 Today, on September 8, 2022, Queen Elizabeth II passed away, and since she's passed, there's been a lot of debate and arguments and back and forth happening on Twitter as people mourn the Queen's death and as many celebrate it. So today, what I wanted to talk about is a few things. Why are people celebrating her death? And some of the ethical and moral questions around this type of behavior after someone passes away. But before we dive into that, if you're new here, make sure you subscribe to the channel. I am working on doing daily videos coming back to YouTube, talking about a wide range of subjects. I've been doing some more in depth deep dive video essays, but I want to try to do daily and do smaller kind of commentary videos about things going on or things that interested me. I'm fascinated in human behavior as well as morality. So that's what we're talking about today. And for all of you who are subscribers, welcome back. Those of you who haven't noticed or you haven't been around on testing out this kind of voice over type video, let me know down in the comments. If it's something you like, you hate, I'm just looking for feedback. So I know what direction to take the channel. All right. But getting back to Queen Elizabeth's death. So today we're seeing a lot of tweets like this, where this one from a woman named Rachel says, I'm really enjoying unfollowing all the people who seem to be delighting in a woman's death and her family's and nation's pain. This isn't the time to prove how far left you are. And something that you'll notice as we dive a little bit deeper into this topic is this is kind of an ignorant tweet. There are so many of us who don't experience what others have experienced. So we think that people are just being cruel or they're trolling. And what we really need to be asking is why it's really easy to reduce this down to people just being terrible, awful, evil people, right? But I believe we need to take a step back and ask ourselves, why are people reacting this way? Why are there people celebrating something as tragic as a death, right? When we look at it like that, when we do a little bit of research, we start asking the right questions. We start to uncover things that we never knew because they never affected us. And that's kind of a larger problem as a whole is we often think that if something isn't happening to us, then it must not be affecting other people. And when I was actually researching this very video, I literally saw somebody say this. They said, what the Queen did did not affect me or my family, which means this was a white person. They said it did not affect me, so I don't mind, right? So there's it's none of my business. And that that just kind of sums up this kind of individualistic just how separated we are as a world, right? It's not affecting me. So what's the big deal? And that is just kind of a nasty way to live. So earlier, and it probably still is trending, black Twitter was trending. And at the time that I took this screenshot right here, it had over 441,000 tweets. And I guarantee because it was a few hours ago, I guarantee by now it's probably even much more, right? So why is black Twitter trending? Well, it's probably because of this or this or this or this. But meanwhile, we see tweets like the one we started this video off with about this woman unfollowing people. Or there's this tweet right here from someone named Bridget Gabriel saying, President Trump and Queen Elizabeth II were very close, pray for both families during this time of grieving. And then this is a tweet that really caught my eye because it said making fun of Queen Elizabeth's death is pure misogyny at its finest. When Betty White died, people wouldn't dare make a joke about something so tragic. So why is this any different? And first off, let's just discuss how that doesn't make sense. He says it's misogynistic, but he says people weren't doing the same thing to Betty White. So if Betty White was a man, that would make sense based on the way he started this. But he's he ended in a much different way. So it's kind of nonsensical. But I think this reply to this man's tweet makes a lot of sense and it helps kind of explain a few things. So this guy, Duke, he said, when Betty White occupied my country for 200 years, pillaged our resources, sent half of our men to die in war, and the other half to die in sugar cane plantations, cut off the thumbs of traditional artists and let the Bengal starve to death. I'll laugh at her death too. So this is what I was talking about when we're saying just because something doesn't affect us doesn't mean it's not affecting other people. Some of us have the privilege to see things through rose color colored glasses, right? For example, we'll see this with policing. If you are a white person, you get to see the police as, you know, saviors and helpful. And that doesn't mean that, you know, that police don't arrest or harass or assault or shoot white people because it definitely does happen. But statistically, it happens more often to people of color. Okay. So same thing when you look at capitalism, right? When capitalism is helping out people who are rich or born into wealthy families, we're able to look at capitalism and say, oh, well, yeah, I benefited from this thing. So clearly it's a good thing. So when we're looking at the Queen's death, we have to understand that this negatively impacted a lot of people. So I pulled a quote from this New York Times article that went up today called Mourn the Queen, Not Her Empire. And I'm going to read you a snippet from this article, but I want to make it look very clear. I am not a historian. This is something that I only recently started educating myself about because I didn't even understand the full scope of this thing. So I will link this article down in the description below, but I do recommend you go look and find some more recent sources. But the point of this video was to try to have some understanding like why is some of Twitter celebrating this thing? So in this article, it says what you would never know from the pictures, which is partly their point is the violence that lies behind them. In 1948, colonial governor of Malaya declared a state of emergency to fight Communist guerrillas and British troops use counterinsurgency tactics the Americans would emulate in Vietnam. In 1952, the governor of Kenya imposed a state of emergency to suppress an anti-colonial movement known as Mao Mao, under which the British rounded up tens of thousands of Kenyans into detention camps and subjected them to brutal, systemized torture. In Cyprus in 1955 in Aden, Yemen in 1963, British governors again declared states of emergency to contend with anti-colonial attacks. Again, they tortured civilians. Meanwhile, in Ireland, the troubles brought the dynamics of emergency to the United Kingdom in a comic turn, the Irish Republican Army assassination of the Queen's relative, Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last visceral of India and the architect of Elizabeth's marriage to his nephew Prince Philip in 1979. So what you need to understand is that this monarchy, OK, from the United Kingdom, they have been colonizing different countries around the world. I don't know if you remember when the Prince and the Duchess went to visit. I believe it was Jamaica last year, maybe I think it was 2021. But they went there like, oh, we're celebrities and we're loved by all because it's under British rule and they got treated like garbage. And it got really awkward. There was a few really cringy moments, but you need to understand that not only have they colonized these nations, but as that New York Times article said, there has been brutal atrocities that happened under the Queen's rule. And while researching this, I saw some people saying it's unknown how much the Queen actually knew about. But the thing is, when you are ruling over these countries as a common wealth, it's part of your duty to know what's going on. So again, when we're asking ourselves why, why is Black Twitter celebrating all this? We need to say, OK, well, they have some reason to feel a certain type of way towards the Queen. So my final question is, is it ethical? Is it morally OK to celebrate the death of somebody? So personally, I don't believe in celebrating death, right? Like every life has some kind of value. I'm a person that believes in forgiveness and that people can change. Whereas, you know, somebody who's 96 years old, like Queen Elizabeth was, like, was she going to change? Her time was running out. You know what I mean? But I try not to do that. But I do understand when people do feel that way. And I think it's important, too, because I've seen a lot of moral hypocrisy on Twitter today, where there are people who celebrated these tragedies over here. But then they say, oh, you're morally out of line over here. There's a lot of flip flopping on this. And there's a lot of people who struggle to have moral consistency. And I'm actually just about to start rereading for the third time. Two of my favorite books on moral psychology. One is called The Character Gap by Christian Miller. And the other one is called The Mind Club. And this is by God. I can't remember his name, but I'll put the book up on the screen. Kurt Gray, that's who it is. I actually interviewed him for the podcast. I interviewed both of them. But I love both of these because it really helps us understand why people's morals switch like that. But again, like I said, we need to be asking why? Why are people on black Twitter celebrating cracking jokes and all these other things? And they they have a reason for it. It's not just because they're terrible people who laugh at death. There's something else going on there. But I want to end with a quick story. As many of you know, I'm a recovering drug addict. I got sober in 2012. Well, many years ago, this was years before I even got sober. I had a primary drug dealer who I went to. OK. We never really talked other than making deals. And he was providing me drugs as my addiction was getting worse and worse and worse. But did it matter to him? Of course not. I'm giving him money. It's almost like thinking that McDonald's is going to care about your health. No, that's how they make their money. So this guy was helping fuel my drug addiction. And even in my addiction, you know, I was angry about it. Because I was like, man, I just wish this guy would cut me off like a bartender and trust me, I take 100 percent accountability for that. But anyways, there were, you know, multiple times where I almost died, I should be dead today. But this guy, he actually passed away and he was only in his early 20s. I believe he had some health issues. I don't know the exact cause. But after he died, everybody started seeing him through rose colored lenses. Everything this was back when we actually use Facebook. Everything was mourning his death, saying that he was one of the nicest, greatest, amazing people they ever met. And even the people he wasn't supplying drugs to, he was kind of a jerk too. All right. And that's that's just something that I think about regularly. And I've said this to my closest friends and closest family members that if I pass away before they do, like, just be honest, if I'm a jerk, say it, don't create a fictional story about me. Don't whitewash my past. Don't eliminate these things from the conversation because it's part of who I was and I don't want people pretending that I was somebody who I wasn't. So I'd love to hear your thoughts down in the comments below. So go ahead and let me know what you think about what's going on in Twitter. And yeah, again, if you're new here, make sure you subscribe or ring that notification bell. And if you're coming back, you're already subscriber. Awesome. Thanks for coming. Thanks for hanging out for the whole video. And for all of you, if you're not yet, make sure you follow me over on Instagram and Twitter at the Rewired Soul. I love chatting with all of you. I love getting book recommendations too. That's awesome. I give you guys some. You give me some. We all win. All right. But anyways, that's all I got for this video. Have an amazing rest of your day and I'll see you next time.