Privelige - are we Guilty?

White Male privilege.

Here is another area in which people's minds are being messed with: the attempt is to make them ashamed – or rather to shame them in regard to things over which they have no control.

Recently (white) nurses in Australia were told by their (left wing) union that they should apologise for their “white privilege” before treating aboriginal patients.

As for “white, male, heterosexual” well that is “privilege” cubed! And if one's parents have worked hard and become well-to-do that probably makes things worse still.

For those of us old enough to remember the Cultural Revolution in China, and the news snippets and pictures that leaked out of people being shamed in “speaking bitterness” sessions and paraded with signs round their necks proclaiming in what way they failed the Communist ideal, this new campaign re-awakens those memories. Yes this is another thing out of the Marxist play-book! Yes this is another social engineering plot to pave the way to turn our liberal democracies into illiberal collectivist states.

If we value freedom; if we value justice; if we value the truth; we must fight back.

One may object “but surely privilege is not just” My answer is: “In itself it is neither just nor unjust, it merely is”.

It is the things which are in themselves unjust which we must fight, not “privilege”.

Let me illustrate: In Australia being born into a remote Aboriginal community statistically goes hand in hand with much worse child abuse, health, employment, and lifespan, than in the rest of the population. But not just “white” population. The mainstream population includes immigrants from India, China, Africa, Malaysia, Indonesia and many other places, and even Aboriginals who blended into modern culture. It is a cultural phenomenon. If one chooses to try to maintain a 40,000 year old tradition in the face of modernity then “meaning of life” problems are going to tear you apart. If you live in a close and closed community where sexual child abuse has been the norm, how do you change that behaviour. If your role was hunter-gatherer near starvation because of lack of natural resources and you now get welfare cheques and alcohol is available, how can you avoid lethargy, lack of purpose and rampant alcohol and substance abuse?

It is not that “whites” have some privilege aboriginals are denied. Indeed refugees have come to Australia with nothing and made good. It is perhaps the perennial “do-gooders” selling them the “victim-hood” lie. It is certainly lifestyle choice. It is clinging to “land” and “culture” when the world has changed. Reality, not lack of privilege is their enemy.

Of course in the 1950's to be “black” in the Southern United States definitely involved lack of equality before the Law, and lack of opportunity in many other areas. These were injustices. The whole “civil rights” campaign aimed at rectifying this.

This is what I meant when I said that it was the things that were themselves unjust which had to be tackled, not mere “privilege. Equality before the law is absolutely fundamental. Voting rights, access to education, employment and so forth.

Now to put that all in perspective. Life is not fair. We just are born with varying levels of privilege.

Forget the white male heterosexual. How about the really big ones: born in the 20^th or 21^st century. Born in a first world country. Born in a democracy.

Think about living before modern medicine. No immunisation – so you probably died in childhood. No antibiotics, no surgery – so even if you survived childhood you still died young. For women , one-in-ten died in childbirth.

Think about living before modern agriculture – always on the brink of starvation. Think about living before modern engineering – muscle and perhaps horse power was it. No “living electrically” maybe you couldn't even afford candles for night time. No central heating! Maybe no piped (or clean) water.

And this is just in good countries. Serfdom or tyranny just added to ones woes.

Even today think about third world countries. No, its not idyllic! Living in squalor, children dying of gastroenteritis, malaria, or one of the countless other unchecked diseases. Starvation. Overwork and child labour. Cruel rapacious leaders – think of the Somali warlords. Daily threat of gruesome death or abduction of children – think Sudan and parts of Nigeria.

If you want to talk about privilege: being born here and now is it!

But we had no choice in it. It was a “just is” of life. We have no attached guilt about things over which we had no control. …. BUT

Jesus said “to whom much is given, much is expected, and to whom much more is given much more is expected.”

What we do with all the privilege and opportunities life bestows on us is something for which one day we will all be judged.

Gender "Only the Knower Knows"

“Only the knower knows”

This piece of pseudo philosophy is complete rubbish. But it is sneaking into every-day thought and it is being used to underpin the terribly destructive “gender fluidity” propaganda out kids are being relentlessly bombarded with.

One of my daughters is doing a course in librarianship. In a recent essay assignment, the course notes said “In archiving we cannot say we are storing knowledge because only the knower knows ...” So this perverse ideology is really infiltrating education.

Kids – from tender ages like 6 years old are being taught that no one can tell them what gender they are because – you guessed it - “only the knower knows” - so they alone know what gender they are.

Then the door is not just left open but kicked down by “educational” material persuading them that if they like activities normally associated with another gender (not just two genders remember!) then that's what they should “identify” as. So some boys are encouraged to dress as girls at school and use the girls change rooms (backed up by government mandate to the schools), girls who like skateboarding ate persuaded to have their breasts surgically removed and take testosterone and so forth – all behind the parents backs. And in some countries if parents find out and object they can be charged with “child abuse” and have the children removed to state care. Doctors who dare to advise kids against surgical and or drug sex change are ipso facto guilty of professional misconduct.

If you have not come across this hideous program it likely sounds unbelievable. If so watch one or both of these videoettes:

https://www.facebook.com/cbnnews/videos/10160228332495393/

https://www.facebook.com/TheDailySignalNews/videos/967580886741197/

OK so this “gender fluidity” teaching is really bad. It is also built on a web of lies. One of these, as I said is that “only the knower can know” meaning in this case that only the child in question can “know” what their gender is.

So let's talk about what it is to “know” something.

An otherwise obscure professor named Edmund Gettier was told he had better publish something. So he wrote a short paper on knowledge that set philosophers on their ears.

He said – illustrated with an amusing story – that to “know” something required:

a) to believe the proposition was true

b) to have a sound reason to believe it was true

c) for it to be true.

For a huge number of propositions – just for a start: fire burns, ice is cold, eating a lemon makes ones mouth pucker … - things that most of us learn by experiment as children we can say are common knowledge. The child who has just touched a hot stove cannot claim that only they know fire burns – lots of us know that!

I don't think one has to go any farther than that to say “Myth Busted!” … “Only the knower can know” is false

Now to gender. Last post I said gender was about an individual's putative role in reproduction. Reproduction requires a sperm and an egg. If you have the sexual apparatus that normally produces eggs then you are a female. If you have the sexual apparatus that normally provides the sperm to fertilise the egg, then you are a male. Thee are no other options.

So if activists claim that a child “knows” they are a boy in a girls body or a girl in a boys body they are wrong on every level.

a) can the child believe this is true? Well I dare say sufficient brainwashing can make someone believe almost anything! But without brainwashing, can they? We were discussing this over dinner when my younger daughter put this argument: “A girl cannot say she feels she is a boy for the simple reason she cannot know what it feels like to be a boy because she isn't one! As a girl whatever she feels is something a girl can feel!”

For those who remember their maths; attributes (from people's heights to anything else) in populations show a spread around a mean generally like a “bell curve”.

If you take say, “all people age X” the curve is generally bi-modal. That is to say there are actually two means – one for males and one for females.

If you take adult heigh for instance, the mean height of men is taller than that of women, but for each sex there is a spread – some shorter and some taller than the mean. So whilst the mean height of men is greater than that of women, there are some women who are taller than some men. We all know that – we've seen it!

So to with masculine and feminine traits of every sort – men and women are different BUT some women score higher on a masculine trait than some men and some men score higher on a feminine trait that some women. That's just how life (and statistics) is. BUT to say in either case the person is a man in a woman's body or a woman in a man's body is is just plain wrong and also cruel and wicked.

b) Can a child have a sound reason to believe this? Well they are told it by teachers they trust and teaching material provided by the government education department which they might believe is to be trusted, and every attempt is made to stop them discussing it with their parents who would try to tell them the truth – so you might say that in their minds they have reason to believe they are the wrong gender.

But in fact this fails Gettier's test of being a good reason: They have a false belief that the government and their teachers will tell them the truth in this area.

c) Is it true? We are back to an absolute standard of truth. As I write this a foot-bridge collapse in Florida is in the news. The engineers doubtless believed it was strong enough to support itself, but in reality just five days after being put up it collapsed onto a busy highway crushing a number of cars and their occupants. There are absolute standards of truth: it was not true that the bridge was strong enough! (Gettier would say the engineers had a sincere false belief that it was)

As I have outlined above: Gender fluidity is not true: the boys are real boys and the girls are real girls

Yes there are genetic and birth defects which in olden days were surgically corrected if possible – now activists have banned this and convinced these unfortunates to live out their lives with deformed genitalia as “intersex” - another terribly cruel trick. There is also a real psychiatric condition “gender dysphoria”. Kids suffering from it have about four times the suicide rate of other kids – which is terrible. However U.S. statistics show that this sad suicide rate actually goes up for kids with it who are given chemical and/or surgical “sex change” therapy!

To conclude: No, it is definitely not true that “only the child can know their gender” anyone – by looking at their genitalia, or if doubtful checking their DNA can know definitely and definitively what gender a child is, and he or she should be brought up as that gender and to be confidant they are that gender even if say a girl is what used to be called a “Tomboy” - like Calamity Jane!

Gender: It Only Takes Two

Gender: Its About Reproduction, not Feelings

First. Why bother to argue?

“But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15)

We are entering a new era of persecution of Christians in the West. All the more dangerous because it is subtle and insidious. We all think we could emulate the courage of our Christian brothers and sisters in Muslim countries confronted with severe persecution, But can we resist the barely noticeable forms? One Mediaeval bishop fumed over the actions of most of the Christians in the lands that had just been invaded by Muslims: instead of paying the “tax” of half their possessions to remain Christian, they converted to Islam. Our trial is of this sort.

Of course we are free to remain “Christian” if we keep it secret – or at least private. Of course one can be a Christian politician - as long as one leaves Christian belief outside parliament hall! One can, for now, go to church – as long as the new “civic religion” is espoused alongside Christ. But from John the Baptist down through the ages the martyrs and “confessors” (those who would not renounce Christ even under torture) have all rejected this enticing option.

No! If we love God we must proclaim Christ as Lord of all. If we love our neighbour we must not only live out the commandments of God, we must proclaim them as the way to live to please God.

This brings us into conflict with the devil. This makes us Christ's “soldiers and servants” to thwart the devil's plans to bring our once more-or-less God-fearing societies to ruin and to usher in a life of misery to humans whom God loves. As Jesus said “the thief comes to kill and destroy: I have come so that they may have life – life in all its fullness.” So if we are active on Christ's side, we are in the devil's way – he will attack us, he will stir up human dupes to persecute us – he will stir up all the social pressures of a society drifting under his thrall to silence us.

So whilst I hesitated to use the verse from Peter's first letter because it specified “the hope (of heaven) that you have” His first recipients were being ostracised because they no longer indulged in the decadent lifestyle of the time and the reason was their new allegiance to Christ and their obedience to God's laws prompted by the sure and certain hope of a resurrection from the dead to unimaginable glory with Christ in heaven.

So yes. I think the verse does apply to us today standing firm and speaking out against the forces pushing our societies away from God to their ruin. The message to us is:

a) Be prepared to give an answer.

b) do it with gentleness and respect.

This will be hard when abuse is heaped on us – as it will be, when we are falsely accused of being “...phobic”, when we are accused of being “haters” when it is we who are the object of the “hate speech”, when even school children are being taught that all who disagree with the devil's project are “religious nutters” who are to be denigrated and resisted. And when schoolchildren are in fact (as they are right now) being trained in resisting all who question the “new morality”.

Today's answer to a mantra….

Mantra “gender is not binary”

This whole nonsense of “gender fluidity” that is being shamelessly promoted to our children is built on a cobweb of lies and pseudo-philosophy. This is one of its strands.

Children are being taught, both in school and by television that gender is “non-binary”. In England the BBC has put our video clips enticing children to believe that gender is just something “society assigns to them at birth” and has nothing to do with the genitalia they possess. In Australia our publicly funded ABC television is coaxing young children to believe they may be trans-gender or homosexual etc.

The driving point of all these indoctrinations is that gender is about feelings, not biological facts. I hope to say more in another blog, but for brevity today I suggest that is the point to hit back with the truth: sex or gender is about biology not feelings – or society. It is about one's putative role in reproduction. Of course you don't actually have to reproduce to be male or female – but your gender determines and is determined by the role you could, would or do play in the reproductive process.

Earthworms aside, just about every insect and animal (and ever most plants) have two sexes: the female provides the egg and the male provides the sperm which fertilises it.

So too in humans: female provides the “egg” cell which when fertilised will develop into a baby, male provides the sperm which fertilises it. There is no room for any third – let alone twenty or thirty or fifty other genders! Yes there are some individuals with chromosomal and birth defects – but just as with other birth defects that does not affect what is “normal” any more than babies born with six fingers negates the fact that like most vertebrates, humans are pentadactyl.

So my short answer to the mantra is:

No, that is not correct. Gender is the biological role in reproduction. Reproduction needs an egg and a sperm: female and male: there can only be two genders. Female and Male,

New Series: Answers to Marxist Mantras

Hello. I have not been blogging for a while – just thinking and reading!.

Now I'm starting a new series. I hope you like it

Weapons of Truth

The Bible talks in 2 Corinthians 6:7 about fighting wrong ideas “In truthful speech and in the power of God with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left” Our essential defence and attack against the scourge of Marxist propaganda sweeping our countries is Truth.

Marxists and the “New Left” in our midst lie. From teaching “gender fluidity” to our kids through glorifying adultery and fornication and killing unborn children to igniting gender and race wars the whole Marxist/secularist project is based on lies.

We must learn to counter lies – wherever they arise - with the truth. One of the reasons the Cold War ended (among others) was President Reagan continually hammering the Soviets with the truth about their regime being evil.

But how can you and I do this?

Have you noticed on TV that most people when interviewed “beat around the bush” as we say in Australia, and do not put their ideas concisely or systematically – but a small number can shoot back a neat well worded answer? Do you find this happens to you when you are talking to someone spouting “Progressive” ideas and you know they are wrong but you can't find the right words?

I think many of the people who do answer well can because it is not the first time they have been asked that question. As well as good background knowledge they have been able to refine their answers by repetition and others critiquing their answers. Well we can't all be like that, but I do think that knowing concise answers to many of the common mantras of leftist dogma will help us be a lot more effective in private conversations.

So …. here goes with the first one.

Mantra: Why should your right to free speech trump X's (currently they usually say “a trans person's) right not to be offended?”

I had the pleasure to hear Ben Shapiro asked this on You-tube. Without missing a beat he replied: “Because there really is a right to free speech, but the so called “right to freedom from being offended” is predicated on a “right” for life to be free from hurt – and that “right” doesn't exist – life just isn't like that. And besides if no one could say anything that anyone else felt offended by, the result would be that no one could say anything – which would be bad for society.”

But I want to go into this a bit more so that you can formulate the answer you prefer as a first strike and have some backup arguments if needed.

Here goes:

Freedom of speech.

Definition: Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship or sanction. (Wikipedia)

For a start it is a Universal Human Right. Sure it is universally trampled out of existence by dictators! But that does not stop it being a human right, and it tells you something about the people who want to stamp I out!

It is essential to the survival of a functioning democracy: In the US it went in as the First Amendment. In Australia it has been upheld by the High Court that “freedom of communication” is an inferred right under the constitution because elections are called for – and they necessitate freedom to communicate one's ideas.

Now one common come-back is: “Ah but one isn't free to shout 'FIRE' I a crowded cinema – so freedom of speech can be curtailed” This has nothing to do with “freedom to articulate opinions” it cites an act calculated to cause panic and a stampede in which people may die. So a spurious argument.

A more real comeback is:”But you don't want people able to urge violence – like Nazis did against Jews or the radio campaign that stirred up Hutu's to kill half a million Tutsi's in Rwanda” And of course this is quite true! But here the difference it the object of the demagoguery. On one hand, for democracy to function one must be able to urge people. “The government is corrupt, vote for our party” - even if the government has passed a law forbidding criticising it! But to urge people to commit what are universally regarded as crimes against humanity …. well that is as good as committing the crime oneself (much worse, morally) so of course that should be punished.

Feeling Offended

No one has a “right” to stop me articulating my opinions because they don't agree with them and so say they “feel” offended! As Shapiro said in that case no one could say anything anyone else disagreed with – which would mean no one could say anything – which would be ridiculous.

He is also right that it is predicated on the fatuous notion of the “snowflake” that there is some “right” for life to be without pain. Real life just demolishes that idea!. In fact the pain of discipline is essential to children to grow up into adults who can enjoy life. The pain of discipline is essential to the athlete, the scholar, the musician to be successful. Being “offended” by being told you are not performing well enough, and heeding rather than complaining about the warning, is an essential part of successful education – and of keeping you job in later life.

Feeling “offended” by the challenging opinions of another person is essential in the search for truth and in improving one's own opinions.

So next time someone says to me: “Why should your “right to free speech trump X's right not to be offended?” I'm going to say:

“Because the right to free speech is a real right – its a universal human right - but no one has a “right” not to be offended – that's life!”

But I'll have the other arguments ready as backup!