The Boron

Ever get stuck with someone in a social situation and the conversation is awkward, quiet, strained, uncomfortable?

You're struggling to break the awful silence with some banter and you're failing.

You're in a social relationship with the person whether you like it or not.

You were left there by someone, or you just end up in close proximity with a person.

The nauseating silence chews at you. You have to say something.

You try the standard banter. The response is awful. It's clear this person is not into collborating with you, or their own attempts breed further awkward silence and failure to connect.

Could be you're stuck in the presence of a Boron.

A Boron is a boring person. Someone who has nothing to say that interests you and is uninterested in what you have to say.

The conversation is boring. The person is boring.

You've met a Boron.

Maybe you are the Boron. How do you tell?

Because you connect with everyone else. You have a full-on interesting conversation with others.

You notice that no one else can connect with the person.

It's not you. It's them. They are a Boron.

Run!

Toxic Masculinity

The latest slogan to appear all over social media is Toxic Masculinity.

A new name for an old complaint.

Men are bad.

Gee whiz. Never heard of that one before have we?

And like women are totally harmless, right?

The term was coined by a psychologist in the '80s.

The concept? Been around for about 200,000 years.

The term is another 2.0 version of ancient endless terms signifying the same old ancient complaints.

The term, currently used, stereotypes the entire male sexual gender.

So, weren't stereotypes bad? Wasn't tarring a whole group with the same brush a bad thing?

Oh... only when we say so.

If We wanted to stoop so low, we could use SJW arguments that the term is offensive, by SJW definitions.

Toxic masculinity as usual is another poorly defined slogan thrown around social media without any discussion of what it means. Sound familiar?

Without any definition accompanying its use, it's impossible therefore to tell what people mean when they use it. But let's have a guess.

Firstly, it feels pejorative, morally charged, superior, prejudiced, presumptuous, stereotyped, can we say negative?

Is this kind of negative terminology not in direct contradiction to the shoutings of SJWs?

Shouldn't the term be banned from speech, by the standards of the constantly offended hoi polloi?

The appeal of the term Toxic attached to the enemies of SJW, manly men, must be too much for planet-savers to bear. No definition required.

Masculinity is fine by itself. But the toxic version sounds... harmful. Bad. Must need to be treated as a problem. Removed or eradicated from society.

Papers scanned via scholarly writing sites do offer a range of definitions.

Academics qualify the term, as reference to the bad side of masculinity, especially We assume when it offends women or weak men, and society tolerates it. So, bad masculine behaviour is seen as Normalised. Society has accepted the bad side of masculinity. And now we planet-savers must campaign to destroy it.

And what do we do about Toxic Femininity?

Toxic Social Media?

Toxic SJWs?

Toxic Man-haters?

Toxic Causes?

Toxic Protesting?

Nothing.

Ironically, Misandrists accuse men of Misogyny.

How about re-focussing on Toxic Humanity? Or how about plain old rudeness?

Climate Rage

Today, Australians mass together across the three real cities in the latest privileged planet saving cause, a rage against inaction on the Climate Emergency.

Other countries kicked off the global whinge and now it's Australia's urban privilegeds' turn.

More surveys and news items are declaring the Climate as the number One concern for society; especially politicians, and you and me.

Not poverty, financial and political corruption, household debt, mental health, cuts in higher education, media control, monopolies, housing affordability, lack of effective policing, increased home invasions and car-jackings, the rising cost of medical treatment and energy, insurance gaps, the trend away from full-time work to part-time and casual, foreign takeovers, robots taking jobs, paedophile organisations preaching against sin, crushing costs of living...

No. Not that shit. Don't matter.

Climate Emergency!

Our top concern. Worthy of mass protest.

Screaming hysterical masses demand someone fix the Climate. Fuck the economy, farmers, the jobless, the disabled, the poor struggling to make ends meet. Fuck them. Climate Change is killing us right now and all our future generations are next (if we survive to have them). We're all gonna die and its our own fault (not us, but those who aren't us).

Drop everything else. We need to focus all our efforts on the climate and those evil people who fucked it up.

Who are those evil doers who destroyed our climate?

The government. Politicians. Greedy corporations. Murderers!

Questions:

How did you get to the protest? Did you walk?

How were all your clothes, cars, houses, furniture and appliances manfactured?

Where do you get your electricity from?

Why did you vote in a political party that doesn't believe in climate change?

At the last UN climate summit, where was our Prime Minister?

He decided to brown-nose Trump instead.

The devices you buy every year to tweet your rants and instagram yourselves on holiday and eating, how were those devices manufactured, powered?

All that shit food you eat, how did it make it from the farms and factories to your big mouth?

How come you don't protest outside the Chinese and Indian embassies, consulates?

The two largest polluters in the world haven't heard any demands or complaints from you. Not a peep.

You demand Action Now! Exactly what do you want to be done, and done now? Do you have a clue?

We think you're just another mob of social-media addicted, Cause-seeking frauds proudly pretending to make a heroic effort to save the planet.

I'm saving the planet! I'm so awesome.

Look everyone. Look at me, waving banners, wailing slogans, crying, yelling cliches at the world, tweeting my fingerprints off, because that's how you save the planet.

Today thousands of disrupted vehicles sit still in gridlock, exhaust pipes pumping out greenhouse gasses, waiting for the traffic to clear.

Real people are struggling to live, suffering, terrified of the next bill, the next illness, keeping their job, keeping their family together, lonely, getting knocked back by real problems.

And today you're telling them the fucking climate is their most important concern.

You fucking stupid pack of useless dishonest self-contradicting wankers.

Hope the climate joins your protest and rains on you dickheads.

Why Respect the Law?

Comply with the Law. Familiarise with it. Accept the findings of the Law. Understand what you can of Law likely to cross your life path.

But why respect the Law?

The Laws are the product of the minds of people, not an almighty God.

The Laws are made by elite individuals, Parliament, Courts, not the collective public.

Laws are not made democratically (Aristotle's version not "representational" democracy).

Laws are inconsistent across the world. In Russia it is against the law to be homosexual, but not in Australia. In some US States marijuana use and possession for personal use is legal but not in the UK.

Even within nation states the Law is still subject to interpretation of individual people.

Laws are so hard to understand the average citizen needs an expert to interpret them, a person trained for years in particular laws.

All this means that the Law is fallible and does not deserve that resepected status it holds among most.

The Law is the best thing we have for ensuring a society has rules controlling behaviour and some vague idea of a moral society.

Why respect only the best thing we currently have?

Yet in court there is no fallibility, no misinterpretation, no incorrect judgment.

Even with courts of appeal, the same respect is demanded of the Law.

It is reasonable to agree that any group of people need rules.

It is unreasonable to respect the Law.

But to praise it, to fight and die and harm for it, to use it as a moral compass, to hold it among other respected things like family, friendship and love and security, wisdom, talent, physical ability, resilience, science, spirituality, courage, sacrifice, altruism, is ridiculous and self-contradictory.

These things are not respected for their infallibility, but for their intrinsic value. These things are respected as the ends to most of our means in life.

The Law is respected for like a God, as an end for all means, for its perfection, its superiority, its heavenly power and authority above all else.

Why this mindless respect then?

The reason is fundamental. Humans have a fetish for objective truth.

Humans believe that above us all exists close but often unreachable truth, not man-made, but true in itself.

The Law is, to too many, such an entity living like a God in the heavens above us.

Like the Latin Bible, the Law is so high above the average person we need experts, interpreters, Lawyers, to study it, pass exams and explain and work it for us.

The Law is just a bunch of the latest temporary fickle rules of a particular society.

The Law changes, is often against the morality of contemporary society because it changes slower than our morality.

The Law is man-made, not carved on stone tablets by God sent down to us from the sky.

The Law should be obeyed. But the Law does not deserve our respect.