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Worzels World - On Behalf of the Narrow Minded and Intolerant

 

 

Many of the teachers and other adult figures of my childhood were anything but tolerant. Perhaps they have scarred me for life. Once the best part of a lifetime ago after mixing with the Kelly boys – who were rightly regarded as a rough lot – I had picked up a pejorative phrase that had gained some popularity back then.

It seems tame now in these anything-goes days, but when it was suspected that a contemporary was ‘gilding the lily’ – exaggerating or otherwise embellishing or augmenting the humble truth – we would tar him with the epithet of ‘Crap Artist‘.

For a while practically anyone and everyone who said anything was labelled a crap artist. I was young and fairly naïve and had no idea what crap was and that such a word my not be acceptable in polite company. When at the lunch table, (yes we sat at the table together to have lunch) I called my sister a crap artist, and my mother, a woman quick to anger and almost as quick to act upon it, swiped me across the head with an open hand in what I believe was then termed a clip on the ear but which these days is labelled common assault. ‘How dare you use that language at the table’ she admonished. Even now the effect of such things haunts me.

I feel a guilty pleasure writing what was once an offensive phrase in the paper. My childhood was full of such examples of narrow-minded intolerance by adults who were not only intolerant but were proud of it. They even admitted that they were trying to keep us on the ‘straight and narrow‘. Can you believe the bare-faced cheek of them trying to mould our young impressionable minds in such a fashion?

I am not at all sure to what extent such behaviour scared my peers and me. I would have sought counselling except I am thoroughly convinced that most counsellors are for the most part crap artists. I am convinced though that the cumulative effect of encountering such intolerance was to endow me with that other now politically incorrect characteristic of narrow mindedness.

When it comes to certain things I am very narrow minded indeed. After five decades of existence that has been reasonably well packed with experience there are certain things that I now accept as true and about which I am not prepared to compromise. Two and two equals four and I do not have an open mind about it. If someone reckons that it equals 3, 5 or seventy-twelve I may be labelled an intolerant narrow-minded bigot when I say they are wrong – but in fact they are wrong. Likewise I know what 6 + 2 x 8 is equal to and it is not 64, although I expect many of you will think it is.

I am also narrow minded when it comes to gender identity issues which seem to confuse many these days. It’s pretty simple really. If you're born with an extra

visible appendage you’re male. If later in life you are somehow led to believe that you are a male with female thoughts you are wrong. You are simply a male with confused thoughts.

Part of the trick of living is learning to play the cards we have been dealt. No matter how much a six of clubs thinks or wishes it is an ace of hearts it will never be so. My advice to it would be to team up with three other sixes of clubs and working together they could make a virtually unbeatable poker hand.

Yes I practice narrow mindedness and intolerance and long may it be so.

The addict, the pervert and the criminal had to start down their respective paths somehow. They began with an open mind to actions that seemed attractive at the time and continued to tolerate this behaviour in themselves.

All evil gains an initial foothold through a broad-minded assessment of how a certain course can benefit us. When evil in ourselves and in our society is tolerated we become immune to it. News reports are mostly lies and wicked is the new good. What is unacceptable and intolerable has become accepted and tolerated and in time we come to know and love it. Wrong has been called right and has become a familiar but malignant friend. We find it difficult to eradicate yet for our own good and the good of all eradicate it we must.

n prof_worzel@hotmail.com

“When it comes to certain things I am very narrow minded indeed. After five decades of existence… there are certain things that I now accept as true and about which I am not prepared to compromise.”


 
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