Friday Ephemera (753)

I suspect alcohol may have been involved. 

Yet I’ve had exchanges with people who assume, quite emphatically, that affirming Net Zero is a sign of Being A Good Person. And that those who fail to enthuse must be contrarian, or simply wicked.

A plea to Britain in two parts.

Not unfair. 

And it rather dovetails with the exchange I mentioned above, during which Trump was mentioned, as if there could be no conceivable reason to view his election with optimism, as a belated and necessary course correction. 

The problem, I think – beyond the conceit that high-status (i.e., progressive) opinions equal rightness, touched on above – is that the situation, the mood, can become so demoralised, so all-encompassing, so personal, that any attempt to poke at the prevailing conceits may involve the kind of discussion that’s quite intense and socially awkward. One might say incriminating. 

Sort of, “You believe this obvious nonsense, or pretend to believe it – regarding migration, multiculturalism, the climate, transgenderism, or whatever – and you think that this makes you a good person. But what if these conceits result in a practised unrealism, a habit of pretending, and thereby decline? What if your pieties are very much part of the problem?” 

In terms of a casual chat, it risks exposing the kinds of realities that people don’t often appreciate and for which they won’t generally thank you.

I totally understand… But at some point after biting my tongue one too many times it occurred to me that the other party/parties do not give a damn about my concerns with keeping the discussion, nor even our relationship, in an honest nor realistic context.

Well, a fairly realistic exchange did ensue, on my part at least. Though, being – as you know – a sensitive soul, I did pull some rhetorical punches. There was plenty more that could have been said, but I didn’t want to derail the social moment too far. There was a third party present, largely observing, and you don’t want to end up grandstanding or being a monopolising bore. 

I’m not sure my efforts to answer honestly were entirely appreciated. But still. As you say, it gets a bit tiresome when other people think they can get away with what amount to unilateral digs. When other people assume they can drag you into their social status game and that you’ll defer to their conceits, such that they always win. Because you don’t want to seem rude or hurt their feelings. It does feel a tad insulting. 

Yeah…ah…nah, bro.

Hey, swimwear, tentacles… Granted, the harpoon may be a bit much.

To the barricades!

The body cam videos are going to be lit, as the kids say.

Why, it’s almost as if some hiring decisions need to be reconsidered.

I’m always taken aback by how self-important some (many? most?) teachers are.

You’d think the routine narcissism on display, the promises of violence and law-breaking, and the outright mental illness, might prompt some rethinking of who should be entrusted to educate children. 

Yet here we are.

Heh.

That “nothing” is why it’s still a classic.

Yes, very much so. And while effective, the character set-up still has a pleasing economy.

In fact, the whole film holds up really well. The only weak points that come to mind are Parker’s struggle with the headless Ash – the hands really do need to move – and the closing shot of the creature being blasted by the escape shuttle’s engines. After all the careful use of shadow, of not letting us see, that one shot makes it clear we’ve been terrified by a very tall and skinny man in a rubber suit. 

In contrast, I saw most of Alien: Romulus a few weeks ago – it was uploaded in its entirety to YouTube – and dear God, it was bad. My flickering interest had been completely extinguished after about forty minutes.  

No lies detected.

And attempts at course correction are made triggering by the fact that the status quo, here and in the US, has been so perverse, to an extent one might regard as deranged, or treasonous. The degree of pretence and mental contortion that’s been required in order not to register the perversity, on so many fronts, is a tricky thing to undo. When so much imaginary piety has been staked on the affirmation of obvious wrongs, there’s a lot of resistance to overcome. 

Hence my discussion mentioned upthread, in which, for instance, arguing for secure, affordable electricity as a priority, a necessary precondition of just about everything else, is regarded as scandalous. Because if you’d rather that pensioners could afford to heat their homes and not face the prospect of Net Zero blackouts, in which someone will have to decide which cities are plunged into freezing darkness, then this makes you a bad person. 

Or at the very least, a presumed contrarian, a maker of mischief.

A government that doesn’t take energy security (and affordability) seriously can’t be trusted with anything else.

That would be my view. 

But again, we live in an age of pretending. Of fantasy pieties. In which anything remotely hard-nosed is met with gasps and fainting, and howls of pretentious indignation. As if a society could somehow be endlessly indulgent, endlessly accommodating, on an indefinite basis, without ever saying no. 

Because that would be terribly mean. 

Again, the point I made upthread – it’s difficult to convey to someone immersed in these fantasies of perpetual niceness, of endless accommodation, that their desire to be seen as nice, as never saying no, is precisely what makes them enablers of dysfunction and societal decay. 

Such that, if you champion Net Zero and other lunatic pieties, you’re making the scenarios above – little old dears freezing in darkness – much more likely. And if you want to throw open our doors to the flotsam of the third world, in limitless numbers, because you think that would make you look like a nice person, then someone else’s neighbourhood is going to rapidly go downhill, perhaps irretrievably. 

It’s hard to convey that idea, that reality, without the other person being somewhat resentful.