I know nothing.
, I know a lot of random things but I could be wrong about all of them. If you told me that penguins didn’t actually have knees covered by their copious amount of drooping belly fat I would be surprised and want to see the evidence but I am prepared to be wrong.
There suddenly seems to be a rise of people who aren’t prepared to be wrong. Whether it’s not understanding Black Lives Matter doesn’t mean your life matters too, JKRowling vs Trans people, whether the empire was great or evil, statues or just whether strawberry flavoured Jaffa Cakes should exist people have decided what they think and are not prepared to consider the possibility that they are wrong.
“This is the hill I’ll die on!” they shout.
Yesterday, on Twitter, that Grimey boy was being horribly anti-Semitic and even when people told him he was wrong he refused to back down. He didn’t even have many of the confirmatory voices that you often get but he just kept going, for hours and hours. He was eventually suspended from the platform for a week but you can imagine him in his bedroom spitting bile about Jews (because everyone who believes that Abraham made a covenant with God is the same, right?) and even when the cat showed him its butt he refused to stop, shouting, “This is the hill I’m prepared to die on.” He’s probably still there now, rocking in a corner. I would feel sorry for him but I think he’s always been a bit of a twit, not turning up to gigs and generally acting like he’s the most important person on the planet.
All these people shouting about being prepared to die on a hill have confused me because I thought the phrase used to be, “That’s not a hill I’m prepared to die on.” It used to be used by people to admit that they might not be completely sure. That used to be allowed. Once upon a time, in the not too distant past people used to be able to say, “I think Churchill was a great man but it’s not a hill I’m prepared to die on.” Most humans could see that there aren’t two distinct sides, that humans are basically flawed and whilst someone did great things, they might have also done some pretty horrible things (Boer war concentration camps).
I wondered where the phrase came from in the first place because, let’s face it, not many people actually die on hills.
It’s quite a new idiom and dates back to 1969 and the Vietnam war and a battle that took place on Dong Ap Bia, a mountain, with particularly difficult terrain. The battle was nicknamed the battle of Hamburger Hill by theAmerican soldiers because anyone who fought there was ‘ground up like hamburger meat’. This was a hill you definitely didn’t want to die on.
It worries me that the phrase has shifted. It worries me that people are no longer prepared to be wrong. We can’t know everything. We must be prepared to be wrong and open to learning new things.
I’m desperately trying to learn new things. I’m trying to learn how to teach music without singing or blowing. On a body percussion Zoom training they told us to check out their website.
“Click on the burger,” he told us.
I sat, confused. I didn’t know what the burger was.
They switched their screen to show their computer and the mouse hovered over the three little lines in the corner.
“This is the hill I’ll die on!” they shout.
Yesterday, on Twitter, that Grimey boy was being horribly anti-Semitic and even when people told him he was wrong he refused to back down. He didn’t even have many of the confirmatory voices that you often get but he just kept going, for hours and hours. He was eventually suspended from the platform for a week but you can imagine him in his bedroom spitting bile about Jews (because everyone who believes that Abraham made a covenant with God is the same, right?) and even when the cat showed him its butt he refused to stop, shouting, “This is the hill I’m prepared to die on.” He’s probably still there now, rocking in a corner. I would feel sorry for him but I think he’s always been a bit of a twit, not turning up to gigs and generally acting like he’s the most important person on the planet.
All these people shouting about being prepared to die on a hill have confused me because I thought the phrase used to be, “That’s not a hill I’m prepared to die on.” It used to be used by people to admit that they might not be completely sure. That used to be allowed. Once upon a time, in the not too distant past people used to be able to say, “I think Churchill was a great man but it’s not a hill I’m prepared to die on.” Most humans could see that there aren’t two distinct sides, that humans are basically flawed and whilst someone did great things, they might have also done some pretty horrible things (Boer war concentration camps).
I wondered where the phrase came from in the first place because, let’s face it, not many people actually die on hills.
It’s quite a new idiom and dates back to 1969 and the Vietnam war and a battle that took place on Dong Ap Bia, a mountain, with particularly difficult terrain. The battle was nicknamed the battle of Hamburger Hill by theAmerican soldiers because anyone who fought there was ‘ground up like hamburger meat’. This was a hill you definitely didn’t want to die on.
It worries me that the phrase has shifted. It worries me that people are no longer prepared to be wrong. We can’t know everything. We must be prepared to be wrong and open to learning new things.
I’m desperately trying to learn new things. I’m trying to learn how to teach music without singing or blowing. On a body percussion Zoom training they told us to check out their website.
“Click on the burger,” he told us.
I sat, confused. I didn’t know what the burger was.
They switched their screen to show their computer and the mouse hovered over the three little lines in the corner.
“That’s not a burger!” I shouted at the screen. Luckily, I was muted.
This is the hamburger hill I’m not prepared to die on though. I’m willing to learn. Does everyone call it a burger?
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