Saturday 23 April 2016

Flood Gates

I'd like to preface this post by saying it isn't a post of acquiescence. I'm still doing my thing, I still stand up for my rights with tiger like fierceness, I still have plans to be a thorn in the side of my government, etc. This post is mostly one of observation of the world around us and of course my usual self reflection. So with that being said...

Sometimes I feel like I'm trying to hold back the ocean with my hands. There are countless things that make me feel this way, and I feel like I've been inundated with them the last few weeks and months. First of all there is what is going on socially. It doesn't matter if I'm scrolling down my facebook feed, listening to the news media or hearing conversation in the room I'm in I cannot avoid wondering "What the hell is going on? What are these people doing/thinking?".

It's partially my own fault, I've apparently surrounded myself with politics. It seems impossible for me not to though, because I think politically. If I'm passing some time playing a video game, chances are the things going through my mind are inherently political. It's usually about the rights people have, or don't have, my own rights, how people are treated in our society, etc. So I get that I could possibly never have to worry about these things if I were to stick my head in the sand but at the same time I feel like what is the point of being alive if not to help yourself and others live better? So I always return to thoughts of people being harmed. It seems like the only thing anyone is being liberated from these days are their own lives or rights as human beings to live those lives.

So what am I talking about? The first that comes to mind is what the powerful are doing to the powerless. This manifests itself in countless ways. The bathroom shenanigans going on in North Carolina, something my federal government tried to do here country wide several years back which makes me wonder how long until it gets attempted again either federally, provincially or locally. Most people probably haven't heard about this, but there has been a law passed federally that does nothing but make the lives of sex workers more dangerous, more fragile. Corporations and billionaires that use their endless wealth to influence the individuals of, and therefore the entirety of, government on all levels to make life better for them while the powerless get tread on or forgotten about or just as often, purposefully marginalized and demonized. Something that I naively thought was mostly an American problem but have had it thrust into my knowledge that it happens, not just in Canada, but the very city I live in.

That's three examples, but I hope I'm getting my point across. The list of things are infinite and they are not in the past. The way we've treated indigenous people in my country, particularly the women. For that matter the way society treats women in general. Roman catholic priests and young boys, abortion,  rape victims, corrupted economics, Flint Michigan... I could keep going long enough to find out if blogger has a word limit or not.

To be honest, you have to let all of these things just wash over you, how can you not? If you were to let everything hit you how could you function? How could you not end up a heap of tears feeling for all of these people, if not a ball of rage? At the same time though, I can't help but feel like someone has to think and feel these things, it's too obvious that not enough people do. That does not mean we can't, every single one of us, acknowledge what is happening and at the very least have an open minded and caring frame of thinking for all of the purposeful violence and oppression that is happening. Which brings me to my other point, the non-players.

The non-players as I just called them are the people with no direct link to the issues that come across their consciousness. I see these people occasionally in the media, like when a random interviewer asks a random celebrity about an issue in current news or politics that they really have no information on but yet feel like everyone needs to hear their opinion. I also see these people in my friends or facebook or overheard conversations as I pass through life. I get that they don't know the details of the sex industry, or don't have a transgender person in their lives, or are rich so they don't see the real problems of the poor. What I don't get is the complete inability to let their own opinion rest and have the courage to say "I don't know" at the very least, and to follow up with "please, inform me" at best.

And maybe I'll upset some people by saying this, but it needs to be said again. It is a lack of courage that keeps people from acting that way. It takes a conscious suppression of social anxiety to let people know you have the "weakness" of ignorance. What makes this so detrimental is that their feigned knowledge creates the irradiation needed for the flood of bigotry and hatred and oppression that myself and others like me are trying to keep back with our hands to overtake us. They have no experience, how can they be expected to resist the constant pressure of misinformation and subtle corruption and overt bigotry and hatred?

It is like an old cartoon where the character sees a hole in a dam and plugs it with his finger just to have water spring from another hole that he plugs with a toe, then another hole with his other finger, and etc etc. When will the constant attacks stop? We had a minor victory here in my province where we can now change our gender markers without requiring surgery. (yay!) It is still however near impossible to get said surgery in a country that supposedly believes healthcare is a right of all. In the meantime, we've also had a devastating budget just get proposed that is going to drastically affect many peoples lives. I've read articles that suggest it will force many families into bankruptcy.

So there's that, but at the same time, I mention how I am involved with people in the sex trade, and from select people I hear nothing but platitudes about how they are a scourge to society, not just from cis, well off, white people, but from marginalized trans poor people. For anyone with empathy for all human beings it is a war against an enemy that shifts depending on what battle you're fighting. Frankly it is emotionally exhausting.

I hate feeling arrogant, I really do. I'm human though, so it seems I can't get away from it and I go periods of time feeling like I know more or am somehow better than someone else. I always catch myself and berate myself accordingly and usually put an end to it for good on a given topic. However this is one I can't seem to let go. Every time I find myself in the middle of observing the sorts of corruption, bigotry and hatred I've mentioned here (and the infinite list I haven't) I can't help but think I have the right answer and the people involved are just idiots. Is it so hard to acknowledge every person is different? That every person you meet has lived a different life and has a different perspective than you? And is it so hard to jump from those thoughts to "All of these lives are equally valid. I don't own the key to life."? Apparently it is, apparently it's something that only a handful of people truly get right. I'm not perfect with this, I too from time to time find myself caught in a bad opinion of someone based on nothing. But it takes nothing more than time and I'll realize I'm being an idiot and I make adjustments accordingly.

That's what makes this so frustrating to me. It seems like the end to this war from all sides is so simple it seems childish. Literally all we need to do is get along. That's it. To recognize that the way someone lives their life does nothing to what life means to you. But can people do this? It seems no. can it possibly happen that people can be convinced this is true? Again no. And what really worries me the most, can people learn this before we end humanity? Again, I feel like the answer is no.

3 comments:

  1. Hmm. Let me add a provocative comment. Note that this is not intended to minimize your outstanding work as a promoter of social justice, not even intended to add another layer of frustration, but just detaching the viewpoint a little from the dirty, smelly reality and looking at it in a different way — one that is not really 'better', as you will see.

    Democracy is a form of utopia. Nevertheless, it's the kind of utopia which we strongly and fiercely believe in, and not only that, we're actively engaged in building it. In fact, I think that we might claim that from all other 'utopias' that have been attempted in the past, democracy has shown a rather good track record of being actually implementable — in a sense, we might claim it's the 'first real utopia' that we humans have managed to implement, after so many historical failures in the past. This is not to say that it's 'perfect' just because it's an utopia: of course it isn't. But, as the old saying goes, it's the best form of society after all others.

    Modern democracies are based on two main pillars (to oversimplify the issue, of course). The first is that all humans have the right to equal opportunities. That right is supposed to be inalienable and embodied in constitutions and laws. One might argue that we have many more rights (like 'freedom', 'privacy', and so forth) but I usually subsume all human rights in that 'right to equal opportunities' (again, to simplify discussion). The other pillar is freedom of expression, which of course includes freedom of speech, which in turn can be used to point out where the society is not providing equal opportunities. In a sense, therefore, freedom of speech is the mechanism we have to correct inequalities — mostly by pointing them out.

    If you look at this oversimplified model of modern democracies, you can recognise that at least most democracies are trying hard to do their best in establishing themselves as a successful utopia. Of course, there are still big differences between all those attempts. Democracy in India or Brazil are not the same as in the UK, Canada or USA; and even the 'kind' of democracy among those three examples vary a lot in the details. And one might put a few question marks after 'democracies' like, say, Russia or Iraq. But my point is that at least, to a degree, there are attempts to somehow implement those two pillars, at least to a degree. One might even assume that in a few decades even China might be a 'democracy' (using my definition) — assuming, for instance, that anybody in China has equal opportunities to become elected, and that freedom of speech gets less and less suppressed — even though it might look substantially different from what we are used to think as 'Western democracies' (I can only hope to live long enough to see that happening — it's certainly not the case today. But even China is much better in 2016 than it was in, say, 1989).

    So... where is the catch? Basically, democracy unfortunately assumes that this 'equal access to opportunities' and 'freedom of expression' are used by educated citizens, and that's why all democracies, within their respective national abilities, try as hard as they can to educate their citizens — providing as many opportunities to all to achieve 100% literacy.

    Why is that so important? Democracy, as an utopian form of government, requires knowledgeable citizens to truly work. To be aware of the opportunities you have, you need knowledge. To be aware of when those opportunities are being removed, you need information. To be able to speak out loud against those violations of one of the basic pillars of democracy, you need to know and understand where exactly the violations are (and of course you need to know how to successfully employ your freedom of speech to call out those violations publicly and get them to stop).

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  2. Here is the catch, though: not all humans are able to acquire that amount of knowledge and information. More bad news: it's not even the fault of the government (or of the society itself), they try hard. They really try. And the worse bit of news: dang, humans are, on average, very stupid creatures.

    Here is where I touch on your own words, that people listening to you often think that you're arrogant. Maybe you are, I have no idea, not having met you in person. But I think that what comes out as 'arrogance' in others is actually just what I call 'above-average intelligence' and nothing more. In other words: you're truly a member of the utopia called democracy — you know your rights and the rights of others; you are able to successfully recognise when those rights are being violated; you can reason and understand why that happens, point out the causes, make amends or at least suggestions for change; and you are able to express yourself freely (and competently, as your blog shows so well!) and reach an audience to point out what's wrong and turn the tide back towards more equal opportunities.

    Unfortunately, the vast majority of your fellow citizens are completely unable to grasp what you're talking about. And yes, I'm not really talking about those poor unfortunates who dropped out from school for some reason; I'm really talking about all layers of society, including those poor clueless celebrities, politicians who never really worked in business (but made politics a career), or even university professors who might have huge IQs and be candidates for Nobel prizes, but lack the 'democratic intelligence' that allow them to take a look at the world around them.

    It's unfair (or even offensive) to call them stupid? Well, I love the definition given by Carlo M. Cipolla The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity — a stupid person is someone who harms themselves as well as others, through ignorance, and that is the most dangerous kind of human being. Cipolla — if you haven't read him, do that, it's refreshing to read — meant that as a humorous, non-serious essay (in the good old tradition of Italian academia, where high-brow professors routinely publish the most absurd ideas disguised as 'academic papers' merely as 'fun'). However, even if it was meant as a joke, Cipolla actually grasps quite well the way human beings act and think. Stupidity, as the ability to harm yourself and others, is much mor dangerous than merely 'ignorance' or 'naiveté' — those human beings who, due to their lack of ignorance, harm themselves while benefitting others (I'm still quoting Cipolla). Ignorance can, to a degree, be eradicated — through acquisition of knowledge. Someone who is actively interested in benefitting others, but who, due to ignorance, is constantly harming themselves more and more, can have their actions reverted by getting educated about a certain topic or issue. Stupid people (and that's why they are so dangerous) not only are unable to understand the issue (for several reasons, and, as said, IQ doesn't even need to be one of them — it often isn't), but they don't even see that their own actions are harming themselves (and not just others).

    So... the assumptions of democracy (yes, this is also a corollary that you can extract from Cipolla) are that human beings are either intelligent (actively working towards benefitting themselves or others) or at least naive/innocent/ignorant (wishing to benefit others but not knowing how to do that without harming themselves), which means they can be educated successfully — and that's the role of a government promoting democracy among its citizens. Yes, there will be a few 'villains' (those who harm others to benefit themselves — you know, politicians ;-) I mean criminals! Same thing :-D ), but these are supposed to be a minority and dealt with swiftly.

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  3. The problem is that society is mostly composed of stupid people...

    So... essentially we are trying to 'retrofit' an utopian ideal (a democratic and egalitarian society) on top of a bunch of people who — having a vote! — are pretty much clueless about the harm they're doing to others and to themselves. Some of those people might be 'won over' through information spreading — education, if you prefer — but most will not even know what to do with that information. Because democracy is about equal opportunities, it requires that everybody thinks for themselves — and not get 'herded' like mindless animals. This means that those who are clever enough can easily subvert the system in order to turn it to their own benefit — by abusing the 'stupid' people, who are unable to understand that they are being abused —and there is not much we can do about it, since democracy has few mechanisms to deal with those who are not aligned with its mindset.

    It is said that the biggest drawbacks to democracy is its ability for anti-democratic institutions to freely express their opinions publicly — and even rally people towards the 'cause' of destroying democracy. That's definitely one of its biggest problems. But I believe that a much bigger one is that democracy, to work correctly — i.e. to be able to provide equal opportunities to all its citizens, as well as freedom of speech to all — requires a certain mindset, which, in turn, is the result of education but also natural skills, talents, and, most importantly, personal interests. Unfortunately, we don't have those kinds of people living in a democracy — or rather, we do have them, but they are a tiny minority, easily displaced by the vast majority of mindless drones...

    Plato's Republic presumed that only philosopers became rulers, and, contrariwise, every ruler had to become a philosopher to keep their job. If we replace 'philosopher' by 'able to apply reasoning and logic to solve problems to benefit others and themselves', then we can see that Plato's utopia is not very different (only in that aspect, mind you, I don't advocate a literal interpretation of all of those suggestions) from modern democracy. Plato, however, recognised that none of the countries in his time did, indeed, have philosophers as rulers (and vice-versa: rulers had little interest in becoming philosophers, being far more concerned about how to improve their own financial situation) — and honestly, this is still the case today. Obviously there are a few exceptions to the rule.

    So, to conclude, I'm afraid I would have to agree with your 'three nos' at the end of your article. Even though I can truly see a lot of positive progress regarding world-wide acceptance of trans* rights and trans* people — it has certainly increased from the 2010s onwards, and certainly Laverne Cox and then Caitlyn Jenner have given it a further boost — it seems that there is a limit at how far we can actually go.

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