(Or - The arrogance of ‘knowledge’ in a Sushi Plate world.)
You know what they say about arseholes - every single one of them has an opinion.
There’s nothing wrong with opinions, per se, certainly not in the old days when, so long as you didn’t express them in the street where they could frighten the horses, you could knock yourself out. Corner tables in smoke-filled pubs were a hot bed of ‘alternative’ opinion. No one cared. Possibly because they were only shared with three like-minded drunk mates. In that company, they weren’t so much as ‘alternative’ as gospel.
But that was then, and this isn’t. These days, opinions are so crammed full of haemorrhoids, that once they’re out, you can’t even shove them back in with a big, blue Twitter tick.
You can’t blame people. Not in a general way. In keeping with the laws of Sushi Plate thinking, we need to be more direct (and blinkered) with the venom of blame.
Michael Gove removed his finger from the dyke of common sense when he confidently told us we’d ‘had enough of experts’. As he ran away giggling, a billion gallons of amateur opinion spilled out flooding the twin towns of Logic and Critical Thinking - the way various small villages were submerged during the formation of huge new reservoirs. Thanks Mike. What a beautiful new piranha-filled landscape you’ve helped create. Well done.
If this was still a pre-social media world, Mike would simply be a poor man’s Mr. Bean Impersonator doing children’s parties. But he flipped the switch on a weird new stupidity for the ‘connected’ world. It was like a homing signal for those who know what they think without actually thinking about it.
In the past, society would glance up at the emperor in his new clothes and get an eyeful of dingle-dangle scarecrow. Not everyone would feel the need to snigger and point, but a lot would know the truth no matter what they were told to the contrary.
Those days are gone. People now answer the question regarding the emperor’s tackle with things like: ‘Yeah, but what about trans people?’ It’s a sleight of hand lacking all subtlety – a close-up magician shouting ‘Look, a badger!’ while climbing a ladder and sticking your playing card to the ceiling.
Mike wasn’t alone, of course. Donald and Boris were also figureheads for two tsunamis of nonsense. And they were great at it. They taught their followers how to win every argument. They were part of the Sushi Plate thinking revolution. Revolution might be too strong a word as it normally suggests a little more than picking up your phone, scratching your bum with one hand while tapping away with the other.
I’ve mentioned it several times, so you’re probably wondering: What is Sushi Plate thinking? Good question.
Let me explain.
You know Gary Lineker? Ex-footballer, MOTD host, Guy Fawkes of the modern era? At the time of writing, he has just been a very high-profile victim of the Sushi Plate thinking epidemic. He suggested the home secretary was guilty of using language reminiscent of 1930s Nazi Germany. He was upset. He thought Suella was being a dick. (My interpretation of his words, lawyers, stand down.) Whether he was right or wrong is irrelevant. Because, rather than investigating anything, a huge swathe of bum-scratching England waited like baby birds, mouths open, for their Twitter parents to vomit their opinions into their mouths. And vomit, they did!
His contract says he can’t…
Why don’t footballers stick to football..?
He’s paid so much money if the BBC sacked him, we could build 40 new hospitals!
Crisps kill children!
Didn’t he poo himself on the pitch in England’s opening match of the 1990 world cup?
Like a conveyor belt of wonderful Japanese cuisine, Sushi Plated ideas rotate through society utterly separate from nuance, from alternative views, from logic. Simply wait until someone tells you which plate you should be picking and you’re off.
And it works. Because if you only look at the single plate of opinion in your hands, you’re right! All the other analogous thoughts and opinions drift by on the carousel, but you don’t look at them, you keep staring at your plate, until you can’t think of anything else. And during that moment of staring, a miracle happens – you turn opinion into fact. And when you’re in possession of a fact – you’re one of a new breed of experts the world so desperately needs – since Mike, et al, discredited all the others.
There was an ex of mine. She could argue both sides of the same argument. Not seeing both sides but speaking them. And agreeing with them in complete isolation. This is allowed in Sushi Plate thinking – so long as you put the first plate back before selecting the second. To be fair, I think she needed to be able to do this, so as never to have to agree with me.
This sort of thinking is destroying debate. How can we discuss anything when we’re all so right about everything? If you’re planning to enter the Sushi Plate arena, why not take a minute to watch all the plates go by, instead of grabbing the first one the same colour as your political rosette.
Failing that, you could always pop next door for a kebab.
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