Opinion
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The Enticement of Language Imagery
When I was young, admittedly many years ago, imagination was still A Thing. As a child, and then a young adult, we were called upon to use our imagination in order to play, to learn, to visualise anything which didn’t seem clear to us at first glance. The exhortation to use your imagination was part of daily language usage, and mostly came from those people around me who, through perhaps no fault of their own, were unable to gift enough time to explain something, or suffered a lack of understanding themselves. As a child, of course, imagination was part and parcel of being a child. The cardboard box as a…
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The Cultural Appropriation of Knowledge
Our modern world – when you listen to those shouting loudest who claim to be in the know – and especially the latest generations in the advanced West have discovered and created all that we know today. There is no history before 1776, there are no countries outside of the United States of America; the only language used throughout the world should be American [sic], and anywhere that has a city with the same name as one in the United States, is guilty of cultural appropriation. All worldly knowledge and wisdom originates from within the borders, the institutions, of the United States of America. Jesus Christ, we are told through…
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Where Were You In The Great War?
There was a British poster, during the World War, of a young child sitting on her father’s knee and asking, in all innocence, what he did during the war. The idea, clear to all at the time, was to embarrass all those who had not taken part, not served the fatherland in some form of military role, to awaken a nationalistic feeling, awaken patriotism for the country, and avoid having to explain themselves at a later date. The same level of patriotism, of being prepared to serve the country and, if necessary, sacrifice your life, was raised again during the Second World War, and then seemed to disappear from the…
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Recording the Dark Side of Life
Life is not just one pleasure ride, there are ups and there are downs and the description, heard many years ago, that life is a rollercoaster still fits to this day. How we weather the individual events of our lives is impossible to regulate, and also to foresee. Events happen which we have not expected, which we could never anticipate, and with which we have no connection, and our lives are often changed by the actions of others. For anyone to claim they have their life under control is the equivalent of wearing blinkers which only allow us to see one direction, a form of tunnel vision of the mind.…
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Misinformation: the Thin-Skinned and the Gullible
A close friend of mine received some unwelcome post recently: a letter from the local police force with an accusation of insulting behaviour. It referred to a comment she had posted on a certain social media web site – well-known for its own lack of legal responsibility, partisanship and the politics of its owner – where she drew, in no uncertain terms, the original poster’s attention to a piece of misinformation from a German politician, well known for a wealth of false claims over the years, and described the further distribution of such fact-free propaganda as more than just foolish. The poster felt that their honour and credibility had been…
