The canons of 2019: a new catechism for an online world without a past | thearticle

Let’s talk straight. 2019 is an unhappy name for the period we’re crawling through, since it misleadingly suggests that this year is just like the 2018 or so that preceded it. It is not. And

it’s no good ransacking the annals of history and tomes of scripture for nuggets of wisdom still fit for purpose. These unprecedented times require adherence to a new code of conduct – a

catechism for a world that has found itself to be irreconcilably different from its past. In the spirit of public service, then, I set out below the core canons by which I, and by obvious

extension you, should now live: * Facts are all well and good, but my truth is unassailable. * I unfailingly assume the worst motives in those with whom I disagree. * But I treat as

confrontational bigotry the scepticism of those who question my own intentions. * An individual’s lived experience is sacrosanct, and not fully intelligible to anyone else. * But each and

every individual is irrelevant when set beneath the sacred shibboleths of group identity. * The differences between such groups should be treated by society as simultaneously a matter of

paramount importance and utter irrelevance. * Since I regard all political decisions as moral matters, I necessarily conclude that those who differ from me politically are immoral. * The

past is a source of embarrassment, the future of despair. * The collected writings of history are the regressive progenitors of intellectual privilege. * I am suspicious of all news sources

and academically-conducted research, since they are inevitably blighted by implicit bias. * Instead, I challenge my opinions by reading exclusively the comment writers who think most

similarly to me. * The voice of the working class must be listened to – except when they themselves just aren’t listening. * In a world of longed-for equality, all discrimination by

difference is wrong. * Words should not be judged by their speaker’s intent but by their hearer’s perception. * Mercy, grace, humility and charity are problematic religious archaisms. *

Science should strive to reveal the world not as it is but as it should be. * It is unconscionable to make value judgments about other cultures than your own. * The public voice of any

majority should be tempered to mitigate its own numerical privilege. * The society in which I live is at an unprecedented point of crisis. I shall use the resources available to me to

advance this belief ahead of the wars, genocide, famine and across-the-board oppression blighting those parts of the world that have patchier social-media participation. * [Only available

once adherence to 1-19 has been publicly demonstrated] I will effect change across the world by propagating the hashtag #changebeginselsewhere.