When things aren’t going well, and people are dissatisfied, the most popular calls are usually for things to be stopped. “This is bad, and it should be banned.” “This is unfair, and it shouldn’t be allowed.” “That is dangerous, and people should be stopped from doing it.” The odd thing is that much the same happens when people are very comfortable. It becomes very important to stop anything that disturbs that comfort....
Two books I read in recent years stay with me and keep bouncing off each other: One is called “The Invention of Good and Evil”, and one of its core themes is that human society is the product of evolution just as much as any species. That what that society considers important and moral and ethical is shaped by its response to the pressures on it and the solutions collectively found that allow it to thrive....
“Prove me wrong.” This is a topical phrase, as I write, for tragic reasons, but this is not about that. It’s about me trying to work out why I’m uncomfortable with it, really. Because I wouldn’t expect to be. By instinct, I’m close to a free speech maximalist. Saying things and being able to say things feels extremely important to me. And countering bad ideas by talking about them is better than suppressing them....
I have a problem with socialism. I can discuss it intellectually and rationally, and see why it appeals to others. But, like a lot of core political things, I conclude that most of us have emotional instincts, and one of mine struggles with the concept of taking things from some people and giving them to others, no matter how well-intentioned and for everyone’s good. So, while I do accept redistribution is necessary to some extent, and am open to discussion about what that extent might be, fundamentally those who believe in equality of resources are always going to have an uphill struggle persuading me....
“It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him.” I have never really understood the English class system. I’m English. Very English. I nodded to myself when Hugh Grant said we’re born one gin-and-tonic below par. And we all swim in this sea of class consciousness, whatever we might like to say about it being a relic of the past. For all we ignore it and pretend otherwise, it makes a massive difference to almost everything experienced by anyone, like me, who comes from a very obvious long-standing English background....
In the nineteen-nineties, there was a small chain of shops devoted to men who wished to be, or seem to be (both were catered for), women. I discovered this after reading the autobiography of the transgender owner, part of an exploration that was very important in my life. Visiting the shop in London blew my mind. There’s no doubt in my mind that if things then had been like they have been in the twenty-twenties, I would have gone the whole way down the gender reassignment road, the sheer inevitability carrying me....
If you like, feel free to abandon this post and read this instead: Beyond Elon Don’t worry, the title is basically clickbait, but the essay itself is very good, and says what I’d like to say myself, very well. If you’re still here, or have come back … When I was at school, the teachers loved me. I was the kind of child they went into the career for. I came from nowhere, a family with no expectations that had nobody with a university background, and I picked up pretty much everything effortlessly....
Politics has become poisonous. I don’t think it needs to be. Government doesn’t work. I think it can. I have some ideas, and because I have no power and no platform, writing them down here is the best I can do. The positive ideas will be at the end, and it gets negative first. Bear with me. The ideas make more sense with the framing. What do you MEAN, government doesn’t work?...
I regularly mention, when talking about other things, that I am a great believer in “the wisdom of crowds” and democracy in the absolute. And people are regularly baffled. What, I see all the idiots around, and what they vote for, and how all around people say stupid things and are mean and terrible, and wrong … and I think that’s a good thing? I do think it’s a good thing....
Everybody knows you shouldn’t only eat what you like. Whatever it is that you like best, a varied diet is better for you than just that thing, however healthy it may be. Some of the necessary things seem pointless or borderline harmful. Roughage, for example, goes right through you and you get nothing from it. There is strong evidence that some things that are mildly toxic prime your body in useful ways, not to mention that some elements that would be poisonous in large doses are vital in trace quantities....