The Bullshit Magnet.

When I was a kid I coveted a pair of shoes with a compass built into the heel. Problem was, these shoes were made for boys. Did boys need to know their direction? Were girls supposed to follow… or get lost?

I never got the too-big shoes. That was Ok. I lived in the north and I didn’t need the spinning arrow of magnetic north to find my way south. I had to go south, had to get away, had to find my own direction, and I couldn’t do that using another definition of ‘compass’. My circle or circuit. My limit.

The only hope was to run.

Finding direction is the hardest task. When people hanker for the past, they are usually hankering for certainty, a road to follow, how to behave, who to be. The job, the marriage, the house, the kids, a plan. MAGA has weaponised the aimlessness of America. Brexit was supposed to be about Taking Back Control. The manosphere pretends to offer young men a route to self-respect - without telling them that the compass has been magnetised. It’s easy to produce a wrong reading - a strong magnet will deflect, or reverse, the polarity of a compass. North is South. Up is Down. Wrong is Right. Violence is Strength.

In the charged, topsy-turvey world of post-truth politics, finding direction is offered as a white-supremicist, anti-feminist, two-gender, fossil-fuelled, creationist, God-fearing, meat-eating, social media, technocratic and capitalist anti-welfare small-government TV news broligarchy, where the rule of law applies to ‘enemies of the people’ and the ‘elected’ executive may do as it pleases. When all this is securely in place, we will, apparently, each find our own True North, just by virtue of standing in the force-field of…

The Universal Bullshit Magnet.

Interestingly, True North is not the same as magnetic north. True North is a fixed point that’s always there. The North Pole. Magnetic north shifts over time, in response to changes in the earth’s magnetic core. It’s not a fixed point. Society does change - we make progress, we do better, we’re not missing at sea, trying to find our way home - in the way that the Pundits for the Past like to pretend. Yes, the world has lost its way. No, there isn’t One Direction ( Is that a Boy Band?) Back to a Better Time.

We can travel where we want to go. How amazing that would be…

Still, you might want to protect your own direction - and your kids’ search for direction, not from the open sea and the stars, but from being thrown off track by the Forces of Bullshit.

A magnetic shield re-directs an unwanted magnetic field away from whatever is being shielded. Yes, it’s all a bit Lord of the Rings, an anti-magnetic cloak that protects you from disorienting forces. You don’t have to clad your home in iron, cobalt, or nickel. The usual help is at hand - no crappy TV news, no doomscrolling, no rant-radio. No weird websites. No aimless app-grazing, no blank-eyed Likes and Ticks. No shock-jock podcasts where white men get emotional about being in a minority, no creeping acceptance of the unacceptable. Raise up your shield made of personal, hard-won, thought-through values, and explain to your kids, or your colleagues, why you believe what you do and act as you do. Words have never been more important as a literal defence. So much nonsense is said in serious voices. Don’t shrug and sigh and turn away. Argue!

Teaching kids right from wrong can only happen if you are aware of who else is influencing them - social and para-social - and if your influence is stronger. That means talking, listening, brushing up on history, knowing your facts, showing that you live by your own rules, respecting your own values. Opening up about how you became the person you are - what makes you proud on this journey - and what doesn’t. And that you are still finding your way, still asking questions, still getting it wrong while trying to get it right. The compass is a start, not a finishing line.

And if the whole world is heading in the wrong direction, as Populists and God-fearers tell us, we can accept that they are correct. It’s not exactly hard to spot. But are they correct about how to change course?

Equality, fairness, education, the rule of law, social justice, opportunity, housing, healthcare, respect for the planet and one another, these things don’t happen through racism, war, thuggery, hatred of the other - including misogyny, shutting down independent media, de-funding universities that won’t act like puppet-palaces, threatening other countries, deporting workers and despoiling the natural world. When the ‘solutions’ are nonsense call them nonsense. Strengthen your mind by speaking out.

We don’t live long. We don’t have much time, as responsible adults, to make whatever difference we can, in both the private and the public spheres. But we can refuse to be thrown off course. We can stick to our path. We can help others to find their way - and have the courage to change direction where necessary.

You are nothing. I am nothing. A jot. A brief moment in time. A temporary imprint in a temporary place. That knowledge brings humility and relief. No need to get a Messiah-complex. There is only so much we can do. All the more reason to do it.

Protect yourself. Help others. Those things are not at odds.

And don’t get deflected by the Bullshit Magnet.