Podcaster Ben Shapiro displayed a slogan on his microphone “My facts don’t care about your feelings”. What the slogan conveyed reinforced the essence of his messaging: fearless, factual and forthright, regardless of topic or person. In that, Shapiro epitomizes promotion of truth over ideology as the basis for reasoned debate, as the way to improved social engagement and a better society.
Essentially, that is what my book Becoming encourages: truth, facts and reality as the basis for constructive harmony, where choice, expectation and responsibility coalesce for sound decision making.
Another factor raised in Becoming is the feeling of pride that impassions so many: pride of authority, knowledge, complacency and sensitivity. Sensitivity is especially indulged in an era when essential characteristics of resilience and self-reliance are overwhelmed by serial neediness encouraged by providers getting off on compassion righteousness, usually at someone else’s expense.
Emphasis on feelings expanded when universal pervasiveness of woke DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) culture encouraged the oppressor/oppressed victim dichotomy now structured into governance, bureaucracy and corporate practice. Advantage channeled to the victim class, often without merit, to the detriment of performance. Another way to diminish productive people and countries.
At a personal level, priority preference given always to needy, wounded victims fails to build resilience, initiative or “equity” goals, whether in family, business or government. Rather than being “lifted up” by the privilege of preference, facts tend to reveal a sinkhole of everlasting need without end to be tended by disadvantaged “oppressors”. Not sustainable. Like all pride, pride of sensitivity is on track for a fall, with attendant social and financial consequences.
Feelings in families
One recollection from last century in a period of sectarian conflict between Catholics and Protestants, a woman who married for love “outside the church”, was ostracized by her whole family for the rest of her life. By that time hardly anyone was going to any church, exposing the schism as ridiculous, mean-spirited and unnecessary by today’s standards.
Ridiculous as that family edict seems today, similar situations arise. How often does a family member take offence about something innocuous spoken personally, or an opinion voiced on a political topic during a period of churning change (take your pick of Palestine, Trump, climate change, COVID, Aborigines, DEI or gender). A divergent opinion taken as offensive, without examination of the veracity, can stir feelings of resentment and hatred that are hard to quell and difficult to reconcile. Feelings override facts which may not be exposed until long after the feelings arose.
Experiences viewed through a child’s lens as hurtful when unresolved by ineffectual progress through young adult maturity, are known to fester, reappearing as blame, isolation of ageing parents from adult children and grandchildren. Prince Harry and Cruz Beckam are examples. Nursing the unexamined narrative is addictive, repeated ad nauseum to maintain the rage (feelings) to justify the position. Rarely can courage be found to confront truth through adult eyes, revisit reality, to see parents (siblings or incidents) as flawed people who did their best with what they had at the time, rather than judging what happened in a different era ever so harshly by today’s woke standards. Feelings of resentment blind accusers to the benefits parents bestowed in their flawed efforts, just as hatred of Trump blinds detractors from any appreciation of any good he may do.
Such divisiveness is no different and every bit as inexcusable as the case of the person isolated from family for marrying outside the church. Trouble is, addiction to the flawed narrative is a co-dependency that becomes part of a person’s identity. To relinquish a false narrative requires the courage to look within oneself, to reflect and let go of issues no longer relevant so that a bounteous present may be enjoyed and a prospective future allowed.
Because we are social beings, divisiveness is harmful to general wellbeing. That means seeking the facts above feelings as Ben Shapiro recommends. Too often self-interest/indulgence intervenes.
Facts and feelings of compassion
The Christian message of caring for the poor, the sick, imprisoned and lonely has been taken to another level with woke DEI exploitation of oppressor/oppressed dichotomy. Moralists take offence on behalf of the oppressed, beating up on ‘oppressors’, regardless of the facts, claiming the devil’s bargain promising feelings of moral superiority in exchange for constant failure.
Appalling political and personal divisions were created when falsehoods were deliberately and systematically promoted by governments and mainstream media (MSM), tolerating no alternative position.
Examples can be readily exposed in COVID, climate change, Palestine, Trump, Aborigines and gender. As always, follow the money. Even now, years on, when truth has been exposed to sunlight, people who have entrenched a wrong belief, repeated the falsity, remain convinced, unable to come to terms with facts. Divisions are maintained between others of more sensible mind, making basic conversation fraught, should one bother.
For example:
- COVID: Dr Jay Battacharya, a Professor of Medicine, Economics and Health research from Stanford University, was cancelled for advising that giving Covid vaccines to young people and locking them up was unnecessary. Proven sensible by hindsight, he is now a Trump appointment as Director of the National Institute of Health that previously proscribed his advice, after money and kudos went to Dr Fauci and vaccine manufacturers. Follow the money.
- Climate change: CC was always a scam for which the business case never stacked up. Terrorising children, robbing the poor, destroying the landscape while funding international elites and annual overseas frolics for taxpayer contingents of 490 people from Australia shows how big a scam. Those wallowing in profits and self-righteousness for ‘maybe’ saving the planet in a hundred years time show neither shame nor inclination to relinquish their narrative, despite the facts. Follow the money, most of which has gone overseas to China and other international investors in solar and wind farms. Meanwhile our energy grid and sovereign risk are at stake and energy bills unaffordable.
- Palestine/Islamism: Interesting to observe the low energy of the Islamist activist class when the corrupt Iranian regime machine guns its own people protesting on the streets for the collapse of the currency and banks, destruction of water resources, control over movement, speech and dress. Okay for our activists to turn out in CBDs every weekend for the non-State of Palestine, destroying local business and amenity, funded by the world’s largest promoter of terror (Iran), which also funds Hamas, Houthis and Hezbollah. Follow the money to terror of Jews on the streets of Sydney and Melbourne, deaths and injury in Bondi. Shame on the righteous Palestinian activists who have swallowed whole the narrative of suffering of Gazans manipulated to discredit Israel and the Jewish people in their existential fight for survival. Pity to be so limited in their view of history and so reluctant to let go of the narrative proven false, preferring the feeling of self-indulgence over facts.
- Trump does excite a lot of animosity, some of his own making, but mostly historical built upon a narrative generated by former President Obama and Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to discredit him should he win the 2016 election. The story that Trump was a Russian asset was taken up by MSM globally, including our ABC running a three-part series, based on a false dossier fabricated for Hillary to cover her misdemeanours getting rid of 33,000 emails. The fake narrative extended in a three-year, $40 million enquiry that found nothing, followed up by a questionable 2020 election to make sure Trump did not win and could not ever do so again and the January 6 enquiry. So obsessed with hatred of Trump is the Democratic party and MSM that their only policy is to negate, undermine, and object to anything Trump tries to do, which means they have lost favour, credibility and good sense, still pursuing the destructive Obama DEI policies long after people have moved on from that falsehood. Even with all the losses, Democrats still cling to the ‘orange man bad’ narrative, without any self-reflection or discernment of whether any of Trump’s actions have merit. Just this week someone still commented to me that Trump was a Russian asset. Feelings of hatred should be revisited using facts. Follow the money. Who stands to benefit from discrediting or eliminating duly elected Trump?
- Aborigines, particularly the activist class, have nurtured a narrative of invasion and mistreatment by the British colonizing power, warranting forever apologies, payments and obeisance, along with exclusive control over most of the land, all paid for by Australian taxpayers as recompense for their “oppression”. Spare me!
- I would like to celebrate Australia Day on 26 January, the preference of 76% of the population, recognizing achievements of this marvelous, if imperfect democracy in which all people are equal. Aborigines have 364 other days in the year to recognize their own, and they do, paid for by taxpayers. Follow the money. Such a lucrative scam collecting at the trough of racial specialness, rather than picking up their bed and walking like the rest of us are expected to do. Fact is that history cannot be changed. Imperfect people did things imperfectly. Yet, as voted overwhelmingly in the Voice referendum, we would like to move on together, especially as most claiming Aboriginality are diluted by other races through intermarriage and appear whiter than I am. Letting go of false narratives of woundedness may be hard, as is confronting reality, yet rewards promised are great.
Gender: Concerns by NO voters on Same Sex Marriage referendum have been realized in the outcome, as gender change issues have permeated every aspect of life, especially confusing and damaging children. Talking about man, woman, mum, dad became offensive (the sensitive aspect of pride again) in defiance of biological fact. Follow the money.
As the late author and commentator Christopher Hitchens said, “if you will simply abandon your critical faculties – a world of idiotic bliss can be yours.”