When Lips Are Sealed

Boy with tape over mouth

Rewind to 13-years ago, I’m reading a curiously worn paperback… the story of a man, who refused to watch the news…

I laughed the book away, but later it bit me: He was smart. He was smart to avoid the emotional overwhelm, and the numbing that follows.

You might ask, “Andrew - what you on?”, what overwhelm?

The business model of the media is selling adverts. The more people read and watch, the more they get paid. This means your attention is their product, and keeping it is their paycheck.

Today’s media policy:

“If It Bleeds, It Leads”¹

— Unknown

It’s not always obvious, so I ask:

When was the last time you cried at a news report?
When did the horror of a bombing stick with you for days?
When did the death of a Soldier have you grieving for their family and children?

Respectfully, if you watched it on TV, I guess you didn’t.

…and if you think the media is impartial, it’s a lie. Today, televised war is read by embedded reporters, given a stream of news by the military themselves.

Nobody does propaganda like the British Empire - heck, we didn’t just colonise India, we re-wrote their history. The rest of the world has caught up to us.

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes

— Mark Twain

Step forward 10-years and I’m reading 1984. A book written in a time when a spin-doctor must’ve been a strange kids toy.

A book about a dystopian future, where the masses are controlled through double-think, their minds riddled with a fog of confusion so strong they are guided like sheep through their lives.

Where the Ministry of Peace fights wars & the Ministry of Truth rewrites the past to it’s own ends.

A peculiar book, but more disturbing once you’ve read it. You start to see the unseen narratives and verbal slights of hand.

You might not know this, but some extremist groups use unintended deaths as a recruiting cry against their enemies. In the West, we call these same deaths “Friendly Fire” following a “Targeted Strike”…

No matter the words you choose, it wasn’t friendly, and they weren’t targeted.²

You can’t beat people into believing your ideology, but you can silence opposition.

— May as well been the the Gestapo, the KGB, the Third Reich or any oppressive regime.

…and fast-forward to today. As an American president opens his mouth, his voice throws petrol over already inflamed crowds. The media sits to one side, relaxing and sipping champagne as their assistants fan the flames.

Not too far down the street is Feminism 5.0, a media-based deformation of equal rights moulded in the socially acceptable shape of Girl Power, and magnified to only a few steps from open hostility.

Inside Government, they say they support diversity, but when the workers arrive they say “No! only some of you can work here. We need to prove we are diverse.”

Their planners scheme to protect themselves. We can’t hire based on race - that would be racist, but we must prove we’re diverse somehow… Someone erupts - “I’ve got it!”, “Let’s advertise in a small ethnic area and hire from there!”

…and now we’re “culturally diverse”.

I say bullshit: If Asian-parents drive their children to become skilled Doctors or Pharmacists, why should they be denied a job when a less skilled, light-skinned & straight British person would meet a quota.

I believe everyone should have equal opportunity, regardless of sex, creed, colour, religion or any other theme. It’s not popular, it’s not shocking, but it’s the right thing to do.

If they choose not to use their opportunity, that’s okay. But they should have the choice… Not only that, their imagination should be fed so they can see themselves using it.

This does not mean that others are forced upon you, but rather it’s a dance together with our differences, and the themes that unite all humanity: Connection, Love, Respect, and so much more.

This idealism is lovely, but I’m not entirely sold that this can be enforced with any metric, some examples:

If more Women than Men choose to be Nurses, should men get a hiring advantage?
If more Men than Women choose to work in jobs with risk to life and limb, would it be right to hire exclusively women to meet a quota?

I believe both examples are sexist, in both directions. Nothing can be perfect, but surely there are better ways? Here’s an idea:

If 15% of applicants for Nurse roles are Men.

Target 15% of applicants to be Male.
Target 85% to applicants to be Female.³

This would of course break down with smaller numbers - what if you have 3-applicants and only 1-job to give?.. and offers an easy loophole of under-reporting applicants of an undesired sex.

The real-world has many problems.

It’s now past midnight, and I’m scrambling to link this back to the title you clicked on… but before that a quick story:

Dan: Do you know the story about the Zen master and the little boy?

Charlie: Oh, is this something from Nitsa, the Greek witch of Aquilippa, Pennsylvania?

Dan: Yeah, as a matter of fact, it is. There was a little boy, and on his 14th birthday he gets a horse.

And everybody in the village says, “How wonderful! The boy got a horse.”

And the Zen master says, “We’ll see.”

Two years later, the boy falls off the horse, breaks his leg. And everybody in the village says, “How terrible!”

And the Zen master says, “We’ll see.”

Then a war breaks out, and all the young men have to go off and fight, except the boy can’t ‘cause his leg’s all messed up. And everybody in the village says, “How wonderful!”

And the Zen master says, “We’ll see.”

So you get it?

Charlie: No. No, I don’t ‘cause I’m stupid.

Dan: You’re not stupid. You’re just in Congress

— Charlie Wilson’s War (screenplay by Aaron Sorkin)

I remember years ago, some psychologist was describing how the deadliest shooting in Norway since WW2 happened. In particular, the story was about the lone shooter.

The specifics are unimportant here, but the pattern is very relevant. People didn’t listen to him, so he rejected them for extreme groups, when they stopped listing, he rejected them also… and so through rejection, he ended up isolated. The only person left to talk him down was gone. Years later, he attacked.

I hear a pattern similar to this every time I hear a mass-shooting incident in the USA.

Flipping to the more positive, there is some beautiful research on empathy. My favourite involved 2 subjects from violently opposing groups, and simply asked them to sit and stare into the eyes of the other. In silence. For 15-minutes. Some broke into tears, others hugged, but all were changed: They saw a fellow human being.

So before you blast someone on social media… beware:

Stupidity is more common than malice.
Emotion makes things black and white, learn to absorb the shades of grey.
When you think you know the answers… “We’ll see”

…but not all people are willing to have that conversation. Most are only willing to react, to lash out, like a child.

When it’s safe: Speak up, bring calm, bring humility.

Extreme ideas and beliefs only survive… when lips are sealed.

To your good health, Andrew McAuley

Photo by Jackson Simmer on Unsplash

1 As an aside, Deborah Serani Psy.D. did a well researched piece on this topic, Understanding Fear-based Media (2011). ↩

2 If you’re from the military, you might be feeling a little ostracized at this point. I want to be clear - while I often disagree with the politics, I have the upmost respect for men and women willing to put themselves in harms way. Whether that’s for people at home, or the person next to you, you have my respect. ↩

3 To those of non-binary genders, I have to apologise. I’m keeping this simple to make a point, but I am very aware you should have a slice of this as well. ↩