Culture Wars

Just by saying that the present UK government has seen what encouraging (or at least not discouraging) 'Culture Wars' did for President Trump, I am engaging in one myself. In one sentence I have set half the world against me and the other half for me.

The conspiracy theorist in me (we all have a bit of one) is beginning to think that the divisiveness which seems to permeate every aspect of social life these days is not so much an unfortunate byproduct of cultural change as a covert piece of policy to force it.

When you think about it, the divisive nature of Culture Wars has shifted the polarity of acceptability from one end of the world to the other. It used to be simple to justifiably accuse one easily identifiable sector of society as tending toward fascistic thinking or behaviour, but when  left wing-hotbeds such as university student unions send death-threats to individuals whose only crime is to express the belief that having a sex change does not automatically give you the same rights and insights as a person who was born to be a woman, whether or not she is happy in her body. 

You may, as a white person, deeply empathise with black and brown people, but you have not arrived at the end of a long line of ancestors and  found yourself born into a culture that obliterated your family history 400 years ago and still regards you and your children as some sort of outsiders at the same time as accusing you of not wanting to fully integrate. They still have not yet even apologised for the Windrush scandal, let alone given out compensation. to anyone who they can still be traced in the country they were forcibly sent to. 

There is a woman who has written a book (don't know her name) which advocates a way of discussing this stuff without starting wars. From her brief description of it, I think she suggests asking yourself if you are really giving the evidence against your argument enough scrutiny, or if you are simply amassing bits of evidence which seems to support your way of thinking, whether it is of good quality or not.

She cited a good example: A man had written or expressed something which many people disagreed with and attacked him for. Instead of staying in the same place and saying 'I am right and you are wrong', he selected some of the stronger arguments against him and pointed out their various merits. He published the contra arguments and said that they were the best and strongest - but he still stood by what he originally said.

That is a good way of counteracting the divide and rule tactics which governments all over the world have employed simply to stay in power.