RUTHFULLY YOURS

We no longer live in an age of moral relativism, but one of moral absolutism.

That’s one observation made by Canadian academic Eric Kaufmann in his latest book, Taboo, published this year. It’s an arresting inversion of a long-held view. Everyone today does indeed seem to know what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’.

But it also makes it hard to square the argument that postmodernism is at the root of our ethical woes and moral vacuum. Rather than living in a state of doubt and ambivalence, as postmodernism’s most optimistic advocates argued in the 1990s, we now actually inhabit a world where people cleave to firmly held truths and fight over them with righteous fury.

This can be seen most evidently in the present day over Israel and the Middle East. For many, the Israelis – and very often, by extension, the Jews – are the personification of evil. Hence, the precipitous rise of virulent anti-Semitism and of correlating sympathy for the Palestinians. In the minds of many, this is a war of good against evil. The Palestinian flag has itself become a universal symbol of goodness. And when you feel you have good on your side, any sort of appalling or belligerent behaviour or words are permissible.

This Manichean viewpoint is replicated in matters over the environment. Here, those who supposedly have right on their side deem it acceptable to resort to any sort of anti-social behaviour because it’s for a ‘good cause’. Self-righteousness is an intoxicating sensation and a self-perpetuating one. The self-righteous become consumed by their own sense of power. Elsewhere in this regard, others abide by the creed that race determines everything. Others hold to the inviolable sanctity of trans rights.

Luke Conway, another North American scholar, also came out with a book this year. It’s called Liberal Bullies: Inside the Mind of the Authoritarian Left, and it looks at how and why today’s authoritarians do indeed stem from the progressive left. It’s the same story – they believe they are caught in a battle between good and evil. Because they possess virtue, liberal bullies no longer tend to engage in debate with opponents. They give up on argument altogether when possible, feeling the veracity of their positions to be self-evident. This mindset leads to ‘intellectual apathy’ and ‘cognitive rigidity’. As a consequence, they are reliant on slogans, personal intimidation and mob rule.

We should have seen this coming. Indeed, one man foresaw this would come to pass. Just after the 180th anniversary of Friedrich Nietzsche’s birthday last week, it’s worth recalling that it was he who warned of men’s lust for power. He warned of rule by the herd, of the danger of convictions and of the bellicosity of the righteous who believe they can act with impunity. It was Nietzsche who warned that a European civilisation drifting into nihilism would see matters henceforth settled with fists and guns.

It was perhaps no coincidence that Nietzsche was a life-long critic of anti-Semitism. He correctly connected this prejudice with resentment. Anti-Semitism, he wrote, is the emotion felt by those who resent the success of others, for whom ‘someone must be to blame for the fact that I do not feel well’. Of resentment, he continued in 1887: ‘This plant now blooms most beautifully among anarchists and anti-Semites.’

The problem today is not that we no longer hold to truths. The problem is that there is an excess of foolish conviction.

The narcissism of pronouns

In case you missed it, last Wednesday was International Pronouns Day, an annual festival established in 2018. As the grassroots collaborative Pronouns.org reminds us:

‘Referring to people by the pronouns they determine for themselves is basic to human dignity. Being referred to by the wrong pronouns particularly affects transgender and gender-nonconforming people. Together, we can transform society to celebrate people’s multiple, intersecting identities.’

The irony of the pronoun revolution of the past 10 years is that it’s done little to improve society or make it more harmonious. Quite the reverse. It has only created a climate of rancour and division. Rather than seeking to bring about clarity, this revolution has brought about confusion and chaos. Nurses in NHS hospitals now feel obliged to ask men if they are pregnant. People wonder why newspapers bow to the whims of Eddie Izzard and the like, by calling him ‘she’ or other actual men by the once plural-only ‘they’.

Confusion and division. Our precious relationship between language and reality put in peril. This is the legacy of the hyper-narcissistic, self-important pronoun revolution.

Michael Palin is all too human

In the popular imagination, Michael Palin is an affable, amiable chap. He is a character who has enjoyed a hugely successful career, which has taken him from stardom with Monty Python’s Flying Circus via Hollywood and on to become the world’s best-known TV globetrotter. No wonder he often enjoys the epithet ‘national treasure’.

Yet as anyone who has read his diaries and travelogues (and I have read nearly all of them) will know, there is much more to the public persona. Palin is not an insufferably, permanently happy man. Even TV viewers who watched his first small-screen expedition, Around the World in 80 Days (1989), will recall his temper finally snapping at Piccadilly Circus as he sought to buy a newspaper from a crabby street vendor. The suicide of his sister in 1987 and the death of his wife last year are reminders that whatever our relative successes and failures, we are all mortals.

His latest collection of journal entries, There and Back: Diaries 1999-2009, is a further reminder that life has never been perfect on planet Palin. By the time the reader begins, Palin already has three phenomenal voyages behind him. Yet from the outset, some constant themes emerge: doubt, anxiety and disappointment. He begins 2 January 1999 by confiding: ‘Once again that worry about being really good at anything (even sleeping) seems to have risen from somewhere.’ Later that month: ‘Read through the reviews of Hemingway Adventure. Dispiriting – such abuse, such bitter, vitriolic stuff… It goes on, in some cases, way beyond criticism and reveals a dark delight in biting someone hard.’ Forward to August 2000: ‘Consumed with negatives this morning – almost achingly so at times… Generally demoralise myself.’

We have got so used to telling ourselves that social media have ushered in a new age in which so many people present falsely positive portraits of their lives. But ever since the distinction between public and private arose, it has always been the norm to mask one’s inevitable inner woes and worries. Michael Palin, as Nietzsche might say, is human, all too human.

Patrick West is a spiked columnist. His latest book, Get Over Yourself: Nietzsche For Our Times, is published by Societas.