes from, to censor film genres such as Nunsploitation? [3]
“Nuns in films, right? That’s cool, isn’t it? We’re getting ‘represented’ aren’t we? Oh no, wait – they aren’t believers at all! Censor it. Censor it, i say” – a hypothetical nun
All of these items, so credulously presented as symbols of fake-love and fake-peace and fake-harmony, are worn through political motivations. Which prompts an important question, that simultaneously asks a deeper question about your respect for your own autonomy: if you do not approve of the manifestation of that respective superstition in the world, then why are you wearing it at all?
If you don’t agree that ritual genital mutilation is a good thing, then why wear a kippa? If you don’t approve of glorification of violence, then why wear a turban? If you don’t agree that women should be executed for having been raped, then why wear a hijab? Or a niqab? Or a burqa? If you don’t agree that the systematised sexual abuse of vulnerable people left in your cohorts’ care counts as ‘pastoral’ then why wear a dog collar? [4]
And if you don’t agree that Whites are a put-upon minority, that’s been subject to extensive crimes of violence and corruption, and that their culture is being wiped out by a 'system of oppression', and so on and so forth, then why wear a pointy white cone hat? And why sign your tweets off with #whitelivesmatter?
It’s not just clothes. They aren’t designed that way to serve a utilitarian function. Not to keep you cool, not to keep you dry, not to keep you safe when the arrows start to fall – they are designed that way in order to brazenly broadcast to the world that you are an advocate of a particular form of superstition.
If you don’t agree with it, then DON’T DO IT. Do you not value your autonomy?
And more than that, there is danger for any kid (or adult) who wears those garments without being an affiliate of those ideologies. Many superstitionists are prompted to be spiteful about ‘abuse’ of ‘their’ silly hats. It actually puts kids in danger, to encourage them to play around with symbols of superstition, because the believers might not be ‘happy’ with the way the kids are treating them.
Remember the school teacher who was subject to imprisonment and a murderous mob, under charge of blasphemy, because her class of 6-year-olds had voted to call its teddy bear mascot ‘muhammad’? It can be that mad. And it very often is. [5]
If you think that’s an unreasonable expectation of superstitionists, then remember this: it’s intrinsically unreasonable to be superstitious. By hoping that superstitionists won’t behave like this, you’re just crossing your fingers and hoping that they don’t really believe it. Or don’t believe too much of it!
An excuse that i would accept, for wearing politically-motivated clothing, despite not believing it, is if you genuinely feared reprisal, ostracism, bullying, or even worse, if your peer group – friends, family, colleagues, and so on – were to find out that you didn’t really believe the things that your chosen outfit suggests you do.
But even this excuse must have its limits, because all the time you’re doing this, you’re saying to other people “i approve of this” and are thereby peer-pressuring them into doing the same. Humans are a social species – they spontaneously mimic each other. They don’t like to be left out. And they will mimic the delusions of their peers, if they fear isolation from not doing so.
This feeds into a wider point that can be made on this subject.
Humans, in general, are far too willing to sign up to movements and the ideologies that motivate them. It’s always bad news to get involved with a superstitious movement, because even if you agree with some of its notions, there’s no guarantee of any kind that any of your company will continue to do so. Superstitions are horrendously fickle.
Fuelled with self-deluding self-righteousness, superstitionists will wholeheartedly make anything they touch worse, with no regard for effect. If they cared about the effects that were evident, then they’d care about evidence. And if they did that, then their movement wouldn’t exist at all.
This is why the majority of people, who casually pin their flags to other people’s metaphorical poles, and say “I’m up for that”, are so willing to condemn the owners of the flagpoles, to which they have pinned their flags, as ‘fundamentalists’ or ‘radicals’. What they’re saying is “how dare you believe more of your superstitious ideology than i do? I insist that being less enthusiastic about your movement, is better than being more enthusiastic about it” which is absolutely mentally-bonkers!
So my advice to you, dear reader, is this:
Don’t sign on the metaphorical dotted line until you really know what you’re dealing with.
Don’t believe any of the claims you hear, until you’ve put in sufficient effort to expose any tricks that might have been played on you. (Deliberately or accidentally)
Don’t regard acquaintances as allies.
Don’t get the pin badge.
Don’t pledge your heart and soul to the cause.
Don’t pay the direct debit.
And whatever you do, don’t wear the silly hat.
[1] For clarity, i shall state here that the advocation of diversity was limited to political garb - it was not about racism, sexuality, or anything else like that. It was just about the clothes in her box.
[2] There are exceptions. Take the Maths example of resolving the equation (x+3)(x-2)=y. When drawn as a graph, the curve passes through the x-axis at the values -3 and 2 so both answers, in that context, would be correct. Or the wave-particle duality of light, in which light behaves both as a wave and as a particle, with each model getting the right answer depending on context. For most questions, there is only one ‘right’ answer, or one ‘best’ model.
[3] https://www.grindhousedatabase.com/index.php/Nunsploitation
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Sikhism#Violence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Blue_Star
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudanese_teddy_bear_blasphemy_case
No comments:
Post a Comment