Cheer Up

(Quick disclaimer: This blog post is not aimed at depression or any other mental health issue. Telling someone with depression to just cheer up is not going to help in the least; this post is aimed at people’s attitudes in society.)

It’s always very difficult to tell whether the world is changing or whether your perception of it is, but I’m almost 70% certain that the darkening of all the human minds across the world is happening in the world and not inside my head.

For goodness sake, we’re facing the death of happiness if we don’t start to change. And trust me, I’m all too aware of your immediate response, if you’re opposing. There’s plenty to be upset about. There are buckets worth of worldwide events going on that prove that life is not a cheerful occupation, that planet Earth is not the most cheerful place to inhabit. And yes, I agree with you to a point, because people out there are being treated dismally and there are a plethora of corrupt politicians running the world. There’s famine and disease and poverty and abuse and corruption and ignorance and so much more that I could brighten your brain with, and it is absolutely vital that we do not turn a blind eye to these issues.

But I feel the need to make this plea. There’s no point in watching the news, as everyone says, because it’s full of miserable stuff. And do you know why it’s full of miserable stuff? It’s because the audience – that’s us – laps it up. Our sense of disillusionment grows by the year, the month, perhaps by the very day, and the more jaded we become the more we look on to re-assert our sense of darkness in the world. Some of us even become the source of darkness in the world, and this adds to the snowball effect more than all else.

The news does not report the happier things because the happier things don’t have this effect. A cynic would argue that these happy things don’t actually happen, but I’m more inclined to believe that it’s because they don’t affect the way we think as much; they don’t change world events or how the country is run. They’re not relatively important enough to be reported. This leads to forced perspective by omission, causing it to seem like nothing good is happening in the world whilst all bad is scaling up, getting worse, becoming perpetually darker.

I’m not just talking about the news, either. People aren’t just jaded, they revel in being so, as if they’re catching the world out by being a pessimist. “Hah, look at me! I’m disgusted by humanity, you can’t fool me, world.” But this just won’t do. Because I’m sure – and I have no evidence so shoot me, but I am sure – that this is most certainly being passed down to the children. And instead of becoming disillusioned when they grow up to think for themselves, they will instead grow up with this mindset. Believe me, when you’re growing up you don’t see the world from any perspective other than the one you’re given. You could even have one parent and not question it until you’re old enough to be told why.

So do me a favour. The next time you’re in a foul mood and you hear somebody else make an optimistic – a foolishly optimistic, to you – remark about the world, don’t trample on their daisies. Don’t drawl on about how love fades after a while or how Christmas is just some capitalist money trap. Do the world a favour and smile and maybe even agree with them. Do yourself a favour and adopt that foolishly optimistic way of thinking.

Even if your heart disagrees.

Thanksgiving

I’m not American, and therefore do not celebrate Thanksgiving. I believe, however, that it is one of the most brilliant holidays that is celebrated. I’m sure there are many who just see it as another holiday, probably “that one which means Christmas is close”, or for the cynical, “the one where we celebrate ethnic cleansing”. But in my eyes, it’s one of the most positive ideas for a holiday you can have; barring, of course, its blood-tarnished origins.

With society growing more pessimistic and disillusioned by the day, it’s reassuring to know that there’s a time every year where at least some portion of the human race stops to think about what they appreciate and have to be thankful for. I find it difficult to write about this without coming across as incredibly corny (or cheesy, take your pick), but I, too, have plenty to be thankful for. For instance, the family I have which staves off the dark without even realising they do so. I’m thankful for my friends for much the same reason, be they aware of their positive effects or not. I’m thankful for every single person I’ve met through my life who has made me smile, and given me the strength to make awful puns in the face of adversary. There. You just got Thanksgiven. (See what I mean about the awful pun thing?)

Blech, that was soppy. But the brilliant thing about Thanksgiving is that it gives clams* like me an excuse to do the soppy thing. Except… I’m British. So the Thanksgiving shield doesn’t apply to me and now I just look odd.

I should go now.

*clam: someone who keeps their emotions to themselves. E.G: “He did not say he was upset, because he was a clam.”

Let’s Talk About Feminism

The most important thing I must stress before I begin this blog post is that I am for the equality of men and women, and believe that the current state of the world weighs too heavily in the favour of man to be labelled as equal for both genders.

The one debate I always attempt to stay away from is feminism, because there it seems there is so much venomous hatred being flung at everyone involved in the discussion that I decided it simply wasn’t worth it. So bearing that in mind, the obvious first course of action to take would be to write a blog post about feminism!

As far as I’m aware, unless I’m horribly mistaken, the main cause of feminism is exactly what I put in the header of this post: the movement for equality between woman and man. And, as I’m sure anyone who has read anything within this mess of a debate is fully aware, this movement has been echoed in the worst possible way by those who think that being a feminist means to turn the prejudice towards men and hate them. For the purposes of making things easy to understand, I will be calling this group of people “feminots” for the rest of the blog post. Because that’s exactly what they are. Whilst I can’t entirely blame women for wanting to turn the tables and let men be the unfairly-treated ones for as long as we’ve been shitty ourselves, this is not equality and goes against everything the true feminist movement stands for.

The above paragraph is my personal understanding of the current state of affairs. Feel free to let me know if I’ve gotten anything wrong; as someone who tries to be as fair and level-headed as possible, you’d honestly be doing me a favour. And yes, I am tiptoeing around this subject, as it’s laced with all too many hatred-mines. (What a god-awful metaphor.) Before moving on, I’d quickly like to add that calling the feminots “feminots” is actually a terrible idea, as labelling always leads to stereotypes which leads to ignorance of individuality. It is purely for making things easier in this post.

So, what’s bothered me enough to speak out? Well, as of late I’ve heard of a video going around in which a woman walks around New York City for ten hours – check it, ten hours – and edits two minutes worth of people being sexist towards her into a video. And immediately I must state that yes, these people were ignorant and rude. (More on the sleaze-aspect of it later, it’s awful). But ten hours for two minutes seems a little excessive. If anything, walking around my home city, I’d expect to get five minutes out of two hours; far more if I was picking up on stuff not directly aimed at me. Speaking in general, there are so many different people in one city that your chances of coming across an ignorant, self-obsessed person is highly likely. This doesn’t make it right for people to be this way, but it’s the current state of society that is, if I’m not mistaken, known by most people already. To put it in simpler terms, there are always scumbags.

There are two things that anger me about the feminist debate, and yes, I’ll step on that landmine. (How could he be angry about feminism, ignorant non-progressive asshole!) The first one is that most of it, at least from what I’ve seen, is centred more around feminots (the minority) than feminists (the majority). The cloud of hatred and negativity blinds even well-doers. The swing of hatred from the feminots brings with it a backlash just as unjust from people like “Men’s Rights” (excuse me if I just insulted a domestic abuse support group, I can’t remember the actual name – I mean those who are basically for the downfall of women). True feminists then see the uprising of these men and become angry with them (rightfully so, in my opinion). And the triangle of confusion, anger and hatred continues. Mostly on Tumblr.

I won’t get started on Tumblr.

The second is how it spreads. This video, for example, about the woman in New York. I don’t know if this was filmed with honest, good-hearted intention, or whether it was feminot propaganda. What matters is the negativity in which it portrayed men via cherry picking. (Side-note: A friend rightfully pointed out I might be cherry-picking myself by bringing up this video instead of the incredibly positive Emma Watson speech.) What bothers me is this:

One time when I was fourteen or fifteen, our teacher showed us a video. It was CCTV footage of a street-corner in New York City. In this video, there was a mugging at knifepoint. A passerby decided to help and stepped in front of the knife, and was stabbed fatally; the mugger and potential victim both fled. The man then bled to death on a busy street corner, passed by too many people who just ignored the bleeding man. The amount of time it took for someone to eventually phone for an ambulance was astounding, and by the time it arrived he had died. I believe this is the news story.

While I’m sure this got some coverage at the time, it didn’t exactly go viral. This story, which raises such massive issues with the moral compass of the average human being, was rather quickly lost and humanity learned nothing from it. Yet meanwhile, this other video that has a negative message – most importantly, a skewed message, because positive intention or not this was purposefully edited out of ten hours – about men blows up. Having watched the video, I’ll admit, the harassments were sleazy and made me feel uneasy just watching. The video does raise serious issues that need to be addressed with how we treat women in this society, and that’s what the positive feminist movement is all about. The removal of ignorance; equality. But there are people – these “feminots” – who take that video and extrapolate it into fuel for their kill-all-men blog posts. And as a man who is on your side, I can’t help but feel affronted by this.

I guess my real problem isn’t about the issue itself but about the debate, and how people will go out of their way to misinterpret something to add to the steamroll of hatred that plows through the internet every single day. A movement built upon the foundations of hatred is no better than the original point in which it set out to change.

That’s just how I view things, anyway.