Mar 27 2008
“Why isn’t there any fun anymore?”
John Brignell, in March of the zealots, explains why fun has gone out of style. In doing so he also explains a lot of other stuff. Consider yourself warned.
Every age has its dominant caste. This is the age of the zealot. Twenty years ago they were dismissed as cranks and fanatics, but now they are licensed to interfere in the every day lives of ordinary people to an unprecedented degree. When Bernard Levin first identified the new phenomenon of the SIFs (Single Issue Fanatics) many of us thought it was a bit of a joke or at most an annoyance. Now the joke is on us. In that short time they have progressed from being an ignorable nuisance to what is effectively a branch of government. They initiate legislation and prescribe taxation. They form a large and amorphous collection of groups of overlapping membership, united and defined by the objects of their hatred (industry, tobacco, alcohol, adiposity, carbon, meat, salt, chemicals in general, radio waves, field sports etc.) Their success in such a short time has been one of the most remarkable phenomena in the whole of human history.
He may be wrong on his timeline, as I remember hearing as a child, “If it’s fun, you better do it now before it goes out of style.” Back then “style” meant “approved,” but today it’s called “political correctness.” I also remember coming to the conclusion nearly 40 years ago that everything caused cancer.
I’ve been fed up for quite a while, it seems.
The common factors in these campaigns of zealotry are:
Creation and maintenance of a myth
Ignoring all evidence countering the myth
Ad hominem attacks on opponents
Encouraging authoritarian governments to impose taxes and reduce individual freedom
Promotion of limits and constraints that are simply invented without reason
Collusion by the establishment media
Damage to science and its methods
Elimination of things that make life bearable
Making some people very rich whilte impoverishing the lives of almost everyone else
They will not be satified until they have you shivering in a cave, sipping thin gruel.
It’s rare that I come across an essay this long in which I find almost nothing to disagree with.
(via Junkfood Science)
