Last week got away from me a little (as happens at this time of year!) and I didn’t get a post out, sorry!
My thoughts on democracy are ongoing, and while my next newsletter on the topic is not quite ready, I still wanted to get a little thing out, to wish you readers a wonderful Christmas, Meri Kirihimete, Happy New Year, Stunning Southern-Hemisphere summer holiday, or festive celebration of your choice, and thank you for joining my little soirées this year.
My wife and I have a silly little tradition around this time of year: 12 Days of Crispness.
Growing up, she always loved a “tight bed”. She would get her mother to tuck her in as tight as possible when she said goodnight, and seemingly experienced a real sense of security from being virtually immobile as she drifted off to sleep.
Of course—in reality—she’s not chained down. She can move as much as she likes with minimal effort, but it’s clear to her that it could cost her some comfort and security, which she won’t be able to easily get back.
She still loves a freshly-made bed, and often insists I stay out of it until she has properly enjoyed the “crispness” before I ruin it!
That’s because I’m pretty-much the opposite. While I don’t like a bunched-up bottom sheet, I do like to move around in bed, so I personally prefer looser top sheets and I probably shuffle a little too much at times to make that happen. Apparently, I often even “jump” just as I’m about to go to drift off to sleep… It’s always an adventure in our marital bed!
Anyway, like little things do, this causes occasional tension in our marriage so, several years ago, I started a tradition of remaking the bed as tightly as possible for the 12 nights leading into Christmas Day, so she could at least enjoy a continuous 12 Days of Crispness.
It’s such a silly little thing, but this time of year is full of this sort of frivolousness for anyone lucky enough to share it with family and friends.
I don’t want to sully that up with philosophy, but as I remade the bed this morning—my mind also on the nearing of another year—I did get to thinking about the risks to our future, and the comfort of restriction.
The holiday season is dominated by traditions and—by definition—traditions are restrictive: They are, almost without fail, things we’d not do in a world detached from our history. Yet, things we feel compelled to do anyway.
How many times have you ended up doing something completely inane because “it’s a tradition”?
Now, I want to be clear that this is not at all bad: A loving kiss under the mistletoe; snapping the wishbone of a cooked chicken, gift-giving, countdowns, and mysterious bearded men breaking into houses, are all things that bring a certain absurd joy to this time of year. Plenty of other less-anglicised or private traditions help us recall loved, or lost, family or culture.
So, traditions, and the restrictions they represent, are kept and evolve to suit our changing lives, because we instinctively understand they protect something—a treasured memory, perhaps? Or a habit, or a value?
I guess this is all on my mind because I’m part-way through a series on democracy, and can’t help noticing how the tradition-centric “Conservative” perspective is increasingly being popularly-weaponised by one extreme, and popularly-mischaracterised by another.
But, I also have it taking up space in my head because of a bunch of pro- and anti-Nazi-profiteering opinion pieces which are taking up space in my Substack inbox.
Anyone following more than a couple of writers on Substack will no doubt be aware of this controversy. What started as a high-profile piece by Jonathan M. Katz in the Atlantic became a series of diverse opinionated pieces on the platform itself, essentially either advocating for “freedom” or “moderation”.
The most sober of these—in my opinion—is pointing out that, first, no one serious is accusing Substack staff of being open fascists and, frankly, anyone publishing on a freely-accessible platform on the open internet already believes in the broad strokes of “free speech”. However, a line ought to be drawn when a platform elects to not moderate anti-social, hateful, or inciting content, under the banner of “protecting speech”, but then profits from those words that explicitly aim at challenging or eliminating the civil protections that many people fought hard (using both words and fists) to attain in the past decades.
This, to me, is a kind of restricted comfort.
I believe strongly in an evolving society—in my opinion, blanket conservatism is just fearfulness dressed in a nice 3-piece suit—but I also believe conservatism still has things to offer us. Indeed, few people frustrate me more than commenters on Reddit or X humiliating our cause by generalising everyone older than themselves as “Boomers” and agitating to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Still, while I think there is both wisdom to snip out from our past and build from; and there is real practical value in pacing some change at a speed gradual enough to allow older-generations (in particular) to ‘keep up’, I also think that holding tight to old ideals on-mass and trying to just bludgeon them into a new epoch, is both short-sighted and, as often as not, selfishly-evil.
Regardless, not enough people read my newsletter to hear those insights, so we have to accept, in a world increasingly bereft of certainty, that means people will run in all directions for even just a small sense of security, from anyone promising answers. And, for want of a fortune-telling crystal ball, the most appealing “answers” are always going to depend on a little relatable truth to help with digestion: You can hide some pretty evil shit behind the half-truth of “It worked back when…”.
Progressive thinkers, on the other hand, have a far tougher sell with their sales pitch which inevitably has to start with something like “Imagine if…”
Ambitious assholes understand this. So, beyond the advancing geopolitical, economic, and natural threats we’re already set to face this coming year, we can be certain of an ever-growing bunch of them, from grifters to white supremacists, willing to take advantage of the modern “conservatism” [sic] of lax or repealed rules and “free speech” whenever they’re given half a chance.
But, in that context, freedom is not one thing: It is not simply manacles or a wide-open ocean, as those arguing for “free speech” often, ignorantly, croon about.
To belabour the bedding metaphor, we are, historically-speaking, enjoying the soft foam rubber, pocket springs, and quilted pillow-tops that our conquest of fossil fuels, modern medicine, and varied other labour-saving technologies have granted us. Now, it is time we understood how comfort like this breeds not just indifference, but contempt for real, hard-won, freedom. In the interconnected world and disconnected society that capitalism has shaped for us, it’s scarily easy to chime in about lives you have no experience of; or deflect to hazy economic benefits when asked to consider a cost to people you don’t know… Then call any interrogation of the dangers an affront to your freedom.
The actual formula for freedom in humanity is: The more comfortable we collectively get, the more seriously we need to consider what restrictions are required to keep it that way.
That sounds a bit like the opposite of freedom, and it would be if all we were concerned for was freedom for ourselves. But, that’s just because freedom beyond the confines of your own brain actually looks a lot more like responsibility.
Every season of more-powerful and unpredictable weather, every dictator-tending politician, every youth mental-health crisis, and every social media-amplified genocide is a reminder that freedom in the real world isn’t just something you can “believe in”; nor is it something you can simply fight for under an eagle-bedecked banner, and call it a day.
Freedom is a never-ceasing reassessment of your values, and an acceptance that for each battle won, and for each comfort we carry forward from the hard work of generations-past, the more important the rules and bureaucracy to protect those comforts become. In a world of comfort, like ours, freedom is not lost in battle but rather in hubris.
That’s all to say, when I think about free speech, I think about tight bed sheets.
-T
Meri Kirihimete from New Zealand, Tim. I do like that your Christmas tradition is essentially 'doing something special for your wife.' Can't go wrong there, in my book. You raise some points I must ponder. Including, I think perhaps: what makes something good or evil? It may of course be like seeking the meaning of life. But do we have the answer to that? Some say, 42 .... I will stay clear of Nazi ideology debate. Millions died trying to quash it and as it was promulgated, so I believe the matter was well covered, and those beliefs and views had nothing to do with freedom then, or now.