I have always been a “live and let live” kind of person. It was something that made sense to me. In my mind, being a GenXer and growing up when I did, goes hand in hand with this way of seeing the world. On a personal level, I honestly never cared how you choose to live your life. You might live your life in a way that is both baffling and even “wrong” to me, but my philosophy has always been, “as long as it doesn’t infringe on me getting on with my life, or harms anyone, knock yourself out”.
I have never been a religious person, but my attitude to religion has always been the same. Believe in, or worship what you like, just don’t foist your beliefs onto me or expect me to believe what you believe and we’re all good.
Again, as long as you are not harming anyone, do what you like.
Simple right? Well not entirely.
The definition of “harm” has been expanded and varies wildly depending on who you talk to. This puts a spanner in the works and the whole sentiment of “do what you want as long as it doesn’t harm anyone” becomes a subjective swampy soup of defining what “harm” is. With the advent of ideas like “hate speech” and “words are violence”, it further throws everything out of whack in substantially unhelpful ways.
I was casually skipping along with my “live and let live” attitude consistently intact for years. However, over the last decade or so, many of my baseline values have been turned upside down and I have found myself questioning even the most basic and fundamental principles that I had previously taken for granted. In some ways this has been good for me. It’s important not to get too complacent. Also, as things shift around you, it’s worth observing these changes and perhaps revisiting your beliefs to see if they are still useful or relevant.
In my twenties living through the 90s rave scene, it really was an “anything goes” era, driven by a no holds barred feeling of abandoned hedonism, freedom and an almost unconditional acceptance of others, no matter how messed up or unhinged they were. We were all loved up, and everything was one long “shiny happy people holding hands”…. fluffy, strobey, buzz-fest. I remember seeing all sorts of crazy, bizarre and sometimes idiotically destructive behaviour going on around me and I mainly just rolled with all the messiness. It’s all fine. Live and let live!
Well, buckle up stoned 90s party girl. Things are about to get real. You’re not in Kansas anymore. The honeymoon’s over.
One of the most seismic and profound changes to me personally has been becoming a Mother. I have ceased to be so GenX’y and “whatever floats your boat dude” about things, and have started to develop more boundaries around my expectations towards standards of behaviour and what I am willing to put up with. It’s not just about me anymore. It’s about my daughter now. What kind of society is she entering into here? What people do I want in my life who she will be exposed to? I feel a strong maternal urge to draw clear lines, not just in terms of how I parent, but in terms of myself as I now have the most important responsibility I have ever had in my life, and need to get my shit together in terms of having a coherent value system. If I allow someone to breach my own personal boundaries, they could get to her, and there is absolutely no way in hell I will let that happen.
We’re not in some 90s rave scene “whatever goes” after-party, where any weirdo straggler can just wander in off the street and into my life. “Come on in, you weird, wasted rando guy with piercings, stinking of patchouli, weed and stale sweat. Sleep on my sofa, eat all my food and talk shit about Chakras all night. Whoever you are…. Yeah. Whatever. This is all fine. I’m just all live and let live”.
No!
Old me from the past would have been all “let’s not get judgy”. Well, old me was a naive idiot with no discernment. Not everyone is “nice” and a positive force in your life. Not everything is “fine” all the time. I embrace and trust my judgement now. Having judgement is an absolutely essential and instinctually natural part of being a human. Particularly as a parent, and no amount of lefty “just love everybody man”, bollocks is going to change my mind. (They don’t really mean that of course - but I’ll get onto that later).
I will not agree with you just to be “nice”. I don’t think we are all the same and I certainly don’t think all cultures or lifestyles are equally good either. I will judge whatever I want, in any way I see fit.
But it isn’t just becoming a Mother that has changed me so much. There are other factors.
“Live and let live” can only really work if everyone (or most people) share a similar attitude. The minute you are confronted with people who take advantage of you or try and force their worldview upon you, then the magical “live and let live” spell is broken. Abruptly.
If you stupidly continue to be “live and let live” after that point, then the person who is taking the piss, will just continue to walk all over you and keep taking more and more. Why wouldn’t they? You’re letting them. It just is the case that some people are like that. You might think you’re being nice and tolerant but they don’t see it that way. They see your “nice tolerance” as a dumb, naive weakness that is wide open for them to exploit. If you have any sense you will then draw a firm line and say “NO!” and the more regularly this starts to happen, the more you need to think seriously about where your lines are. This has been the case for me personally, but is also happening on a societal level.
I am certainly not a political philosophy expert and don’t pretend to be. I can only express my views based on my own life experiences and how I see things. There are many people, way more clever than me, writing about these concepts in academic depth. However, I do see the conundrum here and it seems to boil down to the “paradox of tolerance”.
From Google:-
The paradox of tolerance states that if an open and tolerant society extends unlimited tolerance to intolerant people and ideologies, those intolerant forces will eventually gain power, destroy the tolerant society, and eliminate tolerance itself. Philosopher Karl Popper articulated this idea, famously arguing that a tolerant society must retain the right to not tolerate the intolerant to protect its own freedom and principles.
There are many factors at play here that are testing our “live and let live” attitudes to the limit. There’s the radical left social justice (woke) activist idiots that are far from kind and tolerant in my opinion, and who I have written about before. There are also factions on the right (particularly in America) who, in my opinion, are every bit as unhinged and authoritarian as their radical woke left counterparts.
Some people will scoff and sneer at the concept of “Horseshoe Theory”. Not surprisingly, they tend to be the radical nutballs at the extreme ends of both the left and right. Funny that! But I do believe there is something in it. I see it with my own eyes. Most sane, normal sensible people are stuck in the middle, watching this demented, dysfunctional spectacle unfold and are just trying to stay well out of it. Who can blame them?
There is also the big question of (brace yourselves) ….. mass migration. Eeek! Yes. I said it. I shall now roll up my sleeves and get into that messy shitshow. What fun!
Wherever you fall on this topic, it isn’t something that we can ignore and continue to shut down conversations about. Whether you like it or not, this problem isn’t going away and if people are not prepared to have a serious and nuanced conversation about it and listen to the concerns of ordinary people, it will only get WAY worse. Just shouting “far-right” at anyone who has legitimate worries about the high levels of mass migration, is counterproductive (to put it mildly) and people have understandably really had enough of it.
I have travelled extensively. I loved it. It’s an eye-opener. My mother was a Jewish immigrant to France from North Africa before becoming a “bloody foreigner” here in the UK when she married my English father. I’m talking about my own childhood growing up on a rough crappy council estate in London in the 1970s and 1980s here. Which I remember clearly. (I have stories).
So I am really not in the mood for a tedious lecture from some white middle-class matcha latte swigging, terrorist sympathising, hipster dullard, wearing a keffiyeh scarf, banging on about “xenophobia”. (I am well acquainted with the concept). And while I’m at it, I’m also not in the mood for an onslaught of moronic “Hitler was right” memes from their radical, actual far-right, “Groyper” ugly cousins, banging on about me being Jewish and controlling the world. You can all sod off and take a very long goose-stepping walk off a short pier. I have a handy block button for you lot.
But I digress, my biggest takeaway from all my exciting travelling adventures to far flung lands, and coming from a complicated “mixed” background, is realising just how phenomenally lucky we are here in our little Western bubble and how different people’s values are when you venture away from this bubble. Yes. We are all human beings. We all eat, sleep and want the best for our families and kids and it goes without saying that individuals vary. I met some amazing and lovely people travelling. But the particularities of what is considered “best” for us and our families vary from culture to culture, and there are obvious compatibility issues. How could there not be? What dawns upon you when you travel to vastly different cultures, is just how alien to other people the whole concept of “live and let live” actually is. You’re the one with the weird attitudes. You’re the one who stands out.
Sorry John Lennon, but “Imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do” Okay. It's just a song, and you’re not alive anymore, but unfortunately some so-called “grown ups” have actually taken this “off with the fairies” twaddle to heart and turned it into actual policy. Thanks for that. We’re not one big handy-holdy “global village” and frankly, I don't like the sound of that. When you travel, it's the differences between cultures that make it such a mind-boggling, intense learning experience.
So tell me all you “open borders” freaks. How does that work in practice? Do you think you can magically socially engineer humans to be interchangeable blank-slate identical blobs that can be plonked anywhere in the world randomly and it will all work out fine and everyone will just “get along”? What happens when your next door neighbours think it's a good idea to throw gay people off buildings, believe in child marriage, or think it's absolutely morally correct to stone women who don't cover their hair? Is that okay?
Clearly not everybody has the same values as us (far from it) and assuming they do is an arrogantly Western centric and naively dumb way to view the world. I go back to my previous point above and the lefty “everyone is the same and nice really” bollocks. Which is a lie because they don’t really believe this. What they really mean is, everyone else from other parts of the world who aren’t white and Western are cuddly, naive and sweet with noble intent and have no agency, and us terrible Westerners are evil “colonial” shitbags. Which is outrageously condescending when you think about it, but they seem to be able to square that circle somehow.
Where are the lines? People from all sides of the debate will vary wildly on the details of where those lines should be, but it is obvious to me that if we are importing vast numbers of people from cultures that have such fundamentally different values to us, you’d have to be insane to believe that this won’t create conflicts of interests. How is this even controversial? In my opinion, these things should be addressed sensibly, fairly and humanely for everyone involved. Including us!
I understand that people are wary to even get into all this. Myself included. I didn’t even begin this piece with the intention of “going there” but as I got typing, the elephant in the room started stomping around louder and louder in my ear, so I just couldn’t ignore that noisy, fat arsehole anymore. “Okay! I know. I hear you! I’m going to write about it. Happy now?!”
Immigration is that explosive and divisive issue that sends people raging bonkers and for good reason. But we really do need to at least acknowledge the fact that it impacts some communities more than others. Some empathy is required to have this conversation. The “be kind” brigade really need to start to extend this mantra to people that they have differences of opinions with on this topic. Whether they will or not, depends on whether they are prepared to start using their brains or not. So far their tactics have proved to be, well, frankly lacking in any actual tactical intelligence or logic. Surely just labelling everyone thick and racist, over and over for years on end, is not quite the win they think it is, duh! And I hate to break it to these people, but it’s clearly NOT working anymore. The backlash will get ugly. What did they think would happen?
None of what I have written about here makes me feel good and I'm sure I'll get crap for this piece and may even lose a few subscribers. So be it.
At the end of the day, If you are lucky enough to have experienced what it feels like to live in a “high trust” cohesive society where you have had the extraordinary luxury (!) to be able to even be relaxed and free enough to be “live and let live”, it makes sense. It’s almost obvious. You do you, and I’ll do me. We can accept and tolerate one another’s differences and acknowledge that we are individuals with different ideas about things and ultimately respect one another’s boundaries and give each other some space. Live and let live. Right? This value system IS exceptional and in my opinion desirable and despite it obviously not being perfect, is worth fighting for. But as I said, it can only work if mostly everybody is on the same page and has a basic foundational level of shared values. Is that even possible anymore?
I don’t know.
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