Live? Laugh? Love?

It’s been a while, but I’ve had some more thoughts that might be worth writing down. There are of course greater things going on in the world that I could be discussing right now, but I lack the words or the perspective to do them justice. My current thoughts are in relation to the old topic of free speech, which I’ve discussed multiple times before, but more specifically about laughter, humour, offense and happiness.

The first thing to say, of course, is that humour is incredibly subjective; more so perhaps than any other area of expression. What one person finds funny, another finds utterly boring, or perhaps even offensive. Just within one individual, what they might find amusing in one mood is distinctly unfunny in another.

That caveat aside, I think there are some things worth saying. This is all brought about by the news stories in the last couple of weeks about former actor and failed politician Laurence Fox. While being interviewed on GB News, he made some extremely misogynistic remarks about a female journalist, and was roundly criticised from all sides.

He has, perhaps predictably, dug his feet in, complaining about his treatment and the imfringement of his free speech, and blamed the too-easily-offended and the world at large. One of the things he said though, struck me as revealing.

"I realise that the new woke world is low and laughter and high on offence..."

What this tells me is that Mr. Fox has failed to understand something; he has failed to understand that it is possible to laugh without laughing at someone. It is possible to tell a joke that doesn't have someone else as the butt of it. It is in fact possible to be happy without knowing that someone else is miserable, and possible to experience joy without making someone else sad.

Mr. Fox's words brought to mind a couple of lines from a poem I read years ago (and which a bit of Googling has informed me was written by Brian Jacques of ‘Redwall’ fame):

Bullies never smile, they sneer.

Bullies never laugh. They jeer.

In the case of Fox and the many people like him, they seem very apt. However, if anyone ever dares tell them that they are bullies they (someone ironically) become very offended and bewail modern peoples' lack of good humour.

There is this persistent idea that there is something humourless, po-faced and deeply un-fun about modern discourse. Individuals like Fox and certain tabloid newspapers complain of ‘politically correct kill-joys’ or ‘woke snowflakes’, the ‘professionally offended’ who can’t bear to hear anyone say anything mean about anyone without clutching their pearls and 'cancelling' people left and right (but mostly right).

I have said before that I believe nobody has the right not to be offended, but that everybody has the responsibility not to offend, or at least not without very good cause. Offense can be an important tool for shocking us out of our apathy, but that’s very different to being the butt of a mocking joke. Laughter is a blessing, but there is such a thing as cruel laughter, and cruelty is always to be opposed.

Sometimes one hears people complain that ‘you can’t joke about anything anymore’. This is patently untrue, but the idea that people are more humourless or more easily offended is, I think, incorrect.

Something has indeed changed, but it’s not that people are less inclined to laughter and more inclined to offense. People have always been offended, they’ve always been hurt, they’ve always felt insulted and belittled. What has changed is that they now have the confidence to say so. We have this idea that people ought to be kind to each other, and when they’re not, we express our disapproval through our words and our wallets.

It is, of course, possible to laugh at someone in a way that isn’t mean-spirited. One can (and should) laugh at oneself, and you can invite others to laugh with you. But that’s rather the point. You can join in the laughter when someone laughs at themselves, and do it in a way that is good-natured and kind. We can find humour in each other’s flaws and foibles without mocking or belittling them or the person themselves.

Humour is subjective, but if you can’t laugh without laughing at someone else, if your happiness is predicated on making others miserable to make yourself feel good, then you’re a poor excuse for a human being. I can only hope that one day the jeering is entirely drowned out by the warm laughter of those who take delight and joy in each other’s differences, not use them as an excuse for cruelty and mockery. The quality of the laughter will be better, and because we are all laughing together, there will be so much more of it to enjoy.

Opposing Extremism Extremely

Another blog post, another link to another BBC story, this time about the idea of locking up ‘extremists’ in separate sections.  Never mind the quote from the article, “Extremist prisoners who "seek to poison the minds of others" will be put in special units”, which sounds like something that should be coming from China or North Korea, that’s not the issue I wish to address today, significant and terrifying though it is.

In their infinite wisdom, the BBC opened the story up for comment, and you can imagine some of the gems that came up.  However, beyond the usual daft ‘ban religion’ posts were some rather more disturbing ones: “People who still believe in gods in the 21^st century just need culling”, “All religious people believe in an afterlife, so why don’t we just kill them?”, “Just cut (Anjem Choudary’s) tongue out.”  Now, my understanding of the law is that these are actually incitement to violence and therefore illegal, and I know that the first one at least was removed by the BBC moderators.

Now, as a ‘religious person’, it may not surprise you to learn that I am not wholly in favour of these as long-term plans.  I feel in myself that being culled would not align with my interests, and although I do indeed believe in an afterlife, albeit only with the very vaguest ideas of what precise form it might take, I don’t feel that I should be prematurely ushered into it, even by the most well-intentioned of violent extremist maniacs.

More specifically, there was plenty of ranting against Islam extremism, or indeed just Islam itself.  Plenty of calls to deport them (regardless of the fact that many, including Anjem Choudary, the focus of the article, were born in the UK) and quite a few to just shoot them.  To be fair, these latter were mostly directed towards extremists preaching violence, not Muslims generally.  Mostly.  There were however plenty of calls for such people to be forcibly silenced, and prevented from preaching at all.

Many of the posters claimed that they wanted to protect the UK from Islamisation, and that these extremists want to turn Britain into another “backwards, medieval hellhole”.  In short, to prevent Britain from becoming like Saudi Arabia or Yemen, they want to reinstitute the death penalty, mutilation and corporal punishment, crack down on free speech and quash freedom of religion and freedom of assembly.  Wait a second…

Extremism takes a great many forms, nebulous and easily-abused concept that it is, but if nothing else the saddening and baffling comments quoted above demonstrate that it is by no means the sole domain of religion.  We should also bear in mind of course that the vast, vast majority of moderate, reasonable rational atheists decry and condemn the calls to violence, intolerance and oppression made by their sadly loud but nonetheless tiny extremist fringes.  It can be easy to forget this when they are so very visible, but the aim of such people is to polarise us, enforce the ‘us vs them’ mentality, whether ‘Us’ is British people, atheists, right-wingers or whomever, and the ‘Them’ Muslim extremists, Muslims in general, ‘religious people’, left-wingers etc etc etc.

I reject them and their vile and poorly-thought out antagonism.  We are better than the people who seek to oppress or destroy us, and we should be proud of that fact, not racing people like Choudary to the bottom.  Fighting fire with fire is an excellent way of burning down the entire world, and we need to preach this until everyone gets the idea.

The Right to be Wrong 3: The Right to be even Wronger

I confess to being slightly confused about the apparently schizophrenic attitude we seem to have towards the concepts of offense and free speech that we have as a society.  A month ago, we proclaimed Charlie Hebdo in Paris as a beacon of free speech and defiance for publishing cartoons of Mohammed, knowing before they did so that a great many people would find them deeply offensive.  This week, there has been widespread condemnation of a group of football supporters, also in Paris, for racist chanting, to the point where they have been banned from their football club, one has been suspended from work, and they all potentially face criminal prosecution.

Now, I have to be very careful here in case it seems that I am in any way supporting these racists morons, or condoning their behaviour on any level at all.  I am not.  I am also aware that there was an element of physical assault involved in the incident, when they blocked a black man from getting on a train, and then physically pushed him off when he did get on.  This is inexcusable, and I am perfectly happy to see them prosecuted for this.  However, I would like to address what to me seems like a strange double standard, in which we agree that people have the right to be offensive, just as long as it’s not us who’s being offended.

The question is whether the men involved have the right to chant racist things in a public place, or say racist things to someone in the full knowledge that they, and anyone else who might hear them will find it deeply offensive.  We can be shocked that they should do so, in this age of equality and given the comparatively high level of education people in the UK and France receive, but I wonder how, in the light of the reaction to the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, we can say that these people deserve to be prosecuted, banned or suspended from their places of work?

It might be said that Charlie Hebdo was a work of satire, and so different from a group of yobs shouting at people in the street (or, in this case in a train station), but if so, it was (in my opinion) poor satire, and what’s to stop these men from claiming that they were being ‘satirical’ or ‘ironic’?  Artistic merit can’t be brought into play, and is in any case highly subjective.

Nor do I see how the fact that one of these twerps is a racist has any bearing on his ability to work in a financial company.  He wasn’t, to my knowledge, representing the business in any way; he wasn’t wearing their uniform or sporting their logo, and wasn’t present in any sort of official capacity, and so there is no implication that his views reflect those of the company.  I am more than happy for people with such erroneous views to be ‘named and shamed’, ostracised, and mocked in the same way they feel it’s acceptable to mock others, although I’d much rather see them educated as to why their views are so incorrect.  However, for a company to suspend an individual for (vile, offensive) opinions expressed as a private individual away from their place of work is one that I find uncomfortable.  For the football club to ban them makes a little more sense, since they were present as supporters of that club, and their racism can be seen to reflect badly on the club and its supporters as a whole.

I’ve mentioned that there was an element of physical assault to this incident, and this clearly must be punished.  Being offensive might be a right, but physically attacking, or even just shoving, someone is Not On.  But that brings me to the subject of hate crime.  This has been defined as a crime “with an added element of bias against a person's race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.”  Now, should this make a difference?  If I punch a man in the face, I have commited the crime of assault.  If I punch a man in the face because he’s black and I hate black people, does this make it worse, as a crime?  It would make me worse as a person, and reflect my ignorance and unthinking prejudice, but should the motivation have any bearing on the severity of the crime?  My victim is no more or less punched in the face, his nose no more or less broken.

The FBI’s policy is that "Hate itself is not a crime - and the FBI is mindful of protecting freedom of speech and other civil liberties."  But surely by making a ’hate crime’ more serious than a plain crime of the same sort, you’re doing just that?

Now, hopefully it doesn’t need saying that this post isn’t intended as a defence of hatred, which should be rooted out as effectively as possible through education, dialogue and emphasising compassion and empathy.  Obviously we don’t want every public space to become a slanging match between different groups, all yelling their own, potentially offensive opinions, but if we accept that free speech is a right, then we have to accept that it is a right for all, not just the people we agree with.

I actually have a problem with the very concept of ‘rights’, which I will elaborate on in another post, but if one accepts the premise, then one must accept that it applies to all equally.  People should have the right to be offensive, ignorant and unpleasant, even when their offensiveness, ignorance and unpleasantness is aimed at us.  However, as I have quoted before, “to have the right to do something is not at all the same as to be right in doing it”.

It is in educating people, and explaining this, that the answer lies, not in making those opinions subjectively odious to ourselves illegal.  That is the top of a very slippery slope, and one that makes me very uneasy indeed.

Freedom, Trust and Responsibility

Continuing to think about the questions of free speech and its responsible use, I thought I would clarify something that I’ve hinted at or mentioned in passing to or three times in previous posts, and that’s my attitude towards laws against inciting religious or racial hatred, or hatred at all for that matter.

My first thought when presented with these concepts was “Great idea!  Speech should be free, but clearly persuading people to commit acts of violence is not on!”  But that’s not what these laws mean.  Incitement to violence is a crime, and, I think, rightly so, but inciting hatred?  I have become convinced that making this illegal isn’t right.  Don’t get me wrong, hatred is a terrible thing, both for the hated and (perhaps especially) for the hater.  However, stopping incitement of hatred is not the same as stopping hatred itself.  People shouldn’t hate, not because they’re not allowed to (or rather because they’re not allowed to speak or act on it), but because they’ve seen that there is no reason to.

For me, the question of an open society, and of having an open mind, is that all ideas be allowed to sink or float on their own merits.  It is true that some ideas are more subjective than others, others are less so.  The point is that any idea should be allowed to be aired, and people have the right to decide whether or not they think it makes sense.

A few years ago, Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party was to appear on Question time.  The organisation Unite Against Fascism campaigned to prevent him from being allowed to air his opinions on national television, and tried to physically prevent him from entering the BBC building.  I can only assume that their name is meant ironically.  Happily, the BBC stuck to its guns and allowed Nick Griffin to speak.  As expected, when he did so, he showed himself up for the ignorant, unpleasant little man he is.  His ideas were permitted to be aired in public, and taken on their own merits, which were very few indeed.

If I stand on a soap box in the middle of the street, and cry out loud and clear that all people who make their porridge with water, salt and pepper (ick!) are vile sub-human morlocks who deserve to be stoned to death, I will rightly be judged to be a blithering idiot, and my opinions given the scant credence they deserve.  If I cry out that all black people are sub-humans that deserve to be subjugated, then my views should be treated in exactly the same way.  That is, they should be able to be aired, considered and judged on their own merits (in this case, none whatsoever).  Such opinions are certainly offensive, but they are also completely idiotic.  Should they be illegal though?  If I produce a radio broadcast trying to persuade people that Methodists are all insane and evil fanatics who ought to be swept up into ghettoes and not allowed out, my views should again be considered and judged on their merit or lack thereof.  For my own good, I should probably then be committed to a reasonably secure institution.  Bur should there be a law against being a blithering idiot or a frothing lunatic?  Does using the term ‘lunatic’ constitute hate-speech against people with mental health problems?  If it does, should that be illegal?

I’ve said that incitement to violence is rightly a crime, but I’m now not even sure of that.  No matter how persuasive I can be, am I ultimately responsible for someone else’s actions?  If I told you to go and kill the first blonde person you meet, and you do so, am I responsible for your actions?  In the case of someone who is emotionally or mentally vulnerable, and therefore isn’t necessarily fully responsible for their own actions, then yes, possibly.  For most people though?

Ultimately, what this comes down to is whether or not we think that human beings can be permitted the responsibility to make their own decisions.  Do we trust people to be able to listen to a wide variety of conflicting theories and opinions and beliefs, and judge them as objectively as it is possible for us to do, weigh their flaws and merits and come to a reasonable conclusion?  Can we trust people to listen to the imam who preaches death to non-Muslims, the pastor who preaches death to homosexuals, the imbecile preaching death to salt-and-pepper-porridge-eaters, and expect them to be able to say ‘You’re an idiot’?  Not because they feel pressured into saying it, but because that’s what they actually think, and are not afraid to say it.

Take it a step further.  We talk about ‘freedom’.  Can people be trusted to be free at all?  Can we trust people to use their freedom responsibly?  If we can’t, then why do we hold the concept of freedom so highly?

I am an idealist, especially when it comes to human nature.  I believe that we can be trusted, but only if we ensure that people are able to hear all the arguments, in every direction, not some sanitised and carefully filtered version of the world, in which speech is limited only to what we agree with, or don’t find offensive.  The case of Nick Griffin ably demonstrated the adage ‘remain silent and be thought a fool, or open your mouth and remove all doubt’.  We need to allow every fool to open their mouth and allow people to see them for what they are.

That’s my opinion anyway, but I trust you to take it or leave it on its own merits.