Tag Archives: politics

Lacking decorum

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I used to think, ‘I don’t understand how we got here?’ But I’m beginning to see a pattern.

Honour, respect, and decency are conventions. They are merely expectations, they are simply the way things are normally done in a caring culture. Decorum is upheld not by the roles of everyone, rather it is upheld by the usual lack of tolerance for people that don’t show decency. A key role for those with power and influence in a decent society is to demonstrate what’s acceptable, and when they don’t, conventions are not enough.

Conventions, decency , and decorum are expectations, not laws. To break them is not illegal, but rather just ugly. And sad.

Our collective tolerance has been too weak. The ‘paradox of intolerance’ is the problem on two fronts. First, in being too tolerant of the intolerant. But secondly and almost more importantly, because the tolerant are held to a higher standard. Those who hold decorum and decency within them expect of themselves to follow these conventions, and are upset but more tolerant of those who do not, in comparison to the expectations they place on themselves.

It’s a slippery slope because bad faith actors are given too much leeway to say and share things unbecoming of themselves and the roles they play in society. And so it takes a lot less effort to lack decency and decorum than it does to uphold it.

Agency, not information

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One of my favourite quotes comes from Derek Sivers,

“If more information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.“

I was reminded of this in a video shared with me yesterday morning, “Can Paper Stop Tyrants?“. In it the vlogger, Tad Stoermer, shares:

“Too many people are still talking as if words act on their own; As if law acts on its own; As if constitutions act on their own; As if conventions just magically act on their own. They don’t, people act…”

He sees the futility in people waiting for action against tyranny… which simply is not coming. Then he continues with something he was told by European literary scholar, Dr. Julia Holloway:

“Evil continues when people convince themselves that stopping it is somebody else’s job… What is missing in our time is not information, it’s agency. It’s the capacity to see suffering as real, and then understand that action is required. Her point was that a culture that devalues the humanities also devalues the habits of empathy and moral imagination that make action possible.”

We seem to live in an era of outrage, whereby there is some expectation that outrage itself is action. “Can you believe this is happening?” is not a statement that prevents something from happening at that point, or in the future. Yet, that seems to be the stance most people hold.

Outrage without action is a loud but impotent form of acceptance. 

It holds no agency, and does not promote change. When conventions are broken, it’s easy to be upset, but conventions are only conventions because good people hold them up as such… and it’s that ‘holding them up’ that just isn’t happening.

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*Update: I read this by Chris Williamson after posting, and it seems too fitting with this post not to share:

“The gap between words and actions has never been bigger.

You can be the least virtuous, meanest, most dishonest human on earth, but if you say the right things on social media, the world will be unaware.

No one stress tests the words coming out of most people’s mouths.

Which means that appearing good becomes more important than being good.

Performative empathy is more rewarded than genuine empathy.

Posting about mistreated groups is more incentivised than helping mistreated groups.

Words have become more important than actions, because you can tweet the words without needing to do the actions.

It’s the path of least resistance for everyone.

This isn’t me saying that you can’t do good whilst posting about it online.

But that many (maybe even most?) of the people who proselytise about how virtuous and caring they are, and how it’s everyone else who is evil/malignant/the enemy, are allowing their morality to stand on the shoulders of limited scrutiny.

Beware the people who only say good things, but don’t do good things.“

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In living satire

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A few years back I heard someone say that we are living in the timeline that is the laughing stock of all other timelines, and I’m routinely reminded of this.

I read a quote from the leader of the most powerful nation in the world today, shared in a social media post commenting on it, and my BS detector went off. This had to be fake… satire to anger those not intelligent enough to get the joke! So I went onto the web version of this man’s social media propaganda machine that bears the word ‘Truth’, (again this screams satire), to see if the quote actually came from the horse’s mouth.

It did.

He actually said this ridiculous statement. I know what you want to ask. I know I’m being too vague, and you are wondering, ‘What did he say this time?’ But here’s the sad truth: I could have written this a week ago, a month ago, a year ago… the only thing that would be different is the quote itself. Not the fact that it’s so obtuse that it is offensive. Not that it’s a disgrace to the office he holds. Not that it’s so off colour that you’d think it was satire if you didn’t read it at its source.

So here we are in living satire. Living in a joke of a timeline, where we can’t distinguish the difference between the truth and what is satirical, fake news shared on ‘The Onion’. And here I am writing a post that will be just as relevant a week, month, or year farther into our comical, if not sad timeline.

Intentionally disconnected

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Is it just me that has been intentionally disconnecting from the news and even social media around the war in the Middle East?

I truly understand my privilege in saying this, since I don’t have loved ones in jeopardy. And understand the desire of some people to know what’s going on because there are global ramifications. Yet I find myself unable to concern myself with the political posturing, the doublespeak, the justifications, and the outrage. I feel like I don’t have the mental capacity to either partially engage and feel insignificantly informed or to delve in and be fully informed… and ultimately powerless to do more than fill my brain with visions of destruction and violence.

Even though I usually choose to ignore the negativity of news, I still tend to keep myself updated on global issues and major news stories, but I’m struggling to engage right now. I find it too disheartening.

It makes me question the humanity of humans. That as a species we can construct such diametrically opposed ideologies; that we can live in societies that value greed over the welfare of the community; that we can choose leaders who do not care for the people that elected them into ‘service’… these are things I don’t understand. Or rather, things I don’t want to believe that humans could value more than peace, love, and kindness.

And so for now I lack the capacity to engage. It seems like a futile activity that will anger and upset me, with no gain. It is rare for me to actively choose to be uninformed, but right now is one of those times.

Keeping the faith

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Religions around the world are losing followers. But people are seekers, they want to believe in something. And while there are downsides to religion, including fanaticism and blind following of misguided faith leaders, there is also a warmth of community, a comfort of shared values, and a wonderful sense of belonging.

Atheism and often the path it can lead to nihilism don’t fill the voids a loss of religion can leave behind. And I think that’s why we see blind faith emerging that doesn’t seem to make sense to many.

Why on earth would someone in 2026 join a community of flat earthers who have to literally ignore volumes of data in order to believe what they believe? Maybe because the community is so inviting to anyone who believes?

Why would someone defend unnecessary violence, or even terrorism in the name of God or country? Maybe because they feel othered, or fear being othered. Maybe they feel hurt and seek vengeance? Maybe they feel the government is too heavy-handed or not heavy handed enough?

Why would someone follow a leader who does things they would previously have been upset about? Maybe there is one pillar that leader stands on that supports their beliefs more than any other transgression that leader might be accused of? Maybe they feel community, shared values, and a sense of belonging are all missing in their lives because their waning beliefs in a broken religion can no longer fulfill these needs.

When people can’t seem to hold onto their religious faith, where else do they put their faith?

It seems today that it goes to all the wrong places.

We need a new kind of religion, one that is inherent in most faiths already, but often masked by evangelical fervour, threats of secularism, misinterpreted scripture, literal interpretations of metaphors, among other reasons justifiable by the keepers of the faith. That inherent idea common to all faiths, the somehow lost idea, is that we are all the children of God, and that we should be kind, caring, and even loving to all God’s children.

If that was the underlying premise of ‘our belief systems’ (intentionally plural) then the best thing we could do is to keep the faith. But when religions and more specifically religious people, focus on differences, and when charismatic leaders decide that hate, separation, and false prophecies are the goal, well then our belief systems rise only to crumble.

This is the path we are on, not an increase in atheism, because atheism is not a belief system to swap another religion for. A thing to ‘not believing in’ is not a replacement for a faith. And so what we are seeing is a rise in people looking in all the wrong place to feel safe and then blindly, misguidedly keeping the faith.

From comedy to sad reality

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I first saw it as a joke on TikTok, African content creators making comedic posts about sponsoring needy children in America. I got the humour, Americans not being able to afford healthcare is a serious concern. After growing up seeing ‘sponsor a child’ ads on TV I can remember my parents putting a picture of a kid we sponsored, to help feed and educate her, on our fridge… to see this same sort of thing about a kid in America is clever satire.

Today that satire came to life. Sitting in a hotel room, watching an American movie television station with my wife, we saw an ad with a bald little boy being featured. A voiceover of his mom shared how hard it was to have her child diagnosed with cancer. Then the true purpose of this ad came to life, this was an American hospital asking for monthly pledges to change a young kid’s life. This is no longer comedy, it’s pure tragedy. An American hospital is asking for $19 a month to change the life of a young American child.

It’s no longer a comedic bit… This is the reality we live in today.

The moment I’ve been waiting for

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I wanted it, but I didn’t think it was going to happen. Last February I wrote ‘Schoolyard rules’ and basically said that unlike in the movies, in the real world the bully usually wins.

I ended that post saying,

“If we want to see the feel good movie ending, it won’t be one hero protagonist saving the day. No it will be the band of brothers all standing up to the schoolyard bully. It will be all the kids in the schoolyard saying, ‘That’s enough!” It will be his own little gang deciding that he’s not worth supporting. It didn’t happen the first time around, maybe it will happen this time… but I’m not betting on it. I’m looking around the school yard and I just don’t see enough kids banding together, and I definitely don’t see enough adult supervision.”

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at The World Economic Summit in Davos was a call to action, an invite for a band of brothers to take action. The only question now is if we get the movie ending or if the moment is lost in cowardice… and the bully still wins.

I’m hopeful.

Abnormally Normal

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If I wanted to make light of the sense I’m feeling, I’d say that I feel ‘a disturbance in the force’. Or I’d reference that meme of a dog in a house fire, sitting at a table having coffee, as if the world is fine.

But the new normal is not normal. The dichotomy of politics, the hatred between religious extremists, the focus on vengeance and public shaming in social media, police violence against citizens, the inability to share middle-ground opinions without fear of being ‘othered’ by both sides of the political dichotomy… it’s like we’ve slipped into a dystopian movie, and we are left wondering if this is real life?

It is.

We are bearing witness. We are seeing the collapse of modern society. Sovereignty used to matter, it doesn’t matter anymore. Neighbourly love used to matter, it doesn’t anymore. The rule of law used to matter, it doesn’t anymore. Civility, etiquette, respect, and even kindness used to matter, they don’t matter anymore.

And yet in our day-to-day not much is different. We can rant because we don’t like what we see, or we can move forward blissfully and blind to the world beyond our own existence. Our tolerances vary, but the shenanigans that alter what’s normal in society seem to slip greater into the abnormal without us being able to influence it in any way.

Pick a decade after WWII and tell me how it was more abnormal than what we are seeing today. I can’t.

When I say, “We are seeing the collapse of modern society,” I am not being hyperbolic. I’ve only mentioned social/political abnormalities, without mentioning climate change, microplastics, artificial intelligence, or even cost of living and the decline of the middle class. Factor all these things in and the new normal is anything but normal. Except that’s exactly the point… somehow this is what normal is.

Beliefs trump intelligence

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Is it a feature or a bug? I don’t know, but what I observe is that human beings allow their beliefs to trump their intelligence.

I saw it first hand with my dad. In many respects he was the most intelligent person I ever met. He designed a process to chemically leach platinum out of recycled electronics and catalytic converters; He designed a nuclear powered airplane; He created a perfect solution of diesel fuel and water that he ran in diesel motors… And he was also a doomsday-er convinced that the end of the world as we know it was going to happen in his lifetime. It didn’t. But that belief consumed so much of his time and energy.

And so it is with religious faith. Intellectually bright people will believe their scriptures are the actual words of their God.

And so it is with conspiracy theorists, who are often smart people, yet they let their beliefs cloud over any counter arguments or logical insights that don’t match their beliefs about the conspiracies they harbour.

And so it is with political extremists, who can only see the benefits but not the consequences of their polarized views.

And so, it would seem, it is with all of us. We hold strong beliefs about the world we live in and we blindly allow our beliefs to influence our thinking, bias our views, and undermine our own intelligence.

Is it a feature that helps us find community and bond with like minded people, or is it a bug in our intellect that sabotages our ability to think logically and objectively? Again, I don’t know. What I have come to realize though, is that our beliefs seem to have some hierarchical level of control over our thoughts and actions that upstages and even eclipses our intelligence.

Drinking poison

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I just read this and it kinda hit hard:

‘Never again should anyone be amazed at how Jim Jones got his followers to drink poison.’

I’m not a fan of naming killers on my blog, I think they get too much attention by name, and that glorification permits others to seek the attention. But we are living through an era where millions of people are polarized, and I’d say misguided. They blindly follow a leader whom can do no wrong in their eyes. And this is utterly and completely dividing a once powerful nation.

Worse yet, the media passively permits it. It allows blatant lies to be shared as news. I can’t decide if it’s simply complacency or if it is equally the fault of ignorance. Complacency from some for sure, from the ones that willfully spew the propaganda and rhetoric. Ignorance perhaps from others wherein there is a belief that the viewer sees the lie, and can discern truth from lies themselves… but many can not.

So the painful truth is that the poison is fed to the masses, and too many are drinking it.