Tag: education

Common sense does not seem so common these days

We are living in some strange times indeed. Safe spaces, words being considered as violence, trigger warnings, collective guilt based on your ethnic origins and/or the colour of your skin. These are just a handful of recent manifestations of collectivist thinking which has led to an increasing absence of critical thought or what was once just referred to as common sense. Simply put, common sense is becoming less and less common in the modern world and that is not something we should applaud as a society.

A Brief History of Common Sense

The history of the term “common sense” can be traced back to the 14th century but truly took hold during the American Revolution during the 18th century. Thomas Paine authored the revolutionary pamphlet Common Sense which had a profound influence on the desire for American independence from Great Britain. The 50-page pamphlet sold over 500,000 copies in a few short months at the beginning of 1776 and paved the way for the ratification of the Declaration of Independence on July 4 of that same year.

Fast forward just over a couple of centuries. I believe the phrase “common sense” began to receive negative reaction from the public and media back in the 1990s. Like many words/phrases which take a negative turn with the average person, politics usually creates that negativity. This stigma, which now seems attached to the term “common sense”, can be traced (at least in Canada) back to the Common Sense Revolution which was a slogan of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario when they ran the province from 1995 – 2002. Other countries, such as Australia, adopted similar slogans to combat a growing social democratic movement in western democracies.

Now in the wake of the negative blowback to some of that Mike Harris led PC government’s deep cuts to program funding, it appears that the term “common sense” is now under attack from the extreme left.

“In order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive.” Jordan B. Peterson

Think about the meaning of this quote carefully. What it means to me is at the very root of a free society that we should all have the right to express ourselves no matter how offended some people may be by what someone says. The idealogues will counter that free speech does not mean mean speech free from consequences. The problem is that exactly who determines what will be the consequences of speech deemed to be offensive? Even further, who is the arbiter of what makes certain speech offensive? After all, what is offensive to one person or group is not offensive to other individuals or groups.

We have learned from historical events that the litmus test for acceptable speech should never be what is supported by the majority of society. Should the standard of “majority rules” have been the case throughout history we would still believe the world is flat, slavery would still be acceptable and women would not be allowed to participate freely in the workforce let alone vote in elections. In all those cases it was a determined and motivated minority who were able to change the status quo. (side note, I find it a troubling occurrence in today’s world that we as a society often judge individuals from 50, 100 or even 200 years ago through today’s moral lens. Maybe this will be a topic for another day).

The best way to counter “bad” or “offensive” speech is always by taking it head-on and engaging with those who speak in a way that is deemed offensive. Said more simply, the best way to counter this type of speech is with more speech – not less. Free speech should not be afforded just to those who share the same opinions and ideals as the majority of society. Should that become the case we will live in a dystopian world similar to the fictional one from George Orwell’s novel 1984 where the thought police tell us what to think and say at all times. Protecting free speech is about protecting all speech not just the speech we support.

There is a further point I often make when speaking with my children as it relates to so-called offensive language. I believe this is even a more important discussion in today’s world of social media which allows people to say things they would never say in-person. Should anyone find themselves in a situation where they are offended by words their first response should not be to silence the alleged perpetrator. Rather, I believe they should look inward to discover why the words are offending them and further, why the person saying them should carry any meaning in their life. Also, assess why the person is using offensive language (for example, in my experience in a debate/argument, ad hominem attacks usually mean the person has no evidence to support their position).

Yes, should the person on the other side of this exchange be a loved one or a close personal friend then the “offensive” words can and often do cause emotional harm. However, should an anonymous person whom we have never met (and likely never will) say something “mean” or “hurtful” we should be teaching our children not to be offended but rather to ask “why does this person’s words matter to me?”. This will help all of us all to compartmentalize personal exchanges and assign the required priority to each exchange. Were we to create a scale from 1-10, with one being insignificant to our life and 10 being extremely important, most exchanges online would likely never rise above a 1 (possibly a 2) on the scale. To be a 10 an exchange would probably be with someone in your direct family and even further with family members who live under the same roof.

Rather than teaching our children absolutely nonsensical things like “words are violence”, I believe we should be teaching them the old adage many of us heard as children – “sticks and stones may break my bones – but words will never hurt me”.

One Dad With a Blog

Breaking the silence

I have been gone from this space for some time. This has been a self-imposed exile while I ponder everything related to who I am and what principles I deem important enough to express and defend. The reason I am back is that I believe just saying something is not enough – one must stand behind that belief in a real and measurable way. In layman’s terms – put up or shut up.

A brief history of what led me to pause my writing each time in this space is encapsulated in chronological order below. Some of the dates may not be exact but the events are accurate:

  1. Pause #1 (2015) – I was made aware through third-party sources that my ex-wife (well, she wasn’t my ex-wife yet at the time) was upset at some of the content of my blog. In an effort to not make the relationship (which was already frosty at best) any more acrimonious (and also to shield our two children from any of the discussion which would probably devolve into “he said – she said”) I shelved my blog for the first time.
  2. Pause #2 (2017) – I received an anonymous email from a source who indicated that my blog had become the topic of some negative discussion in an online forum. The individual who sent me the email indicated one of the people who objected to the content of my blog was a fellow employee at the GTHL. Other members of this unnamed online forum who shared similar negative opinions encouraged the alleged GTHL employee to speak with my boss in an effort to get me fired. Since I only had recently begun my position I thought it would be prudent to stop writing… again.
  3. Pause #3 (2022) – I had only recently begun writing again and once again the heavy hand of cancel culture threatened me again. My boss at the GTHL summoned me to a meeting (well it was actually a Zoom call since we were not in the office full time due to Covid). During the meeting he revealed to me that someone in the mainstream media (let’s just call him RW) had contacted him and asked his opinion on the content of my blog, specifically my takes on race and gender which have dominated so many spaces over the past several years. My boss indicated that he read my blog and did not see any issue with the content but others may not necessarily agree with his sentiment (or my opinions). To protect my livelihood I stopped writing… again

So on three separate occasions I have allowed the “woke mob”, an online entity I had vowed would not silence me, to do just that. This left me questioning not only my character but the world that has emerged in the past decade. What message was I conveying to my still relatively young children who are supposed to look to their father for moral guidance? I have been torn – go along to get along or stand up for that in which I believe?

Some life changes have made me choose to stand on principle rather than just to go with the flow. Most notably, I left my position with the GTHL in the fall of 2022. That decision was made partly due to the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion mandate which had permeated much of society, including workplaces almost everywhere. Imagine coming to work every day knowing that the focus of almost everything you did would have a DEI backdrop. This was further compounded given that some of the narratives surrounding this objective were at best exaggerated and at worst fabricated (I will not get into the discussion in this particular post but maybe, just maybe I will in a future post). Don’t misread what I am writing to mean that I don’t believe that there are issues in society related to race, gender and sexual orientation that need to be addressed but I do not believe, like noted “race hustlers” such as Ibram X Kendi and Reverend Al Sharpton, that racism/sexism are baked into the system. The process of doing my job had become mentally exhausting given my conflicting beliefs to the all-encompassing DEI agenda.

I think the tipping point for me was sitting in a DEI workshop with all the staff at the GTHL. I remember listening to the material which in essence told me that everything should be looked at through a racial lens. I was the oppressor due to my skin colour (and my gender). Unless I acknowledged this I would be in effect contributing to racial bias and discrimination.

This goes against everything I have ever believed to be true – that people should be judged on their character – not by the colour of their skin. The world that Martin Luther King had expressed his desire to live in when he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech during the height of the civil rights movement had been hijacked. Now instead of a society striving for a “colour-blind” world where skin colour would be irrelevant, we are living in a world where we are told to always look at race. The race hustlers I mentioned earlier had successfully created a narrative that when an injustice or slight (whether perceived or real) occurs it depends on the colour of the alleged victim’s (and the alleged perpetrator’s) skin as to whether racism is at the core of said injustice/slight. A rewriting of language where people with white skin could never experience “racism” and a man could never be victim of “sexism” are just a couple of the core beliefs of this twisted ideology. The collective rather than the individual has become more important. Terms like “intersectionality” can determine one’s position in the ongoing victim Olympics. Facts no longer seem to matter (ask Roland Fryer, esteemed Harvard professor about that contention).

The time has come for all of us – regardless of race, skin colour, religion, gender or sexual orientation to stand up and push back against a divisive ideology that has permeated our schools, public institutions, corporations and political offices. Should any one ask why the simple answer is the truth still matters.

One Dad With a Blog