I'm Done With This World
If I ever have the misfortune to become well-known, please direct everyone to this page so that they can exercise their righteousness and tear me down for having the audacity to become a visible presence.
I've kept this LiveJournal for over 10 years and if you trawl your way back through all the entries, I'm sure you will find enough evidence to condemn me under the rules of the current moral climate. Some of the things I'll have meant, some I will have written because I was drunk, tired or annoyed and some will be fabricated for comic effect or because I set out to deliberately annoy people or attempt to be provocative. Which one is which doesn't matter because what matters ultimately is that you find something to give you enough moral outrage to hate me despite the original context. Because that's what we do these days isn't it? We analyse someone's online history in the hope that we find evidence that contradicts whatever online persona they are trying to present and expose them as the horrible person that they truly are underneath. It doesn't matter which end of the political spectrum you connect with because both sides are doing it, taking a fine tooth comb to the past musings of James Gunn, Justin Trudeau, JK Rowling, Piers Morgan or any musician, actor, politician or sports person to find any hint of a remark out of step with today's moral climate.
About morality, Stewart Lee said:
"I'm not sure how much weight you can place on the nature of morality in this arguement because morality is not a fixed thing, it changes it's parameters culturally and historically over time. "
Is something that was said under the morals of the time really that incomprehensible because the author did not have the foresight to predict the major concerns of a society decades into the future? I can guarantee you one thing and that whatever you are doing today that makes you feel like you have the moral high ground will be completely reprehensible to someone else and if not now, then it will at some point in the future. Whether you're eating meat, driving a petrol car, using palm oil and corn syrup or reading paper books, someone in the future will look upon your works, ye mighty and despair. "My grandad loved calling out TERFs online but look at him, scoffing that burger when there are no cows left in the world today, the selfish blind bastard!"
We are living in a world torn apart by extremism, witch hunts, anger and violence and neither side wants to listen, they just want to shout down all opposition and feel morally justified in doing so because YOU are right and THEY are wrong. There is no room for middle ground, just the high ground.
Years ago, an uneasy truce was established between the East and West in what became know as The Cold War. Neither side truly believed or trusted the other side or was willing to understand their social systems but they realised to be provocative would only lead to mutually assured destruction. Instead, they built a wall and agreed to have nothing to do with each other whilst secretly spying on the other camp and doing their best to destabilise the opposition. Today we have a second Cold War with agencies looking for condemning evidence in the work of people they dislike or going undercover on sites like Mumsnet, UKIP, Trump's Twitter DMs or celebrity MySpace photos just to find an excuse to point that accusatory finger at them once more. It feels like there is so much anger in the world that we'll never all get along together, we'll just sit there in seething silence, quietly disrespecting the other side while not wanting our own boat rocked at the same time.
I've had enough. I've chosen a path where I want to make people feel better about themselves but all I see around me are words of hate and anger and an unwillingness to understand things from the other side of the argument. I can't go online without triggering my own anxiety because some new shitstorm has blown up. It's all just antisocial media these days. We should be using this technology to build bridges, make friends and find love but we're choosing to give into hate and highlight the foibles and failings in others to make ourselves feel better for the things that make us feel powerless. This is not a world i want to live in anymore.