On Being Ignored: Some Advice for Prince Harry
With the news that Harry and Co. were hanging out in my home town perhaps with an eye to resettle there – a no-brainer given the Canadian climate – and with the recent understanding that he blames the low-culture media for the death of his mother – reasonable if incomplete – I have some advice: I’m an expert on being ignored. Indeed, I may be one of the world’s greatest. All one has to do is become a critical social philosopher and practice your craft. In an instant, all your wishes for utter privacy will be attained.
Considering that I am the most prolific scholar of my generation – true, Gen-X hasn’t accomplished much and never will; Tiger Woods is about it – and considering I have come up with numerous new discursive concepts including a new model of the afterlife, a theory of subjectivity that addresses prolonged adolescence in consumer society, a critical-ethical conception of political relations, an analysis of fascism in everyday life, a new theory of anxiety – uh, I could go on – not to mention having written an eleven volume fantasy-sci-fi adventure series that completely obliterates the previous canon and its moribund morality, one might think that I, or at least my work, would be of interest to somebody.
One would be mistaken. Though it is quite true that a retired academic might be imagined as having little to offer the world at large – aside from, in my case, public policy analysis in health, higher education and corrections and justice, pedagogic ability from the widest liberal arts down to the ability to teach ‘TOK’ in IB programs, social and institutional research experience of over twenty-five years, eight years of mid-executive management experience and publications in HR journals [hey, this is beginning to sound like a resume; it’s actually a white flag] and the ability to practice a form of therapy called existential analysis etc. – I had hoped, most naively as it turned out, to be of some use in my autumnal years. From the start of 2018 to the summer of 2019 I applied to over four hundred jobs. I got four interviews. I applied to dozens of volunteer sites, started my own consulting business, led writing workshops and had all of three takers combined. All I can say is thank the Gods for PRIFFs (as well as my brilliantly resilient and resourceful spouse). Perhaps I didn’t go the distance, perhaps I didn’t move to the right place (one executive headhunter I spoke with early on simply said I needed to move to Boston of all places, but as I grew up a Habs fan – my father had been drafted by them back in 1945 but with the returning hordes from Europe only played on their farm club – I had to turn that one down) or perhaps I missed my boat when my editor – ex Scribner’s, ex McClelland and Stewart – asked me to move to New York City back when I was ‘only’ forty-eight. Whatever might have been the case, I now couldn’t get a gig helping out free of charge at the lowest of the low.
I’m even mostly ignored by my friends, as well as those few I have actually helped, the media to whom I have sent oh-so-enlightening articles, small businesses to whom I have offered business, politicians – perhaps this is a good thing – and even Greta Thunberg herself who is, ironically, just as Mr. Putin characterized her: ‘kind, gentle and ill-informed’. She is kind and gentle. Far too much so for the mission at hand. And she is misinformed, though not in the way the Russian leader was perhaps indicating. Twenty minutes once a week makes her a darling of parents, schools and peers alike, not to mention the greater villains. Stating what actually needs to be done makes someone like myself into public enemy number one.
Hence my advice to the Prince. That and move out to an internally divisive thirteen municipality patently cultural backwater locally referred to as the GVRD. But he may have that part down already. So if Prince Harry, or anyone else for that matter, for whom a dubious fame is getting to be all too much – and when does it not if you have any conscience at all; even Hitler, who might not have had a conscience but did have a debilitating social anxiety, succumbed to it in the end – wants to become a true pariah, simply follow in my recently furtive footsteps. I guarantee instant results.
Social Philosopher G.V. Loewen is the author of over thirty-five books in ethics, education, health, aesthetics and social theory, as well as metaphysical adventure fiction. He was professor in the interdisciplinary human sciences in two countries for over two decades and in spite of all of that, has retained some nominal sense of humour.