The Side Eye

When I joined an international service organisation a few years ago, I was interviewed by two older men. They praised me for my CV, and asked me if I was married. The question took me by surprise. I asked if being married was a prerequisite for joining such an organisation. They said no. They stopped short of asking me why I was not married.

In the years since, it has become obvious that the married status is increasingly seen not only as a status symbol, but as a form of virtue signalling. It means you are capable of making commitments, at least in words. Whether your subsequent actions illustrate your vows is another matter entirely.

I believe it’s been in the last 10 years that side chickery started torpedoing the credibility of the Good Ship Happy Ever After. Some women make a career out of it. And then even monetize the advice they give, cloaked in not invisibility, but hypocrisy and the glamour of instafame.

Sadia Khan, the ‘relationship expert’ who has ridden the wave of celebrity for the past few years, has recently been exposed for being allegedly less than high calibre in her personal dealings with men who were spoken for. It is difficult to discern what really went on through the roar of public censure and outrage, and the scratchy sound of the audio that was recorded by the fiancée of the man she was boasting about being preferred by, and the adulterous event all happened a couple of years ago, but there seems to be a very large gap between appearance and reality, where her ‘value’ is concerned.

Why keep using the word ‘value’? She has often used the term ‘high value’ to describe the kind of woman she visually embodies, and the kind of high net worth men that such women attract. In the chaos of the world today, she seemed to offer certainty and wisdom and clarity, to her many followers.

She seems to identify with Red Pill incels who decry women and their strategic attempts to capture wealthy men. She teaches courses to men, to embolden them to draw women of high value to them. She has basically been playing both sides of the gender wars.

Her beauty and charm make her a pleasure to look at. Some find the way she speaks very pleasant. I personally found that her somewhat rough accent contrasted with her smoothened facade. But where she really grated on my sensibilities was when she started exhibiting narcissistic exceptionalism on an epic scale.

By this, I mean, she appears to think she is above the rules by which most human beings conduct their lives. She has this belief in common with many men of high net worth, from Heads of State to corporate princes. The kind of entitled scions who have mistresses and think of themselves as royalty. The men incels wish they were. Alpha men, who subscribe to the hierarchical scales of external worth and value she promotes. Her appearance and presentation have clearly opened many doors for her. She scales herself a 10/10, and competitively measures herself against other women to their detriment. She’s a woman succeeding and excelling - temporarily - in a man made world. Often her statements about women are sneering and mocking. She wants to distance herself from victims and losers. She plays to win. She not only dresses but positions herself for success. At least, that is probably what she would tell her clients.

The trouble with insta famous people is that their credentials are often faked. They say in interviews that they did such and such a degree, or hold such and such a qualification, but when these claims are investigated, they often evaporate in smoke.

They can claim to invent innovative and effective ways of testing human blood, appear on Forbes lists as wunderkinds, or tell people they are heiresses while skipping out of paying their hotel bills, but their stories wear thin, and exposure is inevitable. All the superlatives and the grandiosity set them up for a big fall.

In the case of Sadia Khan, the value she brought to the table, in terms of advice to people regarding how to conduct themselves to maximise their self fulfillment is now somewhat diminished. The audio that is circulating through the very channels and sites that made her famous is very graphic, showcasing a vulgar, brazen crudeness not only of language but of mindset that is in strong contrast to her cultivated, soft, feminine public demeanor. She speaks in the audio not like a refined lady, but like a slapper or a bully boy. It is quite a shock to hear it.

It makes me wonder about celebrity personality cults, and the insidious effects of uncertified influencers. In their virile eagerness to seize their moment, they sometimes display what should not be seen, to court the infamous algorithm and monetize their appeal. Their ambition carries them beyond the parameters of self restraint and mass relatability and into outlier territory.

The fact is, the value of being the second choice of a person who cannot even honour their own marriage or engagement vows is a very low calibre place to hold. There are plenty of rationalizations side chicks or side pieces can indulge themselves with, but it’s still a far cry from the higher love they presumably feel they should receive. Love is not just a commodity, whatever the dating apps and Only Friends may suggest.

To commit adultery and call it feminism (or even anti-feminism) or simply demonstrating one’s excessive desirability by promiscuity and poaching on other people’s territory is still a degradation of the vows made by other people to each other. Saying you are preferred by someone who is promised elsewhere is a pretty fractured way of manufacturing self worth.

We live in a multiverse now, and that means we should be more careful whose spheres we collide with, and what roles we play in those realms.

The Day We All Looked Up The Dictionary

This last week, we have seen extraordinary interest shown in one word used in a letter apparently written by the President of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka to the current Leader of the Opposition, dated the 19th of August. This letter was shared in full by News First on their news platform and has been widely shared and commented about on social media.

 
This letter has caused a great amount of discussion, and many news outlets and media platforms have commented on the use of the word ‘threat’ in the third paragraph.

Was this a typo? Did the President of the BASL use the word intentionally; or did he intend the word ‘thereat’?

‘Thereat’ is actually a real word, meaning ‘At that place’, ‘At that time’, or ‘For that reason’. It would make sense in the context of this letter.

In actual fact, either word would make sense. And so the reaction to the apparent confusion is very interesting.

The general clear communication rule is that if the overall meaning of a letter or speech or text is clear, then any typo which occurs in it is relatively insignificant. In my opinion as a professional editor, the letter in consideration clearly meets the criteria for overall clarity, and effectively communicates the writer’s message.

If the word ‘thereat’ was intended, there is an argument for Plain Legal Language which could be used in Sri Lanka, where English has not been the dominant language for decades.

But any writer should be given fair chance to clarify their meaning, if there is indeed any confusion on the part of the recipients. So attempts to accuse and interrogate the writer of various errors and deficiencies of knowledge or understanding based on the use of this one word are clearly disproportionate.

This disproportionate response can only be said to be based not on a desire to enforce rules of grammar that no one in the comments threads on social media have given any thought to for decades, but on other wishes, which (we would be justified in speculating) are probably not being put forward in good faith.

I suggest that we should all be wary of any attempts to try to discredit the legal institutions in the country, which have a track record of safeguarding citizens in recent years.

It is irresponsible of news outlets to use sensationalist and derogatory headlines and mocking perspectives to undermine the standing of not only the legal professionals concerned in situations like this, but the legal system which they have taken oaths to uphold.

I see certain individuals on social media attempting to encourage the public to hold in derision members of the legal profession, and the profession as a whole; and while fair comment and request for clarification is definitely permitted in a democracy, what is going on right now seems to me to be politicised and tainted by bias.

Eroding public confidence in the legal institutions of a country is a very counterproductive thing to do. Politicians in past regimes have not wanted their own authority undermined, and have moved to criminalize any dissent or questioning of their actions on the part of the public. Citizens get jailed for being perceived as critiquing the national religion or holding the images associated with GoSL in disrespect. Their only recourse is to turn to members of the legal profession to uphold their rights. If they now participate in eroding the respect and dignity of the legal profession, who will stand to protect them when their own rights are interfered with?

For this system of checks and balances to work as it should, respect for Justice should be maintained, and with that goes respect for the legal officers who work in the legal systems, independent of government interference. For this respect to be given, the lawyers must maintain the highest standards of professional conduct themselves. If members of any legal profession are seen as bought or owned or intimidated or interfered with by any government, they can no longer be respected. The same goes for the media, which used to be called the ‘Fourth Estate’. Once journalists start using their columns to act as apologists for any political party, they lose objectivity and respect. In Sri Lanka, social media has a great deal of impact, and those especially with large followings who are expressing opinions and asking questions should be seen to be doing so for good reason. Anyone with over 2,000 followers is presiding over a voting bloc.

It is quite easy for a person to genuinely believe they are acting in the public good, and speaking truth to power, and holding organizations accountable. But that belief must translate into action. And every action in the social media and journalism space occurs in the form of words.

We hear a great deal about rights in this fractious world of ours. But I believe that understanding our responsibilities is equally important. Citizens while exercising our rights to express our thoughts and beliefs, have a responsibility to also use critical thinking, and be as well informed as possible; and this applied mindfulness will result in better governance. If we all follow the crowd and say whatever comes to mind in any given moment, and suspend our judgment due to bias, we will become useful idiots, and mere instruments used by opportunistic agents for their own purposes rather than free, independent thinkers.

Creating Self Worth In A World Which Devalues Women

I was recently invited to give a presentation to the young Interactors of a Ladies College in Colombo, online and via Zoom. The topic centred on how society trivializes and dismisses women, and how we can recognise and navigate this challenge successfully.

I started by thanking the young ladies for the honour extended to me, to address them. And I said that, when the President of the Interactors Club was introducing me, she had focused on my achievements and career accolades. But that this is not what society does. I would be asked how old I was, how much I weighed, and my size and shape and skin colour and tone and the condition of my hair would be scrutinized. This is the frustrating reality that women experience.

We are judged on how we look. And measured by beauty standards we had no part in creating. However, there is a remedy for this! It is not in adjusting to society’s standards. But in developing our own moral compass.  And then persistently requiring society to adjust to us. Over the next hour and a half, we poured scorn on society’s superficial standards of judgment. And critiqued Imposter Syndrome and the Golden Ratio of Facial Beauty. We also called out ageism in its relation to beauty standards. I will elaborate on the points that were made in this discussion, here.

1. The truisms we are told about ourselves as girls and young women are very often not true. We are told these things to mobilize us to behave in ways which disempower us. I urged self-reflection, self-awareness and scepticism towards the advertising and marketing industry around us. They profit from telling us there is something wrong with us, so they can sell us products and services that we really do not need.

2. I urged the girls to develop a long term view of the development of their character. Not to believe what society tells us, that we peak at 23. It helps if we understand that we unfold over time, like everything in nature. Maturity as a person often comes in our 40s. Choices made without insight and self awareness early on in our life can lead to a distortion of our life path. The twenties and thirties are the time we invest in our education and our self development, intellectually and professionally. It is the foundation of our lives. We need to be aware, not distracted, and misdirected.

3. We noted the recent rise in racist ideology and white supremacist jargon, associated with the international politics of the last decade in particular. And how this aversion to melanin affected how South Asian girls see themselves. Colour shaming can be both subtle and brazen. Eurocentric beauty standards fail to encompass the diversity of our skin tones and textures, often curvier body shapes and distinctive facial features. The range of golds, ochres, browns and dark tones in South Asian skin is absolutely mesmerizing. We need to value this.

4. The pornographic material accessible today online by young men and boys raises the issue of the sharp rise in pornographic and sexualised content to which our male peers are exposed, on the era of the internet. Be aware that when girls and women interact with boys and men whose minds are saturated with these images, the way we dress and behave often seem to them to play into and reinforce these stereotypes. We need to be aware of this, because it affects the way we are perceived. And this perception results in the objectifying and insulting behaviour to which we can sometimes be subjected.

5. Young girls in mainstream society are being told that provocative self exposure, and in particular presenting their bodies as sexualised objects on public platforms, will bring them positive attention. Influencers with augmented facial and body features and Only Fans ‘content creators’ and sex workers performing desirability and playing into people’s fetishes or preferences often present highly filtered and manipulated images of themselves. Lips are filled, breasts and butts are lifted, skin is stretched. Age defying means artificially creating a facsimile of youth and mirroring an image of desirability. These models are not positive or empowering ones for us to follow. The attention gained by this kind of self presentation is short term, and reductive of us in the long run, and diminishes our credibility.

6. Young women’s appearance is ultra emphasized in mainstream culture; and whole industries are built on selling products and procedures to women to influence them to alter and manipulate their appearance to fit a norm. This norm is easily recogniseable because it correlates with the period of biological desirability which we experience in our late teens and early twenties. At this time, due to our hormonal levels, we have glossy, lustrous hair, bright eyes, a clear, glowing complexion, and shiny nails white pink nail beds and white nail tips. We are told that we should try to look like this via every chemical means available to us, for the rest of our lives. Because - apparently - this is the ‘best time of our life’. When young, we want to be admired and appreciated and loved, we love the attention we get, and the feeling of being observed with admiration by others. We are willing to invest a lot of time and money to feel the pleasure of those feelings. We believe that this is the pinnacle of our experience, the time when we are most ‘powerful’ because we are most desired. This makes us vulnerable to manipulation. This message is so often repeated through advertising and the behaviour of others that we come to believe that the age of 23 is the best age to be.

7. But is it? A life fully lived encompasses several eras. Physical beauty is only one aspect of our existence. If we locate all our happiness in that short period of time, we are bound to lose our joy as we mature. Ageing is a natural process, and it is also humbling. We are more subject to illness and stress as we get older. It is foolish and arrogant to try to defy it or disguise it. Mental, intellectual, psychological, emotional and spiritual development result in a deepening evolution of our character and personality that is not available to us in our early years, and that only emerges from life experience. The thirties and forties and fifties and sixties and seventies and eighties each yield their treasures, and have their high points, and bring lasting happiness in a way that being complimented for our looks for a short time cannot really match.

8. Short cuts and quick fixes for our complexions and experimentations with our hair colour can cause lasting damage to us. The chemicals we apply onto our skin and our hair add up over time and have toxic effects. The skin lightening products are dangerous; surgical procedures are expensive and also dangerous and irreversible; Ozempic etc and other rapid weight loss products are not even properly tested, and can cause psychological problems, and the list goes on.

9. In Question Time, some of the girls said they felt trivialized and frustrated by the way they are treated in society. How come men get all the attention and respect, and get to decide the path of their lives for themselves, while girls and women have to do as they are told? I said we can recognise the injustice and make sure we see ourselves as the ones who have the choice. We choose how we want to present ourselves authentically in the world. Not to conform and look like everyone else, but celebrate our individuality. We decide not to make shallow personal choices. We do not present ourselves as ornaments, toys or playthings. We present ourselves as whole beings, with all our aspects of character fully showcased. To find soul mates, we need to access and develop our soul, beyond our appearance and external self. We should, for example, select our friends and partners for non superficial reasons, not because they are good looking or charming or popular. But because of their ethics and their values, their qualities of character. We are best off being selective and discerning in our choices and in our conduct. Not to impress anyone, but in order to self-create a fulfilling life.

10. Basically, we need to start thinking in the long term, from a young age, and build our future on a commitment not to another person but to developing our own character. God made us each unique, with a unique contribution to make. Let’s recognise our individuality and celebrate that, and expand that, and understand that when other people measure us, they often fail to recognize our full worth. Some who make critical comments to young people are frustrated and jealous, as they lacked the opportunities that young people have today. So let’s see that for ourselves, and experience the excitement of that discovery in all we do. We need to understand that it is we who have the power of choice. Not to scare anyone, but in personal relationships women biologically are uniquely given this choice, to discern and to select. It is our choice of partner that determines the quality of future generations and the whole human race. Red Pill incels are activated by rage about this, because they understand what even apparently casual rejection by a woman means for them and their sense of value. It is not women who are seen as Unmarriageable, it is men who are actually afraid of being Unchosen.

‘High value’ does not mean how much money we earn or inherit. In terms of self worth, high value means self respect and personal coherence and integrity. Therefore, in our lives, wherever we have choice, we should appreciate each opportunity and use it well. The choices we make determine the quality of our life. It is worth taking that choice in our own hands, and taking our time to make each choice a good one, a better one, the best.

Fives And Sevens Plus Mandatory Dogs

I somehow grew up missing out on an essential aspect of childhood experience: The Five Find-Outers (and Dog) by Enid Blyton. I had read all The Famous Fives, and Secret Sevens, and Malory Towers, and the Naughtiest Girl books (my favourite). But their formulaic nature led me to lose interest after a while, and categorize them as holiday reading. And move into the darker bookscapes of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

However, recently, a friend said the Find-Outers were his favourite books growing up, and I was able to access the audio recordings of all 15 books. And they were the best, in terms of characterisation, in terms of character arcs, group dynamics, evocation of setting and incident, and also a highly entertaining mandatory dog, this one called ‘Buster’, a jet black Scottish Terrier so vividly described I can almost hear him growl when I read the words on the page.

I say ‘mandatory’ because every childhood book by Enid Blyton - and Tintin and Asterix - contains a dog friend. Snowy and Dogmatix are also terriers, if I’m not mistaken. And in childhood, however urbanized and airbrushed and neatly contained and put together we are today, we roamed gardens and woods and lanes in our respective villages and towns, unafraid and unmolested.

Recently, a video taken on a phone showing a little girl from rural Sri Lanka carrying a large cat in her arms and being doggedly followed by an affectionate Sri Lankan porcupine through muddy fields, has gone viral. Artists have rendered the image from many different countries, and their versions are very telling of the way people from all cultures respond to this picture.

Both the little girl in this version and the porcupine have a frangipani flower behind their ear. The porcupine’s quills are blunted and modified. The girl’s skin colour is lightened, her hair is made more luxuriant, and the teeth which are missing in real life are modified. In fact, the porcupine is given a tooth. We see this because all three friends are smiling. They are roaming not precariously in real life through muddy fields of water, but through verdant green fields and bountiful, over-arching trees. Everyone looks well-nourished, happy and content. The sky is blue, and there are fluffy, puffy clouds in the sky. Everything is softened.

I believe we all respond to this adorable vista so positively because as adults we are stressed and we are starved. Stressed by our city-bound pedestrian lives, and starved of connection and innocence and a sense of freedom and belonging that many of us felt in childhood. Estranged too from the natural world and the simple life, where, as children, we could explore the world in a tactile and intensely sensory way, be curious and engaged, without fearing for our safety, or finding ourselves in situations which threaten our bodies or our souls.

Adults existed on the peripheries of this world. And they dispensed meals, advice, scoldings and praise as the children’s actions warranted. There was natural justice: robbers, thieves, and those engaged in nefarious activities were discovered, and rapidly brought to order. This was a golden world, where ‘Heaven lies about us in our infancy’, as Wordsworth said. Any breaches of the peace were temporary, and everyone concerned knew it.

The spontaneous joys of childhood, the pleasures of sensory connection, and nature itself are being packaged and sold to us tellingly as escapes and retreats. Having destroyed the natural environment, and the lives of many children, through commercialism and exploitation, we glorify the very things we have taken and used.

I remember being told once of countries where all the animals have been killed but the soft toy industry is booming. No birds sing over those industrialized skies.

In the Find-Outers, the children are sworn enemies of the local policeman, Mr. Goon, who is exasperated by their meddling and interfering. In all the books, the children are curious, intrepid, fearless and enthusiastic to discover what is going on under the smooth and placid surface of their local town. Together, they spy and stickybeak and mess with the nefarious activities of adults who are engaged in criminal activities. And all their midnight espionage activities seem to occur within a radius of about 100 metres. The Find-Outers early on impress Inspector Jenks, who has a high opinion of their skills, and this canny ability to go to the top and sidestep the middle management is very impressive.

Their life is full of colour and verve, and goes on underground, unknown largely by their parents, who are strict and respectable and law-abiding. And privileged. Everyone has maids and cooks. And aunts who come to afternoon tea, with sandwiches and cakes.

It is an insulated world. And that is what we remember, and what we are glorifying and what we yearn for, in the frankly chaotic and violent scenario we have to now negotiate as adults, full of natural disasters and manmade wars and famines and all the atrocities by which we are besieged in newspaper headlines and the 24/7 news cycle on TV and our smartphones.

It is nostalgic, yes, but it is also something more. It is slapstick. It is dodgem cars. It is rubber swords. It is bouncy castles. It is gentle relief for us, now, who are witnessing so much actual cruelty, heedlessness and suffering.

The archetype we are resonating with here is the Pre-Lapsarian world theory proposed by Northrop Frye. That in the world before human beings fell from grace, due to their ignorance, idiocy and greed, when they were closely connected to God, the Creator, that everything was good. There was no pain in childbirth, there was no disease or violence or cruelty or anything ugly or evil to make us cringe. We were aligned, and all was good. After the fall, the golden world became debased. Now we buy and sell and try to profit, now we suspect instead of trust, and we have to protect ourselves from the world around us.

Children have a tolerance we do not have, for oddness, eccentricity, wrinkled faces, larger sized bodies and imperfection. They have not yet learned to associate these human flaws with anything contemptible. Their inner GPS is strong and clear. For them, what they see is what it is. And they have their mandatory pets by their sides to guide them.

We don’t have to vicariously tap into those wonderful childhood memories, and attitudes, though. We can find those qualities in ourselves, through doing simple things like letting our senses guide us, and making choices based on how something or someone makes us feel, directly, without second-guessing or modifying our direct perceptions.

For example, one day recently a friend of mine and I were driving through an area called Arcadia in late summer. In that part of the world, people grow fruit, and the harvest was abundant that year. Roadside stalls were selling boxes of peaches and cherries. The two of us stopped and bought boxes of each, and the fragrance from the fresh fruit from the back of the car was literally too much for us.

We stopped the car by mutual agreement, and ate some of the fruit directly, so sweet, so pure, and it was one of the best experiences ever, for both of us. We didn’t have to even talk about that. We just knew it.

First, Second, and Third Worlds Are Changing Places!

We have all grown up being presented with certain sociocultural perceptions as if they were unassailable facts. For example, the idea of ‘First World’ nations, and ‘Third World’ nations, is a global classification which is supposedly based on economics and facts and figures. But recent events and political developments are showing a radically different picture which challenges these beliefs.

First World nations comprise the European settler/colonising nations, who, empowered by self-justifying beliefs of white supremacy, expanded their reach from the boundaries of their own relatively small countries to conquer other nations which were rich in resources. Portugal, Holland, Spain, France, Belgium, and England all used weaponry to enforce their status and assert their rights of exploitation over many countries and continents.

Their wealth today had its foundation on the labour of enslaved peoples and on mineral and agricultural resources which were taken over from the people of the colonised countries by violence, force and rapacious greed. The so called Great Exhibitions of the 19th century were giant displays of wonders from this pillaging. The movements towards Independence, and the Great Famines and Great Wars of the 20th century resulted in the displacement of millions of people as economic refugees.

Immigration has resulted in a forcible challenging of the concepts of First and Third Worlds. What we see now in the rise of what is euphemistically called Populism in countries like the U.K., the U.S.A and Australia, particularly focusing on calls for a limiting of what is termed mass migration and the fear of being overwhelmed by refugees, is a direct consequence of the historical injustices of the past. Multiculturalism threatens the idea that it is possible to retain control of the colour of a society: not only the skin colour of its citizens, but their political stripes, their religious beliefs, their dominant language, and their core values.

Colonisation was a form of vicious control of others who were different from its perpetrators, and monoculturalism in the name of social harmony is another form of retaining that control. Sri Lanka in this regard is actually shining bright in comparison with far larger and more self important nations. Despite three ingresses of colonisation, courtesy of the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British, and the colourism and class hierarchies and political tensions that have accompanied these invasions, there is a cohesion and a tolerance and a generosity between communities in this small island that makes it vibrant in its diversity.

Viharas, temples, mosques and churches co-exist, and despite the regular playing of the majoritarian politics during election cycles of the predictable short term profits that arise from polarizing the minorities, people have lived respecting each other and each other’s beliefs. Peace and reconciliation workers in particular have done a great deal to raise awareness of the need for empathy, for dignity, for valuing of the differences in others. And the younger generation are showing themselves to be more educated and literate about other cultures, and more open to the customs and social traditions of those other than the ones they have experienced in their homes and communities.

We see this in the number of religious festivals the country celebrates each year, and the generosity of people in diverse neighbourhoods inviting those of other faiths to their feasts and celebrations, as welcome guests. The ‘ghetto mentality’ that people decry in other nations is not seen so much in this country, today. The currency has been repeatedly devalued, and the emigration of professionals from the country in response to the recent economic crisis has been disheartening.

But when one looks at the quality of life and real sense of community in Sri Lanka, it seems to be far better than what people are enduring in Britain or the USA. People in the so-called Third World have witnessed the erosion of capitalism, the class division, the rise of brazen elitism, and the socio-economic distress starting to be felt by the voting majority in the First World. Vulnerable classes of people are visibly suffering in countries which call themselves the beacon of democracy.

True sense of community comes from genuine co-existence and co-operation, which requires compassion and humility. Greed and individualism does not activate social harmony.

We in Sri Lanka, due to the multiple crises we have experienced, are less polarised, less reactive, more resilient and more focused than many countries. And we are starting to see that there is a vast and growing shift of global power as a result of decolonization. The very vociferous nature of anti-immigration rhetoric and its rise in the West shows the perceived success of so many people who have been able to find and create opportunity amidst dire circumstances and challenging conditions.

But it must be opportunity and access for all. Recently, one of the country’s most renowned schools sought to ban the wearing of head coverings for women, preventing mothers collecting their sons from school or participating in parent/teacher meetings. This has led to complaints being made, of discrimination against the Muslim community. After the Easter Attacks in 2019, the rise in anti-Muslim feeling was noticeable, and it was met with campaigns against hate speech in social media, and concerted efforts by activists and community leaders.

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South Asians as a whole focus on education, and many do their utmost to ensure that they and their families have access to opportunities for not only employment but self growth: prosperity in every sense. Entitlement and grievance make a noise, but are often all hot air, talk and no action; and quality and calibre will always show themselves in contrast to be valuable cultural assets. Living at a lesser standard in a so called First World country, enduring racist attitudes, distrust, suspicion and micro-aggressions, is often eclipsed completely today by the prospects offered by one’s country of birth.

We can retain the positive aspects of our culture - the warmth, the humanity, the love of social life - in a way that a wholesale pursuit of economic growth has not achieved in the West, where social isolation and loneliness are on the increase.

The classism in this country is in many ways a consequence of colonial imposition, but also based on culturally learned bias against race and religion. A truly multicultural society with a majority ethnic group dominating the positions of power will not allocate second tier status to any minority citizen. Through recognition of equal rights and individual merit, through commitment to inclusive policies and active participation, through open mindedness and setting aside of attitudes of inherited entitlement, the society can progress and thrive.

The long illustrated and collectively disheartening experience of citizens - that prominent, corrupt and connected individuals are somehow not accountable in the same way that other citizens are - is now being challenged. Everyday administrative processes such as utilities payments and support for households are actually improving, despite the orchestrated comments from paid nay sayers on social media.

Sri Lanka can, by developing its human resources, making its administrative infrastructures more efficient, developing English as a link language which will act as a bridge to international employment opportunities which can be accessed without leaving the country, making itself a magnet to investors, and expanding its support systems to encourage its citizens, really become resplendent again. I see with joy the national pride expressed whenever talented local athletes, scientists, writers and scholars, beauty queens and artists achieve international recognition. Sri Lankans have great creativity and talent in a number of fields of excellence. Until recently, the fracturing effects of civil war and conflict and the debilitating impact of corruption and abuse of the vulnerable have been endured as if there was no solution or remedy that could be sought.

Social media has shown its ugly side in this country in outbursts of hate speech and splintering discourse over the years. But it can also be a powerful instrument of positivity, if used consciously to illuminate the best of which we are capable. Is there a ‘Second World’? A world which is not colonising and exploitative, and also not embattled and exploited? Not a predator, and not prey? But an empowered global participant? Can we create and inhabit that world? It can be the best of both worlds, and of all possible worlds.

We have been described by spokespeople from the ‘First World’ over the years as underdeveloped and developing, but we can all see as their empires have been dismantled and their populations divided that their experiments have not worked out well for them. I suggest that a society which seeks to develop itself wholistically will always succeed. It will take time, but every step will be taken in the direction of prosperity and happiness.

Special Treatment

I write this in a period when the country and the world is in transition. The late renowned journalist John Pilger created a documentary film called ‘The New Rulers Of The World’, about 20 years ago. My students and I studied it together in Globalisation courses. As the title of his documentary film suggests, he theorises that the old feudal societal system of the Middle Ages, which had been softening into what we called Democracy, was now being broken down into a new elitism, dominated by increasingly conscienceless and violently money hungry individuals.

Social inequality was entrenched, notions of social justice and equity were broken down, and brutal demarcations of power and powerlessness were now becoming the new norm. Underclasses were now being created to be exploited, and human worth was no longer seen as intrinsic, but was now comparatively assessed. Some humans were deemed more valuable than others.

People started talking openly about privilege and entitlement, and being humbled and feeling grateful for the same, about ten years ago. Noticeably, those blessed with most of these endowments, including inherited property and recently created offshore bank accounts, were the most quiet about them, and the most egalitarian in their politics, the most publicly cultivated in their tastes, and the most philanthropic in their assiduous virtue signalling.

Amidst this new socio economic calibration rose a repellant and very recogniseable category of people: those adjacent to powerbrokers, those who opportunistically court and fawn on the old feudal aristocrats and the new money makers. Parasites, fattening themselves via contacts and connections and whatever crumbs they could collect from the tables of their big name buddies. The rent-a-crowdsters, the seat fillers. Those attracted by terms like ‘high end’ and ‘high worth’ and ‘high value’.

By their name dropping you will know them: because, coming from relatively unmonied backgrounds, they thirst and hunger to create the impression of what they imagine privilege to look like. Brand names are brazenly displayed, bling is prominent, they are desperate to be seen in the society pages. Their resumes and CVs are short on substance, and in many cases concocted or faked. Because they cannot bear feeling inadequate, they openly say that formal qualifications do not amount to very much. The name of the institution of education is just a brand stamp to them. They assume everyone really feels the way they do. That no one truly has real inherent worth, and life is just a hall of mirrors.

Scammers and teledrama queens. Victim mentality giving way like sink holes under their facial reconstruction procedures.

This is the ‘Fake It Till You Make It’ brigade. They would not know what to do without their little band of followers, who are required to regularly bolster their fragile self image. They boast about knowing important people, who do favours for them. Like puffer fish, amplifying their actual size, in a hostile world.

But ironically, as the world is changing, such antics are becoming increasingly ridiculous. People who take short cuts are now being seen not as cool or clever but lazy and greedy, and when they boast about disrespecting the systems and being above the laws of the land, their gross sense of narcissistic exceptionalism shows not the superiority they imagine, but reeks of actual inferiority.

Their jobs are sinecures, gained through personally knowing so and so, and coming from such and such a family, and so whatever profession required sincere effort or actual exertion was too much work for them. So they never knew the transformative experience of having a true vocation, or of working towards anything other than self enrichment. They are colossally little, in the end, and their legacy is a reverberating reel of repetitive selfies.

These kinds of people are super fatted in every sense. They mimic and they mime. They are like the smooth surface sheen on the top of a cyst. All the inflammation is pooled up and toxic inside. And when their masks fall, at points of tension or micro aggression, you see how atrophied they have become. No accountability and a delusional sense of immunity has eroded their empathy. Like acid, it has eaten away their residual humanity. They are disconnected from the hoi polloi, and they prefer it that way.

These are the people who boast of using contacts and connections to get certified vaccine certificates during the Covid pandemic, so they had the certificate to show without having had to take the vaccine. No protection needed, they thought, because they felt themselves to be extra special, and superhuman - and immune to the normal ailments that affected lesser people.

Death, the great leveller, is something they like to defy. It makes them feel outrageous, larger than life, to live while others die, to travel in comfort while others cannot, to jump queues while others faint from exhaustion. They see themselves as born exceptional: and if only everyone could recognise that, the world would match the ideal realm in their heads. All the grievances they carry come from this sense of the failure of others to recognise their superiority.

Their ideal realm is a world with plush red carpets rolled out, people ushering them through iterated archways with smooth surfaces and embossed augmentations. They worship notions of exceptionalism. It’s their religion. It’s Stone Age principles, wrapped in high end gloss. Remember that, when you see their big lippy mouths open in those carnivalesque smiles in the glossy magazines.

The norms they live by - ‘if no one can prove it, I did no wrong, you’d have to be stupid or naive not to work the system, people who play by the rules are fools’ - have become an ecosystem. Only very toxic plants thrive in it. Venus flytraps, and the like.

They divide the world into winners and losers, and everything is commodified: every relationship is transactional, to them. Enmeshed in a world of surfaces, simultaneously stagnant and superficial. If it was not for their pathological need to be admired, they would be invisible, if not quite immortal.

ColourBlind Casting

Over the past 25 years, we have seen many adaptations of Jane Austen’s novels, and the adaptations have in several cases been visually very confronting and challenging, for some viewers. I believe this trend started with the Miramax adaptation of Mansfield Park, released in 1999.

While this production did not cast people of colour in the main roles, or even in minor roles, it is the first production ever to have vividly illuminated the cruelty, objectification and exploitation of slavery, as part of colonialism and enrichment, as practised by Sir Thomas Bertram, owner of Mansfield Park, in a way which shocks the heroine, Fanny, who is the moral centre of the story.

The revelation of the sources of his wealth and status show the questionable ethical conduct of the patriarch of this family, and provide a context for the subsequent moral disintegration of his children, who all fall prey to forms of temptation and depravity, even Edmund, who is intimately redeemed only by his affection for Fanny.

In more recent years, we have seen the quasi Regency Shondaland confection, Bridgerton, on our screens, openly using the slightest of speculations regarding the genetic ancestry of an English queen as a framing portal to usher in women and men of African and Indian heritage into the story landscape, each with their colourful back stories.

This inclusiveness and diversification trend has extended into the 19thC production ‘The Gilded Age’, in which wealthy African American families are brought into connection by the story writers with the Anglo-European families of New York.

In Bridgerton, the scenes where the elder sister of the Sharma family, in Season Two, participates with her younger sister and mother in the saffron/ turmeric paste beautifying rituals traditionally used by Indian brides before the impending wedding ceremony are beautiful to see. The love story between Miss Sharma and the eldest son of the Bridgerton family is based on an ‘enemies to friends’ arc which is very believable, and in which contrasting skin colour is no barrier to the recognition of beauty and desirable character qualities.

This preference to bring characters together across social barriers was foreshadowed in Season One when the eldest Bridgerton daughter falls in love with the dark and handsome Duke, and their magnetic attraction to each other is intensely illustrated in their words and actions, inter alia as a celebration of their equality or at least equivalence of social status.

In Jane Austen’s adaptations, we have not seen any casting director go beyond the pale, and venture into colourblind casting. Elizabeth Bennet may be accused by the jealous Miss Bingley of having ‘brown’ skin, but (fortunately for all of us clutching our pearls) it is only ‘tanned’, which is ‘no great wonder, in the summer’.

Shakespeare’s work, in contrast, has been often performed with people of all hues and from all ethnic backgrounds in the principal roles, and recent performances of Harry Potter on the stage actually cast a black Hermione Granger. The author herself, in her description of the characters, never specified Hermione’s ethnic heritage, only stating that she had bushy hair, and it is clear that the prettiest girls in Hogwarts School were the Indian Patel twins, and the Chinese Cho Chang.

Bridgerton aside, this embracing of diversity in the film and stage productions of beloved books which are regarded as central to the English literary canon is a trend about which I have mixed feelings. The realities of colonisation and the assertions of white supremacists created a conceptual underclass, in which people of colour lived their lives as minor characters and in service to the central characters. And therefore, in the cultural products of those eras, artworks were created in which people of colour were erased, or invisible.

The comments sections of Jane Austen online groups is an interesting snapshot of our times.

‘Mansfield Park has, to my mind, the best TV Austen adaptation of all time: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p04vfvpn via @bbciplayer

Impeccable costuming, wonderful casting, fidelity to the novel, understanding of the period, and no painful, anachronistic, ignorantly woke attempts to force every third character to be black or trans.’

Shoehorning people of colour into European landscapes is problematic. But what seems to really offend some people is the high status which these people of colour are afforded, in these fictional narratives. It is ‘anachronistic and painful’, because it clearly offends supremacist beliefs that people of colour could be so well established, so dignified, and elegantly costumed, and coiffured, and move as equals through gilded drawing rooms, and be centered in narratives instead of sidelined.

One of the worst and laziest equations ever made is the lumping together of minorities as second class citizens, seen as having lesser value: women, disabled people, trans people, people of colour and people exhibiting other forms of divergence from a standard of normativeness which is male, heterosexual and with skin containing less melanin, into the messy category of ‘different’, which to the minds of many is a euphemism for ‘deviant’. Women are not even a minority, statistically.

In Georgette Heyer’s novel, These Old Shades, the Duke of Avon’s sister has a black servant boy, called Pompey. The social mobility we are being shown in what I term Regency concoctions is wish fulfillment on the part of those who prefer a more colourful and equitable world, and have chosen to create it themselves, in fictional storytelling, reality falling far short of the way they clearly wish the world to be.

Colourblind casting on the one hand asserts the primacy of human personality, of intelligence and soul and emotion, as being more significant than external identifiers of race, colouring, facial features, hair type, physiognomy and body shape. In these contemporary performances, it is visually suggested that calibre, and content of character, is more important than the colour of a person’s skin. We relate to the characters on our screens as human beings, and we become interested and involved in their challenges and experiences as if they were real, and relatable.

However, in our identity obsessed world, it is also a form of false equivalence, and erasure of difference. We are not all human flat packs, culturally constructed the same. Our unique social and anthropological characteristics, and the cultural traditions in which we have evolved, are part of us.

The genders are different, and more diversely and subtly formulated these days. The actor who played the eldest Bridgerton son could not be more than a good friend to the lovely Miss Sharma, in real life.

This celebration of difference is at the heart of any union of human beings, whether personal in marriage, or political, in the form of nations. Tolerance is not a grudging recognition of someone else’s equivalent centre of self, but ideally, in a less threatened and defensive society, a more positive delight in multifoliate hues and difference.

In our excitable contemporary world, in which people find it difficult to do anything other than compete for territory and contest the most desirable sociocultural space to occupy, and the most compelling platforms on which to speak their truths, it is the reinterpretations of classic stories which portray to us the evolution of our species. Both in the bold steps forward, with the diversification of what we are now being shown as admirable and worthy, and the hue and cry (often muted, in genteel literary groups) that inevitably follows.