By request, I'm bringing over here to Mastodon the story I posted to twitter about what happened when Rupert Murdoch bought the zoo where we liked to talk about Kant and eat frozen chocolate-covered bananas.
Context: people are angry at scientists for moving here because they think that in doing so scientists are violating their right to free speech, that scientists are playing politics by leaving when Musk takes ownership, etc.
Imagine that my friends and I like to meet at the zoo to discuss Kant.
But every time we settle in for a good conversation about transcendental idealism, a modest-sided herd of inebriated emus arrive, playing vuvuzelas and waving placards about how we should be tried at The Hague for reading Leibniz, reading Hegel, not reading Hegel, whatever.
We shout above the din for a while and eventually either we get sick of trying, the emus get bored and move on, or one of the emu keepers comes and runs them off.
One of my friends suggests maybe the zoo isn’t the right place to meet and discuss such abstruse matters.
But it’s not so easy to just leave.
We’re used to meeting here, the zoo has really good frozen chocolate covered bananas, and—for reasons we can't really comprehend—other people who just happen to be passing through the zoo seem to enjoy listening to our conversation…
...so we put up with the emus for the time being.
Then one day Rupert Murdoch buys the zoo. Aussie that he is, he loves emus—so he doubles the herd, and brings in a mob* of wallabies as well. As a cost-saving measure, fires all the emu keepers. He accuses us of hating emus.
He stops selling chocolate-covered frozen bananas.
*Mob. A mob of wallabies. That’s the technical collective noun, not a slur.
We start talking about how maybe it makes more sense to discuss Kant at the circus. A few of us even go over there and give it a try.
It’s kind of nice there.
Quieter.
The elephants don’t say much, but they are generally good-natured and even seem to appreciate a thoughtful conversation about noumena at times.
Meanwhile, back at the zoo, the kookaburras find out where we’ve been going on the weekends we don’t show up there.
“Free speech,” they cackle.
“You are trampling on the emus’ rights!"
"You can’t just leave for the circus! What about the wallabies?"
"Are you so insecure in your understanding of Kant that you are afraid of a few vocal ratites?"
"Why do you hate Australia?”
Wrong, you overgrown kingfishers!
The emus can play their plastic horns to their hearts’ content. I’ve no interest in stopping them. But I don’t have any interest in listening either.
Especially not while debating the finer points of monadology or whatever it is Kant is on about.
[over at Twitter, where an abbreviated version of this thread first appeared, I restricted the replies to people I follow.]
I suppose some will find it ironic that only those I follow can reply to this thread. How is that not a violation of free speech? I could write about that too, but I’d rather not.
Suffice to say that I hesitated to do that—but the platypus insisted that I show enough self-compassion to hit that particular button before posting.
fin.
@ct_bergstrom See, now, when you say "why do you hate Australia", you distract me because my brain basically starts with "are you kidding me, even the trees are poisonous and the only reason there are no snakes is that the spiders have eaten them" and the next thing you know I have this playing in my head and I've lost the thread of my answer, let alone the original argument :(
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