TV shows and Movies create an image of what it means to have wealth that in turn creates a stereotype. We are led to believe that people who have a lot of money will look and act in a given way, to the extent that we begin to determine wealth by that which is visible. As with everything of a visual nature however, in order to create a convincing illusion you need only convince the eyes that they see things not as they really are but as you want them to see it. Wealth therefore becomes an illusion that is about appearances more than anything else. If you look like you have a lot of money, most people will assume you do, and more than this they will resist asking questions or digging deeper in most cases out of the desire not to commit a faux pas.
Confidence Trickery, also known simply as conning people, is all about creating confidence, both in yourself and garnering it from other people. With such a low barrier to entry it becomes incredibly easy to trick people into believing you are rich. There has been a rise of Instagram Models, and other social networks have similar groups of people, these are people who create idealized versions of their life to share on social media. Wealth is the most prevalent aspect of their lives that these people attempt to promote, followed by happiness, and then fame. People want to be seen to be rich and successful first of all, happy second, and famous third. There was a time when this order was reversed, where fame came first and then happiness and then wealth. That is no longer the case.
In decades past, to become famous you had to be good at something, or at least people had to think you were good at something. Singing, Dancing, Acting, among many other things, these were talents that people pursued in their aim of fame. Today however you do not need to be good at any of these things or any of the others in order to become famous. Today there many people in the world who are famous for being rich, being socialites, or in some cases being famous for simply being famous - that last one is rather hard to achieve at first but once the positive feedback loop is established it becomes quite easy.
Beware the lives that people claim to have when you follow them online. Things are often not what they same. I may sound jaded for saying this, but I believe the reason I came to accept this as reality is because in time I saw the frauds exposed time and again for what they were. I believe the same will hold true for most in years to come. People will eventually see them for what they are. That is, save for the few who actually garner fame and then go on to do something that involves talent and actually gain success, again in reverse of the traditional process, normally success comes first and then fame, not the other way around.
This mentality is most succinctly put by the mantra "fake it, until you make it" - that's all well and good if you succeed in the end, but if you don't then what will happen to you when you have spent a life faking it and the reality hits that it was all a lie? Will you cope with reality when the bubble of belief that you will one day make it eventually bursts and you hit the ground? There is another saying that is put forward by many who dabble in gambling - only gamble what you are prepared to lose; perhaps in the world of faking it, you should ask yourself, if you want it all are you really prepared to risk it all to get it?
Pick A Side
I've come to realise that social media in general doesn't like it when people make observations. That might sound like an odd statement to make, but let me explain what I mean by this. Most social media platforms have gone from being a place where you share how you feel, or what you're thinking about, to being a place where people comment on anything and everything. Facebook statuses once took the form of "is..." that was hard-coded into the platform, if you wanted to post a status update, it had to take the form of an "is..." statement, "John is bored", "Jane is thinking of ordering pizza", "Alex is packing for Paris" etc. This had its limitations admittedly, but it forced the user to post statuses that were actually about the person behind the profile, or at least it put you in a position where what you posted wouldn't make sense if it wasn't. That didn't last that long in terms of the evolution of the site's design, it was abandoned relatively early. Eventually you were able to post anything you wanted that would simply appear beneath your name, rather than being part of a grammatical syntax.
When that design change occurred, Facebook moved from being a platform where you shared details about yourself specifically, towards being a platform where you commented on things you shared, or issues in general. This wasn't unique to Facebook, the same evolution occurred on other social media platforms. Twitter in its infancy was designed to be used to post short text based messages as statuses, they were always called tweets but they were intended to be single, stand alone posts. This functionality also evolved like that of Facebook to include the ability to share links with previews of the content, embed content like youtube videos, and now the platform allows you to string tweets together into a thread, this combined with the character limit being raised from 140 characters to 280 characters all imply the same underlying change in mentality - namely that the platform expects you to comment on something. I don't mean this in the way that comments appear on a blog or beneath a youtube video, although those share the same desired interaction.
No, what I actually mean by this is that these platforms have gone from being places where you share information about you specifically, your interests, and your life, to being a place where you are expected to comment on current events, on links and content others have shared, and in response to others attempts to engage with you. You might be thinking now, so what's the issue here? Well, the issue is that this change although subtle, has a much greater impact on your behaviour than you think, the subtlety of this change also makes it remarkably easy to monetise and commoditise what you are sharing. By this I mean, tweets and status updates about how you feel today are useless to these platforms, what is useful to these platforms is why you feel that way. Again this is a subtle change but it all comes down to money at the end of the day.
"John is happy!" is a status that offers no profit to these platforms, "I love this! <link>" with the link being a link to any product or consumable item, movie, music, games etc, is a profitable status because it tells the platform what you like, which can be used to profile you, build correlations between products and demographics, and ultimately to sell you products, whether that be through the platform or through advertising partners that might not even be targeting you through the internet at all. If a high volume of tweets in the London area talk about loving a new chocolate bar for instance, that company would benefit from slapping a massive poster on the London Underground - you might find yourself asking why there would be a correlation but that's irrelevant with this type of data mining, you don't need to understand why two products are often bought together, all you need to know is that it is common, so you can stick them side by side and watch your sales rise.
What all of this has to do with social networks is the realisation that your view on anything and everything is what these platforms want. They don't actually care about social interaction, they don't care about making their platforms beneficial or detrimental to their users, they only care about profit. If you have a social media account where you do not comment on current affairs, current trends, or engage in a "fandom" then you likely won't get far. Or to put it bluntly, no-one cares about your private life or anything about you as a person, all they care about is what you think of X - where 'X' is whatever their focus is. To give you an insight into how prevalent this is, there is a hashtag on twitter - #OnBrand - which is full of people either telling you what they think their "brand" is and what defines it, or what they perceive others' brands to be and what define them. You can trawl through this hashtag and see for most accounts you can quite quickly pick out one or two focal points for their tweets. In other words you can quickly stereotype twitter accounts into being fan accounts of a given artist, music, type of event etc
So you might find yourself asking now, if social media wants you to comment so much, why doesn't it like observations? Well, the reason is because making an observation is passive, whereas commenting is active. If you make an observation about a particular issue it doesn't commit you to an opinion or a view point, it doesn't tell the advertisers or the platform how to profile you. If you try tweeting "wow there's a lot of porn on twitter" - a simple observation, something that doesn't commit you to an opinion of approval or disapproval, it's an observation nothing more; do this however and you'll see adult content slowly filter its way into your feed. This happens because the platform is designed to interpret everything you say as either an endorsement or a protest. You might think I am paranoid for saying this but as someone who has been using twitter for quite some time I am well aware of what the platform and specifically the API behind it can actually do. The twitter API is capable of discerning emotion from your tweets. There was a time this feature was public knowledge and publicly accessible, those who are twitter veterans will remember twitter's advanced search page once included the option of searching for positive tweets, negative tweets, retweets, or question tweets; this functionality although no longer part of the interface still exists, as a developer you can access it, there are even third party apps that provide access to it.
You might notice if you are eagle-eyed that these options do not contain a "neutral" option - that's because the platform assumes if it's not negative then it's positive by default, hence the interpretation of your ambiguous tweet as being one of endorsement. You might have also experienced this if you have ever tweeted something sarcastic about a product or brand and then found it creeping into your feed, again this is because the sarcasm is missed and the tweet is taken at face value as being a positive comment.
Posting observations or anything that is neutral in general is not profitable, and these platforms have evolved to the point where their design influences your behaviour and actively encourages you to "take a side" on anything and everything. Knowing this, it's not surprising that these platforms are filled with love and hate but no middle ground. You find people that are either completely devoted to something or hate it with a passion, those in the middle never tweet about the things they are indifferent to because they know in the negative they will be attacked or in the positive they will get swept up and included with a fandom they actually have no interest in.
But that's just an observation, and notably one I did not make on a social network, instead I chose to write a post about it where I can actually explain the concept.
When that design change occurred, Facebook moved from being a platform where you shared details about yourself specifically, towards being a platform where you commented on things you shared, or issues in general. This wasn't unique to Facebook, the same evolution occurred on other social media platforms. Twitter in its infancy was designed to be used to post short text based messages as statuses, they were always called tweets but they were intended to be single, stand alone posts. This functionality also evolved like that of Facebook to include the ability to share links with previews of the content, embed content like youtube videos, and now the platform allows you to string tweets together into a thread, this combined with the character limit being raised from 140 characters to 280 characters all imply the same underlying change in mentality - namely that the platform expects you to comment on something. I don't mean this in the way that comments appear on a blog or beneath a youtube video, although those share the same desired interaction.
No, what I actually mean by this is that these platforms have gone from being places where you share information about you specifically, your interests, and your life, to being a place where you are expected to comment on current events, on links and content others have shared, and in response to others attempts to engage with you. You might be thinking now, so what's the issue here? Well, the issue is that this change although subtle, has a much greater impact on your behaviour than you think, the subtlety of this change also makes it remarkably easy to monetise and commoditise what you are sharing. By this I mean, tweets and status updates about how you feel today are useless to these platforms, what is useful to these platforms is why you feel that way. Again this is a subtle change but it all comes down to money at the end of the day.
"John is happy!" is a status that offers no profit to these platforms, "I love this! <link>" with the link being a link to any product or consumable item, movie, music, games etc, is a profitable status because it tells the platform what you like, which can be used to profile you, build correlations between products and demographics, and ultimately to sell you products, whether that be through the platform or through advertising partners that might not even be targeting you through the internet at all. If a high volume of tweets in the London area talk about loving a new chocolate bar for instance, that company would benefit from slapping a massive poster on the London Underground - you might find yourself asking why there would be a correlation but that's irrelevant with this type of data mining, you don't need to understand why two products are often bought together, all you need to know is that it is common, so you can stick them side by side and watch your sales rise.
What all of this has to do with social networks is the realisation that your view on anything and everything is what these platforms want. They don't actually care about social interaction, they don't care about making their platforms beneficial or detrimental to their users, they only care about profit. If you have a social media account where you do not comment on current affairs, current trends, or engage in a "fandom" then you likely won't get far. Or to put it bluntly, no-one cares about your private life or anything about you as a person, all they care about is what you think of X - where 'X' is whatever their focus is. To give you an insight into how prevalent this is, there is a hashtag on twitter - #OnBrand - which is full of people either telling you what they think their "brand" is and what defines it, or what they perceive others' brands to be and what define them. You can trawl through this hashtag and see for most accounts you can quite quickly pick out one or two focal points for their tweets. In other words you can quickly stereotype twitter accounts into being fan accounts of a given artist, music, type of event etc
So you might find yourself asking now, if social media wants you to comment so much, why doesn't it like observations? Well, the reason is because making an observation is passive, whereas commenting is active. If you make an observation about a particular issue it doesn't commit you to an opinion or a view point, it doesn't tell the advertisers or the platform how to profile you. If you try tweeting "wow there's a lot of porn on twitter" - a simple observation, something that doesn't commit you to an opinion of approval or disapproval, it's an observation nothing more; do this however and you'll see adult content slowly filter its way into your feed. This happens because the platform is designed to interpret everything you say as either an endorsement or a protest. You might think I am paranoid for saying this but as someone who has been using twitter for quite some time I am well aware of what the platform and specifically the API behind it can actually do. The twitter API is capable of discerning emotion from your tweets. There was a time this feature was public knowledge and publicly accessible, those who are twitter veterans will remember twitter's advanced search page once included the option of searching for positive tweets, negative tweets, retweets, or question tweets; this functionality although no longer part of the interface still exists, as a developer you can access it, there are even third party apps that provide access to it.
You might notice if you are eagle-eyed that these options do not contain a "neutral" option - that's because the platform assumes if it's not negative then it's positive by default, hence the interpretation of your ambiguous tweet as being one of endorsement. You might have also experienced this if you have ever tweeted something sarcastic about a product or brand and then found it creeping into your feed, again this is because the sarcasm is missed and the tweet is taken at face value as being a positive comment.
Posting observations or anything that is neutral in general is not profitable, and these platforms have evolved to the point where their design influences your behaviour and actively encourages you to "take a side" on anything and everything. Knowing this, it's not surprising that these platforms are filled with love and hate but no middle ground. You find people that are either completely devoted to something or hate it with a passion, those in the middle never tweet about the things they are indifferent to because they know in the negative they will be attacked or in the positive they will get swept up and included with a fandom they actually have no interest in.
But that's just an observation, and notably one I did not make on a social network, instead I chose to write a post about it where I can actually explain the concept.
Be Yourself
The only advice I can give to people when they are dating that I think is universal is to just be yourself. Every other piece of advice I could give may work for you, or it may not. Everyone is different and we all have to find our own way in life. We each make our own mistakes and hopefully we learn from them. That takes longer than it should for some of us, and in some cases we never learn - that's all part of life. However, the advice to be yourself I think is universal, and it is often something we feel reluctant to accept, because we think we're not normal.
"That works for other people but it wouldn't work for me" - we repeat this to ourselves until we believe it is true. We convince ourselves that there's something wrong with us for the little things we do. We think if anyone saw us uninhibited that they would instantly lose interest. As a result we try to present the best version of ourselves that we can, only showing the positives, only showing people what we think they'd like, in essence we go as a polished version of ourselves. The trouble with this mentality is that sooner or later they're going to see the real you and if they fell for a lie, or an idealized version of you, then that is likely to cause a comedown from the sugar high.
There's a belief that when you're in love you will do anything for the one you love. That if you have fallen for someone, you'll overlook all of their flaws because your love is what matters most. There are those that try and use this to their advantage, by dating, showing only the polished image of themselves, in the hope that the other person falls in love with them, and then whilst they are love drunk they bare their soul.
Fantasy eventually gives way to reality. The infatuation and the period of obsession eventually wears off, and when it does, whether you love someone or not you will see them, all of them. When the novelty of a new relationship wears off, that is when most that break up do so. For the others that break up it takes time until an outside force exposes your behaviour to each other in a way that bares all. That can be another person, an event of great stress and pressure, a time of year that isn't easy for you to get through, or a plethora of possible scenarios. It is rare for relationships to end out of boredom.
If you want a relationship that will stand the test of time, you need to be honest with each other, communicate, and trust in each other. A relationship that was built on a foundation of deceit won't last long. It can be hard to accept your actions as being deceitful but the definition of deceit is "the action or practice of deceiving someone by concealing or misrepresenting the truth" - that last caveat is what applies here, misrepresenting the truth. You have to be honest from the start, be yourself, find someone that loves you for who you are, not the idea of you, and your relationship will last.
In my younger years I feigned interest in things I had no interest in, just to have something to talk about with guys I liked. I studied things to become more knowledgeable on them so that I could hold a conversation with guys who I knew had zero interest in anything I liked. I tried to be someone I was not and it never ended well. Above all else you don't realise how exhausting that actually is and how much of your energy is being drained. When the connection is superficial, as soon as something material comes along to test it, everything falls to pieces.
It's unrealistic to think that someone else will share all of your interests. Look at the friends you have and the ones you have had, look at whoever was the closest and think about all of the things you differed on. No two people are ever identical, even identical twins don't share all of their interests. One of the biggest barriers to dating you will find is the ability to have a conversation with someone who doesn't share any interests with you, if you can learn how to do that, then you'll be alright.
"That works for other people but it wouldn't work for me" - we repeat this to ourselves until we believe it is true. We convince ourselves that there's something wrong with us for the little things we do. We think if anyone saw us uninhibited that they would instantly lose interest. As a result we try to present the best version of ourselves that we can, only showing the positives, only showing people what we think they'd like, in essence we go as a polished version of ourselves. The trouble with this mentality is that sooner or later they're going to see the real you and if they fell for a lie, or an idealized version of you, then that is likely to cause a comedown from the sugar high.
There's a belief that when you're in love you will do anything for the one you love. That if you have fallen for someone, you'll overlook all of their flaws because your love is what matters most. There are those that try and use this to their advantage, by dating, showing only the polished image of themselves, in the hope that the other person falls in love with them, and then whilst they are love drunk they bare their soul.
Fantasy eventually gives way to reality. The infatuation and the period of obsession eventually wears off, and when it does, whether you love someone or not you will see them, all of them. When the novelty of a new relationship wears off, that is when most that break up do so. For the others that break up it takes time until an outside force exposes your behaviour to each other in a way that bares all. That can be another person, an event of great stress and pressure, a time of year that isn't easy for you to get through, or a plethora of possible scenarios. It is rare for relationships to end out of boredom.
If you want a relationship that will stand the test of time, you need to be honest with each other, communicate, and trust in each other. A relationship that was built on a foundation of deceit won't last long. It can be hard to accept your actions as being deceitful but the definition of deceit is "the action or practice of deceiving someone by concealing or misrepresenting the truth" - that last caveat is what applies here, misrepresenting the truth. You have to be honest from the start, be yourself, find someone that loves you for who you are, not the idea of you, and your relationship will last.
In my younger years I feigned interest in things I had no interest in, just to have something to talk about with guys I liked. I studied things to become more knowledgeable on them so that I could hold a conversation with guys who I knew had zero interest in anything I liked. I tried to be someone I was not and it never ended well. Above all else you don't realise how exhausting that actually is and how much of your energy is being drained. When the connection is superficial, as soon as something material comes along to test it, everything falls to pieces.
It's unrealistic to think that someone else will share all of your interests. Look at the friends you have and the ones you have had, look at whoever was the closest and think about all of the things you differed on. No two people are ever identical, even identical twins don't share all of their interests. One of the biggest barriers to dating you will find is the ability to have a conversation with someone who doesn't share any interests with you, if you can learn how to do that, then you'll be alright.
The Easy Answer
How do you get a six-pack in 6 weeks? How do you lose a stone in a week? How do you turn $10 into $10,000? How do you become a millionaire? How do you win the lottery?
There are many questions we ask in life hoping to find a simple answer, or something that looks easy enough for us to do. These questions are usually related to things that are inherently hard to achieve, or involve no skill whatsoever and come down to luck alone. When we search out answers to these questions, we hope to find an easy answer but we often find people who try to sell us their solutions to the problem. In most of these cases the solutions we have to buy into are difficult. If you want to get a six-pack in 6 weeks for example you end up with people trying to sell you things like P90X and other workout routines that are best described as insane. If you bite, and actually buy these solutions you quickly learn they are very difficult.
The reality in life is something that should be self evident, but we often ignore it. That reality is simple, if it were that easy, everyone would be doing it. When you say this to people who are adamant an easy solution must exist they will make a never ending list of excuses why you have to be wrong. Most of the arguments they have centre around the disbelief that the people who achieved these goals before them actually put the work into achieving those goals. They argue that this celebrity or that celebrity wouldn't do an insane workout for 6 weeks to get into that kind of shape. My argument against that is rather simple, they get paid enough for their endeavours that they feel it's worth it in the end, and those that don't think it is worth it, don't put that work in.
Whenever it comes to anything in regards to physical fitness, the first response that people seem to give is that it's all surgery. You can't get six-pack abs with surgery, the muscle has to be there. Yes, you could have all the fat sucked out, but if you're not physically fit enough it won't make a difference. Whenever it comes to diet there too there is a belief that there must be a magic pill you can take or some super food you can eat that will give you all the energy you need with zero calories and will leave you feeling full with no appetite to eat more. When you start to think about how ludicrous that actually is you begin to see how the promise of an outcome outweighs the scepticism and the reasoning that would tell you it won't work.
Whilst body image is a driving factor for many, there are plenty of people who are happy just the way they are. It is for this reason I think money drives us more than image, that and the belief that "if you have enough money, anything can be fixed" with regards to body image. That's patently untrue, but it's not worth dwelling on right now. What is worth dwelling on however is that the same thought process governs the pursuit of wealth. People believe they can get rich quick, that investments claiming ridiculous returns are legitimate, or that they can become a millionaire if they just save their money - unless you're earning a very high salary you will never become a millionaire by saving money in the bank. Making money is like getting that perfect body, it take a lot of work, a lot of time and energy, and like body image for many people it will never be enough no matter how much progress they make they will still want more and think they can do better.
In life I can be considered a cynic, despite having a mind that explores so many things in such depth, and an imagination and creativity that runs away from me at times, I am still grounded by some beliefs that have stayed with me throughout my life. One such belief is applicable here - if it seems too good to be true, it usually is. That's the truth about easy answers to difficult questions, if it really was that easy, everyone would be doing it.
There are many questions we ask in life hoping to find a simple answer, or something that looks easy enough for us to do. These questions are usually related to things that are inherently hard to achieve, or involve no skill whatsoever and come down to luck alone. When we search out answers to these questions, we hope to find an easy answer but we often find people who try to sell us their solutions to the problem. In most of these cases the solutions we have to buy into are difficult. If you want to get a six-pack in 6 weeks for example you end up with people trying to sell you things like P90X and other workout routines that are best described as insane. If you bite, and actually buy these solutions you quickly learn they are very difficult.
The reality in life is something that should be self evident, but we often ignore it. That reality is simple, if it were that easy, everyone would be doing it. When you say this to people who are adamant an easy solution must exist they will make a never ending list of excuses why you have to be wrong. Most of the arguments they have centre around the disbelief that the people who achieved these goals before them actually put the work into achieving those goals. They argue that this celebrity or that celebrity wouldn't do an insane workout for 6 weeks to get into that kind of shape. My argument against that is rather simple, they get paid enough for their endeavours that they feel it's worth it in the end, and those that don't think it is worth it, don't put that work in.
Whenever it comes to anything in regards to physical fitness, the first response that people seem to give is that it's all surgery. You can't get six-pack abs with surgery, the muscle has to be there. Yes, you could have all the fat sucked out, but if you're not physically fit enough it won't make a difference. Whenever it comes to diet there too there is a belief that there must be a magic pill you can take or some super food you can eat that will give you all the energy you need with zero calories and will leave you feeling full with no appetite to eat more. When you start to think about how ludicrous that actually is you begin to see how the promise of an outcome outweighs the scepticism and the reasoning that would tell you it won't work.
Whilst body image is a driving factor for many, there are plenty of people who are happy just the way they are. It is for this reason I think money drives us more than image, that and the belief that "if you have enough money, anything can be fixed" with regards to body image. That's patently untrue, but it's not worth dwelling on right now. What is worth dwelling on however is that the same thought process governs the pursuit of wealth. People believe they can get rich quick, that investments claiming ridiculous returns are legitimate, or that they can become a millionaire if they just save their money - unless you're earning a very high salary you will never become a millionaire by saving money in the bank. Making money is like getting that perfect body, it take a lot of work, a lot of time and energy, and like body image for many people it will never be enough no matter how much progress they make they will still want more and think they can do better.
In life I can be considered a cynic, despite having a mind that explores so many things in such depth, and an imagination and creativity that runs away from me at times, I am still grounded by some beliefs that have stayed with me throughout my life. One such belief is applicable here - if it seems too good to be true, it usually is. That's the truth about easy answers to difficult questions, if it really was that easy, everyone would be doing it.
What are you waiting for?
What's the one thing you do more than anything else in life? Is it sleep? Is it eating, or drinking? Is it sex? I would discard the things we do without thinking about them as they require little effort. I wrote a post for a different blog many years ago that is now long gone about the breakdown of time we take in our lives to do the various tasks that make up our daily routine. The purpose of the post was to take the time devoted to each individual task we undertake and try to isolate what I considered to be actually "living" as opposed to the myriad of maintenance needed just to stay alive.
I thought about updating that post and recalculating the result now that I am several years older, but I've come to realise that life encompasses everything we do. They say to live doesn't mean you're alive, intimating a philosophy that going through the motions is akin to being dead, or a zombie if you will. The truth however is that life isn't just about big things, achievements, goals, and attaining things that make other people think our life was worth living. You live your life in every single moment, the only thing that changes is whether or not you realise and appreciate in those moments that you are alive.
There is a deeper message here that isn't easy to uncover with words alone, but I'll do my best to try and explain it. There can be things in life you want to do, like rising up that corporate ladder and becoming CEO. You can do everything you can to set yourself on a path toward achieving those things, but it's rare that the goals we set in life are immediately attainable, you can't become CEO in a day, at least in most situations. In almost everything we do there will be an element of time. That is, the time it takes between setting the goal and achieving it, if you ever manage to do so. When you are waiting for things to happen, going through the motions, serving your time, it's easy to focus on the thing you are waiting for, and lose sight of the fact that you are here, you are present, you have time, and you have potential to do so much more while you wait.
I wrote about anticipation, and how that can be a good thing and a bad thing. I didn't mention the impact it can have on our thought processes though and the impact it can have on our day to day lives. To take an example, if there's an exam, or an appointment, a doctor or a dentist or any other medical appointment, or anything else you are dreading that will happen at a date in the future which is known in advance to you, then that can impact your behaviour, and your thought processes much more than we care to admit. If that event is 1 month from now, and it dwells on your mind, then for the next month it is conceivable that in everything you do, there will be a distraction, a loss of focus, and an emotional imbalance brought on by the worry in anticipation of that event.
Whilst these things are fixed, at a date and time known to us, we at least have the reassurance that once they come, and once they pass, they will be behind us and we can move on with our lives. That's a luxury we don't always have. Sometimes we are not afforded the luxury of knowing when something will happen, if it even happens at all. Instead we live in anticipation of something that may or may not happen some day.
When the biggest part of your life is spent waiting for something, especially something that might never happen, you're left in a state of limbo. In computing there are two terms that are used in relation to situations such as this. The first term is known as a 'Decision Problem', this is any given problem for which there are two possible outcomes that a computer has to choose between. The second term is an 'Undecidable Problem' that is a decision problem for which you can't write an algorithm that will always be able to give an answer to the problem.
The best example of a decision problem is the Halting Problem, a theoretical problem for which there exists an answer, but finding it can take an immeasurable amount of time, the decision for a computer is when to stop looking, whether it finds the problem or not. For humans when we undertake a task for which we know a solution exists, there comes a point where we stop looking if we haven't found it. There's no easy way to explain why we stop, and as such there's no easy way to tell a computer how to decide when to stop. Consider a locked door, and a key-ring with an infinite number of keys, you know one of those keys will open the door, so you begin trying the keys, one by one. You will eventually stop if you don't find the right key, without trying every single key, you stop because you know you could be trying keys from here until the end of time. Defining the point at which you stop is difficult. We decide to stop without thinking, it's not a rational, reasonable, or logical decision. There's no variable to measure, there's no set number we try, we just stop when we feel we should.
What all of this has to do with waiting for things that might never happen is that both represent repetition in anticipation. You try each key going through the motions in anticipation that one will work. You eventually stop. When we are waiting for something that might never happen, there has to come a point where you give up waiting, or do something that removes the uncertainty. The problem is when we wait for something that isn't the result of our own actions, something that an outside force or external factor determines, we seem to become blind to the fact we have a choice, instead we convince ourselves we don't have a choice and that we just need to wait. Do you want to spend your life waiting for something that might never happen? Does the certainty of the act of waiting negate the uncertainty of when or if it will ever happen? Are we happy to wait because at least then we know what we are doing - waiting - as opposed to actually having to think about what we should do?
I thought about updating that post and recalculating the result now that I am several years older, but I've come to realise that life encompasses everything we do. They say to live doesn't mean you're alive, intimating a philosophy that going through the motions is akin to being dead, or a zombie if you will. The truth however is that life isn't just about big things, achievements, goals, and attaining things that make other people think our life was worth living. You live your life in every single moment, the only thing that changes is whether or not you realise and appreciate in those moments that you are alive.
There is a deeper message here that isn't easy to uncover with words alone, but I'll do my best to try and explain it. There can be things in life you want to do, like rising up that corporate ladder and becoming CEO. You can do everything you can to set yourself on a path toward achieving those things, but it's rare that the goals we set in life are immediately attainable, you can't become CEO in a day, at least in most situations. In almost everything we do there will be an element of time. That is, the time it takes between setting the goal and achieving it, if you ever manage to do so. When you are waiting for things to happen, going through the motions, serving your time, it's easy to focus on the thing you are waiting for, and lose sight of the fact that you are here, you are present, you have time, and you have potential to do so much more while you wait.
I wrote about anticipation, and how that can be a good thing and a bad thing. I didn't mention the impact it can have on our thought processes though and the impact it can have on our day to day lives. To take an example, if there's an exam, or an appointment, a doctor or a dentist or any other medical appointment, or anything else you are dreading that will happen at a date in the future which is known in advance to you, then that can impact your behaviour, and your thought processes much more than we care to admit. If that event is 1 month from now, and it dwells on your mind, then for the next month it is conceivable that in everything you do, there will be a distraction, a loss of focus, and an emotional imbalance brought on by the worry in anticipation of that event.
Whilst these things are fixed, at a date and time known to us, we at least have the reassurance that once they come, and once they pass, they will be behind us and we can move on with our lives. That's a luxury we don't always have. Sometimes we are not afforded the luxury of knowing when something will happen, if it even happens at all. Instead we live in anticipation of something that may or may not happen some day.
When the biggest part of your life is spent waiting for something, especially something that might never happen, you're left in a state of limbo. In computing there are two terms that are used in relation to situations such as this. The first term is known as a 'Decision Problem', this is any given problem for which there are two possible outcomes that a computer has to choose between. The second term is an 'Undecidable Problem' that is a decision problem for which you can't write an algorithm that will always be able to give an answer to the problem.
The best example of a decision problem is the Halting Problem, a theoretical problem for which there exists an answer, but finding it can take an immeasurable amount of time, the decision for a computer is when to stop looking, whether it finds the problem or not. For humans when we undertake a task for which we know a solution exists, there comes a point where we stop looking if we haven't found it. There's no easy way to explain why we stop, and as such there's no easy way to tell a computer how to decide when to stop. Consider a locked door, and a key-ring with an infinite number of keys, you know one of those keys will open the door, so you begin trying the keys, one by one. You will eventually stop if you don't find the right key, without trying every single key, you stop because you know you could be trying keys from here until the end of time. Defining the point at which you stop is difficult. We decide to stop without thinking, it's not a rational, reasonable, or logical decision. There's no variable to measure, there's no set number we try, we just stop when we feel we should.
What all of this has to do with waiting for things that might never happen is that both represent repetition in anticipation. You try each key going through the motions in anticipation that one will work. You eventually stop. When we are waiting for something that might never happen, there has to come a point where you give up waiting, or do something that removes the uncertainty. The problem is when we wait for something that isn't the result of our own actions, something that an outside force or external factor determines, we seem to become blind to the fact we have a choice, instead we convince ourselves we don't have a choice and that we just need to wait. Do you want to spend your life waiting for something that might never happen? Does the certainty of the act of waiting negate the uncertainty of when or if it will ever happen? Are we happy to wait because at least then we know what we are doing - waiting - as opposed to actually having to think about what we should do?
Vocation
They say the mark of a true politician is the ability to take a question once asked, to speak for several minutes at length, and impress upon the asker that their question has been answered when in reality they have said nothing of substance. This ability demonstrates a principle that we are taught quite early when we start to learn how to become effective public speakers, namely that most of the time what you say is irrelevant, instead what is important is how you say it. There are various percentage figures that are often attributed to this principle giving various ratios all of which create a heavy bias towards delivery rather than content.
When you think of the skill set of any public speaker, there are a number of careers that you can consider which require that skill. For example, a teacher needs to be confident addressing large groups of people, they need to be able to speak clearly, to captivate their audience, and be able to explain whatever it is they want to convey with salience. If both of these careers share this skill set, does that mean anyone who is effective in one, could be effective in the other? The immediate answer here can either be yes, or no, depending entirely on how revered or maligned those respective careers are in your mind. To put it another way, if you are disillusioned with the political system and still hold reverence for the education system then you would likely argue the two careers cannot overlap and transitioning from one to the other would be difficult. If however, in reverse you are disillusioned with the education system, and hold the political system in reverence then you would be able to argue the counter point.
To give an example, one defining characteristic that is perceived by the general public is that teachers aim to convey truth and politicians aim to convey lies as truth. You can however make the argument that teachers often find themselves in the position where they have to lie to their students, not because they want to but because the reality is depressing and ultimately the job of a teacher is to inspire and motivate their students to keep learning and growing - something which they won't want to do if you tell them their endeavour is fruitless. There is a reality that is inescapable, that social mobility is not as ubiquitous as we are told when we are children, that inspirational quote "you can be whatever you want to be" is something that breaks down with age as caveats are added and the reality hits you when you realise that certain paths in life are not open to you simply because of where you were born, what colour your skin is, what gender you are perceived to be, among many other things.
What then do politicians and teachers have in common? Well one could argue that both share the job of trying to inspire and motivate - the former need to convince voters to continue to vote for them in order to keep their jobs, in order to do that they need to convince them there is a positive future for them as a reward for doing so. Most people would immediately recoil at the thought of a politician being inspirational, not because there have never been inspirational politicians but because they are rare. In modern history, political agendas pushed to one side, from a purely objective point of view, politicians such as Barack Obama were effective at inspiring others - whether you were one of those who were inspired or not is irrelevant here, to deny they were inspirational to someone somewhere would be delusional - or to borrow from Harry Potter, as Ollivander said "He Who Must Not Be Named did great things – terrible, yes, but great" - exemplifying the fact that greatness is an order of magnitude, not a measure of good or evil.
Indeed one can even go much further and say that some of the greatest politicians throughout history were some of the greatest examples of evil that humanity has ever produced. Yet their aptitude in public speaking and persuasion remains self evident, again demonstrated in many cases by the fact they were elected to their posts. So why do many recoil at the drawing of parallels between desirable and undesirable careers? Perhaps the answer is a reluctance to admit that the number of people in each of those careers who are actually good at their job is comparable. The number of politicians the public would feel comfortable identifying as good at their job is probably comparable in percentage terms to the number of teachers they would identify as such if they received the same exposure in their jobs as a politician does. That might sound harsh at first, but when you break down the number of schools that exist and how they perform, there is a ranking, whether we like to use it as a marker of quality or not it does exist. Education is not a constant, and although a set curriculum exists and inspections are used to check it is being adhered to, the result varies wildly.
What all of this boils down to is the realisation that both of these careers like any other are simply that - careers. The people that do them are doing a job, the only real problem is that they are not jobs that are easy to get into, and once you are in them they are not easy to walk out of and into another career. In this regard both of these careers can really be considered a vocation, in that once you pursue these career paths, you more or less have to commit to pursuing them for life. In the case of a politician those who stay in the job for a long time are often referred to as a career politician with negative connotations, the same disparaging judgement isn't made when it comes to teachers, again this can be chalked up to the former being undesirable and the latter being desirable, but in reality there is something much more sinister at play here - the idea that you have to stay in the same job for life. Politicians perhaps can be seen as the greatest example of our discomfort with that idea, perhaps because they gain the most public attention. They do however represent that permanence regardless of whether we deem their performance worthy of it.
This all raises the question, should any job ever be a job for life? Some vocations come with the expectation that you will stay in that field for life simply because of how much effort it takes to get into it in the first place - for example if you become a Doctor, it is a given that you will be expected to be a Doctor for your entire professional career, in part that is because of what you had to go through to get there but in part it is also because of how difficult it would be to replace you at short notice. As for other careers however, the less significant we perceive each role to be the more forgiving we are when it comes to the thought of someone leaving it - so much so that it is becoming increasingly common for people in general to assume they won't keep the same job throughout their lives. In fact, if you were to ask most people if they wanted to work their current job from now until retirement, the likelihood that they will say yes will relate entirely to their age and how close to retirement they are. The younger the person is who you ask, the longer they will have to work in that job, the more likely they will be to reply with protest and profess desires to do something else - whether they ever follow through on that desire is an entirely different question.
Which brings us to my final point; most people end up staying in the jobs they have up until they are pushed, or something forces them to make a change. They stay in those jobs because there is a sense of security to be gained from having some work, even if it's not right for you. The question is, how many people have pursued jobs that are perceived as lifelong vocations and now feel trapped in those positions, unable to move into any other career and feeling obligated to remain because they recognise how much effort it took them to get there in the first place? If the answer to that question is anything other than zero then by your own admission you have to recognise no matter what job you take as an example, there will be people doing it who really shouldn't be, and the grim reality you might find yourself approaching if your answer was high, is the realisation that the vast majority of people, in every career, are doing jobs they really aren't suited for.
When you think of the skill set of any public speaker, there are a number of careers that you can consider which require that skill. For example, a teacher needs to be confident addressing large groups of people, they need to be able to speak clearly, to captivate their audience, and be able to explain whatever it is they want to convey with salience. If both of these careers share this skill set, does that mean anyone who is effective in one, could be effective in the other? The immediate answer here can either be yes, or no, depending entirely on how revered or maligned those respective careers are in your mind. To put it another way, if you are disillusioned with the political system and still hold reverence for the education system then you would likely argue the two careers cannot overlap and transitioning from one to the other would be difficult. If however, in reverse you are disillusioned with the education system, and hold the political system in reverence then you would be able to argue the counter point.
To give an example, one defining characteristic that is perceived by the general public is that teachers aim to convey truth and politicians aim to convey lies as truth. You can however make the argument that teachers often find themselves in the position where they have to lie to their students, not because they want to but because the reality is depressing and ultimately the job of a teacher is to inspire and motivate their students to keep learning and growing - something which they won't want to do if you tell them their endeavour is fruitless. There is a reality that is inescapable, that social mobility is not as ubiquitous as we are told when we are children, that inspirational quote "you can be whatever you want to be" is something that breaks down with age as caveats are added and the reality hits you when you realise that certain paths in life are not open to you simply because of where you were born, what colour your skin is, what gender you are perceived to be, among many other things.
What then do politicians and teachers have in common? Well one could argue that both share the job of trying to inspire and motivate - the former need to convince voters to continue to vote for them in order to keep their jobs, in order to do that they need to convince them there is a positive future for them as a reward for doing so. Most people would immediately recoil at the thought of a politician being inspirational, not because there have never been inspirational politicians but because they are rare. In modern history, political agendas pushed to one side, from a purely objective point of view, politicians such as Barack Obama were effective at inspiring others - whether you were one of those who were inspired or not is irrelevant here, to deny they were inspirational to someone somewhere would be delusional - or to borrow from Harry Potter, as Ollivander said "He Who Must Not Be Named did great things – terrible, yes, but great" - exemplifying the fact that greatness is an order of magnitude, not a measure of good or evil.
Indeed one can even go much further and say that some of the greatest politicians throughout history were some of the greatest examples of evil that humanity has ever produced. Yet their aptitude in public speaking and persuasion remains self evident, again demonstrated in many cases by the fact they were elected to their posts. So why do many recoil at the drawing of parallels between desirable and undesirable careers? Perhaps the answer is a reluctance to admit that the number of people in each of those careers who are actually good at their job is comparable. The number of politicians the public would feel comfortable identifying as good at their job is probably comparable in percentage terms to the number of teachers they would identify as such if they received the same exposure in their jobs as a politician does. That might sound harsh at first, but when you break down the number of schools that exist and how they perform, there is a ranking, whether we like to use it as a marker of quality or not it does exist. Education is not a constant, and although a set curriculum exists and inspections are used to check it is being adhered to, the result varies wildly.
What all of this boils down to is the realisation that both of these careers like any other are simply that - careers. The people that do them are doing a job, the only real problem is that they are not jobs that are easy to get into, and once you are in them they are not easy to walk out of and into another career. In this regard both of these careers can really be considered a vocation, in that once you pursue these career paths, you more or less have to commit to pursuing them for life. In the case of a politician those who stay in the job for a long time are often referred to as a career politician with negative connotations, the same disparaging judgement isn't made when it comes to teachers, again this can be chalked up to the former being undesirable and the latter being desirable, but in reality there is something much more sinister at play here - the idea that you have to stay in the same job for life. Politicians perhaps can be seen as the greatest example of our discomfort with that idea, perhaps because they gain the most public attention. They do however represent that permanence regardless of whether we deem their performance worthy of it.
This all raises the question, should any job ever be a job for life? Some vocations come with the expectation that you will stay in that field for life simply because of how much effort it takes to get into it in the first place - for example if you become a Doctor, it is a given that you will be expected to be a Doctor for your entire professional career, in part that is because of what you had to go through to get there but in part it is also because of how difficult it would be to replace you at short notice. As for other careers however, the less significant we perceive each role to be the more forgiving we are when it comes to the thought of someone leaving it - so much so that it is becoming increasingly common for people in general to assume they won't keep the same job throughout their lives. In fact, if you were to ask most people if they wanted to work their current job from now until retirement, the likelihood that they will say yes will relate entirely to their age and how close to retirement they are. The younger the person is who you ask, the longer they will have to work in that job, the more likely they will be to reply with protest and profess desires to do something else - whether they ever follow through on that desire is an entirely different question.
Which brings us to my final point; most people end up staying in the jobs they have up until they are pushed, or something forces them to make a change. They stay in those jobs because there is a sense of security to be gained from having some work, even if it's not right for you. The question is, how many people have pursued jobs that are perceived as lifelong vocations and now feel trapped in those positions, unable to move into any other career and feeling obligated to remain because they recognise how much effort it took them to get there in the first place? If the answer to that question is anything other than zero then by your own admission you have to recognise no matter what job you take as an example, there will be people doing it who really shouldn't be, and the grim reality you might find yourself approaching if your answer was high, is the realisation that the vast majority of people, in every career, are doing jobs they really aren't suited for.
First
"In Chess, the pawns go first"
- Magneto (X2)
This quote is from the second X-Men Movie, it was said by Magneto and it expresses a sentiment that is rather dark - although not strictly true if you want to get bogged down in the technical aspect of Chess. The sentiment of the quote quite simply put is that you let those you are willing to sacrifice go first, and keep those you want to protect until the right time before you bring them into play.
When I was younger I wanted to be first. I wanted to do everything I could, as soon as I could. I wanted to be the first to play games, listen to music, see movies, see TV shows and all the rest. I was the first to volunteer for things, partly because I didn't think anyone else would, and partly because my anxiety would grow if I had to wait so I preferred to get it over with quickly to take the edge off and then sit back and watch others try. I still maintain some of that mentality mainly in regard to anxiety, but as for the desire to be first in general, that has pretty much died with age.
With video games when I was younger I wanted to play them first. Whenever I heard about a game in development that I thought looked good or promising I would want to pre-order it with the hopes of playing it on the day of release. After more than one bad experience however, I've come to realise that, those who go in the first wave are those who meet the most problems. The worst example of this was the release of Sim City, the modern remake. When it was released I had a copy on the day of release and what happened next was history. Electronic Arts [EA] the company that developed the game was wrecked with problems. The game had restrictions coded into it in an attempt to prevent piracy, these required the game to connect to servers run by EA to play the game. Those servers suffered greatly in the first few days and even into the first few weeks. They crashed regularly, they instituted queuing systems where you had to wait, sometimes hours before you would be connected and you would finally get to play the game.
The Sim City debacle taught me that being first to experience something new means you're the first to experience the rough edges, to encounter the problems, and above all else the first to have your patience tested. With age I've come to realise it's better to let those who have the energy and the patience to weather that go first, and to wait until most of the bugs and the issues are fixed before jumping in.
Staying with technology to use another example this time an Operating System, when I was at University I had access to the Microsoft Developer Network Academic Alliance [MSDNAA] - among other things this give me access to thousands of pounds worth of Microsoft software completely free. In amongst the software was a copy of Windows Vista Business Edition. If you know anything about computers, you can probably guess how that went. For those of you lucky enough to have never experienced Windows Vista, it was a train wreck - that's putting it kindly. I could write a ten thousand word post about everything that went wrong with it.
The sentiment remains, as you age and the novelty of being first begins to wear off, you soon come to realise that those who go first should be those who are most resilient and are able to withstand everything that will be thrown at them in the fray. Those who have learned the value of patience will be rewarded with stability, refinement, and the free experience of those who went before you - as those who go first will be more than willing to share their experience and tell you everything about it, good and bad.
- Magneto (X2)
This quote is from the second X-Men Movie, it was said by Magneto and it expresses a sentiment that is rather dark - although not strictly true if you want to get bogged down in the technical aspect of Chess. The sentiment of the quote quite simply put is that you let those you are willing to sacrifice go first, and keep those you want to protect until the right time before you bring them into play.
When I was younger I wanted to be first. I wanted to do everything I could, as soon as I could. I wanted to be the first to play games, listen to music, see movies, see TV shows and all the rest. I was the first to volunteer for things, partly because I didn't think anyone else would, and partly because my anxiety would grow if I had to wait so I preferred to get it over with quickly to take the edge off and then sit back and watch others try. I still maintain some of that mentality mainly in regard to anxiety, but as for the desire to be first in general, that has pretty much died with age.
With video games when I was younger I wanted to play them first. Whenever I heard about a game in development that I thought looked good or promising I would want to pre-order it with the hopes of playing it on the day of release. After more than one bad experience however, I've come to realise that, those who go in the first wave are those who meet the most problems. The worst example of this was the release of Sim City, the modern remake. When it was released I had a copy on the day of release and what happened next was history. Electronic Arts [EA] the company that developed the game was wrecked with problems. The game had restrictions coded into it in an attempt to prevent piracy, these required the game to connect to servers run by EA to play the game. Those servers suffered greatly in the first few days and even into the first few weeks. They crashed regularly, they instituted queuing systems where you had to wait, sometimes hours before you would be connected and you would finally get to play the game.
The Sim City debacle taught me that being first to experience something new means you're the first to experience the rough edges, to encounter the problems, and above all else the first to have your patience tested. With age I've come to realise it's better to let those who have the energy and the patience to weather that go first, and to wait until most of the bugs and the issues are fixed before jumping in.
Staying with technology to use another example this time an Operating System, when I was at University I had access to the Microsoft Developer Network Academic Alliance [MSDNAA] - among other things this give me access to thousands of pounds worth of Microsoft software completely free. In amongst the software was a copy of Windows Vista Business Edition. If you know anything about computers, you can probably guess how that went. For those of you lucky enough to have never experienced Windows Vista, it was a train wreck - that's putting it kindly. I could write a ten thousand word post about everything that went wrong with it.
The sentiment remains, as you age and the novelty of being first begins to wear off, you soon come to realise that those who go first should be those who are most resilient and are able to withstand everything that will be thrown at them in the fray. Those who have learned the value of patience will be rewarded with stability, refinement, and the free experience of those who went before you - as those who go first will be more than willing to share their experience and tell you everything about it, good and bad.
Do you think of me?
Thoughts by their very nature are private, in that they exist inside our heads, and we only share them with those we choose to share them with. There are often people in our lives who can become so attuned to our thought processes that they can pretty much guess what we are thinking, all it takes is a look. When there is no contact, no communication, even no presence at all, separated physically, you can think of someone all day from the second you wake until the moment you fall asleep and they would have no idea unless you tell them.
Privacy of thought is essential, as I've said before in the typical question of what superpower you would like to have, I think telepathy would probably be one of the worst. Ironically the one place you might think it would help - your romantic life - it might actually cause the most damage. Ask yourself very carefully if you would really want to know everything someone else is thinking, then ask if you would be happy with someone else, anyone else knowing everything that goes through your mind. The thing about thoughts is that although we like to think they are an indicator of how a person would act, this is rarely true. When you take politics as an example, what people think often has no bearing on how they would actually vote if you try and use logic and reasoning, people rarely vote for the party that most accurately represents their policy positions, sites like iSideWith prove this with extensive research, people don't read manifestos and don't take political pledges seriously. Ultimately who a person votes for comes down to two things, emotional connection, and who they think can win. There are outliers who do not conform, as there always will be.
What the political example shows however is that our actions are often driven more by reactions, impulses, instincts, and our assumptions more than they are based on logic and reason. In other words if you could see inside someone's head you would likely see them telling themselves not to do x or to remember to do y and you would also see they don't actually have any great attachment or devotion to those actions, they just behave in that way because it is what is expected, or it is the way they always have. Ask yourself how many people you think go to work with happy thoughts and excitement for their job versus how many if you saw inside their minds would be thinking about how much they hate it and the practicality of what they have to do next and when it needs to be done by.
This isn't a question of whether someone is disingenuous, that doesn't really come into play when talking about thoughts and actions, instead that comes into play with beliefs and intentions. Disingenuous behaviour is the expression of belief and action motivated by belief that the person does not actually believe, in other words insincerity. Disingenuous behaviour is linked to communication and interaction whereas thoughts alone apply to us and what we tell ourselves.
The balance is to be found between being an open book with no cover whatsoever as in the hypothetical telepathic scenario, and the other extreme of being a closed book with a lock without a key holding shut. Communication is the key as they often say and in this case quite literally, the key to opening that lock. What you choose to share can be as little or as much as you want as long as you make the commitment to at least share something. If you want a relationship or a friendship to work, then you need to recognise that your thoughts are private and the person you want to build a relationship with can not read those thoughts. You need to share the things you want to share, and you need to understand that it is unreasonable to want them to be able to know what you are thinking without having to tell them. That level of connection is not dependent on intimacy, it depends on commonality and likeness. The more you are alike another person the easier it is to know what they may be thinking because whatever you are thinking is probably the answer. Most relationships are not narcissistic, people do not date themselves - again there will always be outliers you can think of who would fit that description quite aptly.
It's easy to be upset when someone doesn't say or do something you were expecting them to do, if you had attached a lot of significance to that action in your mind, the more you built it up the bigger the disappointment would likely be. In situations like this the best approach is to stop and ask yourself what indication you gave of what you were thinking, then decide if it is fair to react so strongly.
Privacy of thought is essential, as I've said before in the typical question of what superpower you would like to have, I think telepathy would probably be one of the worst. Ironically the one place you might think it would help - your romantic life - it might actually cause the most damage. Ask yourself very carefully if you would really want to know everything someone else is thinking, then ask if you would be happy with someone else, anyone else knowing everything that goes through your mind. The thing about thoughts is that although we like to think they are an indicator of how a person would act, this is rarely true. When you take politics as an example, what people think often has no bearing on how they would actually vote if you try and use logic and reasoning, people rarely vote for the party that most accurately represents their policy positions, sites like iSideWith prove this with extensive research, people don't read manifestos and don't take political pledges seriously. Ultimately who a person votes for comes down to two things, emotional connection, and who they think can win. There are outliers who do not conform, as there always will be.
What the political example shows however is that our actions are often driven more by reactions, impulses, instincts, and our assumptions more than they are based on logic and reason. In other words if you could see inside someone's head you would likely see them telling themselves not to do x or to remember to do y and you would also see they don't actually have any great attachment or devotion to those actions, they just behave in that way because it is what is expected, or it is the way they always have. Ask yourself how many people you think go to work with happy thoughts and excitement for their job versus how many if you saw inside their minds would be thinking about how much they hate it and the practicality of what they have to do next and when it needs to be done by.
This isn't a question of whether someone is disingenuous, that doesn't really come into play when talking about thoughts and actions, instead that comes into play with beliefs and intentions. Disingenuous behaviour is the expression of belief and action motivated by belief that the person does not actually believe, in other words insincerity. Disingenuous behaviour is linked to communication and interaction whereas thoughts alone apply to us and what we tell ourselves.
The balance is to be found between being an open book with no cover whatsoever as in the hypothetical telepathic scenario, and the other extreme of being a closed book with a lock without a key holding shut. Communication is the key as they often say and in this case quite literally, the key to opening that lock. What you choose to share can be as little or as much as you want as long as you make the commitment to at least share something. If you want a relationship or a friendship to work, then you need to recognise that your thoughts are private and the person you want to build a relationship with can not read those thoughts. You need to share the things you want to share, and you need to understand that it is unreasonable to want them to be able to know what you are thinking without having to tell them. That level of connection is not dependent on intimacy, it depends on commonality and likeness. The more you are alike another person the easier it is to know what they may be thinking because whatever you are thinking is probably the answer. Most relationships are not narcissistic, people do not date themselves - again there will always be outliers you can think of who would fit that description quite aptly.
It's easy to be upset when someone doesn't say or do something you were expecting them to do, if you had attached a lot of significance to that action in your mind, the more you built it up the bigger the disappointment would likely be. In situations like this the best approach is to stop and ask yourself what indication you gave of what you were thinking, then decide if it is fair to react so strongly.
Reality TV
The only reality you can believe is true is the one you experience first-hand, and even at that there are many ways in which our perception of reality can be warped to make us experience things that aren't there. We rely on 5 senses to tell us everything about the world - sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. With such limited percepts if you can overload or overwhelm one or more of them you can lead a person to experience something quite different from what is actually happening.
When it comes to television, there still exists an unsettling eagerness to believe that everything we see is real. Even when it comes to movies and TV shows that we know with full disclosure are entirely fictional, they can still solicit an emotional response similar to that as if it was real. Happiness, sadness, excitement, and fear, amongst many others are all emotions that content can evoke whenever it is created with skill.
This doesn't cause many problems except in cases where it becomes extreme and leaves a lasting impact on the viewer. There are times however when reality and fiction become so entwined that it can be hard to distinguish between the two. Reality TV is the best example of this. There is first of all the misnomer that comes with the name in itself, the fact it was produced in an environment conducive to TV production should in itself be the first flag. You would think people would hold a degree of scepticism when it comes to anything they see on TV however that willingness to suspend their disbelief is hard to prevent even when they profess to be hard to fool and adamant that they can judge what is real and what is not, often arrogance leads us to cross the line and form false conclusions.
I believe part of the reason why people are willing to believe what they see on TV is real is because of the misconception that those who produce it have a vested interest in producing something as true to life as possible - the reality however is that their vested interest is in creating something as entertaining as they can, which inevitably means turning reality into something closer to the traditional content they produce, in other words they want a traditional TV show with a traditional story line but with real people in place of the actors coupled with organic dialogue to make it believable. It's important here to note tradition means what they are used to producing not in the cultural sense of conservatism and traditional values - although some broadcasters do try to achieve both of these too.
There is a belief held by the viewer too that places far too much onus on regulators and mediators to ensure what they see is based in truth, or to put it another way, they think that regulators and legislation would prevent a broadcaster promoting something as "reality" when it isn't actually real - again this is misplaced trust. Most regulators are not tasked with ensuring accuracy, and even in the few instances such as advertising where they are, their actions are often reactive not proactive, in other words they only respond to complaints made, they don't police content and review it before it is released. Nowhere is this more problematic than in printed media with publications such as newspapers able to print bold headlines that are complete lies, then post forgotten revisions and apologies hidden away in the corner of some page buried within the paper in future. The damage is done by the initial headline and a fraction of a fraction of the readers who read it in the first place will see the revision, retraction, or apology.
This leads to a complacency whereby broadcasters and arguably to a greater extent, publishers, are allowed to push out whatever content they want with no regard for the viewer or the reader and the damage it will create, simply apologising or offering retractions etc after the fact when someone forces them to - which in most cases will not negate the damage and are usually insincere lacking any genuine remorse. Perhaps it would be better then if publishers and broadcasters were fined instead at a rate equal to whatever money they made from the productions they pushed out - that way the more lucrative the lie the greater the penalty paid. In reality when most people break the law or cause damage they have to pay for it, corporations are treated very differently to people which begs the question why shouldn't these publishers and broadcasters have to pay for the damage they cause? Which in itself raises the question, how do you measure the extent of the damage caused?
When it comes to television, there still exists an unsettling eagerness to believe that everything we see is real. Even when it comes to movies and TV shows that we know with full disclosure are entirely fictional, they can still solicit an emotional response similar to that as if it was real. Happiness, sadness, excitement, and fear, amongst many others are all emotions that content can evoke whenever it is created with skill.
This doesn't cause many problems except in cases where it becomes extreme and leaves a lasting impact on the viewer. There are times however when reality and fiction become so entwined that it can be hard to distinguish between the two. Reality TV is the best example of this. There is first of all the misnomer that comes with the name in itself, the fact it was produced in an environment conducive to TV production should in itself be the first flag. You would think people would hold a degree of scepticism when it comes to anything they see on TV however that willingness to suspend their disbelief is hard to prevent even when they profess to be hard to fool and adamant that they can judge what is real and what is not, often arrogance leads us to cross the line and form false conclusions.
I believe part of the reason why people are willing to believe what they see on TV is real is because of the misconception that those who produce it have a vested interest in producing something as true to life as possible - the reality however is that their vested interest is in creating something as entertaining as they can, which inevitably means turning reality into something closer to the traditional content they produce, in other words they want a traditional TV show with a traditional story line but with real people in place of the actors coupled with organic dialogue to make it believable. It's important here to note tradition means what they are used to producing not in the cultural sense of conservatism and traditional values - although some broadcasters do try to achieve both of these too.
There is a belief held by the viewer too that places far too much onus on regulators and mediators to ensure what they see is based in truth, or to put it another way, they think that regulators and legislation would prevent a broadcaster promoting something as "reality" when it isn't actually real - again this is misplaced trust. Most regulators are not tasked with ensuring accuracy, and even in the few instances such as advertising where they are, their actions are often reactive not proactive, in other words they only respond to complaints made, they don't police content and review it before it is released. Nowhere is this more problematic than in printed media with publications such as newspapers able to print bold headlines that are complete lies, then post forgotten revisions and apologies hidden away in the corner of some page buried within the paper in future. The damage is done by the initial headline and a fraction of a fraction of the readers who read it in the first place will see the revision, retraction, or apology.
This leads to a complacency whereby broadcasters and arguably to a greater extent, publishers, are allowed to push out whatever content they want with no regard for the viewer or the reader and the damage it will create, simply apologising or offering retractions etc after the fact when someone forces them to - which in most cases will not negate the damage and are usually insincere lacking any genuine remorse. Perhaps it would be better then if publishers and broadcasters were fined instead at a rate equal to whatever money they made from the productions they pushed out - that way the more lucrative the lie the greater the penalty paid. In reality when most people break the law or cause damage they have to pay for it, corporations are treated very differently to people which begs the question why shouldn't these publishers and broadcasters have to pay for the damage they cause? Which in itself raises the question, how do you measure the extent of the damage caused?
Limitation of Speech
People have a lot of opinions and ideas of what freedom of speech is, what it should cover, and when it should be limited, if ever. One of the things that is difficult with regard to freedom of speech is the concept of a universal definition. When people think of the concept, the first place their mind usually travels to is the USA, particularly because of the first amendment of the US constitution, and that's cute but that only applies to the USA and despite what many Americans like to think, the USA isn't the whole world. Go beyond its borders and the definition of freedom of speech varies quite a bit. In the UK for example, freedom of speech in UK law is not defined as an absolute right as it is in the USA. Under UK law, freedom of speech is defined as a negative right, defined by what you can and cannot do as opposed to giving you the right first and then limiting it - or to put it plainly, UK law does not grant an individual that right at all, it implies that right by limitations. The only place UK citizens can actually derive the right to freedom of speech in the absolute right in the same vein as US citizens is actually from laws passed by the Council of Europe - not to be confused with the European Union. The Council of Europe is a separate distinct entity.
These laws implement the European Convention on Human Rights which was enacted in 1950, prior to this, UK citizens had no absolute right to freedom of speech, and if the UK were to ever resign from the Council and withdraw from its treaties then its citizens would lose that absolute right. It's also worth noting here once again for emphasis, the Council of Europe is distinct from the European Union, Brexit has no effect on its membership thereof, and there is no intention for the UK to leave the Council any time soon.
What this little fact should highlight however is the reality that freedom of speech as an absolute right is a relatively recent concept for the UK and most of Europe. Whilst the USA can claim a longer history of the right, beyond these nations the concept is not as widely held as people like to believe. Freedom of speech varies greatly by country with many having no concept of it within their national laws at all, with citizens relying on various international organizations like the United Nations Human Rights Council to uphold their own conventions. The trouble with the vast majority of these organisations is that they have no executive or legislative power. In other words, they can't enforce anything they pass as each member remains sovereign, which is one of the reasons why human rights violations are still prevalent in the global stage and very little is ever done about them, the other being that people generally don't care what happens outside their own borders, as much as they may profess to care during times of catastrophe and tragedy on the international stage, the rest of the time people give little or no thought to these issues unless it's part of their job.
What does that mean for civil liberties? Well the answer is quite short - it means you are on your own when it comes to challenging your national government. The laws that are passed within your own country are subject only to the checks and balances that exist within your legislative framework, and even then as been demonstrated in recent years on both sides of the Atlantic, people who are supposed to be World Leaders have disregarded basic human rights in pursuit of their own political agendas, often to the cries of approval from their supporters. This should serve as a reminder to everyone who sees this and recognises it for what it is, that the rights you have, only exist so long as someone else says they do, if that person changes their mind or decides to ignore them completely, then those rights evaporate in an instant, no matter what laws exist to protect you. There will come a time when these rights will be challenged and I do not mean in faux outrage and sensationalist veins that mainstream media tries to incite, I mean in terms of a very real, direct challenge.
You may find yourself denying such a thing could ever happen, or questioning how such a moment could ever come to be, and again the question can be answered by looking at precedent and seeing where and when this has already happened. Time and again, these changes happen in society when perception of the populace convinces people that such change is warranted. There is a cycle that exists with all legislation and all liberty and it goes as such:
During stage 1, Absolute liberty exists, during this stage you are allowed to do something without limitation, usually because no laws exist to cover whatever it is you are doing, let's use flying a drone as an example.
During stage 2, Absolute liberty is abused, individuals or groups exploit the fact they can do something without limitation and behave in ways that the populace start to perceive as negative. In our drone flying example, people start invading others privacy, flying in areas where other people would rather they didn't, spying through bedroom windows, flying over their property, landing on their roofs etc.
During stage 3, that abuse reaches a tipping point where it passes from annoyance into the remit of endangering the populace as a whole. In our drone flying example this can be demonstrated by events such as drones colliding with aircraft, or the interference with air traffic at an airport as was demonstrated by the Gatwick Airport Incident in December 2018.
During stage 4, laws are proposed that limit the liberty that once existed, there is a conflict here between those who are proponents, and those who are opponents. At this stage it is very rare for opponents to actually win, even if the proposed laws get rewritten and become less invasive than those that were first proposed, the absolute liberty no longer exists.
During stage 5, those laws are enacted and either prove sufficient, or they prove ineffective in which case the original much more invasive laws that were proposed are once again brought forward and they will usually pass.
Whether it happens during stage 4 or stage 5, the limitation of the absolute liberty that once exist eventually occurs. This happens predictably, and is the result of the abuse of the absolute liberty that once existed. Which brings us back to the idea of freedom of speech. Right now for many this exists as an absolute liberty, either through national laws or through convention as we discussed above. However, that liberty was originally intended to allow individuals to have the right to express themselves freely without the government being able to stop them from doing so, they were never intended to be used as weapons. They were intended to be a defence to prevent the individual from being attacked for expressing their point of view, the trouble is that is not how these laws are now being used.
As far as freedom of speech is concerned, we are now in stage 3, where whether you like it or not, whether you agree or not, there are those who exploit these laws to attack others. Your point of view is irrelevant here, your political persuasion is also irrelevant, which side of the argument you are on is irrelevant. What is relevant is the fact that this discourse that exists has descended now to the point where speech leads to actions that break other laws. The absolute liberty is being used as a weapon, and it is endangering the populace, how many people are endangered is growing in number every day. The same cycle that applies to every liberty that has existed will also apply here. The exploitation of freedom of speech in this manner is what will ultimately lead it to be restricted, and the irony therein will be that those who used it as a weapon, are those who will suffer the most when they have it taken away from them because they are the ones who rely on it the most.
What it will take to tip us from stage 3 into stage 4 or 5 is not yet clear, but what is clear right now is that there is growing discontent within the populace as a whole for the ineptitude of those perceived to be authority figures for failing to tackle this extremism. The number of people who are willing to give up freedom of speech as an absolute liberty and accept some limitation to prevent that extremism is growing, because those people no longer feel protected by that right, they feel endangered by it. As long as the alternative seems safer to them, they will embrace it. If you do not believe this to be true then my only real retort is to say that it is not uncommon for homeless individuals to deliberately break the law with the intent of being imprisoned in order have somewhere to live with food and drink provided. That may seem extreme to some people but given the choice between being housed in a prison or sleeping rough on the streets, there are those who choose the former, and the reason in most cases for that choice is because the latter actually seems more dangerous to them than the former - people ultimately choose whatever they think will be safer and more secure for them, even if it means sacrificing liberty to do so.
If you want another example which is much more extreme then you can look to Northern Ireland, during the period of time known as the Troubles the government introduced its policy of Internment, this policy allowed for the arrest and imprisonment without warrant, charge, or trial of any individual. The police and security forces could literally stop anyone they wanted, arrest them, and put them into internment camps where they could be held indefinitely. This policy was enacted because of the limitations of existing laws that made it difficult to arrest and charge individuals they suspected were part of terrorist activities but had no substantive proof. This policy was protested by many civil liberties groups at the time, is still regarded as one of the grossest violations of human rights the British Government has ever made within the UK, and crucially, happened whilst the UK was a member of the Council of Europe, meaning it violated the Human Rights that were established by the convention, in other words, those laws don't protect you from a government that wants to violate them.
These laws implement the European Convention on Human Rights which was enacted in 1950, prior to this, UK citizens had no absolute right to freedom of speech, and if the UK were to ever resign from the Council and withdraw from its treaties then its citizens would lose that absolute right. It's also worth noting here once again for emphasis, the Council of Europe is distinct from the European Union, Brexit has no effect on its membership thereof, and there is no intention for the UK to leave the Council any time soon.
What this little fact should highlight however is the reality that freedom of speech as an absolute right is a relatively recent concept for the UK and most of Europe. Whilst the USA can claim a longer history of the right, beyond these nations the concept is not as widely held as people like to believe. Freedom of speech varies greatly by country with many having no concept of it within their national laws at all, with citizens relying on various international organizations like the United Nations Human Rights Council to uphold their own conventions. The trouble with the vast majority of these organisations is that they have no executive or legislative power. In other words, they can't enforce anything they pass as each member remains sovereign, which is one of the reasons why human rights violations are still prevalent in the global stage and very little is ever done about them, the other being that people generally don't care what happens outside their own borders, as much as they may profess to care during times of catastrophe and tragedy on the international stage, the rest of the time people give little or no thought to these issues unless it's part of their job.
What does that mean for civil liberties? Well the answer is quite short - it means you are on your own when it comes to challenging your national government. The laws that are passed within your own country are subject only to the checks and balances that exist within your legislative framework, and even then as been demonstrated in recent years on both sides of the Atlantic, people who are supposed to be World Leaders have disregarded basic human rights in pursuit of their own political agendas, often to the cries of approval from their supporters. This should serve as a reminder to everyone who sees this and recognises it for what it is, that the rights you have, only exist so long as someone else says they do, if that person changes their mind or decides to ignore them completely, then those rights evaporate in an instant, no matter what laws exist to protect you. There will come a time when these rights will be challenged and I do not mean in faux outrage and sensationalist veins that mainstream media tries to incite, I mean in terms of a very real, direct challenge.
You may find yourself denying such a thing could ever happen, or questioning how such a moment could ever come to be, and again the question can be answered by looking at precedent and seeing where and when this has already happened. Time and again, these changes happen in society when perception of the populace convinces people that such change is warranted. There is a cycle that exists with all legislation and all liberty and it goes as such:
During stage 1, Absolute liberty exists, during this stage you are allowed to do something without limitation, usually because no laws exist to cover whatever it is you are doing, let's use flying a drone as an example.
During stage 2, Absolute liberty is abused, individuals or groups exploit the fact they can do something without limitation and behave in ways that the populace start to perceive as negative. In our drone flying example, people start invading others privacy, flying in areas where other people would rather they didn't, spying through bedroom windows, flying over their property, landing on their roofs etc.
During stage 3, that abuse reaches a tipping point where it passes from annoyance into the remit of endangering the populace as a whole. In our drone flying example this can be demonstrated by events such as drones colliding with aircraft, or the interference with air traffic at an airport as was demonstrated by the Gatwick Airport Incident in December 2018.
During stage 4, laws are proposed that limit the liberty that once existed, there is a conflict here between those who are proponents, and those who are opponents. At this stage it is very rare for opponents to actually win, even if the proposed laws get rewritten and become less invasive than those that were first proposed, the absolute liberty no longer exists.
During stage 5, those laws are enacted and either prove sufficient, or they prove ineffective in which case the original much more invasive laws that were proposed are once again brought forward and they will usually pass.
Whether it happens during stage 4 or stage 5, the limitation of the absolute liberty that once exist eventually occurs. This happens predictably, and is the result of the abuse of the absolute liberty that once existed. Which brings us back to the idea of freedom of speech. Right now for many this exists as an absolute liberty, either through national laws or through convention as we discussed above. However, that liberty was originally intended to allow individuals to have the right to express themselves freely without the government being able to stop them from doing so, they were never intended to be used as weapons. They were intended to be a defence to prevent the individual from being attacked for expressing their point of view, the trouble is that is not how these laws are now being used.
As far as freedom of speech is concerned, we are now in stage 3, where whether you like it or not, whether you agree or not, there are those who exploit these laws to attack others. Your point of view is irrelevant here, your political persuasion is also irrelevant, which side of the argument you are on is irrelevant. What is relevant is the fact that this discourse that exists has descended now to the point where speech leads to actions that break other laws. The absolute liberty is being used as a weapon, and it is endangering the populace, how many people are endangered is growing in number every day. The same cycle that applies to every liberty that has existed will also apply here. The exploitation of freedom of speech in this manner is what will ultimately lead it to be restricted, and the irony therein will be that those who used it as a weapon, are those who will suffer the most when they have it taken away from them because they are the ones who rely on it the most.
What it will take to tip us from stage 3 into stage 4 or 5 is not yet clear, but what is clear right now is that there is growing discontent within the populace as a whole for the ineptitude of those perceived to be authority figures for failing to tackle this extremism. The number of people who are willing to give up freedom of speech as an absolute liberty and accept some limitation to prevent that extremism is growing, because those people no longer feel protected by that right, they feel endangered by it. As long as the alternative seems safer to them, they will embrace it. If you do not believe this to be true then my only real retort is to say that it is not uncommon for homeless individuals to deliberately break the law with the intent of being imprisoned in order have somewhere to live with food and drink provided. That may seem extreme to some people but given the choice between being housed in a prison or sleeping rough on the streets, there are those who choose the former, and the reason in most cases for that choice is because the latter actually seems more dangerous to them than the former - people ultimately choose whatever they think will be safer and more secure for them, even if it means sacrificing liberty to do so.
If you want another example which is much more extreme then you can look to Northern Ireland, during the period of time known as the Troubles the government introduced its policy of Internment, this policy allowed for the arrest and imprisonment without warrant, charge, or trial of any individual. The police and security forces could literally stop anyone they wanted, arrest them, and put them into internment camps where they could be held indefinitely. This policy was enacted because of the limitations of existing laws that made it difficult to arrest and charge individuals they suspected were part of terrorist activities but had no substantive proof. This policy was protested by many civil liberties groups at the time, is still regarded as one of the grossest violations of human rights the British Government has ever made within the UK, and crucially, happened whilst the UK was a member of the Council of Europe, meaning it violated the Human Rights that were established by the convention, in other words, those laws don't protect you from a government that wants to violate them.
What were you thinking?
Following on from my previous post where I wrote about the divergence of behaviours people have in different environments there was another topic that I wanted to write about in the same vein, that is the variance of language that accompanies that shift in behaviour. People don't just act in a different way depending on who they are in the company of, they also change the way they speak, the words they use, and even the way they say it. In some extremes this can actually lead to accents changing where you notice people talk with one accent in general but that shifts when they are around different people.
There is a psychiatric condition that is related to this behaviour known as Echolalia, which simply put is the unintentional or unconscious mimicry of another person's vocalizations. This can be a symptom of a wide range of psychiatric conditions, most notably it can be an indication that you are present on the autism scale. Adapting to your environment is natural but it should happen at least in part as a conscious choice. There should be a driving factor behind that shift in behaviour that you are aware of and are happy to go along with. If the behaviour is unconscious and unintentional then it may indicate something greater at play.
I have written before of how the technical expertise of the people we are in the presence of can influence the use of technical language, through an understanding that you can use the correct terms without the other person losing the flow of the conversation or being unable to understand what you are saying. This in itself isn't an indication of Echolalia as there remains to be a semblance of conscious choice to vary your vocabulary.
What I find interesting about this behaviour and this variance is when I perceive other people's vocabulary and articulation vary around me. I have said before that I have much disdain for the practice of dumbing things down and how I prefer things to be written or said as they are meant to be said, if I can follow it that's great, if I can't then it presents an opportunity for me to learn and the best place to do that is in the presence of someone who actually knows what they are talking about. It puzzles me when I see people vary their language around others because it is not always clear why they choose to do that. It can come across as condescending and I have certainly noticed some men in particular try to reduce their vocabulary in the presence of women, you can imagine how those women feel witnessing such blatant chauvinism.
In situations such as these, your actions say much more about you as a person and your perception of the people you engage with than anything else. You can profess to be one way inclined with open mindedness and equality and social justice and all the rest, but in those moments that veil slips and third parties such as myself quietly observing the situation can see right through you. I try to gain experience of how people interact with others not just how they interact with me because it not only gives an indication of who and what they really are, but it can also let you glimpse inside their mind to see what they really think of you. There's often a question we're asked as kids and even as adults of what superpower we would like to have, telepathy is often given as an answer, but having caught glimpses into the minds of others I think I can safely say, I don't want to know what you're thinking all the time, it would likely drive me mad and lead me even more so towards the desire never to engage with anyone at all ever.
There is a psychiatric condition that is related to this behaviour known as Echolalia, which simply put is the unintentional or unconscious mimicry of another person's vocalizations. This can be a symptom of a wide range of psychiatric conditions, most notably it can be an indication that you are present on the autism scale. Adapting to your environment is natural but it should happen at least in part as a conscious choice. There should be a driving factor behind that shift in behaviour that you are aware of and are happy to go along with. If the behaviour is unconscious and unintentional then it may indicate something greater at play.
I have written before of how the technical expertise of the people we are in the presence of can influence the use of technical language, through an understanding that you can use the correct terms without the other person losing the flow of the conversation or being unable to understand what you are saying. This in itself isn't an indication of Echolalia as there remains to be a semblance of conscious choice to vary your vocabulary.
What I find interesting about this behaviour and this variance is when I perceive other people's vocabulary and articulation vary around me. I have said before that I have much disdain for the practice of dumbing things down and how I prefer things to be written or said as they are meant to be said, if I can follow it that's great, if I can't then it presents an opportunity for me to learn and the best place to do that is in the presence of someone who actually knows what they are talking about. It puzzles me when I see people vary their language around others because it is not always clear why they choose to do that. It can come across as condescending and I have certainly noticed some men in particular try to reduce their vocabulary in the presence of women, you can imagine how those women feel witnessing such blatant chauvinism.
In situations such as these, your actions say much more about you as a person and your perception of the people you engage with than anything else. You can profess to be one way inclined with open mindedness and equality and social justice and all the rest, but in those moments that veil slips and third parties such as myself quietly observing the situation can see right through you. I try to gain experience of how people interact with others not just how they interact with me because it not only gives an indication of who and what they really are, but it can also let you glimpse inside their mind to see what they really think of you. There's often a question we're asked as kids and even as adults of what superpower we would like to have, telepathy is often given as an answer, but having caught glimpses into the minds of others I think I can safely say, I don't want to know what you're thinking all the time, it would likely drive me mad and lead me even more so towards the desire never to engage with anyone at all ever.
Default Behaviour
The way we act and the way we behave is often influenced by the people we find ourselves in the presence of, so much to the point that we can be perceived to be completely different people when in their presence. It's easy to build up a perception of another person that is incomplete or even inaccurate if we only ever see them in the presence of a certain type of people. As a gay man this is perhaps best illustrated by the disjunction between other gay men's behaviour when they are in the presence of straight people as opposed to when they are in the presence of other gay people.
This is not unique to the LGBT community however, it transcends such social constructs and divisions and applies to almost everyone you meet. The personal versus professional mentalities, the social versus familial mentalities, the romantic versus platonic mentalities, all of these demonstrate the juxtaposition that can exist between how we behave in one situation versus another. There inevitably comes the question of which of these is your "true" behaviour or the one that comes most naturally to you. This question is perhaps best answered by identifying which environment is the most comfortable for you, where you can feel little or no inhibitions.
Having said that, there are behaviours we can exhibit in the right conditions which aren't an indicator of who we are or how we act in any given situation. There comes a point where you have to draw the line between what is easy and what is right. The easiest choices to make in life are often the ones that require the least deliberation - in other words those where a default choice exists often result in us making the default choice, not because we want to but because it's the least effort for us to put in.
When it comes to identifying what your "natural" behaviour is then I would argue that the actual answer is whatever is the modal behaviour, in other words the behaviour you exhibit most often. If you rarely behave in a given way then that behaviour is not an accurate depiction of you in general. To use an analogy, the odds of winning the lottery, anything at all not just the jackpot, are quite low, the majority of times you play it you will win nothing at all. It is only in the minority of cases that you will actually win anything at all. Is it fair therefore to say that winning something should be described as the default when trying to explain it, or use it as a template for future behaviour? The answer whilst marketing and advertising would agree it is fair, in reality it is not. A truer explanation of the lottery is to say it is a game that the majority of people lose, and that if you play it you will most likely lose and win nothing at all.
Identifying a default behaviour is as much about numbers and consistency as it is about comfort. Default should by its very definition be the behaviour you expect to see most. How then do you determine if the way a person behaves around you is their default? The answer to that is rather simple - you need more experience of their behaviour over a longer period of time in the presence of other people in order to judge it. How can you use this knowledge to your advantage? Well for one if you want to get to know a person quicker then you need to learn more about the way they interact with others. If you want to date someone and get a more accurate depiction of them as a person, despite being counter intuitive, intimacy should actually be avoided. In a one on one setting you experience only how they behave towards you. The sooner you see their interactions with others the sooner you see who they are in a more general sense. In most cases when you date someone or start a relationship with them, in time the intimacy wanes and you start to see more of their life, not just the time they spend with you. The same is true for professional environments and any other situation where you are in the presence of a few people but never in the presence of others. The sooner you can expand the number of people the sooner you can see interactions.
This is not unique to the LGBT community however, it transcends such social constructs and divisions and applies to almost everyone you meet. The personal versus professional mentalities, the social versus familial mentalities, the romantic versus platonic mentalities, all of these demonstrate the juxtaposition that can exist between how we behave in one situation versus another. There inevitably comes the question of which of these is your "true" behaviour or the one that comes most naturally to you. This question is perhaps best answered by identifying which environment is the most comfortable for you, where you can feel little or no inhibitions.
Having said that, there are behaviours we can exhibit in the right conditions which aren't an indicator of who we are or how we act in any given situation. There comes a point where you have to draw the line between what is easy and what is right. The easiest choices to make in life are often the ones that require the least deliberation - in other words those where a default choice exists often result in us making the default choice, not because we want to but because it's the least effort for us to put in.
When it comes to identifying what your "natural" behaviour is then I would argue that the actual answer is whatever is the modal behaviour, in other words the behaviour you exhibit most often. If you rarely behave in a given way then that behaviour is not an accurate depiction of you in general. To use an analogy, the odds of winning the lottery, anything at all not just the jackpot, are quite low, the majority of times you play it you will win nothing at all. It is only in the minority of cases that you will actually win anything at all. Is it fair therefore to say that winning something should be described as the default when trying to explain it, or use it as a template for future behaviour? The answer whilst marketing and advertising would agree it is fair, in reality it is not. A truer explanation of the lottery is to say it is a game that the majority of people lose, and that if you play it you will most likely lose and win nothing at all.
Identifying a default behaviour is as much about numbers and consistency as it is about comfort. Default should by its very definition be the behaviour you expect to see most. How then do you determine if the way a person behaves around you is their default? The answer to that is rather simple - you need more experience of their behaviour over a longer period of time in the presence of other people in order to judge it. How can you use this knowledge to your advantage? Well for one if you want to get to know a person quicker then you need to learn more about the way they interact with others. If you want to date someone and get a more accurate depiction of them as a person, despite being counter intuitive, intimacy should actually be avoided. In a one on one setting you experience only how they behave towards you. The sooner you see their interactions with others the sooner you see who they are in a more general sense. In most cases when you date someone or start a relationship with them, in time the intimacy wanes and you start to see more of their life, not just the time they spend with you. The same is true for professional environments and any other situation where you are in the presence of a few people but never in the presence of others. The sooner you can expand the number of people the sooner you can see interactions.
The End Result
Almost everything we consume is a final product. You are given something that has been built from bits and pieces through a process that can take a very long time. When you see the final product you see it for what it is, not what it was. You see the product in its final form, not the iterations that came before. When I wrote about pilot episodes to TV shows I said about the fact that they represent a rare opportunity to see something the way it was before it was developed and polished. I also said that pilots in this vein have been dying off as the expectation of a polished production has increased to the point where the pilot is now expected to be a final product.
When you read a book, you often explore the thought processes of characters as they appear and wonder what motivates them and you have a desire to know more. The secondary content is becoming as important as the primary. Supplementary publications that take the world created in the book and expand upon it have proven popular. Despite this growing trend, even that supplementary content is expected to be a final product. People are interested in the development process to a point. They want content that they can actually consume. Using the example of a book, seeing the iterations thereof would make very little sense. Things that are cannon in the final product would not have been in the iterations as they would often have relied on plot points or details that were eventually removed. Entire characters can end up being removed in the editing process.
Whilst it may be interesting to see some of these iterations, for other mediums and for other creative works, like cooking for example, often the iterations we go through can't be consumed at all, and serve only as something to look at and think about. The Mona Lisa is perhaps one of the most famous artworks in the world, but would you visit a museum other than the Louvre to see previous versions of the painting that were abandoned? It is often the case that the canvass of a famous artwork once examined in detail with the aid of computer imagery can reveal earlier versions of those masterpieces. There comes a question of whether or not your curiosity overrides the desire of the creator. Those great masters who painted those works of art clearly were not happy with the iterations that they washed over, so do you actually have a right to see them?
There's a balance to be found here somewhere, somehow, between wanting to know of the work involved and the time it takes to get from point A to point B and desire of the creator for you to consume only the best version. There is of course the argument that seeing iterations that demonstrate mistakes would allow us to see the creators as being more human in nature, to introduce flaws to our images of them to make them much more believable and their status that much more attainable. By extension this would also negate the immediate reaction we often have when we see the final product and think "I could do that" or "That looks easy enough" because we do not see the work that went into it, and the practice that was involved in honing that craft. Ask yourself how many paintings were created by your favourite artist that never saw the light of day? Not only those that were washed over, but those that were destroyed, those that served only as a means of practising their craft. No artist no matter how great created a masterpiece every single time they painted, neither were they born with that ability, it took time and effort and above all else practice to reach that point, but you don't see that, you see the the end result.
When you read a book, you often explore the thought processes of characters as they appear and wonder what motivates them and you have a desire to know more. The secondary content is becoming as important as the primary. Supplementary publications that take the world created in the book and expand upon it have proven popular. Despite this growing trend, even that supplementary content is expected to be a final product. People are interested in the development process to a point. They want content that they can actually consume. Using the example of a book, seeing the iterations thereof would make very little sense. Things that are cannon in the final product would not have been in the iterations as they would often have relied on plot points or details that were eventually removed. Entire characters can end up being removed in the editing process.
Whilst it may be interesting to see some of these iterations, for other mediums and for other creative works, like cooking for example, often the iterations we go through can't be consumed at all, and serve only as something to look at and think about. The Mona Lisa is perhaps one of the most famous artworks in the world, but would you visit a museum other than the Louvre to see previous versions of the painting that were abandoned? It is often the case that the canvass of a famous artwork once examined in detail with the aid of computer imagery can reveal earlier versions of those masterpieces. There comes a question of whether or not your curiosity overrides the desire of the creator. Those great masters who painted those works of art clearly were not happy with the iterations that they washed over, so do you actually have a right to see them?
There's a balance to be found here somewhere, somehow, between wanting to know of the work involved and the time it takes to get from point A to point B and desire of the creator for you to consume only the best version. There is of course the argument that seeing iterations that demonstrate mistakes would allow us to see the creators as being more human in nature, to introduce flaws to our images of them to make them much more believable and their status that much more attainable. By extension this would also negate the immediate reaction we often have when we see the final product and think "I could do that" or "That looks easy enough" because we do not see the work that went into it, and the practice that was involved in honing that craft. Ask yourself how many paintings were created by your favourite artist that never saw the light of day? Not only those that were washed over, but those that were destroyed, those that served only as a means of practising their craft. No artist no matter how great created a masterpiece every single time they painted, neither were they born with that ability, it took time and effort and above all else practice to reach that point, but you don't see that, you see the the end result.
My First Job
A while ago on twitter there was a trend where people would list their first five jobs, I found it difficult to answer that question as I've had a lot of jobs that I wouldn't consider my "job" as such because they were part time or because they were things I did temporarily. To make a list here of everything would give away a lot about my personal life which I'm not willing to do right now, but I wanted to take the idea and make a post inspired by it. This post is about the first job I ever had, and by that I mean no excuses no exemptions, literally the first job I ever did for an actual employer.
I can't remember how old I was at the time but I was still in high school, nearing the end of my time there, as part of one of the core subjects we had to complete we needed to find work placements where we would spend time working full time rather than attending school. I was probably 15 at the time and the company I went to work for was a sign-writing company.
The first thing I learned how to do when I worked there was how to design, print, and apply a vinyl transfer; this involved using Computer Aided Design [CAD] software that would create a template for the sign by using colour layers to build the sign on screen. The template would then be cut by a cutting machine that would scour the coloured layers into coloured sheets of vinyl. Each vinyl sheet then had to be stripped of the waste which was done by hand using an etching knife to peel away the waste vinyl. You'd be left with a sheet of vinyl that only had the parts of the sign in that colour still on its surface. One by one you would align each sheet with the surface it was to be applied to, spray it with adhesive, smooth it out on the surface then peel the vinyl off again which if you did it right would leave the coloured vinyl on the sign.
I've always been interested in using computing in different ways, and seeing the combination of design and application fascinated me. This was really something that drove me towards software development as I wanted to create that kind of software. In the end I didn't pursue that career path but it was interesting to see.
During my time working at the sign-writers I also got to work with metalwork, designing and assembling the metal frames for 3D fabrications that would be the basis for more elaborate designs. I also got to work with engraving machines and gained a better understanding of how everything was done that I really had never actually though about up until that point. I've written before about the nature of design, and how everything in our lives has been created by design right down to the letter T you see on your screen right now, that font had to be designed and much more effort goes into it than you would think. This moment was rather analogous for me to the scene in Devil Wears Prada where Andy is shot down by Miranda for thinking she's exempt from the influence of the fashion industry when in reality everything she was wearing was the result of millions of dollars of industry. I gained an understanding from that young age that nothing you use that has been manufactured is exempt from the design process, someone somewhere had to think about it and design it before it could be made for you to use.
If you've ever endured the countless courses and training programmes designed to help you find a job, one of the things you probably hate hearing is the idea of transferable skills and non-transferable skills, mostly because it seems like a concept that is so obvious that you don't feel like you need to spend hours sitting in a classroom listening to someone explain its importance to you.
What those concepts teach though is something that some of us embrace and some of us fight against, and that is the idea that everything in life happens for a reason. Some people feel comfortable with that idea but a lot of people don't because they feel that accepting it would imply they have no free will, when in reality that's not what is being conveyed by this mentality. In my view what is being conveyed is that every experience you have in life can teach you something, no matter how mundane you may think it is, there is something to be learned from the experience. Does that mean that you have no free will? No, obviously not, all that it means is that you can learn something from everything you do, every choice you make has a motivation sometimes we understand it when we make it, sometimes we don't understand it until long after, and in some cases we never understand why we made those choices at all. Whatever the situation you find yourself in, you made a choice, even if you were forced into that choice, and you witness the consequence. Those two things can teach you a lot if you are willing to disarm yourself and look at those choices with a critical mindset and really begin to examine them.
Every job I ever had taught me something, either about myself, about the world, about the field of work that I was employed to do, or about people in general. I don't like to refer to these lessons as skills because the truth is most of the time they are not skills, they are simply the elevation of your awareness of a given truth that is self evident that is presented to you in that moment. Learning about how people interact with each other, the limits of their abilities, how they handle stress and pressure, the physical, mental, and emotional cost of any given task, these are all things you can learn but they aren't considered skills, nevertheless they are self evident if you are willing to open your eyes and observe.
I never pursued a career relating to the work I did for the sign-writing company, but much more than that, what I find interesting is that in my professional career as it stands, I've never really done the same job twice, apart from retail which I did a number of times always part time in addition to some other focus, usually studying. Once I learned all that I could from the experience I moved on to something else that would help me continue to grow as a person and gain a deeper understanding of the world. I realise for some that may sound trite or even contrived but the truth is, knowledge is what has driven me most in life, ever since I was a child I wanted to know everything about everything - of course I realised that was an impossible task so in the end I decided to learn as much as I could about everything I had an interest in and learn a bit about anything and everything else when I had the opportunity, my career path has been part of that mentality, throughout its entirety I have sought to learn what I could when I could from whoever I could.
I don't really have an ending to this post quite simply because it deals with a topic that I don't think has come to an end yet for me - my career. There will be more for me to do, and I don't really know what that will bring or where it will lead me, all that I do know is that I will continue to approach it with the same mentality as before, to soak up as much information as I can and learn everything that I can in the process.
I can't remember how old I was at the time but I was still in high school, nearing the end of my time there, as part of one of the core subjects we had to complete we needed to find work placements where we would spend time working full time rather than attending school. I was probably 15 at the time and the company I went to work for was a sign-writing company.
The first thing I learned how to do when I worked there was how to design, print, and apply a vinyl transfer; this involved using Computer Aided Design [CAD] software that would create a template for the sign by using colour layers to build the sign on screen. The template would then be cut by a cutting machine that would scour the coloured layers into coloured sheets of vinyl. Each vinyl sheet then had to be stripped of the waste which was done by hand using an etching knife to peel away the waste vinyl. You'd be left with a sheet of vinyl that only had the parts of the sign in that colour still on its surface. One by one you would align each sheet with the surface it was to be applied to, spray it with adhesive, smooth it out on the surface then peel the vinyl off again which if you did it right would leave the coloured vinyl on the sign.
I've always been interested in using computing in different ways, and seeing the combination of design and application fascinated me. This was really something that drove me towards software development as I wanted to create that kind of software. In the end I didn't pursue that career path but it was interesting to see.
During my time working at the sign-writers I also got to work with metalwork, designing and assembling the metal frames for 3D fabrications that would be the basis for more elaborate designs. I also got to work with engraving machines and gained a better understanding of how everything was done that I really had never actually though about up until that point. I've written before about the nature of design, and how everything in our lives has been created by design right down to the letter T you see on your screen right now, that font had to be designed and much more effort goes into it than you would think. This moment was rather analogous for me to the scene in Devil Wears Prada where Andy is shot down by Miranda for thinking she's exempt from the influence of the fashion industry when in reality everything she was wearing was the result of millions of dollars of industry. I gained an understanding from that young age that nothing you use that has been manufactured is exempt from the design process, someone somewhere had to think about it and design it before it could be made for you to use.
If you've ever endured the countless courses and training programmes designed to help you find a job, one of the things you probably hate hearing is the idea of transferable skills and non-transferable skills, mostly because it seems like a concept that is so obvious that you don't feel like you need to spend hours sitting in a classroom listening to someone explain its importance to you.
What those concepts teach though is something that some of us embrace and some of us fight against, and that is the idea that everything in life happens for a reason. Some people feel comfortable with that idea but a lot of people don't because they feel that accepting it would imply they have no free will, when in reality that's not what is being conveyed by this mentality. In my view what is being conveyed is that every experience you have in life can teach you something, no matter how mundane you may think it is, there is something to be learned from the experience. Does that mean that you have no free will? No, obviously not, all that it means is that you can learn something from everything you do, every choice you make has a motivation sometimes we understand it when we make it, sometimes we don't understand it until long after, and in some cases we never understand why we made those choices at all. Whatever the situation you find yourself in, you made a choice, even if you were forced into that choice, and you witness the consequence. Those two things can teach you a lot if you are willing to disarm yourself and look at those choices with a critical mindset and really begin to examine them.
Every job I ever had taught me something, either about myself, about the world, about the field of work that I was employed to do, or about people in general. I don't like to refer to these lessons as skills because the truth is most of the time they are not skills, they are simply the elevation of your awareness of a given truth that is self evident that is presented to you in that moment. Learning about how people interact with each other, the limits of their abilities, how they handle stress and pressure, the physical, mental, and emotional cost of any given task, these are all things you can learn but they aren't considered skills, nevertheless they are self evident if you are willing to open your eyes and observe.
I never pursued a career relating to the work I did for the sign-writing company, but much more than that, what I find interesting is that in my professional career as it stands, I've never really done the same job twice, apart from retail which I did a number of times always part time in addition to some other focus, usually studying. Once I learned all that I could from the experience I moved on to something else that would help me continue to grow as a person and gain a deeper understanding of the world. I realise for some that may sound trite or even contrived but the truth is, knowledge is what has driven me most in life, ever since I was a child I wanted to know everything about everything - of course I realised that was an impossible task so in the end I decided to learn as much as I could about everything I had an interest in and learn a bit about anything and everything else when I had the opportunity, my career path has been part of that mentality, throughout its entirety I have sought to learn what I could when I could from whoever I could.
I don't really have an ending to this post quite simply because it deals with a topic that I don't think has come to an end yet for me - my career. There will be more for me to do, and I don't really know what that will bring or where it will lead me, all that I do know is that I will continue to approach it with the same mentality as before, to soak up as much information as I can and learn everything that I can in the process.
Love In Love
There's a difference between loving someone and being in love with someone. The former is an affection and a feeling that can be held for anyone or anything. The latter is almost exclusively reserved for romantic love, that is to say someone who makes you feel those butterflies in your stomach, that heartbeat that misses a beat, that moment where time stops when your phone has a text and you see it's from them and you open it to read whatever they said next because it's from them and you can't wait to see what it is, even if it turns out to be nothing important, the fact they thought of you makes you feel a warmth and a rush that envelops your soul.
I truly believe that once you fall in love with someone, you will forever love them, no matter what happens. You can fall out of love with someone but you can't stop loving them if it was really love. There's a line to be drawn between like, love, and lust, something which you will only learn the difference between through experience and through your own realisation. Nobody can tell you what love is, what lust is, and what it means just to like someone. You come to realise it for yourself in time.
When you fall out of love, you find yourself looking at the person you were in love with in a new light. Sometimes it's considered to be a sobering experience, with the antecedent being a "love drunk" state of mind. If the feelings were real and the emotion was true then I believe you will forever love that person even when you are no longer in love with them.
There are guys who I fell in love with when I was younger. I still love every single one of them. I could never be with any of them now though, too much happened and too much emotion was attached. I still feel affection and warmth for each of them but that's all it is now. I know my feelings were real and I know my emotions were true because even when I see their faces now I still smile and I remember what I felt before. There is no longer that drive or that control over your mind that once existed however. No longer does your heart overwhelm your head and push you to do anything to have them. There is a recognition that is found where your heart remembers but in a way where it recognises time has passed.
When I first went to University, that was for me as a young gay man the first time I really got to be open about my sexuality and with that openness there was an honesty about what I wanted - a serious, committed, long term relationship. Trouble was I was old before my time, having skipped over my adolescence due to trauma I never experienced the years of recklessness that most people do in that time. Nobody my age wanted a relationship and in time I reluctantly accepted that if I chose to wait forever then I probably would wait forever. I gave in and I explored and sampled everything. I was late to the party by that point. As others were finding a new level below, I was rising higher. Everyone else wanted a relationship whenever I did not. That led to a lot of turmoil, broken hearts, and broken dreams, my own included.
When I look back on that time, I don't regret any of it. I've said before that in life you do what you think is right in the moment, and when you look back in hindsight you see things you never saw in that moment, it's unfair to judge your past self with the knowledge you now hold because they didn't know any of that back then and usually the fact they didn't is what led you to learn those things in the first place.
I learned a lot from every man I loved. Each love taught me something about myself and about other people. I am grateful for the experiences I had, and I hold a happiness and an affection in my heart for that time we had together, even those that didn't end well. I still love every one of them but I could never be with any of them now. I love them all but I am not in love with any of them. I don't think you can truly understand that distinction until you have been through the experience.
I truly believe that once you fall in love with someone, you will forever love them, no matter what happens. You can fall out of love with someone but you can't stop loving them if it was really love. There's a line to be drawn between like, love, and lust, something which you will only learn the difference between through experience and through your own realisation. Nobody can tell you what love is, what lust is, and what it means just to like someone. You come to realise it for yourself in time.
When you fall out of love, you find yourself looking at the person you were in love with in a new light. Sometimes it's considered to be a sobering experience, with the antecedent being a "love drunk" state of mind. If the feelings were real and the emotion was true then I believe you will forever love that person even when you are no longer in love with them.
There are guys who I fell in love with when I was younger. I still love every single one of them. I could never be with any of them now though, too much happened and too much emotion was attached. I still feel affection and warmth for each of them but that's all it is now. I know my feelings were real and I know my emotions were true because even when I see their faces now I still smile and I remember what I felt before. There is no longer that drive or that control over your mind that once existed however. No longer does your heart overwhelm your head and push you to do anything to have them. There is a recognition that is found where your heart remembers but in a way where it recognises time has passed.
When I first went to University, that was for me as a young gay man the first time I really got to be open about my sexuality and with that openness there was an honesty about what I wanted - a serious, committed, long term relationship. Trouble was I was old before my time, having skipped over my adolescence due to trauma I never experienced the years of recklessness that most people do in that time. Nobody my age wanted a relationship and in time I reluctantly accepted that if I chose to wait forever then I probably would wait forever. I gave in and I explored and sampled everything. I was late to the party by that point. As others were finding a new level below, I was rising higher. Everyone else wanted a relationship whenever I did not. That led to a lot of turmoil, broken hearts, and broken dreams, my own included.
When I look back on that time, I don't regret any of it. I've said before that in life you do what you think is right in the moment, and when you look back in hindsight you see things you never saw in that moment, it's unfair to judge your past self with the knowledge you now hold because they didn't know any of that back then and usually the fact they didn't is what led you to learn those things in the first place.
I learned a lot from every man I loved. Each love taught me something about myself and about other people. I am grateful for the experiences I had, and I hold a happiness and an affection in my heart for that time we had together, even those that didn't end well. I still love every one of them but I could never be with any of them now. I love them all but I am not in love with any of them. I don't think you can truly understand that distinction until you have been through the experience.
Staying Ahead
I've never been involved in the production of a TV series or a movie or any other type of content that won't be consumed until some time has passed after it was created. This blog however now has many scheduled posts that go quite far into the future. There is a perplexing mindset that is emerging for me as a result of this delay between writing and publishing and it's something I am not entirely sure how to address. The reason I write posts and schedule them for future release is because my creativity comes in bursts, I have written in the past about how I find it difficult to sustain creativity at an optimum level for a prolonged period of time. I write posts and schedule them creating a "buffer" of time where there will always be content being released on this blog even when I have not written anything in days or in some cases weeks. This makes it easier for me to achieve some level of consistency.
The desire to stay ahead of my schedule is what motivated me to write posts and schedule them but as I have done so, the time between writing and publishing has started to extend and increase. The buffer has become longer with time to the point where I can write a post and it can be several weeks before you actually get to read it. That's led me to contemplate the nature of delayed consumption. We live in a world of instant gratification and that mentality can push people like me to want to release the content sooner rather than waiting weeks to release it and see how people react. As I said, I have never been involved in the production of media with such a delay before and I don't know how to approach that mentality. I do wonder what actors and directors and everyone else involved in media productions think and feel about creating content that won't be released for months, and in some cases not for years.
There is no consequence for me to talk about posts I have written before they are published, if anything those conversations often add new ideas and new information that can lead me to take a post that was scheduled and extend it adding much more to it. There comes a point where I have to split posts into more than one part dealing with distinct issues that have emerged as talking points. I try not to let posts go beyond 1,000 words on here, a few have, but I don't like doing it. The purpose of these posts is to give you and me something to think about and when they are really long, some of the points raised are easily forgotten or buried in the text.
There too has to be a limit to how much I will allow myself to write. I love to write and on some topics I could write a dissertation of 10,000 words or more on the subject and still not run out of points I want to include. There is a temptation at times to do this but I have to pull myself back and regain focus. Posts often end up having parts gutted out because they diverged too far from the original topic and they wouldn't serve well as a post of their own. This act of editing myself is something that I find interesting and challenging at the same time. I like to think that I have a pretty good handle on what is and is not relevant but as I have said in previous posts, we often don't see our own mistakes as we have become so used to seeing them we gloss over them.
With regards to the buffer there are a number of options that I could consider, but perhaps the most obvious would be to increase the frequency of publishing. Right now this blog is scheduled to post every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday according to UK time. I could increase publishing from 3 posts a week to 4, or even 5 and still have a buffer of content. The trouble is this would require me to write more often to sustain that buffer and I'm not confident that I would be able to do that. Sure right now my creativity is going through a rare peak where there's a lot of content I am producing but I've had lows where I can't think of a thing to write for weeks. There is also the fact that this blog was originally 1 post a week and if you go back and look at the dates the posts were quite sporadic until I managed to get that content buffer in place. The number of posts per week stepped up to 2 and then 3. This is something I have already done and I don't think it will be a solution to the problem.
The problem in itself is essentially a content glut, and my own impatience. The latter I can address with some modicum of self discipline, and it is perhaps the most likely outcome that I will pursue. As for the former I don't think I would actually want to try and limit my creativity especially when it can so often be hard to come by. If you are a writer and you have ever wanted to create something with consistency, I would advise you start small and make small commitments and then gradually increase those commitments over time. I committed to 1 post a week and in time I exceeded that commitment and scheduled the rest until I reached a point where I was comfortable taking on a new commitment. I would give the same advice if you want to write a novel or some other kind of written work that is quite long. Start off by setting yourself a target as low as say 100 words per day, and start writing to meet that target. In time you'll surpass it and it will become easier to reach that target. Increase it when you feel confident enough to be able to meet the new target consistently. With any luck you'll end up with a production much longer than you ever thought it would be and your biggest problem will be editing it down as opposed to writing more - and in the process you might actually end up adding in more detail.
The desire to stay ahead of my schedule is what motivated me to write posts and schedule them but as I have done so, the time between writing and publishing has started to extend and increase. The buffer has become longer with time to the point where I can write a post and it can be several weeks before you actually get to read it. That's led me to contemplate the nature of delayed consumption. We live in a world of instant gratification and that mentality can push people like me to want to release the content sooner rather than waiting weeks to release it and see how people react. As I said, I have never been involved in the production of media with such a delay before and I don't know how to approach that mentality. I do wonder what actors and directors and everyone else involved in media productions think and feel about creating content that won't be released for months, and in some cases not for years.
There is no consequence for me to talk about posts I have written before they are published, if anything those conversations often add new ideas and new information that can lead me to take a post that was scheduled and extend it adding much more to it. There comes a point where I have to split posts into more than one part dealing with distinct issues that have emerged as talking points. I try not to let posts go beyond 1,000 words on here, a few have, but I don't like doing it. The purpose of these posts is to give you and me something to think about and when they are really long, some of the points raised are easily forgotten or buried in the text.
There too has to be a limit to how much I will allow myself to write. I love to write and on some topics I could write a dissertation of 10,000 words or more on the subject and still not run out of points I want to include. There is a temptation at times to do this but I have to pull myself back and regain focus. Posts often end up having parts gutted out because they diverged too far from the original topic and they wouldn't serve well as a post of their own. This act of editing myself is something that I find interesting and challenging at the same time. I like to think that I have a pretty good handle on what is and is not relevant but as I have said in previous posts, we often don't see our own mistakes as we have become so used to seeing them we gloss over them.
With regards to the buffer there are a number of options that I could consider, but perhaps the most obvious would be to increase the frequency of publishing. Right now this blog is scheduled to post every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday according to UK time. I could increase publishing from 3 posts a week to 4, or even 5 and still have a buffer of content. The trouble is this would require me to write more often to sustain that buffer and I'm not confident that I would be able to do that. Sure right now my creativity is going through a rare peak where there's a lot of content I am producing but I've had lows where I can't think of a thing to write for weeks. There is also the fact that this blog was originally 1 post a week and if you go back and look at the dates the posts were quite sporadic until I managed to get that content buffer in place. The number of posts per week stepped up to 2 and then 3. This is something I have already done and I don't think it will be a solution to the problem.
The problem in itself is essentially a content glut, and my own impatience. The latter I can address with some modicum of self discipline, and it is perhaps the most likely outcome that I will pursue. As for the former I don't think I would actually want to try and limit my creativity especially when it can so often be hard to come by. If you are a writer and you have ever wanted to create something with consistency, I would advise you start small and make small commitments and then gradually increase those commitments over time. I committed to 1 post a week and in time I exceeded that commitment and scheduled the rest until I reached a point where I was comfortable taking on a new commitment. I would give the same advice if you want to write a novel or some other kind of written work that is quite long. Start off by setting yourself a target as low as say 100 words per day, and start writing to meet that target. In time you'll surpass it and it will become easier to reach that target. Increase it when you feel confident enough to be able to meet the new target consistently. With any luck you'll end up with a production much longer than you ever thought it would be and your biggest problem will be editing it down as opposed to writing more - and in the process you might actually end up adding in more detail.
Collective Friendships
Following on from one of my previous posts there is an issue I touched upon but never went into in much depth, that is the idea of shared friendship versus individual friendship. Whenever you have a lot of people sharing an experience, such as attending University together or another setting where there is something that binds everyone together in commonality, there is a tendency for friendships to develop that overlap. If you were to draw these friendships as a chart then you would have each person dotted around the outside as points on a circle, and lines through the middle showing the connections that exist between each person. The amount of overlap that happens, with lines crossing can become quite heavy. This can be considered to be a heavily integrated group of friends where almost everyone is friends with everyone else.
The problem with having this kind of density in relationships is that whenever conflict inevitably ensues and one person severs ties with another, there comes an expectation for everyone else who is connected to that person to also sever their ties. You can say this is childish and pugnacious, and you would be right. This is the idea that friendships in such densities are collective rather than individual and that you should determine the strength of your friendship based not only on your own experience but the experience of others too.
Whenever I wrote about the way we treat other people I said that the way someone treats others is the way they end up treating you. In these scenarios you have to be very careful about who you believe. There is a willingness to believe the one who cut off contact is the one who is right, that is not always the case, and even when consensus follows and people join in that effort and also cut off contact, that isn't an indication that they are right either. As we said above this is the notion of shared friendship as opposed to individual friendships, and this collective action can be explained as a herd mentality, it doesn't imply a deep level of thought has been devoted to the decision by each individual.
Going further than this, as I said above, the way someone treats others is the way they end up treating you. If someone severs ties with another person and then insists that everyone else follow suit, that is an indicator that they are a controlling person which can imply much deeper levels of manipulation. If they were virtuous and believed they were in the right without a doubt they would have the confidence to believe that others in time will see for themselves that truth. In other words if they think they are right they shouldn't have a problem with you continuing to be friends with the other person until you see for yourself what they already knew - there is of course the possibility that in time you will realise the problem was with them all along, not the person they tried to exclude.
I prefer to judge people for myself and see through their words and actions who they are. I don't like to rely on other people's perceptions in such scenarios because I know how easily people can jump to false conclusions. I know first hand how many people make false assertions and come to false conclusions about me personally. I gave up on the idea of correcting other people or trying to "win them over" long ago. What other people think of me is none of my business, I know who I am and I know what I am, no-one else gets to define that but me. They can think what they like, and if anything I find it highly amusing when I see people come to the wrong conclusion. I know in time they will see they were wrong, or if they never realise that then they will never know the real me, which is their loss, not mine.
I realise this sounds arrogant and rather condescending but it comes from a long battle with self confidence issues that stemmed primarily from other people's perceptions of me mainly due to the fact I was a shy person and it took time for me to open up to people. I know that I can come across as cold when you first meet me or uninterested, that's not usually the case, I'm just trying to determine whether or not you are someone I want to open up to. For a time I tried to change this behaviour and be more outgoing and be more outspoken and I never felt comfortable. That's not who I am and trying to be someone I am not, only caused more problems than it fixed. So a long time ago I accepted myself for who I was and with that accepted that the vast majority of people will never get to know the real me, and I'm okay with that. If you have a friendship with me, that friendship is between you and I and nobody else.
The problem with having this kind of density in relationships is that whenever conflict inevitably ensues and one person severs ties with another, there comes an expectation for everyone else who is connected to that person to also sever their ties. You can say this is childish and pugnacious, and you would be right. This is the idea that friendships in such densities are collective rather than individual and that you should determine the strength of your friendship based not only on your own experience but the experience of others too.
Whenever I wrote about the way we treat other people I said that the way someone treats others is the way they end up treating you. In these scenarios you have to be very careful about who you believe. There is a willingness to believe the one who cut off contact is the one who is right, that is not always the case, and even when consensus follows and people join in that effort and also cut off contact, that isn't an indication that they are right either. As we said above this is the notion of shared friendship as opposed to individual friendships, and this collective action can be explained as a herd mentality, it doesn't imply a deep level of thought has been devoted to the decision by each individual.
Going further than this, as I said above, the way someone treats others is the way they end up treating you. If someone severs ties with another person and then insists that everyone else follow suit, that is an indicator that they are a controlling person which can imply much deeper levels of manipulation. If they were virtuous and believed they were in the right without a doubt they would have the confidence to believe that others in time will see for themselves that truth. In other words if they think they are right they shouldn't have a problem with you continuing to be friends with the other person until you see for yourself what they already knew - there is of course the possibility that in time you will realise the problem was with them all along, not the person they tried to exclude.
I prefer to judge people for myself and see through their words and actions who they are. I don't like to rely on other people's perceptions in such scenarios because I know how easily people can jump to false conclusions. I know first hand how many people make false assertions and come to false conclusions about me personally. I gave up on the idea of correcting other people or trying to "win them over" long ago. What other people think of me is none of my business, I know who I am and I know what I am, no-one else gets to define that but me. They can think what they like, and if anything I find it highly amusing when I see people come to the wrong conclusion. I know in time they will see they were wrong, or if they never realise that then they will never know the real me, which is their loss, not mine.
I realise this sounds arrogant and rather condescending but it comes from a long battle with self confidence issues that stemmed primarily from other people's perceptions of me mainly due to the fact I was a shy person and it took time for me to open up to people. I know that I can come across as cold when you first meet me or uninterested, that's not usually the case, I'm just trying to determine whether or not you are someone I want to open up to. For a time I tried to change this behaviour and be more outgoing and be more outspoken and I never felt comfortable. That's not who I am and trying to be someone I am not, only caused more problems than it fixed. So a long time ago I accepted myself for who I was and with that accepted that the vast majority of people will never get to know the real me, and I'm okay with that. If you have a friendship with me, that friendship is between you and I and nobody else.
The Placebo Effect
For a while in my life I had to take a lot of prescription drugs, right now I am not taking anything thankfully, but as an example, during the height of my Sarcoidosis journey I had to take 18 tablets every day, sometimes 19. When you take so many tablets there is a thought that dwells on your mind and that thought is what are they actually doing to you? The clinical explanation is quite simple, each tablet is prescribed to treat a given symptom or condition and they have their stated purpose. The question of what they actually do however goes a little deeper. Not all medications are created equal, and whilst many are effective, no drug is ever 100% reliable, there will always be cases where it works better than expected, and cases where it works worse than expected, part of the reason for that is that our physiology although similar does deviate from person to person. Tolerance in medical terms is defined as the level of a drug your body can withstand before it has an effect and that can vary quite a bit.
Beyond the clinical explanation however, or to be more precise the pharmaceutical explanation, there are other factors at play that determine what a drug actually does when you take it. One factor I find fascinating is the influence of Psychology on the effectiveness of treatment. Most people will be aware of the placebo affect and have a basic understanding of what it is, namely that a drug only works for a patient because they think it will or because they expect it to, not because of the chemical composition of the pill - in fact some medications are nicknamed 'sugar pills' for the fact they contain nothing of any real substance - no pun intended.
Whenever you get a cold, the first place most people turn to are the various remedies that people believe provide a cure. In some cases they even turn to medical professionals seeking out medication to treat their cold - if a doctor is worth their weight in this situation they would be direct with the patient and advise them to simply get some rest, stay hydrated, and try and maintain a healthy diet, all of which are things we're supposed to do anyway. A bad doctor in this situation will prescribe the patient a drug they fully know and understand will do nothing whatsoever to treat that cold, for the simple reason that the cold and the flu - related, although different - are both caused by viruses. In the UK we have legal restrictions on certain drugs to prevent you from buying them over the counter or from a pharmacist without a prescription, one class of drugs that are controlled by these restrictions are antibiotics. There is still a perception held by the general public that these can be used to treat the these conditions - they cannot. Antibiotics will not treat viral infections. In years gone by, it was common for doctors to prescribe antibiotics to the patient, knowing they wouldn't actually work, but also knowing that a typical cold or flu lasts no more than a few days, or a week at most, so giving a patient a 2 week course of antibiotics would "buy" the doctor enough time for the patient to naturally recover.
This happened much more so in the past, today of course this practice is discouraged, partly because antibiotic resistance is a growing problem caused by their overuse, but also in part because of austerity. There is a cost associated with these medications and preventing doctors from prescribing them lowers that cost. The fact that these drugs didn't actually treat the condition they were prescribed for, seems not to have played a factor at all in the decision to stop prescribing them - which leads you to question how many other drugs are prescribed knowing they won't actually treat the conditions they are prescribed to treat; more than this, it makes you question how many treatments actually rely on the patient perceiving an effective treatment being administered for them to recover - in other words, how common is it to be prescribed what is essentially a placebo even if the pill you are given is pharmaceutically active?
You can also flip this question on its head and ask how many conditions do people develop in the first place because they expect to develop them - something referred to a psychosomatic condition, or to define it more explicitly, a physical condition that develops as a result of a mental condition like stress, anxiety, or depression. If a placebo is a drug that doesn't treat a condition but makes it disappear because you believe it will, then psychosomatic conditions can be seen as the antithesis, as conditions that develop in the first place because you believe they will. It's important to note here that not all placebos actually work, and that not all psychosomatic conditions develop out of expectation, there are exceptions as there always will be and as with many things, there can often end up being more exceptions than the rule to begin with.
Still of all, the question remains, how much of our physical health is determined by what we think and feel, in whichever direction it heads, either in recovery or in malignancy. There are times whenever the desire to overcome something without any treatment at all would be an incredibly bad idea, particularly those conditions which can be fatal, but for conditions that we can recover from without treatment, how effective is it to rely on psychological based treatments as opposed to pharmaceutical based treatments?
You might find yourself asking why I would contemplate this question, as I am not a medical professional, but the answer to that is rather simple. I have seen through my own experience and through that of others both in my immediate and extended family, as well as the experience of friends, and the experience of people through social media who I do not know personally, a correlation, where time and again they have been advised by doctors to focus on condition management rather than pharmaceutical treatments. In the past 10 years the UK has experienced one of its strictest periods of austerity in a generation, some would argue in several generations. One area that has been a particular focus of that austerity is Healthcare, despite the best efforts of successive governments to purvey propaganda to the contrary, with headlines claiming billions extra in funding is being spent, the trouble is most of that increase doesn't even bring you anywhere near reversing the cuts that were made in the first place. More than this, there have been many cuts that have been delivered in ways which are obfuscated, they do not grab headlines, nor do they garner much attention from the general public because they are done in ways that are not immediately perceived as being what is defined as a "cut" - for example freezing recruitment for several years caused the number of people employed by the health service to fall, and fail to keep up with population growth, the end result is a cut that is made against the projection rather than the headline figures.
Healthcare is not the only area of the UK economy where this has been the case, these hidden cuts have been employed in many different areas and are not limited to the UK either, several other nations employ the same tactics, the USA for example has succeeded in hiking taxes on its citizens aggressively whilst making them believe their taxes have been cut. This was achieved through the use of tariffs, additional costs on goods and services that are paid for by the consumer in the price they pay for those goods and services or by the company that produces them - these tariffs in reality are hikes to VAT and Corporation Tax respectively they just aren't referred to as such, and the guise of international trade disputes are used as justification, just as the guise of austerity is used as justification to cut public services in the UK in a way that isn't directly viewn as a cut.
The emphasis on using condition management, relying on pain management techniques and visualisation instead of prescribing painkillers, I believe is motivated by cost and austerity, not by any clinical justification, moreover, if this approach actually works then it would raise serious questions as to why those drugs were prescribed in the first place if they never actually worked or if they were relying entirely on perception to be effective. If however, this approach was to ultimately fail, then in the coming years there will be a health crisis that will develop as a result when a nation of sick people have gone untreated for years allowing their conditions to progress, in many cases to points where effective medication may no longer work at all. Which brings us back to the question we asked before, how effective is it to rely on psychological based treatments as opposed to pharmaceutical based treatments?
Beyond the clinical explanation however, or to be more precise the pharmaceutical explanation, there are other factors at play that determine what a drug actually does when you take it. One factor I find fascinating is the influence of Psychology on the effectiveness of treatment. Most people will be aware of the placebo affect and have a basic understanding of what it is, namely that a drug only works for a patient because they think it will or because they expect it to, not because of the chemical composition of the pill - in fact some medications are nicknamed 'sugar pills' for the fact they contain nothing of any real substance - no pun intended.
Whenever you get a cold, the first place most people turn to are the various remedies that people believe provide a cure. In some cases they even turn to medical professionals seeking out medication to treat their cold - if a doctor is worth their weight in this situation they would be direct with the patient and advise them to simply get some rest, stay hydrated, and try and maintain a healthy diet, all of which are things we're supposed to do anyway. A bad doctor in this situation will prescribe the patient a drug they fully know and understand will do nothing whatsoever to treat that cold, for the simple reason that the cold and the flu - related, although different - are both caused by viruses. In the UK we have legal restrictions on certain drugs to prevent you from buying them over the counter or from a pharmacist without a prescription, one class of drugs that are controlled by these restrictions are antibiotics. There is still a perception held by the general public that these can be used to treat the these conditions - they cannot. Antibiotics will not treat viral infections. In years gone by, it was common for doctors to prescribe antibiotics to the patient, knowing they wouldn't actually work, but also knowing that a typical cold or flu lasts no more than a few days, or a week at most, so giving a patient a 2 week course of antibiotics would "buy" the doctor enough time for the patient to naturally recover.
This happened much more so in the past, today of course this practice is discouraged, partly because antibiotic resistance is a growing problem caused by their overuse, but also in part because of austerity. There is a cost associated with these medications and preventing doctors from prescribing them lowers that cost. The fact that these drugs didn't actually treat the condition they were prescribed for, seems not to have played a factor at all in the decision to stop prescribing them - which leads you to question how many other drugs are prescribed knowing they won't actually treat the conditions they are prescribed to treat; more than this, it makes you question how many treatments actually rely on the patient perceiving an effective treatment being administered for them to recover - in other words, how common is it to be prescribed what is essentially a placebo even if the pill you are given is pharmaceutically active?
You can also flip this question on its head and ask how many conditions do people develop in the first place because they expect to develop them - something referred to a psychosomatic condition, or to define it more explicitly, a physical condition that develops as a result of a mental condition like stress, anxiety, or depression. If a placebo is a drug that doesn't treat a condition but makes it disappear because you believe it will, then psychosomatic conditions can be seen as the antithesis, as conditions that develop in the first place because you believe they will. It's important to note here that not all placebos actually work, and that not all psychosomatic conditions develop out of expectation, there are exceptions as there always will be and as with many things, there can often end up being more exceptions than the rule to begin with.
Still of all, the question remains, how much of our physical health is determined by what we think and feel, in whichever direction it heads, either in recovery or in malignancy. There are times whenever the desire to overcome something without any treatment at all would be an incredibly bad idea, particularly those conditions which can be fatal, but for conditions that we can recover from without treatment, how effective is it to rely on psychological based treatments as opposed to pharmaceutical based treatments?
You might find yourself asking why I would contemplate this question, as I am not a medical professional, but the answer to that is rather simple. I have seen through my own experience and through that of others both in my immediate and extended family, as well as the experience of friends, and the experience of people through social media who I do not know personally, a correlation, where time and again they have been advised by doctors to focus on condition management rather than pharmaceutical treatments. In the past 10 years the UK has experienced one of its strictest periods of austerity in a generation, some would argue in several generations. One area that has been a particular focus of that austerity is Healthcare, despite the best efforts of successive governments to purvey propaganda to the contrary, with headlines claiming billions extra in funding is being spent, the trouble is most of that increase doesn't even bring you anywhere near reversing the cuts that were made in the first place. More than this, there have been many cuts that have been delivered in ways which are obfuscated, they do not grab headlines, nor do they garner much attention from the general public because they are done in ways that are not immediately perceived as being what is defined as a "cut" - for example freezing recruitment for several years caused the number of people employed by the health service to fall, and fail to keep up with population growth, the end result is a cut that is made against the projection rather than the headline figures.
Healthcare is not the only area of the UK economy where this has been the case, these hidden cuts have been employed in many different areas and are not limited to the UK either, several other nations employ the same tactics, the USA for example has succeeded in hiking taxes on its citizens aggressively whilst making them believe their taxes have been cut. This was achieved through the use of tariffs, additional costs on goods and services that are paid for by the consumer in the price they pay for those goods and services or by the company that produces them - these tariffs in reality are hikes to VAT and Corporation Tax respectively they just aren't referred to as such, and the guise of international trade disputes are used as justification, just as the guise of austerity is used as justification to cut public services in the UK in a way that isn't directly viewn as a cut.
The emphasis on using condition management, relying on pain management techniques and visualisation instead of prescribing painkillers, I believe is motivated by cost and austerity, not by any clinical justification, moreover, if this approach actually works then it would raise serious questions as to why those drugs were prescribed in the first place if they never actually worked or if they were relying entirely on perception to be effective. If however, this approach was to ultimately fail, then in the coming years there will be a health crisis that will develop as a result when a nation of sick people have gone untreated for years allowing their conditions to progress, in many cases to points where effective medication may no longer work at all. Which brings us back to the question we asked before, how effective is it to rely on psychological based treatments as opposed to pharmaceutical based treatments?
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