Hi John Curious about what everyone is writting about What is(are) your topic(s) and future projects

This is an essay i wrote for substack but havent published yet...related to this topic Unimpeachable Heros Every culture selects its heroes. This is not a matter of taste but of orientation. Heroes signal what a society admires, what it rewards, and what it hopes will be emulated. They provide scale. They offer perspective. For most of history, that function was performed imperfectly but honestly. Human beings were admired without being mistaken for saints. Moral failure did not negate significance. It contextualised it. The past was understood as a record of action taken under constraint, not as a catalogue of ethical purity. That equilibrium has not survived the modern culture war. Over the past several decades, the way historical figures are evaluated has shifted fundamentally. Rather than being assessed within the moral horizons of their time, they are increasingly judged against the ethical expectations of the present. Context narrows. Proportionality weakens. A single flaw is elevated until it eclipses everything else. This practice did not originate on one side of politics, nor has it spared one tradition. It has moved indiscriminately across the historical record, consuming figures once held as icons by opposing camps. Figures associated with Western power and authority were early targets. But the method did not stop there. and , long treated as moral touchstones by the political left, were among the first to be widely re-examined and publicly diminished once the same logic was applied consistently. Their personal failings, contradictions, and private behaviour — long known to historians — were reframed as decisive moral disqualifications. Both sides of the culture war took casualties. What was lost in the process was not simply admiration for particular individuals, but perspective itself. The capacity to weigh significance against imperfection began to erode. History became flatter, thinner, and more brittle. Figures were no longer understood as products of complex worlds, but as moral exhibits arranged for contemporary judgment.

@Jonathan Duff we need to accept the complexity of the human mind. Our ability to adapt has been a major component of our biological survival Given the right (or wrong) conditions humans achieve great things and also do the unthinkable...but they are still humans Accepting that we are all "ordinary men" just that we dont all live in ordinary circumstances

William Buckley Probably a bit obscure especially outside of Australia He was a convict who escaped into the bush and lived 30 years with uncontacted natives One of very few people to have actual first hand experience of meeting a pristine infigenous culture

@Jonathan Duff he entered the tribe unable to speak their language...30 years later he had forgotten how to speak english I doubt he could ever have truly assimilated in either culture Interesting questions i would have for him He had 3 aboriginal "wives" (though one was an inherited wife and possibly elderly) and almost certainly had children with them Did he ever visit or regret not visiting them ? Was he initiated ? There is no mention of cicatrix or tooth removal, the usual signs of an initiated man But that could be deliberately obscured or covered up out of embarrassment...either by himself of by the priest who recorded his biography More detail on indigenous spiritual belief and practices The descriptions he gives are lacking in meaningful detail Another case where it is hard to say was this just negotiating the moral expectations of colonial era audiences, self censorship due to embarrassment or shame or a failure to recognise the importance of recording those details Sadly Buckley has suffered egregiously under the regime of modern political reinterpretation of history His eyewitness accounts, speak of cannibal rituals and inter-tribal violence...subjects that dont flatter modern noble savage narratives The simple naivette of the story reads as an authentic lived experience clearly curated by a third person who was interpreting unfamilar things A genuine and real life record Yet modern commentators have judged his personal observations as tainted by colonial biases and 18th century social exceptionalism Ironically denying the cold reality of indigenous cultural practices...because they fail to conform to modern sensibilities The very crime they accuse the past of committing Buckley used to be taught at schools...now they tell children aboriginals had agriculture and intercontinental highways connecting them to global trade networks The europeanisation and flattening of nuance to create a curated global indigenous identity

"But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought." — George Orwell Most bad ideas throughout history have been accompanied by heavy censorship and approved language The people who dissent are forced to stay silent or face persecution and social stigma of some kind It starts as small, acceptable, justified actions and ends in catastrophe Good ideas do not need to censor opposition...they invite debate and inspire examination

@Jonathan Duff self policing is downstream of radical ideas taking power At first dissent is tolerated, then it is discouraged and eventually outlawed We see again and again in history where small groups of zealous individuals controlled entire societies through incremental increases in control Self censorship only happens when the mechanism for persecution is already activated When you have people in the community who believe strongly enough in their ideology to persecute and even commit violence it is not self censorship....rather self preservation The real danger is letting the extremists have any power at all Once dedicated zealots hold the reins of power they will manipulate the system to enforce their beliefs They promote in group ideologues who will benefit their cause and marginalised more centrist figures who would bring balance Once they have stacked gallery it is very easy to identify any dissenters as enemies of society

@Jonathan Duff we carry a lot of cultural baggage Our view of the world seems so fixed and logical that it can be hard to relate to our ancestors One of my future possible projects is an examination of our attitude towards cannibalism It has been an act of love as funerary ritual, a display of state or religious power, an act of war, basic nutrition (the working title is "long pork") and in modern times entertainment as fiction and a bizarre sexual kink Each society has compartmentalised the act in a different framework and performed it with very different intentions