Top

On Brock University’s Hallowe’en ‘Fun Rules’™

October 30, 2015 by  

mckAccording to Brock University, the last thing you would want to do is break Hallowe’en’s “FUN RULES”™. Brock University’s Student Union has put out a poster telling Brock students what they are prohibited from wearing on Hallowe’en. A number of officially verboten examples are given. ‘Oddly’ though, whereas a bindi or Arabic or Native headware is prohibited, you will find no mention of kilts, lederhosen, or wooden shoes. No mention of prohibitions on Pope hats, or anything else Christian or Jewish. Some cultural stuff deserves more protection than other cultural stuff, apparently. That is hardly an important point though.

To the contrary, here is the point:

In a free society – which is what Canada is supposed to be according to its admittedly flexible constitution – nothing is socially/politically sacred. Not fashion. Not religious practices/beliefs. Not diet/recipes. Not “CULTURE”. Where individuals are free and responsible for their actions, nobody gets protection from judgments about their choices. In a free society, everyone is free to cheer you on or boo you; everyone is free to laugh with you, or laugh at you; everyone is free to utterly ignore you. In a free society, you wear your big-person pants, and remember that sticks and stones may break bones, but that names say as much about the person using them as the person they are used for.

Earth is for individuals. It is not a museum for human-defined/created collectives, but the cultural collectivists want it to be one.

The Brock poster will be defended as a means of ensuring that no student’s feelings are hurt by another person’s costume; as a means of ensuring that every student feels welcome at Brock. I can think of nothing that could make a student feel more welcome than defending all students’ freedom to dress however they want to dress on Hallowe’en; allowing all of them to express their likes and dislikes, their fears and hopes, their cultural or political views, no matter how provocative. However, cultural collectivists – and I can only assume that whoever designed Brock’s Hallowe’en Fun Rules™ poster is a big fan and practitioner of cultural collectivism – don’t want us eroding the differences between the cultural boxes they want us all to remain in. They figure that, if they can force us all to remain in cultural boxes – if they can make sure that only Scots wear kilts, only natives wear Chieftain headgear, only the Dutch wear wooden shoes, and only Rastafarians wear dreadlocks – they can continue to argue that differences in wealth or power between their human-made cultural collectives are due to discrimination by some cultural collectives against others; that the purple guys are 10% poorer than green gals because of colourism or some other sort of ism. They then can continue to call for the use of government force to redistribute wealth, power, prestige or what-have-you on the basis of membership in one of their little human-made cultural collectives.

I am writing to advise you as follows. DON’T LET ANYONE KEEP YOU IN A CULTURAL BOX. Cross dress. If you’re a devout Muslim, consider renting a kilt and some bagpipes for Hallowe’en. If your forefathers have been living on this continent “since Christ was a Christian”, consider dressing up as a Christopher Columbus Zombie. If you look Asian, consider dressing up as an observant Hasidic Jew. If you’re a Hasidic Jew, consider dressing as a Rastafarian. If you’re a Rastafarian, consider dressing as a Pastafarian. It’s all good if the result is to get rid of cultural collectivism, and to enhance individual freedom.

I say: Turn that melting pot up to boiling! Be sure to wear your cowboy boots with that that Chieftain’s hat. Wrap your vintage Playboy magazine in the cover of someone’s holy book. If adorning yourself with a bindi, consider combining that with a mock wooden stake to the heart for panache (don’t even ask me what that would ‘mean’, I have no idea).

Other than remembering that Hallowe’en is about the scary and provocative, and not about the bland and uninteresting, keep in mind the only Halloween FUN RULE™ that should exist: if dressing as a cultural collectivist, be sure to have a mock rich guy’s forearm to gnaw upon (make sure there’s a Rolex on it).

To Hell with them all, folks. This is Hallowe’en, not Don’t Offend Anyone Day.

Comments

Comments are closed.