We're not allowed to hate others, but we can despise them

Is it okay to openly despise the despicable? To call out what's offensive and ridiculous?

An article in Quillette describes the "training" foisted on employees in the Office of the Ombudsperson of BC. When one press-ganged participant raised questions about the partisan "decolonizing" language being used, he was attacked and shut down by the two-spirit trans trainer. (No, I don't know what two-spirit is either ...)

It seems that in public service jobs adults are treated like delinquent children. (At the same time, actual children are brought up to believe they're mentally ill, with quite a range of phobias, anxieties and traumas to choose from, and if they haven't had any actual trauma in their lives they can always fall back on an inherited "inter-generational" or societal one. 

"Ombuds-" is Swedish for investigator of complaints, but only some kinds of complaints get investigated. In the BC government training session there was a complaint against "hate" and against white supremacy (which, confusingly, you're obliged to hate. ) You know you've encountered white supremacy when you see someone "being on time”, and displaying “manners” or “perfectionism.”

We've all noticed how workers today feel entitled to be late, rude, and incompetent, but those who point it out are being "bullies". Regarding punctuality, remember the phrase "90 percent of success in life is just showing up"? (I'm not going to mention which comic first said it, for we're definitely supposed to hate him.) Now employees don't always turn up (note how often BC Ferries sailings are cancelled due to staff absenteeism). But "being on time" is white supremacy, right?

Children too are taught that if they put down their smart phones and do their school work in school (i.e. their job), they are being victimized and subjected to emotional trauma. Literacy and education are colonialist bullying. "White" values.

There are despicable prejudices folded into all this -- in the way kids are brought up to be fragile instead of resilient and workers are ideologically brain-washed through "training" (bringing to mind Maoist re-education and "self-criticism" camps?) 

Woe betide the employees at the Ombuds Office training who questioned whether trans men who identify as women and are still sexually attracted to women, are lesbians? If you express surprise at this imaginative use of definitions, you're guilty of hate. That means no one can beg to differ or freely exchange ideas, because that would be hate speech and hate speech (aka speech somebody else doesn't like) must be censored. 

So to preserve their jobs, commentators don't "hate" other people -- though they can't help but despise a lot of them.

From "Do Humanities Care About Academic Freedom?" in City Journal: "the three parts of the trio of free inquiry, intellectual diversity, and civil discourse are antithetical to the new holy trinity of diversity, equity, and inclusion."

Handing Over the Future

 It's handy for those in the digital and software industries, but bad news for physical fitness: children's hands don't work like they used to. Like the rest of their bodies in our online virtual world, hands don't get much exercise. They are atrophying, which  causes the newly-identified Hand Fatigue Syndrome.

"Kids' fingers are reverting to the tree-grasping claws of our early pre-human ancestors," warn experts.

Since learning-at-home took over during the COVID pandemic, kids spend even more time online than they did in classrooms, observers note. "We're seeing a new epidemic of hand dysfunction."

Physiotherapists are worried. "I have clients who can't even hold a pen, let alone write with one."

But, "who needs handwriting?" ask educators. "Penmanship is an elitist colonialist concept."

Kids' hands might soon be able only to peck keyboards, not pick up objects. No grasping a ball, let alone throwing one. No turning a door handle, since most doors have auto-openers one need only press. Tapping on digital devices, only the index finger gets a work-out today. 

Fingertips have become insensitive, feeling only smooth plastic surfaces. The brain isn't being fed other sensory information, and brain regions to do with touch, texture and dexterity are shrinking. We are becoming less dexterous (right-handed) and increasingly sinister (left-handed) in our manipulations. 

The word "digital" comes from "digit" which means finger. Fingertips used to be the body's "eyes" on the tactile world, but they are going blind. We live in a push-button world. 

When polled, five out of ten teens reported that physically turning the pages of a book is challenging. "Where's the swipe function?" they ask.

"Finger joints no longer get a work-out, which impacts wrist joints which also have less to do in the smartphone-pecking lifestyle," warn physiotherapists. 

Software developers scoff at concerns. "None of that matters," they declare, "because soon we'll have robots performing most tasks. Artificial intelligence is the future, body-based intelligence an artifact of the dark pre-tech past." 

"Plus, the playing field will be levelled between disabled and abled when everything is done by robots anyway," point out delighted disability advocates. 

Hand-eye coordination will be a quaint notion from our ape-ancestry days, as will the notion of a 'playing field' itself; there will be only online play. No fields. No baseball-catching, no frisbee throwing, no berry-picking in meadows. "We're working on playing on screens by thought alone," enthuse new software developers. 

"It'll come, once we get the right electrodes implanted in the brain. Never mind hands, we'll hardly need bodies at all.