Wisdom

Charlie Hebdo, Bullying And Free Speech

January 22, 2015 — Leave a comment

Within an hour of hearing about the Charlie Hebdo massacre I had found out that the only person I know in Paris was safe and sound. She had taught me something about French culture that I had not known before. Cartoons, graphic novels, manga and anime are very highly regarded, if not revered, in France . This is a tradition that goes back decades and I decided to refresh my memory about it and especially the recent history of the Charlie Hebdo magazine. This included looking at several articles which had examples of their cartoons and I could not understand why they were affecting me so.

Days later it hit me – I had seen a cartoon of a Muslim drawn with a hideous and massive hooked nose and the memories came flooding back of the first time I had been called a hook-nose. I was about eight at the time, had no Jewish blood in me and for the life of me could not see any hookiness . But I was bullied relentlessly for the first dozen years of my life – for being a poof, a ponce, being able to read – and with hindsight being taunted for being Jewish was more about a new and different way to bully than anything to do with my ethnicity.

Then it dawned on me what it might be like to be a twelve year old at the beginning of 2015. You wake up to hear that the Prime Minister of your own country is  standing up to defend the rights of people to offend. You can be forgiven for thinking  that every bully and troll is rejoicing to get such approval for their actions from arguably the most important man in the country?
Then the Pope gets involved. He mentions that if a good friend of his were to insult the Pope’s mother, the Pope would punch his good friend. David Cameron responds to the Pope saying this –
‘ I think that in a free society there is a right to cause offence about someone’s religion.’
It’s pretty tough at school for many kids anyway, and being a Jew, Christian, Muslim, or whatever creed often can make life even more difficult. The last thing you want to hear is the Prime Minister saying something that could be interpreted as giving bullies the right to be offensive about people’s religion.
Or the Pope advocating punching.
Respect and tolerance are two words that many schoolchildren must be sick of hearing. And many of them may well be asking two questions. Why is it that, on the one hand the powers that be extol these two virtues, and yet also extol freedom of speech which is so often used  to be disrespectful, intolerant, offensive, provocative, insulting and bullying?
And why is it OK to portray someone of another faith with a hideous and massive hooked nose when it is a caricature in the name of satire but  wrong to do so in other forms of expression?
If I was twelve years old in 2015 I could easily feel a very vulnerable and confused young lad.
The Pope not only defended freedom of expression but also talked about its limits. In the same interview David Cameron described himself as a Christian. Doing unto others as you would have them do to you is a part of the gospel message no bully wants to hear precisely because it would set a limit to their behaviour. Yet neither Pope nor Prime Minister see fit to bring to the debate any contribution that is unmistakably Christian let alone such a relevant key verse – or did such words get edited out? I am sure both  could provide a more Christian answer than advocating punching or offensiveness in the name of free speech.
Freedom of speech is given to both the good and the evil, the respectful and  the disrespectful,the tolerant and the intolerant, the peaceable and the violent, the bully and the bullied. Not every twelve year old will appreciate such generosity.
I can imagine the sarcasm which bullied kids around the world will use when they talk back to their bullies and say that whilst they disagree with every word said, they would sacrifice their own lives in defence of the bullies’ right to be as offensive, provocative, abusive and insulting as they like.
Fancy being a teacher and explaining Voltaire, satire and freedom of expression to your classes?
And as chance would have it, there is  a subject  taught in pretty much every school which is  all about people’s actions and words and how other people react, often violently, to those actions or words. It is called History. I suspect many a twelve year old today  would be baffled that so many grown ups are so surprised and shocked to hear about the consequences of someone’s words or actions leading to a violent response in a country that allows free speech.
But then most children’s conception of an ideal world does not include the right to be offensive, abusive, insulting, disrespectful or intolerant.

2014 you learned i good | New Year’s Resolutions for 2015.

December 31, 2014 — Leave a comment
1) Life Is Not  A Contest.
    You know the sort – every time they play Scrabble the world’s peace-keeping forces are put on red alert. If you tell them you bought a lovely pair of shoelaces today, tomorrow  they send you a link  to their Pinterest page with photos of their comprehensive shoelace collection – which they uploaded last night. And for some people life is a contest from the playground to the grave, an endless saga of compare and contrast – with themselves. Every comment and situation is taken as a direct challenge to their validity, or masculinity or pretty much any part of their life that makes them feel they are important or worthy of whatever position they hold in their own imaginations.
And whatever problem you are experiencing, they have had a bigger, more serious or significant one to help you put  yours into perspective.
# Let them win but make sure they lose you out of their lives. Spend more of your time with people who don’t have to self reference everything.
2) Avoid Tension Seekers.
     Unlike attention seekers who can be entertaining and the life and soul of the party, tension         seekers bring nothing to the party or any other situation except tension. They attempt to bring everything and everyone down to their level. They delight in putting people on edge and on the defensive. They ask inappropriate questions often of a personal nature, talk about subjects normally off limits and are always on the look-out for a chink in your armour which they hope to exploit or embarrass you with. While they are doing all this they hope that nobody notices how lacking they are in social graces, intelligent and stimulating conversation, general emotional development and all the other things that people trying to better themselves strive for.
I sometimes call them ASWATES as they are often Always So Wise After The Event.
Whatever you have been through or are experiencing now, they sure know how to make you and the situation feel worse.
# If you cannot confront them, give up on them as very few people will ever change them.
3) Leave Mountain People Where They Are And Move On.
     My favourite FB post of 2014 (not that there was much competition) read something like                                         ‘Stop crossing oceans for people who wouldn’t jump a puddle for you’
Such Mountain People are very easy to avoid as you always have to go to them, do things their way and generally fit in with them. Compromise,  reciprocity and mutuality just ain’t in their vocabulary. They are  emotionally and socially immovable, and of little use to anyone but their self-serving selves. Often they are like emotional vampires draining you dry of your life force whilst you buy into them being the centre of attention.
At one point this year I looked at all my recently sent FB messages, emails and texts and realised 90% had received no reply. Can you take a hint? Such people’s lives are lived to the exclusion of everybody else’s unless useful to their own ends. Or you weren’t that close anyway.
# Be a potential priority not a potential option.
4) Beware Of People Who Call Themselves Spiritual.
     If you have a spare couple of centuries, read every religious book, all the lives of the saints and       about holy and spiritual people generally. You will rarely if ever come across any spiritual person calling themselves spiritual. People who think they are spiritual are not usually a problem – it’s those who tell you they are. In our 21st century the word spiritual has come to be used in conversation and print mainly by the amoral, either to smokescreen their ultimately selfish behaviour or to establish common ground that proves to be quicksand. They might meditate, go to all the right festivals and lectures as well as read self help books but like Mountain People they worship the same god – themselves.
# It’s not set in stone that you dance to other people’s tunes so give them a taste of your own music.
5) It Is Better To Walk Away And Live Another Day Than To Die Trying To Win.
    Toward the end of June my father went into hospital critically ill and came out worse. About the same time my phone-line was slammed  and  I lost my broadband connection for a month. Unbeknown to me I was about to embark on a four month Kafkaesque odyssey to scrap my car and finish a similar odyssey to change electricity supplier . I was let down by Ombudsmen, The Metropolitan Police, The Consumers Association’s Which magazine, the DVLA, the NHS and the Post Office.
I could have taken matters further but I was reminded of a time a few years ago when I had to re-mortgage my house because of changes to the law relating to pensions. Without any sense of irony my Personal Financial Advisor told me that if I wasn’t happy I could take on the British Government .
There is a chance you can take on the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse with a sling and a handful of pebbles and win  – but realistically?
I could have embraced the challenge and found my unfair share of tension seekers and that sometimes life is a very biased and unfair contest. It is not just Mountain people who never move but also the likes of monolithic organisations with teams of lawyers and shareholders who need to be satisfied. I could have made myself as ill as my father was. Or worse. But I chose to walk away.
 # Save your energy, sanity and health  for potentially more  fruitful days.
6) There is More to Life Than Coping.
     Whilst I did cope with all that happened in 2014, it did make me realise that there is more to life     than just coping.  Are you just about coping?  Waking up from your living nightmare to realise that there more to life than coping is a major step towards defining your goals and future happiness.
# I’ll say it again – there’s more to life than coping.
7) Seek out Peaceable People.
    Peaceable people don’t turn life into a contest. They shun tension and the people who cause it as much as possible. Mountains ain’t on their maps and they rarely if ever call themselves spiritual. Ultimately they are interested in  people and not in what people can do for them no matter what they or you are coping with.
Seek peaceable people out and you will find them happy to compromise, to meet you half way and to give without expecting to receive.
Associate with peaceable people and your stress levels will plummet. Your self image will stop being such an issue. You will find yourself apologising less. Your opinion of yourself will improve. Your opinions will be of interest to other people. Your interests will broaden. Trivia and a life  permeated by soundbites and  social media will recede into the past. Your experiences will be more fulfilling. And ultimately you will feel better, more content and peaceable yourself.
# May 2015 see your life enriched by peaceable people.
P.S. My father is better.