It seems a safe assumption that people are not dealing all that well with the current global state of affairs. Fair enough, there are two significant wars going on, that directly or indirectly involve the world’s superpowers, and that is a fairly reasonable justification for having one’s cage rattled right there. Compounding the problem is society’s modern habit of using those events as a catalyst to fight about absolutely everything. That habit is a natural extension of two big forces at play: nations seeking to form a block of interests to challenge western dominance, and a media ecosystem that survives on calamity, chaos and fighting. It is a match made in heaven, much to the detriment of the sanity of normal people.
In much the same way that doctors check for prostate problems, it is worthwhile to similarly dive into the cultural zeitgeist. First, seek to understand, Stephen Covey used to say. In that spirit, no better place to start than the BBC’s website, because it is an interesting litmus test of that zeitgeist: the BBC is, at least according to the institution itself, more resistant to cultural piffle than almost any other media institution. In theory.
And that one quick visit showed just what trouble we are in, if mental health is an objective. Those people are not well. An article that they chose to run in the News section, standing tall against the ferocity of reason, paints a vivid picture of where their heads, and a good slice of the cultural dynamos, are at. The article is entitled “How the bare nails trend became a class issue”. The sheer power of the Beeb’s unhinged righteousness leaps into your face like a cranky cat: ‘Nail art’s historical and creative roots are linked back to black, Latino, and Asian communities and the suggestion that bare nails are now a sign of high status could stigmatise bold manicures…[bare nails] are often called elegant or tasteful, and these are often usually euphemisms that perpetuate white supremacist standards of beauty.”
If you are keeping score to ensure relevance in elite cultural circles, understand that clearly: not painting your nails is now racist. The article does concede, suspiciously, that some women choose not to get their nails done “to save time and money. Others just love the look.” But nevertheless, according to the author, “…there are those who think the trend – or the way it’s being discussed by some – belies something more sinister.” Sinister. Sinister.
The point of flagging such imperious droppings is not to pick fight with it. That would be nonsensical, just as it is nonsensical to argue with a mosquito that it should not bite you. The authors may be reasonable, possibly, but they are locked into a structure that forbids expression of it. Hey, it’s a living.
No, the point of flagging stuff like this is to try to elevate awareness to a new level, with the objective of not going nuts from it all. It is too easy to be swayed by the output of nonsense factories, and so it is a worthwhile exercise to become resistant. There is no good outcome in becoming swallowed up in it all; that is how we wound up with the senseless energy wars of five years ago, how we leap from smallish-problem-amplified-to-global-crisis, time and time again. To become involved in stupid fights over stupid issues is a good path to lose friends, increase blood pressure, and solve nothing.
At the best of times, it is hard to figure out what is going on at the macro level, and even harder to predict what will happen in the future. In current times, it is much harder to understand or predict, because the old order is breaking down, undergoing tectonic shifts away from a relative period of stability.
A key thing to remember is that what is being promoted as relevant is sometimes noise. Sometimes the truth peeks out, like the sun behind clouds.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal tried to interview some people attending an Ed Sheeran concert, as they went into the show. If you somehow missed it, Sheeren’s tour opening act, Macklemore, used his opening slot, and Sheeran’s crowd, as a political pulpit, and thereby of course turned an artistic evening of fun into today’s cultural inevitability: a mess. Macklemore was kicked off the tour for needlessly offending a fair slice of a paying audience, and even Sheeran’s band quit in protest. Some venue owners refused to allow Sheeren to play if Macklemore did also, which muddied the waters for many, pointing to a future where we could have left-wing stadiums and right-wing ones. The whole fiasco is the sort of revolting slop that is dumped on every single item or event in the general public discourse these days.
The WSJ article writer inadvertently captured a simple remedy to being swallowed up in muck. Seemingly without even realizing it, the author noted: “Before Sheeran’s show, many fans were uninterested in even tolerating questions about the exodus of opening acts.”
You want a good life lesson? One that will pay great dividends, every day? One that will save you hours of angry angst and annoyed conversations with people who will never see the world the way you do? Become “uninterested in even tolerating questions.”
Shut it down. Don’t engage. Avoid provocateurs. Change the subject. Don’t take bait. It’s all noise. It’s all designed to provoke reactions, and animosity, and it is all pulling everyone apart at the seams.
Here’s a real-life example, from Greenland of all places. Over the past year and a half, US President Trump set out to rattle the cage of the world by speculating on a possible takeover of that great mineral-laden block of ice. The bombast was loud. Vice President Vance grandly and loudly flew to the island, scolding Denmark and seeking to reassure the people of Greenland that no military force would be used to take over the island (despite his boss hinting that he would do so (and admittedly the same boss that tweeted a picture of a Trump tower in a tiny Greenland fishing village, hypothetically of course (another phrase folks need to study up on: rage-bait))).
Global angst rose noticeably over these events. Would the US really invade Greenland, a fellow NATO nation? People were worried sick. Trump fanned the flames, backed off, then fanned them some more.
And then it was over. The US, Denmark, and Greenland standing smiling onstage, proudly holding up a new defence agreement that really didn’t change much from the 1951 agreement, but that made everyone happy apparently. What the new agreement made clear was that Russia and China would be forbidden from establishing military bases in Greenland. But really, what were the odds of that happening in a NATO country before signing this agreement? A Danish Institute of International Studies senior researcher said that such Russian or Chinese advances would have been ‘unthinkable’ even under the old agreement, and that the new agreement’s allowance for new bases was essentially a ‘non-issue’. So what was the whole kerfuffle about? All the needless angst and analysis? Nothing. A bunch of noise.
Here is another example from the Wall Street Journal. President Trump promised $5,000 to every adult American if the Republicans remain in power through the midterm elections. The scheme even had a name that no one could possibly have seen coming – the “Trump Dividend”. Well that can’t be real, us simpler folk thought; a scheme like that sounds like pretty clear cut vote-buying, an idea that is frowned upon wherever voting on anything happens. But partisan people lined up in formation to either love or hate the idea as their teams respectively suggested and proceeded to act accordingly on social media. Meaning, ape-like.
For the simpler folk that were truly curious, it seemed best to learn more about this as straight from the horse’s mouth as possible. You can’t get any more straight from the horse’s mouth than the White House’s website, and lo and behold, there is not much room for equivocation in the President’s statement: “Because we’ve done so well, and because our country is making so much money, only I can make this promise to you, and here is my promise: if the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate… I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000.”
OK wow, I guess I’ll take that back, it is real. Oh wait. No it wasn’t. Not at all. Whether it was the economic realities of borrowing and forking out $1.2 trillion at a time when the government is desperately trying to lower debt, or whether someone decided vote-buying isn’t such a good idea, Vice President Vance granted interviews where he explained that it isn’t literally a dividend and it isn’t literally to all adult citizens and it isn’t literally $5,000, even though Trump literally said all those things. Per Vance: “What the president is just saying is…if you keep us in power and allow us to continue to do these things, then you’re going to share in some of the benefits.”
Quite a different message, and solemnly if ridiculously received: “He [Vance] can distill things down in a way that people can understand,” said an Iowa-based radio host that had recently interviewed Vance, failing to note that Vance did the exact opposite, if one puts any stock in White House news statements.
I’m not picking on an administration that is not even my own; just using it because cartoonish examples are the easiest to see. We do the same here in Canada. Our Prime Minister recently disclosed that he had evaluated plans for a US military invasion of Canada. That statement is cut from the same cloth as Trump’s promise, a bunch of grandstanding nonsense grounded on a much lesser reality that is declared to win over voters.
The point of it all: Very big geopolitical events are reshaping the global landscape in what is ultimately a race for control of resources required to keep populations well-fed and reasonably happy. The old structure has broken under the US’ debt load, China’s wish for a multipolar world, and Russia’s Russian-ness. All actors are trying to find a path forward in this new world: the US, China, Canada, EU countries, even Greenland.
Start with what we know, and ignore the noise. And what we know is that Canada possesses vast surpluses of many industrial materials the world is willing to fight for. And they will do so in ways that sometimes seem peculiar, and in ways that get distorted and amplified either on purpose or by screaming social media armies. Rise above the stupid bun fights, try to put the actions in global context, even if they don’t make standalone sense. Sanity lies in sorting noise from signal. It can be done.
In many instances these days, it does not pay to “read the room”. The better question to ask is, who is in the room, why are they there, and why are they saying what they are saying?
At the peak of the energy wars, The End of Fossil Fuel Insanity challenged the narrative of imminent fossil fuel demise, facing into the storm. Read the energy story for those that don’t live in the energy world, but want to find out. And laugh. Available at Amazon.ca, Indigo.ca, or Amazon.com.
Email Terry here. (His personal energy site, Public Energy Number One, is on hiatus until there are more hours in the day.)