Freedom From 'Harm' Means Freedom From Labels

You are not fragile (from Latin, frangere, to break). You won't break every time someone hits you with a label. 

You are not a victim, but you live in a spreading victim-culture. So step away from the miasma.

To see yourself as harmed or unharmed is a choice. No need to be on automatic pilot about it. Pilot the good ship "Unharmed". Skim over choppy waters, sail past slings and arrows. They call this "building resilience", and used to teach it to kids. Now schools teach them to worry about their mental health and to find their place in the victim-hierarchy. If they're not put high on the Trauma-Spectrum Disorder Scale, they feel disadvantaged and unprivileged. (And if they don't master this spectrum-game, they'll never succeed in the current University.)

Something will get us all one day ... disease, freak accident, nuclear war ... but until you really are mortally harmed (dead), why not aim to live harm-proof rather than harm-curating?

The Way of the Skeptic rejects group-think labels like "harmed", and its twin, "unsafe". We can choose to ignore labels as we do seagull droppings: unpleasant, but just step around them.

We needn't feel harmed by people who think differently, or look at them as the opposition. Other people's opinions are not weapons trained on you. They are just thoughts. We don't need to fear the thoughts of others; only your own thoughts can harm you.

And no one can oppose you if you haven't agreed to oppose them. Instead, you can agree to live and let live -- safely. Without labels, identity or other. The word "identity" comes from the Latin word "idem", meaning "same" -- like all the members of a tribe. It's better to be freely a no-name brand; be a one-off.

Real Poets Write Wine Labels

"Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down", opined Robert Frost.

Since he said that, poetic structure (not to mention content) has continued to -- let's say -- devolve. Dissolve. Much current verse sounds more suited to a therapy session than a poetry collection. 

"Serious" poets, often trained in Creative Writing departments, get away with turgid, tangled, concept-free feeling-pieces. Reading them is like staggering through a bramble-patch, clawed by cleverness and prickly diction. Let's take another path, think some readers. 

They might try strolling through a wine shop. They might conclude: real poets write wine labels! Some play around with comic sub-genres but most favour the romantic style. Like 18th-19th century Romantic Poets they draw on the language of nature: flowery and suggestive with a plethora of fruity scents and smooth flavours. Phrases like "dark smoky velvet" tempt the oenophile, and adjectives like "clean, fresh, and crisp", and "spicy, peppery, and bold" are popular. 

Wine labels also revel in synonyms and antonyms. So as to please every prospective buyer, presumably, and to tempt every sommelier, wine diction covers several bases at once: "sharp but generous", "balanced yet assertive". They are suggestive, lulling us with promises of the "juicy and tropical", others with the "musky and earthy".   

"Herbacious" is a favourite word; everyone likes some herb or garden plant which the term calls to mind. Its partners in rhyming language would be "vivacious" and the imprecisely teasing "bodacious". When the wine-label poet wants to invoke sensations, the encomium will brim with "hints" of things ... citrus, oak, cedar or honey. Overtones and undertones grace not only the wine but the wine-verse describing it.

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" is one subtext; or perhaps the comparison is with a winter's evening before the fire. "Full-bodied" works for both. 

Alliteration is prominent in the products' names as well. Nature-based like the label descriptions, wineries' names have become whimsical: "Pink Poodle", "Crow Canyon", "The Black Chook" (an Australian reference to Australian poultry). Puns and wildlife are popular in naming, as in "Fish Hoek", "LAB", with a black dog graphic, and "Yellow Tail" (with kangaroo).

British Columbia wineries are not to be out-done in the lyrical/colourful nature-linked name game, offering "Blue Mountain", "Red Rooster" and "Blue Grouse", plus "Wild Goose", "Burrowing Owl" and more ...

What with poetic oenophilia combined with artful label design, a visit to a wine shop is like a visit to an art gallery. Even if you're not a wine drinker you could get drunk on the lyrical language of labels -- rather more than on the contorted ambitions of "serious" verse. And, unlike that (or Coleridge when visiting his dream-caves of Kubla Khan), your dip into the pleasures of wine-verse will allow you a "pleasing finish".

The Necessity of Inappropriate Laughter

If it was appropriate, it wouldn't be half as much fun. There's no such thing as inappropriate laughter of course -- laughter is so automatic that that would be like inappropriate breathing. Laughter bubbling up or bursting forth unplanned is a type of honesty. It bursts as a force of nature, not of manufacture. The world needs that safety valve.

Yet, in cartoons or performance, during a speech or at a party, some people do complain that a joke was "inappropriate". Tasteless it may have been, but it has a function: Neitzsche and other philosophers have mentioned the release of tension and the joy of surprise.

It's socially useful to have the ridiculous laughed at (from the Latin ridere, to laugh). It's more than a personal response, it's a social corrective.

When laughter is labelled inappropriate it's usually about sex, gender, race, religion, or something ending in "ism". One person's laughable "ism" is another's no-go area.

Yet laughter goes everywhere; that's why it's powerful. No one has been able to imprison it -- not chilly religions, dictatorial bureaucracy, humorless teachers or anxious parents, no matter how repressive their reactions are. Laughter Laughs Last.

Think of how dangerous the world would be without it. Neitzsche also pointed out is that to oppose a bad idea, laughter is more effective than anger. If we had only anger imagine how much more violent life would be, how full of warfare.

In former ages court jesters were a professional group. In ancient Greece, under the rule of Philip of Macedon they were linked with Court Poets and Philosophers. Likewise in the English Courts of Henry VIII, James VI, and Charles I, where William Summers, Archibald Armstrong and Muckle John performed respectively.

This was reflected in Shakespeare's plays, with their essential Fools. ("Fool", linked to "folly", comes from the Latin noun follis, meaning bellows -- which are full of air and provide oxygen, like humour does.) Being full of air, someone to be jeered at (Shakespeare also dressed characters in ass ears etc.), the Court Fool could say what no one else could, escaping the murderous censors of the time yet managing to tell truths. 

Some comics do that today. In their act (or writings or cartoons) they present a farrago of material (a "mixed medley", originally meaning a mixture of fodder:  "far-corn").

Humour too is food, for both personal and social nourishment. Spontaneous laughter might erupt when we don't know what to think about something ... and then our subconscious tells us. Conflict is short-circuited, resentment deflected and something else takes the blame ... and escapes. Call it the scape-joke.

My Cat Changed Their Identity

My cat decided to self-identify as human. Human he is, in his own view, whatever the real world might think. The real world (the human-humans with whom he lives) is a nest of wrongthought and denialism, in his view. To be human-identified is his "right", and his most strident miaow repeatedly proclaims it.

Two-spirited and species-fluid, he orders take-out (taken out of the fridge at any time of day or night), and claims ownership of any napping surface (humans' bed, laundry basket, front porch, all keyboards ...). Everyone else is a mere settler on the furniture.

He reserves the right to change his identities and his pronoun-wails at will (e.g. from king-cat to queen-cat, fur-baby to stalking lion, butterfly-batterer to couch potato). It's his right, the wail-miaow reminds us.

When identifying as Hunter, he de-colonizes the garden of rats. When cats of other persuasions enter the garden he avails himself of the right to hate-screech, and then de-platforms them off the fence -- although no other cat is allowed to utter hate-screech. His "positionality" is that the one privileged group is himself. He has no time for any confounding variables, and won't tolerate any concept-creep around it. At least you could never accuse him of micro-aggression, it's macro all the way with him, er ... them.

Perhaps he (sic) suffered betrayal trauma in his kittenhood, we think. Or maybe he has Borderline Personality Disorder due to some early stigmatization while still in the litter. We are committed to being tolerant. There could be a heartbreaking victim-narrative here, a real one; there's no deepfakiness about Chief Cat. 

I think I heard a miaow just now; it was the take-out order miaow. Do we respond too quickly to their demands, we humans ask each other? After all, look how obese they're getting. 

But wait -- sorry -- forget I said that. We don't do fat-shaming here. Fat beings are merely other-shaped ... at least, that statement is as reality-adjacent as we dare to get.

Social Justice Rights -- Friend or Faux?

Are newly legislated rights stemming from Social Justice activism real rights -- or real restrictions?

Beware the Faux Rights Movement. Elected officials hire staff specifically to monitor public opinion. Politicians gauge the feelings of their "base", re-election being their top priority. That's not new, there's always been a "loudest voice gets heard" syndrome -- it's part of democracy -- but it's amplified by the ubiquity of social media. Now, politicians re-frame waffling as "pivoting", and assure us they're "listening", especially to anything demanded by any group called "marginal".

So the new (2020's) loud voices that demand and accuse are the self-identified stigmatized, victimized, racialized, ethnicized identity groups who want recognition (preferably in the form of financial compensation) plus lots of new legislation meant to criminalize other people's attitudes toward them. 

As commentator Matthew Crawford puts it, victim dramas conjure up a "permanent moral emergency" which justifies deepening penetration of society by bureaucratic authority. The authorities hasten to pass laws which limit speech and any expression of dissent about popular victim-narratives. In the rush to limit rights of any group considered "privileged", ever more laws and restrictions are fashioned to re-shape society from above. Yet, in practice the leaders are following the popular movements of the day; they don't risk leading.

Thus, a prime minister can, with a straight face, pronounce that the desire of parents to know what gender ideologies their children are being taught at school, is an expression of "hate". And hate, of course, must be outlawed -- 'though that's a hopeless cause because no one can outlaw emotion. Hate is an emotion, and repressive bureaucracies only stoke it.

Only guard rails protecting the freedom to speak, to air and compare attitudes out in the open, can disperse the build-up of tension and resentment against other identity groups.

An obligatory "rights" movement is the friend of no group. Repeating the slogans of the grievance industry is necessary for officials, to avoid being fired. Many bureacrats, media commentators, and chairpersons have been; so it's a survival tactic. Sincerity however does not survive. Faux allegiance to grievance-groups by politicians and bureaucrats naturally wanting to keep their jobs, is not true help for anyone.  

Humanity's place in the global ecosystem?

The lure of fur, the rabbit-habit,

don't demure, you want to grab it,

you want to be warm, to change your colour,

you want to seem soft and alluring to another.

Bear's hide, sheep's fleece, wool, hair, skin,

you seize on everything you want -- a common human sin.

You dangle 'coon tails down your back, 

and must have feathers for your hat,

you must have eggs from the highest cliff

and want the bladders from bear and bat,

even the hidden oyster pearl and organs deep in a gut.

the crime is theft and the motive gain, the case is open and shut.

You're guilty, Human, you stole, you killed,

you dragged the young from the nest,

you saw the helpless mother aghast -- and did what you do best

-- F.J.

The Skeptic's Guide to Insensitivity Training

Ida Tarbell, the American 19th-early 20th century researcher, biographer and editor of McClure's Magazine, had to calm her staff whenever the owner of the magazine (Samuel McClure) drove everyone mad with his unpredictable bi-polar behaviour. 

"Try not to mind" Ida advised her staff in a soothing voice. An investigative journalist and a biographer conversant with human psychology, Ida seems to have been something of a Stoic philosopher. Her rational moderation would be helpful in today's workplace.

Corporate workplaces compete with each other to be "sensitive" by forcing employees into "training" (as China did in communist-revolution days, through self-criticism and re-education camps). Corporate training too boils down to compulsory self-criticism through "customized coaching" meant to produce "cultural competency" and curb inappropriate behaviour in the workplace. The key bad-words are bullying and harassment. Words that should ring alarm bells for employees are coaching, training, and "building trust". When employers tell you they are going to build trust -- mistrust them. 

This corporate team-building is Sensitivity Training, which aims to promote diversity even as it enforces uniformity. Never trust a thing that is being its opposite. Better to do the real opposite, which in this case would be Insensitivity Training.

How would Insensitivity Training work? Mainly it would do exactly what Ida Tarbell recommended: practice not minding things that you can't change anyway. We're meant to tolerate differences in the workplace? That would seem to mean stop minding that everyone's not the same. Some will be a pain, some delightful, some in-between: diversity. 

Rules of Insensitivity Training

1. Resist group-obsessing about skin colour, ethnicity, and diverse ableisms.

2. Forget "identities".

3. Drop the word "racism" (especially after the adjective "systemic"). Also drop "harm" and "stigma".

4. In the name of freedom of expression, appropriate whatever you like. (Let's call it intersectional creativity.)

5. As far as respect is concerned, respect the right to privacy.

6. Let no manager harass and bully you into giving up your right to introverted non-participation in group whining and parroting.

7. Understand that the core of democratic liberal humanistic civilization is about acknowledging other people's right to express opinions you despise. Then, ignore them. 

8. While it is unkind to express hate, there are times when hearty dislike is unavoidable. 

9. Forget micro-aggression, make your just aggressions adult-sized. Share them when appropriate, and then retreat into dignified silence.

10. Don't get drawn into competitive victim-narratives.

11. Embrace the Enlightenment ideal of merit. Who wants to live in a shabby, meritless world of self-obsessed equitable mediocrity?

12. Claim your inalienable right to walk away from invasive staff meetings to the safety of your own desk.