Consciousness ~ the kernal that will not be cracked (#1)

This blog is a very strange beast I know. I tried a few times to write something accessible on consciousness for it; but it's a subject where you have to be so precise in what you say, with such a massive history, that there's no way to talk about it in my usual "chatty" style.

But what the hell - I may as well post up a few of the flawed attempts to say SOMETHING about this area of philosophy - few will read it, fewer will understand it, but here it is - take #1:

There is something that, to me at least, it seems utterly absurd – a total non-starter – to think we could ever reduce to an objective account: Consciousness. This is not because of any new-agey faith in the idea, but rather from weary experience of exploring the endless arguments and schools of thought on it; and, more importantly, that the very task would appear to be a logical impossibility. It should become clear why I think this. Consciousness has pride of place amongst those concepts that we simply can’t get outside of – so much of our language simply presupposes it, to talk dryly about what it might be without using terms grounded in an idea of some kind of conscious experience happening would appear to be intractably problematic. Some have tried – Phenomenologists like Husserl and Heidegger come to mind – and they were certainly brave attempts that threw up some enlightening ideas, but ultimately failed to lay the question of “what is consciousness and how does it arise?” to rest. In the mind of the common pleb it might simply be a matter of mind-as-soul (religious account) vs. mind-as-brain (physical account), but this dichotomy is bullshit. You don’t have to take either of those views. I’m quite sure both are massively inadequate.

Old News (Yawn).

The most common religious view of consciousness is the idea that the “soul” is distinct from the physical body – an idea essential to the possibility of an “afterlife” since, well, the body... stops; and goes away. Extraordinary damage has been done to this concept by the study of the brain and body and how it affects people’s experiences, abilities and behaviours. Through biology and neuroscience there is an undeniable avalanche of examples of how what is going on, chemically, mechanically, electronically, in the body and brain at any particular time correlates with what you are feeling, perceiving, remembering, thinking, doing: The activity of the nervous system, the firing of neurons in specific parts of the brain, the balance of chemicals in the brain and body, the activity of organs and their effect on the rest of the system – all of these things are observable, and consistently correlated with sensations, moods and cognitive (mental) tasks (from doing a Sudoku, to remembering a shopping list, to reading a book, to chatting with friends, listening to music, delivering a presentation, visualising the face of an ugly fisherman, assessing the correct trajectory for reverse parking into a space tighter than James Brown’s funk, feeling pain in your eyeball, feeling gung ho for combat after watching (the first) Die Hard, feeling really quite sad indeed, feeling faintly aroused in a sexy-sexy way) – the body behaves in different specific ways when these things are going on, and they are correlated to the point we can look at the physical process and predict what is going on in that person’s “head”. But it’s more than this: We know cause and effect goes both ways – yes, your thinking affects what goes on in your body, but your body also affects your “mind” - by playing about with the brain and body we can cause changes in mental “stuff” to happen. Both drugs (which simply alter the balance of chemicals in your body) and brain damage (from accident or disease) can alter not just your abilities but your personality, your moods, tastes, values – even your sense of humour – everything about your personal identity. If there is a soul, that can survive the obliteration of the body, then it is simply a blank life spark – it is not your conscious “self”, your personality, your faculties or your memories, because all of these can be changed or obliterated by brain damage and manipulation. This suggests very strongly that the split between mind and body is false – even if they are two things, they are bound up in one system. More likely they are two perspectives on the same thing.

But there were problems for the concept of a separate soul even before such scientific knowledge. The idea of a split is kind of ill-conceived, and even its most famous and rigorous champion, Descartes, never quite resolved how it worked. He said since mental events like “the idea of a circle” or “a feeling of sadness” cannot be located in space, then the mind was not a spatial thing – i.e. it’s “outside” of physical space, non-physical. So far so “soul”. But how can a non-physical thing interact with a physical body? Descartes, bafflingly, decided the soul was linked to the body via the pineal gland in the brain. Hmm.

Problem A: Gilbert Ryle called the idea of mind/body dualism “the ghost in the machine” and thought it was guff. Ryle said the idea of our “minds” driving our bodies like we drive a car was simplistic and silly – we do not “get in” our bodies and then tell it to do things, rather the “mind” is totally integrated with the body. When we stub our toe, we feel the pain in our toe. When things happen to our bodies, it directly affects our minds. Problem B: Worse, there is no account of how something non-material and outside of space can have any contact with something material at a point in space. The idea does not seem to make sense – how can the non-spatial mind be “located” in one particular body in space? How can the “link” with the mind (which can’t be located in any particular place) be with the pineal gland (which occupies a specific place in the body)? Descartes’ own later attempt to say the non-spatial mind was distributed evenly throughout the body is clearly a contradiction in terms. Problem C: David Hume, the rotund Scottish sceptic par-excellence “pooh-poohed” the idea of a separate “mind” or “soul” altogether. He said the soul was simply a nonsensical idea – the concept itself was meaningless. We cannot conceive of a “thing” that exists outside of space and time, nor say anything about it that would make any real, meaningful sense, let alone give an account of what it would be like to experience such a thing. Therefore the word “soul” is an empty concept – it’s just a word that doesn’t refer to any actual thing that we can pin down. Problem D: Finally, even if the mind is separate to the body, it still causes the body to do things and the body causes it to have experiences. Even if we carve the world up into two distinct realms – physical (body) and non-physical (mind) – if they interact at all they must still be part of the same over-all causal system.

All of this would seem to be old news, laid to rest in the minds of the average Atheist. There is no mind/body split, the mind is the body, or at least just something the body does. Consciousness is mechanical – in the sense that it is part and parcel of, inextricably bound up with, the mechanisms of the body. So it would appear to be settled, and so far I have not told you anything that isn’t a commonly held view.

Thomas F***s It Up.

Now I’m going to f*** that shit up. Because there is a massive, glaring problem here, and this is really where the modern arguments involving consciousness begin. Q: What do we mean by “explaining consciousness”? It seems to me there are two distinct avenues of enquiry here; 1) Giving an account of how human activity, behaviour and functioning arises in the world; 2) Giving an account of how subjective experience or “raw perspective” arises in the world. Now while we may presume these two are linked, they are not the same thing. In most “scientific” approaches to the problem, the second line of enquiry is put on hold, “bracketed out” – there doesn’t appear to be any way to investigate this scientifically, so “subjectivity” is ignored as an ill-defined wishy-washy idea full of misleading errors in conception – as a starting point for enquiry it is a scientific dead-end, a blind alley. Much better to concentrate on the first account. The more optimistic tend to believe 1) will lead to 2), though it’s far from clear how this will happen. The more stubborn and mule-headed tend to insist that 2) will be reduced to 1), so we don’t just have to “bracket” 2) out for now, we can forget about it altogether. But this to me seems utterly nuts – pathological denial and nonsensical self-contradiction of what is most glaringly self-evident – us, our own perspective, what “we” are. It’s presenting an observation and then denying that there is any observer, there is only what is observed; and that is either stupidly naive or flat-out bogus and fraudulent.

We cannot subtract ourselves out of the equation – not even (or especially not) when we are trying to explain ourselves. Q: How do we account for the difference between observing a brain process and being the “experienc-ee” of that brain process without a concept of experiencing or perspective? To try to ignore the issue of perspective is to ignore the very framework and grounds that make any observation, measurement, or ordering and interpreting of factual data a) possible and b) meaningful. You cannot “explain away” the concept of “experience” in the way that you would explain away the concept of, say, ghosts. You can say “ghosts don’t exist” because the concept of a “ghost” is a hypothesis, a constructed explanation for “anomalous” events in the world. You can show that, with research and deduction, there are other, more convincing explanations for those so-called “anomalous” events, and that the explanation “ghost” is incoherent. But the concept of “experience” or “raw perspective” is not a “hypothesis” to be proved or disproved by research and deduction. These are simply basic labels for something ill-defined, that needs explaining – ourselves and what we fundamentally are – the fundamental grounds of our existence. The argument is about how we are supposed to grasp and define “conscious experience”, not whether it is a valid term or not – to explain away the concept of “conscious experience” before we have started to try and describe it and how it works is self defeating – we lose the very thing we are analysing in a puff of confused smoke. But it is so hard to pin down that we have a hard time saying anything more about it other than shoddily labelling it. It is not, therefore, truly a fully-formed concept yet. We need to be careful in how we talk about it, what presumptions and distinctions we make about it and attach to it (eg. the idea of a “soul” clearly goes beyond a pure label and into an explanatory hypothesis, which is why it can be pooh-poohed). Essentially 2) is the more primordial question, and, whether we like it or not, a “subjective perspective” (or however we choose to label it) is the starting point we all have. The possibility of “subjective experience or perspective” is in fact unwittingly presumed in, and necessary to, any meaningful account of human activity, behaviour and functioning, i.e. 1). Without it we are left with a dry description of mechanics that may have characteristic features, but ultimately no single definable element that makes it unique from other complex (apparently non-conscious) mechanical systems. And no formulation of 1) alone could do justice to the question of how a unique, non-exchangeable perspective or identity could arise from a point within the undifferentiated flow and interaction of matter and energy in the physical universe.

Just You Try

Q: If “consciousness” is indeed reducible to an account of physical mechanisms, what is it about our brain and body processes exactly that causes “consciousness” to happen? Or to put it another way: Q: How does a subjective perspective arise out of an arrangement of matter? In order to be scientific about what conscious experience is and how it is caused we would need to able to observe and measure when something is “conscious” or “consciously experiencing” – be able to test whether “consciousness”, whatever it is, is present in any object or physical mechanism. Q: How do we observe and measure when something is “conscious” (carrying out the function labelled “being conscious”?) We must accept: Some matter arranges itself to carry out this function (eg. me) some does not (eg. my unappetizing sandwich). Q: What observable and measurable data do we have to tell us about what is happening with any arrangement of matter? We can observe and measure its physical properties and processes, and we can observe and measure its behaviour. Q: What physical properties or processes or behaviour would be sufficient to conclude that that “arrangement of matter” is “being conscious” – let’s say, that it has an identity and perspective in the way that we do? Let’s break that down:

If we look at the physical properties and processes of the working body, is there anything there that tells us that that body is experiencing, has an identity, a perspective? Well, it responds to stimulation – but those are just chemical reactions, electrical responses, mechanical forces, no different to standard chemical reactions etc. elsewhere. So “consciousness” is not observable in this way.

So it must be in the behaviour of that body, what it does, right? Q: Is it feasible that we could create a robot that could behave and respond just like a living, breathing human being, and yet it does not have a perspective or identity of its own – it is simply going through the motions, a puppet of its programming? Computer scientist Alan Turing suggested that if we talked to a human (let’s call her Colin), and a computer with artificial intelligence, in a Skype-style conversation, and could not tell which was which, we would have to conclude that the computer was conscious. But we can turn this on its head and point out that we still have no definite firm empirical evidence that the computer definitely has its own perspective and identity – we are just relying on some undefined human judgement. The computer could still be simply mimicking “conscious” responses through clever, complex programming that it is just too subtle to detect. If we admit that this is at least, in theory, a possibility, then we have just admitted that we also have no way of empirically testing that Colin has her own perspective and identity. We have no way of knowing anyone but ourselves experiences like we do. Behaviour does not give us measurable and observable “consciousness” either.

“Behaviourism” is (or was) a philosophical school of thought that suggests that “consciousness” should simply be defined as behaviour. It ultimately fails as an account of “consciousness”, because it has zero explanatory power – by limiting itself only to what is observable, it only looks at the surface, the end result, the output. It’s like asking “how does a biscuit factory work?” and expecting “it produces these biscuits” to be a sufficient response. Furthermore it would seem impossible to reduce a description of a person’s behaviour to dry, mechanical terms that do not pre-suppose conscious activity – at least not without losing the sense of what you are trying to describe in the first place. You are left with a description that could refer to any non-conscious physical process, and have again evaporated what you were trying to explain. You cannot say some matter carries out the function of “consciousness” and some does not, since nothing empirical can show you the difference.

In short, there is no way to observe and measure when something is “conscious” or “consciously experiencing” – there is no way to test whether “consciousness”, whatever it is, is present in any object or physical mechanism. Whether we look at physical properties and processes or outward behaviour, our “scientific” criteria for whether that thing is carrying out the “consciousness” function or not is this: How similar is it to ourselves – the only example of a “perspective” that we know. There is no unique, identifiable, observable element we can measure in that thing that will tell us definitely, empirically, that that thing has a perspective. We just measure it against ourselves. From a scientific point of view this is appalling. It means all these high-minded attempts to reduce and explain consciousness as a physical, mechanical process essentially, at the core rely on... personal introspection. This is outrageous – that’s not scientific at all! What a dirty secret! What a swizz! The only other option available to us is to deny consciousness altogether – ignore ourselves and state that there is no difference between so-called “conscious” arrangements of matter and “non-conscious” arrangements of matter. Because: Dry descriptions of physical properties, processes and outward behaviour contain nothing that suggests a “perspective” is occurring in that arrangement of matter; and, if you are truly reductionist and refuse to use any terminology that presupposes consciousness, there is no element that is unique to so-called “conscious” things. Therefore there is nothing “conscious” doing the observing, measuring and describing – “you” don’t exist.

This is clearly a failure. Why? What has gone wrong? Well, there is some kind of category mistake here. The problem is treating consciousness as if it is a property to be found by observation and measurement. When we observe the world scientifically, whether observing matter, energy, properties, behaviour, mechanical interactions, processes – in every case we are looking at something we have come across in the world, something we can analyse, compare to other things, take apart. We can even do this to ideas – they may not be physically “in the world”, but we do still come across them “in the world” in a broad sense – they exist outside of "us" and have a mechanics and behaviour in the function they serve, so again we can analyse, compare, take apart. But our perspective is not something we “come across” – it is the starting point, the grounds for being able to “come across”, measure, observe, analyse, compare, take apart, anything at all. It is so utterly primordial and basic that it fundamentally resists analysis – it is analysis. Consciousness is a concept so fundamental it cannot be broken down, and there is nothing to compare it to – it is a kernel that cannot be cracked. You can’t observe and measure consciousness because it is observation and measurement. It is not a thing to slot into in our framework of how things work it is the framework itself. You cannot explain your framework by slotting it into itself – that’s simply a logical nonsense.

This is not to say that there is nothing that we can say about consciousness, simply that we will never be able to reduce it to what is empirically observable. We are also unlikely to ever pin it down sufficiently, but that does not mean we can’t explore some aspects of its mysterious workings, only that the final question of “what is consciousness and how does it arise?” is never likely to be answered properly. It’s more than an attribute we developed like language capability or the opposable thumb – it is our defining essence and a concept that we cannot make sense of anything without, that it is impossible to remove from anything, that we cannot think outside of or around – obviously, because consciousness is implicit in all of those statements. Indeed it is more than just a ‘conscious’ concept – consciousness is not just our persona or ego it is raw perspective, ‘unconsciously’ presumed, there, a priori, unspoken no matter how ‘conscious’ of it we are and whether we have a word for it or not.

Sheila’s Bigoted Wheels

So. Car insurance companies giving women cheaper deals, just because they are women, has been ruled as sex discrimination by the EU's European Court of Justice. Ohh! How deliciously controversial, eh?

Unlike one of my good friends, who, to my amused bafflement, always gets apoplectic at Sheilas' Wheels ads, I was pretty accepting of it as a fact of life: Women are statistically safer drivers. Men’s premiums are skewed by the abundance of moronic boy-racer tw*ts – and I do not apologise for my cuss word there – I may be generous with my swears elsewhere for comic effect, but here I really mean it. I get properly furious, and not in an amusing way, whenever I see those utter, utter bell-pieces deliberately, actually, properly, genuinely putting people’s lives at risk for the sake of their barely-sentient, testosterone-p*ssing egos. F*** them. Really.

But, anyway, so, women are statistically safer drivers. Sure they might get ripped on for being slow and nervy and having poor spatial awareness when parking (I know this is a stereotype. Bear with me.) Slow and over-cautious drivers are dangerous to some extent, yes, because they infuriate other drivers and make them take risks; but more dangerous are the drivers who’re convinced they’re brilliant – so brilliant that they apparently have powers of pre-cognition about what other road-users are going to do, and can get away with all kinds of death-defying gambles, ‘cause they’re Michael f***ing Schumacher. And these, statistically, are more likely to be men.

So I understand the price difference. I can see how frustrating it would be for a young bloke buying his first car to be whacked on the bonce with such a massive insurance bill, and my sympathies go out... but, y'know, the premiums do come down with age. That’s just the way it is. Blame our sex – the insurance companies just go on the stats.

And that is one of the objections to this ruling – sex discrimination, the nay-sayers say, should refer to unfounded bias and prejudice. But this isn’t unfounded: Insurance companies don’t make decisions on social prejudices and out-dated conventions, they look only at the hard statistics. It is a fact that men cause more accidents than women do – and so are more likely to claim.

Insurance companies calculate their premiums by looking at past claims, and current relevant risk-factors, and use the trends they see in those statistics. The more probable it is that you, in your specific situation, will claim, the higher your premium will be. All very dry and scientific – no room for prejudice there.

Or is there? Because, what the above account fails to note is that any judgement you make about an individual based on generalising from a larger group/category they belong to, is prejudice. Of course it is – statistically a lot more men follow cricket than women, a lot more English people drink tea than, say, American people, and a lot more black people listen to reggae than white people. But that doesn’t mean you can just presume that any English black man you meet will drink tea, love reggae and be a massive cricket fan.

But this is exactly what insurance does – it judges you on looking at general trends in masses of people. Whether it’s looking down its nose at where you live, trying not to look alarmed at you smoking at your age, or getting all cautious over you being male, it works on the probability of you or your situation leading to certain costly consequences. It is the disparity between the individual and crowd that creates any unfair prejudice, rather than groundless, ignorant stereotyping, but it’s still prejudice.

In fairness what else do insurance companies have to go on? How else could it work? Are they expected to take our word for it (“Oh, yes, I’m ever so safety conscious, Dan.”)? They can’t possibly follow everyone around individually, and get to know them properly, before quoting them. (“Dan” works for the insurance company. I hope that was clear.)

The big problem for insurance is that it works this way for everything, leaving the way open to similar rulings banning age discrimination for life-insurance policies and such like – and pretty soon we are in a situation where you cannot discriminate (in the broad sense) between people or their situations in any way at all, whatever the statistics tell you – and basically, everyone is charged the same for insurance whatever their situation.

As a rugged individualist (and, it has to be said, a bit of a weirdo in some respects) I think it’s a very good rule of thumb to not presume stuff about the people you come into contact with based on their apparent “type” or situation – but even I have to admit that much of the time you simply have to, in order to make decisions and make sense of the world around you. In terms of general trends there are real differences between men and women, the young and the old, the wealthy and the not so, and people of different cultural backgrounds. Stereotypes can be depressingly accurate, and people depressingly predictable. In business this is an essential factor to grasp when planning any interaction with your customer base. The insurance industry would cease to exist as we know it if it couldn’t make decisions based on such statistics.

How I feel about that, I don’t know. Part of me has always thought the whole industry is a scam anyway – ever since I tried to claim after my first accident, thinking, naively, "this is what I pay for, so I won’t have to somehow find £300 for repairs now..." only to realise my excess, which I had to pay, was £300. They would pay nothing, or scrap my car and give me £600 if I fancied that, and then ask for more money because I’d lost my no-claims bonus. Cheers. That was well worthwhile, then. (I didn't claim.)

However, on my second accident, where I wrote off my car (a different car) in a ditch (male drivers, eh?) I was looking at a much greater sum than £300 to find. To my surprise they paid out generously and I was very, very relieved and grateful. None of which has anything to do with sex discrimination, but, well... I clearly don’t know what my opinion is on that either. You decide – I'm afraid I can only say I have sympathies with both sides of the argument. I'm not convinced such a terrible miscarriage of human rights has been done either way. Life ain't fair, kids - or at least it can't always be fair to everyone all the time. Either way, that's just how it's gone down this time - I'm not going to discriminate.

Like Getting Angry at a Copy of "Jackie".

It’s funny what Facebook will bring out in people. People who are quite intelligent and independent-minded in the flesh sometimes show an altogether different side on the ‘book. One acquaintance springs to mind whose status updates, quite unexpectedly, revealed her to be like something out of a Jane Austin novel: All how wonderful her boyfriend was, how many babies she planned to have, how her wedding would be, what dresses and shoes she’d bought and – I kid you not – kittens. I mean, I knew she was a bit of girly-girl, but Jesus wept, it was relentless, y’know? “Feminism was obviously lost on you, luv.” I’d think, in an offensive Bernard Manning voice. (In my head. Not out loud.)

Others all too easily fall into the habit of posting up alarmingly intimate status updates: Needy, passive-aggressive, “me, me, me!” statuses about their alarming private lives. I’m often tempted to comment with some kind of cautionary response: “You do know that you just told ME that? I hardly know you, y’know, I feel a little awkward here.” My advice: Click on your Friends-list and take a long hard look at who’s there – do you really want all those work colleagues, old school acquaintances, friends-of-the-family and people you met on holiday/down the pub listening to your latest drunken snipe at your loved one? You do? Really? Mmn, well. Go ahead then.

But even some of those who have managed to control themselves and maintain an intelligent and independent-minded status update will still pop up on your News Feed “like”-ing all manner of needy, passive-aggressive bullshit. Well, alright, strokes for folks and all that, people will like what they like; but one strand in particular annoys the hell out of me – and that’s the “guys are like this/girls are like this” gender-stereotyping tosh.

Some people, like the ‘kittens, babies and boyfriend’ girl, really are genuinely like that, and all power to them. It’s no different to blokes who only ever post about football, beer and cars, and I know plenty of them too. It’s kind of comforting to know that the gender stereotypes do happily exist somewhere; but it really annoys me when people presume that those stereotypes apply to everyone, across the board – and all at once, a) perpetuate a bunch of bullshit myths, b) peer-pressure folks into thinking that’s how people should behave and c) simultaneously judge everyone with one massive sweep of that tarring-brush.

So, hey kids! Let’s have a look at some gender-stereotyping “like”-page favourites:

“hi. i'm a boy. here's how it goes. i'm gonna flirt with you, then diss you. i'll send you mixed messages, hit on your friends, lie to you. then i will lead you on so you fall for me. i'll make you happy for a night, but tomorrow i'll completely ignore you. you'll be the one i turn to when i need for a friend or a confidence boost. know what the best part is? you can't do anything about it because you love me. and you don't want to lose me. ha.”

My initial response to that was “Oh really? Strange, ‘cos that’s what I thought girls did to guys.” Aw, I didn’t mean that though, I’m just talkin’ out of hurt. The point remains: The gender is interchangeable in that one. Have I met guys who have acted like that? Yes. Have I met girls who have acted like that? Yes. That’s not girls or guys, that’s just people. Some people are simply selfish, manipulative emotional black-holes who have an empathy deficiency. They probably didn’t even realise they were doing it.

On the converse, I’ll see the above and raise you:

“Hi, I'm A Guy, I Ignore Decent Girls, And Only Date Cheating Hoes ...”

– again, gender is interchangeable. Blokes get a lot of stick for having a weakness for dumb, fickle, glammed-up bimbos; but then plenty of nice, intelligent women have a weakness for nasty, swaggering, bad-boy alpha-male cocks, so, y’know, its pot/kettle/black on that front. Both sexes are perfectly capable of being equally shallow and superficial, and equally dysfunctional in their romantic choices.

"If a girl looks sad....the best thing you can do no matter what is hug her."

No matter what. Following this advice could get a guy in serious trouble, say, in the workplace or, as a friend of mine japed (I hope), using public transport. I assure you, "... but she looked a bit sad," is not going to carry much weight in that ensuing sexual harassment case.

Seriously though, this is obviously written by a girl angling for a bit more observant and hands-on attention from her emotionally-stunted boyfriend. He will have seen her “like” this on his News Feed, and you can be sure next time they meet up she’ll be doing the big watery cow-eyes at him and, dammit, expecting that hug.

Because, of course, women are all such fragile, childlike things: Constantly in danger of complete emotional collapse that only the safe, paternal, bear-like embrace can head off. If they don’t get that hug when they are “sad”, they might just crumble into a jellied mess and spend the rest of their days rocking back and forth in knee-hugging catatonia. I think that’s pretty much what Germaine Greer said. Sometimes the comfort blanket and thumb sucking just don’t cut it (they, after all, don’t involve the flattering attention of a “fit guy” – unless he hands her his blanket and offers his thumb for slobbering over).

Guys on the other hand are fine. They don’t ever want or need hugs. When a guy looks “sad”, the best thing you can do no matter what is slap him in the face and tell him to stop bawwwwing like a baby, and if it really matters to him then he should sort it out, maybe by getting steely vengeance with his fists on some other dude. Either that or just do a comedy fart to lighten the mood, and he’ll forget about being “sad” because blokes don’t really have much in the way of deep emotions anyway.

“50 things every guy should know about a girl.”

There are infinite variations on this “like”-page favourite, and endless spin-offs and responses. The “...girl should know about a guy” responses tend towards the tounge-in-cheek comedy-sexism slant (which is, of course, a very “male” way of dealing with things), though there are at least a couple of “sensitive guy” versions which, like what they’re responding to, have a couple of fair points but are mainly sweeping personal statements from some wilting wallflower.

One of the most prevalent originals is the “50 things every guy should know.” which ranges from the ludicrously obvious: 14. When a particular guy flirts with a girl very often, a girl would start thinking the guy likes her (well, yes – that’s the point of flirting); 22. Keep a calendar. Remember her birthday and your anniversary; 23. If you love her, tell her once in a while; 38. Appreciate her (what kind of cold, half-arsed relationship does this NOT happen in?)

...to the ludicrously specific: 4. Girls love it when a guy she likes come up behind her, put his arms around her, squeezes her tightly against his chest, and whisper softly in her ear; 40. When girls go to the restroom together, they're gossiping about you (HOW DO YOU KNOW THIS?)

...from the infantile: 43. When you play games always let her win (like you do when playing games with a child - because all girls are rubbish at games); 2. When a girl says she's sad, but she isn't crying, it means she's crying in her heart (This “sad” business again – Oh, is THAT what the word means?! Because, of course, girls get sadder than blokes do, NO MATTER WHAT.)

...to the flagrant bullshit: 3. A girl can't find anything to hate about the guy she loves (Pfff. Huh. Mmn. Give it time.)

...and finally, the frankly unreasonable: 8. Keep in mind to be happy in front of her. She'll think you're not having fun. 31. Smile a lot (Your feelings do not matter – you don’t have any, you’re a bloke, so fix that forced smile on your face and dance, clown-monkey-man!); 20. Take her everywhere you go with your friends. If she can't come, say you will miss her. Don't invite anyone else (EVERYWHERE. Nothing scary and insecure about this. I'm sure she'll do the same with her friends. I'm sure.); 41. Be first and last to wish her a happy birthday (One assumes this assumes you live together – otherwise how the hell would you know? What happens if someone texts her before you wake up – IT’S OVER!).

The document is stated with such absolute certainty, it's like it's the 10 f***ing commandments: 18. Thou shalt always give her a peck on the cheek when you depart from each other, even when friends are watching. 37. Thou shalt hold her during a movie. 42. Thou shalt never tell a girl she's useless in any way.

Aside from the obvious fact that really, these are sweeping generalisations and in reality everyone is different, the majority of "things" mentioned could – with very slight gender-specific alterations – apply both ways, from guy to girl or girl to guy. But what’s depressing is that, well, you just kind of think... can’t couples work this shit out for themselves? I mean really, we’re all human beings, we all have feelings and we all occupy space in the same world – do we really need lists like this to understand each other? Is this list a revelation to anyone? Who isn’t autistic, that is?

Well, the answer is no. It was clearly written as a list of “how I feel about that guy I like and what I want him to do/be like towards me.” Which really is sad, if he has to be told these things... I mean, she has to explain what the word "sad" means, instruct him on how to show affection, and offer guidance on appropriate facial expressions - this isn't a guy she's after, it's a robot - it's "every girl's guide to programming a man-automaton". My advice to the author: Ditch that insensitive plank and stop being all “Hi, I'm A Girl, I Ignore Decent Guys, And Only Date Pricks Who Take Me For Granted And Treat Me Like Shit ...”

Thomas’s Final Thought

Ok, I know it’s not really fair for a jaded, embittered 30-something to be passing judgement on what are obviously the whimsies of over-emotional teenagers: I’m evidently not the target audience for this guff. It is, as a friend of mine said, “a bit like getting angry at a copy of Jackie.” Yes it is, but I’ve been known to do that kind of thing also... I once threw a copy of Heat magazine clean across the room to stop the rising revulsion it elicited within.

But moving swiftly on – since these things are continually brought to my attention via the delight that is Facebook (often by mature adults who really should know better), it’s worth noting why I find it so depressing and annoying – because what it shows is just how utterly ingrained such gender stereotypes are in society, still. You can see them being blatantly and blindly perpetuated by the next generation without so much as a second thought; and are still very much in evidence in a hell of a lot of people my own age. There are differences in how men and women respond to the world and what’s important to them, though much of it is conditioned rather than biological – studies suggest there is more variation within each gender than there is between them, meaning you can’t just presume “men are like this” and “women are like this”, though there are general trends. We are vastly more alike than we are different, and it does no-one any favours to characterise men and women as two different species, unknowable to each other.

Whatever, the important differences in behaviour and preferences are emphatically not about the need to be loved, noticed, appreciated, valued, understood and supported – that’s just universal human stuff. The real issue here is not so much gender – it’s romantic relationships in general. Love is cruel, and frequently sets up situations that most people simply have no idea how to sensitively deal with. Sometimes no amount of sensitivity will make it ok – how do you “make it ok” that you don’t really love someone, who still loves you, anymore? Or that you just don’t find someone, who is crazy about you, attractive in the first place? That’s one hell of a bowl of shit for even the most kind, thoughtful soul to serve up, let alone your average clumsy, semi-articulate punter.

Most heterosexual people’s close friends will be predominantly of the same sex as them, and their focus on the opposite sex will be pre-occupied with the idea of love-interest - not to disregard my female friends, whom I really do value like gold-dust for... well, not being boring blokes... but still... You don’t think much about the fact that members of your own sex are just as frequently horrendous, thoughtless, needy, manipulative, ham-fisted, unfeeling, spiteful, desire-led shits when it comes romance, because you’ve never had to deal with them in that way (I’m quite sure the gay perspective on gender stereotypes is very different). Sure, no one likes their same-sex friends to take them for granted, ignore them, or put them down – but even with your closest friends you simply don’t have that kind of intense hair-trigger emotional attachment, the same need for reassurance and affirmation and exclusivity – friendships are not quite as directly and critically tied to your sense of self-worth and emotional wholeness. And, with the fondest of regards to my house-mate, you don’t hang all your dreams of settling down, starting a family and growing old side-by-side on your friends.

At the end of the day it’s all about the empathy. I just don’t see that there’s any great mystery to how the opposite sex works – if you’re ever frustrated by what she/he wants or why she/he is acting in such a way, forget the gender-stereotyping bullshit and just think – I mean, properly, think: Why might I act like that? What would I feel/think/want in her/his shoes – and, whether you like the answer of not, you’ll probably get one.

Yet Another Christmas - 5 Ghosts of Christmas, Past and Present

TV ad: “It’s that time of year when the Christmas decorations come out”

Un-named TV watching friend: “Not it’s not, chap. Put them away.”

Yeah, I know, predictable. The Christmas-themed post – well, let’s get it out the way early. It may surprise regular readers that I do not consider myself a Scrooge: I, in theory, like Christmas – Or at least I used to. Not so terribly long ago, in my mid-twenties, I was, in fact, known for my love of the festival (or at least resistance to others’ Yuletide whinging and cynicism) – to the extent that for a few years at the shop I worked in I became, by default, the guy who voluntarily got in, and put, up the ‘decs’. But I can’t deny a tendency over the years towards increasing apathy, the unresponsive grunt or the weary sigh as the season kicks in – oh, that shit again. Another f***cking Christmas. This now happens automatically, and then I catch myself doing it and feel a bit sad – how did it get this way? How did it come to this? Well, it’s not so odd for a childless singleton of my age – it’d be far odder for someone in my ‘demographic’ to be getting all excited about it. But still, my feelings upon the seasonal season are complex, and there’s material to be mined here; so indulge me, if you will, in a slightly unwelcome stirring up of my Christmas past...

Ghost 1: The Loss of Faith

The first blow was, of course, when Father Christmas stopped existing. Christmas was a time of crisis-inducing excitement when I was a kid – it was by far the highlight of the year, and cast a feverish glow over the whole of Autumn and Winter. It wasn’t just the toy payload, although that should be mentioned – no adult gift will ever be as exciting as a Lego pirate ship. The only time I came near to this level of gift satisfaction as an adult is when I bought myself a guitar and amp-simulator/effects unit (with contribution from my parents as their gift) and waited until Christmas day to “open”/play with it. You’ve got to have something to play with... next year I think I might buy myself a Lego pirate ship.

No, it wasn’t just the toy payload, it was the magic. It was a time when the supernatural, the arcanely fantastic, actually, in reality, made itself tangible and touched your life – and was accepted by everyone as really, actually doing so. Supernatural goings on and fantasy beings from fantasy worlds were mainly consigned to books and TV, and I knew they were made up. Sure, there were also second-hand, supposedly true supernatural tales told by others – but at Christmas the magic rained down with a vengeance and happened to you, unambiguously, undeniably. And that was crisis-inducingly exciting – for a day-dreamy, imaginative (read: weird and arty) kid like me, it just grabbed my mind and took it far, far away.

So the year that my brother told me he had heard Father Christmas come into the room with our stockings, and then go and take a piss down the hall, was a little confusing. Would this magic being, un-encumbered by time, really be bound by such mundane, earthly functions? It was a little unglamorous, but I saw no reason why not. My brother (older than me) was more sceptical – he was suffering a Crisis of Faith (from which he never recovered – he was evidently Told shortly after this when he raised the issue with the folks).

I however, held out for another year. The topic was much debated amongst my peers in class. Some claimed to have been Told by older siblings – whisper it – there is no Santa Claus. Some had tales of finding the contents of their Christmas stockings in their parents’ wardrobe. The evidence was mounting, but I was in firm denial. I was one of the most vocal amongst the embattled Faithful. I constructed all kinds of ‘logical’ arguments to pooh-pooh the doubters, to try to make out that it was simply impossible that my parents could do it all, that it surely didn’t make sense. When would they buy all that stuff? Where did they store it –I ain’t seen no gifts in no wardrobe, fool! (I clearly didn’t have much grasp of what adults were capable of).

So, when, after Christmas, my Mum sat me down with my brother and they Told me, I felt more than a little embarrassed. I clearly remember thinking at that point: Just goes to show that, if you want to believe something enough, you will find arguments for it in the face of all evidence. I became aware of the power of self-delusion, in myself and others, which I like to think is a pretty damn profound thought process for someone of that tender age. The prospects for me ever being uncritically religious after that were pretty slim (though my early-mid teens did see some ill-defined wishy-washy religious dabbling). The repercussions for ‘magic’ in the world in general were also not lost on me – the world suddenly looked significantly duller, greyer and more uncertain.

Ghost 2: Cheese Mind

In my sixth-form years I got into the habit of making pointless analytical comment on aspects of culture that people largely took for granted. Which I still do, chronically. In fact, I studied in it at two universities and made a living out of teaching it for four years. It made me feel clever, and anyway, I couldn’t turn it off. I still can’t turn it off, which is sometimes a problem, and yes, it still does make me feel clever. Or alienated from my own society, one of the two.

Anyway, this was the point at which I started noticing that the paraphernalia of Christmas, all the motifs and symbols, were largely trotted out by people without any conscious thought whatsoever. All the guff – tinsel, bells, holly, trees, logs, santa hats, reindeer, stars, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year – it was all on auto-pilot. Sure people are dimly aware of where this cultural bric-a-brac comes from – well, some of it, anyway – but no one really cares. Walking down the street with a friend I remarked that the glittery gold banners saying “Merry Christmas” in multiple neighbour’s windows may as well say “Cheese Mind” for all the thought that had gone into the greeting.

I had a point – the point is that the words “Merry Christmas” are not really words any more, just a sound, a polite seasonal code-utterance, a petrified shorthand signifier, which could be anything at all if enough people agreed to use it. Hence “Cheese Mind”. Why must Christmas always be Merry? What stops us using any other perfectly apt adjective? The fact of the greeting’s unchanging form shows that no real, personal consideration has gone into it at all. Ok, of course repetitive utterances like “Morning”, “Thankyou” or “Goodnight” are standardised for practical use – but actually, it is the same with most Christmas symbolism.

All of the common motifs you see around at Christmas will have their roots in some kind of folk tradition or practice, but no one feels they have to be clued up on this before they use them. It’s Christmas innit. Put a tree in your lounge. Put bells in your pop song. Something to do with Jesus in a manger and shepherds and that. This is most salient every time a Hollywood film tries to meddle with Christmas folklore – every new generation takes on the previous one’s traditions and symbology in an utterly superficial fashion, and then proceeds to ‘update’ them for ‘modern times’. The result is that you end up with a massively surreal mishmash of nonsensical, ill-fitting elements that they then have to try to force some kind of sense into. I mean, have you seen Santa Claus the Movie? The Santa Clause? Jingle All The Way? I mean – as an adult?

But this doesn’t just happen in films – it happens in society in general. When we look at other cultures’ rituals and traditions they often look utterly baffling, alien, and relentlessly oddball, and you wonder how they ever came up with that – well, Christmas is a case in point. Just think about it for a second – how would you explain it, in all its glorious absurd detail, to an alien (“So, tell me again, hu-man, where exactly does the flying fat man with the red and white arctic wear and the little people come into the equation? Hu-man?”).

The symbols used, see, over time and generations, become totally divorced from their origins, and just become groundless signifiers, spat out every year like festive tourettes. The map remains, but the territory has eroded away. As a yoof, “Cheese Mind” was simply a funny observation; but today, ill-informed and unthinking reflex touting of the thousand Christmas clichés you are bombarded with every year actually, actively rankles me – not alot, just a kind of low-level abrasive irritant. For f***’s sake, if you’re going to spray me with trite Christmas cliché, at least put some thought into it. At least get it right. It’s the same with Easter and it’s the same with vampire films – don’t get me started on vampire films.

Ghost 3: Don’t Look Back

But I still loved Christmas, in general. For a while, in my early twenties, I found new ‘magic’ in it by genning-up on the history and folklore of Christmas every Christmas time. Today’s traditions are an impossibly complex meshing of multiple strands – whilst nominally a Christian festival, with the Nativity, St. Nicholas and Good-Will to All Man, there is a heady, intoxicating cocktail of pagan Mid-Winter traditions that infuse the whole thing. Despite the St. Nicholas story, the figure of Santa Claus is clearly heavily derived from pagan folklore, a kind of wild-man-in-furs Green-Man/Dionysus nature spirit. All the nature stuff – gifts under trees, the holly and the ivy – is all obviously north-European, and at some point Christmas just merges with chilly north-European folklore in a fascinating way. Dark, icy north-European folklore, full of snow and forests and goblins. It’s all very Wicker Man – it’s Moominesque, but gorier, and I love it.

This worked for a while, but I still couldn’t help noticing a recurring malaise – pretty much every year began to seem like an anti-climax. You would catch yourself thinking that you just weren’t feeling as Christmassy as usual – as you should be – for the time of year. You would get frustrated at not being able to conjure more Christmas spirit with the usual devices that used to fill you with it. And then you would feel guilty about it. Why am I not Christmassy? Everyone else is. What a party pooper I am. The whole thing was just a little bit disappointing and – yes, frustrating; not because you were being a Scrooge, but because you were trying not to be – to recapture something just beyond your reach, that you expected to be on-tap.

Of course, it’s age, but we can be more specific: It’s not so much that I was too serious and responsible and adult for Christmas now, it’s that things had simply changed too much – a friend of mine hit the nail on the head when he pointed out that it’s about connection with childhood. His girlfriend still feels Christmas acutely, but she currently lives with her parents in the same house that she did as a child, and they largely still adhere to the same routine.

For me those early childhood Christmases were so perfectly formed that they set the template rigidly – being a young family they were always spent at home with just us – my mother, father and brother, totally safe, contained, predictable, a hermetically sealed idyll. But the older you get, the more circumstances change, and every small upheaval and alteration takes you further away from recapturing the feelings you had in that idyll – never mind the more massive upheavals that come later as an adult. By your mid-late twenties there is very little left of that connection at all – but that connection is what you need to kick-start the Christmassy feeling first learnt in the childhood idyll, so, if you’re a soft nostalgic type like me, you scrabble after what strands you can find, but it’s frustrating and never quite does it. Time to give up – accept it, Christmas doesn’t mean the same thing now. Appreciate it for what it is today –don’t look back.

Ghost 4: Bad Christmases

So maybe my enthusiasm for the festive season was on the decline – but was it terminal? Who knows? Because what really ingrained today’s state of seasonal apathy was the one-two punch of 2007 and 2008: a right pair of Bad Chritmasses.

I won’t go into the gruesome detail, but 2007 saw a tragedy in the extended family that indirectly precipitated an all-out family feud, complete with ensuing logistical crises. It started, like the detonation of an unexpected H-bomb, at table during Christmas dinner, on Christmas Day afternoon.

By Christmas 2008 that state-of-affairs had stabilised, but there was more threat of tragedy (unrelated) in my immediate family, that I’m infinitely thankful eventually turned out ok – but at that time extreme worry and heaviness hung over us all. I also became aware as Christmas drew nearer, that the last year had actually, in some kind of irrational Pavlovian response, made me apprehensive rather than excited about it. In a way, I was right to be – something, as it turned out, was brewing. There was about to be a thunderous fall-out amongst my close friends, that I was unwittingly the catalyst for. For reasons I won’t go into here, Christmas Eve had been upsetting and set up an explosion of resentment and animosity amongst friends on New Year’s Eve that saw me start 2009 in a crippled ball of jangled nerves. Like a kicked puppy that’s accidently pooed on the carpet, I was, all at once, a little guilty at having pooed, very worried for who had stood in it, but also mortified and uncomprehending at the screaming it had set off - and the severity of the kicking I’d just taken.

Neither 2007 or 2008 were silly short-lived tantrums – they were complicated, deep-running, circumstance-changing divisions – whose repercussions are, to some extent, still felt today. There is nothing quite like the weight of mortality, combined with the hunted-animal feeling of dancing over yawning rifts that are opening up between your nearest and dearest, to make the tinsel sag and the carols ring hollow in the ears. Such immediate pressures and strains tend to force one out of Christmas mode – it all looks a little unimportant, and it’s hard to pay the festivities much attention when the harshness of the real world comes a-knocking. If I was underwhelmed by Christmas before, now I wasn’t ‘whelmed’ at all.

So in 2009 I decided to expect nothing. I wouldn’t feel like I had to feel Christmassy, and I’d make no apology for shrugging my shoulders at it. As it turned out I was rewarded with a thoroughly pleasant, warm, happy, low-key Christmas – nothing massively exciting, just... nice. There was even an impromptu staff gathering and guitar-led sing-along at work, the first time anything of the sort had been done (Dunkirk spirit – work was a mess at the time). And New Year at the local was a very sociable blast. All in all a satisfying Yuletide – so again, this year, I will expect nothing, force nothing. A lesson learnt.

Ghost 5: Not Christmas’ Marketing Demographic

“Christmas is about the children” people would say, and I would shake my head at it as another example of the serious, sensible platitudes thrown out by responsible middle-aged types who had lost all warmth, joy and humanity from their serious, sensible souls. Terminally cynical, I’d think – Christmas is about community, celebration of life, a time to relax and indulge and be grateful for what you’ve got and to the people around you. It’s not just a glorified kids party, a bit of glitter and fairytale and toys for the spoilt offspring – it’s a cosy, communal, hallowed tradition, it’s for everyone.

But they were right, at least in some respects. Because (as stated in Ghost 3), the further away my own childhood gets, the less it means, and I’d be a fool not to notice that the people my own age to whom Christmas really matters – even though they may gripe about it – are the people with children. To them it is a living tradition, vital and necessary once more. What has gone wrong here is that the cycle for me should have been renewed – at my age I should be settling down and producing squawking pink little people in order to take charge and do that Christmas shit with them. But I haven’t, so my connection with Christmassy-ness continues to dwindle into near insignificance. I’m far too old for my parents to be lavishing soft Christmassy nonsense on me – it’d just be silly and embarrassing – but I have no one myself to lavish soft Christmassy nonsense on either. So there is no soft Christmassy nonsense anymore – except for the clichéd impersonal stuff I’m unwelcomely bombarded with by the world in general.

If in any doubt about this diagnosis, I only need to look at any of the abundant Christmas propaganda. All of it – the ads, the TV, the movies, the events – all are aimed at families (young families), or every occasionally young couples (about to have families). The season is thus renowned for making lonely people feel their loneliness all the more acutely, and it’s no wonder. But even ignoring the loneliness factor (I can’t credibly strike that pose since it would be grossly unfair to my friends and family, who are just lovely and always around), it’s more simple alienation from Christmas. One day it just hits you: Christmas is not for me anymore. I am not Christmas’ marketing demographic.

What a sad man you are, Thomas

But I want to end on a positive note. I am still, generally, pro-Christmas – I will not become a full-blown griping Scrooge about it, because there is still something of the nostalgic, dreamy idealist in me: Yes, the unconscious, knee-jerk, ritual habits may annoy me as the same old nonsense is trotted out ad-nauseum; and the bandwagon-jumping marketing machine may make me grind my teeth – as it kicks in as soon as you get back off your summer holiday, desperately trying to squeeze some life into the usual tired clichés in an attempt to grab your attention (and your money).

But I will always have a soft spot for the atmosphere, the cosiness, the myth and folklore and flights of fancy – and the sheer, silly, glorious eldritch irrationality of it all. One over-riding goodness of the festive season is how it forces people to change their day-in-day-out patterns for a while, even if it’s in a ritualised way. Christmas is something going on, something large scale and communal, something happening – that everyone in the country (and many other countries), regardless of background or religious persuasion, cannot avoid being involved in, in some capacity. The Christmas-New Year period gears everything up to a feverish pitch of activity and then abruptly grinds everything briefly to a halt, before we are allowed to carry on again as normal – and I think this is a good thing. It calls an end to the year, marks the passing of time, brings things to a head, sweeps in a fresh phase – it changes things. It’s important to have these periodical events and shake-ups, and to mark them, lest life just plough on un-noticed, relentlessly uniform. So hooray for that. Oh, and the food’s good.

Gift suggestions for Thomas: Lego Pirate Ship

Required Listening: Stevie Touch and the Lonesomes - Don't Go Out On Christmas Eve

The Ties That Bind

Today I bought 5 ties, and I don’t know how I feel about that. I have vague but deep-rooted suspicion of ties: Few garments pong as pungently of human social politics. More than any other element of men’s apparel, the tie is a symbolic statement of professionalism, respect and, yes, social conformity.

This suspicion dates back to student days. Considering ourselves quietly radical and bohemian (as students are wont to do), we would note the worryingly Freudian unconscious symbolism of that noxious bit of cloth (we were psychology students, after all) – a knotted noose around your neck, a kind of dog-lead that your masters hold you by, tethering you to work, in the grip of authority, at the beck and call of society - it’s even called a tie, we would mutter darkly – and gaze upon each other with wild surmise. But, for all our clever anti-establishment musings, we all knew, really, that we too would don one without hesitation at the first whiff of a job interview. Yeah, we’d say then, with a dismissive pragmatism, it’s just clothes isn’t it? Doesn’t really matter. At least it’s a step up from the servile, style-crime horrors of the full-blown, identity-stripping supermarket uniform.

I haven’t worn a tie to work for 6 years, and have only ever had two jobs requiring me to do so, both of which were short lived (temporary positions, I should stress – I didn’t get sacked for tie-protest or anything). Most of my working life I have not had to wear one, a state of affairs I’ve been more than happy with. One can scrub up reasonably smart without, thanks, if one wants to feel well-groomed and professionally stylish. I had consigned the accessory to “special occasion only” status, a piece of archaic formal dress-up kit that really doesn’t need to make an appearance outside of funerals, job interviews and black-tie functions. I viewed my tiny selection like the Queen’s Royal Carriages – things to wheel out once in a blue moon for a bit of glittery pomp and pageantry, but frankly a bit showy. I mean really, who needs that faff when getting dressed, on a daily basis?

I don’t want to be the hoon who states the obvious, but I will anyway: A tie is, aside from “style”, functionally pointless – it may have evolved from a useful garment but it is useful no more. It’s like the human appendix, but with a snazzy pattern on it. No one’s shirt is going to fall open embarrassingly without it. No one thinks “oh, it’s a bit cold out, I’d better grab a tie”. No one thinks “hmm, this collar just isn’t comfortable... I know, I’ll put on a tie with it, that’ll feel better”. A tie’s function is all psychological – it is all about the image it projects, and the effect that has on the viewer, as well as the wearer. As fashion it can make all kinds of statements (not always favourable), but the most common are, of course, respectability and power. This latter element is what we failed to recognise as right-on student beatnik wannabes – we were concerned with the lot of the lowly office drone, oppressed by his shirt-and-tie uniform. We did not consider the tie as a symbol of dominance, power, seriousness and success – the politician, the executive, the banker, the academic, the chairman of the board. This is not tie-as-dog-lead, this is tie-as-diamond-studded-man-jewellry. Like uniform a tie can be a social symbol of either authority or servility – but unlike a uniform it doesn’t necessarily tell you explicitly which it is. You need extra cues and context to tell that – is it part of a well groomed package, or a token effort? Is it worn with an expensive suit or a cheap nylon shirt? How does the wearer talk and hold themselves? Ultimately it’s a conformity thing rather than an obedience thing – whatever the person’s power or lack of, they are playing the game – when faced with a tie you are faced with (at least a veneer of) establishment.

Whatever, my coolness of feeling towards ties is more than just a hangover from idealistic youth; today, more serious than this, is the simple matter of preferences... I’ve never particularly liked the look, never found the style alluring, particularly on myself, and never felt very comfortable with any clothing that restricts at the neck. And if you think this is a result of my early ideological objections, it’s not, necessarily – I feel exactly the same way about polo-neck sweaters (despite their beatnik associations). Or even T-shirts with small neck-holes. I am strictly an open-necked clothing motherf***er. It’s a style and taste thing, like my equally arbitrary preference for earth tones and dark hues. I don’t know where these things come from, except that they haven’t ever changed as far as I can remember, back into earliest childhood.

You understand though: The philosopher Wittgenstein never wore a tie, and this is a big deal: “He did not dine with the faculty, as the faculty in all its grandeur always dines in academic gowns, black shoes, and neck tie. Wittgenstein was forever tieless and wore a suede jacket that opened and closed with that marvelous invention: the zipper; and his shoes were brown.” (that’s from here). As far as “no-bullshit” heroes go, Wittgenstein is a humdinger, one of the few philosophers for me who consistently cuts through the nonsense and clearly and forcefully brings out the subtleties of how stuff really works, with a genius originality and attention to detail. And that guy didn’t wear a tie. His photos look surprisingly modern because of this – before I knew much about him I always presumed he was active in the ‘50s, ‘60s, or even ‘70s, because of this – but he died in 1951.

I know that argument is a fallacy – Wittgenstein’s genius and his failure to tie a half-Windsor in the morning are not necessarily related. On a similar but contrary note, you could say “but he was a successful Cambridge-educated genius, so he could get away with it.” Did I hear you say that? Tut. Shocking. That’s the same argument as “Jesus could work on a Sunday because he was Jesus” – as if he should have special treatment because he was special - it’s circular logic and completely misses the point that he was making a point with his behaviour.

Let’s put it another way – to paraphrase Socrates (kind of... well, not really, actually): Did Wittgenstein not have to wear a tie because he was a genius, or was he a genius because didn’t wear a tie? Um. Well, ok, I’m not overly sure that one’s formal-wear habits fall within the Venn-diagram of genius (unless you’re in the business of being a fashion Deity), but one can’t help but hmm on whether the two things were related. Wittgenstein’s “no” to the neck-rag was not down to a militantly anti-establishment stance, or hipster politics; neither was it an affectation of cool, liberal, touchy-feely casualness, in the style of Tony Blair or David Cameron (the guy’s demeanour was pretty intense and severe). Much more likely, it was simply down to the fact that he was a relentlessly idiosyncratic man and absolutely stubborn in doing things his own way (as well as being continental – he was Viennese – and you know what those over-familiar continental types are like, eh? Eh?) He was also devoted to clawing away at the crusty structures of accumulated traditional-thinking bullshit, quite the modern thinker – he had no time for the endless study of, and deferment to, history. In short, the “I’ll pass on the ties, thanks” was a curious supplementary effect of the very same personality and outlook that made him such an original thinker.

If Wittgenstein demurred on the neck-apparel, that’s a good enough example for me to follow suit. Not out of idol worship so much as sympathy. His example, to me, is telling. In Wittgenstein’s day, for a Cambridge academic not to wear a tie was extremely unusual, and doubtless controversial. Not so these days – as a teacher one may be a respectable figure, but is on the lower end of the scale of professional vocations (as opposed to, say, a doctor or a solicitor) and only around the fringes of academia; so a tie for me, then, was very much optional rather than a necessity – very much a style choice. But, once again entering the private sector workplace, it is not – it is a specified requirement. I’m going to have to bow to convention and get used to it – but, strangely, “style” may be the sugar coating to that bitter pill.

Or, more precisely, vanity. “I’m sure I can pick out some pretty cool ties.” I thought, as I sauntered into the men’s section to buy the things. “I’m sure I can rock ‘tie-wearer’s chic’ as well as the best of them.” How would I know what was up to date? Well, who knows? Go for what’ll go with your shirts and rely on the store not to sell hideously dated-looking items, I guess. If in doubt, go for classic style, classic style doesn’t date. Trust your instincts, Luke, use the force. The horror. I used to be as anti-fashion as I was anti-ties, and here I was vainly fussing over tie-trends. What happens, you see, is that you realise, as you get older, that you can actually look quite suave and dapper (in a low-key, endearingly rumpled way, you understand) in this get-up. It doesn’t look stiff, awkward or pretentious on you like it might have when you were 21. It looks ok. Hot damn it, let’s not hold back – it looks SEXY!!! Yes, sexy. Well maybe not sexy – I’ve still to be convinced that ties are quite that. But everyone likes to look good, no matter how no-nonsense and down-to-earth they think they are – if you can feel comfortable in it and make it work for you, then, hell, wear it.

My fashion aversion hadn’t deserted me altogether – I took one look at the skinny ties and instantly dismissed them with an unspoken “f*** off”. I feel cruel towards the actual garments for mentally projecting such outright prejudice towards them now; but there’s just something a little too self-consciously hip and affected about those pieces of apparel that I just can’t get over. However, I am pleased with my tie selection, have some quite alluring shirt combinations, and I’m actually looking forward to wearing them. At the same time I feel faintly like I may have betrayed my past and my principles... but I guess it’s just clothes isn’t it? Doesn’t really matter. It’s not like I’m Stalin or Nick Clegg or anything. And you know that as soon as I discover situations where I can legitimately get away with not wearing them, I will revert to type and not bother – and in the meantime, I may be tied-up, but the top button is resolutely undone. I’m a strictly open-necked clothing motherf***er, you understand.

Type A and Type B

Student: I want to be Prime Minister!

Me (horrified): Why the hell would you want that? It’d be horrible...

I know, you’re appalled. Not the inspiring and motivational tone a teacher should take, that... but, man alive, really now, what a thankless job.

Some people’s main goal in life is success and achievement. And then there’s people like me: I’m pretty happy if everything is... yeah, kind of ok. If everything is just fine, thanks. If everything is ticking along nicely, then perfect. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about stagnant apathy here – I’m talking about a state of happy, warm contentment, and that, as it turns out, is actually incredibly hard achieve, and seemingly impossible to maintain; especially with all these “success and achievement” types messing stuff up with their obsessive narrow-focus drive and ambition, prodding me from my rest...

What this is, is a fundamental mismatch of priorities – what do you want out of life? Let’s call these different approaches to life Type A (achievement driven) and Type B (contentment driven): These approaches are pretty fundamental, core personality traits and possibly even rooted in your biology; certainly in your upbringing. Ok, it’s a sweeping generalisation – very few people are all one and none of the other, and if you’re like me you can have a fairly Type A approach to some things but a Type B approach to the rest, or flit between the two depending on what situation, mood – or mode – you are currently in. But it’s a kind of scale we can adopt, if you’ll humour me. Look out for it in the work place and you will find at least a couple of salient examples in your colleagues... and if they have to work closely together, this can cause friction and resentments. Type A and Type B people drive each other up the wall. Type A’s plans and schemes are constantly being undermined by Type B’s infuriatingly slow and unfocussed dithering – how can they be so laid-back when there’s stuff to be done? How can they be so accepting of compromise, and even failure, when with a bit more oomph and action we could be achieving this? Type Bs on the other hand are constantly being hassled, prodded and pushed by Type As, who are always messing up their contentment and peace of mind. Why are they so focussed on this stuff? Why is this stuff so important to them? Can’t they be content? Isn’t there more to life? Are they never going to be happy? Why can’t they just leave me alone?! Stop f***ing railroading me with your agenda! Ahem. Sorry, got a bit carried away, that was very un-Type B of me. The point is: Type As and Type Bs infuriate each other, because they simply can’t empathise. They’re unlikely to get along smoothly if they have to work on a project together – but actually, in fairness, probably need each other: To organise, drive and focus Type Bs or to persuade Type As to take a moment and see the bigger picture.

I have stolen this terminology form Meyer Friedman and “R.H.” Rosenman’s research into personality and stress in the ‘50s, ‘60s and 70s, where they identified what they called Type A as ambitious, competitive, aggressive, status-driven, time-conscious, controlling etc. – basically, Gordon “f***ing” Ramsey; and Type B as... well, basically, not Type A – patient, forgiving, non-competitive and “generally lacking an over-riding sense of urgency”. Which makes Type B people sound like Jesus rather than the slackers they probably are, but there you go. People who scored highly on Type A personality tests (and at interviews designed to provoke characteristic responses) were found to be massively more likely to suffer and die from coronary heart disease or similar stress-related conditions. Friedman and Rosenman concluded that, when it comes to stress, Type A = BAD, Type B = GOOD. Which, as someone who scores robustly (though not extremely) Type B on their personality questionnaire, seems at first glance to be a cause to be smug, and all is right with the world. However, as always, there are big problems with this glib assumption – never take psychology research at face value.

First of all, cause and effect is not clear – it could be the high stress that these people are under as part of their working life that is causing both the Type A behaviour and the heart disease; ie. it is situational, and not a core personality trait driving the stress and therefore the CHD. Furthermore, since the “types” cover a whole range of characteristics, it is a bit rich to suggest everyone falls into one or the other, even with a “mixed Type AB” category – for example it is possible to be ambitious, but not aggressive; or forgiving, but still time-conscious; and it is just as likely that it’s just one characteristic such as hostility/aggression, and not a whole sweeping personality “type” that leads to poor handling of stress. Fair enough for the common criticisms; but I’m also slightly suspicious about Friedman and Rosenman’s conclusive assertions – that, for example, Type Bs are in reality just as successful as Type As, so Type B is by far the best way to be. It should be clear – by Type B they do not mean lazy, useless and apathetic idlers, they simply mean calm, positive-thinking, well-adjusted, patient and co-operative, multi-functional types who know how to get that work/life balance right – but these people are extremely rare, and lazy apathetic slackers will surely score highly as Type B also.

Even more damning is a look at rival personality/stress models, such as Stephen V. Kobasa’s “Hardiness scale” – which suggests some personality traits make you more resistant to stress (or “Hardier”). This is based around the “3 C’s”: Commitment – which means you get actively involved with things and see projects through to the end; Challenge – which means you see problems as a positive challenge rather than an insurmountable obstacle; and Control – which means you see yourself as in control of your fate and the situations you find yourself in. If you lack these, you won’t deal so well with stress – you will tend to get stressed easier. According to Friedman and Rosenman I am Type B, so I deal well with stress. According to Kobasa I am not particularly “Hardy”, so I don’t. I don’t score very highly on the “3 C’s” – I’m reasonable on Commitment, not brilliant, but not terrible. I am traditionally a stand-back-and-observe type, but less so now I’m older and more confident... I’m reasonable on Challenge, despite my sneery cynic pose and tendency to displays of depressive histrionics – I’m open minded, and I will generally be up for sorting stuff out and giving things a go in a reasonably positive fashion... It’s on Control that I fall down badly, not because I always feel out of control in situations, or unable to handle myself – I don’t – but because, as an avowed realist I am quite convinced (from both intelligent reasoning and undeniable, slightly bitter experience) that, actually, a hell of a lot of stuff that life throws at you is out of your control. You can only make the best with what you’ve been given, and greater forces than you rage about you constantly, puking up unpredictable and immovable curveballs that you must constantly dodge or climb over. Ok, the more savvy and proactive you are the more you can affect outcomes and transform situations, I understand that, I really do – but plenty of things simply will not be predicted or will not be changed. We are not Gods. There is no “karma” and you don’t make your own “luck” at all – luck is fickle f***er. Going about insisting you are always in control seems to me pure delusion – a happy, motivating, stress-busting delusion, maybe, but still simply sticking its fingers in its ears and going la-la-la in the face of the facts, nonetheless.

Whatever, Kobasa’s model seems to contradict Freidman and Rosenman. The "3 C's" are traits much more likely to be shown by driven, Type A "doers" than laid-back, go-with-the-flow B's. So is this Type A and B stuff bollocks? Well, I suppose we can say it’s an over-simplification, though intuitively there does seem to be something in it (at the risk of damning it with faint praise and consigning it to pop-psychology). Certainly some people clearly are those types (Gordon “f***ing” Ramsey), and the characteristics listed would seem to tend to clump together. Incidentally other types have been added – Type C, who tend to bottle stress up and not deal with it, and may appear fine on the surface but are all worried and knotted up inside. This allegedly leads to a high incidence of cancer in these types, though this is far from proven; and Type D, who typically respond to stress by getting depressed (- well, alright, if we’re talking purely about stress response, that is quite clearly me – my characteristic urge when it all gets too much is to simply gnash my teeth in woe, hide away, and sleep. Stress-leads-to-anger-leads-to-“isn’t-everything-shit”-despondency-leads-to-shut-down). But how these later additions fit exactly with Type A and B is unclear – these types are stand-alone, developed by others, and not necessarily on the same scale as Friedman and Rosenman’s Types A and B.

If we are going to stick with exploring Friedman and Rosenman’s model, on a personal note, I’m still sus about the idea that a Type B personality always leads to better experience of stress. While, yes, I have never had a highly-strung “stressy” personality, once I got a pressured and high-responsibility job, I suddenly realised that, even so, I didn’t have such amazing tools to cope with it: I’m aware that my Type B tendencies are actually at the root of what causes me stress – my slowness, procrastination, disorganisation, lack of assertiveness, terrible time-consciousness, easy boredom with relentless work, incredible bodily resistance to switching gears (getting active in the first place or turning off once I am), my insistence on spending huge swathes of time on unproductive and unrelated interests (case-in-point – this blog), my inability to concentrate and focus on one simple dull or repetitive task without getting side-tracked or going off into thoughtful reverie... all of these things are pretty Type B and constantly mess me up when it comes to doing the job and getting things done: I need to keep a tight rein on them at times – but if the rein is too tight I end up getting angry and depressed. In fact, while I can wind myself into quite an impressive and zingy all-cylinders-firing energetic work-machine (no, really!) when I’m on form, it always takes a while to crank up and I simply cannot maintain a Type A level of efficiency for a protracted period without burning out quickly – I can’t think of anything more life-draining and dispiriting than living a Type A life.

No wonder Type A types tend to see themselves as superior. In terms of energy, drive and focus they clearly are. As someone who dresses distinctly to the B side of the scale, I have plenty of examples of what I would consider under-achievement littered throughout my history. Not because I lacked the ability or know-how, but because I simply didn’t put myself forward or apply myself enough; not out of laziness, but because I just didn’t realise the importance or feel the urgency of it at the time. You live and learn, I guess, but motivation for the likes of me cannot be forced – it’s there or it’s not. If it’s not, and yet you still have to proceed, your life becomes maddeningly dull and empty, and at worst stressful, exhausting and hellish. Obviously a degree of success and achievement and recognition is essential to contentment, but it is not everything. For genuine so-called Type Bs there is a natural ceiling of activity where things just cut off: When the effort and stress out-weighs your likelihood of tangible reward, and starts impinging on your happy, healthy mood, Type Bs just – stop. It’s like a natural in-built safety mechanism, to protect against the possibility of crisis or breakdown. But it means they will never achieve that sheer hyper-organised, bee-like activity; the perfection and glorious heights of people who will single-mindedly drive themselves into obsession pursuing a particular goal, when nothing less will do. For a true Type B, a little less will do, as long as it’s ok. No giving 120% for these lads. 90 at best. Sheesh, ok, maybe 95 if it’s really, really important, but jeez, a fella’s got to have a little in reserve.

Which brings us on to the real problem, which is this (and in this I think Friedman and Rosenman genuinely had something): In the modern workplace it is Type A behaviour that is rewarded. Everywhere I’ve ever worked wants you wound up to hyper efficiency all the time. It’s so obvious it barely needs saying. I got so fed up with the word “outstanding” as teacher that it came to induce an unconscious Pavlovian sneer – “good” wasn’t good enough, and “satisfactory”... well, hell, that just wasn’t satisfactory. Words like “outstanding”, “excellence” and “achievement” are used so liberally, and drilled in so relentlessly, like motivational tourettes, in the modern workplace that they have become virtually meaningless to my ears – in the way that repeating the word “socks” or “tree” to yourself 100 times divorces the sound from any sense. Try it. In most workplaces (private or public sector) these days everything is target driven – and if you meet those targets, the targets are just put up again, in some kind of Sisyphian ritual of existential futility. Companies and institutions have their own Type A ambitions, and none are ever content to simply rest where they are – but then, in business, as in life, I suppose no position is stable – if you are not going up then you are on a dangerous plateau of stagnation and it could be the beginning of a downward turn and, ultimately The End – you cannot afford to get complacent. Still, many a business or institution has precipitated its own demise (or at least done more damage than good) by over-extending themselves – because they could not be content with their current position, they couldn’t leave things be: It wasn’t broke but they still tried to fix it and lost the culture that made things work so well in first place. Toyota. I’ve seen it happen first-hand (not with Toyota). It seems intuitively true that those at the top will tend to be Type A – they must at least be ambitious, competitive, single-minded. Not always, maybe: “Type A” is a sweeping generalisation involving a suspiciously large batch of characteristics after all; and Type Bs may be called upon to fill such roles if they just happen to be good enough. Certainly those calm, positive, well-adjusted, patient and co-operative types do exist in such positions (I’ve seen that first hand too – a life-affirming privilege) – but still, experience all points to non-Type As in senior positions being the exception rather than the rule. And therefore Type Bs will always be at their mercy. I suppose it has to be this way really – if society was run by Type Bs one suspects the result would be a bit shoddy, and certainly progress would be very slow and limited; but I don’t think it would collapse altogether – it would simply be a humbler, messier, more basic and perhaps more uncertain world. But a happy one.

Though I guess a Type A would say: Why the hell would you want that? It’d be horrible...