The World Economic Forum’s Ida Auken wants to correct your primitive lifestyle:

Embrace the upgrade, you filthy savages:

This is Ida Auken (WEF Young Global Leader) who wrote:

“Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better.”

Here she is wanging on about using your neighbour’s car. pic.twitter.com/tbKT5MJzTR

— James Melville 🚜 (@JamesMelville) July 20, 2024

Because having neighbours and strangers, people you don’t know, taking your car, apparently at random, would be terribly progressive and super-convenient, and “fun,” and “not annoying.”

More on Ms Auken’s vision of tomorrow can be found here:

All these things, these beastly capitalist products, would be “free.”

And not yours.

Update, via the comments:

If the above sounds like an evasive, rather coy way of saying, “Everything will belong to the state,” or, “Surrender all territory,” then hold that thought.

Update 2:

In the comments, Brother John quips, rather pithily,

Indeed. We might also pause to consider the endless glamour of so-called “social” housing projects, where decidedly anti-social behaviour is not exactly uncommon, or public transport, or any number of other areas in which responsibility is dispersed and nebulous. Take away the territorial aspect, the ownership – the concept that Ms Auken finds so bothersome and passé – and things are generally much more likely to tend towards degradation.

Sometimes quite rapidly and to an eye-widening extent.

The human urge to have some territory over which other people – and the state – do not have total dominion is not a trivial thing.

Or, as Mr Muldoon puts it,

But hey, progress.

Lifted from the comments, a small point, on suburban versus city living. And those who would prefer that you didn’t have a choice:

I went out on my porch last night and there was a guy milling about in front of my neighbor’s house, sitting on their retaining wall, just, you know, hanging out on somebody else’s property at 11pm.

Freedom from that (and a million related things) is what suburbanites are… https://t.co/O94JKBdBv5

— wanye (@wanyeburkett) May 30, 2024

A thread ensues.

In the comments, Jacob adds:

Well, yes. Quite.

Not having to guess whether some stranger sitting on your wall at 11pm is a threat, or just someone with an impaired sense of boundaries – and not having to do that regularly – is freeing. Likewise, being able to park your car on the street outside without fretting, routinely, about whether someone may try to steal it, or steal some part of it, or just vandalise it out of moron spite, is similarly non-trivial.

And contra Mr Gifford, a thing one might wish to enjoy.

Update, via the comments:

Mr Gifford, since you ask, is a proponent of the “15-minute city.” He doesn’t much like car ownership, or people having the option of living in the suburbs. He’s also rather disdainful of the fact that some of us would rather not “live closer to all kinds of different people,” a proximity to difference – now there’s a euphemism – that is presented as some kind of unexplained moral imperative.

That some people prefer to have neighbours with broadly compatible values and expectations – say, regarding behaviour, noise, the observation of normal boundaries, things of that kind – seems to vex Mr Gifford. The word “privilege” is deployed in a rumbling kind of way.

A rumbling we’ve heard before, while marvelling at its implications.

Update 2, via the comments:

Regarding Mr Gifford’s enthusiasm for our proximity – that’s coerced proximity – to “all kinds of different people,” MattS notes,

Another non-trivial point, one touched on here, and about which readers may have views somewhat at odds with those of Mr Gifford.

Dicentra adds, not unreasonably,

YOU WILL CARRY THOSE FOUR BAGS OF SHOPPING ON PUBLIC TRANSPORT. OR DIE IN THE ATTEMPT. CITIZEN. 

And where, needless to say, you will delight in being surrounded by “all kinds of different people.”

At which point, this came to mind, along with this. And of course this infinitely charming scene. Among many others.

Update 3:

In the comments, Daniel Ream adds,

And if everyone involved has shared values and behavioural expectations – the kind of cultural common ground – and moral common ground – that Mr Gifford would presumably disdain as problematic, as mere “privilege.”

A while ago, I mentioned that for many years a neighbour has had an ‘honesty box’ on a small, home-made stand on the pavement outside their house. Passers-by can help themselves to surplus produce from the owner’s vegetable garden, or small plants, or unwanted toys, or whatever. People leave the suggested, very nominal charge or whatever they deem appropriate.

In a box. That doesn’t get robbed.

Almost every time I pass it, I’m faintly pleased that it exists. It does seem rather symbolic. And it serves as a reminder that I’ve lived in neighbourhoods where such a thing would very promptly be vandalised and thrown into the road, and where delight would be taken in its destruction – and in the misery of its owner.

And the difference between the two scenarios – or between this scene and this one – is not caused by poverty, or indeed “privilege.” It’s about being better people. The kind of people one might, say, prefer as neighbours.

Update 4:

Regarding the reference to better people, EmC replies,

To acknowledge the obvious does have an air of scandalousness. Such is the practised dishonesty of our times. But at risk of being thought “privileged,” or insufficiently egalitarian, I would prefer to walk down the street without someone doing this in order to do this. To me or anyone else.

Outrageous of me, I know.

Lifted from the comments, a little elaboration on an Ephemera item from yesterday. Specifically, an everyday scene from Ruislip, Greater London:

Queuing means the old, small and weak are treated fairly. Not all cultures queue. I saw this living abroad. pic.twitter.com/XAXOY5n5uq

— Larry Lemon (@larrylemonmaths) May 13, 2024

Note that the would-be bus passengers, the ones accustomed to queuing and now looking on in weary dismay, have varied shades of skin.

As Rafi adds in the comments,

Quite. And the fact that mentioning the degradation may result in scolding or social punishment of some kind is itself part of the degradation. Plenty of people are itching to seize upon any such transgression, thereby asserting their own high status. Above the likes of you.

And so, quite a lot of people who don’t much care about the skin tone of those doing the pushing and jostling, but who do think that politeness and queuing are good things, things that a society shouldn’t lose, are, by many progressives, pushed into the category of Incorrigible Bigot, as invalid by default. As if the grievance, the stated issue – “queuing means the old, small, and weak are treated fairly” – could only be about the pigmentation of the players, not their actual behaviour, to which attention has been drawn.

And with those who prefer politeness suitably cowed or demoralised, the degradation continues.

It should, I think, be pointed out that this suppressing and demoralising effect, the adding of insult to injury, has not gone unnoticed by many of those keen to do the suppressing and demoralising.

Some years ago, I mentioned a car journey in which, for reasons that escape me, I was distractedly listening to BBC Radio 4’s Loose Ends – a sort of whimsical revue of chat, music, and substandard stand-up. The generic left-leaning comedian of the week, whose name I didn’t catch, was pleased by the taboos surrounding immigration and multiculturalism. Lots of code words were used – “Sun-reader,” and so forth – so that the disdain for working-class people and their fears wouldn’t be too overt.

The gist of the comedian’s punch line was, “Isn’t it hilarious that people who have concerns about mass immigration and failures to assimilate – the rapid and estranging transformation of their neighbourhoods – now have to be quiet because otherwise they’ll be called racists and possibly lose their jobs. Ha! We won!”

This triumphal non-joke – and it was blatantly triumphal – was deemed incredibly funny, or at least ideologically congenial, and much mannered clapping ensued. Of course, this was aired shortly before the uncovering of events in Rotherham and elsewhere, and before our immensely vibrant age of Congolese machete gangs.

And so, if that nice Mrs Wilson, the old dear two doors down, can no longer get on a bus, and dreads waiting for a bus because of the Third World scuffle that now ensues, and if she no longer feels she can complain about this without being thought racist, then this is totally fine, apparently. Indeed, it’s a basis for triumphal smugness by BBC comedians and BBC studio audiences.

Today’s word, since you ask, is alienation.

Update, via the comments:

sk60 adds,

Well, again, quite.

And the rate at which new arrivals materialise, their sheer numbers, will have an effect on how well, or how poorly, those new arrivals adapt to the customs and values of the host society. Indeed, it will have an effect on whether those new arrivals feel inclined, or obliged, to make any such attempt.

Which brought to mind this:

And yet, it seems we’re supposed to imagine that such massive, unprecedented immigration, seemingly indiscriminate immigration, both legal and otherwise, couldn’t possibly create problems. Things one might lament. Things lost and irretrievable.

If the word irretrievable sounds too emotive, consider the practicalities in the bus stop video. How does the customary courtesy prevail – how does it reassert itself – against a jostling mass of rude people? People whose attitude is screw the rules – and by extension, screw everyone else. The considerate, including the elderly or frail or physically unimposing, will either have to start jostling too, or just stand back in muted dismay and wait for the next bus. Probably in the hope that the same thing doesn’t happen, or happen quite so badly.

So, one more time. Some things, when lost, may be irretrievable.

And note, as in the case linked above, the progressives loudly denouncing as “hostile” any reservations about massive, unselective immigration can in the very next breath bemoan “societal breakdown,” as if the two things couldn’t ever, under any circumstances, be related.

Our betters, you know. They say so themselves.

Update 2:

Oh, to be in Portugal.

From Oklahoma City, the thrills and spills of public transport:

Oklahoma City Police arrested an Embark passenger for attacking a bus driver while he was driving this past weekend, which sent the bus directly into the side of a building. The passenger was trying to get the bus to stop at a railroad track. pic.twitter.com/X9oxY61II4

— Catch Up (@CatchUpFeed) April 25, 2024

Today’s words, since you ask, are bogglingly selfish morony.

Update, via the comments:

As noted here before, many times, when it comes to the criminal underclass, we are but objects in their world.

Given its obviousness, you’d think the whole selfish morony thing might crop up occasionally in editorials and opinion pieces on the subject of crime. Instead, however, we tend to see quite different intentions.

Consider this an open thread.

Regarding the obstruction by activists of the Golden Gate Bridge, a not unfair observation:

My toddler’s new thing when I tell him to stop doing something is to respond, “I’m just <literally the thing I’m telling him to stop doing>, so I’ll be like, “get down off that chair” and he’ll say, “I just wanted to be on the chair.” These people are literally toddlers. https://t.co/JrJMgoQ1ZI

— wanye (@wanyeburkett) April 15, 2024

And,

Reminder: these people arrive at thought-terminating cliches because their views are extraordinarily stupid and cannot be defended on their own terms. “I should get to shut down the economy any time I’m mad enough about something” sounds so retarded that they have no choice but…

— wanye (@wanyeburkett) April 15, 2024

Note the lofty defence offered by our pronoun-stipulating champion of the obstruction – that “protests are meant to be disruptive. It’s the whole point.”

A protest, then, is not meant to persuade the general public, or to get them on-side, or to make others sympathetic with whatever this week’s cause may be. But simply to be disruptive. To gratuitously frustrate, and aggravate, large numbers of law-abiding people. To exert power. By doing random harm. That’s “the whole point.” A vision doubtless attractive to those with antisocial inclinations.

And those inclinations aren’t being indulged and given rein reluctantly or under duress. The screwing-over of others is sought out and chosen, over and over again. This is recreational sociopathy.

We’ve been here before, of course:

And what kind of person would have urges like that?

Hence the need to consider other, less edifying motives.

Update, via the comments, where other illustrations come to mind:

They are, as it were, pleasuring themselves.

Update 2:

In the comments, pst314 adds,

Alas, being incorrigible narcissists, I suspect that reciprocation isn’t a restraining factor, or a common feature of their thinking. See, for instance, this rather glorious illustration:

And from which, this bears repeating:

One more time. This is who they are.