Is it 2022 yet? How to make sense of all this f***ed-up s*** going on?

(Given to me by one of my Latvian students, 2007)

Or perhaps you’re better off burying your head in the sand and reading something else.

At first, I wanted to provide an objective (as possible) take on current events. But I try to steer clear of politics on these pages.

And, get your 2021 off to an introspective, contemplative start with a few philosophical yet practical articles that have nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with politics or pandemics.

Feel free to skip down to the reading list. Otherwise…

My upbringing

I grew up in democracies – Western Europe and the United States – during the Cold War era. I studied and learnt about various coups and insurrections in other parts of the world: the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe even…but North America? Not so much.

I studied history and politics at university and graduate school. Again, much of the same, but in more depth.

Over the years, my students have asked me various questions about history and politics in the US and UK. It’s usually not the focus of a lesson so I don’t have much time to delve into the minutiae, but there are times when the topic of a unit is something political (ish), like comparing systems of government in the world, learning about the history of democracy and things like freedom of speech, the press, etc. In fact, this was a topic in one of my teenage classes just a couple of months ago, and I admit, it was hard to get them really into the topic of the history of democracy.

And now, perhaps some of them are watching current events and genuflecting on that Winston Churchill quotation about democracy being the ‘worst’ form of government, ‘except for all the other forms that have been tried’ and wondering in bemusement – or laughing to themselves – about all this malarkey.

(in all actuality, probably not – they probably don’t know what’s going on, or if they do, are only vaguely tying it to what we recently talked about – anyway, I’ll ask them next week when we return to class.)

This is often part-and-parcel of my job as an English teacher. Curious, open-minded students still often seek my opinions about goings-on in the rest of the world, but I usually have to end up giving them a potted, 2-minute, overly-generalised version mainly because it so rarely relates to what we’re studying. Some 7-8 years ago, a couple of my teenage students asked me, totally off-topic, whether I could explain American race relations in ‘like, 2 minutes’. Like, where the hell does one start?

And then, last spring, after George Floyd was killed, one of my 13-year olds asked me to explain it, again looking for a condensed version. On a Zoom lesson, where the topic we’re studying is completely unrelated, with only person asking the question, with most of the class with their cameras off...I can hardly do justice to a faithful retelling of events and what led up to it in a mere couple of minutes.

Inspired by questions like this, I put together a long post about American race relations, one that took me a long time to write, and shared it for feedback with 4 friends. They had a lot of constructive feedback to add, and I greatly appreciated it, but I also realised that I had a lot more research and legwork to do, and that it would need some drastic editing and a significant change of tone. A condensed version of history can too easily come across as flippant and breezy, and although this blog over the years does take on an irreverent tone, there are some subjects too important to be treated with any type of jest.

Where does that bring me now? That long, rambling post on race relations is still a work in progress.

And now, to make sense of all of this?

Sometimes during my classes I’ve found and shown clips of various hijinks and shenanigans that go on in parliaments around the world. In Ukraine alone there are plenty of amusing – if I can use that adjective here – examples of fights with fists, eggs, buckwheat, tomatoes. Other countries feature much of the same (a simple youtube search will turn up countless examples). While living in Nigeria, one day I was at the British Embassy with many of my students who were applying for visas to the UK, and we were stuck in the waiting room for hours with looping clips of Sky News on the television. On that particular day – 16 Sept 2004 – fox hunting supporters stormed into Parliament and disrupted the session with condoms filled with coloured flour and launched them at various MPs. My Nigerian students were bemused – this kind of thing goes on in the west? In democracies? And it’s on the news? They were shocked for two reasons: one, because they didn’t think that kind of thing happened in so-called civilized democracies, and certainly not in the 21st century. And two, they knew, from experience, that far worse went on in countries like their own and in other so-called less civilized democracies. Purple dyed flour-filled condoms? Tomatoes? That’s nothing, they told me. In Nigeria, we’ve had coup after coup and sham elections, and that’s barely the tip of the iceberg. Look all over Africa in the past few decades, they told me. Tell us when there’s been an election with a smooth transition of regimes. Tell us, huh? In Britain, MPs get attacked with condoms and this is big news?

I can only wonder what they’re thinking now.

Just a few months later, in December 2004, Ukraine had its Orange Revolution. I sat watching the news on CNN, with some of those same students and other Nigerian colleagues, and they sat mesmerized, and in awe. They could only hope, they said, for a peaceful transition of power, and a fair election that met international standards.

Nigeria’s last two presidential elections, in 2015 and 2019, were largely free of any major violence, and in both cases there was generally a peaceful transition of power. In a country where corruption is rife, where public trust in elected officials is minimal, and where transparency is still a pipe dream, there have been two elections in the past 5 years where the loser conceded gracefully and the people accepted the results.

In Nigeria’s history, from its independence in 1960 to the present, there have been 9 coups and the military held power for over 3 decades.

I thought this kind of stuff only happened in places like Russia, Belarus, Egypt, Libya, Chile, Uganda, Mali, Chad, Pakistan, Haiti…

So, no, I don’t really know how to make sense of what’s going on. All I can say is that, in my lifetime, I never would’ve expected anything like this to happen.

(The author in Nigeria, 2004)

Make the most of 2021, philosophically(ish)

These are some of my favourite articles from over the past few years most coming from one of my favourite websites, Aeon (www.aeon.co). Many of these I revisit from time to time, always discovering something new with each reread.

Get 2021 off to an introspective start:

1 The usefulness of dread

My anxiety has been lifelong but I would not wish it away. It has made me the philosopher – and person – that I am today

https://aeon.co/essays/dread-accompanies-me-through-life-but-it-is-not-without-consolation

2 Boredom is but a window to a sunny day beyond the gloom

https://aeon.co/ideas/boredom-is-but-a-window-to-a-sunny-day-beyond-the-gloom

3 How Schopenhauer’s thought can illuminate a midlife crisis

https://aeon.co/ideas/how-schopenhauers-thought-can-illuminate-a-midlife-crisis

4 For the full life experience, put down all devices and walk

https://aeon.co/ideas/for-the-full-life-experience-put-down-all-devices-and-walk

5 Sooner or later we all face death. Will a sense of meaning help us?

https://aeon.co/ideas/sooner-or-later-we-all-face-death-will-a-sense-of-meaning-help-us