Satire: literary or dramatic form in which human or individual vices, follies or abuses are examined, using burlesque, irony, parody, humour and caricature, sometimes with an intent to inspire social reform. Stories, verses, dialogues for the Satirocene Age from Vancouver Island, Canada. (Posted by F. Jardine or guests)
Thursday 23 June 2022
City Councils Proclaim Anti-Canada Day
The Last Stoics Standing Are the Elderclowns
The CLOWN is an ambiguous figure. S/he goes two ways. The ELDER clown, wearing the famed double mask of theatre, is a seasoned expert at perfecting dual comic-tragic presentation -- being old enough to have seen all sides of life. A clown (also known as the "wise fool" or "holy fool") is a philosopher. Elder ones are often of the Stoic school.
Do schools of philosophy match phases of the life span (and maybe also the eras of human civilization)? Infants are still at one with nature, and humanity's earliest mind-body lore is pagan. Beyond early childhood, which schools match which phases of life?
Adolescence: Nihilism (Morality has no factual basis.)
Early adulthood: Existentialism (Life has no inherent purpose, it's up to the individual to create meaning. Wear weird clothes.)
Early middle age: Hedonism (Pleasure is tops. Seize - and share - the most you can get while you can get it.)
Later middle age: Empiricism (with a topping of Rationalism. Face facts, be logical. Top up your pension, slim down your diet.)
Senior years: Stoicism (Acceptance, inner balance, calmly knowing what you can and can't control, and seeing the humour in it all even in the face of death).
At the Philosophy Cafe the elder-philosophers consider themselves the Last Stoics Standing -- while also falling down laughing.
Visit the Cafe at Just Jests:
https://justjests.blogspot.com/2022/12/chapter-one-epictetus-was-street-corner.html
Combatting Systemic Erase-ism
How can the past be future-proofed, if Systemic Erase-ism blanks it out for current and future generations? Erase-ism doesn't see history as a series of events that have happened, but as an assault on the sensibilities of some people in the present. It re-shapes history as parable ("fictitious narrative or allegory") in defense of dominant attitudes of the present. Once it becomes a creature of ideological opinion-shaping, History as a subject is no longer a scholarly discipline but a branch of identity politics.
The problem is not only that new parables are written to suit contemporary tastes (every generation does that), but that actual historical evidence in the form of documents, memorial sites, graves, archaeological remains, architecture, letters and memoirs are being erased and destroyed.
In every generation, knowledge of the past must survive depredations of the present. If we (the present) suppress parts of our past story considered discriminatory or "unsafe" for some (e.g. "privileged, dominant, colonialist, white, elitist, etc. ...), what will we be leaving descendants and future scholars? The future, where scholarship is concerned, will be blank.
How is this erase-ism accomplished? With displays of diversity-equity. This takes forms we have become used to: statue destruction, vandalism of buildings, removal of inconvenient documents from public archives and libraries, name changes of cities, streets, schools and universities.
This process is common when one regime or zeitgeist replaces another. It can change names and streetscapes, but not the actual facts of what happened in the past, because the past cannot unhappen. It can be unknown however, to an ignorant populace. This is engineered ignorance.
Removing statues of early explorers, politicians, inventors and philanthropists in Canada doesn't remove the fact of their having been nation-shapers. Changing the name of Ryerson University (for example) to Toronto Metropolitan University, doesn't change the fact that Egerton Ryerson the person had enormous effect on Canadian literacy, education, journalism and free speech. It can only erase public knowledge of the fact.
In the past, churches and polite taste muzzled certain expressions of speech, but speech was loosened up during the 20th century -- only to be re-muzzled today. Today we suppress not profanity but ideas that others say make them feel marginalized.
Now, scholars with a different take on history than the ideologically correct one are banned from campuses (exactly the arena where they would be speaking, in an open society). It only needs someone to call their theories "hate" for them to be sent the way of statues: de-platformed.
Next, editors of mainstream media accept submissions only from "disadvantaged" groups. Festivals, conferences and theatres only receive funding if they demonstrate the right kind of "diversity" (i.e. non-diversity). We live in paradoxical times.
Thought can be erased before it even finds expression -- through self-censorship. This is about freedom of speech, debate and analysis among citizens, academics, writers, bureaucrats and officials. Only if we preserve open expression can the past and present be held proof against future erase-ism.
“If we lose our freedom, it will not be because of invasion from without, but erosion from within; not because of autocratic dictators looking to do bad, but parochial bureaucrats seeking to do good.”
— Alan Borovoy, Canadian Civil Liberties Association
Sunday 19 June 2022
The Settler's Ballad for Canada Day
(You know the tune 😊)
Old Macdonald had a farm
E I E I O
and on that farm he made a life
E I E I O
With a bank loan l here and a workforce there,
here a flood, there a fire, everywhere another care,
Old Macdonald settled here
and shaped the countryside
Old Macdonald made the wealth
of Canada though toil,
Old MacDonald fed the crowds
when settling he broke soil,
and Macdonald took a wife
without whom he'd have led no life
Thank Macdonald for our health,
and Mrs. Mac for Canadian wealth
Is it Time to Fly Canada's Flag at Quarter-mast?
As we approach Canada Day, July 1st, shouldn't Canadians, being the most apologetic nation in history, lower the flag? Isn't keeping it at half-mast (where it's been in some public places for over a year) a flagrantly proud and celebratory act for a country that wallows in supposed past sinfulness? That bright red Maple Leaf is flying too high -- shouldn't it be at quarter-mast?
A National Day is a good time for citizens called privileged to gather in corrective camps for performative self-criticism. (Maoist China had nothing on 21st century Canada, when it comes to competitive apologizing.) If you're European/colonialist/privileged you can't be in public life without apology-training because of the things your ancestors did -- like settling, farming, birthing new natives, working, nation-building, crafting a democracy under rule of law and equal rights ...
Apology-training is mandatory vaccination against patriotism -- and even more compelled than pronouns.
Here is one person's experience in the apology game:
Saturday 11 June 2022
A Self-Help Room of One's Own
Virginia Woolf (A Room of One's Own, Hogarth Press, 1929) knew the necessity of solitude, for anyone thinking and working creatively (although it obviously didn't help her in the end).
In a Self-Help Room of One's Own, one helps oneself to private, quiet solitude. You help yourself to the right lighting, by intuitively opening and closing blinds or, at night, turning on a lamp: simple things, on which simple sanity rests. You access personal agency.
You help yourself to a supply of books, music, pictures on the wall that take you away, suggesting other lands, times and dimensions. Special stones, pottery, shells, driftwood adorn surfaces, arranged for pleasure. There's no need to stress about things, in a private Self-Help zone. The light changes, the atmosphere is elastic. Mother Earth herself is changing her atmosphere and climate, and no doubt has her reasons. Finding balance, is one guess.
One changes the climate in a Self Help Room as if it was a personal planet. It is a personal planet: Planet Helped, where one helps oneself to freedom of thought, freedom of choice, freedom from "influencers". This kingdom is governed as a Nostrocracy, meaning its laws are nostrums, nostrums being "our own remedies": private helps for self, self-selected.
Seems an over-simplified view? Sometimes simplicity helps.
Manufactured History
Since History has become too incendiary to remain a scholarly discipline, it is now to be done by "public consultation" -- a bureaucratic phrase which borders on meaninglessness yet is laden with shadowy signaling.
So what does the consulted public think about history? Which parts of the public are being consulted? Who are they being consulted by? Whoever it is, history will go on being itself, already having been itself. We can't change it, we can only either know or not know it. (Are schools still doing anything about knowing it?)
The agendum behind "doing history by public consultation" is to change the "narrative". If once deemed exclusive, privileged or unjust, a slice of history must be suppressed or rearranged, the previous chroniclers fired and a new crew taken aboard.
How is History by public consultation done then?
First you censor inconvenient documents, removing them from Public Archives.
Then you remove awkward memoirs, history books and historical novels from public libraries.
You knock down statues and take portraits off walls.
You turn heritage buildings and historic houses into convention centres for anti-racism training and corrective re-education.
You change the school curriculum so as to cover indigenous history, "marginalized" and ethnic history, but not European, Anglo-Saxon, Enlightenment, Age of Reason and industrialization history. Students are taught by influencers, identity groups and therapists from the "correct" segments of the population. Finally, you change the names of towns, parks, and streets so as to create amnesia about the figures they were originally named after, and the accomplishments for which those figures were commemorated.
(WARNING for traditional scholarly historians: if you advance alternative non-consultative theories of the past you be may charged with Hate Speech.)
Seriously, the most reliable source of knowledge of past eras is well-written memoir (i.e. written by the literate): the "I was there and this is what I saw" genre.Friday 10 June 2022
Writers: See Our Updated Submissions Guidelines
Dear Writers,
Thank you for contacting our literary magazine; please note our Submissions Guidelines:
In your query letter please declare your/thy/their pronouns at the outset. Consider yourself compelled.
Although obsessed with pronouns we don't really like nouns. They tend simply to name what they name -- nominatively -- and then turn out to be triggering to many readers, sooner or later, leading to excessive online unfollow-hood.
Adjectives might be suspect if they lean toward Wrong-Modifying. Verbs too are problematical what with tenses, indicatives, infinitives, subjunctives and other grammatical micro-aggressions for which we have a zero tolerance policy. (Grammar is colonialist.)
Balanced points of view will not be tolerated, as our literary mission is to save society from itself. We are proud of our appropriate (but never misappropriated) bias, and we deal in nothing non-stigmatized. Write from a margin only.
To apply for inclusion on our Yu-tube channel, please note we like our Talking Heads to be empty, because Blank Lives Natter and we offer viewers an exciting line-up of natterers displaying identical Protected Characteristics, and possessing a diploma in Advanced Grievance Studies.
We invite youth (anyone under 37 1/2 -- possibly about to Age Out of Care) who wish to instrumentalize opposition to able-normativity, to submit work via their case-workers. Send an Author Bio including a headshot of your/thy/someone's Therapy Animal (unless it's of a European breed).
Editorial response time will depend on the colour of your skin.
Sunday 5 June 2022
What Makes Common Wealth?
When Queen Elizabeth II inherited the British throne, there were only a handful of countries in the British Commonwealth. Now there are 54. Countries with populations of all races and colours clamour to join, while Canada shrinks from participation in what some call "colonialism".
Britain declared all members of the Commonwealth autonomous in 1926, and Canada joined the structure as a sovereign nation in 1931. Canada had begun life as British North America, and has became progressively more multi-cultural ever since -- a nation of immigrants. We haven't yet repudiated our parentage though, our descent from "the Mother of Parliaments". We've never given up parliamentary democracy, under which political parties are joined by a peace-inducing loyalty to "the Crown". This means that the opposition party in parliament is, although opposing the governing party, nevertheless a loyal opposition under one Crown, which suppresses the "polarizing" aggression we see in political life elsewhere.
Some citizens of Anglo-Saxon background like to celebrate this heritage, as all other cultures in Canada are encouraged to do with theirs -- yet Anglo-Saxon culture is shunned by some as "colonialist". This is ironic, since the Commonwealth originating in Anglo-Saxon (and European Enlightenment) tradition embodies the principles of human rights, gender equality, freedom of expression, sustainable development, and access to health which the "progressive" political classes in Canada now trumpet (although in fact they're a bit shaky of the freedom-of-expression front ...).
Trade, traditions and values, not a formal constitution, holds the Commonwealth together. Members are represented by High Commissioners and the Head of the Commonwealth is not the monarch of Britain. The Commonwealth Charter formalizes the rights-and-freedom values listed above. These things didn't come out of nowhere however. They came through centuries of historical jostling, struggling and philosophizing in Britain, beginning when titled classes whose taxes supported the Crown and its wars demanded power in parliament, and leading to the trading classes who created wealth and industry doing the same, and then the working classes.
This history used to be taught in schools but few current Canadian politicians, voters and commentators seem to know a thing about it. Schools no longer teach it: History is colonialist. Now we have "history by public consultation", which doesn't work well if equally ignorant and biased participants are committed only to advancing their own self-identity tribe. No wealth of commonality in that.
In this atmosphere, Canadians did little to mark in 2022 the longest-ever reign of any British monarch, that of Queen Elizabeth II, who is in fact the most well-known person in the world, and who counter-intuitively became such precisely by not marking territory and asserting self.
This story is reproduced from LITERARY YARD, www.literaryyard.com, 2024/02/10 It's a common fairy-tale theme -- imprisonment in a tower ...
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Handicaps are not failures, and we all have some -- physical, social, educational, circumstantial. They may even signal prowess (the...