Do I really care anymore?

"The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night."

Nietzsche

I have touched on the themes I wish to write about here many times, to the point of exhaustion perhaps? I just feel the need to try and, I don't know, work through them again, in a way.

Some personal details: I am 66 years old and an English, white male. Yes, I fall into many of the 'non-person' categories in our enlightened times.

I was raised in a very small and very rural village in Lincolnshire, England, in the 1950s and 1960s. And I realise that I am looking back to those times with rose-tinted spectacles of nostalgia and sentimentally. My family for many generations were rural working class, but my father was a long-distance lorry driver in the days when 'long-distance' meant, for example, Glasgow or London, not Berlin or Warsaw.

I passed the 11+ examination in 1964, only the second person in my family to do so, went to Grammar School, 1964 to 1971, and to the University of Essex, 1974 to 1979. I graduated in 1977 with an Upper-Second BA in Sociology. I don't feel the need to defend Sociology as, in those days, it was a very different field to the utter rubbish most of it has become today. To me, the word 'Sociology' has come to mean utter nonsensical 'woke' drivel. However, to be fair, that is mainly in the English speaking world. But, even in my time at University, the first tendrils of the coming post-modern storm of ordure was just visible on the horizon.

I also did post-graduate research after graduation into historical and social structures.

Marxism was present at Essex, of course, but mostly the 'soft' form that was based on the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. For a while I was a serious revolutionary Marxist myself, and then a social anarchist, and then an anarchist of sorts.

But, in my time at University, minds weren't closed, a genuine 'Market place of ideas' existed and the importance of empirical evidence, i.e., reality, was taken for granted. A reasoned argument for a point of view was also expected, not just asserted. Even my Marxist colleagues and I would argue in a rational manner using empirical data. I slowly came to realise, however, that the data was often selectively used and 'interpreted' in particular ways.

Anyway, I have a sort of fantasy home, one that I can never return to. It is a small rural village set in rolling fields of crops. Small fields too, with thick hedgerows dividing them up. It is, of course, hot and sunny with a clear blue sky. There is a long country lane, with grass growing down the middle. The verges and hedgerows are wild and overgrown. There is a smell of grass and vegetation in the air and birds singing in the hedgerows. I am cycling down this road, ecstatically happy, looking forward to my tea, baked beans on toast probably.

So many smells, sounds and sights take me back to that home. But I can never return of course. I know, the frailties of human memory and the strong tendency to remember the good times, but nevertheless, that is, if you like, the 'fantasy' home I yearn for.

After University was over I got married but had no children, and I feel great regret and sadness over that. I taught, both Sociology and Psychology for many years, and some History. For a while, I had a civilian job with the police to help boost my income. That was interesting and all of the officers I knew at that time would be appalled at what the police force has become these days. All of them I knew at that time must be retired, or even dead, by now.

I slipped into a fairly routine life of work and home. My politics also became very conventional. I supported the Labour Party but, at that time, it was a very different party to what it is today.

When Blair became the leader I began to distanced myself from the party.

As I said above, I went through an anarchist phase and that never really died in me. I am fairly well-read in history and philosophy and the lessons and arguments from those fields have always maintained in me a deep devotion to absolute liberty. My time at University, and a growing interest in science, also deepened my commitment to empirical evidence.

Logic and reason have always been important to me too. I became an atheist in my teenage years, and I still am. I know this is disliked, even hated, and misunderstood by many people I otherwise agree with, but that's the way it is, sorry.

I had, I believe, a commitment all through my adult years to liberty, reality and reason and, for most of that time, most of the left actually had a similar commitment.

I turned back to a philosopher I had always admired, J. S. Mill, and began to move towards a Classical Liberal position. Mill was quite popular with the left in my University days by the way, when they cared about free expression. Then I discovered Ayn Rand, Max Stirner and the Austrian School amongst others. These had a profound impact on my thinking.

I found myself disagreeing more and more with the left and agreeing more and more with people I would once have argued against. I think the Overton Window was moving more and more to the left after about the year 2000, but my position basically remained the same, so I found myself moving, ipso facto, more to the right.

Today, I am in despair. The values that I, basically, stood for all my life are being destroyed, derided and corrupted. We are a few steps away from a genuinely totalitarian society. The values that built the greatest civilisation in history are being chipped away, well, more like, jackhammered away. The people doing this and the networks of power that support them do not know what kind of society they are creating, and I hope that they enjoy it.

There is a sliver of hope I think. There exist many pockets of 'resistance' and the left will, eventually, eat itself. There are signs of that already. But what destruction will be caused in this process?

I think there is hope, too, outside the Islamo-'Woke' nightmare that is developing in these times. I still believe that those responsible for this are a tiny minority with very loud voices, and the squeaky wheel gets the grease of course, or as we say over here, empty vessels make the most noise. And I believe that the majority of 'ordinary' people find these developments amusing and largely irrelevant. Ordinary, decent, people have to use time and energy living their lives and to follow their dreams of homes, children, holidays, material goods and whatever else they desire. Those that dwell in the 'woke' bubble have no conception whatsoever of the day to day lives of ordinary folk and fail to see just how much their lives, those in the bubble, are dependent on the efforts of the working classes.

These trends have also been magnified by social media and the sheer speed that bad ideas and utter ignorance can be spread. I would also argue that social media has created a space that encourages quick responses that are not thought through and with a childlike focus on 'feelings'.

I will not excuse myself, either, from being too emotional at times and being too quick to post items that are not totally the truth. I feel ashamed about that and try to control my more basic reactions.

I have written elsewhere on the phenomenon, the 'monsters of the id' have been released.

I am also particularly sad about:

1. The utter ignorance and disrespect that is shown to the many 1,000's of people, both famous and unknown, who gave their time, energy, resources and sometimes their lives to creating Western Civilisation. Yes, they all had feet of clay but, who doesn't? We are all human and we all have the imperfections of human nature. The sheer childish manner in which the crudest form of black and white thinking is used here makes me truly, truly despair.
   
2. The unbelievable depth of ignorance of  'the woke'. It is fractal ignorance, no matter how far down you go there is even more ignorance. The lack of knowledge of the details and subtleties of history, philosophy, literature, art, music, literature and even science makes me very sad indeed. The education system in the West appears to be dead.

What worries me very much is how the social media giants have also become 'woke' and are aiding the movement toward totalitarianism, how much power the big IT corporations now wield.

I realise this is a sketch and a bit thin, but I could deepen many of the points I make here.

But all these developments have created in me such feelings of despair, loss, disappointment and, yes, anger. Everything I believed in and argued for over most of my adult life is being simply thrown away. I really don't care much anymore, and am pleased that I am the age I am.

As I said, I am 66 years old. I could live another 20 years or so if I am lucky. Well, I say 'lucky', but given the way the world is moving, I don't know if lucky is the right word here.

I will admit to being afraid of the future, partly because I am an old, white, gammon male with the wrong opinions and beliefs about .. so damn much.

Maybe I am too pessimistic? Maybe this period will pass? Maybe the 'woke' will begin to see the issues and problems with their viewpoint? Maybe they will grow up? Maybe the next generation will reject the 'woke' ideologies? Maybe people will simply have had enough? It is very possible that this will happen, it has happened before. But, as I said, what damage will be done before then?

Si vis pacem, para bellum

¤

Islam delenda est