Am I getting old?
I don’t think that I am old. I am 66 years, a pensioner.
I have had a good life so far. Not an exciting life, not a reality-TV show kind of life, but a good one. I had a fantastic childhood, the usual ‘difficult’ teenage years, and then a comfortable adult life.
I had the privilege of going to University when that meant something. I have only been unemployed once, for a relatively short time. I haven’t had big, powerful, meaningful jobs. But that is alright. I was never, ever a ‘career’ person anyway. I have earned just enough to be comfortable.
I am, in fact, very grateful for the life that I had, and am having.
I have been married twice. I am now married to the most wonderful partner a man could wish for.
One regret is that I have no children.
Despite the global population almost trebling in my lifetime, I have seen the world get better and better in so many ways. By any objective measure, all the key indicators have improved beyond all recognition during my life: Death rates; Infant Mortality Rates; Maternal Mortality Rates; Poverty; Starvation all going down, and general ‘Quality of Life indicators’ showing a massive upward trend. I have seen the fall of the most totalitarian, cruel and brutal political system. I mean, of course, communism.
I grew up with the ‘Cold War’ dominating politics and policy in the West. To most younger people that is just history now. And, as the discipline of History has been transformed into a mishmash of post-modernistic nonsense, I don’t suppose they even learn about it anymore.
I have seen the most amazing explosion in technology. There are things, today, in routine use that, even 20 years ago I wouldn’t have believed possible. This has had effects both good and bad I think.
In so many ways the world is a much better place than it was when I was born.
Yes, I took a degree in Sociology at the University of Essex from 1974 to 1977. After that I did some post-graduate work, finally leaving the University in 1979. Later I gained qualifications in Social and Cognitive psychology and went on to teach sociology and psychology to adults.
I loved teaching.
When I took my degree Sociology was, to some extent, seen as a ‘soft’ subject. It wasn’t. The focus was very much on empirical methods. The use of documents and the measuring of social processes. The focus was on how this could be done in a way to maximise the validity and reliability of the data extracted from the raw material using rational processes.
Marxism was, of course, very much present, but the focus was very much on ‘Humanist’ Marxism’. How to develop a theory of Marxism that took account of the individual. But, the course was very open to all kinds of theories as long as empirical data was used and, of course, rational argument.
Even the Marxists, at that time, were prepared to discuss, debate and talk to people with differing views. They attempted to use empirical data and reason. They didn't just assert.
Post-modernism was, already, a cloud on the horizon, a foreshadowing of the coming storm. I discovered Foucault during this period and was wild about him. I still have a tiny, tiny soft spot for him or, at least, some of his work.
I learned a great deal, a very great deal both in the sheer breadth of knowledge and the importance of empirical data and reason.
All that seems to have disappeared from the so-called ‘social sciences.’ It astounds me how utterly ignorant modern students and professors are of basic facts about history, culture and reasoned argument. I can no longer call myself a sociologist and hold my head up.
Psychology, too, although it was always a dubious ‘science’ has disappeared in any real sense.
My politics at that time were various versions of Marxism, sliding slowly into libertarian socialism and finally anarchism. Later I became a left-wing Labour Party supporter but wasn’t very active. Today, if I should call myself anything, I would say that I am a conservative Classical Liberal.
But I don’t vote.
I have come to regard political ideologies as utterly irrelevant to what actually happens in the real world. It is now, and always has been, about power and the struggle for power. This goes under a variety of names and labels of course, but they mean nothing.
Humans in groups will always disagree and a means of resolving disagreements will always be needed. This is politics. Politicians and government are a necessary evil. But I have no respect for politicians. They are supposed to be the servants of the various groups of individuals they allegedly represent. Their job is to administer and ensure the security of the individuals to whom they are accountable.
Anyway, today the political process has become dominated by ideological movements of various kinds, both secular and religious. Maybe it always has been. I think a good argument could be made this is a central part of being human because humans love certainty, predictability and a nice simple narrative to ‘explain’ the world. Ideologies claim to provide this.
Politics - ‘Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’ to quote the greatest playwright ever, somewhat out of context.
These days, of course, one can identify several significant religious movements. Islam, I have raved on about before. The other significant movements can be subsumed under the general heading of ‘progressivism’. Under this heading, I would place all the manifestations of social justice movements and third, or is it fourth, wave feminism, although they are not social and have little to do with justice.
Ideologies tend towards demanding a commitment to a central doctrine and will tolerate no disagreement. They all have dogmatic tendencies, a central creed, saints and sinners, and punishments like public shaming and ex-communication.
‘The question is, who is to be master, that's all’ as Humpty Dumpty says.
All these ideological movements are very similar to each. One could argue that Islam, at least, is honest about this.
The Enlightenment has gone. That short period in human history that seemed to offer hope for the human race and a way out of religious intolerance has gone. And I fear the future.
However within the next 20 years or so I will be dead and gone, soon to be forgotten and all this writing of mine will become even more irrelevant than it is now.
Maybe it is just because I am getting old. Old people, I know, have a tendency to see the past through rose-tinted spectacles and be somewhat nostalgic about the past. That is part of it I am sure. But I would still maintain that my perception of the current malaise is accurate to a large extent. Some can be demonstrated empirically, the rest by using reason. A skill that is almost lost these days.
I suffer from bipolar disorder and, for some people, that is enough to write me off as ‘mentally ill’, but it is worth noting that depressed people tend to have a much more realistic view of things.
I have been excommunicated by people I once thought of as friends because of my views.
So be it.
Anyway, those are my thoughts at this point in my life.
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