Comment Massagement

Me, Pat and Steve on 25/09/11
Mum died on 21/10/11.

It's a long while since I've had any time for blogging.  Moving across the world gets you like that but I'm here to post a comment that was left on a blog that claims to be about humanism, although it's hard, given the vitriol and closed-mindedness in evidence there, so see what that might be that is of any use to anyone. I'm posting the comment here simply because three quarters of it was deleted, with the express intention of reputation destruction. (My comment policy is at the end of this post).

Schoolyard Critics

This post is a footnote to my review of Eugene Schwartz' short movie "Recessitation: Bullying in the Waldorf School", which inverts both joke mechanisms and definitions of play and bullying to ridicule the notion of both.

I've reviewed the movie on ANM, because it provides a lot of useful (if inverted) information about Steiner education, and this addendum examines how, in their own critiques of this movie the Steiner critics have continued and extended the inversions used by Schwartz, by which actions they reveal not only a singular lack of ability to self-scrutinise, but also a dangerous lack of awareness of the similarity of their position to the one that they are criticising.

Free Speech vs Hate Speech

Alicia's hateful speech with no right of reply

I've been re-examining my attitude to free-speech in the light of recent court rulings regarding very offensive statements in the public eye.

Whilst fighting a battle to get the recognition of discrimination in the expulsion of my kids from a dratted Steiner School, the opposite critics have turned on us and mauled us savagely on several occasions.  This arose simply from one person, Melanie Byng proposing initiatives that she was unable to take responsibility for and she has then allowed those personal things to bleed into the area of "Steiner criticism", using the social confirmation bias of her friends, to our detriment and also noticably to the detriment of the British campaign to halt State-funding.

Handy Template for Identifying a Cult

Of use to cult-busters might be this handy template, helpfully supplied by Alicia Hamberg. It originally concerned the treatment of Gregoire Perra, whose whistleblowing activities the 'critiques' talk about increasingly, by the Fédération des Ecoles Steiner en France, who are suing him.


But what I found when I looked at it (once I stopped laughing), was that it can apply to any group that mounts an aggressive attack on people with different opinions or ways of approaching matters, and which, in doing so, begins to approximate cultish behaviour.

Dealing with Defamation

If you stand up and be counted, you will experience attack, probably mainly in the form of people smearing you as mad.  That just happens to virtually everybody that takes a stand for justice with any kind of entrenched status quo.  Don't believe me?  Who on earth are you following?

Invisible to Atos

Its so easy to look at an article like this The bunion surgeons who are maiming their patients.and say, oh look at those nasty podiatrists, pretending to be doctors and getting all above themselves.

Yes I had corrective surgery for a mangled op done by a podiatric surgeon.  In fact it was what’s called tertiary surgery (third go), as the podiatrist actually got to try and put it right himself first in a spirit of forgiveness and ...well sheer stupidity on my part as it turned out.

Bullying Comparitors - thanks very much!

Bullying is big in the news.  From “Bully” the movie, to tit for tat about who owns our uteri, and whether rape can ever be legitimate,  it would be hard to say that bullying isn't a feminist issue.

Power-over-others is certain under the microscope, yet it seems hard to get on even ground in even discussing any of these areas.

A Skeptic's Guide to Bystanding

by·stand·er noun \ˈbī-ˌstan-dər\ Definition of BYSTANDER : one present but not taking part in a situation or event : a chance spectator