December 23, 2017

Source: Bigstock

All kinds of people? Did you say all? Serial killers, for example, or mass murderers, bank robbers, torturers, extortionists, and blackmailers, drug dealers and swindlers? Ah, but then we must not stereotype mass murderers; for we must “Stop stereotypes” and “Write a blog of short stories that breaks that way of thinking.”

Suppose that each blog of short stories consists of four short stories on the theme (a modest number, surely); that is to say, it is on humanity’s to-do list to write 24,000,000,000 such stories. In these circumstances, I think it might be a little difficult altogether to avoid stereotypes.

Another thing that we should all do is “educate ourselves on the causes and symptoms of heart disease as well as other Non-Communicable Diseases.” This might be somewhat time-consuming as anyone will appreciate who has followed the debates among experts (who have devoted their whole lives to the subject) on the causes of hypertension and coronary artery disease. UNOG rushes in where angels fear to tread.

Uniformity of opinion on contentious matters is assumed in the pamphlet, and freedom of any kind or description is nowhere even mentioned, even by name. It is assumed that charities and foreign aid designed to relieve the poor do in fact relieve the poor, and that raising the minimum wage makes the poorest better off without entrenching unemployment (which may be worse for health and well-being than low wages). It is not that I want an equal and opposite orthodoxy on the matters that the pamphlet addresses, it is that I want no orthodoxy at all.

What to do about the unscrupulous hypocrites of UNOG and its Perception Change Project, who imagine that when they are producing this unctuous driveling bilge they are actually working rather than parasitizing the very humanity to whom they give to-do lists? It is obvious. UNOG should be transformed into UNOP, the United Nations Office at Pyongyang, where those who work for it should be paid in North Korean currency at the North Korean minimum wage and with North Korean pension benefits. That would soon enough sort the humanitarian sheep from the careerist goats. Talk about a change of perception!

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