High jumping...straight out of the blocks
One of the more hysterical members of our current Loyal Opposition recently stooped to the lowest level of polemic by branding a recently-appointed minister unfit for office because he (yes, it was a ‘he’) had professed to be a fan of a particular 20th Century writer – Ayn Rand – whose crime (and therefore his crime by association) was to invent a particular type of individualism called Objectivism. Somehow, the aforementioned screechy MP had made a swivel-eyed link between Objectivism and – quote – ‘extreme right libertarianism’.
Well, it went on Twitter, so it must be so. On the other hand, if you are one of those who doesn’t take their adopted opinions straight from Twitter, look up the relevant terms and form your own conclusions.
Objectivism is really just Aristotlean individualism given yet another pimping up. But it’s the scattergun use of this word extreme that really gets The Grasshopper’s back legs rubbing. As soon as you can add this to the label, well, so much the better for damning your opponent to the Ninth Circle of Hell.
The Grasshopper ranted recently about his concern on loss of individualism to one whose opinion he values and she roundly disagreed. Her argument, which I conceded to be fair at the time, was that we see individualism writ large all around us, don’t we? Surely, in our post-modern society, anybody can go out and dress differently, act differently, protest differently, be different.
But then I thought, but ay, there’s the rub. To be seen as individual today, you need to be extreme. Playing mixology with the metaphors, you need to do the high jump straight out of the blocks.
Is ‘extreme’ the same as ‘individual’? Hmm. It seems to me that being in the mainstream and remaining individual is becoming more and more different. The signal-to-noise ratio is too low. Which allows the extremely noisy individuals in society – government, media, social ‘scientists’ and knee takers of all forms – to make themselves look like the majority, while the true majority grows quieter. Until a vote comes along - like Brexit and the more recent elections - which the media (who think the minority is the majority, because they all drink the same cool aid together) gets completely wrong.
And that’s when the quiet ones speak.