Undervalued Excellence

Broadly speaking, if we want to organise and prioritise the issues that concern us today into a 'to do' list, there are survival and fulfilment issues to consider. When it comes to fulfilment, the systematic dismantling of the arts and humanities as school and university subjects is an issue that is of paramount importance in how our culture navigates the challenges ahead of us. 

My view is that certain essential skills are only accessible through the valuing of arts subjects, which teach us problem solving in a sequential, illuminating and context driven way. 

We have been increasingly told recently by government ministers all over the Western world that arts subjects such as history and literature are now often classified as nonessential. 

Of course, this is a subjective and false statement, masquerading as an official objective and authoritative announcement, which reeks of political agendas and selective misinformation. This attitude directly contributes to the problems these nations face in effectively managing the new globally connected world in which we live. 

There's a systematic process involved in discrediting anything whether it's a person, an organisation or a subject of study. You begin by undervaluing and questioning its relevance, you discredit its practitioners, you measure its productivity in solely fiscal terms without factoring in its social and cultural impact, and you start to underfund its institutions. 

What skills can language and literature teach us? 

They teach us intellectual and discernment skills to analyse the written and spoken word, as well as how to accurately interpret what we read. We become able to filter out sensationalisation, exaggeration, understatement, euphemism, select obfuscation and distortion. 

Moreover, we're able to identify the triggering adjectives used by writers and speechmakers to detonate our emotions. We learn to feel the impact of cumulation and structural devices in text. And we can understand not only what is being said to us but the intention of the person presenting it. 

These skills of analysis and interpretation arc crucial to enable us to comprehend and process the huge amount of information, sensation and misinformation that comes out way. We also learn to communicate our own ideas most effectively.

If we don't develop these essential skill sets, we become passive consumers of information and susceptible to manipulation; and as a result. we may become overdependent on preprocessed information, susceptible, fearful, and confused participants in the societal spread of misinformation and fake news.

 All of us have witnessed what damage this can cause in our personal experience, society and online communities. 

Fifty years ago, school curricula were not so specialised. There was a much broader emphasis on liberal humanities as a foundation of education. Scientists studied history. geography and literature, while medical doctors and economists also studied fiction and poetry. These were not viewed as luxury or niche subjects and the professionally trained minds that resulted were respected worldwide. 

Today, with Sri Lanka's emphasis on science. technology, engineering and mathematics. (STEM) subjects to build the economy, we may overlook the fact that how we enjoy and comprehend our lives is as important as our material wellbeing. 

In my opinion, we're even more vulnerable to the erosion of the skills of critical thinking relative to other countries because we currently offer language and literature as an option at secondary school level rather than as the building blocks of information literacy that they should be. 

It should not be difficult to incorporate analytical and interpretative skills into any online course that students can access. And the benefit would be manifold: a citizenry that is empowered, articulate and information literate. 

Isn’t It Ironic?

 

This is the story of two men in the USA who recently found they could not breathe. It’s about 6 weeks since George Floyd had his neck stepped on by a group of policemen. And it’s a few days since Richard Rose, proud non-wearer of protective masks, died of Covid19, after testing positive on July 1st. 

I’ve just seen a Facebook post in which someone I know admits that she finds it ‘funny’ that Richard Rose posted a defiant statement on April 28th, declaring he would not wear masks, and that he ‘had made it this far by not buying into the hype’ around Covid 19. Now two months later, he is dead, and his belief in his exceptionalism has been proved to be unsubstantiated. 

Some people found the sight of George Floyd being killed humorous, too. Lynchings have always had some public support, for their entertainment value. We saw his death throes being imitated and exaggerated by people on home videos, with people taking it in turns to be victim and perpetrator. It reminded me of the kids in ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ enacting what they had heard of Boo Radley’s tragic life, so ignorantly and so callously. 

Both men were asphyxiated. One by external force imposed unjustifiably on him in a public street. One by internal breakdown of his respiratory system, in his home, as a result of his own choice to exercise personal freedom. I personally don’t find either death funny, or even ironic. But I suppose callous unconcern is a legitimate response to the world in which we now live, and (in its own way) it is a form of survivalism. 

Some commenters on Richard Rose’s puny statement of defiance said his Facebook statement that he would not wear a mask should be ‘engraved on his tombstone’. I wonder what will be engraved on theirs. Or whether there will be no gravestones available, because we will be buried in mass burial sites in public parks, because the public services which administer our civilized processes of health, death, and burial will be overloaded. 

Perhaps we will end up living in small colonies of like-minded people, all living as we ourselves do, either maskless or masked, depending on our mutually-held beliefs. Like physical, real world versions of echo chambers. 

     ‘Ask not for whom the bell tolls’ no longer has currency, I’m sorry to say. We are all becoming islands, withdrawn from each other, from fear of contracting illness, and suspicion that others do not uphold the same strict standards of social distancing that we ourselves do. We don’t want to be put at risk by being in contact with them, and we want to show our distinct difference from Covidiots who don’t wear masks by mocking their choices. Empathy creates connection, and we want to burn those bridges. 

     Richard Rose was exercising his right to not be afraid, to not be cautious, and he could not have made his stance 

more clear, really. Do we have our own moral objections to finding his fatal stupidity funny? But it’s karma, right? His careless defiance which turned out to be so puny and unfounded? His own immoral behaviour in infecting so many others in the name of his puny, unfounded defiance? It is funny in a way to see people making claims based on a sense of personal exceptionalism. I guess we’ll all find out what’s true before this is over.

Salman Rushdie summed up the chaotic, disconcerting paradoxes of the sudden shifts of postmodern life in his novel, ‘The Ground Beneath Her Feet’: 

‘These things are bad for you: sex, high-rise buildings, chocolate, lack of exercise, dictatorship, racism! No, au contraire! Celibacy damages the brain, high-rise buildings bring us closer to God, tests show that a bar of chocolate a day significantly improves chilren's academic performance, exercise kills, tyranny is just a part of our culture so I'll thank you to keep your cultural-imperialist ideas off my fucking fiefdom, and as for racism, let's not get all preachy about this, it's better out in the open than under some grubby carpet. That extremist is a moderate! That universal right is culturally specific! This circumcised woman is culturally happy! That Aboriginal whistlecockery is culturally barbaric! Pictures don't lie! This image has been faked! Free the press! Ban nosy journalists! The novel is dead! Honor is dead! God is dead! Aargh, they're all alive and they're coming after us! That star is rising! No, she's falling! We dined at nine! We dined at eight! You were on time! No, you were late! East is West! Up is down! Yes is No! In is Out! Lies are Truth! Hate is Love! Two and two makes five! And everything is for the best, in this best of all possible worlds. ‘ ― Salman Rushdie

Under the manic energy of this cumulative outburst beat the twin pulses of fear and anger, the very qualities we pray to be rid of, in the Metta Meditation. If we entertain them, we will be overridden like the doomed City of Hamelin in the old children’s story. 

Let us act in such a way as to ensure a better outcome. May we be well, and happy. May we act in such a way as to lengthen our lives, if we find them valuable and meaningful. For we hold these things to be self evident.

The correct analogy

Two and a half years ago, a cyber lynching took place in Sri Lanka. To understand what I mean by this, you would need to know what lynching is, and the circumstances in which it occurs.

People today are using the word ‘lynching’ to describe the murder of an African American man, George Floyd, by U.S. policemen, and it has a history which enables us to see the pattern of how it is used, as an instrument of deliberate violence, to harass, intimidate, and humiliate.

It’s ritualistic and performative. It is used to dramatically enact a person’s isolation and powerlessness, when outnumbered by a gang of thugs.

Descriptor Credit: Wikipedia

I think of Tom Robinson in ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’. And the bathroom scene in ‘Ender’s Game’. I think of Andy Dufresne in ‘The Shawshank Redemption’, being systematically got at by ‘The Sisters’. Of the images sent out from Guantanamo Bay of guards positioning prisoners in pyramid forms, blindfolded and immobilised while they let the dogs out. The horrors perpetrated against Jewish and Gypsy and homosexual prisoners by Nazi guards in the 1940s for entertainment. Of Aslan in the first Narnia book, ‘The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe’, taunted and put to death by his ghoulish enemies. Of the piñatas in Mexico, where, during fiestas, lifesize dolls or animal figures full of sweets are hung up and beaten with clubs, or stabbed in the stomach, until they burst open for the benefit of the cheering crowd.

There’s an overtly dramatic element in the rituals of lynching. It’s a tribalistic bonding experience. The sadism is shared, and delighted in by the perpetrators. The victim is positioned and framed in a myriad ways as an object of scorn and contempt. There is humor generated by the victim’s fear of their own imminent and painful death and their pleas for mercy are met with shouts of jubilation.

While researching this, I’ve seen several photographs of people who participated in these events. Their faces broadly smiling, grinning, unshadowed by any negative feeling. Their victim tied up and gagged, trussed up in a body bag like a cocoon of cloth, hung by the neck from a nearby tree: hung high, so everyone can see. Silenced and forcibly made passive, no longer any kind of threat to those who outnumber him.

Descriptor Credit: Wikipedia

Cyber lynching is not physical. It describes the orchestrated ganging up of a group of people online, on Facebook or Twitter, attacking one person who has said or done something to which someone takes offence. In online lynching, the weapons are words. And the intended effect of cumulative comments is the equivalent of cudgels or batons on the persona of the victim.

Many of these ‘events’ are participated in for fun — people joke about getting popcorn to be bystanders as if they were at the movies, and watching the performance in front of them, quite good humouredly. If there is a more sadistic or malicious intent, this becomes clear in the comments thread, especially in comments which have a sensationalist gloss, and attract multiple Likes, the trophy of the online cyber bully in their quest for viral transmission of their wit and verbal dexterity.

A lot of verbal arguments take place on Facebook and Twitter. Jousting, duelling, give and take of provocation and puncturing. It’s a fair fight. But not if one party is not even there, to participate. Online lynching can take place without the victim being actually present, either in person or in words, if they are not part of the conversation in which their reputation is being attacked, and their identity trashed.

So two and a half years ago, a cyber lynching took place in Sri Lanka, in the form of a Facebook post and a comments thread in which the perpetrator invited a few tagged people to participate in publicly attacking someone against whom he had a personal grudge.

His visible attempts to make it go viral did not succeed, and the post was taken down by him about 24 hours after it was first posted. But because he had set it to public setting, the post and comments thread were visible on the FB platform, and were photographed in their entirety as evidence of defamation, slander and libel.

The degree of malicious intent was quite remarkable in several aspects, centered on his attempt to frame the object of his anger as someone to be avoided, and shunned, as someone unworthy of respect, devoid of value and undeserving of the dignity of social recognition. It was — at its core — an unjustified, cowardly and one-sided attack. But justice was not its aim. Lynching is not an act of justice, even in the self-justifying minds of its perpetrators. It is a brazen, blatant and explicit act of dehumanization.

The person orchestrating this event was summoned and charged with malicious harassment by the police, because of the evidence in the post and comments thread. This apparently came as a surprise to him, because in Sri Lanka on Facebook and Twitter gross violations of decency are normalized and even admired, among his peers. A culture of online impunity and unaccountability for wrongdoing was prevalent. Many people felt entitled by this to act any way they wished, behind the relative anonymity of their screens and keyboards, or the safe spaces of their echo chambers of like-minded netizens.

Many of the comments and responses on that post were banal and predictable. But the most interesting part about it was the perpetrator’s conscious awareness of what he was doing.

As we can see, he described the woman he was ranting against as a ‘black dude (who) wanted the KKK to join HIM’. By calling this ‘the correct analogy’ for the situation over which he was presiding, and calling the woman he was attacking a ‘black man’ attempting to recruit support from the oppressors who outnumbered ‘him’, he was knowingly equating himself and his mates with the Ku Klux Klan, those white-robed, hooded, racist vigilantes, enactors and symbols of inhumane behaviour against African American men, whom they outnumbered and killed by the hundreds in the 19th and 20thC, their criminal acts made anonymous, apparently impervious to reprimand, and rendered unaccountable by their covering, concealing hoods.

The lawyers and police who read the thread found it very interesting that he described himself and his friends in such a way. Who in their right mind would voluntarily ally himself publicly on the side of the perpetrator in such a contemptible ritual?

After George Floyd’s death was filmed and recorded on video, and his dying words were made available on audio recording and in text form, and started appearing on placards in protest marches, he became an icon. Because he died, he achieved martyr status, and activists were quick to point out that the racism was not new, but that it was now being recorded, and thus impossible to deny.

A few days earlier, in New York’s Central Park, a man himself had recorded on video the threats of violence made against him by a woman walking her dog, in an area of the public park where he was peacefully birdwatching. His asking her to comply with the park rules and put her dog on its leash triggered a furious outburst from her, caught on video and audio.

She identified him to police on the phone as an ‘African American Man.’ Mere identification? Or racial profiling in a racist societal context, where she could frame his actions as dangerous to her merely by invoking the systemic injustice which she knew would endanger him, and which would immediately render him powerless in relation to her?

The Central Park incident illuminated the workings of white privilege. But the murder of George Floyd exposed the injustice and violence of the police, and because it is seen as racialised violence, which has become routine and normalized, and because hundreds of thousands of people all over the world find it unjust, ugly and unacceptable to them, it is being used as a catalyst to channel the people’s collective anger at injustice into a global revolutionary movement.

Debates about whether #alllivesmatter negates #blacklivesmatter have caught alight. People of all colours and creeds are educating themselves about racism, the ideology of white supremacy, and the destructive structures that have supported and sustained it.

In an obscene defiance of this rise in awareness, there have been people on home videos shared on Facebook ritualistically recreating George Floyd’s death scene as a dramatized joke, the person playing the perpetrator laughing with his foot on the neck of the victim; the ‘victim’ writhing in a facsimile of exaggerated agony.

In real life, George Floyd could not writhe in agony, because he was held down by several men and could not move or breathe. He was overpowered and immobilized.

How can people who witness such planned and deliberate damage which is done to another human being, not only stay silent and observe it, but actively participate and re-enact such an event?

To do this, they would have to feel disconnected from the person being targeted: to see the victim as not sharing in their own humanity, and disqualified from the entitlements to dignity and respect and safety and courtesy and sovereignty that come with it. They would have to objectify him/her, otherise them, and feel no pain — and even positive pleasure — at being a spectator of their suffering.

Do any contemporary or historical analogies come to mind?

If so, let’s call them what they are. And by all means, let us use the most accurate terminology.

Image credit: Polygon

Who Let The Dogs Out?

A couple of nights ago, a Russian woman who was out with some friends in Colombo was harassed on Galle Face Green, one of the most public areas of the capital city, by a group of about 10 Sri Lankan men. The video taken of this incident, with its visual and audio evidence of the verbal insults and the physical assault on the person recording the incident, has been viewed by hundreds of people. 

There are a lot of reports in women’s online groups in this country with video evidence of women being harassed as they walk to work, or to the shops, or attempt to walk their dog in their own neighbourhood of the towns and cities in which they live. Or as they attempt to take public transport to work or college, and back home again, with random men trying to grab and grope them, pretending they don’t know that what they are doing is immoral. 

Women increasingly seen as sex objects

We can speculate that the growth in the pornography industry that has accompanied the rise in internet usage in the past 15 years has resulted in women being increasingly seen as sexual objects, and not human beings, with the right to be free of harassment and interference as they go about their lives. 

The disturbing rise in trade in nude photos and the monetisation of human desire for affection and connection, which results in girls being persuaded to share images of themselves with a trusted friend or boyfriend, who then violates the trust placed in him, is also increasing. You add technology to misogyny and you get exploitation and degradation like this. Sri Lanka unfortunately currently has one of the highest rates of consumption of pornography in the world, and also extremely high rates of violence and abuse against children and women. 

There is something wrong with the mindset of men who see a woman on an advertisement or a promotional brochure, advertising a product, and automatically equate the woman with the product, and assume that both are ‘for sale’. There is something actually wrong with the attitude of men who think it is acceptable to express their sexual excitement or approval unsolicited to a woman they do not know. Contrary to what many such men think, their enthusiasm is not welcome or felt as complimentary. It makes the women they approach uncomfortable. 

Women who have public profiles on social media have to post visual images of themselves in the public sphere, on Linked In, Facebook, Instagram etc. When a woman is invited to present a public seminar or participate in a panel discussion, the media team associated with the event will ask for a photograph of her, to enable the public to put a face to the name. 

Recently, a local chocolate company asked a young influencer to advertise their products. The comments on their page had to be seen to be believed. 95 per cent of them commented on the looks of the girl, ranging from ‘pretty’ in various forms, to sexually explicit propositions, implying that she was a sex worker. 

This actually does not happen in many other countries. It is not in fact normal, or sane, to assume that every woman or girl you see is available to you, or trying to catch your eye, or appeal to you in some way sexually. The boundaries between acceptable types of human behaviour in different contexts, and public and personal spheres, have become blurred. It makes me sad when I see young Sri Lankan women say they have just given up on dating local men, because of the low standard of behaviour they are faced with. 

In a country which is attempting to revive its flourishing tourist trade after the Easter Attacks and the current COVID-19 crisis, to allow the behaviour of street harassment and crude objectification of women, especially foreign women, who are merely attempting to have a holiday in a beautiful country, and bringing needed revenue into the country, is counterproductive, and totally unpatriotic. 

No modern woman who has a choice would ever choose to travel to, or work in, a country where she is subjected to this kind of treatment and nauseating scrutiny on a daily basis. By indulging themselves in this lewd and degenerate behaviour, these men are lowering the reputation of the country in the tourist and global travel industry. Members of Sri Lanka’s Tourist Board need to take note of this. 

If this obvious point is not taken up and acted on, Sri Lanka’s reputation as a place of glorious beauty, history and natural abundance of scenery and landscape, will be undermined and damaged by the repulsive and immoral behaviour of some local people, and the lack of safety and decency that both local women and girls and foreign women experience as a result of this behaviour. It is like seeing a beautiful building which has become neglected, being taken over by feral dogs. 

A couple of days ago, a woman publicly shared the name and photograph of a man who had verbally abused her simply because she did not choose to reply to him on FB Messenger. Naming and shaming the perpetrators of such behaviour, by sharing photographs and videos of the insulting and inappropriate behaviour of the men, are actions resorted to by women who know from past experience that their official reporting of such behaviour will not result in any charge being made, as the behaviour is so common. This situation must change, if the country is to go forward, as it should. 

Pervasive disrespect normalised

Why should men think that their offensive behaviour should not be reported? Getting angry, and threatening those who expose the bad behaviour is not going to erase the fact that it happened. The men themselves have to recognise that they are accountable, despite the fact that a whole cultural tradition in many countries has traditionally supported the degradation of women. They have to hold themselves, and allow themselves to be held, to a higher standard of accountability in their conduct. 

It is sad to see that this kind of pervasive disrespect has become normalised in the world today. Many men, angry and threatened at the recent improved rights and increased success of women, seek to continually reduce them through word and deed and stereotype and insult and assumption, to the status of passive sex objects, as if it is only their physical  appearance and its appeal which defines their worth, and not their character, their ideas, their beliefs and thoughts, their intellect, their wisdom and multi-faceted experiences. 

Sri Lanka at this juncture has the opportunity to challenge the South Asian trend, of constantly treating women as second class citizens. We can see in Europe and New Zealand the recent rise to political authority of several women who are young, educated, well-recognized by their peers and skilled in leadership. We can see the welcome appointment of skilled professional women to important executive positions in renowned companies in Sri Lanka. We can see the value women bring to public discourse. 

The mindset that women should be restricted to home and child-raising is an old-fashioned one, suitable to a former era, when one partner’s income was enough to sustain a family. Today, people can and should choose the kinds of life they want, professionally and personally. Relationships being seen as partnerships between equals is one of the most enlightened and rational benefits of the modern era. We should recognise what a benefit that is, for all. 

But it is only really a comprehensive benefit to a society which truly wants to empower every member of its citizenry, and hold a position of respect in the global world. 

I suggest The Tourist Board could combine with the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs and develop an ongoing awareness campaign designed to elevate our public reputation and improve the living experience of women and girls in this country. Corporates and Media could sponsor and promote these campaigns. 

And citizens with their smart phones can continue to demand public awareness of this ongoing problem, which adversely affects the quality of life for the women and girls of Sri Lanka. 

And They All Fall Down

 The necessary overthrow of our idols in our journey of individuation.

We’ve seen a lot of statues being forcibly taken down from their plinths and pedestals, in the past few weeks, as the #BlackLivesMatter movement has started to increase in momentum. Statues of slave traders in Bristol, England; and profiteers from slavery in the United States. Statues of people who built great personal wealth and reputation from colonization and the economic prosperity that it brought to the so-called ‘first world’ countries.

Last year, during the #MeToo movement, we saw the downfall of a famous, enormously wealthy and successful movie producer, and the end of the professional career of a famous actor, ironically playing the part of a President in the aptly-titled political satire ‘House Of Cards’.
There seems to be a global upsurge in the violent casting down of idols.

The author J.K. Rowling, venerated by a legion of fans for her Harry Potter book and movie franchise for 20 years, is now being castigated and renounced by many in her fanbase because of her professed exclusionary opinions about what constitutes a ‘true woman’. The rigid monochromatic binaries of sexual, racial and economic categories which defined us, and by which we previously organized ourselves, have today exploded into a multiplicity of self-identification. For some people, this wide range of possibilities is perplexing, and unnecessary. For others, it is vital and liberating.

Greater respect for those who are different from ourselves, greater empathy, greater sensitivity to the contexts and experiences of others, will hopefully be the ultimate result of this conflict-ridden transitional period. It seems painful, but necessary. As if the human race is finally growing up.

I suggest that we could experience the events in this transition as less traumatic if we relate it to our own personal growth process. We all start the development of our beliefs and attitudes from our own specific context; and our early mentors and idols, including our parents, mirror what is normal for us, and what we aspire to be. They are the measure of us, and we measure ourselves by them.

But young people grow up. Outgrowing our idols, feeling betrayed by them, disillusioned and disappointed by their words and actions as their historical acts of offensiveness come to light, from genocide to sex abuse, exploitation of the vulnerable, promotion of racial or gender-based hatred, is part of our own self-determination.

As we grow, whether as individuals or as nations, it seems inappropriate to have statues in public places celebrating the deeds of people whose actions today are ones we cannot admire.

In our personal lives, people we looked up to, who represented certain qualities to us, which we admired intensely when we were younger, including wealth, fame, beauty and success, are sometimes shown by their own words and actions to be morally deficient or limited in their outlook. We find that our values no longer align with them.
I experienced this recently when researching sources for an academic paper I was presenting on the topic of Exoticism, looking at the ways in which women were described as alluring and provocative in varied literary texts. I found an extract from Pablo Neruda’s Memoirs in which he describes how he sexually assaulted a woman who was employed to clean his house while he was stationed as a diplomat in Sri Lanka in the late 1920s. I was horrified both by his action, and the emotionless and matter of fact way he wrote about it, and mentally dethroned Neruda from the position of respect which I had formerly accorded him.

I recently discovered that Derek Walcott, a brilliant poet and post-colonial writer whose literary work I have long admired, was not given the prestigious role of Professor of Poetry at Oxford University because of accusations of personal misconduct against him.

Psychologists say that we project qualities we admire onto others: it’s ‘the halo effect’. We are so impressed by their good qualities that we do not see their human frailties and failings. It makes it even more difficult for those elevated by public acclaim to self-evaluate or set limits on their own behaviour, as they are allowed so much license by the indulgent, adoring public.
We can blame those we have idolized, for failing us. To use the statue analogy, we can throw paint at them or deface them, to display and dramatize our disrespect. We can insult them and berate them.

Alternatively, we can appreciate that our own standards and expectations are transforming. We can mindfully clear space for worthier inhabitants of those pedestals, which better represent our modern-day ideals.

Or we can do without those statues and those pedestals altogether. We can cease to idolize others, and we can take greater responsibility and accountability for the objects of worship we put up in our public spaces, and those individuals we venerate in our hearts, minds and spirits.
We can develop the qualities we admire in ourselves, and make them living personal ideals which guide our lives, rather than giving away our personal powers by externalising them onto idols made of stone.

White Noise

I have stopped sharing certain kinds of visual images on Facebook. Not because Facebook have sent me any message that anything I have posted ‘has breached their community standards guidelines’. But because the kinds of pictures that are being shared at this point in time are often so ugly, so revealing and so disheartening.

It’s an incredibly significant turning point for the human race. Glossy surfaces and whited sepulchers are being broken up and excavated, statues that have stood for certain symbols and beliefs are being  dismounted from their pedestals, and public figures who seemed culturally ensconced, embalmed in their own success, fame and iconic status are being investigated, through archival material.

Videos taken on smart phones and posted online without context are being circulated: African American men being accosted by police, tasered in the parking lots of fast food restaurants, set upon by attack dogs. Statues are defaced, covered with graffiti and splashed with red paint to represent the bloodshed and human suffering which resulted from the policies of the men whose image they embody. 

A picture of two little white girls in the Belgian Congo in 1955 show them playing with a tiny African child in a cage, as if the child was a pet animal. Human zoos existed until relatively recently in the world, thinly disguised as anthropological exhibits. Saartje Baartman, a South African woman, called the ‘Hottentot Venus’ was exhibited in Paris. 

Fact checking reveals that most of the icons that have been set in stone over the past 250 years have at best a chequered history, and that most of the stately homes of England, America and Europe have been built on profits from the unpaid labour of slaves, or poorly paid indentured laborers. 

Gradually, the public, most of us non-specialist historians, are realising that we have learned a very selective history, and believed a dominant narrative, and that, not very far under what we prefer to believe, there are further facts which are harder to reconcile with our preferred myths of how the human race has progressed. 

The Black Lives Matter movement has sparked a process of cultural reckoning and exploration of colonisation and its ongoing impacts in many countries. Euphemisms like ‘settlement’ cover the indecent rapaciousness and cruelty of what other historians’ term ‘invasion’ and ‘genocide’. A sort of diffused white noise, a fabricated, self-justifying vista of peace and serenity, seems to have absorbed all radical dissent until now. 

Sir Winston Churchill, for example, one of Britain’s ‘most loved’ politicians and statesmen of yesteryear, is known widely for his rallying speeches during WW2, particularly the ‘we shall fight on the beaches... we shall never surrender’ speech in The Battle of Britain. 

But he also said some other equally defiant words, in relation to colonial invasion of the territories of North American and Australian indigenous people, which have an ugly ring to them in our contemporary era: 

‘I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place’. 

When we turn off the computer or TV from which we get our news, and put down the newspapers, and look at the cities in which we live, we see the values of our society emblazoned on billboards, and indicated in the public honors we confer on our citizens. 

There’s a petition to change the Order of St. Michael and St. George in Britain, which contains an insignia showing a white-clad saint trampling a dark-winged devil, underfoot, literally with his foot on its neck and a chain leading from his hand to the neck of the black figure. The image of George Floyd is recalled by this posture, but so is the image of big game hunters, those grinning parasites and propagators of Empire, posing with their kills, in their solar topees. 

Racism operates by creating and imposing hierarchies of value, and assigning human beings into categories based on skin colour, and ethnicity, especially visible physical features. Beliefs about character and personality are imposed via stereotype onto these physical attributes. And these beliefs are reinforced and spread through propaganda, heavily infused with symbolism. 

Professor Priyamvada Gopal, an Academic in the University of Cambridge, author of the post-colonial critique ‘Insurgent Empire’ is currently under online siege by brazen and overt white supremacists who feel disrespected by her statements that Britain should re-evaluate its own history. I have heard Professor Gopal being interviewed on the BBC, in a conversation in which it was patronisingly suggested by an Anglo-Saxon English academic that she should ‘use the resources of Cambridge University which are fortunately available to her, to research the colonisation processes of other countries, not just Britain’. ‘Whataboutism’ and deflection on a truly epic scale. Also, condescension and mansplaining. 

The beliefs underlying colonialism were blatantly racist, white supremacist and overtly capitalist. And these beliefs are stated on record, where we can read them today. White people owned resources. Non-white people were owned, their cultures dismantled and their resources appropriated. Voices in favour of these ideas were so loud and numerous they drowned out all opposition. To suggest that these racist beliefs be re-evaluated now is only radical or threatening to those who benefit from their affirmation and continuation. 

The insults sent to Professor Gopal via Twitter must be seen to be believed. They are a perfect illustration of the state of cultural illiteracy and regress of Britain today. Anger, misogyny, outrage, xenophobia, hypocrisy, vileness, racial vilification – all vie for prominence in the comments threads. 

No amount of shooting the messenger is going to suppress the need for cultural evolution. The ideas of comparative racial supremacy and inferiority served the agendas of the nationalistic and competitive building of Empire for the past few hundred years. A global world which requires real co-operation and respect between peoples can only rise in the public space created by the dismantling of those ideas. 

It’s a big and colourful transformation. It’s something to make a noise about.

Our diminishing attention span

 

One of the most noticeable things about these recent times is how rapidly the news cycle and its presentation of stories moves from one crisis to another, taking our energy and attention with it, mapped in bipolar extremes of highs and lows.

If we think about it, from last year’s Easter Attacks of April 2019 to the COVID-19 crisis which has dominated our lives since February, through curfew and lockdown and interruption of education and commercial enterprise, the rise of unemployment and restriction of activity and movement, to June 2020, where we see civil unrest and riots exploding in the US, we have been subjected to a non-stop attack on our sense of survivalism and security. 

It is difficult to maintain our optimism and equilibrium in times like this. And if we consider it, we can see that the issues and incidents that occupied our thoughts a few months ago keep changing, in step with the news reports, and the myriad opinion pieces. 

It is almost impossible to determine if what is being shown and told to us is real or not, as we are usually physically removed from the place in which it happens. We are aware that visual images are photoshopped, and videos can be faked. We rely on those presenting events to us to be accurate, objective and factual in their representation of events. But often they are not. Sometimes, it’s brazenly and unapologetically. And in that uncertainty, and that falsification, in those gaps, scepticism and conspiracy theories thrive. 

Personal protective equipment

Today, it seems as if the peaceful space outside our own home windowsill shows a completely different world from the one we see exploding on the television and computer screens, with escalating numbers of deaths reported, in lists and infographics, and video footage of Police in protective gear unleashing tear gas and plastic bullets on unarmed protestors. 

A few weeks ago, while 100,000 people were reportedly dying in North America, of a virus we had only heard of in February, we were told the hospitals there did not have adequate personal protective equipment to supply to the medical staff on the frontline. Doctors and nurses working long shifts dealing with the health crisis were wearing plastic garbage bags and homemade masks because the proper protective gear was not available, or not being given to them. Healthcare workers were dying from prolonged exposure to the highly-infective illness, due to lack of essential protection. 

But the Police and security forces dealing with these protests against racial injustice today seem very well equipped. 

For 15 years, I taught a course called ‘Representation and Text’ as part of an A-level Literature syllabus. This showed us how to analyse and deconstruct images and narratives that are offered to us, as representations of events and incidents in the real world. It was great preparation for the world we live in today.

Through technology, we have access not only to the rest of the world, but to perspectives which are created by the ways that world is framed to us. Through selective reporting, through omission, exaggeration, distortion, sensationalisation, minimising and understatement, viewers are presented with a version of reality which is not an exact record of the facts. 

Repetition and iteration of these distorted perspectives, on timed cycles and news loops, imprints and reinforces these ideas. And the barrage of information and infotainment impacts us. This is significant because it affects our thinking, and our beliefs; and our beliefs inform our words and actions, which in turn influence others around us. 

Human beings are naturally responsive, reactive individuals. And when we are in a constant state of tension and crisis, our responses are easily triggered. This volatility has socio-political implications as well as personal ones. 

Meditation practice teaches us to step back and be aware of the transience of our thoughts: our thoughts are like passing clouds, and our mind is the sky. It is our task to try and keep clear skies above us, and to recognise the changing patterns of our thoughts and beliefs, as we respond to each event which is relayed to us. 

It is easy to be overwhelmed by the incoming overload of information and representation. But when this happens, I suggest keeping in focus how quickly our attention is directed from one trauma to another, all targeting our fears and anxieties.  

To be well and to be happy is the goal of Metta Meditation practice. This seems to be a state of harmony which is increasingly challenging to achieve. To develop immunity against the consequences of these destabilising events, we must develop resilience of will and strength of mind. 

Remove the adjectives

A simple rule when hearing stories told about what is going on in the world is to remove the adjectives from what is said. It’s like removing unwanted and harmful fat from the top of food, which can only be done when it has cooled down. If you take your temperature, metaphorically speaking, when watching or listening to something which disturbs you, wait until you cool down before absorbing it. 

The contrasting difference between factual events and someone’s representation of it will always show us the intention of the person presenting it to us and expose our own biases, which are being targeted. It is up to us if that difference is clear to us or not, and how we act on that awareness.