Matisyahu's Blog

Woke up at 9:00 am and it felt easier than previous days – my body getting used to the new routine? appears to be so. I went for a walk and the weather was overcast but no rain, arrived back home then got ready for work then watched some news before logging into my work laptop. I’m keep tracking of my meals and I think the biggest mistake was not keeping a journal on those days off – something I’m going to do this week so I avoid making great progress and then undo all that progress on my day off.

I was watching a video by Taylor Lorenz regarding the push for social media bans around the world – the satanic panic has been resuscitated with a new moral panic. Rather than empower parents to monitor what their kids are doing online and giving young people the tools to navigate the internet safely. As a society we’re smart enough to realise that if we want people drinking responsibly we expect that parents set a good example of how to drink alcohol responsibly. We’re also smart enough as a society that when people want to get a drivers licence there is a process – you start off with a learners licence then graduate to a restricted licence and then eventually, once you demonstrated you’re ready, you gradually to a full licence.

This is what happens when you have politicians being voted in who believe it is their job to implement some social engineer grand plan where is their job to fix all society’s ills. I’m sorry but society’s ills are not going to be fixed by passing legislation that make people feel good believing that is the end of the discussion. I am also cautious when Is start hearing politicians who use moral panics and culture wars as a distracting from fixing actual social issues – where they’ll talk about everything but the most obvious explanation. A good example of that is the drop in the fertility rate – politicians and talking heads who worship at the altar of neoliberalism and twist themselves into all manner of contortions to avoid the obvious that the cost of living is too high and people aren’t earning enough. Reminds of the quote from Upton Sinclair, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it”.