I’ve read/listened to a few powerfully thought-bending books recently, which have swept my mind into a bit of a cyclone. I’ve found myself in a situation again, where there is so much swirling around I need to excise each tendril until my brain is tamed.
I apologise in advance because this is likely to be a long one, so maybe get a brew and a cosy spot to digest these muddled musings comfortably.
The three books in particular that have set off a succession of Truth Bombs to the brain are; Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge, Natives by Akala and Men Who Hate Women by Laura Bates. I would strongly recommend reading all three, basically to anyone who is a human with the capacity and means to do so.
I know this is starting to sound a bit like Birsty’s Book Club, but the issues raised by these authors are so pertinent to our here and now. With the echoes of their words still reverberating, the ground has shifted slightly, cracks have widened and I’m unable to float over them as freely. This, along with experiences over the last few months, plunged me into a period of introspection and self reflection – which although difficult to swallow at times, has been hugely eye opening and I’m hopefully a better person for it.
I’ve always had a curiosity to learn about history, to understand how humanity evolved over time, and steal a glimpse into the lives of those long gone. I’m also fascinated by psychology, why do we do the things we do? The cause and effect argument, sometimes you need to look back to move forward. Everything happens for a reason. The past shapes the future, you either try to learn from it and become better, or keep repeating the same mistakes for literally thousands of years.
The age old issue humanity faces is its GLUTTONY for POWER.
Dominance, greed, influence, corruption and essentially selfishness are the drivers in most societies throughout history. A privileged few battling between themselves for power over the many, proving how little we have truly evolved from primates. Despite the incredible advances we’ve made emotionally throughout the years and our understanding of human psychology – this trait taints us all. Like that weird bit of your coccyx, it’s the tail we can’t shake off. What’s both interesting and soul destroying is that despite years of seeing how this system only works for a minority, we still haven’t managed to crack working together.
We all keep talking about how these are divisive times, as if it’s an excuse for the discrimination that exists in the modern world. We all need to take responsibility for our collective failure in eradicating this from our society. It’s not enough to petulantly peddle the notion that “I’m not racist/sexist/homophobic etc – so these issues are irrelevant to me”.
Just because you’ve got black mates, or in my case family, it doesn’t excuse our culpability in assisting the continuation of systematic racism worldwide. What can you say you’ve really done to understand, let alone challenge this status quo?
With Brexit and the BLM movement it seems to have unleashed the tongues and minds of those so stuck up their own arse they have no capacity to understand their own hypocrisy. Let’s start with one particularly common racist statement that is thrown around all too easily these days; “Why don’t you go back to where you came from?”
The double standards of that question/statement, frequently spat out by white British citizens who have a chip on their shoulder so big it obscures their view of the facts, is absolutely astounding.
Let’s recap for a second on colonialism, how many times do you think those people our ancestors enslaved muttered under their breaths “Why don’t you go back to where you came from”?
They didn’t have the luxury of freedom of speech, no rights to freedom in any shape or form, a commodity no more than cattle that we could dominate. Whether forcibly extracted, or ruled in their owned homeland, the aims were the same – to control, to own, to claim all we found, as being somehow rightfully ours. Not only that, but our ancestors were more than happy to be pretty savage about it. Which is ironic as that was their view of everyone else in the world, despite them being the ones sailing about stealing, raping and butchering humans.
I find the whole “New World” spin they put on things so bizarre. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for scientific discoveries and exploration, it must have been amazing back in the 1600’s to witness the world you knew expanding. However yet again power, greed, and influence shaped society along with the science.
Unfortunately their intentions back then weren’t quite as straightforward as “ Shall we go check if the world is actually flat and see what we discover along the way?”.
It quickly devolved into “What is out there that we can plough for profit?”.
So despite landing on someone else’s shore, they were there to claim it as theirs. Upon finding the original owners, they often feigned kinship and asked for support to survive, until strong enough to overthrow those who had called the place home for thousands of years. We brutalised them, their cultures, their religions, their resources and forced them to bow to our all powerful nation. Yet, it is something we celebrate.
There is a collective pride in England about colonialism, it is still openly memorialised as a bygone age of prosperity which launched us as a leading global economic force. We seem to think we should be respected for it, we’re proud of the entitlement it has bequeathed us. We’re more than happy to reap the benefits without an awareness, openness, or any apparent shame about how this came to be. Almost an air that the Colonies should be grateful to have had the opportunity to learn from, and receive investment from the British – despite the fact they were extorting them for centuries under a different name.
My theory on this is that in England we’ve got an ingrained collective issue of “Small Country Syndrome”. Looking back, yeah fair play we were invaded by the Vikings and the Romans, but to be honest discounting the World Wars, we’ve really been on the offensive. We like to pretend we’re trend setters and examples to other countries of how to be democratic and promote human rights, but just because there were and are other countries who also exploit humans and the planet, I wouldn’t be jumping around celebrating. Denial and deflection isn’t helpful if we want to progress.
There was a massive backlash against protesters regarding the tearing down of statues depicting historical figures whose past included the slave trade. My answer is to stop shouting about the problem, and look at the cause. We are the cause. Our ignorance, our lack of empathy, our ability to ignore our infliction on modern society. We do not have the right to erase or belittle our influence historically. Transparency and accountability would be far more productive and more importantly kinder. Those people memorialised in statues are there because of their exploitation of others, their success only possible due to lack of humanity. Some argue that these were different times with different moral standards – but it doesn’t give us reason to still celebrate them now whilst openly and obstinately ignoring the skeletons in their closet.
I’d liken it to having Nazi leaders memorialised, some of them did positive things for their country along with the atrocities they committed – but their implication in such horrific crimes against humanity is impossible to ignore. I’m in no way downplaying the horrors of the Holocaust, and obviously think it’s right that these individuals and their actions are judged as unforgivable. My point is why those involved in the slave trade don’t rouse the same reaction. Humanity endured 5 years of the Holocaust resulting in an estimated 6 million Jews being murdered. In comparison the Transatlantic Slave Trade lasted about 400 years, there aren’t definitive stats on the number of deaths but estimates range from 17 to 60 million.
So why is it that there are people arguing to save these statues of slave owners? Would they be arguing to save a Nazi with quite as much zeal? Perhaps some of them would, and that’s the scariest thought.
The rise of far right ideology is a very real worry and one we as a community should be hugely concerned about. So much so, that right wing extremism has been deemed the the fastest growing terrorism threat within the UK.
Personally I’ve seen more racism over the last couple of years, than my entire lifetime – why?
Power.
Dominance.
Control.
The Slave Trade and Colonisation were tools of the Western World to dominate, that hunger for power justified the exploitation of humans and the corrupt mining of resources that has caused irreversible damage to our planet. Not only did we attempt to strip these societies of their identities, but we forced ours on them, our language, culture, religion, laws, values. The world is framed by western ideologies, we dictate our way of life as being superior, yet we have no awareness or acceptance of the destruction we inflicted on so many nations. So ready to call out everyone else for being inhumane but no clue or acknowledgement of our hand in any part of this reality. Those decisions made by our ancestors set us on this course, but they aren’t steering the ship anymore.
I’m not purporting to be a Sociologist, and I’ve had no training in History, Politics, Philosophy or the like. I did do a Sociology A level, but it was an intensive 1 year course and I spent most of the time in Burger King with my mate. Not surprising that I think I got an E and now that I’m scrabbling in my brain to remember any helpful info from those lessons, all I can think of is an Angus Steakhouse. What I’m saying is I’m not an expert, I’ve done some of my own limited research and have come to these conclusions. I’m more than open to being challenged and to learn more – so please feel free to comment if you think I’m chatting rubbish.
The Western virus swept over the planet affecting basically anything it touched, everything is a commodity to be exploited, it’s just a case of who has the power and influence to take it. Consumerism and capitalism, under the guise of democracy has led us ignorantly into a world with no integrity. We’ve lost our grasp on reality, rapidly spiralling into a wormhole that has the force and intention to manipulate society. These forces are powered by the few.
They say with great power comes great responsibility. Yet those with the most in this world, seem to have none.
I know everyone loves a good moan about Thatcher, but the consequences of some of her actions are reverberating like ripples in water, social and economic tsunamis have battered our shores, changing the face of it unrecognisably. Deregulation of banks and unfettered freedom given to private companies has tipped the scales so far in their favour it’s left us completely vulnerable.
“There’s no such thing as society” is probably one of the most depressing and soul destroying quotes I’ve ever read and it’s stayed with me for months. To truly believe that humanity works best when we are all serving our own individual needs without care for the community is a really warped view in my opinion. It is that self serving attitude which I fear will eventually be our downfall, by the time we realise it will be too late, the damage to humanity and the planet too far gone. We’ve effectively signed the DNAR on our existence. I often think about what it would take for us all to come together, I imagined with us being so primitive it would be in response to some sort of threat. Alien invasion, an asteroid, perhaps a pandemic.
My money is on the Aliens. And even then I reckon you’ll get your Richard Bransons chartering their own rockets swiftly out of any drama.
We always seem to be competing, this constant power struggle with other countries is so exhausting you’d think we’d have got bored by now. We all seem to scoff at our American protégés, yet all the “Make America great again” bollocks coincidentally aligned with the Brexit campaign demonstrated gross similarities. These weird relationships between countries constantly teetering on a knife edge, absolutely no clue who to trust.
As we have evolved, so have our techniques for gaining and exerting power. Weapons developed, defences built, always adapting.
So what age are we in now?
What power is humanity harnessing throughout this period?
Time has been sectioned up and labelled neatly for us by historians, the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Industrial Age – all denote our developments throughout civilisations. The tools we used to evolve beyond the previous realms of possibility.
So what is this time period all about?
Information.
I’ve heard the saying knowledge is power before, but I kind of always saw that as one of the lesser of all the evils. I think I probably always saw it from my perspective, knowledge enabling me to achieve my goals, understanding giving me enlightenment. I had considered the blackmail aspect, the harm that certain knowledge could cause if left in the lap of those willing to use it for their own gain.
There have been rumblings regarding our increasing vulnerability in the digital world, which is where information is collected, stored and accessed through billions of virtual interactions a day. I would really recommend watching The Social Dilemma and The Great Hack to anyone who uses the internet. Mind blown.
They basically discuss who is in control of this new digital world we have created?
Considering the civilisation changing impact of the digital age on humanity, should we be more concerned with who regulates this new world? Do we trust those with power to treat this world with the same respect they treat our actual world?
So it’s basically lawless. Which is reassuring.
From what I’m beginning to understand we are basically in a weird form of The Matrix without the brutal cable to the brain. They quoted a saying in The Social Dilemma;
“If you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product”
With reference to social media, free apps, search engines etc – they are multi billion pound businesses – if we’re not paying them – who is?
And what exactly are they paying for?
All these battles regarding online privacy, cookies etc were for a very valid reason, and it’s not just to stop spam emails and pop ups for weird stuff off Wish.com.The digital and physical worlds are inextricably linked, it has been built around us, in response to us and contains part of us.
It’s creepy enough to be spied on and targeted with product advertising, but the corruption and manipulation extends to all aspects of life and is just so ridiculously dangerous I can’t get my head around it being allowed to carry on.
World wide there are Politicians and World Leaders who are using the data from our social media use to manipulate our behaviour. Votes for them and their campaigns garnered through digital manipulation, bots sharing posts to skew opinions, fake news promoted as fact. We have always been aware of Politicians being liars, but now they have been handed the tools to weave their own warped reality on the web.
The ability to influence opinion is open to the highest bidder.
Which it always was, but nowhere near on this scale, or with this velocity.
So when you’ve got Boris, Trump and Nigel Farage as leading political figures elected by the public they serve, they are unfortunate role models for our youth. Another soul destroying thought. But in all seriousness there again lies responsibility, which has been disregarded in the pursuit of power.
The discriminatory vitriol spewed from them all over the years should have called their professional conduct into disrepute, but apparently the majority of us are happy with racist homophobic sexist idiots being in control of our politics. Nice one.
The problem with that is it normalises these ideologies, it promotes them, it gives them a really massive thumbs up from those in power. Which is dangerous.
Laura Bates talks about how this, compounded with the seductive qualities of social media can lead people (specifically men in her book) down a path of social destruction. It’s digital factionalism on a modern industrial scale. After a few clicks, a few likes, a few shares we are nudged into a vortex, prompted to interact more, with content selectively lobbed at you to keep your attention. Within this echo chamber views and opinions are intermingled with fact, reality becomes obscured and extreme views are given a platform to spread like never before.
The likes, comments, shares and joining of groups online validates and endorses these untrue or extreme opinions, allowing lies and hate MORE influence than fact.
We jest about being brainwashed, but it is literally happening, and we are gladly, willingly, obsessively asking for it.
What I find most ironic is that this is the age of information, this should be the genius generation, yet most of our time on the most important invention in human history, is spent on social media.
But it’s not irony, it’s design.
The internet and specifically social media is addictive by design. The lack of regulation has led to exploitation, we know it affects mental health, increases suicide rates, has caused kids to become depressed increasingly younger. We know the very real risks of online grooming, weird self harm sites encouraging people to starve themselves, trolling, radicalisation. It is so unbelievably dangerous for anyone’s mind, let alone one of a child, but it’s been left to us to protect our own.
There is no firewall for this stuff other than basically living in a cave and ignoring the rest of the world forever more. There are huge benefits to the internet with regards to learning and advancement, but do they outweigh the risks? With the increasing amount of everyday life that is only accessible through your smartphone it feels a bit threatening, as it leaves us with no choice.
My little one is only 3, and is already addicted to YouTube. Myself and my partner Dan often discuss things like this together and he rolls his eyes and fobs off my concerns as being ridiculous. I wasn’t keen on Jude having a tablet, but a couple of years ago I wasn’t as informed to be honest, I don’t think I fully understood or accepted the risks. So we let our little boy swipe his way through early life and become a lab rat.
There are very few parents who would willingly harm their children, with us, we just didn’t think about it enough. Obviously there are benefits to the tablet; the games and some of the videos he watches are really educational and have helped with so many aspects of his development. However we have felt the effects of the lack of regulation, and I include myself in the list of people who were responsible that. Jude loves Thomas the Tank and so spends a lot of time watching videos from episodes or ones people have made and uploaded of themselves playing with the toys.
You would think that anything Thomas the Tank engine would be fairly innocuous, but clearly people have a lot of time on their hands and nothing better to do with it than make videos to scare the shit out of kids. So this one video started off as a normal Thomas the tank compilation video, and then cut to a load of real life clips of train crashes. He was about 2. It really scared him and hopefully hasn’t scarred him, but either way the damage was done before I could react.
He still has his tablet, with kids YouTube now, but does still watch the normal one with restrictions. As I’m writing this I’m shaking my head at myself thinking what an idiot. The Social Dilemma I watched the other night was a real kick in the kahoonas to be perfectly honest, bit of a wake up call to stop being so complacent. The social media tech manager/designers they interviewed all said they do not allow their kids on smart devices, no social media, no apps. Yet they are more than happy to target our children.
My realisation is that I need to protect Jude, because despite the harm this is causing to our children, nobody with the power to protect us ever will.
In my mind I’m fast forwarding to Jude being at school, and the battles I’m steeling myself for, against the impending tidal wave of peer pressure.
It’s not about keeping up with the Jones’s anymore, it’s keeping up with the complete change to society.
I can remember first getting the internet at home. Massive clunky desktop computer in the corner of our dining room, with this long telephone cable that snaked through the centre of the house from the socket in the hall . For the first few years it shared the same line as the telephone, so it would be a choice between internet or phone. I can remember it being addictive back then, running in from school, switching the beast on, waiting to connect by dialling in, there would be this weird rhythmic digital dial in, someone needs to find that sound and use it as a sample in a song, I bet someone already has.
Anyways this ritual would take place and I would sit for hours on MSN messenger, which for anyone below the age of 25 is basically a really old basic version of Facebook messenger. For me it was always very innocent, just chatting with my mates. For others it was a place to stalk and groom children. The whole chat room thing back then was so gross, you would get messages from random faceless men with ‘ASL?’ which was weird men chat room chat for Age, Sex, Location? If you were curious and careless enough to get sucked in there could be so many risky connections made with dodgy characters.
I was 12 when MSN messenger came out, 21 years ago, and very little has been done to improve protection for kids, scarily it’s the opposite.
There’s always this argument from internet service providers, search engines, social media apps that the net is too wide, the amount of content too vast, for them to ever possibly be able to police it effectively. Yet they are more than happy to mine, store, share, and utilise our data in any way that is beneficial to them? You’re telling me that they can’t develop the technology to protect its users? Or is it that they just don’t want to?
Another argument is freedom of speech. When it comes to sharing “fake news” and anything offensive there seem to be varying opinions on regulation. You can report posts, I have myself, but facebooks ethical and moral standards seem to differ from mine, so despite posts being clearly racist or untrue – my concerns were disregarded and often the posts were allowed to remain visible. People are free to speak, but there should still be consequences for the statements you make whether online or not. The problem is the platform, the access that allows, and the fact that you can pay for it.
Podcasts have been a more recent obsession of mine, I listened to How They Made Us Doubt Everythingpresented by Peter Pomerantsev on BBC sounds. It delves into the murky world of mass mind control, in a slightly less sci fi more misinformation type of way.
Back in the day when we were all happily puffing away, doctors were dishing them out, kids were even smoking and then suddenly reports started coming out that tobacco could cause cancer. So obviously the multimillion dollar businesses ploughed their money and time into refuting these claims and discrediting the experts all to retain their power and economic dominance.
So for decades there was this PR war with the Tobacco industry and basically any one who publicly highlighted any issues with their products, so for every research paper proving a link to cancer, they would knock out a couple of others saying that actually that cancer could be linked to 50 other things. They literally built a research centre, hired doctors, scientists, psychologists all aimed as producing misinformation and confusing the public into believing that cigarettes weren’t harmful. The real cost of power always seems to be human lives. Thousands, if not millions lost all for the sake of selling Tobacco.
The Oil Companies used the same tactics with climate change, if we pelt people with lies tarted up as truths then they won’t know the difference. Information overload. It’s like being at one of those old pubs with a 10 page menu, hit with so much choice it’s hard to make a decision, but food envy is a lot easier to stomach than the irreversible destruction of the planet and it’s inhabitants. For some of us it is anyway.
For the Rupert Murdochs and Trumps of the world, this is just an epic game of monopoly, the longer it goes on, more players drop out bankrupt, consumed by the more dominant who keep taking until everyone else has nothing left. Just that one player and the banker alone together. There’s always that one douchebag who buys Mayfair and Park Lane, whacks a load of hotels on them and watches everyone go round the board each time openly willing them to land there, knowing it will usually mean that player will be knocked out of the game.
With advances in technology and digital media at the disposal of those who have the means to pay for it, we are fighting a losing battle against freedom of thought. The use of social media in political campaigns has escalated to a scale its almost impossible to measure, and the effects that has had on a supposedly democratic society goes way beyond who they vote for. The last decade has seen huge rises in hate crimes, as I said before I’ve experienced racism openly displayed on a whole new level the last couple of years. It all seems to link together.
I don’t know if it’s just distraction? Dangle something shiny over here to distract you from what we’re doing, when you start to notice we’ll throw in a few non-truth bombs and watch you battle between yourselves.
The two sides to this are; the shiny dangly things, to me this is all the bullshit content in every aspect of our media. It is absolutely saturated with pointless glamourising of a set of unattainable ideals aimed to increase our consumption. Not only to watch and engage more, but to spend more. Whilst we’re caught up trying to live our insta lifestyle, watching years worth of Love Island, they can crack on with taking away our privacy and rights. So busy working to pay for the shit they tell us we need, we can’t be arsed to sit researching their shady decision making. This ties into second part which is demonstrated by the constant hammering of misinformation. How can you possibly sift through and fact check everything? Before you get the chance hit delete, it’s a meme that’s been shared millions of times and skewed millions of opinions. It’s not surprising that after taking repeated slaps of mis-truths to the mind it might start to bend a little.
Which I think is the same for the racism we’re seeing. The actions of some politicians has been blatantly discriminatory and divisive. The rhetoric around Brexit has fuelled a fire which although smouldering for years, is now raging thanks to the hot air blown by dominant British white males. However, it was the media which gave it the public fanning required to spread unchallenged and still does.
The media machine helps to perpetuate these injustices, helps to normalise them, until we reach the point we are now. We look at other countries like America and China with its detention camps as though they are inhumane, but that’s what Priti Patel has gleefully planning for refugees arriving in the UK.
I’m not one for morning news shows, all that breakfast tv with discussions about current affairs, I’m either asleep, at work or watching Paw Patrol. The couple of times I did watch it over the last couple of years, I was hit with this sense of what the fuck have we become? Both times the topic up for debate was immigration and rather than anyone with any relevant experience to bring to the discussion it was led by the presenters some random celebs they could drag out of bed at 7am. Which is essentially the same thing.
The first time that little caption under the screen describing the section of the programme was something like “Immigrants faking identity to gain entry to UK, should restrictions be tougher?”. So I sat watching them hash out the details, basically some people seeking asylum were allegedly claiming they were younger than they were to enter the country as a child. We were told this was a growing problem, these blokes could be given places at schools and would be around our kids blab la bla. It was just over sensationalised and there seemed to be absolutely no care that these were people. Humans who were desperate for a better life. They went on to discuss ways we could better determine the ages of people seeking asylum, the presenter quite matter of fact said “let’s start checking their teeth at the border”. Where on earth is the humanity, let alone the dignity in that. Yet this conversation continued by discussing their fucked up rationale on why this would be a brilliant technique for weeding out the fakers.
It turned my stomach.
Is this who we are?
Treating humans like livestock, if that.
The next segment burned into my memory wasn’t all that long ago, probably a couple of months and again was discussing the migrant crisis. Again in a way that was painting their suffering as ours, the toll of these poor souls apparently here to drain our resources. So there’s the presenter, discussing how these people have paid illegal smugglers for a place on overcrowded unsafe boats where drowning is as likely as making it to shore. Then it cuts to a different presenter, on a boat, with a camera, in the middle of the channel. Shooting footage of a load of cold, frightened and likely really fucking confused refugees, like they are some spectacle in the zoo. Real live action of humans at one of the most desperate times of their life, whilst we just film them for ratings without offering to help from our humongous boat!
“What’s that? Bit of a squeeze in there? Sorry mate I would offer you a lift but it would really ruin the shot.”
We. Are. Gross.
The Brexit shiz and refugee crisis really boils my blood, but is the perfect example of how the media and those in power can manipulate. We all know the campaign was based on lies, yet there are so many people who still hold views formed from it. What it proved is that there are many in this country who haven’t learnt, or refuse to learn how to demonstrate basic human empathy.
Perhaps it’s because this country has never been in the position of some of these other countries, we’ve never had to flee en masse from civil wars, persecution or corrupt governments. There’s no understanding, no moral responsibility to aid our fellow humans. There’s this attitude of its not our mess, let someone else sort it. You hear comments like “They’ve passed through 10 other countries to get here, why didn’t they settle in one of those if they’re that desperate”
Firstly, if you actually look into statistics on global displacement, most people do stay close to home, the majority move to a different area in the SAME country or will flee to their neighbouring ones.
Secondly, in the grand scheme of things we don’t make a dent on the crisis, despite the media reports we are far down the list of countries offering a home to those displaced around the world. In 2019 there was an estimated 11 million people seeking asylum or refuge, the UK hosted a whopping 195,000 of them, yet our country is far more wealthy with more resources than many of the nations who took in more people.
Thirdly, why shouldn’t people fleeing persecution or a humanitarian crisis go to somewhere they feel they will be safe? We bang on about how democratic we are, how we respect human rights, how we’re so tolerant and then we’re shocked that people might believe us.
Another one is the argument regarding the threat to our culture; “People coming over here, speaking their own language and taking over our high street, mosques everywhere etc”.
Coming from the same Little Englanders who refuse to speak anything other than English whilst on holiday in Benidorm, who like going there for the Irish bars and won’t eat any of the ‘foreign muck’. Whilst “they” are “illegals” “immigrants” “aliens” we’re “expats” or “emigrates”, the only positive is at least we’ve moved on from calling people slaves.
Those making these comments are more than happy to revel in our colonial past, enjoy our status as a dominant global force without any understanding of how the western world changed the fate of the people and countries it ruled. The hypocrisy isn’t lost on me. But quite how we have the gall to chastise anyone for trying to retain any semblance of their culture, when we have brutally forced ours upon those we stripped of of theirs, is really so far beyond me I can’t even explain it. Is it that they don’t know, don’t understand or that they just don’t care?
Or is it power?
Like those people that accuse their partners of cheating when it’s really them that’s been doing the dirty the whole time, are we so hyper aware of our lack of human decency that we expect it from others? We are on the defensive. Sat in our ivory tower it’s much easier to throw stones at those trying to climb the walls.
These are pretty open ways we demonstrate our entitlement, but there are much more subtle ways we use our privilege, and we all do it. The Brexit campaign pimped it to send another signal to the world that we’re better than you, nah nah nah nah nahhh.
Our notorious passport is something we beat every other country round the head with at any opportunity. As British citizens we know this, we love the doors it opens, it’s essentially a VIP card to every country in the world. We take a huge amount of pride in it, so much so that we’ve had to change the colour to prove our denouncement from the EU, it may as well have “we’re not with them” alongside fingers pointing in every direction printed on the cover. We flounce around wherever we want and flash that thing as if it’s suddenly gonna bust out it’s own Patronus charm and out pops the genie of a British ambassador with a get out of jail free card, to whip you off on his magic carpet.
What we don’t appreciate is the power that gives us. The freedom we have compared to others. The privilege it affords us. The global respect it bestows is.
I remember talking to an old friend once, I was wondering out loud to her whether I would be eligible for a South African passport and whether I should look into it. She looked at me confused and just said “Why, what’s the point?”. I babbled about it being nice to have proof of my heritage and she just shook her head at me laughing.
“You have no idea how lucky you are to have that passport do you?”
I looked at her confused “What to you mean mate?”
So Nico went on to explain her experiences of travelling as a child.
She was born in Columbia and lived there with her Mum until she was 8, they moved because her Mum met and fell in love with Nico’s stepdad. He was Scottish and had been working over there, when his job required him to move back to the UK, he wanted to take his new wife and daughter with him.
He had a pretty well paid job, it afforded them the luxury of travelling on nice holidays and obviously they went back now and again to Colombia to visit their family. She said that it always a ball ache when they travelled, they would always be grilled at security and passport checks whilst Nico’s stepdad would be able to breeze through without question.
Her Mum ended up with a new British passport, so when they travelled Nico was the only family member using a Colombian one. On one occasion they tried to go through security in the UK, Nico was stopped, separated from her parents, patted down for drugs and held in a room for a few hours. She was 8.
After this incident her Mum thought fuck this, I’m not going through this trauma every time we go on holiday, so she spoke to lawyers about sorting Nico a British Passport. Surely if Gloria was now a British citizen that would also count for her daughter. Apparently not, for some reason the simplest and most straightforward way of ensuring Nico had the same rights as her parents, was for them to adopt her – this included her Mum. So Gloria had to sign papers to legally adopt her own daughter.
As I’ve mentioned there seems to be a complete disconnect with the people seeking asylum or refuge in the UK, a recent meme I saw blasted round Facebook was some a photo of a lady who had just got off a boat, with people around scrambling to get out and the focus is on the fact that she’s holding a smart phone. The accompanying vitriol implying she can’t be that destitute if she’s got a half decent phone.
A question to those people sharing it as if it’s suddenly proof that the woman and others like her are lying about needing help. If your house was on fire, would you grab your phone? If you were planning to run from a war zone, would you think you might need your mobile?
It’s just another example of the blatant lack of empathy or understanding. Why are they not entitled to bring their phone? What does it prove? Just because life before civil war or whatever forced them to flee was successful, doesn’t mean they are left with the wealth they may have once had. If you had to go on the run now, realistically how much money could you get together in a rush to take with you, especially if the banks in your country collapsed?
But it’s not surprising when the system is geared to enforce these ideals. It’s not just those who come needing help that face blatant discrimination, people who want to emigrate here, even those who did so decades ago and worked all their lives have been publicly discriminated against by our government. The Windrush scandal saw people who could have just as easily been relatives of mine, dragged from their homes without warning and thrown in prisons under the guise of detention centres or worse deported to countries that they hadn’t called home since early childhood. This happened in the last couple of years, and yet you’ve got the” All Lives Matter” brigade telling everyone that systematic racism in the UK doesn’t exist.
Unfortunately you can’t discredit the truth by refusing to look for it.
Ignoring it won’t make it go away.
Neither will deflecting. The injustice displayed by others will never magically erase our wrongdoings.
It’s like someone leaving a rogue toddler in a museum filled with the most precious delicate priceless artefacts in human history, handing him a sledgehammer and whispering smash whatever you like. When you find the devastation he looks around at you innocently and holds his hands up as if to say I have no idea how this happened. When you point to the mess, he redirects the finger at his brother who sat in the corner most of the time, but had joined in just enough to leave his footprints in the trail of destruction.
One of the big questions we should be asking is - who is responsible for the toddler and why did they give him the tools, ideas and permission to go smashing everything up?
Who is running the show?
The system has been broken for so long we don’t realise it, built to be broken, it’s only function is to serve those who made it, the laws created seem to be the spanners thrown in to keep the cogs jammed.
To those with power these laws are malleable, the higher up the chain the more flexible they become, until some glide effortlessly above them giving us a massive two’s up from their perch.
Our government is the perfect example, whether breaking the law on the sly or blatantly changing it to fit their agenda, they aren’t too fussed - either way they feel the rules don’t apply to them. They don’t feel the need for transparency or honesty because they are above it. Who are we to ask questions?
One of the biggest ones we should be asking at the minute is what on earth they think they are doing with Brexit and the hard border in Ireland.
This is so close to home, but I don’t think we really feel involved, again disconnected from it, if we look away it’s not really happening, or at least it’s not our fault.
I have to admit I started to massively switch off with anything to do with Brexit, again it was information overload, not only that but most of it was so intensely boring. Human rights and the movement of people I could just about keep up with, but when it started to kick off with trade negotiations, fishing and farming laws, importing of goods it felt like it wasn’t really relevant for me, it’s not my area of interest and certainly not one of my expertise. I cared, but not enough to wade through the vast amount of info required to really understand what they were all banging on about.
When the discussions about the Irish Backstop and soft/hard borders started up, I didn’t take much notice, I didn’t really understand what it meant to be honest, and I never took the time to find out. Until recently.
On a recent trip to Cornwall we visited Tintagel and I did a bit of reading up about the history of the place, it got me wondering about British history, I didn’t know much about how we came to be the United Kingdom.
This is another massive question we should be asking ourselves - who’s responsibility is it to teach history? There is a very valid argument that education regarding social history in this country is lacking, one sided, and biased to paint certain cultures out of the picture. Who decides on the school curriculum? Although we count on the education system to help shape our little humans minds, as parents we should be ensuring any gaps are filled.
Ireland has had a really shit time over the centuries, predominantly because of us and our obsessive need to conquer anything we find. After years of various invasions we finally claimed it as part of the British Empire in 1601, and did as we always do, forced our culture, laws, religions and social structure on them. The centuries of conflict and suffering that followed was devastating for Ireland, with atrocities that can never be erased or justified, but as I often wonder with British Colonial past – What could have happened if we’d have just left everyone alone to get on with their own lives?
I wonder what the world would look like if we hadn’t sailed around claiming it?
Yet despite our irreversible meddling, we’re back here.
After centuries of unrest, peace was negotiated, although still quivering on a knife edge it has been been sustained for decades.
What this government and Brexit are planning equates to rebuilding the Berlin Wall. Sticking a border through Ireland not only breaks constitutional law, and an agreement that helped to end centuries of unrest, but demonstrates our complete disregard for any moral responsibility. We clearly don’t care, as long as it’s for our gain and not on our doorstep, who gives a shit?
Well it’s about time we did.
So to all those people who I hear moaning about all the protests recently, or call everyone snowflakes for caring about anyone other than themselves, just take a minute and think about what type of person you want to be.
Ignorance may be bliss, but it’s really not becoming or helpful to humanity.
We’re better than that.
I appreciate this post has been a bit of a slog, the people who managed to make it this far without being bored to death – thanks for sticking with it. I apologise for the ranty nature of this blog, I’m by no means perfect, as I said this is actually my brain farting out thoughts which have brewed from things I’ve read, watched, listened to. I’ll add a list at the end for anyone that wants to delve into more coherent and in-depth explanations of the shiz I’ve rambled on about.
I guess my main message is to be more open to personal growth, don’t be cocky and complacent like I was, denying yourself the opportunity to learn and be a better person isn’t helpful to anyone – least of all yourself.
Yes it’s super depressing that we live in this world dominated by power and those who have it, but sticking your head in the sand and accepting that as an inevitable reality isn’t helpful either. These constructs need to be challenged in order to change.
Stop blindly sharing misinformation without fact checking, question the information that’s being thrown at you and perhaps wonder why someone is lobbing it around in the first place.
Use your time better and don’t get sucked into the bullshit. Turn off Love Island and do something productive with your time. Protect your mind from being moulded by someone else’s agenda.
We need to collectively fight for better protection online, whilst the negatives are hard to ignore so are the positives, better regulation and transparency is essential.
Show empathy and understanding, put yourself in other peoples shoes before making assumptions and show a bit of humility regarding our privilege as a nation.
I’m not saying we can’t take pride in our Country, it’s people, it’s history, it’s achievements, but we also need to be transparent and accepting of our negative impact upon many parts of the world. And stop repeating the same mistakes.
Books/podcasts/documentaries worth checking out:
Books
Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge
Natives by Akala
Men Who Hate Women by Laura Bates
Podcasts
How They Made Us Doubt Everything
1619
Documentaries
The Social Dilemma
The Great Hack