A lot has been written about the phenomenon of "cancel culture." Most of the material I have read on this topic has been decidedly in the pejorative, arguing that a small group of left-wing activists are out to ostracize anyone who is perceived to have given offence in a particular way. There are others who say that cancel culture does not exist at all and is a figment of the right-wing imagination. Many commentators sit somewhere roughly between these two positions. Me, well I tend to think that it is an intensification of politically correct conduct.

It is a hot fact that in the present age, offence can be taken by anyone relatively easily. Being a subjective thing, offence comes in many flavours. What offends one person may not offend another. Different political affiliations, age groups, cultural dispositions and identity classes are keenly important in how people see the world and themselves in it. There are many triggers for causing offence and it is not always possible to know where the boundaries lie.

Empathy allows us to enter into the world of another person, even if only superficially at first. If you see things through another's eyes then you are less likely to cause them offence in the first place. I suspect a lot of what passes for 'offence-giving' is probably just an ill-advised response to the demands of certain groups for what is a perfectly reasonable quest for equality. However, sometimes those demands seem to be a grab for something more than equality. Resentful remarks about this or that 'majority' or 'mainstream' group are unlikely to elicit much sympathy either and can be the trigger for aggressive push-back.

I have a high tolerance for outrageous comments, though I often disagree with them. That doesn't make me any kind of free speech absolutist - I'm not - but rather, a man who has made his fair share of silly, ill-timed and over-the-top utterances. Sometimes I have paid a price for them, though I have never been 'cancelled.' It's a foolish concept really, whether it exists or not.

bright facetted water
flowers blush in the sun,
a bagpipe awakes

Two Views

You know that there's a snake about
When magpies scream en masse,
They hover in a high phalanx,
Their cries and sharp insistent shouts,
The trees a-shake, a green palace
That's livid with directed sound.
While on the ground, a snake
Weaves cannily, unbound by
Any single agitation -
Save the parting of the grass
Dry weeds in its wake.

among the spray
of bright yellow flowers-
asbestos: no entry

Usually I talk about a Grand Sumo Tournament when it's in its early stages. Today is the final day of the November tourney at the Ryogoku Kokugikan in Tokyo and the Emperor's Cup is a toss-up between two wrestlers who actually meet up in the final bout of the day. I speak of the ozeki Takakeisho (13-1) and the the komusubi, Terunofuji (12-2) whose bout will be critical in deciding the winner. If Terunofuji wins, the two will then have a play-off for the championship. If Takakeisho wins, then everyone gets an early bath.

This has been a tournament of surprises. The two yokuzuna were both absent with injuries and the other ozeki, Shodai pulled out early on with an ankle injury. Not forgetting yet another ozeki, Asanoyama, who is also out. This gave the lower order wrestlers a better chance of progressing towards the title. Other oddities include the poor form of entertaining lightweight Enho, who seems to have lost his confidence and will probably drop a division.

Finally I would like to salute the great Kotoshogiku, a former ozeki who has announced his retirement. I will miss his signature belly-bouncing of his opponent from the dohyo, truly a thing to behold.

Below. Takakeisho thrusts at Shimanoumi on the penultimate day of the November tournament.

Dreams are odd phenomenon. I have lots of them but remember very few, usually those just before waking. Each night is like a book of short stories written of which only a couple survive the transition to consciousness. Interpreting dreams may be one of the oldest forms of psychological analysis. Today we still hanker after the meaning of dreams, though I think such musings would be best located in the mundane - what happens every day. The unconscious mind goes to work processing the day's affairs. I know that it's possible to get lost in the weeds, especially when we are dealing with symbols and their interpretation.

I once kept a dream diary in which I recorded a few dozen remembered dreams or fragments thereof. I used a book purported to be based on Jungian theory to try to get a handle on what my dreams might mean. It was interesting enough but I realised that most of what I had recorded had a simpler explanation attached to it. My hopes and fears informed my dreams.

I had a surprisingly rare dream last night. I was having one about going to the local swimming pool. something I do regularly. As in many dreams, things were going a little pair-shaped - there were all sorts of obstacles preventing me from getting in the water. No swimmers, the change room door disappearing, the pool being empty etc. At some point I realised that I was dreaming and I began to tell myself that this was in fact a dream and that I should wake up. Now I can never recall this ever happening before as dreams have always seemed real and completely immersive. I know that this is the experience of others but it has always eluded me until now.

Among the darkest places on the internet, worse than those sites that peddle racist nonsense, are those that harbour child exploitation material. Aside from the fact that young lives are being ruined, and surely they are, they attack the very fabric of the family. Children are to be nurtured.

I have been fortunate to never come across any such images in my twenty-five odd years online. But I have come across material that I would consider inappropriate. Sometimes, because I consider it to be a potential gateway to things much worse, I have reported the sites the authorities. I have no idea whether anything will or can be done, or even if my complaints are frivolous.

But it hard for me to stand idly by.

 That members of Australian Special Forces committed war crimes when on duty in Afghanistan does not come as a huge surprise to me. Shocking as it is when laid bare in media reportage, war crimes have been a feature of warfare since humans first took up arms against each other. In fact, the rape of women, the torture and summary execution of civilians and prisoners of war, the enslavement of surrendering populations, has been used a tool of war. When conquering armies entered defeated towns and cities, they collected whatever 'booty' they could as a matter of policy.

Of course, we know this is wrong, very wrong. We like to think that we bring a higher moral sense to bear on issues surrounding war and its conduct. But I beg to differ. The whole notion of deterrence in modern warfare is based upon holding whole populations hostage to instant destruction. Politicians connive in the targeting of cities by nuclear weapons, a war crime of huge proportions. 

Those soldiers who thought it okay to brutalize or murder innocent civilians should be brought to justice. So too should those who think that killing entire civilian populations is somehow justified, or different, from any other war crime.

 It is a feature of the age we live in, an age in which almost everything leaves a digital imprint, that the worst thing about a person often becomes the thing that defines them. Of course, it a feature of any age really, but the modern world accelerates and consolidates the process.

Once upon a time you might escape continued censure in your hometown or village by simply leaving. Moreover, records were more easily destroyed or damaged, and certainly not so well documented, so convictions for various offences might be lost or may never get much beyond the local area. An adulterer in one town might become a shining example in another. Chances are that you could flee your past and make a new present if you had the will to do so.

The current era permits no such luxury. There are copies of copies of just about everything that is likely to condemn a person to a lifetime of labelling. You may have led a blameless life apart from that one murder (say, a crime of passion)- but you will forever be known as John Smith, the murderer. If you are caught out in any way, no matter how out-of-character the offence may be, then that plaque of condemnation will be around your neck. It happens all the time in the presentation of the news, quite unfairly, in my estimation.

It has nothing to do with informing the reader or viewer, and much more to do with titillation and sensationalism. People deserve the opportunity to redeem themselves and if they do, then their past should be of no consequence.

Memory is a tricky thing. Every time we retrieve something from our past, we recall it through the previous recollection. It is like a hall of imperfect mirrors, each reflection minutely corrupted by the previous reflection, and so on.

Our memory naturally fades somewhat with age and can be completely undone by diseases of the brain. It must be sad to find someone who has forgotten utterly everyone and everything. They are essentially a different person, stripped of the accumulation of life experiences and memories. The storehouse of the mind appears to be empty.

I battle with my own oddly selective memory loss. I have mentioned in previous posts that there is a period in my mid-teens which had become almost a total blank, as if part of a disc had been wiped. I have struggled over the past four or five years to find ways of remembering that period - a formative time if you think about it, being middle high school. There are photos and old school diaries that pop up, conversations with friends and family, objects, songs, even old advertisements from that time. Sometimes they elicit that faint glint of something remembered. Sometimes a whole fully formed memory of something or someone emerges. Is is a true memory, I often wonder, or part of a dream I once had?

This is an ongoing project. Things from that period turn up fairly regularly and in truth, I do go looking for them. Driving past my old family home a few months ago, I was startled to find a park at the end of the road. Sure enough, it triggered certain feelings and glimpses of time spent there. I began to isolate some of those recollections in order to rebuild a solid event. Is is real, or illusory, I cannot tell. But try I must.

Eleven Eleven

A hundred years ago today,
The wailing cannons ceased. 
The subterranean veins were dry
The end begat a war-like peace,
That seemed more like a waking dream-
All losers down, all victors high-
The lamentations of the dead
Hushed beside the quickening,
The world above still rushing by
Fond grassy coats and earthy seam,
A stillness of the reckoning.
Twenty years was all it took,
For these same pastures to be shook.

"At the going down of the sun and in the morning
 We will remember them."

                                        

                                            Lest We Forget.

 How I feel today is best summed upon in a verse from the Old Testament from the Book of Jeremiah.

"Stand at the crossroads and look;

 ask for the ancient paths,

 ask where the good way is, and walk in it,

 and you will find rest for your souls."  (6:16, NIV)

When you have children in the kind of world we have today, then sometimes there is a hankering after the wisdom of the past. Sure, these times had their own problems - slavery, poverty, injustice, discrimination and so forth, but there were also deep truths and ways of being that created stronger communities.

I see less and less of that today. I think that kids in the West are to be pitied - the competition for their attention has grown so much that there is a constant background noise where there is no peace.

 After four tortuous years, the free world can breath again. Good people have put up with insults, demeaning behaviour, arrogance, outright lying and incompetence. It has been a daily affair for the totality of those forty-six months (there are still two to go) and such has been the onslaught that truth and falsehood entered a twilight zone where it became difficult to distinguish one from the other.

It is not really a loss for the Republican Party though. They have done well enough in Congress and in the state races to feel quite satisfied. And they have gotten rid of the ogre at the top of the ticket. Biden's win, however, may well end up being pyrrhic in nature, for his administration could well be stymied by a hostile Senate.

But even so, there is a kind of moral victory abroad today, one in which the tone in the White House will change and something like normality will ensue beyond January 20th. Sure, Biden is an old white male, but then, what was the alternative, this time round.

Afterparty

I'm not so old, yet old enough to know,

The laws of diminishing return,
The way each body-blow resounds.
Formerly benign, now they earn
A world of newly-minted scars.
In sequence and in secret do they grow,
Till bursting forth, they manifest
As just how it is, or getting on.
The grate and grind and slow untimely
Slide towards the near beyond,
Every day a jot closer now.
Not to complain, merely a jest
That cannot be fathomed, 
Nor, like the sum of our ills
Compounding,
Can it be put to rest.

For the past 12 months or so I have been filling in for presenters at 2RPH. Sometimes this has been quite ad hoc, a program here and a program there. Other times I have been lucky to have a run of a few weeks or months. The latter is usually preferable since you get to know the reader and the general setup. You can also stamp your mark stylistically on the show and tweak the format a little. Our objective is to faithfully  read the daily news as clearly as possible, remembering that the listener is our primary focus. Within this remit, there is scope to create a program that offers as much variety as possible within the time constraints. There are certain parts of the paper that must be read in full, such as the front page and the editorials, but other than that, there is some room for flexibility.

So it was with some joy that today I was given my own permanent shift on a Wednesday. I have been doing this fortnightly gig for a three months - filling in - but now the job is mine! I guess that I must be doing something right, or, at least, not a lot wrong. I am not as nervous as I was on those first half dozen shifts when the board, the computer and the role kept me on the edge constantly. I have had some very good mentors and role models, for which I am very grateful. The road ahead is not without briars. But then, what other worthwhile road is there for one to take?