A collection of incendiary thoughts have been ticking away at the back of my mind like an unexploded bomb for the last few weeks. Rather than let them sit there, festering, I thought I might write them down. Explore them a little. Poke them with a stick.
Where to start?
It seems to me that far too many people spend far too much time complaining, judging, and criticising anything and everybody that crosses their path. I don’t like it. I never have.
I suppose I’m inherently a pragmatist - somewhat an optimist. I find it really difficult to deal with negativity.
There’s a common preconception that as people get older they not only become more negative about the world in general (“it was better in my day”), but also lose the filters they once had. I’m not sure it’s entirely true, but there’s probably something to it. I sometimes joke that I’ll enjoy being old, and being a pain in the ass. Maybe that’s it? Maybe people enjoy being negative, and that provides a strange sort of balance?
It’s not just negativity though.
All it seems to take for prejudice, division, and discrimination to proliferate is for people to take no notice - to look the other way - to avoid confrontation. And yet so many people seem only too ready to confront each other over subjects that really don’t matter very much at all.
I saw a wonderful interview with Mirriam Margolyes a few days ago - where she brought up the subject of pronouns:
“I was very keen on grammar… so when people started talking about ‘them’ instead of ‘he/she’ I thought, ‘What the fuck? It’s clear, it’s grammar, it’s the structure of language.”
“Zoe Terakes had a discussion with me about it and she said: ‘What does it matter to you? If you can make somebody happy by calling them they instead of he or she, why not do it?’
“And I thought, that’s right, it doesn’t matter about grammar!”
It’s not just gender or identity though. It seems people always have to pick sides - that we can’t have different opinions, ideals, or values and still get along with each other.
Surely our different ideas, thoughts, hopes, dreams, and so on are what make us interesting? If nobody ever challenged anything, how might we ever progress?
The old Apple advert comes to mind:
“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things - they push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
(if you’re as old as me, you can remember Richard Dreyfuss reading that passage of text, and you’re smiling already. And just to correct the record, no, Steve Jobs didn’t write the passage).