Backwards

Like many people I often find myself with a procrastination problem.  I've read many articles on this that propose supposed solutions but the truth I feel is simply that procrastination at its core is natural.  I know that many people will offer a plethora of negative implications associated with procrastination, and I don't make any attempt to deny those.  However, to say that we avoid, or do not need any and all things which have negative implications on our lives is delusional, because we don't.  No-one no matter how devout they may be to different ideologies and regimes will uphold those to a perfect record.  In other words everybody slips.

While I was born and raised Christian and have since abandoned organised religion in search of my own spiritual path, there are moments when some semblance of truth can be found in teachings that ironically most people who preach never actually follow.  If you take Christianity as a whole, the religion is mostly defined by what you are not supposed to do and the eternal ramifications.  Religion is in many ways an archaic form of legislature.  Setting out an expanse of rules and regulations you are supposed to follow, punishments and sentences for breaking those, and in some cases predictions of what society will become.

The last point we can dismiss for the moment because it's a topic in and of itself.  As for the rules and regulations which people should follow and the consequences, when you return to the time period when these were constructed they represent the mentality of the generation that existed.  Not only does it represent what they thought, but it also gives an insight into what people of that time saw as problems.  By this I mean, what was considered a sin was influenced by what people of the time saw as counter-productive. 

It can be tempted to look at the world as it is today and say things are getting worse.  To say that crime is rising, and that people are increasingly hateful but is that really true?  As a gay man I have had the discussion of how much homophobia exists and whether it has increased or decreased etc over the years.  At the moment my view is that it has done neither.  I have flitted back and forth between thinking it rose and fell, but to be honest I think in reality it's remained more or less constant for thousands of years.  One of the things people quote when they are homophobic is a verse in the Bible that denounces homosexuality, conveniently discarding the rest of the book that says a mountain of other things are abominations that people are perfectly comfortable with - shaving, divorce, working on Sunday [or Saturday depending on your interpretation] as examples.  Moving beyond the attack itself if you look at the fact that verse exists you can deduce that thousands of years ago when men wrote that book and decided to victimise an entire group of people, you can assert homophobia existed, and not just on a small scale but on a wider scale that encompassed the establishment.

I realise many cultures and groups at the time didn't have a problem with it, but I would argue using Gay Marriage as an example that LGBT rights are not uniform today after thousands of years.  Society as a whole seems to fluctuate, and while some people like to perpetuate the idea that we are moving forward as a race, I have to question whether that is really true.  Racism as another example, was considered legal by the Bible.  This is testament to the mentality that existed which viewed other people as "lesser" depending on certain characteristics, gender, race, social class etc.  Now while you can point to the changes in laws over the years that have led the way to giving people rights they did not once have, the problem is a law does not change opinion.  You can make something illegal but that doesn't change the mindset of people holding that view.  Instead they find other ways of expressing their view without breaking those laws, or by breaking those laws in ways they avoid being caught in doing so.

Slavery might be illegal, but the mentality held by those with backward mindsets who view people as lesser still exists and it hasn't waned in its strength.  The animosity held towards people who are LGBT at its core centres around the fact that it is viewed as being counter-productive in a much more literal sense.  Two men or two women can't reproduce, and because of this LGBT people are seen as lesser and we are viewed as failing to contribute to the human race.  Slavery was a way of subjugating other people into subservience.  A way of exploiting people to achieve a level of power, often with the intent of carrying out manual labour or some other type of work without recompense. 

The problem with these mentalities is that they are fundamentally flawed.  Much as we view procrastination as something negative, the truth is no matter what you do you are always being productive - that may not be directed at the task it is intended to be directed at but it's still there.  When you avoid doing work to play games or consume some other form of entertainment you are contributing to other industries.  When you spend hours scrolling through social networks to avoid doing what you were supposed to be doing you are still being productive, it's just that what you produce isn't necessarily of benefit to you.

While two LGBT people may not be able to have children, they can adopt.  That may not increase the population but it provides parents for children that otherwise would have none.  If they use surrogates they have children with people who would otherwise have none.  When you don't have children at all your life is not wasted, there is more to life than reproducing and there is more to be given to the good of humanity as a whole than just increasing its number. 

Slavery actively prevents people from contributing anything to society as a whole; when you have no freedom you can't pursue ideas that can lead to new paradigms.  When you are not paid for your work at all you can't contribute to an economy, you can't consume, you can't help businesses grow.  By extension corporate-slavery is a very real problem, maximising profits and minimising wages is ultimately a catch-22, if every business made their workers broke, they would very quickly go bust, because customers and employees are not mutually exclusive, and every customer you have while they may not be employed by you, the majority will be employed by someone.

I've deliberately tiptoed over morality and ethics in this post because those are something that I feel are fluid.  You just have to look at television to see how this is true.  There are many television shows from decades past which would never get commissioned today and would shock younger generations that such things were ever allowed on television.  "Respectable" broadcasters had television shows that were openly racist.  This isn't one way however, this goes in both directions.  There are television shows which were much more liberal in the past which would never get commissioned today.  In the UK as examples, Black and White Minstrels were once acceptable on broadcasters like the BBC - this was openly racist but considered normal for the time and had little objection.  On the obverse, there were comedies such as Gimme Gimme Gimme which were commissioned by the BBC at the time but would never make it onto television today because it's considered risqué. 

British television has become increasingly conservative, there was a recent furore on twitter over comments made in response to a gay kiss on Coronation Street - this isn't a one off thing, this is endemic to the backward direction television is moving, which, in keeping with this post, is representative of society as a whole.  We now live in an atmosphere where television shows depicting benefit claimants in an attempt to enrage public sentiment toward them is considered normal.  Shows like Benefit Street, and Can't Pay We'll Take it Away exploit some of the most vulnerable people in society for the purpose of entertainment, yet their broadcasters think this is funny and don't have a problem with doing it.  If you took this sick mentality across the pond to the USA you'd have TV shows like "Death Row" showing people living in prison on death row with the live finale being their execution.  People are fucked up, this is the reality of the world we live in, morality and ethics are fluid and they are fluctuating right now in ways that are transforming our society into something many of us will look at with the same disdain as the shows we look back on and ask how the fuck did people ever agree with that.

The UK has become increasingly conservative politically and culturally, and it's not showing any signs of reversing.  it's not progressing us forward it's taking us backwards and the solution is not to offer the same fucking thing because that's the problem.