Dr. Doolittle was a character in a series of 1920 novels by Hugh Lofting. The books, I understand, have a mixed reception today. It is wonderful that they advocate for environmental concerns and a closer relationship with the other animals that share the planet with us; however, there have also been concerns about a colonialist slant to the text that portrayed Africans as simple natives so appreciative of the assistance of a member of the European educated class. I'm just interested in the origin and susequent uasage of a word from the text of the first book; namely, the Pushmi-Pullyu.
Lofting described the creature as resembling a llama or antelope, but with a head at either end of the body, pointing away from the torso, so that the creature always faces in two directions at once. The term came to mean a person who behaves in a contradictory fashion with motives that appear conflicting.
Various politicians and commentators have used the term in derogatory descriptions and it certainly could be used today to characterize those who advocate for Israel's "right to exist" even when it means mass starvation and violence inflicted upon innocent Palestinians but who then protest against criticism of their position as anti-semitic violence. Other, perhaps less controversial examples abound, but that will be, I am sure, the primary one for our times.
I found a reference to a use by one Julie Burchill in The Spectator of April 21, 2015 where she wrote: "This is the age of the Cry-Bully, a hideous hybrid of victim and victor, weeper and walloper. They are everywhere, these duplicit Pushmi-Pullyus of the personal and the political."
"Cry-bully" Now there's a pushmi-pullyu word if ever there was one. She is a fine journalist by my standards with a gift for coining incisive terms. She also sounded like my kind of heroine. Here's her posting in full:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9686037/JULIE-BURCHILL-reveals-wont-silenced.html
And, she's still going strong on her blog and in her book Welcome to the Woke Trials. My jottings on the subject of pushmi-pullyu are tame by comparison, but here they are, nevertheless.
Those horrible Moslems are the real apartheid culprits by keeping "their" females in burkhas, doing "honour killings" of women and vowing to exterminate all Jews. And any criticism of Israel's military in their (genocidal) war in Gaza is antisemitism and should be punished, even if there have been over 44,000 Palestinians killed (some estimates are as high as 186,000) and they weren't all terrorists using children as human shields
We want encyclopedic information at our fingertips, and we have it. The price of access to that information is often a surrendering of our privacy. We may be cautious in sharing personal information with site providers; we may refuse all cookies requests; we may decline to take post-purchase surveys; and still we wonder how did "they" know I like that colour clothing or that I might like those book suggestions.
Remember a few years back when people were sounding an alarm about the ability of governments (ours too) and commercial entities to examine billions of bits of data in the public texting, phoning, emailing, purchasing, zooming environment? They still are and the "they" is an algorithm (I don't know what that is either; ask your grandkids) that checks and rechecks for specifically-defined items, and those AI-trained algorithms are getting very refined.
In a less-digitized environment, I may protest that I want a close, loving, open relationship, but when the chips are down or the arms are open I may realize that I really don't feel safe or don't want to feel obligated to share my feelings. C'mon, I have this perfectly comfortable view of myself. Let's not get all intrusive about it, even if that conflict cost me too many years without the love of my life.
We want to travel (and this is my big failing), but we know that air travel is one of the biggest producers of greenhouse carbon. The promises of tour companies that they will charge extra as a carbon offset is meaningless when it simply means they will buy reduction credits from some less-productive nation. Guilt money is still just that. And I'm guilty.
We want babies and a sense of continuity, but those little people are messy, take serious commitment to their education and socialization and the world is getting bad for them. Eco-caution around family planning (or planning not to have a family) is very real. There are countries now that offer incentives for couples to have babies because of falling birth rates. On this one I don't have a lot of sympathy, and yes, I love my kids and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The elephant or pushmi-pullyu in the room of any conversation on the problem of climate change has to be the planet's overpopulation of hominid consumers - that's us.
On a similar note, we want to do the right thing for the planet, but for sure it will be expensive and inconvenient. Fossil fuels may be the simplest to use right now, but refusing to work towards or advocate for renewable energy puts us on the wrong side of the problem. Rather, it keeps us blindly on the wrong side. Those working to shift us all to using renewable forms of energy are at least working for something.
Also, for me (but you get back to me with your own pushmi-pullyu examples) the future seemed too distant to plan for retirement, but looking back, life seems to have been so brief and I wonder, "Where did the time go?" If you resented your employer's requirement that you contribute to a retirement plan because,"Hey, that's my money and retirement's a long way off" - well it's here now isn't it, and it didn't take all that long in retrospect.
I was also struck by this piece on the push-pull of such conflicting values as survival and moral code. It was posted by one Shiv Tandon from New Delhi. Where would we stand on this question?
When the Titanic sank, it carried millionaire John Jacob Astor IV. The money in his bank account was enough to build 30 Titanics. However, faced with mortal danger, he chose what he deemed morally right and gave up his spot in a lifeboat to save two frightened children.
Millionaire Isidor Straus, co-owner of the largest American chain of department stores, "Macy's," who was also on the Titanic, said, "I will never enter a lifeboat before other men." His wife, Ida Straus, also refused to board the lifeboat, giving her spot to her newly appointed maid, Ellen Bird. She decided to spend her last moments of life with her husband.
These wealthy individuals preferred to part with their wealth, and even their lives, rather than compromise their moral principles. Their choice in favor of moral values highlighted the brilliance of human civilization and human nature.
When push comes to shove, some people know in which direction they are going. So may we all.