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1984 …
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… by George Orwell. Anyone read it - and if so what were your impressions and is it relevant to what is happening today? The condemnation and destruction of history, the suppression of ideas that oppose the ideals of the ‘woke’, and the insistence in some quarters that two plus two really does equal five - all of that I think we are now witnessing.
Your thoughts?
Your thoughts?
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Pixie, //You can agree something is due for a change, without it being an insult or apology. We just move on.//
I don’t agree that we are ‘due for a change’ - and I don’t believe that airbrushing history, destroying statues, removing portraits, and scrubbing words that form part of the great literature of our society from a college wall, is moving on. I find the very idea that we should demonise the past of this great country an insult. When those demanding that our nation concedes to this wanton destruction stop taking advantage of the benefits brought them by the men who built what they have now I might - only might - start taking them seriously. Until then I will regard them for what they are - the leaders anarchists bent on creating a society that, in truth, few of us, black, white or purple with green spots, would relish - the followers useful, if naïve, idiots. Be careful what you wish for.
I don’t agree that we are ‘due for a change’ - and I don’t believe that airbrushing history, destroying statues, removing portraits, and scrubbing words that form part of the great literature of our society from a college wall, is moving on. I find the very idea that we should demonise the past of this great country an insult. When those demanding that our nation concedes to this wanton destruction stop taking advantage of the benefits brought them by the men who built what they have now I might - only might - start taking them seriously. Until then I will regard them for what they are - the leaders anarchists bent on creating a society that, in truth, few of us, black, white or purple with green spots, would relish - the followers useful, if naïve, idiots. Be careful what you wish for.
Ohh it goes further than taking down a few statues and altering History Naomi. Oxford University has also given notice that it intends to ....wait for this one......decolonise Maths and Science.(Interpretation....make it easier) How do they do that? Add a bit of dark matter to the speed of light? You know to slow it down a tad and make it easier to do the maffs? No more Boyles or Charles law. Instead of working out the pressure of a gas and comparing it to the size of a vessel they can "debate" the relative aspects of the changing "safe space". Or is it that the sciences are different if you are black? Must confess I never thought the Asians, Israelis, or Arabic people had any trouble with Maths and Science in the first place.
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"// I find the very idea that we should demonise the past of this great country an insult. //
For someone so concerned about the risks of airbrushing history you seem surprisingly flippant about the less-than-pleasant parts of it. "
Just to expand upon this -- there is clearly a problem with portraying everybody in our history, and for that matter the history of every other country, as wholly evil and beyond redemption. You will have no argument, too, on the idea that it would be wrong for you to apologise for the sins of those long-dead. But:
1. If we can only apologise for what *we* did, then we can only take pride in what *we* did too. Being proud of our past can be and indeed is as dangerous as being ashamed of it. Be neutral, instead.
2. None of this undermines the idea that we should strive to be better than our past, to avoid the mistakes: the callous, institutional disregard for anybody different is disgusting and we should make sure that it stays where it belongs, as something we can only look back on.
It seems to me that this must lead to us continually asking that question. Is the racism of the past truly still of the past, or is it part of our present? There is plenty of evidence to suggest that yes, it still is, sadly; something that ran so deep for so long is not going to disappear so quickly and conveniently.
Statues and symbols do play into this: the choice of who deserves a statue, and where it is put, is inevitably a question of how we view our past, and inevitably ties in to how we see ourselves in the present.
For someone so concerned about the risks of airbrushing history you seem surprisingly flippant about the less-than-pleasant parts of it. "
Just to expand upon this -- there is clearly a problem with portraying everybody in our history, and for that matter the history of every other country, as wholly evil and beyond redemption. You will have no argument, too, on the idea that it would be wrong for you to apologise for the sins of those long-dead. But:
1. If we can only apologise for what *we* did, then we can only take pride in what *we* did too. Being proud of our past can be and indeed is as dangerous as being ashamed of it. Be neutral, instead.
2. None of this undermines the idea that we should strive to be better than our past, to avoid the mistakes: the callous, institutional disregard for anybody different is disgusting and we should make sure that it stays where it belongs, as something we can only look back on.
It seems to me that this must lead to us continually asking that question. Is the racism of the past truly still of the past, or is it part of our present? There is plenty of evidence to suggest that yes, it still is, sadly; something that ran so deep for so long is not going to disappear so quickly and conveniently.
Statues and symbols do play into this: the choice of who deserves a statue, and where it is put, is inevitably a question of how we view our past, and inevitably ties in to how we see ourselves in the present.
