Although the passage from one year to the next is an arbitrary line in the sand (or snow, since this is winter in Canada), it does provide us with a pivotal moment when we can reflect on what has gone before and look forward to what is yet to come. The obvious topics—pandemic, Ukraine—have already been done to death. So, in the interest of flogging fresh horses, here are thoughts on matters that have only been done half to death:
1) Greta Thunberg owns Andrew Tate
As a moderately progressive left leaning guy, I’m supposed to be delighted that Greta Thunberg rounded out 2022 with the Tweet heard ‘round the world. Andrew Tate, kickboxer and incel magnet, posted an image of himself at a gas pump filling the tank of a high performance car. He tried to troll Thunberg by offering to send photos of all his 33 high performance, gas guzzling, carbon emitting cars. She responded by inviting him to send them to her email address at smalldickenergy@getalife.com. Since his first attempt didn’t work, he tried again, this time sending her a video of him smoking a cigar and eating pizza with the pizza box in plain view: Jerry’s pizza, a brand available only in Romania. Police then executed an outstanding warrant for his arrest on human trafficking and organized crime charges. Thunberg followed up with another tweet: “That’s what happens when you don’t recycle your pizza boxes.” Both of her Tweets quickly joined the rarefied category of “most liked Tweets in the history of Twitter.”
Despite widespread delight at Thunberg’s responses, I personally am not going to join in the gleeful hand-clapping. There are a couple problems here:
1) Twitter has become a toxic ecosystem, made worse since Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform and his decision, in the name of free speech, to reinstate the accounts of hateful extremists who had previously been banned for being, well, extremely hateful. This includes the accounts of Donald Trump, Jordan Peterson, and our friend, Andrew Tate. Musk enables hate speech. At one remove, so does Greta Thunberg. By lending her voice to the platform, she increases its value. Whatever happened to the old advice: Don’t Feed The Trolls?
2) In a Guardian op-ed, Rebecca Solnit correctly observes that the exchange between Tate and Thunberg exposes the long-standing nexus between toxic masculinity and climate emergency denialism. In the context of social media exchanges, that means testosterone-fueled twerps like Tate try to “own” progressives like Thunberg. We’ll make her our bitch, they tell themselves. When Thunberg executes the perfect comeuppance, when she “owns” them back, makes them her bitch, the immediate response from the progressive side of the fence is ecstatic delight. But we don’t need an immediate response; we need a reflective response. As an immediate response, Thunberg lobs her rock over the fence without thinking that it might in fact make things worse. It certainly won’t address the underlying problem. And it certainly won’t de-escalate the simmering frustrations that motivate incels to lash out in anger. Here, in Toronto, we witnessed first-hand how that can translate into real world violence against women. It is perhaps worth noting that the perpetrator of Toronto’s van attack labours under the same disorder that challenges Greta Thunberg. She has been quoted as calling it her superpower. Well, maybe, but not this time, I’m afraid. Not this time.
2) Canada’s copyright term has been extended
On December 30th, 2022, Bill C-19, the Budget Implementation Act, 2022, No. 1 came into effect, extending Canada’s copyright term from 50 to 70 years following the year of the author’s death. Among other things, that means that no works produced in Canada will pass into the public domain until after January 1st, 2043 (except, of course, if an author chooses to assign their work to the public domain through e.g. a Creative Commons License). The federal government made this change to fulfill a commitment it entered when negotiating the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA).
I have previously discussed the implications of copyright term extension and how an impoverishment of the public domain adversely affects us all. Lawrence Lessig in the U.S. and Michael Geist in Canada have long advocated for a robust public domain. I hold up their work as invaluable in understanding why this legislation is so wrong-headed. I merely set down a few points here:
- The number of private individuals who benefit from a copyright term extension is minuscule.
- The principal beneficiaries of this change are media corporations who jealously protect a few valuable properties. The paradigm here is Disney’s cash cow, or mouse (which, incidentally, enters the public domain next year).
- The vast majority of intellectual property has no commercial value, but because of the legislation’s chilling effect, those works are effectively removed from the sort of vigorous exchange that might otherwise enrich us all.
- This is yet another example of trickle up economics. A few large corporate behemoths benefit at the expense of everyone. It impoverishes the cultural life of ordinary people. It narrows the field in which we are free to think.
3) New Year’s Eve is no time for resolutions
I’ve given up on making New Year’s Resolutions. I never keep them anyways, so the effect of making them is that I end up feeling I have failed myself. However, I think there is another and better reason to resist the temptation to make resolutions: they feed that soul-crushing self-help personal responsibility narrative that seems to have taken root like an invasive weed. I see it in the drugstore checkout counter tabloids, in my social media feeds, in ads above the seat opposite while I’m riding the subway. I can be the best me I can be. I can manifest a brighter future. I can think myself into a life of riches.
The problem with this narrative is that it starts from a false premise, namely that my current circumstances are the result of my own careless actions. Take the mindfulness craze, for example. In isolation, as a Tibetan Buddhist meditation practice, it is. But it has become something else because Western interests instrumentalise it. Now, meditation must be for something. We meditate because the equanimity it produces will make us more effective people. This approach reached its nadir when Amazon introduced the Amazen meditation booth as a pilot project in some of its warehouses. Workers could use the booth for a couple minutes to destress, find their balance, align their chakras, whatever. Never mind that Amazon’s notorious work environment produced the stress, imbalance, misalignment in the first place. In essence, this is meditation as gaslighting. Amazon could wash its hands of responsibility for a toxic work environment by implying that it was all a matter of individual responsibility.
It reminds me, too, of resolutions to do better when it comes to reducing my carbon footprint. I feel guilty when I forget to bring my threadbare cotton bag to the grocery store and have to use a plastic bag instead. Meanwhile, I learn that Elon Musk used up an average person’s carbon footprint in an afternoon by hopping around LAX/Long Beach in his private jet. This is the man who associates his personal brand with the electric car because he wants to do his bit for the environment? Why didn’t he take an electric car then? When people ask these important questions, he answers by suggesting that they want to publish his “assassination coordinates.” Sorry, Elon, nobody wants to assassinate you; they want to hold you to a level of accountability commensurate with an average mature adult. As with Amazon, the Musk approach seems to be: gaslight your critics.
So, no, this year I won’t be holding myself up to the impossible standards of my usual resolutions. I’m aiming for good enough. I hope to be the best me I can be while slacking off. I’ll even enjoy some things that are bad for me. But in a good way.