Equality

Either or both of my regular readers might remember Albert. If not, please look at the post before last - Albert is introduced there.

Albert is a minority.

We were discussing the policy of equality, and a future fair for all, "all" being Newspeak for anybody who is not a heterosexual white working male cider-drinking smoker with no disabilities.

Albert, a man of few words owing to his lack of ability to say many of them because of his stutter, says this:

"There is no such thing as equality. We should let society achieve equilibrium."

Interesting, Albert. I did science, so I know what equilibrium is. Equilibrium is the natural state of an object when all forces acting on it are equal and opposite. Or something.

So I looked it up. And I found, in the Wiki, this. It says that, in sociology, a system is said to be in equilibrium when there is a dynamic working balance between its interdependent parts.

Sounds pretty obvious. Sounds like common sense. Someone, though, has done a bit of research and a bit of thinking. It goes on to say that each subsystem will adjust to change in the other subsystems and will continue to do so until an equilibrium is retained. I think it means attained, but whatever.

Still obvious. That's the way of things, Albert. If left to their own devices, things will generally push and pull back until a happy, if not utopian, state is reached.

And then the crunch. The process of achieving equilibrium will only work if the changes happen slowly, but for rapid changes it would throw the system into chaos, unless and until a new equilibrium can be reached.

It's the same in physic, and biology, and any other science. You can't just throw raw power at something and expect anything but a mess. A railway train wants to travel at 70 miles per hour. There is plenty of electricity available to make it do so. If you take all the electricity (I know what I'm talking about, but I don't want to get geeky about this) and stuff it into the motor, the train will not instantly be doing 70 miles per hour. Parts of the motor will, the passengers will be covered in tea and sandwiches, the driver's neck will break and it will be on the front page of the news. So what the crafty driver does is to feed the electricity slowly into the motor, whereupon the train will accelerate slowly, then the motor will accept some more electricity and the train will accelerate further, and so on.

And so it is with society. I am all for equilibrium. As a heterosexual white working male cider-drinking smoker with no disabilities I don't have a problem with someone who is attracted to the same sex, who is black, who is unemployed through no fault of their own, who is teetotal, who doesn't smoke, or is disabled in some way. As long as they don't try to shove it down my throat, in which case I have a serious problem with it.

And, you know, Albert is right, again. We could have easily achieved equilibrium, and soon. A bit of explaining, a bit of education. Not big fucking posters the size of Kent saying

SOME PEOPLE ARE GAY

and then inviting me to get over it. I know that already. I don't agree with buggery or sodomy or whatever it's called these days, because I'm heterosexual, see? I don't suppose any gay people understand that. You do? Well, blow me down. So there never was a problem, apart from gay guys wearing the most ridiculous "village people" outfits, moustaches and hairstyles, and straight blokes having builder's bums and beer guts.

Fine.

Albert, my mate, collected the golliwogs from jam jars. He has a fantastic collection, but he can't get them any more, which is a shame. He's what they used to call a coon, for God's sake. How can the golliwog be racist? I don't call him one (a coon or a golliwog), to his face or otherwise. To be honest, I don't actually notice what colour he is, because he has to wear a huge hairnet and when I see him he's usually covered in crap anyway - it's part of the job.

I have a mate who was unemployed for ages. He is a printer by trade, and he developed a back problem, which was so bad he actually used to scream when he stood up. His name is Frank. Now he has got a job working at a desk, which is nothing like what he was trained to do, nor in which field his experience was gained. But he gets paid. Not as much as he's used to, because he has to now and again have some time off because of the pain. But the lady who employs him is really good about it, and she doesn't get money from the government or state, and nor does Frank.

I have a friend who is an alcoholic. That's like teetotal but more enforced. If he has a drink he will be back in the gutter. I respect him for his abstemiousness, and he doesn't have a problem if I get ratfaced on cider and talk utter bollocks.

Most of my friends don't smoke. Most never did. I smoke outside their houses and bury the dogends in their flower beds.

And Frank is sort of disabled, as are lots of people I know who suffered as a result of the thalidomide scandal.

So there's all my prejudices buried. I became mildly racist once, in the eighties, when a planeload of Indians took my job. It took some time to realise that it was the stupidity of the employer, not the Indians, who were the problem. And me who had the problem, obviously.

A bit of explanation. A bit of education.

Or shall we, say, introduce a bunch of laws, a squad of enforcers, suppress freedom of speech? Oh dear no, for that way lies chaos.

And so it came to pass.

Vote anyone but Blowndelson.