Snowflakes - Where do they come from?

The term Snowflake is a nascent term used metaphorically and pejoratively to describe those people in the social and political forums of our time, as people who can't and won't tolerate anything difficult.

Snowflakes melt under the heat of a situation.

Difficult things include aggression, antagonism, conflict, negativity, anything bad especially if directed at them.

Snowflakes need counselling when they hear bad words. They are traumatised by arguments. They fall to pieces in the presence of conflict.

Snowflakes have sought safety in numbers and become a political force to destroy all bad things and the people who harm them with words, facial expressions and vibes.

They have their own terminology now:

Triggering, micro-aggression, unsafe spaces, hate speech...

They have created and manipulated terms to denigrate what they call offensive behaviour.

They protest against their feelings being hurt by negative behaviour, but instead of growing a spine, they attack the aggressor, the offender, from the safety of their bedroom or the safety of a protest. They will demand counselling and the removal of their attackers.

Snowflakes have turned traditional weaknesses into strengths, weaknesses not to be overcome but to be maintained and protected and promoted as virtues.

Policy and law now protects them. But protects them at great cost and consequence. This is the problem we need to solve.

The power of the snowflake movement, especially if it continues to grow on its current trajectory, will harm more than its target ever could.

Almost nothing true or thought will be said.

The ideal world of the snowflake is one without disagreement, argument, debate, critique.

The traditional virtues of free intellectual, rational discourse are reversed and demoted to the status of sin. Sin beyond forgiveness. Sin on pain of damnation and punishment.

Resilience, robustness, courage, fortitude, adaptability, honesty, all sin.

Even managerial, parental, governmental discourse and direction is reduced in its execution:

Directions, orders, demands, requirements, expectations, policies, from these organisations, all diluted to requests and suggestions.

This is a world where all important issues, tough decisions, difficult problems are vetted before being discussed.

A world therefore where serious problems are not solved and therefore continue to their end, where all discussion is ceased at the first offense. Where progress is ceased at the point of negativity. Where tough decisions are rejected. Where all difficult occupations and pursuits are left vacant. Where fear is preferred to courage.

The ideal world of the snowflake is a world of fragile, scared, unadaptable, weak people in charge and control over society. A world of people who rule by a fascist doctrine using a metaphorical sword to threaten any opponent, but who will drop to their knees before a real steel sword and accept their very real execution.

Snowflake World is a world that will be easily crushed by any real outside aggressor.

So where did Snowflakes come from?

We weren't having this discussion of how to survive snowflakes ten, twenty a hundred years ago. These people were the downtrodden, timid voice of the weak the meak and pathetic. They were jeered at, ostracised, ignored and ridiculed. They were powerless abberations anathema to society.

Now they advise law makers and policy makers. They are supported in schools and universities, employers and governments. Their voice is loud and powerful.

How did this happen?

Three things:

1. The Internet.
2. Politicial Correctness.
3. Modern Parenting

No surprise. These first two modern forces have enabled a myirad of minorities from political poverty to political power.

Without the Internet, minorities cannot consolidate globally nor spread their ideology.
Without PC, minorities must have their voices heard and their opponents banned.
Parents raise children intentionally or unavoidably to be weak.

 The Internet has enabled a minority rights movement through consolidating members, organising global protests, spreading information globally, responding to more and more pervasive opportunities for their targets (those in opposition are also spread across the Internet), discovery of more badness in the world (more news and current affairs, panel discussions etc available to watch and that trigger them).

PC bans opposition as hate speech. It is easier to garner support when you have no opposition. PC diminishes the power and effect of previously accepted behaviours and principles, such as open debate, freedom of expression, unbiased teaching, even language use. PC forces everyone to change their terminology to avoid offending people and to encourage and promote their ideologies, often by force of law and employer policy.

Modern parenting suffers two great forces: not being as strict as their parents, and laws and social norms that limit parenting activities, especially discipline, communication, safety.
Children now sue their parents for spanking them or even yelling at them.
Parents want their children to be safer than previously due to modern and new threats, such as paedophiles, terrorists, worsened traffic behaviour. Children grow up avoiding all risks and hazards, over-protected from the evils of germs, foods, the sun, strangers, bullies, conflict, all by the coddling of parents.

Thus, children grow up without resilience, conflict resolution, learning from mistakes, suffering through difficulty to grow stronger. They become adults and find themselves living in a society that behaves just like their protective parents. They work for employers who offer counselling, protections from bullying and harrassment, work health and safety policies, safe spaces, mediated conflict resolution.

These three forces are nascent and growing in power. Their ultimate combined conclusion is what we are seeing glimpses of now.

The meek are inheriting the Earth.

There is one positive conclusion.

Snowflakes always melt.

Stereotypes - Are they Bad?

The term stereotype is a metaphor mostly used and misused in public discussion pejoratively.

A person will be accused of stereotyping someone or a group, as an unacceptable, morally wrong, view and expression.

Stereotyping is defined poorly, but used in the public domain despite academic definition.

I.e. it has more uses than dicitionaries define. It has a range of uses. But there are themes that help us refine the spectrum of uses: a label appplied to groups of people based on erroneous assumptions.

E.g.

Blacks are strong.

Chinese gamble.

Jews are arrogant misers.

Whites are racist.

Lesbians are ugly.

Men are aggressive.

Statements like these are called false and harmful assumptions consequential to stereotyping itself derived by only a sample observation that claims to identify conformity of group members to a behaviour or physical appearance.

These statements also make the mistake of particular to universal, they paint a whole group with the same brush, based on only part of the group.

If we ignore the official definitions, as do most users of the term, we see that what is called stereotyping is merely a kind of generalisation based on observation.

Stereotyping is really just another form of generalising people groups to behave and appear with commonalities derived from enough observations of a group's behaviour or appearance to make predictably accurate conclusions, but also not so accurate consequential assumptions.

These generalisations are described by snowflakes as Stereotyping. Snowflakes and SJWs have manipulated the term to serve their political agenda.

E.g. Stereotyping is argued by snowflake users of the term as a negative, immoral and morally inaccurate activity. This moves the term from empirical to moral. Snowflakes can tackle the moral with a greater sense of social justice than tackling the empirical evidence.

But they cannot ignore the fact that people do generalise ethnic and other group behaviour based on consistent behaviour and appearance. They also ignore the fact that people do live up to stereotypes.

Specific behaviours and appearances repeated over and over again, confirmed by experience are going to be noticed. Further, most people want to be noticed for their group behaviour conformity or have no choice when it comes to inbred appearances, like skin, hair colour and eye shape. People often stereotype themselves.

The subject of the stereotyper, the stereotyped, is responsible for conforming to stereotypes.

Not all groups are ethnic. Other groups behave consistently by:

- Sexual gender
- Sexual preference
- Religion
- Age
- Wealth
- Social status
- Height
- Weight
- Profession
- Hobbies
- Talent
- Generation

Stereotypes, as generalisations, usually work because the members of the groups above consistently appear or behave in these specific ways and to the point of highly accurate prediction.

As We have said before, this activity is helped by two things natural to humans:

1. People behave and appear like herds.
2. People are good at identifying patterns.

Both of these factors are combined to support and ease the act of generalising.

These two factors are likely survival instincts. Therefore our conscious rational awareness occurs AFTER internal awareness of what our brain is doing intuitively, without reason or moral judgment. In survival or evolutionary terms, they allow people to tell the difference between their tribe and those from other tribes and thus to predict dangerous behaviour.

There is a cost in getting it wrong. Not all assumptions are true. But people tend to err on the side of caution and the side of likelihood. People tend to trust their instincts. Also, instinct and intuition occur prior to conscious judgment. You will catch yourself generalising. You can go with it or try and ignore it.

Stereotyping, if we accept the moral version of the misnomer, is not a prejudice based on ideology or immoral antisocial conditioning. It is an irrational intuitive activity that only occurs from observation, so it is not the sole product of an observer. It is a factor combined with the factor of actual  behaviour that concludes with the product. It takes two to Stereotype. Both the object and the subject are required in order to stereotype.

If people stopped consistently conforming to the behaviour shared among their group, there would be no stereotyping.

If almost always, Chinese are seen dining out only at Chinese restaurants, then a stereotypical behaviour is occuring and this behaviour will be noticed. Thus the statement is made, Chinese people are reliably seen to eat Chinese when they dine out.

If taxi drivers are almost always Indian, the statement can be made that most taxi drivers are Indian. This is confirmed by observation.

So even the assumptions consequential to stereotyping can be generalised and confirmed empirically:

Tall people are domineering.

Short people are angry.

Gay men overact.

Obese people are lazy or weak.

Rich people are arrogant.

Tradies are bogan.

Men are stronger than Women.

The assumptions, so called, above are not true for all, but true for some, and this is the point of a generalisation. The assumptions at least have the potential to be true for some, true in general.

Classic and popular stereotypes are often targeted as utterly offensive and untrue and even harmful.

When generalisations are made poorly, derived from moral principles and based on tiny samples, that draw attempts to reason unfounded assumptions, this is understandble. Many stereotypes lead to false assumptions. But that is the rational aspect of the activity. Some assume that if you do this behaviour, you wil do another behaviour.

Many stereotypes include fake rational assumptions that are derived from other than logical activity and or not even attempting to be generally accurate. They might include:

Asians are bad drivers.

Women are timid.

Gays are sex obssessed.

Jews are misers.

This kind of statement is often found to be a fake stereotype or generalisation. It starts not with observation but with a moral position, usually a kind of xenophobia, and uses stereotyping to make the morality seem like a rational logical generalisation. But true and honest stereotyping without unfounded assumption is not derived from a moral position, but an empirically verifiable behaviour that occurs in enough cases to qualify as being generally true.

Morally driven stereotyping is likely to produce unfounded assumptions rather than evidence based conclusions. The purpose of this stereotyping is to negatively discriminate against a group you don't like or you think is inferior. It may also derive from ancient instinct to preserve your own people from attack by others. As always, the instinct comes first and the rational mind kicks in to treat it. Sometimes the treatment is antisocial and an attack itself.

But this dishonest activity does not refute the fact that people behave similarly in groups.

But it's not always intentionally bad. Comedians have always represented people groups as stereotypes. Look at Apu in the Simpsons. The intent, whether good or bad, is to get a laugh. Comedians say what many think. The laughter is a relief, because we can't say in public what we think about people groups and their common behaviours. So it is no wonder some comedy is offensive to those of the group being sent up. The blame is not deserved soley by the comedian. If people didn't find it funny, it wouldn't be made fun of or joked about. But people do find stereotyping funny. Being a comedic setting, laughing feels forgivable or more acceptable than in every day life situations.

Further, movies and TV need stereotypes to perform characters from certain groups.

There are many examples of groups sending themselves up on TV, such as Crazy Rich Asians, Fat Pizza, Housos, Upper Middle Bogan, Kath and Kim, Goodness Gracious Me, Black Comedy.

Most standup comedians of minority race will spend the gig cracking stereotypical jokes about themselves.

Not all stereotyping is funny, or good, or accurate or useful. But it happens, it is often accurate, and we need to know why.

It is a human feature that different people groups tend to do the same things.

But the term stereotype is not a good choice of term to describe what it does. It is a metaphor from the original use of the term, where stereotyping was and still is a printing function.

In printing, a stereotype is a mould that is used to create the same product. Every product of a stereotyping machine will print the same thing. Its more efficient construction enabled printers to avoid the labour-intensive resetting of types and other moulds for the same machine.

The printed product of stereotyping is always the same. But this is not the case with ethnic or group behaviour or even appearance. There are exceptions, so the term is not an exact analogy when used metaphorically as above.

It is not the case that all Indians are taxi drivers or all taxi drivers are Indians. But if you hail a taxi in a country with a large minority of Indians, you are likely to observe an Indian in the driver's seat.

Rather than accepting the misue of Stereotyping, it is more accurate to explain that ethnic and people groups tend to behave a certain way in general. The fact that groups do behave the same in general is not a moral judgment. They do.

Why wouldn't they? They share membership with a community of people from whom they are bred and raised. Children in a group are indoctrinated in the morals, world-views, customs and traditions of their group, which often include rites, practices, prohibitions and other behviours and behaviours produced by consequence of ideology. Genetic heredity explains consistency of appearance.

Consistent behaviour is encouraged within groups, preserved and even enforced, but especially when members live among very different ethnic groups as minorities, to express their ethnic identity publically and to make themselves more distinctive as a group and to satisfy feelings of ethnic patriotism.

To pejoratively label the generalising of groups, as Stereotyping, you reject group and ethnic expression.

Stereotyping in this sense is not bad. It is not good. It is a generalisation based on behaviours observed among enough members of an ethnic or other group to have a high level of predictability.

People who behave like others in their group are confirming the concept of stereotyping.

Most Asian university students do study the same range of disciplines and do not usually study others.

Most taxi drivers are Indian.

If you want to stop stereotyping, you need to ask people to stop behaving and appearing the same way as their fellow group members.

Check-out Free Shopping vs Employment

Robots and Software are taking all our jobs.

Driverless cars, delivery and monitoring UAVs, diagnostic and self-help software, robot soldiers, 3-D printer manufacturing, robot surgery, the sky is the limit.

Already we have seen and are seeing more the elimination of job sectors by non-humans: travel agencies, manufacturing robots, automatic storage and sorting services, automatic takeoff and landing in passenger planes, pool cleaning, even combine harvesting.

And next time you're giggling at your little robot floor cleaner, think again. He's after your job.

Now shopping check-outs. Another entire job sector is heading to oblivion. A sector that mostly employs the most vulnerable: unskilled older people, teens needing money to fund their education and start their careers and independant lives gently, people with disabilities, new immigrants.



What happens to humanity when whole employment industries are gone?

Some argue the future of employment is in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics); the labour force can simply change tack and make all this stuff: build robots, design software.

How long is that going to last before they build and design themselves?

Plus it assumes our children are all geniuses and will become scientists and technologists. They're not all that smart. A fraction of children will have the brain power or inclination to work in STEM. A smaller fraction will have money to pay for the education and training.

Governments tell us, STEM is the future of employment of future generations. Yeah right. A future of geniuses. You don't say Musical performance is the future and so all our kids just need to be talented musicians. Easy.

The future of employment is heading toward disaster: mass unemployment, unreachable higher education (by cost, talent and genius), millions of poor, bored, angry youth and the crime and desperation that follows.

At the other end of STEM are the bulk of jobs that most of us are employed in. But even that isn't immune. Even low-skilled labour will disappear with automatic rubbish collection, gardening, home construction, cleaning services, maintenance, haulage and delivery, hotel check-in, fruit picking, all being replaced by robots.

The news is covered in the checkout revolution. Coles-Myer, Woolworths and others have started replacing checkout staff with pay and go technology.

Where will the company savings on salaries and staffing costs go? In reduced grocery prices? Ha ha ha. LOL. Watch their share prices.

Have a look at the graphs of economic growth compared to employment. They used to follw each other. Now growth and employment are splitting in different directions. Economies grow, employment stagnates. GDP soars, median income falls.

We can't blame the private sector. Their ultimate goal, the aim to which all business activites strive, is profit. They are allowed by law and government to acheive this aim by almost any means. They are supported, incentivised and encouraged to achieve their aim.

Businesses are just doing what they do. Saving costs through sacking staff and replacing them with technology. Businesses have no interest in costly public policy support, such as employment and the macro economy. That's someone else's job. The government.

The government has a lot of sway in how employers employ. Many countries have quotas imposed on businesses to employ a certain percentage of people with disabilites.

The government has the only authority, power and resources to shape and influence, to direct, employers. So what is the government doing about this issue?

Who shapes and influences the government? Us. So what are we doing?


Where are the protests. Where is the public discussion. Where is the Government?

Where is the open public and policy discussion about saving our children from the future?

Where the fuck is Great Thunberg?

She'll die of poverty long before rising sea levels.

Racial Profiling

Watching real police chat on the radio on TV shows, we often hear an assailant being described, with the aim of police patrols identifying and catching them.

Example, "We're looking for a big Islander."

News reports often refer to an incident involving a woman, and a woman of Asian appearance.

Forever it seems, these comments have been acknowledged and we move on. The issue is the event, not the person's ethnic identity. What have they done, we ask, having forgotten the description of the person and now focussed on the event.

Why has this kind of description been used for so long, by reporters, witnesses, the police and even in banter and daily discussion?

Because it's obvious. No thought about it is considered. It's a non-issue.

We as humans group things into classes based on each member of the class sharing a distinct qualtity.

If someone tells you they fell off a chair yesterday, will you ask them "what is a chair?"

You know what a chair is. A chair is a physical object identified by its appearance. Its appearance which includes features that other obejcts have and therefore belong to the group "Chairs".

Chairs are things that have potential for being sat upon, usually a platform for the buttocks suspended from the ground by legs.

It is a no-brainer that human beings have the propensity to be classified in the same way; a physical appearance held among some humans leading to the creation of a class of members that all share the same physical features.

Who would not know what a member of the class Women would look like?

Who would say, if you tell me you are dating an Indian, "I wonder what they look like?"?

It is only because people look a certain way and a way shared among many others, that we create and understand the collective term to describe them.

If every single person was a different shape and colour, we might not have a single word to class them. But they don't all look unique.

Genetic heredity and intra-breeding have created groups of humans that appear to share the same shapes and colours to their physicality.

It is no suprise when the child of two parents shares many of their parent's physical features.

On the contrary, great surprise and some awkward conversation, happens when a child has the features of one but not the other. Example, a black child to two white parents.

This fact that humans come in different features, but those features are shared, is very helpful when it comes to description.

This is how terms like race and ethnicity were easily accepted into societal vernacular.

We even noticed that there was a consistent relation between the appearance of someone and their location on the planet. Not many Chinese discovered by Marco Polo were six foot tall and blonde and blue-eyed. He would have noticed some commonalities in their physcial appearance.

Inheriting dominant genetic phenotypes through intrabreeding is the cause of these common features, we now know, but knew anyway despite the science.

Sure, it's not an exact science. Sure sometimes we get it wrong. But here is the reason why we mostly get it right.

Inter-breeding between different ethnic groups reduces the accuracy. But intra-breeding outweighs in numbers inter-breeding and so we can still tell the difference between most ethnic groups based only on physical appearance.

The proof of accuracy is in the results. The police use racially-based, physically-based, descriptions today and they work most of the time, which is why they still use it.

Recently, a movement has protested this practice. They call it Racial Profiling.

Racial Profiling is when you look at someone's physical appearance and assument they belong to a group AND this group has a propensity or likelihood to behave a certain way.

Well they do!

Not only do some humans share physcial characteristics that usually align them with an ethnic group, but they also behave in a way common to that group.

There are some particular behaviours performed differently by some groups of similar appearance from others.

That is because genetic heredity of physciality does occur among people of the same communities. A community has its own behaviours, beliefs etc.

If a village in Africa intra-breeds, the members will not only look alike, they will behave alike, because they behave within their community's norms, values, beliefs and customs.

This makes it possible to identify not only what village a human comes from, but what behaviours they are likely to display.

Racial Profilng is no more offensive or racist than Furniture Profiling.

It is not a denegration or personal attack or attack on the group of people.

It is an accurate means to identify a person when no other means is possible.

If a burglar is described by witnesses as black or Chinese-looking, the police will not waste resources to search for and detain everyone.

If you think people cannot be identified by their physcial appearance, you are deranged.

We will stop racial profiling when people stop looking and behaving in groups.

Culture Versus Tradition

The term Culture is used to signify the lore and norms, customs and beliefs of an ethnic group, or sometimes just of a group of people who contrast themselves from all other groups.

Example: The Indian culture, the Hindu culture, the Islamic culture, the Western culture, Australian culture, Maori culture, Chinese culture, French culture.

We are told, we are enriched by all the world's Cultures.

But what do we mean by Culture?

How does Culture differ from Tradition? Not much. The two terms are used synonymously.

But both terms originally meant opposing things. A traditition is a behaviour that is sustained through time to be forever unchanged. Customs handed down to generations without mutation.

However, a culture is a growth, a development from the past to the present. Culture is an evolution. It is a change from a status existing in history that has evolved and changed to become what it is today.

Tradition and Culture are diametrically opposed in meaning.

So why do we call the ancient practice of genital mutilation, arranged marriage, female inferiority to male as Culture?

These practices, by which people groups and ethnicities identify themselves, are called cultural. They are in fact not cultures, but traditions.

Thus, traditional culture is a phrase that contradicts itself.

We need to rescue the term culture, because it signifies a development and growth and change from what was traditional.

We thus need to stop calling traditional behaviours and beliefs as Culture. They are not Culture.

They are Tradition.

Culture celebrates the growth and improvement a people group has achieved over time.

Culture is change.

Trump Assassinations

Recently, Donald Drumpf (US President) authorised the assassination of an Iranian General, Solemani, by a Drone in Baghdad.

Two camps formed shortly after.

Those who thought Drumpf's action was correct and good.

And those who thought Drumpf got it wrong.

The argument of the former is that all bad people should be killed, full stop.

The latter argue that all actions have consequences and in this case the consequences are worse than inaction.

An issue poorly addressed is the principle behind all bad people must be killed no matter what.

It is no surprise that the Iranians are now in the process of vengeance.

Iran has already responded by attacking US forces in Iraq as an act of revenge. They are likely to continue.

The problem with the principle of killing all bad guys not matter what is its childish short-sightedness.

The assassinated party was not someone like Bin Laden who was not representing the policy of a sovereign state.

Sovereign states are different from individual terrorists. They play an integral role in global peace efforts. Thus, the assassination of General Solemani was an attack against the sovereign state of Iran.

A similar assassination occurred in Sarajevo on 28 July 1914. And look what happened. World War 1.

And that was a non-state actor!

If we believe that on principle all bad people should be killed despite the consequences, then we should expect a negative reaction from all those who believe in considered global policy and the principles of justice: e.g. fair trial.

Not all bad people are acting on their own authority. Some of them represent, by their actions, the polciy of sovereign nations who are privileged with internationally supported rights.

Drumpf has attacked Iran. This horrible nation is ready to defend itself and in the same way the US is ready.

Some bad people are tools of sovereign nations. You can break the tool, but the tool is not the problem. Why an actor has the tool is the problem.

The tool is broken. The actor has another tool on standby. How well did you address the problem?

The Narrative

Who knows anything about fashion and its whims, knows that fashion doesn't just apply to clothing.

The latest vernacular fashion includes the term Narrative.

Whatever cause you are supporting, or argument you are defending, the term Narrative will feature, if you want to be perceived as being intellectually current and sophisticated, "up with the latest" genius language.

The absence of the term Narrative in your expressions may work against you, in favour of rivals or comrades that include the term.

Everything is now a Narrative.

The term derives from the Latin verb for Telling a Story: an account of events.

But today, the term is misused to replace boring old terms such as Assumption, Position, Argument or anything that summarises in a fancy word what you are saying.

Today though, a Narrative (the noun) is not a personal account, but an objective account, closer to the social policy of a doctrine or interpretation or belief system held by many. Example, the feminist narrative.

The pretentious and the vain are quick to allude or express their wisdom and moral superiority with the latest fashion in words. This paradoxically makes it easier for us all to identify such charlatans, who believe fancy words add value to their authority. They are thus exposed. Everything you said before and after Narrative is now easily ignored and relegated to the status of Fraudulent Bullshit.

Even if what you are saying is correct, meaningful, important, you have tattooed the word Wanker on your giant forehead. Your words become subordinate to your falsity as a pretender.

To expose the charlatan to the public, you need only ask publically what they mean by Narrative and sit back as they clumsily fail to express the concept; often even using more tripe to answer the question.

We advise against the use of pretentious fashion, no matter how impressive it appears.

The Bushfire Merry-Go-Round

Bushfires (Wild fires in the US) are raging again in what Australians predictively call Bush Fire Season. 

This year has been and still is a very bad one. Many dead, thousands homeless, emergency services stretched thinly.

The curiosity is in the annual response to an annual occurance.

Every fire season, the same actions are taken by the Government and respondant agencies. The approach is reactive; putting out the fires with water from fire engines and aeroplanes.

Some prevention is undertaken every year; burning back to reduce the fuel load, meteorological analysis for planning, evacuation planning, respondant planning.

A few curiosities:

1. Nothing New is Being Done:

What is not done well and not well discussed in open is what is popularly called Continuous Improvement: can we do X better; more effective, more efficient etc.

What is missing from all the media and government discussions is the matter of whether we should be trying something else? Can we evacuate better, can we extinguish fire better, can we predict better, etc etc.

Can innovation and science and research play a role?

If it can, you couldn't tell. Nothing new has been evident.

In 2015, a private company joined the CSIRO agency to develop a new Mist Bomb to extinguish fire. Five years later.... not a peep.

In the US, homes at risk of annual tornado seasons usually have bunkers installed. The point is, there was a time before bunkers. So someone at some stage came up with an innovation. Someone asked, what can we do differently?

Aeroplane water-bombing was an innovation. Perhaps innovation is a good approach?

2. Bush fires are being responded to and managed by volunteers: e.g. the Rural Fire Service.

Why are there not professional seasonal full-time responders? 

Volunteers have day jobs. They are compelled to take time off work and are not paid. Stop press: Days ago the Federal Government proposed to employers they should provide paid-leave to volunteers. Better late than never.

Not paying for emergency services is a keystone of Australian policy. Ambulance services are all private in Australia: user pays.

Should we rely on an eternal goodwill from the community? We have thus far, but for how long? The pros are being outweighed by the cons, for the average volunteer. Why would you volunteer to face death every year for nothing? Even less than nothing, because you are going to be out of pocket for training, time away from work and family and other costs.

Volunteering emergency services is a cheap save for the government.

Is not the Government's primary role in any society to protect its citizens? This is the first line printed in Australia's Constitution. We have a Defence Force, but no Ambulance or Bush fire services.

3. Rural Planning has omitted fire season management.

The homes mostly destroyed by fire are remote from services and community centres, such as emergency services and shelters. They are usually surrounded by hectares of forests.

Perhaps some changes in rural planning can be made to address the factors that cause a fire to reach a property. Compulsory bunkers might be an idea. Separation between property and tree line? Ease of access to supporting community centres? Fire-retardant measures, external building sprinkler systems, breathing apparata compulsory. Fireproofing vehicles, compulsory.

Every year, homes are destroyed, people are injured or worse, businesses destroyed, resources exhausted. Every year, a formal inquiry into the disaster.

Climate change proponents and meteorologists predict more frequent and intense bush fires. 

Are we to plan for the next one like we did the last one?

What is Gender?

The continuing nonsense carried on with the intentional misuse of the term Gender and its relative terms, Sex, Male, Female, He, She etc, demands Our continuing response.

Further, the act of changing a term in common usage, with a common understanding and fixed clear definition, understood and used this way for hundreds of years is itself a trend that threatens basic and philosophical discussion and communication. The alternate use of terms is a problem for language.

And so here again We are compelled to reiterate and elaborate on the issue of the term Gender.

To remind us:

The term Gender has been hijacked since at least the UK Equality Act 2010, and most recently in the Gender Recognition Act 2017, to signify an ideological lifestyle held by a vast minority. The term now has a double meaning:

1. The traditional meaning referring to physical sexual characteristics among the animal kingdom. There are two Genders, discounting a third genetic mutation such as Kleinfelters syndrome; and

2. The recent conceptual meaning that a human can feel like and choose a sexual gender they are not physically. There are endless types of Gender.

So the latter use is based on a belief, poorly defined, that contradicts and attempts to redefine the classical understanding of what it is to BE a male or female.

So, the second meaning has game-changing implications for all terms and understandings of related male and female terminology, and further domino implications on society, government, law and all issues that centre around sex.

A further corollary is that the conceptual version of Gender is superior to the classic version; heirarchically similar to how Quantum physics is held superior to but evolved from Newtonian physics.

Language is organnic and yes terms evolve over time. But language is the primary tool we use to communicate our thoughts to others. This is difficult at the best of times: e.g. clear definitions and proofs.

For language to meet our needs it requires a common understanding of its terms.

Changing the use of a word will lead to confusion and require re-definition.

Re-definition cannot be one way. It cannot be unilateral. Society must adopt the changes.

Further, the meaning left behind still needs to be articulated and expressed and contrasted.

Gender means Sex type in Humans, mammals, and some other species. It is a term that signifies physical features common in some animals that play an exclusive role in the reproduction of the species. Gender does NOT signify a cognitive decision, a mental state, a subjective feeling or personal experience.

Gender is a term abbreviated from the term Sexual Gender and it has always meant, Male or Female terms that signifiy physiological characteristics that relate only to sexual reproduction and the consequences that those characteristics appear to have on physicality and behaviour and relations between members of that species to which it applies.

Gender is a term to signify physical appearance and behaviour, NOT a mental experience. Thus, Gender is observable, verifiable, consistent, internally coherent and objective.

If you change the use of this term, you are conceding that all terms currently understood in common are NOT signifying their historical use. You are calling a banana a pear. A duck a donkey.

If you accept the historical use of terms, and comply with the common understanding, you cannot change them without misunderstanding and you will expect a societal reaction, such as the myriad debates and court cases.

You cannot chose your height, your ears, or ability to give birth and, in the same way, you cannot choose your Gender: your sexual physiology.

Gender is a term that signifies a Group. A class of physical commonlity among some human beings, those being related sexual reproduction. Gender is not a term that signifies an internal feeling that you belong to another Group, defined by physicality.

To belong to a group called Women, you need to meet the criteria by which Woman is defined, and that criteria is based on sexual features, physcially verifiable.

That is the case unless you change the definition of the term Woman and thus the Group of Woman.

And that is what gender identity proponents have done. To them, gender is not physical, but mental. Gender is to them an internal experience that they say all Women share: the internal feeling that they are a Woman.

How do they know what a Woman is, if it is not a physical thing? How can you say I feel like a woman, if to be a woman is internal NOT external? You could not claim to belong to a group that is defined only by physcial features, but claim to belong because of only internal feelings. This is what we call ideology; when members of a group shares the same idea. However, the traditional use of the term Woman does not refer to ideas, but only to physcial features. So gender identity proponents have changed the ancient use of the term Woman from physical to mental, but claim the mental based on the physical.

There are physical commonalities related to sexual reproduction and manking has created terminology to discuss theses features. Today, some are tearing the terminology off its meaning and applying it to separate concept. What then happens to the original meaning? If we call a donkey a duck, what do we then call a donkey? Is a duck an animal that feels like a donkey?

The term used that far in history, without need of scientifc validation, was eventually confirmed with the discovery of Chromosomes:

The discovery of X and Y chromosomes and their proven role in sexual reproduction proves scientifically what humans have already known: there is a difference between humans related to sex.

All humans have sex chromosomes, divided into two categories, which align with their physical features. All humans with a uterus etc, have XX genes, and all humans with penises etc have XY genes. Kleinfelters is a very rare condition where a person has both male and female sexual features, but it is not a mental condition, it is not a gender in the changed sense of the corrupted term.

In this choromosomal case, science has confirmed what we already knew.

But even after all this proof, even though we have ancient historical references to the term Gender, even after all that time we still need to discuss the meaning behind the term today because a small group have decided history and science are incorrect.

We thought we knew what Gender meant and now we are told we were wrong all that time.

We need to challenge this position now because the word Gender is currently being changed to suit a minority's social acceptance. 0.8% of people require and demand 100% of people change their understanding.

So what was the requirement for the original term Gender? What was its etymology?

The modern term is an abbreviation of the historical phrase Sexual Gender. Here the noun Gender is qualified by the adjective Sexual. The original use of the term Gender, by itself, means and has always meant Type. Gender by itself is not exclusive to sex.

Thus, for example, there are Genders (called Genres) of Movies: Action, Thriller, Comedy, Documentary, Horror.

The French word for Type is Genre, and the Anglo Saxon translation became Gender after the conquest of Britain by the French speaking Normans. The French language encroached into English since 1066 and we saw the first publiction of Gender four hundred years ago.

Recently, the qualifier Sexual has been removed from the phrase for convenience, seen as being redundant, so we have the equivalent term Gender: minus Sexual. This abbreviation of phrases to single terms is common in the evolution of language across the globe. For example, the modern term Art is an abbrieviation of the term Fine Art. The term United Kingodm is abbreviated from United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It appears the omission of the qualifier is now problematic, as gender identity proponents deny the relation between sex and gender in order to acheive their goal.

So, people are now attempting to change the definition of the term Gender, to signify a psychological choice about physical Masculinity and Femininity etc. for exmaple, I am a man trapped in a woman's body.

So, since its inception, Sexual Gender has referred to the two physical types of Human, based on sexual reproductive features, Male and Female.

Terms do not create their meaning. The meaning creates the term. The concept has precedence over the term. Because there are differences between Humans that acknowledge that Humans differ in physical characteristics, we have created a term to distinguish both. Male and Female. And then Man and Women and all the consequent derivatives and relative pronouns.

Today, we are expected to believe and accept that Gender, the abbreviation of Sexual Gender, is not signifying physiology, but a feeling a person has. So, a term is being used to create a meaning.

Today, Gender is said to be an internal experience, rather than a physical quality.

Gender identity proponents have changed the definition of the term Gender, because the current use contradicts their preference for choosing gender and their view that a woman can be trapped inside a man's body.

So, now we are told Gender is an internal experience only. You can feel like you are a Woman, rather than the Man you appear to be, based on physciality.

How can you feel like a Woman, if it is an internal experience? What's to stop us feeling like a goat?

How do we know what it feels like to be a Woman? So,if you are not physically a goat, you can still feel like a goat?

If we allow feelings to determine what we are, how does it feel to be a Woman? You can't know that you feel like a Woman without knowing what a Woman feels like. How do you know?

How do women feel like women? And why do we think a woman is a woman.

Ask a Woman. Ask someone who thinks they know what a woman is. Ask all those claiming to belong to the group Woman and see what the commonalities are. Then compare that with your feelings. If you don't, then you can't claim to belong to that group.

A survey of Women's answers to what does it feel like to be a Woman will largely be the same, and will be base on physical feeling and physical appearance. Internal feelings are likely to be felt as being directly caused by, derived from solely by, a physical experience.

Now knowing what it is to feel like and look like a woman, let us use the information as an empirical objective and verifiable benchmark for deciding whether a person actually is or feels like a woman.

So. What does it mean when someone says, I am a woman?

Ask these people, what do you mean?

Ask your mother why she feels like a woman. Ask the transgender person how they relate to that.

If the person answers honestly, it will become clear that they are or are not a woman.

So, what is a Woman?

Two things:

1. What claimants feel and experience.
2. What they look like.

What do women feel and experience:

1. Female puberty
2. Menstrual cycle mental consequences
3. Pregnancy

What do they look like:

3. Physical appearance: e.g. vagina, breasts, distribution of hair, muscle growth...
4. Potential for childbirth
5. Menstrual cycles: uterine bleeding monthly, uterine cramping

If you claim to have these qualities, then your claim can be verified empirically. And the determination of your gender can be acknowledged objectively.

Proponents of Gender as a choice, Gender Identity, argue that societal norms have imposed gender-specific behaviours onto humans, such as social behaviour, dress, hair style, names, colours etc.

But it is arguable whether these social impositions upon the child is the cause of this beahiour, or its effect.

If your child displays female characteristics, you may impose on them societally consistent female behaviours and labels.

Rather than imposing behaviours, the behaviours create the gender, perhaps the gender imposes the behaviour.

The consequences of redefining commonly used terms and using language in this goal-oriented, anti-scientific way are immense.

If we can choose to identify ourselves with a Group defined by physicality, but without reference to physicality, then we can identify as ANYTHING.

I can say that I feel like a lion, or a brick, or a planet or a God.

I don't have to look like any of these, as long as I feel like them. So identity is a feeling shared.

So, identity becomes ridiculous and its mention will be heckled and ignored.

There is also an insult to real Women. For a man to claim that he is a woman is to reduce women to a fluid concept that any thing can be.

Further, if we accept that Gender is a feeling, then we are forced to comply that we cannot tell the difference between men and women, until we ask them what they are and they tell us. How ludicrous.

Our newborn child is indeterminate. We don't know what Gender our new baby is. We have to wait for them to grow up and decide on what they identify as.

Further:

Transgender women demand that their decision to identify as female is not based on physical charatceristics, but a feeling. But then they make their appearance as a traditional female. This is a self-contradiction. Female is a feeling, but its expression is physical and contrasts with Males.

If being a women is nothing to do with appearance, why dress and look like a traditional woman?

Men tell us they feel like a woman, and then display their features as women. Why the need? Why the need to appear as a woman, if appearance is not an indicator of gender?

This behaviour refinforces why we know it is utter bullshit.

You cannot identify you way out of your sexual biology.

Transgender - A Practical Treatment

Transgender communities if supported by law and social pressure will detrimentally effect society and individuals.

As parents, we are responsible for protecting our children. We often do this by planning ahead and preparing for worst case likely scenarios that risk their protection.

Do we want our daughters to share public toilets with men? Some male sex predators are already using the excuse of transgender to access female areas to assualt them. Should we wait for the sexual assault of our daughters and then do something about it? Or is it wiser to plan ahead, so the assault doesn't happen in the first place?

An interim solution would be to escort our children in public toilets.

A longer term solution would be to abolish communal bathrooms and replace them with single access rooms: one toilet or changing room per person, with lockable doors.

The point is that prevention is better than cure.

We need to look at current trends with changes in society and plan for those that have new risks, currently not managed.

We need to be proactive rather than reactive.

Transgender is a trend that is starting to change and effect society and individuals. Not all of it is good.

Should we encourage our daughters to become elite sprinter athletes? If we look at the trend in transgender and the consequences in sport, we can see how transwoman (physically male) are going to beat females every time. So we should not encourage or waste resources on our female children entering areas of skill dominated by men when they will be competing with those men.

Our children are likely to start dating. Dating is likely to be via internet apps, where transwomen (men) will idenitfy in their online profile that their gender is female. Should we warn our children?

On the surface, everything looks harmless. Transgender looks like a harmless individual experience that has no effect on our lives or society. Only an intelligent consideration to examine emerging ideas and phenomena can reveal the scope and limitations, the risks and consequences. And then plan, prepare, resource and act to treat whatever is not but needs to be treated.

Why We Call things by Names

The study of why we group things that share something common and name that group with a term is vital to many current disputes currently argued globally, from the streets into the court rooms.

When a Canadian teacher can be jailed for refusing to speak a word, as the term for a group, we need to discuss why we create groups and give them a group name.

Female is a term used to denote a group that shares something in common.

Using group terms is important because it enables us to discuss things without spending hours enumerating all members of the group.

Imagine if you couldn't say female, but could only list all females or describe their individual features. How long would that take? Or imagine having to replace every name with its description in discussion.

That is what we are reduced to now. Instead of using the tools of language to convey a statement or argument, we are reduced to a discussion on the tool itself. This is fine when starting a discussion that has important key terms that are not so familiar to us, in detail, but their definition must be mutually agreed before progressing. Who would have thought we would need to discuss what Male and Female mean, what Man and Woman means?

But here we are, because some are trying to fuck with the meaning of these ancient terms. They are changing the definition of Man and Woman, Gender, Sex, Male and Female, to achieve a personal gain, social acceptance for a minority delusion at the expense of society. And we must agree to change our own use and understanding of these terms, or else.

GENERALISING TO COLLECTIVE NOUNS

As humans, we naturally notice patterns and commonalities; that some things have a quality in common with other things. This is probably a survival instinct. If we see one lion kill a family member, and then later we see another lion, we are well to define a group called"lions" and attribute the quality of killing people to that group.

The more occasions we see lions killing people, the more concrete the quality attributed to the group becomes.

The formulation of an abstract concept to a collective noun is obviously important.

Firstly we notice simmilarities in physical appearance and/or behaviour. This creates the collective noun.

Then we use this abstract concept, the term for a group with simmilar characteristics, as a means of predicting behaviour. Over time, the repetition substantiates the collective term. Who would not be worried if they suddenly saw a lion in front of them?

Some lions won't kill. Perhaps they are full, they have just eaten. Perhaps they are too old to chase. So we accept the term is not exhaustive and it becomes accepted as a generalisation.

But the point has not been lost by one exception.

Hence the practical necessity of group terms and also generalisations.

Now that we understand why we use a single term to denote a group of individuals sharing something in common, we can progress.

SEXUAL GENDER

It is a generalisation that we group individuals as Women and Men. Almost all Women have the same physicality and appearance, which other individuals do not, so the we have a definition by exclusion and simmilarity. Women generally have the ability or potential to birth a child, and do not have penises. Men do not generally give birth.

For thousands of years, the languages of people across the world have assigned terminology to describe the group, and separately from each other. All languages have ancient terms for women and men. Now, we are told this is all wrong.

Today, we are told that we cannot use such group terms that denote a sexual gender, male or female, for humans. The term "gender" means "type". The French word for type is "genre", and the Normans of French Brittany passed it to the English, who accepted the term, after 1066.

Thus "gender" today is an abbreviation of "sexual gender", male or female type.

But sexual gender is not limited to human animals. All animals have a sexual gender in the same way other animals do.

But...

No one is complaining about the equivalent use of sexual gender terms for animals. Wonder why? Seem inconsistent? We use sexual gender terms to describe animals for the same reason we use them for humans. So gender fluid proponents are burdened to apply their views across the animal kingdom.

And that is because we all share the same physical commonalities. Sexual gender refers to sexual organs, hormone types and levels, menstrual cycles, the role in reproducing, the ability to give birth or contribute to egg fertilisation, the X and Y chromosomes.

These are things you nor your dog or cat can choose to have or not. They are things assigned at conception and on display at birth. There is no choice here.

None of this has been questioned about humans, perhaps before Otto Weininger a hundred years ago. It's not questioned because the presence and quality of each is empirically verifiable, objectively evident. It is obvious that a human is a male or female. It is something any idiot can verify.

The word Man does not create a man. The word Man is an abstract concept created by a common understanding that a group of humans display the same certain physiology and that which is not displayed by other humans (i.e. Women). A human may agree that they belong to this group from observation of their physicality and then seeing the consistency between that and how they feel with other members of the Man group.

A person claiming to be a Woman, but has no physciality or experience or feeling that naturally born Woman have, is claiming they are and are not a Woman.

Why does this even need to be spelled out?

Further, the creation of sexual gender terms is organnic and pervasive and ancient. So, for the entire history of the world, every group of people on earth has created terms that denote a group sharing sexual characterisitics, man and woman, boy and girl, him and her, for example.

No DNA test is done prior to the use of the terms male and female to ensure a person is identified as one or the other. The decision to use man or woman is based on the physical appearance of the person; their conformity of appearance to meet the distinction the terms create.

You can pretend to be something. You can put a wig on, makeup, socks in a bra. You can have hormone injections and surgical reconfiguration of your privates.

But you cannot say you are a Woman but not be able to experience conception, pregnancy, childbirth, the menstrual cycle, the physicality of owning a uterus.

Besides the science, there is appearance and physicality. The adams apple, lactation, skin smoothness, muscle growth, external genatalia. These don't require science, only observation.

Those who try to mimic what they are not are not fooling anyone.

The proposition that you choose all this, you choose your sexual gender, is factually, verifiablly incorrect. You cannot choose to have a uterus, hormonal cycles, or birth and pregnancy.

Someone calling themselves a member of the group Transgender Female claim to feel like a Woman, as opposed to them being "assigned" Male from birth. They claim to feel like a Woman. How can a physical Man feel like a Woman, in the same sense that a physical Woman feels like a Woman?

How can you claim to feel like a Woman when you have never had female puberty, menstrual cycles, the effects of estrogen and progesterone, having breasts, and all the other things Woman cite as being what makes them Womanly?

Further, if they feel like a Woman, which is an internal mental experience, and not an outward physical characteristic, why go to the trouble of looking physically like a Woman? Why wear dresses, high heels, makeup, have boob jobs? Because that sounds like they believe being a Woman is simply appearing like a Woman.

Further still, how does a man know what he means when he says Woman? All he has to go on is the physcial comparison between Men and Woman. He only knows what a Woman is by observing physical characteristics. He cannot say I look at Woman and then feel like one. The two activities are not the same. One is internal experience. The other outward appearance.

This is why we can't say I feel like a lion. How do you feel like a lion? How do you know what it's like to feel like a lion? You'd need to know what it feels like to be a lion first, before comparing that feeling with how you feel during consideration and comparing that feeling to other feelings, like feeling like a dog. This is utter nonsense. Thinking something doesn't make it true.


Yet again, We argue against sophistry and illusion, and the need to express the truth. No matter how much the truth hurts, the truth will out. Bullshit is not a good platform from which to achieve truth.

In conclusion:

We call things names, because some things share qualities that distinguish them from other groups of things. If we mess with Names, we are not communicating. We are using language as a tool to achieve a selfish deceit. And that is no way to bring people closer together in understanding, empathy and compassion.

Names are humanity's way of sharing information to achieve understanding.

People need to preserve this fundamental purpose of language and...

STOP FUCKING WITH WORDS!

Unconscious Bias

The latest fad in corporate, political and social media debate is Unconscious Bias.

What does it mean and why is it being used in discussion?

The phrase is used during a conversation where two people disagree on an issue.

One party will say of the other that their view is weakened because it derives from an Unconscious Bias.

This is the latest pseudo-intellectual defence of someone who is desperate to win an argument and to win the title of "Correct View" and winner of the debate.

There is some truth to the concept behind the phrase, because it is not a new concept.

Unconscious Bias sounds like it stands for a new enlightenment, discovered recently.

It is not.

Same pig, different lipstick.

The concept that our views, beliefs, tenets, rational conclusions are influenced by our personal morality is ancient.

Influenced. Not derived from. There is a difference. And this difference is the problem.

Of course our life experience and our morality and character can influence our arguments and our positions on an issue for debate or discussion. But those arguments do not derive from this. They are at best a source of influence. That influence can be recognised and rejected by a conscious mind.

In contrast, Unconscious Bias proponents claim that your view is derived ONLY from an Unconcious Bias and that you have no control over it nor even awareness of it.

You can see the power of such a claim made against an opponent during debate.

You can say to your opponent that they are not aware that their argument derives solely from a power in their mind that they have no control over.

This means that the opponents argument is not a product of rational deliberation, logic or intellectual insight, but their argument is derived from an all powerful, unconscious Big Bang that is devoid of reason.

So instead of rationally concluding an argument or position on an issue, the opponent has always had a their view arrived at through a weakness of character than an intellectual exercise.

Therefore, the opponents argument is not rational but irrational and consequently weak, subjective and fallible.

The truth is that rational people already identify any biases they might have and are ready and willing to destroy them for the sake of truth. They may begin unconsciously, but the power of reason is in its deliberate action of seeking out what is unconscious and thus making it conscious.

Everyone has conscious biases. Biases chosen by reason or morality.

It is a harder intellectual exercise to convince us that someone has a bias they are not aware of, but that they are aware of.

The onus of proof is on the claimant, "You have an unconscious bias."

Further, if the logic is sound and the facts are empirically verifiable, then Unconcisous Bias doesn't matter. The proponent cannot argue that a valid argument is defeated by such a claim. A black cat is a cat, no matter what the Unconscious Bias.

The Truth about Obesity?

Obese people are aesthetically repulsive.

Obese people are obese because they ate too much shit food.

Obese people are weak and lazy who care nothing about their health or their appearance.

When have we heard these kinds of statements in discussion or debate?

Not often and not without being vilified and condemned.


Today, there is no acceptable public place or forum to speak your mind about anything.

Anything, let alone important issues that need discussion and free expression.

Fear of vilification or punishable discrimination now outweighs the desire to express the truth.

Thus, although the world and social media is covered in Q&A meetings, debates and social issue forums, none of the panels, speakers or attendees are free to speak their mind without the tangible threat of being attacked for their expression.

Now more than ever, we are effectively banned from conducting meaningful discussion or debate, where truth is the objective.

By truth, We mean simply saying what's on your mind: your experience, your feelings, your rational conclusions, your opinion.

So much of what we think is now offensive and unacceptable, even honest expression is forbidden.

In 2015, the British Medical Journal published an editorial "You can't outrun a bad diet" stating that lack of exercise and sedentary lifestyle had almost nothing to do with weight gain, that weight gain is mostly caused by diet. Shortly after, the editorial was removed following a barage of complaints.

Why the censorship?

Because, the truth hurts. The truth hurts, and therefore simultaneously creates a victim and an offender. The discussion is now no longer a search for truth or an activity of sharing ideas. The discussion ends and has become a trial, where judgment and punishment will be forthcoming.

Worse than the consequent absence of truth seeking and knowledge sharing are the lies, fallacies and frank false appeasement and sycophancy that replaces it.

This is a double whammy. We avoid the truth and encourage lies.

This being the result, how could we ever expect to benefit, resolve, improve as indidivudals and as a society?

If you find fat people ugly, you cannot express that. So how could we ever know what people think about fat people and the aesthetic relationship?

If fat people tell us that they are fat because they have a genetic cause or something beyond their control, how can we move away from stagnant effect to cause, and then address the cause?

If we argue against this lack of control, and that will power, competing priorities and choices are the cause, you will be prosecuted.

To most people, fat is instinctively aesthetically repulsive. But no one will ever say that in public.

Most people see a fat person and judge that the person is lazy and weak. If they are in most cases lazy and weak, then we can move forward toward the truth of causation.

If there is no problem with obesity, that obesity is good or not an issue for society to be botherered discussing, then why is it such a huge and popular topic? Why such offense, if it doesn't matter, if opinions against fat are false, wrong, bad?

No one enjoys, or takes a compliment, for being told they are fat. Nor that they are ugly.

But is the purpose of a forum that claims to be held to seek understanding, shared ideas, and resolution, actually held as the primary objective? Or is the purpose of the forum to justify a vulnerable sector of society in the continuation of their habits, to preserve and protect their feelings and to feel good about yourself for standing up for and supporting sycophantically a vulnerable group?

Is the true purpose of the rational debates really just an exercise in making all attendees feel good?

Honest debate is not concerned about feelings, but about truth. Rational. logical understanding and the benefits of philosophical inquiry cannot be achieved if they are stopped from continuing as soon as someone's feelings are hurt.

The truth hurts. And today, whatever hurts is bad and must be crushed and punished and damned. Not hurting people outweighs the truth, therefore the truth is kept unspoken and unseen.

That is the real danger.

If we can't say what we think, then we can't expect to obtain the truth, subjective or objective.

The progress of curing cancer through foetal stem cell research was all but ended by the Catholic Church and protests from the masses of people who put their personal beliefs above ending the suffering of others.

So, what remains in the latest collection of human knowledge about the world?

Lies, falsehoods and unveiled knowledge.

Fat people are not normal. They are not beautiful. They are wrong. They are aberations.

Fat people drain the civic funds when they seek treatment for fat-related illnesses, which are preventable.

Fat people literally don't fit in society.

Fat people create an instant instinctive disgust.

The truth hurts.

Clive James - A Homage - Australian Bars

[the following is an interpretation of how Clive might have addressed the modern bar culture]

Bars in Australia today are a far cry from how I remember them…

Before I was banned from entering bars in Australia.

In my day, a bar was a place you went to unwind and relax and recount the horrors of the week with friends and strangers.

Today, a bar is a place to go to wind up not down. A place where the pretence of the week was just a warm up for the real thing.

A bar is a place to dress as pretentiously as the conversation. A place to sell the best you to anyone looking. A place to get noticed, photographed and maybe just maybe to score.

The Australian bar today is not a place you go to relax, but a place you go to confirm your power, your wealth and status. It’s not a place for the light-hearted.

Ironically, an Australian bar requires no demands acute sobriety. Sitting on half a bar stool, with your gut sucked in and your muscles glowing throw a tight shirt, the bar has become a stage… where pensive reflection is pressed down and heroic persona forces its way over the sadness just beneath the surface.

Perhaps this titanic change in bar culture is a reflection of modern society’s obsession with the self. Where the weakness of realism is too real for punters to accept. Today’s bar hopper is under social contract to perform, to entertain, to keep the positive spin of the day’s latest fad.

Perhaps that’s why, I feel I don’t belong in this modern version of the village billabong. I’m too sad, too lonely and too outspoken on issues that really matter.

Perhaps that’s why I’m proud and relieved to be banned from the Australian bar of today.