THE GIGO HARVEST How democracy became democrazy

GIGO! Garbage in, garbage out.

I was still a schoolgirl when I first heard this term and its alliteration was immediately appealing. Sadly, its deep significance was totally lost to my galling airhead. Also, it just so happened that ‘Radio Gaga’ was being blared all over the place which as a huge Queen fan, I could not get enough of. That ‘gaga’ also rang out with the very same oomphy sound play was pure coincidence. 

But the mind has a quirky way of shoring and storing things.

My temporal lobe is currently buzzing with the connection between the two, leaping from reminiscence to acquiescence underlining our response to what is happening around us in the Western world mired in a lack of luminescence. I am emphasising the Western world because it is the world I know and love. I am a Westerner living in the western part of the world, precisely in a former British colony in western Europe.

Before furthering my argument, I am going to spell out a few basic facts, not to sound patronising but because I have learnt that taking basics for granted can create misunderstanding.

Most of the Western world is English speaking as a result of the British Empire smoothly giving way to America’s superpower status in the wake of the Second World War. Up to a decade or so ago, America played the role of global police force in the name of democracy. With the exception of Gibraltar, Malta, and Cyprus ‘safeguarding’ sea transport through the Mediterranean, mainland Europe was not part of the Anglophone world. (Like any imperialist, Britain knew that apart from land and resource grabbing, its global dominance depended on controlling the trade routes – a replication of which drives China’s imperialist policies today.) Culturally, Europe nurtured the soul of the Western world by synthesising Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian traditions giving rise to the most wondrous artistic and philosophical movements that have enriched the world. 

I am old enough to remember Europe divided into two halves; a Europe that had national borders and the concept of the European Union was not on the horizon at least to the visible eye. What was brewing behind closed doors in the then Common Market is another matter. Europe’s puppy infatuation with America is also very familiar territory.

Apart from the Atlantic Ocean, what divides Europe from America is its aeons of history and ingrained angst moulded by a full awareness of how tragic life is and how comforting the pursuit of beauty is. This is the diametric opposite of America’s frontier foundation and its fascinating mix of naivete and arrogance which has always fed its litigious, optimistic, God-is-Mammon energy. Its cash nexus has also led America to embrace the extremely myopic ‘politics of inevitability’ whereby capitalism invariably leads to progress and democracy.

Somehow the confluence of these two disparate mindsets created a lifestyle of living the good life in freedom – the impact of which was also embraced in yesterday’s Canada and Oceania. Sub-Saharan Africa is another story, while Hong Kong 2020 looms as a foretaste of what lies ahead.

This is not to say that Western freedom was ever some kind of utopia for it has evolved over centuries of blood-curdling wars and with a sizeable share of ills, injustices, and inequalities. Yet anyone scoffing at how fortunate one is to live in Europe (some parts more than others), should look at where illegal immigrants from Africa and the Middle East have been pouring in in droves for the past 40 years and consequently Europe is no longer Europe.

I am also old enough to remember a time when personal responsibility was not shirked on a global scale; and evil and excess were denounced for what they really are. Meaning long before millennial madness was sought and expressed with unabashed enthusiasm.

This brings me to the link between GIGO and gaga.

The former term refers to the elementary principle in computer science stating that flawed data input will result in flawed data output. This very logical precept is also known as ‘rubbish in, rubbish out ‘(RIRO) if British English is more resonant with you. It is another way of saying ‘you reap what you sow’. But this Biblical expression may no longer be known for it has long been trendy to denigrate Christianity which for historical accuracy began with the French, English, and German Enlightenment over 300 years ago. The light ushered in by the Age of Reason, however, blocked Divine Light whose succour has no substitute.

In contrast, ‘gaga’ has two meanings. One is an informal synonym for senility. The other, an informal synonym for extreme enthusiasm or hyper-excitement. Interestingly, it is the first meaning which has spurred on the use of ‘gaga’ (meaning mad/madness) in cyber speak.

Apply GIGO with gaga – and you get my drift.

Abject ridiculousness stamps any epoch. So does perversity. But the more I look around me in these concurrent febrile/apathetic, fearful/angry, ever-opportunistic pandemic times, the more revealing our lack of critical thinking - and its dire consequences - are becoming. Our huge advancements in technology especially are not being buoyed by the ability to analyse and evaluate facts to form a judgement let alone listen to divergent views that might shine a light prodding us on to say ‘I never thought of this. Let me think about it and learn something from it even if I still disagree.’

To give a flippant but still telling example, when the first lockdown was imposed last March and remote work went mainstream overnight, professionals had to be constantly reminded that they were still expected to appear reasonably smart in front of their screens during working hours and the funny ‘Zoom Suit’ video clip went viral.

Several employees also had issues of space either because they live in poky apartments that do not accommodate a comfortable desk, or because they were elbowed out of a decent and doable work area by their spouse/partner or offspring. In the latter scenario, an attempt at some sort of negotiated solution appears not to have been thought of. Remember I am talking about adult professionals, not children, most of whom consider themselves to be the elite workforce and have no qualms in looking down on menial jobs. They, however, do look up to relentless ads to buy the perfectly impressive Zoom background poster. Perhaps this is the effect of 40 being the new 30, 50 being the new 40, etc.

Speaking of Zoom, it has 300 million daily users despite its dubious cybersecurity. Again, most Zoomers are professionals who seem to have either been assured by or glossed over Eric S. Yuan’s mere apology for its security issues back in April. Perhaps I am missing out on improved cyber filters. Incidentally, don’t you find the unprecedented invasion of private space by employers in these unprecedented times troubling? This is the darkest side and highest price of working from home if virtual meetings need to be done constantly and daily.

The stakes get riskier when spotlighting other truly important matters.

Why is there such a dearth of critical thinking?

Put bluntly, because thinking populations pose a big hurdle in the global dominance plans of big business fronted by pernicious politics. 

Critical thinking is a complex process that needs early learning, deep reflection, constant nourishment, and above all a sound moral compass. I am not illuding myself into believing that in the past everyone had their thinking hats on and strove to keep to their moral high ground. Nevertheless, there was a broad consensus about what distinguished right from wrong, good from evil because moral education taught the difference between pleasure that makes you feel good and pleasure that makes you feel bad.

Today’s metastatic stupidity is unique because there seems little reprieve from it precisely because it is being enshrined and proliferated by people whom we traditionally used to associate with being responsible and intelligent. We are also living at a time when the party-time years of incredible prosperity are over and are unlikely to be coming back soon. Yet the party revellers keep demanding the party to go on. This is beyond decadence. This is a deep-seated existential problem.

How did we get to this point? Why did we allow it to happen? Is there a way out?

Text: NoemiZarb, Image: Meo on Pexels

Any answer to these questions throws open a festering mix of factors most of which are still unravelling and no doubt will continue to unravel to provide enough fodder for truckloads of studies some time in the future. Given the vastness of the subject, I would like to share a glimpse at what I believe are the most salient culprits.

That it is much easier to rule and/or govern an apathetic and intimidated population that is not capable of much thinking is a fact of life. Yet the strategic assault on people’s thinking caps over the past few generations in the Western world is unique because it has been going on in a time of high literacy levels (though there seems to be a catch here since the number of students who cannot string a correct sentence is worrying ) and even more remarkable instant access to oceans of information. Indeed, technology has not made people more knowledgeable or more curious to learn.

Operation Brain Kill began several decades back on several fronts. In a nutshell, it unrolled in a concatenation of language abuse, coma-inducing school curricula, utilitarianism stoked by consumerism, and secularisation.

Abuse of language is no news breaker. As human beings, we are all very susceptible to honeyed tongues and seemingly velvet gloves. Its embedded deceit is easily seen in manipulative relationships at home and at work. It is blatant in advertising, politics, and propaganda. Yet by the middle of the last century deconstruction hit the intellectual scene and established itself as the gauge of intelligence. Sprouting in 1950s France, the fascination of something new on the block at first made waves in philosophers’ clubs. Its impact inevitably percolated daily life.

I don’t know whether its ongoing hold has been scanned from an understanding of its entrenched bitterness, alienation, and despair wrought by two global conflicts. In any case, deconstruction crossed the red line decimating the stature of authors and the sacredness of words and their meaning. Delving into it is like experiencing some kind of mirage – a promise of something exciting to relish but which has you flump with a benighted rather than an enlightened outlook. Its zeal to deny a spiritual uplift from literature, paintings, and the arts, in general, is possibly its most weird trait.

Moreover, by deliberately using convoluted language to sound clever, deconstruction and its offshoots gave rise to an impressive babble of voices that became harder and harder to counter-argue, probably because people who disagreed did not want to appear stupid. So, within a few years, it became acceptable to regard ideal concepts like truth and justice as impossible to determine – a perception that worked well with moral relativism and fixation with ugliness. One of its ironies is that the ability to think things out for oneself got a big blow. How did it sustain and maintain its tremendous sway?

I am zeroing in on schools because their influence is seminal and life-lasting. Here the verve to produce ignorance in overdrive was/still is masqueraded as innovative curricula and up-to-minute teaching methods in order to empower future citizens. The buzz this slogan creates is undeniable. Of course, when hype is allowed to overwhelm, it becomes extremely difficult to peel off the layers of veneer and expose abject shallowness particularly when life is a frantic race of running after the clock. The vital distinction between schooling and education was consequently lost.

Education which essentially means ‘leading out’ gets its crucial foundation and cultivation from home and is ideally boosted both by the ethos and teaching methods of schooling. Furthermore, universities were not originally conceived solely as a place to specialise in a field of study, but also to sharpen critical thinking and debating skills. But once the utilitarian mindset took over, most universities morphed into sausage factories. Standards plummeted. The introduction of subjects whose names end with ‘studies’ also demanded lower entry requirements. Much more bad news was to follow although a higher student intake meant lower employment levels. Another irony is that first degrees have lost their cache because they are too common.

In no way am I saying that schools and universities should remain fossilised. What I am saying is that the overall paradigm gradually but effectively shifted from ‘how to think’ to ‘what to think’. And the decision-makers were Leftists in outright rebellion against the Right-wing accretion of an Establishment that had contributed in no small measure to two world wars within two decades of each other and had also long discriminated against blue-collar workers, in particular, women across the board, illegitimate children and gays. The extreme Far-Right was also responsible for the unspeakable horror of Auschwitz which incidentally is not that well-known among young people. I used to teach Sixth Formers from different parts of the world and had it not been for the literary works we discussed they would still not have a clue of the evil of Nazi Germany.

However, it is important to remember that Stalin’s USSR – read Far-Left - was one of the WW2 allies and his communist regime turned liberation from the Nazis into the Iron Curtain where all facets of freedom were annihilated and divided Europe for half a century. The blind eye that the Western world turned to Stalin’s atrocities especially during the war was more than reprehensible. Yet the hypocrisy was taken to another level by Left-wingers in Western countries after 1945. For whether they continued to uphold their beliefs or made a radical U-turn to conservatism, once their campus days were over in the late 1960s, a good many of them came to form the Establishment.

This kind of ‘development’ perfectly illustrates the circular movement of revolution, where the point of arrival is pretty much the same as the point of take-off. Ousted rulers are replaced by other rulers who conveniently forget their days of protest against injustice to become the new privileged ruling class. Enter the champagne socialist breed in the 1970s and the decades that followed.

The 1968 student uprisings did succeed in allowing much-needed fresh air to ventilate stifling social mores. Yet time has proved Newton’s third law of motion to be spot-on in the sense that an extreme begets another extreme in the opposite direction. I do not know if this explains why the brutality of communist rulers all over the world was brushed aside well before Photoshop came on the scene. Fidel Castro and Pol Pot immediately come to mind while the stories of Eastern Europeans who lived under communist rule are barely told. Are they unwilling to narrate their harrowing past? Are they being discouraged to do so? Or both? Once again you will find the vast majority of Anglophone students in total oblivion of communist rulers who redefined oppression, hunger, and cruelty.

Nor did this dumbing down in schools and universities happen in isolation. Born in the USA, political correctness began to take root at the same time. So did the uber-bossy role of emerging mass media, initially telling us what is best to buy, to eat, to dress in a revving consumer economy. Subsequently how to behave at work, at home, and in bed. Meaning, how to tackle relationships whenever, wherever, whatever. And despite all the tutoring blitz, domestic abuse and violence on women has spiked and continues to do so. Now being told what to read inside and outside the workplace is the latest mantra. This is the demented, dystopian voice of hatred of one’s culture in the name of social justice, but which actually manifests very sad people with no love, gratitude, or sense of meaningful purpose in their lives. 

Furthermore, memories of WW2 instilled a vehemence in our parents and grand-parents to never ever suffer impossible-to-imagine deprivation. This provided the perfect terrain for the seeds of materialism to flourish into a dense, dark forest that not even the oil-crisis in the mid-1970s or the years of social and political turmoil that followed would halt. When families fell by the wayside, the fall became their fault. America’s manic cash register eyes also spearheaded a services-based economy together with globalisation. The latter turned out to mean everything made in China so that once buzzing and heaving factories in the Western world morphed into a wasteland. Labour intensive jobs and craftsmanship disappeared with little attempt to reskill. The same error is being made in relation to AI.

Somewhere along this narrative modern parental wisdom churned out mums and dads indulging every whim of their kids supposedly to foster friendships to the point that calling parents by their first name ceased to raise eyebrows. The underlying reason was to draw the curtain on discipline sold with the ever-enticing path of least resistance especially for working parents to deal with kids’ tantrums.

So, raising kids became synonymous with parents inculcating attitude by pumping up egos into believing that all aspirations are achievable while extolling the power of purchasing anything that comes with a designer label. Nothing and no one could stand in the way of their offspring’s dreams. Not even lack of aptitude or lack of good luck. Or a dire economic downturn. Moreover, that it takes hard work and tenacity, and not just self-esteem as important as it is, to overcome obstacles was no longer harped on. Same story for moral education, commitment, courage, courtesy, and good manners. The outcome? An addiction to self-validation that is immune to any self-questioning.

The de-emphasis on resilience got a further boost from parents whose jobs glorified bluff particularly through the abuse of language in marketing and sales speak. Self-restraint suffered the fate of an earthquake sinking an island. Once again, another leg up came from parents who would not exert discipline and self-restraint themselves. The snowball effect is easy to see because people cannot give what they do not have. Meanwhile, wallowing in victimhood and the vapidity of celebrity culture continue to vacuum brain cells. 

A battered resilient spirit has been laid bare in these pandemic times. For all its ghastliness, the current Covid-19 crisis still does not compare to the hardships people who have lived in wartime endured as children, Nor are we as desperate as the millions who live in unimaginable poverty in many parts of the world. The number of people falling below the poverty line in the Western world is nevertheless rising, ostensibly as a direct result of lockdown.

But a slight throwback shows that this tragic decline was well underway before the pandemic upended our lives. Covid-19 has exacerbated the gap between the haves and the have-nots because the wide middle-class band in the western world has been shrinking for quite some time. If the response to this wretched virus is going to be lockdown after lockdown, the millions of destitute will lead to another bloody chapter in our history, and which the fermenting cultural war is already fuelling.

As we confront the second lockdown, the concern about depriving children of learning and socialising with their peers is rightly growing. At the same time is there any effort to rein in the selfishness, the materialism, and the greed geared towards gratifying uncontrolled appetite, but which can never satisfy the spirit?

The rapacity of egoism indeed lies at the heart of the hideous ugliness and sterility in every sphere of human activity characterising the past few years. I am recalling Tracy Emin’s filthy bed strewn with used condoms and soiled underwear which turned her into an overnight sensation in the very late 1990s. Her assertion that it is art because she says so voiced the still desired attitude of sass. That it was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1998 must have led Turner to roll on the loop in his grave.

Surprise, surprise, no art critic stated the obvious. On the contrary, by this time art critics were long persuaded that such an installation is an artistic high. It goes without saying that the notion of art as co-creation, as insight into revelatory truth, as preserver of mystery, and as transcendental pleasure had long been binned. The same kind of fawning drivel stamps the reviews of fashion collections.

This brings me to another fundamental phenomenon in the post-WW2 western world - the architectural blight on our urban and rural landscape. The wholesale championing of utilitarianism bulldozered any semblance of structural detail that creates beauty even in a padlock. The sole focus on functional forms gave rise to hideous concrete blocks devoid of any personality or soothing aesthetic vibe. Out too went the pride and satisfaction of a labour of love. Glass subsequently replaced swathes of concrete. Yet the ugliness prevailed and has continued its relentless sprawl.

Whether we are talking of 1-star or 7-star ghettoes, most urbanites now live in pigeonholes of differing sizes and with few exceptions furnished with mass-produced, modular, synthetic, disposable furniture totally in sync with anonymity. Can it get more exciting than this? It is incredible how the six to seven years it takes to become an architect fails to nurture an aesthetic sense or if it does, it flexes no muscle in the face of commercial interests.

The spaces where we live and work do not simply provide a backdrop or various degrees of creature comforts. They have a direct impact on our well-being and sense perception which amply prove that the unnecessary is the most necessary Why? Because beauty feeds the soul and fills us with a shot of spiritual grace that has no connection with satisfying appetite or obsession to offend. Incidentally, surveys show that most urbanites (including adults) have no clue that food comes from crops grown in fields. They believe that supermarkets are the source. They even scorn the muscle power of whoever delivers their takeaway food even in times of lockdown. The concept of mental and muscular prowess working in harmony is alien to them. This short-sightedness also explains why agriculture is heaped with derision rather than treated with deference.

Even more absurd are celebrities turned political analysts. Look at Prince Harry and Megan Markle talking about privilege and its awfulness. The joke is over when we note how in-depth, serious journalism is out, blind allegiance to string pullers and vested interests is in. Moreover, a good number of journalists who refuse to toe the line and/or uncover mind-boggling corruption are threatened with their lives or actually killed. As for anyone aspiring to work for big tech, the primary requisite is having their mindset and values. Those that make the grade are carefully primed to ensure that everyone remains on the same page.

What ultimately puts all this jigsaw puzzle together is the meaningless lives so many of us are leading. Sadly, few are willing to admit the grip of our existentialist crisis. Turning back on Christian values whose teaching began to miss so many buses had the connecting bus stops and bus terminals in post-WW2 landscapes subsequently fall into abandon.

Secularism has made it so much easier to denigrate the teachings of Jesus, who with just a bit of thinking would be recognised as the unparalleled rebel of all time untainted by earthly power-grabbing while offering excellent advice on giving importance to what matters in life even if you decide to go the agnostic or atheist way.

Post-Christian routes are still unsurprisingly repaved with several fads of godlessness. Examples include the cult of life coaches and influencers making a packet out of people’s vulnerabilities and foibles. Lockdown mushroomed a swarm of shmaltzy empaths who had just discovered the significance of caring. Another example includes the plethora of leadership experts posting reams of rehashed advice which only serves to prove the lack of authentic leaders. The desperate need to fill a void, climaxes in BLM doctrine which is escalating cancel culture and foisting their Marxist agenda with no tipping point in sight. The British Library's latest move This is the link to a recent article in The Telegraph. I will leave it up to you to figure out the scale of stupidity.

Fast forward a couple of generations and families - once the bedrock of sound societies - came under attack from within and without. Today, strong, functional families going through life’s highs and lows are increasingly becoming a footnote in history. Probably they will not even make it as a footnote given that the traditional family unit is also under the axe and hurtling at lightning speed towards accepting gender as a social construct. Talking of family policy, I believe that western European countries should take a leaf out of its central and eastern European neighbours and begin to encourage couples to have more children.

In the Anglophone world, today’s revisionist history adumbrates how evil conservative Western rulers were, how privileged white people have always been and that nothing about ‘white’ history and culture is good. As cancel culture rages on, analysis of the American vote still runs on racial lines citing words like ‘Latino’ without batting an eyelid. Ironically, the classification of race is the latest form of racism and it is being allowed to undo the achievements of curbing racial discrimination as well as putting into question the tenability of a racially diverse society. As for western Europe, its multiculturalism has undone social cohesion – a reality that few are willing to admit.

Keeping in mind that society is no abstraction but a living composite of families, communities, regions, and countries, the zeitgeist boils down to what oozes out of its being. Applying GIGO, the result is all too evident. I sincerely hope that Voltaire’s observation that “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” will not come true.

Is it not about time that we take a good step back to see where we are heading?