It’s 21 years today since my mother’s funeral…
…on August 21, 2002.
She died on August 17, four days before her birthday…
…on August 21.
Her sane voice is still sorely missed, in an increasingly insane world.
Archive for the ‘Life Musings’ Category
21 years since Mum left us
August 21, 2023The late great Barry Humphries and offence-taking
July 16, 2023
source: Australian Book Review
When Karen and I were in Melbourne in June we found ourselves looking for memorabilia relating to Barry Humphries’s characters, Dame Edna Everage in particular. Humphries died on April 22 2023 following complications from hip surgery at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney, aged 89.
We grew up with the characters Humphries created, especially Dame Edna and Sir Les Patterson. There were a heap of Australian comedians and comedy shows in the 70s and 80s especially (e.g. Australia You’re Standing in it, Norman Gunston, Rodney Rude, D-Generation), many politically incorrect as I recall. Probably why I also love (the more recent) Shaun Micaleff’s Mad as Hell.
We found “Everage Street” in Moonee Ponds, of course, given that Dame Edna was supposed to have been a housewife from that Melbourne suburb.
We also found a fairly drab and disappointing lane in Melbourne’s CBD called “Dame Edna Place” (sign at top-right of photo) with a chalked reference to toilets for purple haired people. Wonder who they could’ve meant?
The family of Barry Humphries declined a Victorian state funeral, opting for an event in Sydney instead (December 2023).
Why? It may have something to do with the Melbourne International Comedy Festival stripping Barry Humphries’s name from the festival’s biggest award, following a backlash over the performer’s comments about transgender people in 2018.
What used to be called The Barry Award became the unimaginative Melbourne International Comedy Festival Award. This is the same festival founded by Barry Humphries and Peter Cook!
Previous winners of the Barry Award, including Hannah Gadsby and Zoe Coombs Marr, called for the award to be renamed after he made negative comments about transgender people.
In a 2018 interview with The Spectator magazine, Humphries said:
How many different kinds of lavatory can you have? And it’s pretty evil when it’s preached to children by crazy teachers.”
Previously in 2016, he had called gender re-assignment surgery “self mutilation”. He is also reported to have referred to transgender as a fashion.
Yes, it’s not hard to see how such comments could be received as harsh, politically incorrect, hurtful.
But, in the age of cancel culture and hair-trigger offence-taking, we apparently can’t keep two or more ideas in our collectively atrophying minds at once without allowing one of those ideas to dominate, in this case:
- Barry Humphries made negative transgender-related comments.
- Barry Humphries is a comedic cultural icon in Australia.
- Barry Humphries battled alcoholism for a decade.
- Barry Humphries was made a commander of the order of Australia.
Humphries wondered about the varieties of toilets. Of course, “How many different kinds of lavatory can you have?” is not a wildly crazy question. Neither is, “Can anything really be infinitely small?” (not according to some proponents of quantum gravity; that’s a different post).
It’s also not the same as US-presidential-wannabe Ron DeSantis trying to ban transgender people from using particular toilets or passing laws allowing removal of a child from their home if they receive gender-affirming treatments or procedures. Now that guy could be a commander in Gilead (The Handmaid’s Tale).
Yes, Humphries also made a hyperbolic comment about preaching to children and made a harsh statement about gender re-assignment surgery.
It’s not hard to see how such comments would be offensive to someone struggling with gender identity.
Then again, it does point to a serious question: what is the decision making process for gender re-assignment surgery?
Is it anything like as strict as for voluntary assisted dying, about which there has been much political gnashing of teeth in Australia and elsewhere?
Is that also an offensive question, or just a question?
Gender reassignment treatment (surgery or otherwise) arguably represents both a kind of death and rebirth, so the analogy is not without some validity, surely.
How about that? Am I being offensive yet? Honestly not trying hard to be. Just asking questions. Or is that no longer permitted?
In any case, that’s definitely a whole other post (that I will probably never write).
Honestly though, what questions and statements are taboo and what aren’t?
A good rule of thumb is whether harm is being done. Not always easy to determine though.
Melbourne International Comedy Festival organisers were even called out as “gutless cowards”:
…after a backflip that saw the festival release a tepid acknowledgment of comedy legend Barry Humphries. Organisers on Monday night issued a statement saying they would plan a “fitting tribute” to Humphries, after declaring there would be no official tribute, and having earlier wiped his name from the Barry award.”
Really? It’s not like they re-instated the award or anything. Is planning a “fitting tribute” offensive too?
It really does seem that you are only as good as your last gig.
Watch your back I’d say to all comedians, in that case! You’re on borrowed time I’d say.
Have there been no other recent famous Australians who have been both amazing in one part of their life and caused harm in another? Was Shane Warne an uncontroversial character?
Have I just offended thousands of sports fans?
I can but try.
Yes, I’m still trying to make a point.
Even the title of this post will be offensive to some, i.e. use of the word “great”.
Is there no other famous comedian who is offensive? Have you listened to Ricky Gervais (who called Humphries a genius) or Jimmy Carr? Hannah Gadsby makes broad generalisations about men that some would be offended by as well. So, again, what’s taboo and what’s not? Nothing in comedy, usually.
Recall Bill Mahr’s (American comedian) satirical comments a year ago about the increased rate of self-identification as LGBTQ over time. Funny? Depends upon the viewer/listener I suppose.
Humphries’s comedy too, was satirical. He poked fun at societal norms, and those norms change over time. To be fair, the transgender comments were made outside of the context of a comedy show.
Humphries is reported to have made the following comment (in an interview with British comedian Rob Brydon):
Comedians aren’t always terribly nice. We don’t have to be nice, do we. We’re not obliged to be nice, we’re generally pretty unsavoury.
I’ve heard Ricky Gervais make similar comments.
As a counterpoint, Australian comedian Sammy J, said:
…the festival “had to make a choice” between hurting Humphries’ feelings or “ignoring and excluding members of a vulnerable community”. “It chose the former,” Sammy J said in an opinion piece published by The Age, before explaining why.” Arts festivals only exist if there are artists. And artists only take part in festivals they feel welcome at. Can you imagine being a trans comedian nominated for an award named after someone who’d wilfully torn down your sense of worth? “No, neither can I. That’s the problem with being in a minority – most people will never understand what your journey’s been like. But in the absence of shared experience, we can still rely on empathy.”
But he went on to say:
Humphries still made his way onto the front pages of newspapers globally and left a lasting legacy. “Barry Humphries hasn’t been cancelled … That contribution included paving the way for comedians to speak up and rally against things with fire and passion, just like he did when he was young. It’s a legacy to be proud of.”
Yes, Barry Humphries expressed opinions that could be taken as offensive and hurtful to some later in his life. But let’s not write him off! Let’s celebrate his comedic genius, his place in our culture!
Most people are complex and contradictory and no-one is perfect.
As British-Australian actor Miriam Margolyes (who played Professor Sprout in Harry Potter) said after Humphries died:
How dare they. He had more talent in his little finger than they did in their whole bodies – all of them. I’m outraged by it and I want to speak up now to support him.
Margolyes said she did not agree with Humphries’s politics, but revered him as a friend and comedian. “I didn’t like his politics. I really didn’t. But I revere the talent of the man,” she said.
And that’s the point right there, possums!
21 Mother’s Days
May 14, 2023I do not especially like the idea that one day I shall be tapped on the shoulder and informed, not that the party is over but that it is most assuredly going on—only henceforth in my absence.
Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22
Today is the 21st Mother’s Day since Mum died.
She would have been 95 years old on her birthday in August this year.
As I’ve written elsewhere, she was a mother’s mother. Karen and I were talking today about that and something I wrote in that post about Nicholas, 2 years old at the time in 2002, playing in the front yard, running around a bit too close to the footpath and road:
Mum, having only just recovered from a major lower leg fracture, did her best to run after him, even before anyone else reacted. No thought for herself.
It’s also Dad’s birthday today. He was 89 when he died in 2020 and would have been 92 today.
They left the party too soon.
Time passes. The rest of us go on.
It’s the little things that matter
February 26, 2023The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.
(James A. Garfield)
The question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being?
(Jeremy Bentham 1789, in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation)
Recently, after hearing munching noises at night and finding chewed soap bars, we realised there were probably mice in the house.
A few years ago, I would have just bought regular mouse traps, and did exactly that several years ago. I still didn’t feel great about it even the last time, having appreciated mice most of my life. At least we never used anything truly horrible, like glue traps.
We talked about it and agreed that we’d try catch-and-release traps this time.
There were a few false alarms where the door of the trap had closed. They’re on a hair trigger, so quite sensitive to vibration. A couple of traps were “licked clean” of peanut butter bait, failing to catch whatever took the bait.
After almost a week, this morning I found a mouse in a trap that was reset last night.
Given that the door was closed, I donned gloves, picked up the trap, couldn’t tell any difference in weight, but could see something other than the red bait platform through the air holes on the trap door.
Opening the door a small crack confirmed something small and brown, but not moving. I thought it may be dead.
In any case, I left the house, took a short walk down to the park above the river, and opened the trap door close to the ground next to a tree.
Almost immediately, the small beastie ran out of the trap in a bouncing sort of way, pausing briefly to look in my direction. Then it hopped away over my shoe, as if it couldn’t believe its luck. Perhaps it was a species of hopping mouse, since it really was hopping, not running.
Prior to jumping out, it was huddled at the back of the trap. After leaving, only a few faecal pellets remained as evidence that someone had been there.
Watching the mouse escape, covering ground quickly, I felt that I had at least tried to do something good.
I was about to walk away when with an odd mixture of horror and fascination, I watched a large magpie rapidly swoop down and grab the mouse in its beak.
My first thought was that I had not done the good thing I had intended to do. My second thought was: “that’s nature in action”, followed by “hoping” that the magpie suffocated the mouse or broke its neck quickly. But there’s no guarantee of that…
No matter how I look at it, I contributed to the death of that mouse, even though I did not intend to. I built up false hope, if only briefly, before the predator had its way.
I was reminded again that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
A criticism that is often levelled at vegans is that even they cause the deaths of animals, such as rodents, for example during harvest. My response is usually to say that, of course that’s true (sometimes with more sarcasm than other times), but it’s different from intentionally farming animals for the sole purpose of consuming them.
So, which is better here? A quick death in a traditional mouse trap or a fighting chance to live in a catch-and-release trap?
Immediately after the event, I felt confused, but upon reflection, I would still choose the catch-and-release trap with the corresponding fighting chance to live, just with a better choice of release location. Indeed, I have opted for the catch-and-release approach, since more traps await. We will see what the next few days bring.
In the rose garden across the road from my workplace where I like to spend some lunch breaks doing recreational mathematics when the weather is nice, mice are often seen tentatively peeking from a bush or scurrying between bushes. Perhaps something like that nearby, but not too nearby, can be found for the next time a release is necessary.
Animals don’t understand our world, nor do they care about our notions of property. We may not want them in our house, but we should at least try to treat them with care if possible. After all, they’re mammals like us, and they feel, and just want to live, like us.
The “right” approach is not always clear. I’m trying to do my best, even if it isn’t always good enough.
EDIT: More than a month and various trap configurations later, another mouse entered a trap today. This time, the release location was near long, dense grass along the bank of the river a few minutes walk from our house. After placing the trap (“The Big Cheese”) on the ground and opening the door, it took awhile for the timid and probably very frightened mouse to exit. I had to tip it up and give it a gentle shake. The mouse scurried away quickly into the cover of the long grass. No matter how long it lives, at least it’s living on its own terms now.
Astrology Ontology
October 22, 2022Astronomy uses people to explain the stars.
Astrology uses the stars to “explain” people.
(Anon)
Many amateur astronomers, myself included, have enjoyed Quasar Publishing’s annual Astronomy publication. Astronomy 2023 includes an article titled Astrology – the First Astronomers which at least in some forums, has generated some discussion.
The one page article talks a bit about the historical context of astrology as predating astronomy, its focus on the constellations that the Sun appears to pass through – the zodiacal constellations – due to the Earth’s annual trek around the Sun, and that the Earth’s slow wobble about its axis leads to the so-called precession of the equinoxes that has changed the zodiac’s constellation-occupying date ranges.
The article also talks about some well-known figures in the history of Science have practiced astrology including Galileo, Tycho Brahe, Ptolemy. As did Kepler, who also believed that there was some relationship between the platonic solids and planetary spacing. Today, we revere him for his Three Laws of Planetary Motion, investigations into optics, measuring the volume of wine barrels, and an early Science Fiction story (Somnium). He, like many early scientists, was on the cusp of the old and new ways. Think also of Newton, who was an alchemist. It’s easy for us to see the many ways in which they were in error now, given our historical perspective and educational good fortune.
The Astronomy 2023 authors comment on the aspect of the day of a person’s birth in relation to the Sun’s position at that time as used in “newspaper horoscopes”, and follow on with this:
Astrologers have clearly defined methods on how to create such charts, but the problem is the validity of their initial assumptions to start with. From a scientific basis, it has never been demonstrated how the arrangement of these distant bodies can influence individual’s characteristics.
So far, so good.
Earlier in the article we have this:
This article is not a criticism of astrology, but more spelling out the differences between astronomy and astrology.
That’s also fine as far as it goes. They continue with:
A bit like how science cannot be used to disprove God (whichever version) or in this case, astronomy disprove astrology.
It’s true. The existence of gods is not susceptible to proof or disproof. I’m not going to lose sleep over this or the infinity of other things we can’t prove or disprove. As an aside, the word prove shouldn’t be bandied around so much. The only things that can be proven are mathematical theorems. Science doesn’t prove things: it gathers more and more evidence in favour of a particular hypothesis or against some other.
The article follows on with:
They are just different. Astrology and religions are belief systems which are effectively non-falsifiable…this means there is no test known (or perhaps even possible?) that would disprove a concept. By religions, we include all the gods, including those that used to be worshiped by the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East cultures, responsible for the mythological figures immortalized in today’s constellations.
To be honest, by the time I had tossed around the content of the article, the initial knee-jerk reaction of “why the heck is there anything about astrology in Astronomy 2023?” had given way to: “how could the article be improved?”
My main feedback to the authors is that we need to be careful not to encourage the perception that all forms of knowledge are equal. Having an opinion isn’t enough, especially for things that matter in some important way. It’s okay to criticise ideas and systems of belief. More than that, we must criticise ideas because otherwise no progress can ever be made! Sometimes ridicule is also valid, in the case of truly toxic belief systems. Kinder, constructive criticism is better. Let’s face it: we’ve all had bad ideas.
The authors do make the point that belief of the astrological and religious kind are not falsifiable. They also mention that astrological assumptions and mechanisms are suspect.
Perhaps the case could have been made even more clearly by saying that systems of belief such as astrology and religion have no predictive or explanatory powers, whereas Scientific theories do, and further that the latter are open to question and revision. That’s not to say that Science is not a human process. There’s ego and politics aplenty. But the Method wins in the end.
I would also suggest that if all someone does when reading their daily horoscope is to have a laugh, then there’s nothing to worry about. If astrology or religion leads to important life decisions, then I think it is more than reasonable to apply a bit more scrutiny.
To prefer the hard facts over our dearest illusions, that is the core of Science.
(Carl Sagan commenting upon Johannes Kepler)
Waiting for Artemis 1…
August 29, 2022
I’m currently watching NASA TV waiting for the launch of Artemis 1, the first test of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion crew capsule, albeit unmanned this time with “crash test dummies”, mannequins that will be used to measure forces and radiation, and the first mission to the Moon of its kind for 50 years, since Apollo 17 in 1972.
There was an unplanned hold at 40 minutes before launch due to an operating temperature problem in engine #3.
There are a couple of launch opportunities in early September if today’s launch is cancelled.
This is an important precursor test mission for Artemis 2, a crewed mission scheduled for 2024 that will orbit the Moon and return its astronauts to Earth, Apollo 8 style, before the first crewed landing mission, Artemis 3, in 2025, 53 years after Apollo 17 and 56 years after Apollo 11.
I must admit that life keeps me pre-occupied enough that I wasn’t thinking about this much again until recently. For someone who remembers being sent home from school, even as a 5 year old boy, to watch Apollo 11 on the family B&W TV along with the blurry pictures of Neil Armstrong on the ladder of the LEM, and as a lifelong fan of spaceflight, manned and robotic, the fact that Artemis (the twin of Apollo) is happening seems just a bit special.
NOTE: While writing this, the Artemis 1 launch was scrubbed for today. The next earliest possible launch date is September 2nd, pending the outcome of the analysis of test data from today’s engine problem. Here’s hoping!
EDIT: More than 2.5 months after I wrote this post (Aug 29 2022), Artemis 1 has finally launched!
20 years since Mum died
August 16, 2022August 17 2022 marks 20 years since my mother died.
My first inclination was to title this post 20 years since Mum’s passing. Even though I sometimes find myself using the word “passing” in this context, as an atheist, the word makes no sense to me here.
So, what’s changed in 20 years?
Everything and nothing.
And yes, I am aware that’s not a logically consistent statement…
Here’s a personal, random (that’s me in a nutshell) and partial list of things that have and have not changed:
- A little over a year after we lost Mum, Karen and I had a daughter, Heather, who we dearly wish had known my mother.
- The Kepler spacecraft has shown us that the universe is likely to be teeming with planets.
- I still think Mum was the kindest, wisest, sanest of us all.
- Some countries think war is still a fine idea. Sigh…
- Our species is beginning to understand that consuming resources at the current rate is problematic. Note that’s not the same as doing something about it…
- The world as a whole is still not taking climate change all that seriously.
- I changed employers a few times.
- The future of computing is still exciting and scary in equal measure. Technology is not value free.
- I still think of Mum most days. I still miss her, and that’s how it should be.
Facebook Immortals?
May 14, 2022
I try to remember to light a candle each year on my mother’s and father’s birthday. Today (May 14), it was for Dad, and he would have been 91.
On August 17th this year, it will be 20 years since Mum died (four days before her 74th birthday). On January 7th this year, it was 2 years since Dad died.
So, you can imagine my mild surprise when Facebook notified me that it was Dad’s birthday and invited me to post on his timeline. Apparently Facebook time stretches beyond this life…
I’ve noticed this phenomenon a number of times now. Of course, given concerns about “what social media knows about us” and “how it controls what we think” (to which I’m not entirely unsympathetic, but about which I have not yet succumbed to total paranoia), I suppose it’s comforting to know that Facebook hasn’t yet figured out whether or not an account owner is still alive. Seems like a not-too-crazy-hard application of traditional symbol systems AI to search death records etc and put two and two together though.
At some point in time, the living Facebook population may outnumber the non-living. Perhaps just in time for Facebook Metaverse v2.0: reanimation? That may be taking AI too far though. 😉
Still, I thought I’d take Facebook up on the invitation to post on Dad’s apparently eternal timeline. Given his particular sense of humour, and that he was a Uniting Church minister, I’m pretty sure he would have found it funny.
Once in awhile I’m not misanthropic…
March 13, 2022In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
(Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot)
I find it increasingly easy to be misanthropic now.
Climate action malaise.
Zoonotic diseases (e.g. COVID-19, Japanese Encephalitis Virus).
Rampant speciesism.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and who knows what country next.
All unnecessary. All preventable.
I find myself speaking about homo sapiens in the third person more and more, despite (obviously) being a deeply flawed member of that species.
Despite a willingness to be conciliatory, to be a glass half full kind of guy, to encourage open, honest conversation, some days, I find it really really hard to have any hope that our species will mature quickly enough to significantly mitigate the coming climate catastrophe or to avoid decades more unnecessary suffering and death of the members of many species, but especially those that members of species homo sapiens use and abuse.
Every so often though, my spirits are buoyed and hope seems possible. That happened recently, when I watched this video.
Having said that, I do tire of the us and them phrasing of the title of videos like this (“meat eater” vs “vegan”). The content is positive and respectful though.
But there will need to be many more such intellectually honest, respectful conversations, before my view of the future is likely to be significantly perturbed.
How the Woke Cancelled Wumbus
June 1, 2021
Everyone knows How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
But have you heard How the Woke Cancelled Wumbus?
Among other Seussisms, “A Chinaman who eats with sticks” (from And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street), was recently declared to be offensive.
On March 2nd 2021, Dr. Seuss Enterprises issued this statement:
Today, on Dr. Seuss’s Birthday, Dr. Seuss Enterprises celebrates reading and also our mission of supporting all children and families with messages of hope, inspiration, inclusion, and friendship.
We are committed to action. To that end, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, working with a panel of experts, including educators, reviewed our catalog of titles and made the decision last year to cease publication and licensing of the following titles: And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, If I Ran the Zoo, McElligot’s Pool, On Beyond Zebra!, Scrambled Eggs Super!, and The Cat’s Quizzer. These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.
Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure Dr. Seuss Enterprises’s catalog represents and supports all communities and families.
“These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.“
Hmm…
You have to admit though: that Wumbus high on the hill from On Beyond Zebra! looks pretty happy.
Land rights for gay whales anyone?
No-one uses chopsticks anymore, right?
What about the “big” magician?
Should robust magicians everywhere suddenly be up in arms as they recall their traumatic childhood being force-read Dr Seuss?
In his recent article And then they came for ON BEYOND ZEBRA!, the American linguist John McWhorter said:
The book is not only entertaining but educational, in ways that a linguist like me especially values. It gently gets across the key fact that our letters only approximately reflect the language we actually speak. Note, for example, that there is no way to indicate with an isolated letter, or even a group of letters, the sound of u in put – if you don’t see it in the word itself, no other approximation works: ough, oo, eu, eugh … see how nothing works? English has 26 letters to about 43 sounds, and Zebra introduces the idea, in its goofy way, that there could theoretically be more letters.
But now we are to see the book as some kind of controversial contraband, and why? Specifically, on one page a man of no delineated race (and thus we would declare him “white,” I assume) is riding a kind of camel and has a mustache. A building in the background seems like, if anything (which it isn’t) some kind of pagoda. The man has the billowy pantaloons we would associate with an “Arab.”
I understand, formally, the idea that this picture signals that this is a Middle Easterner. However, I cannot be honest with myself and view it as a “stereotype.” In no way does this picture ridicule the man (or the animal), and in fact, the camel is a special kind (called a Spazzim) with elaborate horns that carry assorted objects which if anything make this man a mid-twentieth century homeowner.
I don’t know whether Dr. Seuss Enterprises felt pressure from within or without, but the action to which it has committed itself is an example of political correctness having reached dizzying new heights lately as the word woke has become part of our language.
Wokeness speaks to a keen awareness of social and racial injustice. We hear calls to “stay angry, stay woke”. The derivation is from African vernacular meaning that someone was sleeping but now is awake (“I was sleeping but now I’m woke“).
It’s not at all impossible to relate to such an awakening…
But with wokeness has come cancel culture.
Books from Dr. Seuss, along with other classics, are being cancelled.
Now, I lean pretty far left politically and ideologically. I’m a Green voting vegan atheist. I support freedom of speech, expression, and belief.
But it is arguably precisely these things that are under threat by cancel culture!
It reminds me of the Catholic Church’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum (index of forbidden books), the Nazi book burnings, and Ray Bradbury’s Sci-Fi story Fahrenheit 451.
To be fair, in the case of Dr Seuss, cancelled in practice just means: no longer being sold, not banned, but there are still books being banned, even if only in some countries.
Nevertheless, I think we have to resist a new index of forbidden books, no matter what form it takes.
Besides, if you did want to cultivate such an index, why on earth would you stop with modern classics?
Why not go after writings about (or by?) the vindictive, jealous, zealous god of the Old Testament, to name just one holy book?
Unless you think that burning witches or stoning adulterers or killing children if they’re disrespectful or slavery or drowning most of the world’s population are acceptable acts?
Or that damning people to Hell (New Testament) because they don’t utter the right magic words is okay?
No? Well, out with a bunch of books from the Bible then too!
But what counts as harm? What counts as injustice? What should be done about it?
If you look closely, you’ll notice that cancel culture is thoroughly anthropocentric.
How ordinary. How boring. How 20th century.
Not to diminish the importance of addressing the injustices still being done to people in various parts of the world, but why stop with human injustice? Why not upgrade racism to speciesism?
It’s easy to imagine a different group of outraged people applying Seuss book bans for treating other species, even if fictional or outlandish, as things to be used. And I don’t mean Thing One and Thing Two.
Those poor old mistreated Floob-Boober-Bab-Boober-Bubs. And don’t forget that the Nazzim only has the Spazzim because he’s handy for travelling. Or how about the udder (groan; dad joke) convenience of an Umbus?
But Seussisms encourage a playfulness with language. And the corny humour never really gets old.
All Dr Seuss characters are essentially caricatures, including the chinaman with sticks, the Spazzim, and the magician.
There will always be someone to offend in this ultra-individualistic world we’ve created.
We have to stop worrying that something we write or say might be considered offensive to some group of people in the future and instead consider writings in their historical context.
That doesn’t mean that we should set out to hurt, to deliberately offend… Of course we shouldn’t…
And of course, we should stand against harm and injustice.
Obviously…
But what’s next: no Irish jokes? No jokes that start like: a priest, a rabbi, and a buddhist monk walk into a bar…
No question should be forbidden. No topic should be taboo.
Unless you think we’re special in some sense, except to one another, irrespective of any special capabilities we may have.
And yet…
We’re better than those others in some part of the world that is not ours. Right?
We’re smarter and superior to every other species. Right?
Wrong!
We have to reimagine ourselves as being a part of nature, the very nature that we seem so keen to distance ourselves from.
Not separate from nature. Not a special creation.
On this, especially, all holy books are misguided or misinterpreted. Usually both.
We are all biased beyond belief about one thing or another.
We are all flawed in some way.
Not one of us is perfect.
We need less judgement, misdirected anger, self-righteousness certainty, talk of those other people…
We need more understanding, thoughtful conversation, tolerance of difference, kindness, forgiveness…
All easier said than done, I know…
Then again…
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.
(The Lorax, Dr Seuss)