MEET ME IN THE MIDDLE
Rudyard Kipling might well have written “left is left, and right is right...” about these deeply disturbing times
HUMANITY IS ENDURING A PLAGUE.
No, not just COVID-19. We are enduring something far more insidious. It is a strain of liberalism so devoid of critical thinking that we succumb to mere prima facie talking points. I’m referring to “wokeism”. The woke movement, spearheaded by the the likes of Greta Thunberg have managed to engineer valiant effo s like the COP26 into something of a farce: 20 countries have pledged to stop all funding for overseas fossil fuel projects beginning next year. The “enlightened” Nordic and Baltic countries even suggest the World Bank should finance clean energy solutions in the developing world “such as green hydrogen and sma micro-grid networks.” Like with what money?
The idea that some of the poorest people on the planet will use green hydrogen — some of the most complex and expensive energy technology that exists — and building out “sma microgrid networks” in just a few years at the scale required is patently absurd. A simple analogy being Thunberg’s expectation that we all travel on that multi-million dollar eco-yacht crewed by people with less means who all travel conventionally. I mean we can’t even agree that Covid vaccine patents should be li ed for Sub-Saharan Africa, which has allowed the virus to run rampant in South Africa, and thus hamstrung ourselves with the emergence of the more virulent Omicron variant.
It is a sad day that the liberal le is no longer a bastion of intellectual thought and we have fallen prey to talking points that score points on TV and in media, but on second, deeper thought, fall apa in the wind like wet tissue.
Moral responsibility cannot exist in a vacuum of critical thought, to do so would be to embrace a kind of vacuousness that would fu her imperil our already shaky existence. More dangerously, this lack of wisdom emboldens the “conservative” right with seemingly commonsense talking points that draw a moderate community to their extreme of the spectrum. This is plausible because they are the so of quippy soundbites that play well to a crowd, but again, lacking substance. Suffice it to say, this extreme too is void of cogent talking points.
A common refrain nowadays is why do people vote against their self-interest so willingly? Well, the answer is simple: both sides of the spectrum hate each other. This divisiveness is so real and pervasive that people are willing to score points against the other to their own detriment.
Where should we go? If we approach the middle with a base of commonly held facts and beliefs, we might be able to carve out some liveable post-Dystopian existence. Why don’t we just meet in the middle? Why are we willing to die for an ideology that proves how “wrong” the other side is?