Comments by "Curious Crow" (@CuriousCrow-mp4cx) on "New York Times Podcasts" channel.

  1. Or more simply, are you for real? Are you sincere? And I think he is for real and sincere. There's a video on the Channel called Unsolicited Advice where he's discussing the novel A Superfluous Man. And Jo notes that to truly connect with people one has to allow oneself to be vulnerable, and John Oliver does do that. But means he may be cautious too, because not everyone is benign. The interviewer came across as defending the profession of Journalism. But that also speaks to the greater issues with mainstream journalism facilitating post-truth politics, and partisanship.
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  2. This is so wrong. Read Albert Camus' novel called "The Plague". Or his work on the Myth of Sisyphus. As the most important exponent of Absurdism, he counters the false optimism vs pessimism dichotomy by focusing on the qualitative, subjective means we can use to cope with a meaningless universe by finding meaning in relieving suffering of ourselves and others by embracing the challenges of being human, by being present, in a compassionate way. In this way, we can find meaning, and in that, "we imagine Sisyphus happy."
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  3. Humans are almost hairless apes. And over 50% of the human genome is shared with the banana tree. And we evolved to have brains that are still neathandal and equipped to deal with sabre-toothed tigers, yet have the ability to be creative. And yet endanger it's home planet by being too creative. We are a paradox, even to ourselves.
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  4. Not really. The Court Jester always outlasted the King. Why? John Oliver wasn't born rich, successful, or sexy. But he was intelligent and compassionate enough to light a candle and not curse the darkness. He has learned in that liminal space between nihilism and overoptimism. He knows he has to eat with a long spoon, but he's no Tucker Carlson. His feet are on the ground. If he has to, he could return to stand-up, and make a living. Kings can't do that - most of the are like Joffrey in GOT.
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  5. No; it's rather anodyne, and "colour blind".
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  6. That's what you are meant to believe. The source material is far more accurate. Like capturing other slae ships was a consequence of Britain wanting to destroy France and Spain economically, so Napoleon could not fund his war against the British and their allies. That's self-interest, which is rarely discussed when abolition is discussed. In fact, a knowledge of British Economic History is essential to understand the British state's actions towards the Slavery as a component of its economic and political policies. It's far more truthful than the virtue signalling, because it provides factual context as to why and how they did it. And truthfully, money was the prime motive at every stage. That's not to Wilberforce, or the Abolitionist agenda wasn't meaningful. but let's be honest, the calculated self-interest of those who ran the British state was the primary driver. What the Napoleonic Wars cost Britain was an eye watering sum of money. And a huge component of that was spending on protecting its control over its Colonies. Military spending would have bankrupted Britain is it had been allowed to continue. So fighting regular slave rebellions, was bad for business. After all, the survival of Haiti as free state, was thought to be a danger to all Colonies in the Caribbean. In this sense, slavery was no longer economical. For the sugar trade to continue, the plantation owners would have to transition to an employed workforce, which was less wasteful that working slaves to death. And so the compensation paid by the British state to slave owners upon abolition was a subsidy to pay for that transition. that together with the 10-year unpaid "apprenticeship" imposed on the "freed" slaves gave the slave owners time and resources to smooth their way. But after the 10-year apprenticeship was over, there was no provisions for housing or integration of the freed slaves into society or the economy. They were ejected with no money to fend for themselves. Indeed, if it was not for the charity of the Baptist missionaries, who raised money to buy land so that some slaves could settle on and subsistence farm, otherwise there would have been serious problems. So, you see, abolition was factually driven by different agendas, where the political and the economic incentives carried far more weight than the moral. That was the reality. And how the Colonies were run after abolition was shaped by their past, which as neither progressive nor equitable, has become a legacy influencing relationships in the Commonwealth today. That's the reality. Pretending otherwise is just putting roadblocks in the way of being able to move on from it. Yes, asking for reparations and apologies as restorative justice will continue, because "get over it" doesn't work. What would work is shifting economic and political relationships towards being less exploitative in the present. Would that happen? Never say never, right? But it might take as long as the original issue took to come about. Especially as the worldview behind colonialism being a thing is being applied to the populations of former imperial nations. How ironic.
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