Walk Your Line

Leo Tolstoy is quoted to have said that boredom is "the desire for desires". How well the Russian writer understood boredom.

When I close this blog down for periods at a time, it's because I'm bored. I get bored with the subject this blog has evolved over the years to concern itself with, i.e., myself. I get bored with the readers. I get bored with the constant stream of emails (which I constantly ask readers not to send to the point I now just ignore them). That's it. There is no more or less to it than that. Boredom.

There's no private devastation or tribulation that pulls me away. If anything, that's the glue that has stuck me to this blog: During my life I have lived on the streets, faced the false allegations of psychotic Tarkan fans, lost my father, took over the care of my mother, endured mind-numbing relationships, and through it all, the blog remained open. Because I felt I had something to say.

And if I feel I have something to say, I come back. I don't come back for the reader. I really don't care if anyone reads this, and in all honesty, prefer the opposite. Heaven forbid some passing ignoramus, without the faculties to apply it, should learn something beneficial.

No, I come back because of a mind itch; that little twitch of thought that indicates to me there is still something worth putting down on record, and my truth (as yours) must always be given the freedom to breathe.

For Truth doesn't need an audience. It just needs air. And the desire to breathe.

But that's my line. And I walk it. And I've been walking it without detours for the eighteen years this blog has remained open, or shut. It's because I choose to walk my own line, that I feel my views have remained relevant throughout those years - when I've been bothered enough to express them.

And not only in my own egotistical opinion; because my truths are now the realities of this generation. A post I wrote back in 2007, for instance, could have been written yesterday. Or talking about the long shadows of 2019 seem almost revelational in its relevance today. And when I scroll through my blog archive, I see that is true for a good many of the things I've had to say.

But I have not returned to say, I told you so once again. I am back, with some excitement, to say that I am hopeful for the future.

Hopeful? Are you mad? I can almost hear it said, and I will get laughed at, I'm sure. Even NASA scientists, who say we have not met alien life because intelligent societies tend to wipe themselves out, claim the human race is next.

I mean, to speak of hope while Russia's borderland war against Ukraine is raging amidst ongoing pandemics and rising energy costs seems blasphemous. And while the UK (and more importantly the British public) may have begun to finally quantify the financial damage caused by the vote to leave the European Union, so what? If we were to return, the EU is not the same entity we left. In another decade, there may not be a union to go back to.

Heck, even Michelle Obama has fits of depression, because she sometimes feels as though her and her husband's time at the White House didn't even "make a dent" in the social issues plaguing her country. Worse it gave us Donald Trump, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Add imminent asteroid strikes and murderous artificial intelligence to the Pandora's box we've opened of old-school racial intolerance, the threat of nuclear and energy wars and climate change, and hope (even talk of hope) feels like the distant, nostalgic dream of a different time.

That is a fantasy, obviously. There has never been a different time. The nineties were inherently nihilistic. That decade had a lot of old-school homophobia and racism, too, left over from the eighties, and most of our institutions in the West were still inherently racist, even when we paid lip-service to diversity. And when 9/11 came along, suddenly anti-Muslim bigotry became all the rage in the 21st Century. So, this is the same time, just with more technology and different fashions - and different things to hate.

It will always be the same time, because that wall is still there. You know the one. It's the wall our ancestors built across the centuries, brick by brick. It's the wall of bigotry built in monument to human fear and hatred, and every generation continues its upkeep as justification for their own fear and hatred.

The focus of the fear du jour changes, because it has to stay relevant to survive. In times past, we spruced the wall up with a fresh coat of paint (from anti-Semitism to Muslim-bashing) or papered it with the latest designs (from gay marriage to anti-transgender), until the wall stood not only for human fear and hate, but as testimony to the fact that every succeeding generation believed its own brand of hate was somehow unique and special - and justifiable.

But the truth is, in the end, bigots will always be shamed by history. Racism, feminism, homosexuality - and any other identity - are matters of basic human compassion, and shouldn't be the subject of debate, because the debate itself is so dehumanising to begin with.

The state sponsored abuse of women's bodies when it comes to abortion, for example, shouldn't be a political issue, but a moral one. These people are just trying to live their lives, they did not choose to be born with a womb. And no one has the right to marginalise an entire subsection of the human experience, not even those being marginalised.

Take the argument that some women use to ostracise transgender people about sharing the toilet, where TERFs believe that somehow transgender women will impact their safe use of a public facility. As a man, I wish I could say: Shut up, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about - what you're doing is impacting their safety.

Transgender women are the ones in danger if they are forced to use male facilities. And as women, you should know exactly what they're talking about. Because how can you deny transgender women what you want for yourselves? Transgender rights might not be strictly speaking gay rights, and they might not be wholly accepted as women's rights - but they are human rights.

It's embarrassing how outwardly sane women are attempting to intellectualise their bigotry, while telling us that no, don't worry, this time their fear and disgust is completely justified. But as a human, I can say this: Going on the TERF argument about sharing public facilities with transgender women, in that case no woman is safe from any man, anywhere. Why don't we bring back the Islamic-style segregation of the sexes, so women can really feel safe again - unless you happen across a lesbian with a strap-on, of course.

Embarrassing and ludicrous, to say the least. But, then, that's where your bigotry gets you. You do not dismantle the wall of bigotry by adding more bricks to it, because this shit isn't even just adding a new face to an old wall; it's making it higher.

And even if your cause isn't based in bigotry, but a real concern, protesting in destructive ways will trigger fear and hatred instead of compassion. Climate activists may believe the attempted destruction of famous works of art, or blocking access to public streets will give voice to the climate hell waiting for future generations, but as a pacifist, I can genuinely say that no end justifies violent means.

Even if you believe the world is running out of time, violence merely speeds up the cycle of destruction. If the fear from climate anxiety makes your actions even slightly resemble the heritage destruction by ISIS in Syria, then isn't it time for a rethink? They believed their cause was just, if not more so, than the damage we've done to the environment. Those misguided idiots believed they were protesting the damage done to the human soul.

When we use violent means to further our cause (and the protection of the environment has been my cause for twenty years) you are not dismantling the wall built by predecessors, you are dismantling lives. Protest, by all means, but protest peaceably, or protest intelligently. You cannot appeal to people's emotions by acting blindly. Destruction is easy, try thinking outside of the box. Try to capture the hearts and minds of your critics by taking the time to first listen to their fears.

Similarly, the wall of bigotry must be dismantled slowly, but surely, brick by brick, like a steeplejack dismantles a tall industrial chimney from the top down.

Hope in the Eleventh Hour

So, where is this hope, I speak of?

Well, I believe that current events have been so global - and technologically we are a smaller globe than previous centuries - as to have shaken societies in such a fundamental way that new generations will be forced to unfollow previous lines, and draw their own. New generations will say this far and no further to intolerance, to warfare, and to the devastation of our planet's resources. And all the indvidual lines drawn will underline the single reality that we all have a duty to give life, in all its forms, the dignity we would want for ourselves.

Why? Simply put, the wall has become too big. Too high. Even to those still building it, or still attempting to maintain it. And when something becomes unstable or unusable, that is the perfect time to knock it down. Gradually. Brick by brick. Without hurting anyone or anything. And even better, by recycling the bricks once erected with hate, to build something that will stand for the only real human superpower we have - compassion.

And there will one day be a class of human that doesn't limit compassion to societal conditions, but to empathic consequence. Women will one day be shown compassion enough to have the final say over their bodies, because there will also be women who were born without wombs to see their side of the matter. TERFs will one day have to show compassion to their transgender counterparts because they will realise that to be a woman isn't simply defined by having a womb.

I won't see it in my lifetime. Neither will you. Or your children, possibly. But the lines drawn today will enable your grandchildren to walk their own lines - as though to do anything else would be unthinkable. It will enable them to connect in ways to a better future that will not be clear until five decades from now, but I can see the offshoots already.

The prime example is Russia, and the lesson it holds for any Goliath nation - such as China, India or even America, (if their own failed excursions into the Middle East were not enough) that all imperial power is fleeting. And until the people in Ukraine, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Muslim minorities in the Xinjian province and in Kashmir are allowed the freedom to walk their own line, no nation can ever truly call themselves free.

Russia - as indeed America, India and China - will one day need to show compassion for the crimes against humanity it commits today, otherwise it will never free itself of a past that keeps it chained to a wall of bigotry it can no longer maintain. When I see the protests in Hong Kong, when I see the resistance in Ukraine, I see the human spirit defying the odds to walk its own line.

And it fills me with hope for the future. For I am always hopeful when I see people walking their own line, or fighting for the freedom for others to do so. Walking your own line is so important, in so many ways. You see the thing about walking your own line, is first you must draw it. Not copy or trace it. Have the courage to face the blank slate and see if you can say something new. If you can do that, for instance, then you know you have a talent for the truth.

If that comes naturally to you, it means you are walking your own line. You may have been riduculed in your youth, you may have been attacked for it in adulthood, but you still walked your own line, because it was your own truth, drawn by your own hand. You didn't walk a line that was expedient to do so, or because it would grant you favours. You walked the line you drew for yourself, because to do anything else would be wrong. Like deeply, spiritually, right down in the pit of the stomach wrong.

Back to the boring subject of me again: This is something a nephew of mine in the film industry has yet to realise. If you walk someone else's line pretending it's yours, you'll forever be towing the line instead of taking the lead. A creative with real talent doesn't do that. You can't steal someone else's ideas (or ideals) and try to furnish yourself with them just so you'll get somewhere - because like a badly tailored evening suit, you'll always look two sizes two small in another's outfit, and you still won't get in the club.

Another person can only pretend to walk your line. That's why it will never get them anywhere. Because they don't know where you're going. And because small minded people have no imagination, they can't even fathom where that might be.

Plus, if you walk your own line, you stay in your own lane. So, to everyone I say, walk your own line. When you do that, no one else's opinion matters; what will matter to you is how high you can hold your head as you walk towards the end of your own.

Right, we're done. Here endeth the lesson for the day. All yous go out now and walk your own line.

Or at least show compassion to one who does.

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