I MUST DEVOTE MY LIFE TO BEAUTY

Walking down the steps, I thought, well, this is pretty. We were filing down the curved rock steps into a hole in the ground. Below us, tables, foliage, a bar, some sculptures – so far just a very pleasantly located cafe.

As we stepped I could see the hole we were in extended into a cave to the right. The cafe area gave way to a stretch of water there, an underground lake with a rock ceiling. I approved. I’m very much a fan of caves, they fill me with a kind of dark primordial glee which I find hard to explain.

But now there was light across the water. The cave was a tunnel that opened out into what must be another large hole in the ground across the way. All I could make out was what appeared to be some kind of paradisiacal terraced garden snaking up on the other side, with people milling about on all its levels, walking, sitting, chatting, doing who-knows what. It looked like a scene from some utopian seventies sci-fi, and I was having trouble processing the reality of it.

We had a coffee.

Then, venturing to the water’s edge, I took a good, long look and – yes – the floor of the crystal clear water was peppered with white dots. Some of them were crawling about in the water by my feet. These were the rare blind albino crabs (obviously). I spent a long time looking at them.

I walked along a path at the side of the water, towards the terraced other side. Lots of people, but everyone in a kind of hushed reverence. I could hear some high-brow ambient music playing. As I emerged out of the darkness I could see the other side had tables and chairs strewn around the levels, and Brian Eno’s An Ending (Ascent) started playing which made me grin (one of my favourite all time womb-like floaty bits of music, that).

The sun hit my face. I looked around. I was beaming, and Zen as I’ve ever been. Everything was beautiful. I wanted to kiss someone (luckily didn’t act on that impulse).

It was at that point I decided I MUST DEVOTE MY LIFE TO BEAUTY and that feeling lasted almost a whole damn week. Yes, a whole damn week. It’s hard to explain why.

MANRIQUE

I was at Jameos del Agua, a subterranean tunnel created by a lava flow that had collapsed at either end and then been transformed by the artist Cesar Manrique. “Jameos”, we were told, means a cavern with a collapsed roof. If you carry on up the terraced bit you come to another garden with a large blue pool that looks like something out of a James Bond film. In fact it was used in the weird German kids TV series The Legend of Tim Tyler as the bad guy’s Bond-villain-style lair. There is another cave that Manrique turned into a concert venue, sadly now cordoned off because of the unstable roof. Looking down on you, at ground level, there is also a museum of volcanology. But the touch that impressed me most is the fact that there is a slot at eye level at the urinals, back in the cafe at the start, which looks out into a little lit grotto with running water. Even splashing the boots is a beautiful experience. Unbelievable.

Manrique is a colossus to the people of the small volcanic Canary Island. The guy was born on the largely barren lava outcrop in 1919, but trained in fine art in Madrid. He became a well known modern artist, was a friend of Picasso and lived in Paris and New York for a while before returning to Lanzarote in 1966.

When he returned he was greeted as a hero and essentially given free rein to do things around the island. He had a hand in setting up the rules for preserving the look of the villages there – no buildings over two storeys, all traditional white or beige with blue, green or brown shutters. His sculptures, many of which move in the wind, are dotted around the island at intersections. He built a sleek-looking restaurant in the middle of the volcanic national park, where meat is cooked from the subterranean heat. His own home was built over hollow volcanic bubbles, which he turned into rooms furnished in sixties modernist style and decorated with his own work.

Jameos del Agua was being used as a landfill rubbish site before he got his hands on it. In doing what he did he certainly helped preserve the habitat of the blind albino crab.

He called his vision “total art”, which was about bringing different mediums together into a whole – painting, sculpture, design, music, architecture, urban planning, pubic art – and integrating them with the natural surroundings. In the process he almost single handedly created the Lanzarote tourist industry, which is the main source of income for the island to this day.

His fingerprints are so widespread over the island that it’s hard to imagine what it must be like for the islanders to go out into the wider world and realise people don’t know who he is, or have an equivalent patron-artist-saint figure.

What he did there puts our token nods towards totemistic public art to shame, not to mention the self-obsessed and pretentious attitudes of many of our artists.

BLOODY ARTISTS

So my reaction to the Jameos was in part due to a radical reassessment of what art and artists can do. Despite being a life-long “creative sort” I had, in my old age, become increasingly uncertain about this business of art and artists.

A lot of this stems from bad conceptual art, it’s got to be said. If I have to read a short essay explaining to me why that split piece of wood with cow dung on it is actually about Western imperialism, then the art is not doing its job properly. I have a deep-rooted suspicion that with a lot of conceptual art the idea it’s supposed to represent is more profound than the actual object. Yes, an experience can say more than a thousand words and all that jazz – but sometimes the art is a mere illustration of a concept that has already been explored much more thoroughly in words. Just because you’re inspired by profound ideas does not make your art profound. It’s almost become a joke – let’s go see some art. Oh hey, I wonder if they’ll have anything breaking taboos about sex, death and religion? Do you think?

Part of the problem is art galleries - I also have the suspicion that if you take ANYTHING AT ALL, put it out of context in a white room and asked people to focus on it, it could become profound. Because the world and its contents are fascinatingly profound if you just point your lens and really think about it.

Admittedly some of my reservations about the art world are down to resentment – being someone both steeped in the study of big ideas, and driven to playing around with creative projects, I would love someone to pay me to have the time to do that all the time, on a large scale. But it still wouldn’t convince me that what I was doing was anything more than amusing myself.

I have spent a massive amount of my time pursuing creative activities and immersing myself in the creative fruits of others, but often wondered if it was all just self-indulgence. I can’t really say any of it has got me anywhere, in fact quite the opposite – it’s served as a massive distraction from the things I maybe should have been paying more attention to. In the grand scheme of things I may as well have spent all that time watching Coronation Street omnibi on repeat and pinging paper balls off the bin rims, for all the wider world cares. An awful lot of people get through life completely untroubled by the need for aesthetic enrapture. Music is just for background, paintings just pretty pictures, sculptures just ornaments and literature is just what some ok films are based on.

Art can be very pleasing, surprising, joyful, scary, funny, tragic, fascinating, thought provoking, comforting, challenging, transporting, enrapturing even – ‘but is it essential?’ I wondered. A lot of high-minded gush is spewed out on how essential art is. But is it though? Huh? Or is that just what we want to believe?

I found it hard to dismiss the notion that, when looking at the big picture, a massive amount of artistic output can look like so much self-absorbed onanism: At best either an escapist distraction from, or impotent howl into the wind against, the grim realities of existence; at worst a pretentious, irrelevant, self-indulgent luxury.

BLOODY BEAUTY

But there was a deeper malaise. I also found myself unable to enjoy beauty without questioning it, picking at it and then sadly concluding it was not all it was cracked up to be. So much that appears beautiful on first glance falls apart under scrutiny. You think a place is beautiful, then you go and live or work there... and realise it just looks nice. You think a person is beautiful, then you get to know them... and realise they’re just another bloody person.

Here I am watching nature documentaries, look. Full of beauty those things. But then... well, if you’re that sea-lion, is any of this beautiful? Or is it just more mindless struggle and strife followed by a grim death? Is the sublime awe and majesty of those geological formations really “beautiful”, or is that just a programmed response I’m having to it? Isn’t it all just an arrangement of dirt and water?

Here I am looking at a Faberge egg. The workmanship is indeed exquisite – ‘cause that guy was given a fortune to tinker around with that for ages while a mass of downtrodden people lived in grinding poverty. Here I am looking at a lovely cosy cottage in the countryside. But it’s been artificially kept like that by a ruthless moneyed-up senior manager who has pretentions of living on the front of a chocolate box. Here are I am looking at a new born child. He may grow up to be Piers Morgan.

I started to think the very notion of beauty was nothing more than a naive dream, ignorant of the true complexities of the world. It was not that I was determined to find ugliness in everything, just that I was cautious of over-romanticising anything. I was very aware that nothing is perfect and nothing exists in a vacuum – everything has a context and background that can take the shine off that beauty. There is always more than meets the eye. There are always disappointing and unpalatable truths bound up with the thing giving you that experience of beauty.

MY JAMEOS MOMENT

So what happened at the Jameos? Well, to put it simply, I had an experience of beauty that I couldn’t be cynical about.

We visited Manrique’s house, now a gallery/tourist curiosity (he died in 1992), and yes it was beautiful and fascinating, but also a kind of museum piece, rather than a functioning space. You wished you could take a seat and just hang out, but knew you’d really better not.

At the larger-scale Jameos del Agua you could. The Jameos is very much alive and open for business – a multi-use place of tranquil beauty, open to anyone to hang out in. Not just pretty, but self-sustaining and functional.

Yes it’s touristy, but the hushed people milling about do not detract from the experience, and it’s not simply a cynical money spinner – Manrique had a real devotion to artistic vision, and respect for the landscape. He saved it from being a rubbish tip for chrissakes.

It is something of a fantasy dream world there, yes – but it’s a dream world that justifies its place in the real one.

It struck me that his vision had done so much – boosted the island’s economy, safeguarded a rare crab’s habitat, brought high-minded art to the masses, created a unique set of spaces – and had given countless others like me a much needed moment of blissful peace. Which is exactly what he designed it to do.

Yes, the experience of beauty was an escapist moment – but that didn’t make it any less real. There were no naïve illusions of perfection being adhered to, no fraudulent appearances that made it happen – it just descended on me simply because of the environment I was in.

I’m sure there are politics and problems surrounding the running of the place (for example the concert hall roof); some may find the arty flourishes not to their tastes; and I’m sure if you worked there it would lose its sheen – but none of that mattered to me, and nor should it have - it was irrelevant to my experience there and then.

It made me realize not everything has to be perfect to appreciate the beauty in something; and your experience of it does not have to be objectively justifiable – if you can get that feeling without any perceptible downside, then do it – do it when you can and do it a lot. God knows the world won’t go out of its way to give it to you.

Manrique’s devotion to beauty had a real, measurable, lasting positive effect on the world, which made me feel like fool for being so cynical.

It hit me that, if I want to get more out of life, I need to stop dismissing beauty and learn to revel in it, accept it, and not pick it apart all the time.

Caution about over-idealising and over-romanticising is one thing. But everyone needs to dream.

Maybe my conviction that I MUST DEVOTE MY LIFE TO BEAUTY sadly wilted in the harsh light of day.

But a lingering trace remains - and I still feel I must… well, dammit, pay it a little bit more attention.

And now I'm going to talk about telepathy.

I know what you’re thinking: Telepathy? Really, now, Thomas?

Never let it be said that this blog shies away from the real, important, practical issues on everyone’s lips. Yes I’m going to talk about telepathy, which I’m sure is a topic that has been playing on your mind too, dear reader.

Mmn. Ok, it’s not my intention to get all sci-fi, or even new-age, on your ass. I actually want to talk about the function of language, which is what I’m going to do, and the telepathy angle is just a (admittedly peculiar) way to do that.

Having been a fan of both Nietzsche and Wittgenstein in my time, what language is and what language does is something I’ve hmmm'd on extensively; and being currently a newspaper man, the use (and abuse) of words is something I continue to ponder, mostly to my own aimless distraction. Which is why it’d be nice to siphon some of it off here.

So here’s something language-related that’s bugged me for some time: I saw this guy giving a talk a couple of years back, and was generally impressed with the massively interesting and quite important stuff he was doing. However, I found myself wary about embracing his enthusiasm for one thing. He said something like (I paraphrase): “Wouldn’t it be good if we could just bypass language altogether and directly communicate our thoughts and feelings from mind to mind.” He seemed to think this would clear up arguments and misunderstandings with his spouse.

I’ll admit that, like many people, I have fantasised in the past about being able to see into the minds of others, and thought how much easier life would be if I could do that. I’ve also, in moments when I’ve felt misunderstood and lacking sympathy, wished I could just show someone what was going on in my head so they would get how I felt and understand what I understood.

But that kind of thing would only work as a one-off, if you were the only one with that power and could turn it on and off. If we all woke up tomorrow able to see and feel the inner-most workings of each other’s headspace, I think it would be nothing less than the end of civilisation as we know it.

FREUD

Freud’s theories may have been largely discarded as science – his constructed model of ‘the psyche’ has little in the way of research evidence to back it up, and much of the detail just looks bizarre and wrong-headed in the light of modern psychology; but the basic notion of the unconscious still rings true to some extent: The idea that we really are not entirely rational creatures under the surface, and that there must be all kinds of processes going on within us that we’re just not aware of on a day-to-day conscious level seems self-evident.

Freud was convinced that our conscious selves – our identity, our persona, how we think of ourselves and present ourselves to others – is only the tip of the iceberg of the full entity that is us.

Beneath the surface everyone is a seething mass of childish, irrational, reactive animal urges, fears and desires that are necessarily kept repressed and hidden from the world - to the extent we ourselves barely acknowledge or understand them. This is true of everyone, no matter how sophisticated, controlled and professional they appear on the outside, from the Queen to Jeremy Paxman to Bez (some are better at it than others). How aware or unaware of this stuff we are is debatable, but we certainly need to learn, consciously or unconsciously, to keep it in check to participate in society as a responsible adult.

But just because this stuff is kept in check, doesn’t mean it's not there – and more importantly, thought Freud, these basic fears and desires actually influence our so-called ‘rational’ decisions and behaviour much, much more than we would like to admit: We tend to come up with rational explanations for our actions afterwards, but it’s obvious there is more to our behaviour than simple logical thought.

In short the idea that human nature and human society is driven by enlightened, logical rationality is a complete myth – reason is at best a regulatory tempering force, and a tool for use, in how we our go about our lives.

I must say personal experience of living in ‘rational society’ (not to mention living with myself and my own weather-like temperament and unmanageable whims) has led me to have a hell of a lot of sympathy with this aspect of Freud. Anyone who has spent time delving into the dispassionate, analytical world of philosophy and psychology and then turned their gaze once more on the barely-sentient everyday politics of human relationships will know the world really does not run on reflective rationality.

But never mind the unconscious – simply knowing what is going on in everyone’s heads, conscious or not, all the time would make any kind of business-like interaction or professional detachment impossible to maintain. Imagine if every minor resentment, annoyance or uncharitable thought you had was immediately known by everyone around you – or how you would feel if you immediately knew everyone else's. That’s bad enough, but it would be so much more than that – everyone would know how you were feeling all the time: There would be no way to hide boredom, reluctance, anger, fear, disdain, discomfort, silliness – or your preference for the company of certain people over others – or, God forbid, desire, neediness and lust.

Everyone’s internal landscape must be so unique, dense and complex that it may as well be an alien world. We would all have to become inconceivably more understanding and forgiving of others if we were going to be party to everyone’s inner-most secrets and feelings all the time. Just to glimpse what is going on inside someone is to know what it is like to be them, in the raw. I suspect the experience would be so over-whelming we would never recover from it.

NIETZSCHE

Which tells us something about the function language plays. It is not, and has never been, simply for transferring dry information. It allows us to choose what we reveal or what we keep secret, it gives us a chance to control how we present ourselves. It acts as a buffer and is also a diplomatic translation tool that enables us to communicate sensibly, at a distance. It acts as both conduit and filter, and is to some extent a protective mask for our inner landscape.

I suppose at this point some readers might be raising an objecting finger - am I suggesting it's a bad thing to be honest and open? Am I advocating deception and secrecy? Aren't I being be pretty down on the purity of straight-forward truthfulness? Why should we have to hide our true selves?

Well, dear, dear, reader, I raise you Nietzsche. Things are not as simple as 'truth' and 'lie', said the walrus-‘tached one, not when it comes to how language is used. There are, in fact, many shades of grey between those supposed exclusive opposites.

Certainly there are lies - out-and-out untruths – things that are demonstrably not the case - complete fabrications, deliberately created - that you could utter, but this is not really our concern here.

Nietzsche's concern is what we mean by truth: Because 'truth' is a very difficult thing to pin down. “Every word is a prejudice” said he - one of my all-time favourite lines because it so succinctly sums up his view of language: The very words you select to convey information necessarily spin it in a particular way. Any expression in words will only highlight a small, limited aspect of the concept or situation you are dealing with, a concise and contained package of signs that gestures towards a wider reality and tries to pin it down in finite terms.

There's a whole raft of decisions that need to be made before you float an utterance out from your gob: What words are you going to use, what angle are you going to come at it from, how will you start, what are you going to include, what are you going to leave out, what are you going to highlight or prioritise as important? All of these elements serve to present the information in a way you want it presented, designed to have a particular impact. There are possibly infinite variations, all of which are 'true', in that the facts are the same, despite very different trajectories.

It sounds like I’m talking about spin, but it’s not necessarily deliberately manipulative or disingenuous – often you will express things the way you have picked up on them, the way you see or interpret them, and prioritise what is genuinely most important to you at that moment. In fact you can’t do anything else, but also, in fact, it’s very rare you will ever say anything that isn’t in some way in your interests to say, and pretending this is the same as speaking the whole dry truth is either naive or flat-out bogus.

Neitzsche was very aware of the power politics at work in language – far from simply conveying facts, language’s function is very much to advance the agenda of the speaker – to have an effect on the behaviour or thinking of the recipient. In the first chapter of Beyond Good and Evil he essentially suggests that even the most dry and rational of philosophical writings are trying to impose the author’s values and preferences on the reader – far from being the dispassionate, open minded explorations they pretend to be, they all start with an agenda, based on the writer's value system, and seek to persuade the reader towards it.

The manipulation of language for social effect is so common we do it unconsciously and when others do it to us it often slips under the radar. We notice it in politicians because we’ve learnt to look for it, but it happens everywhere – from polite small talk with strangers to the dynamics between loved ones, from interactions in the workplace to (especially) advertising and business, the media and the law courts. Where there are people trying to live together there will be power politics, and where there is power politics it will infuse language.

But again I should stress that language has to be prejudiced – it has to take a perspective. At the end of Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche laments how his ideas look dull and dead now they have been immortalised on the page, that he hasn’t represented the vibrant flux of his thoughts fully. We speak only interpretations and perspectives – the true nature of things is not to be pinned down in words. The way that can be spoken of is not the constant way, the name that can be named is not the constant name...

Language is not truth, it is a tool. Together with non-verbal cues, it’s the primary social tool of our species, massively powerful in the effect it can have. As much as we may sneer and bemoan how much easier it would be if we could communicate simply and directly, language exists as it is for a reason – because we need it that way to protect ourselves, to advance our cause and translate our thoughts and feelings. If we were to take this away, to bypass this with telepathy, everything would change – millennia of social development, the whole structure of our society, would be redundant.

WITTGENSTEIN

Nietzsche’s pre-occupation with language and its function is nothing compared to Wittgenstein – no philosopher took language apart as brilliantly as that guy.

There are echoes of Nietzsche’s assertion that language is not simply a logical conveyance of information in Wittgenstein’s later work Philosophical Investigations, particularly in the idea of language games – that the way people use language falls into different categories, each with its own set of rules, that language is woven into the various activities and modes of being we can slip into. Language is an extension of action and behaviour and the way we use it – for example commanding, requesting, pleading, joking, debating - denotes which mode we are in, and requires a response appropriate to that language game.

To understand language you really have to understand human interaction – Wittgenstein contended that without interaction it would be impossible to learn language in the first place – without feedback from others in active situations there would be nothing to tie the system of rules and symbols to. You cannot learn language by watching TV in a room on your own, and you cannot not develop your own language on a desert island on your own - you need to communicate with at least one responsive other.

The real reason Wittegenstein was so interested in language was that for him language, logic and consciousness are inseparable. Thought and language develop side by side, and both through communication and interaction with the world and others – language does not just express thought; thought is influenced by language, since language solidifies and gives shape to concepts, perspectives and ways of thinking – it structures thought, to the extent that developing language may be essential to developing a reflective consciousness, certainly to developing rationality.

It’s easy to see why – without language we have no way to consistently pin down thoughts and concepts, let alone analyze them; and in having to consider how we are going to present our thoughts in language, it makes us analyze and reflect on them.

Without the need for, and practice of, communication with others, there is really no need to be that conscious or reflective at all. Language does not arise, neither does rational thought.

Which raises the point – if we scrap language, do we become less conscious, less rational? If we have direct access to each others’ minds, would we lose our individual identity altogether and no longer have the need for considered communication; or would we have to develop a new 'language' of thought behaviour?

WE EXPLORED SOME THINGS

I don’t think for a second that the kind of total mind-merge telepathy I’ve been considering is possible at all – it seems a condition of consciousness that each perspective is isolated.

So, maybe the above is so much blather about nothing. But we’ve explored some things, and if nothing else it demonstrates that language is not just something we do to tell each other stuff – it is essential to who and what we are, and awesomely sophisticated.

Wishing that we could bypass words and see directly into each other is, I suggest, a folly, fraught with unforeseen problems, and underestimates what language does.

A telepathic society would be unrecognisable to us. It sure as hell wouldn’t look like it does in sci-fi movies, where telepathic aliens are just like us but a bit quieter, all peace-nik and touchy-feely and possibly bald. No: With that kind of power, and without language, we wouldn’t be looking at conscious individuals as we currently understand the concept at all – we would have transformed into something else entirely. That would no longer be human life as we know it.

Careful what you wish for. I’ll be monitoring your thoughts.

Over-used words #1: Inappropriate.

What it's ‘sposed to mean: You have woefully misjudged your behaviour and it's completely misaligned with your situation.

How it's used: A subjective authority-stamping command masquerading as a cool, detached objective statement of FACT. It may sound like a dispassionate observation, but make no mistake, if you’re told your behaviour is inappropriate you are being told off - "This is my 'hood, I don't like what you're doing and I'm telling you to stop it": The terrifying doom from on high - Oh my Christ, have I done something... INAPPROPRIATE? It’s not just your actions that are being trashed, it’s your judgement.

But: Who decided what was appropriate here? Are you sure they’re correct? It is a judgement call, after all – are they infallible? Do they have any better handle on the situation than you? Do we all have the same goals here? Are we all on the same agenda? Do we all see all facets and perspectives of this set of circumstances? Because if not, what is “appropriate” or not is very much relative and up for grabs…

I admit there is something delicious about the word though - such a lot of power for such a politely unassuming bunch of syllables. The quieter it's said, the better... *Ahem*. Excuse me, that's (whisper it)… inappropriate.

As much Steinbeck as sitcom ~or~ it’s ok for things to be "just ok”

~or~ in defence of the "downbeat" ~or~ why is enduring contentment SO DAMN ELUSIVE?

Dermot O Leary: Do you enjoy life?

Morrissey: I don’t think anybody enjoys life, Dermot, do they? ...I think it’s thrust upon them and they just get through it.

BBC Radio 2 interview April 30, 2011

1.

Happiness: Miserable old Morrissey does come out some things, eh? Indeed he does, but in this case I found myself chuckling in recognition, because I happen to wholeheartedly agree.

My life thus far: Some of it has been fun. An awful lot of it, if I think about it, really hasn’t. I have a lingering suspicion that I’ve been doing it wrong.

Certainly there have been agreeably regular moments of laughter, excitement, intrigue and contentment; but really, on a day-to-day basis these seem to be heavily outweighed by the more frequent and enduring stretches of frustration, anxiety, irritability, grey monotony, disgruntlement, confusion, listlessness, embarrassment, panic, exhaustion, alarm, despondency... you get the picture.

What’s worse is that such moods and experiences don’t always tie up with your situation – I’ve often found myself looking forward to, and working towards, situations that leave me bored and restless when I get there; or experiencing out-of-the-blue high times when things are otherwise pretty grim. You can never guarantee a good time, or the whims of your weather-like temperament, it seems.

Happiness in a society like ours really shouldn’t be difficult – God knows we’ve got everything we need, food, shelter, considerable freedoms, entertainment, and countless comforts, tools and toys to play with...

So what, dear reader, gives? Well, the most salient thought-cloud hovering on my mental horizon is sheer disparity between my escapist dreams of a happy, successful, functional life and the rather more grey and complicated reality.

And here’s the rub: I’m increasingly convinced that the myths and values we’re bought up with, that teach us what we should strive for and expect out of modern life, are actually extremely dysfunctional and ill-matched with reality as we find it.

2.

Fairness: To put it simply, life is tough. It always has been tough and always will be. The apparent stability and security of our everyday lives, our escapist entertainments and the creature comforts we surround ourselves with lull us into thinking we should have all the problems of existence sorted – but they are very much all still there, and refuse to go away.

For a start, of course, our affluence and comfort is only attained through the hard graft of millions of other people and the downright inequality of the wider world – but I‘m not intending to get all political here, so to move swiftly on...

This idea that life is, or should be, fair: adhering to this sense of entitlement has caused nothing but anxiety and grief throughout my days.

We live in an aspirational society. Pop culture feeds us myths that we will all be rewarded for our hard work and our talents, that life and work could and should be fun and that everyone can meet their potential (ie. get to develop what they want to develop and applause for what they want to get applause for.)

This is supposed to be motivating, but can actually end up convincing you that, if the above is not how you experience life, something is terribly wrong – either you are a failure or you have been screwed over by “life”.

Actually, it’s really obvious that “life” is simply too complex and chaotic to get too upset when things don’t turn out the way you thought they should in your escapist fantasies – because what pop culture is feeding us is, of course, escapist fantasy, and should never have been taken literally in the first place.

Believing that there is a grand plan and purpose to the universe, and that everything happens for a reason (or even, God forbid, the “best”,) has, more often than not, resulted in nasty surprises for me when faced with the curve-balls, snarl-ups and compromises of reality.

Sure, things work fairly well, you are rarely given more on your plate than you can cope with – but not always, not for everyone every time. To put it bluntly, awful things do happen, good things do sometimes turn terminally bad, tragedy does strike, and you... get through it. Hopefully. These days any talk of destiny or karma make me gnash my teeth for just that reason – given all the injustice and suffering in the world, how dare you suggest that everything is “for the best”?

3.

Work: I’m grateful that I’ve done mainly interesting jobs that I’ve found, on balance, quite compelling and rewarding. But all the same, work has been at the very core of some of the more soul destroying staring-into-the-existential-abyss moments of my life.

The problem is not with the concept of work per-se (on the contrary, without work you face the equally abysmal existential void of zero purpose, achievement or self-worth) but more with the relentlessness and compromise of it all. The tragedy is that there is so much to explore and experience that you are aware exists to explore and experience, and are promised that you can; but in reality you realise you will never explore and experience half of it because your time and energy is all invested in doing what you have to do to pay your way.

The fact that you have to do it is automatically galling, not to mention that it often means doing tasks you really don't want to do, or in a way you really don't want to do them, and then getting harshly judged on the results. Even the most exciting or agreeable of tasks lose their appeal if that's all you do - if you were told you had to relax with a cup of tea in a chair for eight hours a day (but, of course, in a particular way that your boss or clients want it done,) it would quickly become a constricting chore.

I’ve got to admit that without a doubt the happiest periods of my life have been when I’ve been slightly removed from the politics of the workplace and demands of authority, and been relatively independent – when I’ve had time and energy to explore things, to indulge my preferred talents and interests, to consider and discuss and even joke around, to pay as much care and attention as I like to things I’m doing and produce results I’m proud of, to interact with others as a fully rounded human being.

That kind of freedom, quite understandably, does not exist in most workplaces, which, it’s got to be said, tend towards a slightly dehumanising effect. During business hours you are essentially a tool controlled by the demands of others – whether it’s management or clients or customers – who will rarely be happy unless you are giving 100% of yourself to their agenda 100% of the time. The majority of us still have to spend the majority of our active waking hours doing this, and struggling to exert some kind of influence over the course our own lives.

It’s also got to be said that, especially in the current climate, most organisations, private or public sector, are predicated on everyone being squeezed and stretched all of the time, which means morale is always under threat and inter-personal resentments undergo a kind of hot-house incubation.

My point is even if you, broadly, on balance, enjoy your work, it’s still a daily struggle. If, God forbid, you really don’t enjoy your work, or get on with the people you work with, then it doesn’t matter how much money you're making or how great the stuff you buy is – a massive portion of your life is spent in teeth-grinding misery, and you are perfectly justified in despairing about it.

Is there any way out of this? The answer would appear to be, for most of us, no – not unless you win the lottery or luck out in some other way. But that’s not a real solution, you have not really found the key to self sufficiency - it's fraudulent, because you haven’t earned your escape from the wheel of drudgery; and irrelevant, because without responsibilities or contribution to the world you end up no more than a pampered parasite, swaddled from the world, with no right to comment on the lot of everyday man. If you don’t muck in with society, why should society care two hoots about your over-privileged ass?

4.

Resentment: It’s easy to look at successful and wealthy people and make glib, resentful proclamations about how much easier their lives are and how you wish your life was like that – but it’s all relative and that’s only how it appears on the outside.

Beneath the veneer everyone has their own frustrations and constraints, demands on their time and person, hopes and fears, heartbreaks and tragedies, flaws and failures, dramas and neuroses. No apparent “perfect life” is static and permanently sustainable. Life has a habit of compromising and complicating things and every element of our lives is subject to change and entropy.

The Greeks said “call no man happy till he is dead” – meaning it’s futile to envy the living, before their life stories are complete – because no matter how happy someone appears to be now, it might all go tits-up tomorrow, and you sure as hell won’t be envying them then.

No matter how buffered against catastrophe and sorrow and suffering we are by wealth and success, no buffer is totally bullet-proof. In fact everyone is faced with the same unpredictable, unknowable onslaught of chaotic events that life throws at us, and there is at least a kind of final fairness in that. We all still die.

You may feel resentment that you haven’t got every box ticked: the healthy energetic lifestyle, the fun and interesting social life, the professional recognition, the idyllic home, the perfect relationships, all the time, money and leisure that you feel you should, in a fair and ideal world, have got by now. But look around you – who the crap has? I mean really, beyond the surface showboating bullshit?

5.

Getting By: I suppose the point I’m trying to make, is that your life is your life – it’s pointless comparing it to someone else’s and thinking yours should be like that; or to an idealised fantasy and getting upset that it’s not like that. Reality can be as much Steinbeck novel as sitcom, and feel as much Kafkaesque nightmare as Glee-esque dream, no matter who you are.

We are brought up to think if we are not having fun and doing amazing things and being happy and content all the time we are a failure, and something is wrong.

But life is strange, unpredictable and all-over-the-place, and everyone has their own unique challenges, obstacles, tragedies, deficiencies, demons and regrets – everyone has their own “shit to deal with”, everyone has their own hard times. In these uncertain times, certainly - clinging on to your youthful assumptions of "how things should be" just looks like a naive dream borne of a cotton-wool-swaddled bubble. Everything is different now, and everything could be different again tomorrow.

For the vast majority of people through the vast majority of history life has been grim, or at least a struggle. Life never has been all about having constant fun and high times, no matter what the movies and sitcoms and endless aspirational TV series seduce us into believing. You are doing well if you manage to keep poverty and despair at bay and just get on with living. As long it stays generally tolerable and functional enough to keep you moving along day to day, then that’s all anyone is really “entitled” to.

This sounds relentlessly grim, but I actually take a fair bit of comfort in it – it’s ok that things did not turn out like your perfect and wonderful day-dreams, but it's also ok to rage against your lot once in awhile, and it’s ok not to be all happiness all the time. Things are tough all over and everyone should give each other more of a break. We may dream visions of a halcyon Hollywood life made up of those all-too-fleeting fun and exciting moments, but in reality there is Steinbeck too. This is life: We’re all just getting by.

Gradations ~ or ~ the male/female "friendship" issue...

This is bound to get me in trouble. It came out of a recurring pub conversation, and I know I am biased because of my wretched romantic history, and I know the issue is controversial – my female friends would (and do) strenuously disagree, and shake their heads at my hopelessly male perspective. It’s the Harry met Sally conversation - you know, that a man and a woman can't just be normal close friends without romantic complications.

Just a couple of points to make clear before we start, to head off any awkwardness the below may raise in my circle of friends and acquaintances:

1) I am not talking about light, well-established, casual friendships, rather the more emotionally intimate sort.

2) There is no passive-aggressive subtext here – I mean only what I say, and it’s not aimed at anyone – it’s precisely because I am, for once, currently, thankfully, free of any of this kind of emotional weirdness (to my conscious knowledge at least) that I can talk about this kind of thing openly, freely and dispassionately. Amen.

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I’m fascinated by these unspoken things that go on between people of the opposite sex – because, while we like to think in black and white that “these two people are together in the romantic category” and “these two people are together in the friendship category”, and there is no possible cross over between the two, in the hidden, dank corners of people's brains there are often all kinds of gradations.

The line can be a deceptive one - you think you know where it is, but then, one day, suddenly it's hazy and shifting. After all, isn't that the romantic ideal - an intimate friend who we also find hot?

As if all friendships are exactly the same and emotionally equivalent; as if, because there is no overt romantic activity, or because these two people aren’t sleeping together, that means your gender is irrelevant and there’s no frisson there at all. Male/female friendships are nearly always of a different quality, have a different dynamic.

Ok, maybe not so much in distant, casual friendships or in friendships where the boundary is rigorously clear and strictly imposed, in thoughts as well as actions (very important) – but what about those acquaintances where the “what if” hovers in the air? That, even if you have no intention or even much attraction towards it, you know you could get together, if only briefly, if you just ignored any emotional fall-out: Maybe, if the circumstances were just right and you were weak and needing affection and decided in a moment of madness “what the hell”...

That knowledge changes everything about the dynamic of a friendship. I’ve seen so many male/female friendships that clearly don’t act like same-sex friendships – where he acts as the strong, fatherly protector, where she’s happy to snuggle up to him when in need of a bit of affection, where there’s a crackle of mischievous flirtatiousness as the bed-rock of the thing, where they tease and show off to each other – and it’s simply naive or disingenuous to maintain these are totally bloodless and identical to every other friendship you have.

And I’ve also seen the surrogate boyfriend/girlfriend thing happen too much, where at least one party is getting all the benefits of having a devoted member of the opposite sex to lavish them with attention, talk deep with, respond to their beck and call and even go on pseudo-dates with – knowing they can walk away at any time and that there is no binding, overtly-stated claim to emotional commitment.

This isn’t necessarily unhealthy – if both sides are happy with that kind of relationship as it is, and take comfort from it; if both understand what it is and have no buried yearning towards anything more, then fine. But in reality, it’s rarely that evenly balanced or well understood. Someone is usually more interested than the other, and that someone is, even if it's not conscious or deliberate, being used.

The “friend trap” – where you get locked into a thing that you think is going somewhere, only to be told that you’re “just a friend”, by which point it's too late and you are smitten – is a well known phenomena amongst my male friends, and something that’s happened to me, admittedly, too many times for comfort (which has perhaps jaded me... sigh. Ok then, has very clearly and definitely jaded me).

It’s not specifically a male affliction – it’s just as possible for women to be on the receiving end of that, but it does seem to happen to men more – maybe it's my soft friends, but I’m not sure I know a guy it hasn’t happened to at some point. Because there is a tendency for men and women to view male/female “friendships” differently...

If a single heterosexual bloke suddenly becomes a girl’s “new best friend” and starts going out of his way to spend loads of time with her, then 95% of the time he is sweet on her. It’s that simple - sad, but in my experience, true. Other blokes can see this a mile off. Many women apparently can’t – or at least won’t consciously acknowledge it or think about it, because that would complicate a nice, pleasant situation.

The difference between close same-sex and male/female friendships is that the attention of someone of the opposite sex that you recognise as hypothetically eligible and reasonably attractive (even if you don’t really fancy them yourself) is flattering.

Everyone likes to be a sun with planets orbiting them, and your sun does not like to lose one of those satellites, even if you had no intention of doing anything with them. I’ve been as guilty of taking pleasure in this in the past as anyone else.

When a friend you suspect has “a thing” for you, that you keep at arms length because of this (but nevertheless keep) suddenly finds someone else and stops talking to you so much – well, in a small, barely registered way, it still smarts a bit. You feel just a tiny little bit less attractive and important and a tiny bit more alone in the world – a slight slight against the brightness of your sun.

When you are at a low point yourself, starved of affection and slightly insecure – whether long-term single, or just coming out of a failed relationship, or stuck in a stale and "complicated" one – these weird, repressed, need-feeding attachments resonate all the more.

But none of this is ever acknowledged. Such things are rarely thought about clearly, spoken about out loud or discussed amongst friends unless they are extreme and obvious and causing problems. Many close male/female friendships feed a need that same-sex ones don’t, but everyone pretends – for the sake of avoiding awkwardness and complications and repercussions that no one wants to explore – that they are just the same.

Which is not to say close but bloodless male/female friendships aren’t possible – they clearly are, and I have some myself – but in order to happen they have to involve at least one of the following:

A) that neither party finds each other remotely physically attractive;

B) both parties have very clear boundaries, with very good reasons for them, so that there is absolutely no possibility of even imagining in your most wild, futile dreams that it would ever cross into sweet and tender romance;

C) both parties share a long history, a lot of water under the bridge, so that roles in each other’s lives are firmly established and any early attraction or question of romantic involvement has been dealt with and laid to rest long ago.

B) and C) are things that take time to establish – they are not in place with recent acquaintances, and therefore any so-called “close friendship” that suddenly springs up between a bloke and girl is quite understandably a bit suspicious and inappropriate.

This is why properly close non-romantic friendships between the sexes are comparatively rare; and why the term “friends” is viewed by a million guys as a cruel and baffling card that women will sometimes play to tear a bloke’s heart in two.

Consciousness ~ the kernal that will not be cracked (#2): HIVE MINDS

The attached PPT is from the first ever talk I did for the first ever Hmmm Squad group meeting.

Thought it’d be fun to throw up some far-out pictures and videos of ANTS and WIERD SEA CREATURES, because 1) They are hellish cool and 2) they’re so alien that they stretch our understanding of what living things are like - and so raise some profound, thought-provoking questions for the philosophically inclined...

I’ve rarely seen these creatures discussed in standard philosophy textbooks. But: When I was teaching philosophy of mind I found I kept using these examples when discussing certain ideas. This came out of that.

There’s not a massive amount of explanation in the PPT – was meant to be accompanied by me talking and that, so some stuff may not come across (and you’ve missed out on my gags). Ah, well. I’m sure you can do your own research on the things shown (check out honey pot ants - URGH!) – there’s this thing called the internets, you know. Seriously though, google siphonophores, or their real relevance will be lost - they are extremely hard to classify, with individual creatures tied together (some responsible for eating, some responsible for movement, like organs in a body) in a colony that acts like one organism.

But I should, at least, explain that China/Satellite/Robot diagram...

The China Brain:

The China Brain or China Mind* scenario is designed to explore the idea that consciousness arises out of complex information processing.

It’s related to the idea that if info processing just gets complex enough, then you start getting thoughts about thoughts – or rather information processing about the information processing you’re doing – ie higher level, second-tier processing - feedback, monitoring and reflection: This higher-order thinking is what “consciousness” is.

The neurons in the brain all carry out simple information processing functions, which on their own are just single mechanical actions, like chips in a computer – but when they are all put together, communicating with each other, could a “mind” arise? Is the whole “greater than the sum of its parts"?** Is that how consciousness happens?

To explore that question, the likes of Lawrence Davis and Ned Block came up with this analogy: Imagine everyone in China is asked to work together to control a big robot. Everyone is assigned one simple task to carry out, to act like neurons in the robot’s “brain”. Each individual performs their function and they communicate via walkie-talkies to co-ordinate their actions.

The results of everyone’s activity is sent up to a satellite. That processes the information and transmits the resulting commands to a MASSIVE ROBOT (awesome). That, simplified, is the China Brain scenario.

So – people are neurons, the satellite is the core hub of the brain processing their activity and bring it all together, and the robot is the body. Now the key question: Could we then say that that robot was conscious? Would an over-all CHINA MIND come into existence?

Common sense would appear to say NO, said Ned Block. No matter how well co-ordinated the Chinese people’s actions, there would still just be a lot of individuals working together. You could not say "China" had a single mind or self, that could experience things the way we do.

Yes, it would create a certain zeitgeist or culture amongst the Chinese people, and the robot would have characteristic responses and actions and ways of doing things – like any society working and living together does. But that is not the same as a fully CONSCIOUS identity and perspective. It is still a bunch of people moving as one, not a single unique being – the “China mind” remains a metaphor, no more – China doesn’t actually have a single mind, it just outwardly acts like something that does.

At least that’s how the China Brain idea is usually interpreted. In this PPT I speculate wildly about social insects and siphonores (ie colonies and "super-organisms") and hmmm about the idea of hive minds – and in the process realise I’m not so sure about the "common sense" pooh-poohing of the “China Mind”.

It seems to me the most essential question in this is what exactly is ONE thing and what is MANY things? – the clear division between fundamental concepts such as “single” and “multiple” here start to look more hazy and less defined – and I’m quite convinced this issue is at the heart of understanding consciousness, since consciousness has to be both – a complex communication between parts, and yet one single perspective, one whole thing. There is a paradox right at the centre of consciousness - and that's what makes it so tricksy. Tricksy, tricksy.

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* (aka the Chinese Nation or Chinese Gym – variations on the idea have been used by many different philosophers.)

** (look up the term "Supervenience" if you want to explore that idea further.)

FFS vs AVP

The hot topic that everyone is talking about certainly isn’t this. But anyway, out of a sense of duty (because I happen to actually know what the terms mean) I suppose I should say something about the referendum on voting reform – should we stick with First Past the Post (FPP) or change to the Alternative Vote system (AV) to elect our MPs? - for those who don’t have a clue and can’t be arsed to otherwise look up the details... well, bad luck, because by the time you read this it’ll all be over. Should have written this a couple of weeks ago. Still.

Let’s cut to the chase:

FPP = everyone in your area (“constituency”) votes for one candidate off the list standing for that area. Whichever candidate gets the most votes wins. Simple.

The main criticism of the current FPP system is that in constituencies which are a "safe seat" (ie. The “majority” will always vote Conservative even if the Conservative candidate is a half-eaten tube of Pringles) anyone not voting Conservative may as well take up the Tibetan nose-flute as exercise their democratic right to vote.

Bear in mind, the “majority” in FPP might be quite small, and not really a majority at all – if only 30% vote Conservative, as long as every other candidate gets less than 30% they have won. It’s actually the larger loyal minority that wins. This can lead to a stale old deadlock that FPP supporters like to call “stability”. In times of voter apathy these loyal minorities are sometimes the only people who turn out. Voters are apathetic because they have no faith in politicians, or that their vote will ever change anything, partly due to… this system.

With AV, where there's no majority over 50%, second and third choices etc are taken into account - so you're more likely to get a less predictable result, and a vote that more accurately reflects the diversity of voters’ preferences.

AV = everyone votes by ranking the candidates in order of preference (first choice, second choice, third choice etc.) If a one candidate gets over 50% of “first choice” votes, they win.

If they don’t, this happens: The candidate with the least number of “first choice” votes gets scratched out – they have now left the Big Brother house. So are the ballot papers of everyone who voted for them wasted? No – because for those people, their “second choice” is now moved up to “first choice” and added to the totals. This may bring up one candidate to 50% now – if it doesn’t, another candidate is scratched out and… so on until SOMEONE gets 50%. Sounds horrendously complicated. It is - but also a subtler gauge of voters' prefs.

The main criticism of AV is that you end up with nobody's first choice and only a second or even third-choice compromise. While compromise may seem preferable to being rail-roaded by a small, set-in-their-ways minority, it could make unstable coalitions more likely, as there could, theoretically, be a greater mix of different party MPs. Another main criticism is... Nick Clegg.

Clegg likes it because it should be (or would have been before they screwed up their image in this coalition) better for Lib Dems by breaking the deadlock of “safe seats” – Lib Dems may win on second choices. Milliband likes it because that’s how he beat his brother to the Labour leadership – on an AV vote amongst Labour party members.

Other scare stories are that it’ll give power to the BNP (but only because it’ll give a better chance to a wider range of political parties in general – some of which are, yes, extreme – but if that’s the way the public votes, that’s the public’s stupid fault – ain’t democracy grand) and that it’ll cost loads of money to change, something which is being angrily denied by the AV camp. Mainly, it’s just a bit of an unknown – no one really knows how it will change things. It may make no difference at all.

And neither, of course, is a direct vote for who runs the country. Who gets to be government is who has the most MPs in the House of Commons, NOT who has the most overall votes. Both FPP and AV are still just to decide which MPs get a "seat" in any given constituency - but then if it was the total number of individual votes that decided government you could end up with party in power who don't actually have a majority of MPs, and then they could not be sure they’d be able to pass any legislation once in power – you’d have a weak, toothless government. Confusion over whether you’re voting for an MP to represent your area or voting for who you want the actual damned government to be is inherent in the system. This is democracy at a considerable second-hand remove – it ain’t Athens.

I have no faith that AV will change anything for the better, but I’m going to vote for it anyway – mainly because, after years of whinging about the stagnation of politics and how my vote is pointless and wasted, I’d be a coward and a hypocrite not to take the opportunity to shake things up.

This idea that FPP is tried and tested and works and AV may mess things up and we’ll all be running around unable to make decisions and the country will grind to a halt – did anyone pay attention to the last general election? Or the one before that? We HAVE a coalition under FPP. Voter apathy as been a problem for decades. People are massively disillusioned with the system and the choices facing them in elections – the whole point is, the election system is NOT working like it used to these days. If this makes the political parties rethink how they go about the business of getting votes, that might not be such a bad thing.

Plus many arguments against AV have struck me as alarmingly missing the point of democracy. All this Hobbesian “we need a decisive result, not compromise and coalitions” pretty much = we need to ignore variety of opinion and have a strong, single-minded leadership. Well alright! Dictatorship it is then.

But then, while the crucial element of democracy has been aptly shown by goings on in the middle east recently – the ability to criticise and GET RID of your government – when it comes to political parties, it always has been, to some extent, a prettier word for “mob rule”. Plato certainly thought so. We can but hope that most people are reasonable and sensible and most of our politicians are competent and conscientious. Mmn. Happy voting.