ideals – Observations and Misunderstandings

There is a common theme running through our historical education at school. It is usually the simple narrative that supports our national identity and message; that we as a country haven’t really done much wrong. We learn about the two World Wars from the British perspective, the industrial revolution, The Soviet Union and never in a favourable way and sometimes the Napoleonic Wars but are taught about it and him from a very different angle than the French are. Which means every country does it and that is why this isn’t a piece bashing the UK and suggesting we’re wrong in a world of right. There is currently much discussion about Churchill or the philanthropic slave trader Edward Colston and we as a populace are being forced to explore their roles in our national identity with a different set of eyes. This can only be a good thing because to describe someone such as Churchill as the greatest Briton of all time must only ever sugar coat the actions he took that led to people suffering. Equally not everything he did was bad so it’s important to examine him and his legacy from all angles and in a fair way. We live in an age of trial by social media but once the furore dies down I suspect their will be a few historic individuals with slightly different identities than before.

We are re-addressing our own history then and as long as that’s not with corrupted intentions it can only ever be a good thing. It is important to realise though that we are doing so with our modern take on morality and while it doesn’t absolve people of their wrongs it is still important to take into consideration the times in which they lived. That doesn’t entirely excuse them of course because there are plenty of examples of people in their time expressing beliefs more attuned to our contemporary ideals. Slave traders can not be excused when there are so many examples of people trying to eradicate the practice at the time for example. It can be used by apologists as an excuse but it is important to remember that we are viewing a different time when trying to understand previous takes on racism, sexism and power.

Which begs the question of whether we need to take into consideration how future generations may view us now. Will they understand our actions on race, sex, religion or economic productivity and think us simply abhorrent. On the other hand will they view all religion as abhorrent. I have called people fascists in the past in a derogatory way but had historical events turned out differently that word would have a different meaning. Ultimately we have no idea how our societies and our moralities will evolve and how we will be viewed in the future but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take it into consideration. Our behaviour in combating climate change is one such example. If we carry on like this I suspect it’ll be pretty clear how we’ll be viewed. It could be argued this will tie in with whether we manage to overcome neoliberal capitalism and what kind of society we manage to create in the next fifty years. It is easy to criticise people from the past and sometimes rightly so but it’s important now in understanding our own actions that one day we too will be someones past.

We as a species have an inbuilt response to new things, we fear them. There is a practical reason for that and it is rational; new is unknown and unknown could mean danger. As a species we have managed to survive, adapt and evolve to the point we’re at in our evolutionary cycle. I don’t doubt one reason for our success so far has been down to instinctively following that practical approach mentioned above. Is it instinctive though? When we are young children we try to touch or eat anything new, it appears we sense next to no danger in anything, yet as adults we have become cautious if not neurotically fearful. That would suggest we are taught to fear new and unknown things but then puppies and adult dogs mirror human growth fear patterns too. Perhaps puppies learn new can mean danger because sometimes they experience the pain of discovering new things, like the taste of a wasp, or a dogs parenting is just not something obvious to my untrained eyes. Can we then take that further and use it to explain why we are so weary of new sources of information, or even new information that may contradict our previously held beliefs.

I suppose it is probably quite a straightforward idea, we distrust new sources because they are unknown and we haven’t built up a relationship of trust with them. We reject new information because our current beliefs are known to us and with them we have so far survived to this point in life. With them we have safety and life, potentially this unknown new information may lead to danger and the taking away of either our safety or in the extreme our life. There is also the issue of narrative to take into consideration, what doesn’t fit our narrative we are likely to dismiss but I’ll not go down that avenue this time.

I was sent a link to a video on YouTube by a friend who has a differing set of ideals and beliefs about how best we should approach the world than I do. I rarely bother engaging him in discussion anymore because neither of us come close to seeing the others perspective and I always end it feeling exhausted and frustrated that I’ve wasted an evening arguing with a brick wall. When I received this video I assumed immediately it would relate to one of his points previously made, which it did, and in my mind I had already rejected it before even contemplating watching it. My initial response was to see it was a YouTube video and dismiss it as worthless. There are many useful videos on YouTube and I have taught myself how to do all sorts of things through them, but videos of a political or social nature are quite often just a pile of tosh. I had already rejected the point because of the source platform. I decided to watch it a little, not the full one hour because I have better things to do, and did some research on the speaker and his organisation. Seemingly they are of a different persuasion to me but I still watched and tried to listen to the message. After ten disagreeable minutes I gave up because I found him frustrating, it appears you can’t argue with a pre-recorded person. I do understand why angry people comment now but I still refuse to get involved in that game. Ultimately my point is that I like to think I gave the speaker the opportunity and I listened with a clear mind but it’s not easy when you already think the platform the information is on and the source of the information are unreliable and bullshit.

Absorbing new information is clearly an incredibly challenging task. We struggle to absorb anything that is new because it is unknown and potentially dangerous, and we struggle to accept anything contradictory to our present set of beliefs as it challenges what has so far kept us safe. The YouTube example above is an easy one to dismiss because the contents and the platform are like the Daily Star of video journalism but sometimes we get contradictory information from credible sources and this can be hard to accept and equally dismiss.

The more I delve into these things the more I’m starting to realise just how hard, if not impossible, it is being some kind of discerning, moral and decent person. Here I am, just like yesterday back to the fallible human. Is failure what makes us human, or perhaps the ability to recognise and improve on our past failures. It is okay to be fallible. It is unavoidable clearly, but is it only acceptable if and when we try and avoid repeat failure. Being conscious of our previous failures, accepting that they are inevitable and pushing on in the search of perfection, or at the very least an acceptable success. Don’t try and taste the wasp twice, it’s all so simple now, if only I had realised that earlier.