Tuesday, 11 June 2013

Zygmunt Bauman's "Solidarity: A Word In Search of Flesh"

Zygmunt Bauman, author of the "Liquid Series" on late or "liquid" Modernity, with a look at how the individualism and consumerism that informs so much of Modernity undermines the community and solidarity that was build by "Producers".

http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2013-05-08-bauman-en.html

Monday, 10 June 2013

In defense of gentleness?

The Bible says that the meek shall inherit the earth.

Perhaps it means some other earth, because in the days of half hour soaps being a continuous volley of vicious insults, in the days of entire blogs dedicated to vitriol,- the gentle are getting trampled.

I think that gentleness (like so many other words that have become 'bad' words) has had its meaning twisted.  People now confuse it to mean meekness or weakness - and who wants to be seen as weak?!  Weakness means getting taken advantage of; it means being at the bottom of the social heap.  Who wants that?  Come on!

Except people who trip all over themselves to prove that they are not gentle are missing the point.  In their race to prove that they are tough and can take all punches, they are simply proving their own weakness.

Were the Suffragists (headed by Milicent Fawcett) weak when they campaigned for rights for women, and stood up for social change?  They were gentle, yes - they didn't have the destructive yet admittedly attention grabbing tactics of their sister organisation, the Suffragettes - but weak?  Anybody who could stand up and publicly flout the conventions of her time could hardly be called weak, I think.

And yet, and yet.  It seems that anybody who doesn't fall into the 'get other people before they get you' mentality is seen as somehow....off.  Inferior - almost as though something is wrong with them.  As though they have not yet put away childish things and accepted that in this world, it is dog eat dog, and it can't be any other way.  Which is a pitiful way of looking at the world, if you ask me.

Think of Octavia Hill, Josephine Butler or Florence Nightingale.  They were all women who stood up and did extraordinary things.  What they did flouted the conventions of their time, both for their sex and their class - all these women must have had extraordinary reserves of strength to keep on as they did.  Again, not really what one could call weak.

It is time to stop accepting this conflation of gentle and weak.  I know plenty of gentle people who nonetheless manage to survive in the outside world.  I'm sure you do too.  Have a look.