The lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN
Introduction:
On the National Day of Kuwait, the Kuwaiti restaurant and café The Chocolate Bar posted on their Instagram account a video, followed by two other videos that advertise their products; especially their famous pink pasta dish. They were provocative ads. I would surmise that the ads were designed to be provocative, as we all understand that ads that show explicit violence provoke people. Moreover, the ads were designed to be both realistic in some sense and goofy in others. It featured top-notch acting, they were ridiculous, but that is often the mark of success of an ad — ads that are ridiculous stay in our memories longer. An ad that is bold trumps an ad that is straightforward. McDonald’s ads generally portray cleanliness, the support of local farmers, and the use of the best products. Their most recent ads show us that they are compliant with COVID-19 safety measures. But they do so in a manner that tries to win our trust. We, in the end, as conscious agents choose whether to believe such ads or not, but that’s generally the limit to what they can offer us in short videos. I am not an expert in advertising or marketing. And I know that even some of the experts in such fields are proficient in some normative respects, and some in empirical positive aspects: Those two sides can be remote, secluded, and the exchange between them is not always helpful, but that is the nature of such a field.
Kuwaiti ads in the past, especially for restaurants were always experimental, especially with Hardee’s. They were relevant, and they featured people whom a lot of Kuwaitis know and find hilarious (and we are really, relatively, a small society compared to internationally — we can easily find a connection to any other person in Kuwait). The ads become more frequent in Ramadhan since that’s the season with the most concentration in television views. But I have noticed that the bolder the ad gets, the more we talk about it, which is perhaps the goal of the ads; they are made either to improve the image of the company, to remind people of the company, to keep the company in the thoughts and memories of the people, and most importantly, to increase profits.
The Three Ads:
The Chocolate Bar chose to be bolder and more representative of the spirit of their target audiences than informative in their ads. Their three ads can be found on Instagram and YouTube. (You can skip this section and go watch the ads [1, 2, 3].)
In the first video, a man is shaving the head of what we presume to be his child. A woman, perhaps his wife, walks across the corridor towards the door waves goodbye, then returns because she has become aware that the father had shaved his son’s hair, removing most of the hair on his scalp and leaving a laurel of hair in the sides. She stares at him, and he is paralyzed by fear. We hear primordial screaming, that is at once funny and tribalistic forming the background noise and alerting us of trouble to come. The camera focuses on the child, with a tear trailing his cheek. The mother looks up without moving her face, in a gesture that is easily identifiable as someone who is considering how someone ought to be disciplined. The man, petrified, gulps. The camera returns to the woman as the tone of howling gets higher and sharper, and she issues a dead stare at the man. The sound cuts; we are taken to a scene where the woman dunks the head of the man into a bucket of water forcing his head down, attempting to drown him. We return immediately to the man, hesitantly suggesting that the family go to The Chocolate Bar. The woman’s tension drops, and she rolls her tongue inside her mouth. The scene again is taken to another angle in the same house but with pink and purple flashing colors — colors we tend to associate with the brand of The Chocolate Bar. This is a recurring event in all three ads. The woman is seen dancing enthusiastically. Back in the room, the man understands that his exploits are working. He proposes they order pink pasta, and then the kid looks at his father and doubles the suggestion with fondue. The woman now is seduced, and we understand that she might drop the homicidal inclinations. She dances in that corridor, followed by two copies of her, one imitating the same dance, and the other trailing behind with funky movements. We see on the side of The Chocolate Bar’s ad, with a slogan under it: “You find it in the heart.”
Two similar ads were released shortly after. In the second ad [2], a man is seen exercising to 80’s music in a club, surrounded by women doing the same exercises, and he’s jolly while all the women around him are, some smiling, some emotionless. He is super ecstatic, perhaps because of a carnal desire to be surrounded by women, as a funny cliché, or that he simply loves exercising — his looking around does not help in aiding him, though. Enter a woman—a lover? —into the club; she stares at him with an apparition of sheer anger. He is made conscious of her presence. The screeching tribalistic yells start, we understand trouble is to ensue. His fervent exercise-dance slowly subsides into motionlessness. The woman slowly nods, as if understanding where he has been; as for him, he looks down in both shame and helplessness. He knows it won’t end well. After a couple of back-and-fros with the camera, we are taken to their car, where she suffocates him from the back seat with a plastic bag. He is grunting, struggling, she is sure and determined: The bag is secure to his neck. He approaches her, and out of his ineptitude to solve such problems, he awkwardly suggests “Chocolate Bar?” The camera returns to the woman, her face mellow and both solemn and cute in perfect mastery of human expression: We immediately understand that she desires to go to Chocolate Bar, perhaps more than disciplining him, her face fails her — she succumbs to her cravings. In a similarly colored room to the first ad, she is seen dancing with verve and without retention. The man, triumphant, adds: “Pink pasta, with fries. Extra cheese.” She is playing with her hair at this point. A gesture of going on, I’m listening. As before, the ads end with the same woman with her replicas dancing in that pink and purple disco-like room, the man following behind dancing backward. The logo and the slogan are in the same place.
The third ad differs in one thing: It was posted, retracted, and then reposted. I am not sure about this, but I was told several times — and I tried contacting The Chocolate Bar to no avail. It goes like this [3]. A man and a woman enter the car, the man turns the switch and runs the motor, only to realize that the woman noticed something in the cupholder. A scrunchie (I bet at this point we all know where this is heading). The camera looks up from the position of the scrunchie to the woman’s face, a countenance of rage and suspicion takes over her. The man breathes shallowly, backed up in the driver’s seat. The woman inspects the scrunchie. The man’s brows are raised, and his forehead cannot sustain any more folding. The woman’s eyes are vindictive and brutal. The man attempts to exit the car. The woman loads the shotgun rifle. The camera is now behind the car in the garage, and a shot is heard. We are immediately transported to the car again, the man’s eyes wide open, his head falls on the steering wheel, honking the horn—no blood, no gore, no wound. (Talk about a bummer!) The scene is replaced immediately by the camera pointing towards the couple from the front, behind the windshield. She’s harboring thoughts of betrayal and infidelity. The man offers the now-iconic Chocolate Bar. The woman turns and looks at him, wide-eyed with surprise. A spasmodic dance ensues. Brownie… He then adds with humor, hot chocolate? Her eyes soften and wander. Another sequence of dancing, with two of the very same woman. The woman was ecstatic and wonderfully moving her body. The logo, the slogan. However, it doesn’t end here. In this ad, the man tosses the scrunchie at her and says: “And this is yours, by the way. Here, take it.” I was told that in the previous ad, the final segment was not included, and instead of a scrunchie, there was a lipstick-stained cup from Starbucks(?).
A Note on Activism in Kuwait:
Like most forms of activism in Kuwait, an event occurs, and then some people start to talk about it, and then there’s a reverberation of opinions: Some opposing, some condoning, some antagonizing, some applauding, some commending, and some condemning. This happens in the public sphere of Twitter. The issues that are obviously despicable are reproached by all, and soon after follows some retribution; be it the murder of a relative or a maid, the suicide of a Bedoon, an obvious act of racism. Such reproach is not always unanimous, though, as we always find some dissenters — particularly among more traditional or religious people here. An example would be: Does any woman deserve to be harassed? Most of us would answer “Strictly, no.” But it is always possible to find some persons who would say, “If she was not dressed modestly, she either deserves to be harassed or she wants to be harassed, and therefore it is not a real issue.” I consider it the moral progress of both classical feminism and the more liberal and natural-law ideologies that such state-of-affairs are replacing what might have been another status quo.
But those are not the irritating controversies we have here, as we all know it feels more like a duty to counter such opinions and to socially ostracize those who hold and advocate demeaning and inhumane actions and behaviors. The irritating controversies happen when issues that are neither well-defined, nor simple are processed simplistically, and instead of both sides of the issue arguing through reason, each side demonizes the other. The problems happen precisely because reason is not allowed to reign. Because no rational argument is encouraged, but emotional manipulation. Because not reason and an appeal to factual evidence occupy us, but an appeal to emotion and a desire to demolish the other, to dehumanize them, to present them caricatures that are easily destroyed—that is, to straw-man them. Many such issues happen almost daily on Twitter, and they are tiring. If you present a good argument on the subject, it depends on whether you are of the right party or not. You would assume that the more intellectual people become, the more they will rely on rational arguments, but that is not the case. The goal is not to think about the issue, nor is it a quest for truth, but to win on the battlefield — a battlefield no longer of ideas, but of propagation and self-aggrandizement.
As Socrates’ friends warned him not to engage with those who would be bitter to argue, he reminded them that the wise man chooses his happiness over his despair, and to not seek the truth, to not discuss it with others, to not want to share it is the constitution of misery. We all have a desire to argue. We might bottle up that desire, and that comes at the expense of holding shallow opinions since they are not polished by true opposition. Indeed, our every action stems from the belief that what we do might contribute to achieving some sort of a better life — this is unfalsifiable, so it is a psychological framework to be held axiomatically, and not to be tested, but here, it is a figure of speech that affirms that we act to better ourselves, or rather, a proposal for a more pragmatic way to look at the world.
I have witnessed several forms of activism, and one can easily see that the methods we use in our activisms are horrendous. An event or a phenomenon occurs. We perceive it through some venues. Then: (i) We phrase the problem in ways our preconceived solutions can tackle. (ii) We assume we have the moral upper hand, and often it turns out that our moral instincts are emotionally driven. (iii) We portray some group (usually a bureaucrat or official, but often traditional families, men, religious leaders, etc.) and demonize or dehumanize them so that our criticisms are allowed to be arbitrarily harsh. We tell others that the problem is caused by those devils. (iv) We propose our solutions and assume that they can actually work without demonstrating their effectiveness or efficiency; and that they do not conflict with the structure of society, just like, for example, the revolutionary French were calling for liberty and equality, without considering their inherently conflicting natures. (v) We move on to another issue.
I used to participate in those activisms in the past but then realized that they are moblike and unreasonable. In late 2018, they demanded that stores that sell chickpeas and fava beans put their legumes in different kinds of plastic cups. Then, they demanded that plastic bags be banned from supermarkets. Then, that ice-cream companies give the vendors air-conditioned cars, and so on. These demands do not take into account that achieving their demands might incur very high costs for such companies that they are no longer able to afford to supply such goods and services. That those suppliers are often the very small businesses that can go bankrupt very quickly. That the activists might again voice their disapproval of these people losing their jobs exactly because of such new policies; but that doesn’t happen because of a sampling bias we fall into: We can see standing businesses very clearly, but falling small businesses might not be very apparent to us, and especially in more remote areas. The bias also doesn’t allow us to see those companies that are not formed because of these new policies. Fewer of the poor people we actually want to help will find sustaining jobs.
I stopped becoming an activist by then and started discussing with the activists what their rationales were for what they’re doing, and often, they are either misinformed about what might be the results of their proposed policies, or are demanding two conflicting sets of policies, or — my favorite — are pushing for policies that will achieve X, but whose actual outcomes are the opposite of X. I became an anactivist. I discuss the ideas activists are propagating with those activists, trying to convince them out of some activisms that are detrimental to some of their lofty causes. Activism, in the end, can only be noble if both the ends and the means are noble.
The Conception of the Problem:
On the midnight of Wednesday, March 10th, right before sleeping, I saw that my friend tweeted:
“#Boycott_Chocolate_Bar.” I asked her why, and she told me to check their Instagram account. I told her that I just did, and I thought they were good, and I liked them. I did not think they were very creative, but their boldness and their good acting interested me. The ads were professional. They were good, comparatively speaking, not good in the absolute. It’s very hard for an ad to be a masterpiece, but this ad had a ridiculousness that was inventive and neat.
I showed a couple of my friends the ads and asked them what they thought. Most of them liked something about the ad. Some thought it was silly, and some thought it was funny. My mother said it has violence and she does not like violence. But that’s my mother and a lot of mothers would say that. I don’t think the ads were targeted at mothers. Nor were they targeted at children. I asked my male friends and my female friends. They all recognized that these kinds of ads would surely prove to be controversial. And I would always ask them, I understand that you think it will be controversial, as I also think it would be controversial, but why do you think it will be controversial? In the end, what is controversy? It can be any issue that people do not have a unanimous opinion on, no matter how pressing the issue is. Often, the issue is laterally pressing. It is not pressing by itself, but it is connected somehow to an issue that is pressing. The controversy here would mostly revolve around that issue, with this issue only being the mold for the conversation. A reason to discuss that issue now. My friends said that people want to talk about something, they always want to express some opinion or another. I asked, even when their opinion was uninformed. They said yes. I hold the same opinion. I showed the ad to my brother and sister and asked them for their opinions. My brother liked the ad because it was violent, and he liked that they were brave enough to do such a thing. These ads can tell us that such a company does not fear being experimental, which is a vital sign of life for a growing company. I found that his point hit a bullseye! My sister said she had no opinion about it. So, I asked them another question: Does this ad encourage violence? They said no! My mother said yes! So, I asked her, do you think that after seeing that ad, you might act violently? She said no, why would I? So, I asked her, who might act violently after seeing such an ad? She said, violent people or children. But children are not supposed to see the ad. To have an Instagram account, you have to be at least 13 years old. She said then, teenagers. So, I asked her, who was responsible for the violent act of the teenager, if a teenager acted violently. My brothers cried, the teenagers themselves! This falls into something we call attribution theory. People differ on whom an action is attributed to, and people also differ on to what action is attributed to. And this can only be solved by adopting one framework or another if it would be done reasonably — otherwise, it is an unsolvable problem. Many of the issues we differ on, we differ on precisely because we do not argue using similar frameworks, and therefore, our facts, our axioms, and our tools do not usually align. What we attempt to do in such discussions is not to prove to the other that A is true (or false), even if that was our intention, but to prove that our framework of thinking is better for navigating the world and solving its problems. As for the encouragement of being violent in the ad, that is simply not true: If I went around shooting people and then told the judge and the jury that I was encouraged by the videogame Grand Theft Auto, they would be disposed to believe that I was not honest. The game did not encourage me. I was encouraged by the game. This is a big difference. I could have chosen to rethink what the game did to me. I didn’t. It is completely my fault, and I bear the full burden. I am entitled to feel encouraged about anything, but no one must be held responsible for my encouragement, unless, perhaps, someone actively encouraged me: By clearly telling me what to do for example, by paying me to do it, and so on. And even this can be up for debate because the perpetrator of the crime is the guilty one — we punish the inciter for efficiency.
The Clubhouse discussion:
The day after, on Thursday, March 11th, I went to the app Clubhouse and discovered that there was a room that was discussing the ad. Heading the room was a feminist. I label her as a feminist from her language, from her style of reasoning which borders on the radical side of feminism—i.e., radical feminism—, from the linguistic tools she is using, and from several other things that will become apparent now. People were expressing their opinions, and there were many opinions on the ads — mostly in the negative. That the ad was encouraging violence, inciting infidelity, normalizing domestic violence; portraying women as gullible, or easily manipulable and appeased by chocolate, in general, undermining them; showing violence to children, who might imitate these violent actions; showing us relationships that were dysfunctional, which might normalize them, etc. And these sorts of reasons I thought to be fault-finding at best. Problematizing, in the lingo of post-modernist and critical philosophies. All of these things can also be said of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson. In fact, operating on vagueness and the temerity that people will side up with me, anything can be portrayed as evil.
When it was my turn to speak, I said that I would separate my opinion into three sections. The first is a segment on literary theory. The second is a segment on rationality — in the psychological sense, not the philosophical one. And the third, on anti-fragility.
On Literary theory, I said: In literary theory, there are many schools that choose to interpret the texts (or ads) in different ways. I can understand the text in some way, but then I have to justify my understanding of the text through a logical argument. If I could not do that, then it’s a reading of the text and not an interpretation. An interpretation that is not logically consistent is not an interpretation, since it can mean two contradicting things at the same time. Each school offers a methodology, a list of tools, and some axioms to start. Interpreting under the same school, two people can give two interpretations of the text. These interpretations need not be compatible. However, each is accepted as a viable interpretation if it is consistent and if it is based on the events and ideas of the text. The events need not be taken literally, but the interpretation does. Unless I aim to interpret the interpretation instead of reading it. Authoritarianism has no place in literary analysis. Not even the author himself dictates the meaning of the text, for that constitutes what is called in literature the intentional fallacy, that is to say, that the text necessarily means X since its author intended that it means X. The author’s interpretation is no more important than the reader’s. What we understand from the text doesn’t have to change because someone else wants us to.
I thought that the ad did not portray women as gullible, but as human beings who can be seduced. I believe that because I believe that the ad could equally work if the genders were reversed. Do we live in such a society? Perhaps not, but who said I have to study the text from a structuralist perspective? Maybe these people (in the ad) were different (from the rest of society). That was my first impression of the ad. People who were angry at others were charmed by Chocolate Bar’s goodness. And what about the violence? I thought it was the imaginations of the men, about what the corresponding women were going to do to them. Were they going to do these things to the women? I do not know. Maybe. That is my interpretation of the text, and it would also be my interpretation of real actions I see with my own eyes. I can guess, only. Does the ad tell us something about humanity? Perhaps it tells us that human beings get into problems because they cannot understand each other; they do not know what the others did. Maybe all the men in the ad did something horribly wrong. Maybe they didn’t. Were the actions of the women wrong? Maybe, maybe not. In general, I have to supply such information to the texts to understand them. I am wholly responsible for the information I add, and it may not be accepted by any other reader. What was the moral of the ads? To me, there can be many morals to such an ad. A moral, in the end, is something we also can build into our interpretations. One moral would be, don’t be duped by something not worth it. This also works with the tragedy of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. Another moral would be, if you did something wrong, fix it with a present — this is a way to deal with humans. This is a moral I ended up with Steinbeck’s Cannery Row. Offering a solution at the moment, even if you are unsure of whether it will work may prove profitable. This is a sentiment I found very strong in Murakami’s fable of The Monkeys of the Shitty Island in his The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle [4].
On Rationality, I said that human beings are rational. In what sense? They are not rational in the sense that all their actions are well-informed, nor are they rational in the sense that they know what’s better for them and choose it. They are rational in the psychological—or economic— sense; i.e. when they consciously perform an action, that action is a means to an end. This can neither be proven nor disproven. It is a framework for understanding events. Why did I talk about this? Because it is perhaps the most essential point about the whole topic. If I see violence, and I act violently without being compelled or threatened, so far as I am conscious, I am responsible for it. No one else is. It doesn’t matter if I am suggestible, nor does it matter that I am susceptible. (Susceptibility is the tendency to act out based on what I was exposed to, without being attentive. It’s what we usually call mindlessness. Susceptible people are the people we generally expect to commit crimes after watching violent films. But an everyday example of susceptibility would be: I saw a Pepsi ad on TV and I went to the fridge to get a Pepsi, without thinking much about the consequences of drinking Pepsi or whether I really wanted to drink it now or save it for later, etc. Whereas suggestibility is the capacity to imitate, obey, or change my ideas, without meditating on what I was exposed to. Suggestibility is essential in hypnosis since the subjects think they ought to follow what they are told, and therefore act out on that thought — no probing of the mind occurs without the subject’s active will. Suggestibility is also the tendency of people to change their opinions on a subject because they were given a certain impression. We all are susceptible and suggestible, but to differing degrees, and about different things.)
We all watch violent movies about murder. We do not go around murdering others. If we saw our brothers slaughtering a chicken and eating it, we are no less responsible because everyone was doing it, if we did it ourselves. Even though everyone is doing something, that does not make it morally permissible. The natural state of man is not reasonability (i.e., people do not naturally form logical arguments, but must learn to do so), but morality demands reasonability. It is not helpful to say that the ads encouraged violence, and therefore they ought to be banned. This is a dismissal of human agency. And if humans are not rational agents, if humans are infinitely susceptible and suggestible, whoso stands forth and claims wisdom over men but a tyrant?
On anti-fragility, I gave my own and less informed opinion, that it is not helpful to shield people from things that we claim would harm them if such harm is not deadly or debilitating. Every teenager may die if left unsupervised. But if he was not left unsupervised, how can he learn some of the basic skills that would make him a healthy adult? There is no blanket solution to such problems. There will always be a risk. We can never know the future. It is impossible, physically even. We have to guess. If our guesses were true, we profit. If they were false, we lose. And so is life. No one is exempt. Are we going to censure such ads, as the attendants of the room wanted? If so, we will have in our midst an authoritarian dictating to us what is helpful and what is harmful. And why should ads that we consider violent be banned? Can we prove that banning them would reduce violence? What would such reasoning lead us to become a soft society, not willing to be exposed to our true nature as violent creatures that can learn to contain their anger and violence? (I cannot deny that I had in my mind Gad Saad and Jordan Peterson in their latest books when they talk about what happens to people when they are not exposed to their violent sides, or even Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Coddling of the American Mind, and how overprotecting people is extremely harmful to them, and it only makes the more vulnerable, and not stronger nor more able to solve their problems. In Peterson’s latest book, there’s a whole section on a patient who would not admit that human beings can be violent and was traumatized at seeing murderous violence up close and personal.)
I presented some of this in the three minutes I was given, focusing on the main points. I presented here the extra explanation which I had no time to give. The head of the room told me that I am able to hold such views because I am a privileged man, and that’s why I couldn’t see the misogyny in the ads. She kept insisting that the ads were objectively offensive. To call the ads subjectively offensive is to dismiss her suffering. I am privileged not to suffer from the ads. I told her that saying the term ‘privileged’ was not very nice of her, but I will excuse her for that — am I not human? Am I incapable of compassion? The issue is not that I do not understand her suffering, but to say that the ad was objectively offensive does not rest at that, but it extends to mean that The Chocolate Bar bears the responsibility of offense and that retribution should be sought. The Chocolate Bar has to either apologize or be punished. In defending her position, she said that we are all privileged, but if I were not constantly exposed to misogyny, I would not understand it. I cannot accept that, since she kept agreeing with every fault any person ‘found’ in the ad, without anyone providing strong evidence for misogyny. The case morphed into something very fishy: Anyone who thinks the ad is offensive now understands her suffering and sees the real underlying misogyny in the ad; everyone who disagrees simply can’t understand. It’s not that I do not want to understand her suffering, but that I have to side with her to avoid being called ruthless, and everyone has to side with her to avoid being called insensitive, and disagreeing with her is enabling domestic violence and adultery. I told her that I found the word ‘privilege’ here offensive since it is a two-fold utterance: It tells me that I can’t understand other people, and it tells me to shut up and accept what she says about the ad. We are all privileged to be alive. No doubt our situations in life are different, and no doubt we may think a little differently because of that, and we may also think completely differently based on that. But did she say it to state a fact? Was it just a statement of fact? If it was, it neither proves nor undermines what I presented; that the ads can be understood not to be misogynistic. They do not have to be interpreted as misogyny. And telling a person he’s wrong because he’s privileged is meaningless. Suppose a Bedoon man was present. Suppose we are less privileged people than he was. Is it acceptable for him to say that the ad exhibits Kuwaiti supremacy, and if we do not accept, are we chauvinists? Suppose the less privileged person says that the ad tells him that all Kuwaitis are rude or dumb and that not accepting his analysis is tantamount to bigotry, should we agree with him? Of course not. He either presents a good argument for that, in which we can all assess and discuss, and settle over the matter reasonably, or his attempt is not reasonable. Moreover, even if one was privileged, he could understand if he tried, as John Donne reminds us “Do not send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.” We are not stupid, and we can be compassionate. She kept on her bitterness, so I exited the room. I wrote an article on the word privilege, why it’s distasteful and unreasonable, and what are its inherent assumptions and bases [5], and published it on this blog.
The Entangled Error:
I tried to discuss the ad with many people, and I felt strong opposition. Many people claimed that I had to accept that the ad was misogynist because women are suffering and dying because of how society disregards them. As if the ad is complicit, or had such a grasp or influence. They claim that such ads reinforce misogyny, without any good justification for their claims. In person after person, I discuss with them, and they tell me that it can be understood to be misogynistic. But because it can be also understood not to be misogynistic, it is not necessarily misogynistic. In fact, when I told a friend that the ad was not disregarding women, and so was Burger King’s ad (more about that in a minute), they told me that I couldn’t know because I am not a woman. I can’t understand then why many intersectional feminists write books on whiteness, who are themselves not white. They also write about masculinity, and they are not men themselves. When I asked some of them where they had access to this knowledge, they said that other men told them. Other women told me the ad was not misogynistic, nor is it sexist. One woman I asked, who was sexually and physically abused said that she understood why some people took offense, but she does not agree with them. I had a friend who had a neutral opinion of the ad. When I told her that the ad demeaned women, she thought that it demeaned women, and then when I told her that there was another explanation, she found that that, too was valid.
This is a tactic many scholars of intersectionality, women studies, gender studies, queer studies, black studies, and the rest of the critical (or as Pluckrose and Lindsay call them, cynical) theories use to get away with being unreasonable. It’s a strong tactic because it works on people. People defend it without seeing the logical flaws in it. Its flaws are apparent to all those who would see it. I call this ultimate flaw, the entangled error.
The entangled error is a sly fallacy. It’s, however, a double-edged sword as well. Someone commits the entangled error fallacy when said person presents an argument whose conclusion is A, but then discovers that the same kind of argument can lead to conclusion B, so changes the premises that do not allow B to be reached while still expecting A to be a conclusion of such an argument. It’s an entangled error because it dismisses that precisely the original premises lead to A and that changing them will change the conclusion to A’, which might be A such that A = A’, but not necessarily.
Suppose that an ad is misogynistic when it presents married men who might be thought of as adulterers placating their wives with food. Suppose, as well, that The Chocolate Bar featured such men doing such acts. Then, The Chocolate Bar’s ad is misogynistic. But this argument is not without its problems. Many feminist books present such men, as an exemplification of misogyny. Then, according to the same argument, such feminist books are misogynistic. Feminists would not agree and say that we have to look at the intent of the feminists. But if the intent was important then the first premise becomes ‘An ad is misogynistic when it presents married men who might be thought of as adulterers placating their wives with food, with the intent of X,’ where X is the real issue. But then, the conclusion, A, that The Chocolate Bar’s ad is misogynistic is no longer viable, as we do not know the intent of the persons who made the ad. The Chocolate Bar made a post saying: “Your enthusiasm is really really really sweet, and so is your love. And of course, women are very precious (and we are also women, so what annoys you annoys us)… But it’s also nice that someone understands the issue well. A lot of problems are caused by misunderstanding, and understanding an issue incorrectly, so the issue does not take the time or the discussion that it deserves. But when we have the goodwill and opinion of the other, and we return the mistreatment and the doubt of the other with kindness and generosity, we can revivify the more important things; the things we can’t find except in the heart.” If the intent of the feminist writer is to be taken at face value, then this written intent is also to be taken at face value, and the argument falls, making The Chocolate Bar not misogynistic. A ≠ A’. The Chocolate Bar’s ad and the feminist book’s logical statuses are entangled; either both are misogynistic, or both are not necessarily misogynistic. This is the fatal logical error my opponents keep falling in without wanting to redress.
If The Chocolate Bar’s ad is subjectively offensive, then there’s no issue, because anything can be subjectively offensive. But if the ad is objectively offensive, then we have to look at all the entangled issues: Some major and important feminists are objectively offensive, since they present men or heterosexuals in a similar manner, with gross generalizations, and swooping unjustified claims. They are objectively offensive. If anyone disagrees, then the premise should be rewritten, and the entangled error might occur again. It can be done infinitely, always to their dismay. In the end, only the truth surfaces, and if they don’t want to play fair, fair play will always win the intellectual battle.
Moreover, whenever someone claims that only some people have access to information X and that others have to believe them on information X and have to push for policies or actions Y to fix the issue, otherwise they would be sexist/racist/bigots, or whatever slander is fashionable — and that no one is allowed to call X into question or be accused of epistemic violence, no one is allowed to call Y into question without being accused of hindering the solutions to the problems that are causing vulnerable people to die — such persons are practicing a game in which only they can win. They seek power and authority. This is not new to mankind. This idea is as old as civilization itself. People do not engage in reason when they talk like that. They are emotionally manipulating others, just like what they tried to do with me.
Burger King, The Chocolate Bar, and the Psychology of Crowds:
A few days before, on International Women’s Day, @BurgerKingUK tweeted [6]: Tweet 1 — “Women belong in the kitchen.” Tweet 2 — “If they want to, of course. Yet only 20% of chefs are women. We’re on a mission to change the gender ratio in the restaurant industry by empowering female employees with the opportunity to pursue a culinary career. #IWD ” Tweet 3 — “We are proud to be launching a new scholarship program that will help female Burger King employees pursue their culinary dreams!” The KFC Gaming Twitter account @kfcgaming replied with a picture of a man with a drawn Colonel Sanders’ face, writing: “The best time to delete this post was immediately after posting it. The second-best time is now.” To which @BurgerKingUK replied: “Why would we delete a tweet that’s drawing attention to a huge lack of female representation in our industry, we thought you’d be on board with this as well. We’ve launched a scholarship to help give more of our female employees the chance to pursue a culinary career.” It becomes apparent that what happened in Kuwait is an international phenomenon of mass hysteria.
I have the conviction that most of us understand that what Burger King tried to do was a ploy to attract attention. If people think that minimizing the disparity between the numbers of men and women in the restaurant industry is honorable, the acceptance and admiration of the people to Burger King would increase. If not, and such things are dishonorable in the target culture, it will decrease. It was an attempt. It backfired. We all understand why it backfired. Maybe it didn’t backfire. Maybe they wanted to tell us that they would fire any person who would put such an ad, as a Machiavellian tactic. We cannot know their intentions. Maybe the person in charge was trying to be passive-aggressive towards women, costing the company thousands of pounds through trickery. Maybe they truly wanted to reach the greatest number of people. We can’t know. We have to choose what to understand from it. We can’t say, it means A, since it might mean B. We can’t say we are injured from the ad without providing good evidence. The same scheme applies here: It’s not fair to say, as a woman, I felt offended — and therefore, the ad was offensive, with the expectation that you will be compensated for the offense. The ad was offensive to you. It was not offensive to others. You can equally find offense elsewhere. Perhaps every act can be interpreted offensively. How can we dictate whether such a thing is offensive or not? We cannot. We choose to call some actions offensive when they are blatantly offensive. When there’s physical aggression against persons or their properties. When there is a threat of violence. Else, out of civility, we remain quiet. We can say, that if I were put in their shoes, I would not have done the same. But that’s the limit of what we can do. The word offensive, otherwise, would not mean anything significant! Everything is offensive — something taught in all Women’s Studies courses. It makes everyone enraged and bitter. It undermines the word offensive, and it undermines real physical or emotional offense targeted at people. We can’t even ask if they are offended by the ad itself to whom they subject their harassment or by the structure of our society that puts real limitations on women and puts policies that cause harm to women and reduce their freedoms.
In Mary Shelley’s great novel, Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein’s younger brother William is murdered. Victor sees the monster he had created in the vicinity of the corpse and suspects his monster to have committed the murder. However, a woman called Justine is accused, because she has in her pocket a picture of Caroline Frankenstein, Victor, and William’s mother, which he held in his pocket before his death. Victor knows Justine is innocent, but cannot tell a soul because he would be called crazy. She is unjustly tried, the mob consisting of village idiots not being able to comprehend that the burden of proof lies on them, and not on her. She now understands that no one will stand with her, and so she confesses the murder without actually perpetrating it, since she starts to doubt herself, and also because of the unbearable sense of guilt that everyone thinks she’s a murderer. She understood that it was no use arguing with a mob. Especially that the least capable of them will be the first to pounce on her. They don’t respond to reason. You reply to one of them and then have to give the same reply to the other person, ad-nauseam. Their attacks do not cease. We call them electronic flies when they are online. Even if she was right, how can she prove to them that she is innocent if they will not discuss with her the issue with civility and respect? Can she prove she is right if the crowd is not reasonable? She cannot because the crowd gets what it gets, and it considers itself correct because of its numbers. Reason, real discussion, and argument will not work here. This situation turns out not to be restricted to village idiots, but also to educated individuals; it is ingrained in us as human beings.
We have a tendency to think that a crowd of people is influenced, and act and think in concert. There is no external mind through which they think, but their actions can be understood through this framework. To treat crowds as a single entity. Some thinkers, like LeBon [7] and Bernays [8], present such ideas in their books. That is not to say that their ideas necessarily conflict with methodological individualism [9], but that treating crowds as entities is an easy and useful tool.
I like to reinvoke methodological individualism in the analysis of crowd actions. If a crowd did X, the persons in the crowd believe that they might be exempt from persecution, or that they are more suggestible and susceptible in these circumstances. If many people are doing X, maybe X is correct after all. Otherwise, why are so many people doing it? If some persons in the crowd suggest that their collective action will yield the result Y, maybe that’s what it will do — and thinking Y is honorable, the means might justify the ends. The means end up becoming the ends, with time as Milton Friedman reminds us [10]. Each person is always responsible, but in a crowd, every person thinks he is less responsible. Therefore, people attack targets en masse since that allows them to easily neutralize their target and with lesser damage to themselves. I don’t think any solution would do except to hold all of them accountable for their action. When crowds attack Burger King or The Chocolate Bar, they do not think of their targets as human beings. Burger King and The Chocolate Bar are inhuman corporations to them. But there are people who will be damaged by such an attack, and the attackers will justify their attacks in any way possible to escape moral accountability. The people in the crowd usually think that someone thought this all true, and so these people can cling to that person. If you ask anyone for his justification, he might not know much but what is supplied to him, or what he perceives, which is a shallow understanding of the whole event.
My Support for The Chocolate Bar, and the Attack that Ensued:
I realized on Twitter that ideology was so strong, and there was no pushback. To be an intellectual in the Kuwaiti intellectual climate is to be leftist-progressive in the vein of progressive-leftism in the United States. This is becoming increasingly so. To not agree with them in their claims, which are often wrong, is considered by them bigotry. To deny that the ad is perpetuating the very same ideas that cause the wage gap and the assault, murder, and rape of women is toxic masculinity. To deny that the ‘wage gap’ is caused by bigotry and misogyny makes you exhibit fragile masculinity. To deny that the ad was offensive is to trample on their vulnerabilities. As if it was impossible to tell them that we’re in mass psychosis. We are projecting onto the ad what we do not like about our society. We are using our projections and our sense of moral superiority to dehumanize the other. We are right because we are hurt. Others have to accept that we are right in that they are wrong. They have to apologize for being wrong. Little by little, everyone has to comply. This is the seed that is sprouting in the west. We are bringing it here. The ideologues — those adopting cultural-Marxist ideologies (radical, as opposed to classical feminism; progressivism; intersectionality; critical feminist theory and critical race theory; colonialism and postcolonialism) have brought their ideology here. They now want to test the allegiances of the people.
I understood that if I did not clarify that issue, no one I know will do it. I thought it would not cause the uproar that it did, at least not the hundreds of replies to this tweet, and several other tweets, and many others through the DM, all harsh and condescending. So, I plucked up the courage and called The Chocolate Bar and ordered from them. I wanted to support them. I wouldn’t have ordered if people were not harsh with them. They want The Chocolate Bar to apologize. And once it does, that would be used against them as proof that their intention was wrong. A very malevolent tactic indeed. Their ad was filled with gesticulation. It was not misogynistic. No one uttered anything against women. It can be portrayed to be anti-women, but it could also easily be portrayed to be pro-women due to its abstractness. I did not see anything wrong with it. If someone saw something wrong with it, he or she could easily voice their opinions. I would not accept their opinions unless I agreed with them, and I would not agree with them unless they provided a very strong argument. But no one did. And I think that threatening The Chocolate Bar with lawsuits is a barbaric and uncivil action, and once I heard that they were doing that, I felt that it was crossing the line. That boycotting it was unnecessary — that society needs not to comply with our every belief. That we cannot dictate the meanings and adopt Maoist methods against those who do not accept these interpretations. That tolerance is key. Things that might appear to be offensive might not really be offensive, upon second consideration.
The ice cream arrived, and hell broke loose [11]. I wrote: “I ordered ice cream from @TheChocoBar today to show solidarity with them, —against the ideologues and against those who want to engineer society according to their wishes, and against those who want to censure any speech that does not agree with their thoughts, —and it turned out to be really good. The ice cream was sweet and delicious, the ad was nice and was not insulting nor inciting, and I wish great and sustainable success to the restaurant.” They saw it as provocative, but they did not see any of the vitriol they spewed as provocative as well. We have moved so far towards a leftist agenda that they scarcely realize it. They completely separate their activitisms from the ideologies that are creeping towards us. No one sees that he’s so dogmatic. They can’t even think critically about these issues anymore; they are always on the defensive, often without understanding the ideological and historical roots of their strongly held opinions. This applies to academics, as well as laymen. They think I am emotionless and lack compassion when I do not agree with them, or call for other, opposing, ideas. They think that I am a devil, inhuman and inhumane. No one considered Miss Nouf Al-Mutawa for example, who I do not doubt has suffered. No one considered that the loss from sales would eventually affect the employees — a responsibility jointly shared by The Chocolate Bar and those attacking it.
I received colorful responses. Dalal says: “The problem is that some people don’t see the ad as insulting.” This is a woman who attacks me at every chance she gets. I have been nice to her in the past, but that kindness was misplaced it seems. Fatimah, a woman I do not know, said: “Men privilege at its finest …” I don’t know if she attended the Clubhouse room, or even read the article I wrote earlier, but so be it. Someone named Dama wrote: “Adnan? Who is the measure here? Is it not the person himself? And when a group of people considered it insulting, where’s the problem? What’s troubling you?” She speaks as if I directed the attack towards her. They try to project my speech against themselves and respond to me. Of course, I am the measure of feeling insulted. But if claiming to be insulted is coupled with claiming that the other party is insulting, it becomes real trouble. The claims I responded to were not that the ad was subjectively, but objectively, offensive. The claims turned out to be unfounded after listening to the opinions of many people. A friend, Manar, wrote: “That’s just embarrassing. Adnan is the same person I used to tell you guys about. Degrees and books and culture and science, and in the end, this is how he thinks. And for the millionth time, if you were a male, you do not have the right to say or decide if something is offensive or not. It’s embarrassing that because you’re ‘against feminists’ you support violence and insulting women.” As if I did support violence and insulting women. How easy it would be to attack me if I had done such things. But I didn’t do any such thing, and it’s just lazy to claim unrightly that I am so and so to attack me. And also, as if I am against all feminists, not like I specified which feminists I am particularly against — the radicals, and not the classicals; as I mentioned tens of times, I agree with classical feminism, but not radical and intersectional feminism. Israa says: “And they say we are emotional and with a half-mind and a half-piety.” Someone with the nickname Kingpin wrote: “And I said I read his tweets somewhere, then I remembered that when someone said that sanitary pads should be distributed for free, or [subsidized] he said ‘No, and I do not accept.’ That’s hilarious.” Whereas in the incident she talked about, I just asked why. But apparently, we are not supposed to ask about what happens to public money when it concerns women, even if it also concerns men, and even if it would raise the costs/prices of sanitary pads for women as well. Shurouq said: “I agree that the ad was not insulting at all. I don’t know why people are embittered. This is reality. Males are always doing stupid things, and cheating (their spouses) and because they’re cowards instead of admitting their mistakes and fixing them, and appropriately apologizing, they choose the easy way to fix the issue by escaping it altogether.” Shurouq doesn’t have to apologize for her misandry, because in their crooked intellectual framework, sexism cannot be targeted against men — the straight-white-able-bodied-neurotypical-man is fair game. Rawan said: “Regardless of the naivety in the tweet, as clarification, the ad insulted both men and women. It showed that men are always cheating in their marriages and that women are irrational and easily appeased by lowly actions like these, and it demeaned the marriage institution between the spouses, which ought to be lofty and clear of this filth.” If she only knows what Angela Davis, BLM, and critical race theory think about the marriage institution and the nuclear family. Abdul-Aziz said: “I personally am not surprised by this contemptible and filthy person, as the creature in Kuwait usually eats, drinks, copulates, and has no moral value nor even any human value, but his god and his religion are money. And this mentally deranged person is the best example of a ‘pig’ who worships money and shoes.” To which his friend Abdul-Rahman replies: “One of the most dangerous curses in our society is the existence of those rude privileged people!! He makes human rights issues shallow, stupid and trivial and gains acceptance from a variety of people. I swear to God, it’s wrong to treat these issues this way!!!” These two sociopaths both studied politics, and advocate social justice, but apparently, do not understand that argument has to counter argument; they are intellectually incapable of arguing, and so they resort to name-calling; the last refuge of the scoundrel. Danah said: “I understand that Internalized misogyny sits somewhere in most of us.. but proceeding to ‘proudly support’ businesses that push denigrating ideologies and prejudice towards women doesn’t sit right with me. Not surprised it’s coming from the privileged sex tho.” It doesn’t surprise me anymore that people can’t see how brainwashed they are. How hard it is to ask who I meant in the tweet; they felt the attack targeted them because they have the internalized understanding that they are the ideologues I am talking about. Danita said: “Honestly, males are too emotional. Imagine you order from a restaurant and waste your money only to show solidarity with an ad that demeans women and eases infidelity and violence, and he talks instead of her if it was insulting or not! Do you think the motivation was only sentimental? Or something else?” Amna said: “I will order from Chocolate Bar tomorrow,” and someone called Noura responded to her, “You won’t get a groom with your order, don’t get too excited.” Noura can’t see that she is the person women do not want to be with, the bitter and cruel woman filled with hatred towards other women who do not agree with her on her authoritarianism. Shahad wrote: “It makes sense now,” accompanied by a screen-capture of a joke I wrote on International Women’s Day. Someone with the nickname complicated. replied: “Hahahaha Now those who refuse normalizing male infidelity are the ideologues? The ad is extremely insulting, and immoral. And I am surprised that such a serious subject which is harmful and sensitive like infidelity is presented as if it’s something acceptable and funny and society deals with male infidelity as if it’s something natural and pats men on the head while blaming women for his adultery.” The same bitter and resentful Noura from before said: “No matter how male supremacist you were, and your image of women is lowly, do not justify an ad or think of supporting it with putting your spoons on a couch like this, I don’t know how you’ll eat from them, honestly.” The very same Abdul-Rahman who considers himself the savior of the masses, wrote: “The hippopotamus is a slow animal when measuring his activity. This animal sleeps from 16 to 20 hours a day. The hippo is not easily appeased, and he can close his eyes almost anywhere. Usually in the night, this animal gets hungry and moves about, searching for The Chocolate Bar’s ice cream.” Of course, Abdul-Rahman once misunderstood the joke I wrote and reprimanded me, and then when I called him and explained the joke to him, he apologized superficially and deleted the tweet. It’s very obvious how much hatred he’s harboring towards me, and I don’t even know the guy. But you will always meet such people, who cannot handle their infinite hate for others, so they mask it with social justice.
This all happened on Friday, and it was hilarious, but also eerie. They keep accusing me of calling them ideologues, but I only called those who wanted to punish the company, as the business-hating sentiment is rife in the West and here as well — proving that they were the ideologues. They agree with their friends who say that the ad is objectively offensive while replying to me in utmost hypocrisy that people felt subjective offense and therefore, I have no right telling them not to be offended. I phoned my friend, and we were laughing at the pig and the hippo comments mostly. Not one person who replied to the tweet asked me why I wrote this. Not one person of those who attacked me discussed my ideas with me. I bet they don’t even know to whom this is directed, or to whom it is deserving. I told my friend that it was wrong of me to do this now, as I had a very busy month in March, and should have done it later — (but if not now, when?).
It seems that people could rationalize their anger in any way they wanted to. They can claim that they are not angry with themselves but for the dispossessed. They will dehumanize each other. No one presented an argument telling me exactly how it was offensive. Have they read my previous comments about the differences between radical and classical feminism? (An upcoming article will clarify these differences.) Of course, it is perfectly acceptable to claim that the ad was offensive to you. But it’s not acceptable to claim that it was offensive in general, as it is not — we can choose to interpret it in ways that are offending, and in ways that are not offending. I opened a Clubhouse room that same night to tell people how I perceived the ad since I was sure they did not know my opinions on the ads. I re-explained literary analysis, attribution theory, psychological rationality, etc. I then opened up the room for debate, but still, no one presented a valid argument. I am convinced that we are in mass hysteria. People generally do not understand that if the ad was offensive, then that would not only mean that the ad was offensive, but many more things are offensive. What is offensive in the ad will have to be generalized, and all the implications have to be true as well. When I claim that X is true, implicit in that claim is the truthfulness of all the implications of X. If the ad was offensive, then it is offensive for a reason. Did someone say that women are stupid? No. Were the women in the ad stupid? Maybe, we don’t know. If we assumed they were stupid, it was our fault, not the ads. Maybe the women understood that they were wrong to look at their partners with accusations. The women did not appear to be stupid to me, but very human. I don’t judge people based on very short intervals that do not tell me much about their characters, so I was surprised that this became the norm in analyzing the ad. And even if all the women in the ad are stupid, that does not necessarily mean that the ad wants to normalize treating women as stupid human beings. That’s the problem.
The Moral Argument for the Ad:
As a final attempt, I wrote a thread on Twitter, in which I wrote: “All works of literature (and ads can be construed as works of literature), are interpretable. I might think that a literary piece is insulting to men, meanwhile, a woman might think it is empowering to women. All interpretations are acceptable, so long as we justify them, and this is the basis of literary theory. There are many ways to interpret, and many interpretations of the same piece. And we choose how to interpret the text, if we were not given information clearly, or if the work did not dictate to us the events. These are the axioms of literary theory. I studied them from textbooks on literary theory, from books on epistemology, and hundreds of literary pieces. We should not vehemently bash literary works because we do not like them. Those who want to sue The Chocolate Bar, or even claim that anyone who doesn’t see misogyny in the ad is a male chauvinist — such a person has been brain-washed and programmed. Every work has a justified and acceptable interpretation. Who are we to force others to understand the text in such a way? We choose to feel offense after we choose to interpret the text. If being offended annoys us, we can either avoid the content or reinterpret it. To approach the law here is immoral. It is abusing the system and enforcing our ideas onto others. I believe that the work does not normalize infidelity or violence, nor that it tells us that women are sentimental and stupid. And I believe that many who claimed that it did such a thing did not provide viable interpretations supported by logical arguments. And to say that I can never understand because I am a man is wrong and demeaning and extremely superficial.”
I have been soft on interpretation so far, but here, I will present a moral argument through an interpretation of the ads. The ads can be seen as human beings engaging in actions (or finding themselves in situations) that might appear to be shady at first but turn out not to be so shady. Still, others might think we are in the wrong. The men in the ad imagined their partners murdering them because of the current circumstances. How did they act? They could have told their spouses, what? He is my son, and I want to shave his head, or I am just dancing in this club, and I did nothing wrong. But they didn’t in fear of their partners. So what did they do? They offered their partners’ favorite sweets to cool down the situation and allow for peaceful and civil discussion. Maybe the ads are telling us that when in doubt, we can solve our issues in the same way. Then why are all of them, women? My interpretation would work just as well if all of them were men. Some women are real maniacs, and they might burn their partners’ cars or houses or maybe kill their husbands, but such women were no such women. They thought their partners did X, and they were either disappointed or enraged. The ad is not necessarily representative of all societies. Maybe the ad addresses these women and no other women. We can’t just supply one set of circumstances and universalize them. These women behaved this way. If other women were in the ads, they might have behaved in other ways. The ad is not an analysis of the psychological structure of women’s minds. The ad doesn’t have to portray exemplary people. It doesn’t have to show us our heroes. It is not there to give us our role models. (Why have not those feminists who attacked me behaved in the ways they wanted other feminists to behave?) The ad put three women and three men. The ad never said that all women behaved like this. It did not say all men behaved like this. We can’t use, why are all women in the ad angry, for the same reason we can’t say, why are all beardless men dancing? It’s just stupid and wrong reasoning. We can use it, and we can opt out of using it. But when we use it, we use it within the frame of our interpretation, never out of it. If all men called Adnan sitting in my house on this desk writing this article wore glasses, I cannot aim my accusation at God or society for representing all such Adnans this way. The ad is not morally obliged to represent all of society. It represented some people, in a certain problem, solving that problem in a similar way. And it works. There may not have been any infidelity in the ad. We assumed it. There may not have been any actual violence in the ad, affecting the people in the ad, but imagined violence. To not be able to separate what has happened and what has been imagined in the ad is to fail at literary analysis: We can claim that the violence happened to the characters in the ad, or it was simply imagined by them. But that is something we supply. The ad never said women are stupid. They may or may not have been pacified by chocolate. Maybe they schemed to exact revenge after they were treated to their favorite dishes. Who knows? In my description above of the ad, I intended to show the violence through my writing. Many people have not realized this amount of violence in the ad. Such people are not violent in real life. They would understand violent action if they saw it in front of their eyes. But they understood that this was an ad. An ad is not representative of the world. An ad does not have to be our moral guide. If the ad was offensive, it was our choice — it is not offensive in the absolute, but offensive through our understanding of it. We want it to be offensive to us, to address the issues annoying us in the real world. The ad is innocent, and it is great. And to have us talk about all of this, I believe the ad has been a great success. I rest my case.
Closure:
I discovered soon enough that this was a losing battle. That it’s no use wasting time with a lynch mob in their witch-hunt. No matter what I say, I can never convince people who would attack me personally when I have tried for two days to argue with them. All they told me was that I was privileged. If I dared to say that when radical feminists say that men are necessarily (and by definition) sexist, I am not allowed to call this offensive, because they claim this to be the truth, and are attempting to reshape the language we talk with so that this becomes ‘true.’ But to say that an ad that would not be considered offensive 10 years from now, and is magically offensive today, without anyone presenting a good argument why it should be considered objectively offensive — like how calling someone I don’t know a pig or a hippo, or a male-chauvinist is objectively offensive — but calling people I don’t know pigs or hippos or male-chauvinists is magically not offensive anymore, this escapes me. It’s not because of a newfound awareness of misogyny. It’s hypocrisy, pure and simple. And it’s not only those who commented — who would by normal standards be considered contemptible and irrational fools but are now fighting for a noble cause — but the hypocrisy extends to include many of the people I once respected on Twitter. I realized that many people harbored such ill sentiments toward me, no matter how kind I was towards them. It’s futile to be their friend if they will attack you at any moment, without even asking you what you meant. Not one person of those who attacked me asked me what I meant, who I meant, why I said such a thing. The opposite party can be arbitrarily harsh without causing any kind of controversy. Only one side can be wrong, the other’s sins are forgiven before they are even attempted. I said, if this is the kind of people I have to surround myself with: People who I have to be bound by morality around, but who are not constrained by morality themselves, then I do not appreciate their company nor am I honored by their friendship. They have avoided discussion with me on these topics in the past, and no matter how nice I tried to be it doesn’t matter to them — if the party doesn’t like me, they have to show allegiance to the party; they are not allowed to think the other thought. Only what is dictated to them is true. I do not like this nihilism and cynicism: They will consider this an exaggeration on my part but will realize that it is quickly creeping on us, and it has the potential to swiftly alter our moral foundations. I can reach my friends easily outside of Twitter, so I will not be using the app anymore. I deleted the app from my phone and focused on the issues I had at hand, and I wondered why I didn’t do this a long time ago.
“Human nature is full of riddles and contradictions; its very complexity engenders art—and by art I mean the search for something more than simple linear formulations, flat solutions, and oversimplified explanations. One of these riddles is: how is it that people who have been crushed by the sheer weight of slavery and cast to the bottom of the pit can nevertheless find the strength to rise up and free themselves, first in spirit and then in body; while those who soar unhampered over the peaks of freedom suddenly appear to lose the taste for freedom, lose the will to defend it, and, hopelessly confused and lost, almost begin to crave slavery. Or again: why is it that societies which have been benumbed for half a century by lies they have been forced to swallow find within themselves a certain lucidity of heart and soul which enables them to see things in their true perspective and to perceive the real meaning of events; whereas societies with access to every kind of information suddenly plunge into lethargy, into a kind of mass blindness, a kind of voluntary self-deception.”
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN
Notes:
[1] https://youtu.be/XH95FN2O1YY
[2] https://youtu.be/nyBA2159WAY
[3] https://youtu.be/_Gr5LY_FVyk
[4] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6945091-do-you-know-the-story-of-the-monkeys-of-the
[5] derbeelq8.com, A Disappreciation of the Term ‘Privilege.’
[6] https://www.freepressjournal.in/viral/burger-king-says-women-belong-in-the-kitchen-to-promote-new-scholarship-programme-draws-flak
[7] Gustave LeBon, The Psychology of Crowds.
[8] Edward Bernays, Propaganda.
[9] Joseph Schumpeter, Methodological Individualism.
[10] Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (The University of Chicago press, 40th anniversary edition, p.22 – 23).
[11] I posted about my ice cream in these two posts: https://twitter.com/Alabbar94/status/1370356947359260673?s=20; https://twitter.com/Alabbar94/status/1370388998275923968?s=20
Surra,
May, 2021.
Derbeel Q8 