Next blog, please

The first time I used the "Next blog" function (at the top of this page, last item on the left) , I quite liked it. Like a trip through the strange and wonderful world of other people's minds, each click would take me somewhere else. In that time, I have seen blogs on owl tatoos, informatics, anthropology, pink pride ... just about anything under the sun. Since blogger abandoned the random principle, however, I am less enchanted.

I have tried to find the link between what I write and the "next blog" (e.g. in the blogspot blog) but it is not obvious. It promises to present the reader with related material in the same language, and it does. But I expected something similar to targetted advertising, in which case it would either use the key words I enter, the text itself, and/or any links to my blog. Had that been the case, my next blogs would have probably been a strange mixture of natural sciences, raising children, and home-grown psychology. Lately, however, most of my "next blogs" are from fundamentalist Christian (Protestant) families. The family part I can understand - I do write about my children a lot - but the Christian part? I am an ex-Catholic writing mostly about humanist values. (Yes, I realise that I am still more similar to Protestants than to Muslims or Hindus, but still).

Of course, I could always start censoring myself, and only publish entries on politics, art, science and philosophy, or better still, create separate blogs, one for each main area of interest. But I already have four (this one, two on music, and one at work), each one presenting a slightly difference aspect of myself. Anytime now I will develop the first documented case of multiple virtual personality disorder.

Looking out for Number One

Just finished reading Barack Obama's book on Life, the Universe and Everything (the real title is "The Audacity of Hope", of course, but with chapters called "values", "race", "faith", "politics" and "family", among many others, a wink to Douglas Adams is not out of place), and I have to say I am pleasantly impressed. He really seems to have thought things through. There is just one thing that gets my hackles up. It is not even a criticism; it is more a question of picking up where the book leaves off, and of giving the perspective from the outside.

My concern is the assumption, implicit in some of the wordings in the chapter on "The World Beyond Our Borders", among others, that the rest of the world poses a threat to the livelihood and security of U.S. citizens. This bothers me because it indicates the extent to which fear plays a part in determining U.S. policy (foreign and internal). Even for its allies or friends, the idea that this economic and military giant is not always able to control its own knee-jerk reactions is quite scary.

Having spent an important part of my childhood in the U.S., I am quite familiar with this fear. In my case, it was the the generalised and unchallenged belief that an "evil empire" (usually the Soviet Union and/or China) was out to attack and subdue the "free world" (the U.S. and its western allies). All around me, there were all kinds of different expressions of this fear, either explicit (spy novels), slightly veiled metaphors (most science fiction series and movies), or implicit (the things left unsaid). And the response (the nuclear arms race), though understandable, did not make much sense in the longer run. Now, of course, the main source of fear - international terrorism - is different, but the kind of response it engenders is similar in that it is again assumed that (1) military action and repression is the best (or possibly even only) way to "win the war" and (2) the U.S. must do something about it, or at very least lead the way.

As for the first assumption, I think the spectacular failure to "win the war" on drugs is evidence enough. The problem of drugs, and of terrorism, is complex, and cannot be solved by ouside force alone. But U.S. policy seems rife with overly simplistic beliefs and short-term solutions (presumably again because of fear and/or because it is much easier to sell a quick, simple "solution" than admit that a long-term committment is necessary). Most issues are not just black and white, good or bad, and there is a middle road between isolationist or interventionist.
As for the second point: of course it is difficult to "just stand by" when things around you are going wrong, even if you do not perceive these changes as threats. But just as a parent's failure to intervene may in certain cases in the long run be better for his or her children (see this entry), intervention is not always necessary or useful. In some cases, intervention may provide short-term solutions, but trying to "make the world safe for democracy" by force is a bit like a parent yelling at his children to stop yelling. It might work for a while, but the underlying message is that yelling is an acceptable and useful way to get what you want.

I am sure the above parent/child analogy could ruffle the feathers of lots of people across the globe, because (like me) they see the U.S. as a younger (though larger and stronger sibling), and not as a parent. And as such, there is always the issue of whether or not that sibling has the right to stick its nose into the internal affairs of other countries. I would say they do not. However much I can sympathise with the need to "look out for number one", I draw the line at pre-emptive strikes. I think that in most cases, we would all benefit if the U.S. were to apply the simple rule to "do unto others as they would have others do unto you".

There is of course much, much more to be said on this, but it will have to wait: my children need me.

Cultural diversity - blessing or curse?

Working in a "multicultural environment" means being confronted, on a daily basis, with slightly different ways of doing things. One of the most obvious in my case is how my French colleagues will come in to shake hands in the morning. I quite like this habit, but not enough to start doing it myself (I tried, but I could see that - like swearing in a language that you do not fully master - people sense that something doesn't quite fit). Also, the meaning of shaking hands is shifting. It used to be seen as a way of showing good intentions (a derivative of the original meaning, namely to show you have no weapons), but nowadays, people only seem to see it as a very efficient way of spreading the flu virus.

Another important difference is the size of personal space. In Spain, a few centimeters between people in the supermarket line (or three or four meters between cars driving 130 km/h on the highway) is considered enough, if not ample; in the Netherlands, this invasion of your personal space is not only not acceptable, it is considered threatening. The first thing I think when someone gets this close is that they are trying to force me off the road/pick my pocket. My Dutch-grown instincts tell me to increase the distance, but of course often, there is nowhere to go. On the highway, I have learned to grit my teeth and "stand my ground"; in a supermarket line I have bumped into several people (which luckily is no big deal in Spain either) in an attempt to restore the balance. This reaction is in fact so automatic you can use it identify Northern Europeans who have not yet learnt this lessons at standing receptions: they will be the ones receding all across the room with a polite smile, while the person advancing will be from a culture where it is considered rude to remain so distant ... Of course, you might reach the wrong conclusion if you are observing two people of opposite gender, but the subject of "women are from Venus, men are from Mars" type differences is so vast I will have to save it for another blog entry.

And then there are differences that are related to personality. Many of my colleagues, for example, use first names much more than I do. To me, a first name is something relatively personal, almost intimate. I don't mind when people use it in passing, but when it is obviously used to try to manipulate me into doing something makes me wish I belonged to one of those cultures where the first name is seen as something quite special, to be shared only with friends. (Mental note to myself: if I ever lead a revolution, salespeople who insert my first name into every second sentence should be the first against the metaphorical wall).

So what is my hidden agenda here, you might ask. Nothing much: just a small critical note to counterbalance those among us who insist that we should celebrate diversity. Diversity is all very fine and well, but all these relatively minor problems can also pile up and sometimes make me wish I only had personal and gender differences to deal with ...

Repression and over-protectiveness

The other day, under the shower, I had one of those fleeting thoughts that seem to make perfect sense when you have them, but elude explanation afterwards. The thought was this: being over-protective about your children's safety is somehow similar to the repression, by society, of certain behaviours, such as drug use. It took me three days to find a more or less rational explanation for this intuitive mental leap.

The explanation is that being over-protective delays the transition from dependence to independence, and the sooner they can statnd on their own two feet, the better. This is not to say that we should let our children run wild, and learn everything all by themselves: parents definitely have a role to play. But the role should be one of guiding, helping them learn things, not telling them what to do every step of the way.

Every day, when we arrive home, my children crowd around the front door to get it, and I have to try to keep the youngest from bumping her head against the sharp metal corner of the mailbox while opening the door. My telling her to watch her head does not seem to help much - she is of the age and the height where her head seems to be magically and irresistably attracted to corners - and I am beginning to think she will have to hurt herself, possibly several times, to learn the lesson. The same applies to a lot of things children have to learn by experimentation, such as all the balance games they play (I only intervene when I think it really is too dangerous).


So how is this similar to drug use? Surely I am not suggesting that we should teach people how to use drugs? Well, in a sense, I am. I think it is time to admit we have lost the "war on drugs" and that some people are going to use drugs anyway, no matter what we do. If so, it makes more sense to focus on reducing the negative effects of drug use, both for the individual, and for the society. This is not to say that I would encourage it (any more than I encourage my children to experiment with their balance games), but repression is clearly not the answer, at least not in the long term.

The problem, of course, is fear. Fear is pretty effective at blocking reasonable arguments, and in both cases (as parents and as members of society) we have good reason to be afraid. But at least, it seems, we are slowly beginning to dismantle the worst taboos about drugs. It may have not yet quite reached mainstream US. television (a impregnable bastion of conventiality and traditionalism), but not so long ago, a fictional police chief in the HBO series "The Wire" actually established a prosecution-free drug zone in Baltimore.

Now if only I could stop cringing everytime my daughters take yet another risky step towards independence ...

'tis the season to be jolly ...

For people like me, the winter holiday season with all its abundance can be a bit of a challenge, for a number of reasons. For one, I am easily over-stimulated, and the holiday season is full of stimulants. Bright lights, music and holiday cheer, wine and rich food ... I like them all, but in moderation. And this especially true of presents.

As a child, I was taught (mostly by example) that Christmas is a religious event, which should not be about presents. And, although I am no longer religious in any way that counts, I still hold on to that idea. It is good to have a time to reflect, count your blessings, and celebrate togetherness. It is for this same reason that I oppose the new fashion of opening stores on Sundays: for me, Sunday is down-time. And that downtime should not be used to try to buy happiness (as if that were possible). And of course that means trying to avoid having Santa Claus visit our house.

But not to worry, because in our (Dutch-Spanish) case, we have two other options. Dutch children have traditionally been visited by Sinterklaas, who of course is in fact the same as Santa Claus (both names deriving from St. Nicolas, a 3rd century Turkish bishop famed for his generosity) but who, with the help of a small army of "Pieten", leaves his gifts on the 5th of December instead of the 25th. And we can also appeal to the Three Kings, who bring gifts to Spanish children on the 6th of January.

We have already explained to our children that these five wise old men actually talk to each other, to make sure that the wealth is divided fairly. We haven't been too specific about what "fair" means, other than that it is based on a general evaluation of the goodness of the children throughout the year (as opposed to being good in the weeks just prior to the happy occasion), and we have also had to explain that the number of presents does not depend on the quality of the drawings they leave, as one of my children tearfully admitted fearing the other day, because it is the intention and the goodness that counts. We have also explained that the wise men often consult parents, and that at times, it is necessary to enlist the help of normal humans ("impostors") because the holy men cannot be everywhere at once. Which brings me to the problem of logistics.

Ever since the birth of our children, we have been in Luxembourg around Saint Nicolas' day (which, to make matters even more complicated, is celebrated on the 6th of December in Luxembourg, not the 5th). So logically, our children expect to find something in their shoes. But we always go to Spain for Christmas. In principle, we would want the gifts to arrive on January 6th. But we are hardly ever in Spain on that date. Having them sent up to Luxembourg is not an option, because the grandparents want to be present when the gifts are opened. So, like many Spaniards (who have a different problem, namely that the children don't have enough time to enjoy their gifts if they get them on the sixth, just before school starts again), we allow the gifts to arrive on Christmas. Which leaves me out in the cold with my anti-materialist, anti-hedonist aspirations.

Of course, in only a few years, it will no longer be necessary to maintain the myth (even though we would want to maintain the magic). The other day, I almost let it slip that Saint Nicolas is dead. Later, I realized that my children would probably not be overly worried by the idea of someone rising from the dead to give them presents, but still, I am happy I was not forced to perpetuate a myth that I should start gently dismantling soon, at least in the case of my eldest. I/we have not quite figured out how to do this yet, but I imagine it will help if we start by offering reassurance as far as the gifts are concerned. But that is just part of the problem, the other part being a pre-adolescent version of the existentialist crisis that teenagers/adults suffer when - to paraphrase Nietzsche - they try to come to terms with the fact that God (or at least their image or perception thereof) is dead.

As such, this demystification is a very important step (a bit like a rite of passage), and I hope we will be able to handle this well. At the moment, the most promising approach seems to be explaining how metaphors and symbols work: St. Nicolas may no longer be with us in a literal, corporal sense, but he lives on in people's hearts and minds, and many follow his example of generosity and goodness. (I did not invent this idea of redefinition and internalization, of looking inwards instead of outwards, of course, it is just a slimmed down version of what Humanists like Erasmus did many centuries ago.)

Merry Christmas!

Read my lips

Like most "pleasers", I have never been very good at saying "no", which means I often agree to do things that I don't really want to do. This is not to say that I never say no - there is a big difference between things I don't really want to do, and things I really don't want to do - just that when comparing what I might get out of saying "yes" (in terms of approval/future cooperation) to the amount of work this will mean for me and the possible negative consequences of saying "no", the balance usually tips to the "yes" side. Of course, I do sometimes try to get out of things, and it is true that these attempts may sometimes be too subtle. I could probably be clearer, more assertive, especially when faced with people who simply do not want to hear an inconvenient "no". But I have difficulty discerning the - to me vague - dividing line between assertiveness and bluntness. When I try, I usually end up being rude.

I see a similar pattern in other areas - professional and private - in that I will acquiesce to things that I do not agree with, usually to avoid unpleasant conflicts. I know this is not ideal, but things are hardly ever the way I would like them to be, and you cannot fight the whole world. So for the past 25 years or so, I have accepted this as part of being me. But recently (and possibly because I am getting older) I have started to rethink this. It is not so much that I want to do less for others; in at least one sense (parenthood), I am doing more now than ever. Nor I am getting crankier and pickier with age: the things that bug me now are basically the same as ever.

No, the thing that bothers me most is how I am being forced - by a battle of attrition - to give up the principle of honesty. I am finding out that often, it is simply not possible - for any number of reasons - to give the real reasons for not wanting to do something. So you end up making polite excuses ("other commitments", "something came up" ...) that to me are so obviously a lie as to be rude. But people actually accept these excuses. Worse still: the other day, on "Lie to me" (a detective series where the protagonists depend heavily on body language to solve cases), it was mentioned that teenagers who are good at hiding their feelings are more popular. Apparently, our society not only accepts certain lies (or untruths), it actually rewards them.

Hmm.

The moral high ground

According to my interpretation of evolution (which I apply to just about everything under the sun, from organisms to organs, and from motion to emotion), there is, or was at some point in the past, a reason for everything that exists. Sometimes the thing continues to exist after its reason disappears (like certain architectural features that used to be necessary but are now merely ornaments) and some responses are exaggerated, but as a general rule, I find it useful to try to figure out why things exist.

Why, for example, is there such a thing as the feeling of "moral superiority"?

The other day, a colleague mentioned that he took the stairs and not the elevator not so much because it was healthy, but mostly because it was better for the environment. I bike to work when I can, always fill the dishwasher to capacity, and regulate the pressure of my morning shower so as not to waste hot water (less pressure means less water, but it can also be less hot, because less water splatters off). (I almost added that I only wash the car a few times a year to save the environment, but that would be less than completely truthful: mostly, I just hate washing the car).

I have been doing these things so long that I no longer really have any feelings about them, but when I first started "saving the environment", in my late teens, I distinctly remember feeling morally superior over those around me who did not. Of course, I did my best to hide this from other people - nobody likes a snooty, smug, self-satisfied do-gooder, but now, many years later, I wonder whether I would have ever done them had I not had that feeling as a reward.

Can it be that we as a society actually need snootiness, smugness, and feeling of being moral superior to help us do things that are better for us in the long term? And if so, should they be reclassified as virtues? If so, is my disdain and dislike for snooty, smug, morally superior self-satisfied people also a virtue? :-}

The same old same old

I spend a lot of timing thinking about the process of habituation, and there are several things that bother me about it. One is the lag time between the stimulus and the reaction, which is usually longer than I would prefer. When my wife and kids go off for a week or so, it usually takes me about three to four days to get used to their absence, for example. Then, just when I am beginning to enjoy my solitude, they come back, and I need another 3-4 days to get used to that. Or take the Luxembourg weather. It usually takes expats from more benign climates 20-30 years to get used to it. By which time they usually retire, and go back to where they came from.

And the second is the fact that, with time, organisms react less even though the strength of the stimulus remains the same (desensitization). Of course, it would be impossible to survive without this, because you would simply be overwhelmed by stimuli. And the process of habituation is also an important survival mechanism, because it allows us to adapt, and adaptability is one of the main criteria for survival at individual, group and species level.

But there are situations where it is better not to adapt. It is all very well for me to get desensitized to the problems I have with my my music software, and just accept the fact that it will usually take 2-4 times to create a final version of a recording. (I have tried to fix it, but without success. Now, I just take a deep breath and try again each time the problem occurs.). But it is not a good idea to get so used to working with dangerous chemicals that you forget the risks (a known problem in laboratories). And on a grander scale, it is not so good to get used to "just accept" injustice, abuse, needless suffering and so on.

Of course, there is another, opposite, risk, namely when the same stimulus evokes ever bigger reactions (over-reactions). For the human race, that is probably just as bad as desensitizing, and for the individual it is definitely worse. What would be best is to stayed somewhere in the middle: aware of the problems, and committed to do something about it, but not overly involved emotionally.

Sounds very Zen, I hope. Now if I could only find that balance in my own life ...

Scarred for life

The first time I read Richard Dawkins' assertion (in "The Selfish Gene") that physical scars help their (male) bearers attract potential mates because they indicate survival skills, I felt quite pleased, because I have lots of scars. At the time, I did not stop to think whether this was a valid conclusion; I just accepted it as unexpected good news. This morning under the shower, however, I realized that almost none of my scars count in the way Dawkins meant.

For one thing, most of them are not very visible, either because they have faded with time (the ones on my chin, from an accident when I was four and the one across my eyebrow, from when my face collided with a toilet door during student party) or because they are usually covered (I have several on my scalp and behind my ear and one on my knee from a car accident, one on my stomach from an operation when I was one) or both (the scratches on my back - long story, better left untold). I even have one that was hidden on purpose, by a well-intentioned surgeon who had obviously not read or believed the scar theory.

For another, my scars do not indicate the type of survival skills Dawkins meant (he was referring to the animal kingdom). There is of course nothing wrong with surviving accidents and operations (as I say in my song "Unfair", the alternative is worse),



but you could also argue that it would be better not to have accidents (who knows, I might be a Bermuda triangle on legs) or need operations. And of course, accidents and illness can leave you worse off (Nietsche's idea that "what doesn't kill us makes us stronger" might be true collectively, on the level of the species, but does not necessarily apply to the individual), if only in the sense that they may also leave mental scars. No, the scars that really count in this context are battle scars.

In the world I live in, however, male survival depends on more than just physical prowess. People might still be impressed by muscles and Heidelberg duelling scars (which apparently are still quite popular!), but that really only counts in the initial stages of a relationship. Very soon after that, most males will have to prove they also have provider skills (either directly - a steady job, or indirectly - the qualities necessary to make money).

Luckily, I no longer need my scars for anything (I have built my nest already, and a very nice nest it is). But it is still a bit sad to have to trash yet another illusion ... as a general rule, I am all for truth and demystification. But sometimes it is nicer not to peek behind the curtain.

Life is a project

These past few weeks I have had several occasions to yet again witness the parallelisms between my personal and professional life. As a project manager, this is not so odd, of course, because projects are all around, even if you are not completely obsessed with project management. One example: one Friday evening a few weeks back, my six-year old (who is very into arts and crafts) announced she wanted to make a pinball machine [expression of the need, in project management terms]. It didn't take long for me to figure out that she was not thinking of the kind that I used to play on as a teenager: she wanted something along the lines of a wooden one she had played with at her after-school activity center [project definition and scope].

I told her that it was much too late to start work, and she ran away to sulk in a corner [negotiation and prioritization]. So I said that although we couldn't start work, we could draw the basic design [drafting of preliminary functional requirements]. The next morning, she [in her capacity of project "owner" or "sponsor"] woke me at seven, insisting that we start work immediately. So we did. I explained [with a view to project planning], however, that we should not start directly on the wooden version, and that it would be better to make a cardboard one [a model or prototype] first. As we worked, she kept a close eye on [monitored] progress, and made several change requests along the way. The most important one was her insistence that the prototype be fully functional (a good case of project creep if I ever saw one). This included mounting the cardboard structure on a plank of wood which was raised at one end (to ensure the proper inclination) and attaching close-pins by way of flippers. The end result, though definitely not a work of art, did in fact pass the factory testing (by me, in my role of developer/implementer) and the preliminary user acceptance tests (my daughter/sponsor). Of course, I was now beginning to get worried that we had used up all our time [resources] on the prototype, and dreaded having to inform my sponsor. She however was not worried; she was happy with the prototype, especially after having shown it to her sister [phase II of the user acceptance testing], who was duly impressed. This also signaled the official end of the project (the sign-off consisting of a "Thank you, daddy" and a kiss and a hug).

The meta-society

I have been struggling with a concept for which I am sure a word exists, but which I don't know. The concept is a bit like what you get when you place two mirrors face to face in such a way that you get reflections of reflections, but with the difference that these reflections can go on and on to infinity, until your head spins, while in my examples (see the list below) they are usually limited to a single repetition. More like an echo of an echo, in fact.

Humanities (language, art, etc.):

• Songs about music
• Plays about theater
• Books about writing (and blogs on blogs)
• Photos of photos (and paintings of paintings)
• Talking about talking
• Thinking about thinking
• Learning to learn
• Terminology about terminology

Business, IT etc.:

• Maintaining maintenance
• Automating automation
• Investing in investments, betting on bets
• Managing project management (projects about projects)
• Planning to plan
• Estimating estimation, evaluating evaluations, assessing assessments, rating ratings
• Information about information (meta-data)
• Reports on reports (and apparently, there are even reports on reports on reports ...!)
• Politikerpolitik

Other/general

• Having feelings about feelings
• Having opinions about opinions
• Obsessing about obsessions
• Discriminating discrimination (or being intolerant of intolerance)
• Being judgmental about judging
• Being addicted to addiction
• Making lists of lists
• Exceptions to exceptions
• Arguing about arguing
• Friends of friends
• Liking a like (in Facebook etc.)

There are a few exceptions to the "bouncing once" rule: you can actually learn about learning to learn, and you can have feelings about having feelings about feelings, but I try not to think about those things too much, because - like reflections of reflections - they too make my head spin.

Postscript: just now, at work, I gave some input on giving input. It is contagious.

What's in a name

I think I may have already made remarks, in one of my entries, about one of the many limitations of languages, namely that the same word may mean several different things. The other day I was confronted with it yet again while helping my 6-year-old with her homework. In the course of two simple exercises, we came across four homonyms. And of course, it didn't take her long to ask the "but why, daddy?" question. I explained (carefully avoiding complex issues of etymology and phonetic transcription) that there are only so many sounds but many many things that you want to say, so some words are used for different things. She agreed with me that it would be nice, and much less confusing, if each word were to mean just one thing.

Which reminded me of the fact that I am in a band without a name. We have been talking about the name ever since the band was formed, four months ago, and have already considered and rejected some 40-50 ideas. Some were just plain stupid, of course (proving that you do not need much of a brain to do brainstorming) but quite a few were actually okayish, but were rejected because they get significant number of hits when Googled. Not that I think we have to be absolutely unique, but still: if you want to use the web for publicity purposes, you had better make sure your band's name comes in the top few hits, and that is very hard to do if someone else already occupies that spot.

I even Googled a few less serious ideas out of curiosity (like "Thinking out loud" and "Work in Progress" - two of my trademark phrases) but they already exist.

Several centuries ago, the Swedish botanist Carl Linneaus transposed what his father had done for his family (namely adopt a permanent last name) to taxonomy by introducing binominal nomenclature, thereby virtually solving, single-handedly, the problems of homonyms in the animal and plant kingdoms. Maybe I should go one step further and do the same for band names, e.g. by always adding the origin. In the case, I could call the band "Thinking out loud in Luxembourg" or "Work in progress in Luxembourg". There is just one problem: nobody will ever hit on something like that by accident, which means you have to be well-known before you can become well-known ...

You are what you drink

I haven't yet had a chance to look them up (a polite way of saying I'm too lazy, and prefer the sound of my keyboard to that of my lips moving as I mouth the more difficult words of undoubtedly heavy academic texts), but I'm sure there are serious studies on the link between food and drink and other aspects of human civilization, such as religion and political system.
But instead of making this another illegible treatise, here is my little slurping and burping summary of Western history, as seen from the point of view of liquids.

It all started with water: the infant Democracy was raised on rain. Then, there was wine, which was great fun until it toppled the Roman Empire (the preservatives used in the wine apparently made them go mad). But the Catholic Church survived, and carried the wine, now sacred, along in silver and gold chalices. Islam tried to return to water (not much of a surprise here, considering their dry and dusty desert origins), and up north, where grapes don't grow, the beer belt belched forth the Protestants, quite a few of which escaped to plant their grain in another belt, in the U.S. And to complete my little overview, even further north and to the east, the Communist revolution was fuelled by "little water" (vodka).

Now of course, we all drink just about anything; the world has become one big drinks mixer. No wonder so many people's lives are on the rocks.

I'll have mine shaken, but not stirred, please.

Satellite dishes and foreigners

An article I read a while back in "352" (an English language periodical in Luxembourg) about the difficulties some people experience in getting their neighbours to let them mount satellite dishes on their balconies prompted me to write a letter about the underlying causes for the problems. Here, in slightly changed form, are the contents of that letter.

The most-used argument against satellite dishes is aesthetic. I agree that they make city streets even more cluttered than they already are, but I do think that within 10 or 20 years they will cease to bother most of us, much in the same way we have learned to ignore other things that were once reviled as eye-sores (such as trains and cars at some point in the past).

I think, however, that their perceived ugliness is just the surface of the problem, and that if you dig just a little deeper, you will very quickly come up against a more general resistance to change, and the desire of most people to control their own environment. Both are very human and understandable traits, and as such of course very difficult to do anything about.

But matters become even more difficult (and emotional) when you add the link between satellite dishes and foreigners. This is a touchy subject, but an important one. Where I come from (the Netherlands), you can easily identify big-city lower-class neighbourhoods with high numbers of non-Dutch inhabitants by the number of satellite dishes. Here in Luxembourg, satellite dishes are not linked to class, but they are definitely more popular amongst foreigners than amongst locals.

The problem, in such cases, is not only the fact that satellite dishes call more attention to the presence of foreigners (a cause of concern or irritation for some), but also that these satellite dishes - being a direct link to their respective countries of origin - can be seen as an indication of their not wanting to integrate. Irrespective of whether this is true, I can say from personal experience that having access to sources of information in my own language certainly diminishes the need to integrate. During my 13 years here in Luxembourg, I have only reached a limited degree of proficiency in French, but know virtually no Luxembourgish, mainly because I did not need it in my professional life, and because I know I will not be here forever. But I completely understand Luxembourgers (and especially the older generation) who are less than happy with the increasing numbers of foreigners who cannot really communicate in any of the languages of the Grand Duchy, and would not want to do anything that would maintain that situation, or even make it worse.

Controlling emotions

Something funny happened a while back. I got into an argument with someone about something that was not really very important, and it became quite heated. To me, it was so obvious that I was right, but he didn't seem to see my point of view. In the end, I spent several days after the argument fuming over it, and blaming the other person for my anger and frustration.

It took me quite a while to calm down and realise that - irrespective of who was right (me) or wrong (him) - the blame for my frustration and anger was all my own. And the funny thing was that - contrary to what I myself would have thought - accepting the blame made me feel better, not worse. But I couldn't figure out why, until a few days ago, when I realised that it is all about control. When I blame others for how I feel, I basically put them in control of my emotions, with of course very frustrating results. Accepting responsbility for my own emotions puts me back in control.

I am feeling so happy about this little discovery that I think I might go pick an argument with someone, just get some practice in controlling my own emotions. But it has to be relatively trivial. Ooooh, I know! I will try to convince the neighbour to stop practicing the piano at ten o'clock at night. And I will do so by practicing songs I do not know very well on my electric guitar, and aiming the amplifier towards the connecting wall, at the same time. That should get the discussion going quite well. If I can really control myself, we will soon be playing in four or five-part harmony: piano, guitar, doorbell, percussion (banging on the door when I don't answer the bell) and vocals (shouting).

Effort vs. results

Question: should you reward people for their efforts, or for results?

This sounds very theoretical, but it can cause big dilemmas. When my daughter makes me a drawing that I don't think is very good, for example, I will thank her for the gift, and try to find something positive to say about it, but I will not exclaim "what a lovely drawing!" if it is obviously below her normal standard (or far below that of children in her age group) for two reasons: (1) because children need to learn to distinguish between what is good enough, and what is not, and the only way to learn this is feedback from others, and (2) because false praise (which my children will certainly recognize as such, given how terrible I am at lying) teaches children that insincerity is normal, which creates another, bigger problem down the road.

So I will probably try to tell her - with the necessary diplomacy - where the picture might be improved, i.e. I lean towards the results side. According to what I have been reading lately about improvement processes, it is probably better to focus more on the process and not the results, but I am probably too old-fashioned to do that.

But how about adults? Where I work, we have a punch-clock that keeps track of our presences and absences, the rule being that you clock in when you arrive in the morning, clock out for lunch, then clock back in after lunch, and clock out again when you leave. All of this is designed to make sure that everyone works (or at least is physically in the office) during a certain minimum number of hours each month. Which is basically a measurement of effort.

Some colleagues argue that the number of hours should not matter, because they can finish all their work quicker than others doing the same type of work by working faster/harder/smarter, and they are not happy to have to sit in the office just because someone else is not as efficient/smart/hardworking as they are. Which reminds me of a beautiful episode of Dilbert, where someone yet again wins the employee of the month award because of all the hours of unpaid overtime she spent compensating her own inefficiency.

As far as I am concerned, the "reward" for minimum effort and standard work is the paycheck, and people that produce results that exceed the norm get something extra (a compliment, a raise in pay, a promotion). I would definitely not reward extra effort that is counter-productive. Which is not to say I would penalize the above-cited "employee of the month", because it is up to management to guard against the worst mismatches between skill and responsibility. So instead of giving her the award, the pointy-haired boss should give up his bonuses.

If I ever get to be a manager, I won't have that problem: my hair is not pointy.

Taking things personally

Lately, I have been thinking a bit about how people react to the actions of others (individuals, groups, or organisations), and more specifically about how sometimes, people (myself included) may get upset about relatively minor things and "take things personally" even though that is not in their own interest. Examples abound: the world is full of drivers who obviously don't know the traffic rules, or worse, couldn't care less, people who make your life miserable by their constant nagging/whining/complaining etc. etc., rude and inconsiderate sales staff, incompetent colleagues, argumentative and incooperative civil servants, and family members whose very presence is an insult and an injury (just kidding, and please don't murder me in my sleep!).

But the main focus here is not on the perpetrator/initiator of the action, but on how it may in fact be possible to change the way you react by analysis. Here are some elements to consider, grouped as actions and reactions.

In the category actions, we need to consider

• the focus or target of the action, if any: was it directed at you as an individual, at you as a member of a certain social or racial group, or was the action not actually directed at anyone?
• the intent, if any: were the consequences for others part of the plan, was it just thoughtlessness or an inability to see the effect on others, or were such effects considered irrelevant (an example of which would be the oft-used phrase by silver screen gangsters "just business" - as if that makes you feel any better about being maimed or killed)?
• (in some cases, such as insults): the type and intensity of the stimulus or action: was this normal or extreme behaviour, by the current culture’s or subculture’s standards?
  

In the category reactions, we need to consider

• whether your/my interpretation of the stimulus was correct (did the person really call me a "blurque", or was I just hearing things that are not there? Was it perhaps a joke? Was it in fact not aimed at me, but at humanity in general, and if so, should that make a difference?), all of which in turn helps determine whether your/my reaction was appropriate;
• the type of threat: is it just a question of personal pride or self-image, or is there a more tangible threat to your interests (e.g. your job, chances for promotion, etc.); and
• the intensity of the reation: superficial, or does the hurt go deeper, even to the point of making you doubt your own abilities. And if so, is that really the fault of the other, or is it your own fault, for feeling so insecure?

On the whole, I would say that trying to answer the questions posed by each of the above should usually help to calm you down. It might take an hour, but it gets quicker with practice, and it is worth it. (Basically, this is an extended version of the “count to ten” technique, with the added value that you might actually discover something you didn’t realise you knew). Of course, that only works if you really try to be truthful, and that takes courage and some degree of calm. If you are really furious, you probably need a sauna and a massage first.

Mobility and social change

The politic-economical history of our part of the world can then be summarized (and simplified) as (1) nomadic tribal life, (2) agricultural civilizations (including the Celts, Greeks, Romans, and other "classic" civilizations, and the feudal system of the Dark and Middle Ages), (3) industrial civilization, and (4) the information age.

In an earlier draft of this entry, I argued that what we now call the information age is not essentially different from previous history, because discoveries were already at the root of many historic events, including the change from each of the three phases mentioned. But then I realized that the information age does distinguish itself in one important aspect, namely the intended audience of information. In the past, although the most important ideas (making fire and weapons, the wheel, spoken language and writing, etc. etc.), probably spread like wildfire, they were not meant for everyone. Certainly within organized civilizations, information was guarded carefully within the various upper and middle classes (rulers, administrators, soldiers, priests, merchants and artisans).

The first clear example of a break in this tradition that I can think of (I am sure there are others) are the translations of the Bible into German, English, etc., thereby making it accessible to the common man. This was of course instrumental in the rise of the Protestants, and the fall of the Catholic Church. And over the course of the industrial age, the level of schooling for the middle and lower classes rose bit by bit, until we now have a situation where there is a certain degree of upward mobility. And I just saw the culmination of a very recent one, namely a proposal to give all U.K. citizens access to their own medical data, via Internet. You could in fact summarize recent socio-political developments as an upgrading of the lower classes (abolishment of slavery, voting rights for all in most countries), and a downgrading the upper ones (either in terms of power - royalty that is just there for show - or in terms of the amount of respect they command), and both are in my view very closely linked to increased access of information for the masses.

So why did I call this entry "mobility and change" (and not "information and change")? Because the exchange (or "mobility", if you will) of information is only one important driving force behind social change. An other, possibly equally important one is physical mobility. In the beginning, individual humans were limited to the distance they could walk. Then, they learned to ride a horse. Then came the wheeled transport (carts, trains, cars) and aerial transport (balloons, the airplane, etc). Each development increased the rate of change. And here again we see a similar trend as with information, with mass transport coming into its own in the last hundred years or so, starting (in some countries at least) with trains, and followed by cars and now cheap air travel. And this has had a profound effect on society. Language barriers have restricted mobility somewhat, but even that is becoming less and less of an issue. In the end, this mobility, and the ever-more global economy (or mobility of goods), will almost certainly contribute to the "harmonization" or "levelling" of cultures and the loss of certain aspects thereof, and of languages. This may not be such a bad thing as some make it out to be, but it does give pause, I hope.

One might be tempted to conclude that we have reverted to the hunter-gatherer stage. But there is an important difference: nowadays, families might move (and in some cases only one member the family), but not whole tribes. And the cost of this refound freedom is loss of social cohesion for society at large and rootlessness for the individual. Personally, I have moved house 15 times, and have never lived in the same house for more than 7 years in row, and though this has been an advantage in terms of language skills and the scope of my outlook on life, I do miss having long-term relationships that most people take for granted.

Sins and virtues

I had wanted to call this item "the seven sins and virtues", but in fact, I only have six on offer.

It's a long story. Two weeks ago, my wife gave our children a large fake-ancient keyring, with seven fake-ancient keys. Like most children, our children follow the general maxim that "any present is a good present", but in this case they didn't really know what to think. My wife quickly invented something about doorways and secrets and magic but, also being my kids, they demanded a much more tangible and rational explanation. So the problem was passed on to me, the idea being that I would invent a story about the seven keys.

I soon hit on the idea of writing about the seven virtues (they are definitely not old enough for a story about the seven sins), and happily set off in search of web-based wisdom on the subject. Within a matter of hours I had enough information to start. I collected all the so-called virtues (modesty, prudence, beauty, chastity, etc.) I could find - in the end, I had about 100 - in a single document, printed that out, and then cut out each virtue and started sorting them. The end result of this exercise, which again took several hours, spread out over several days/sorting sessions, was the identification of clusters of related virtues. More importantly, the sorting allowed me to refine my own personal definition of a virtue (namely by excluding good qualities that are mostly genetic, such as health, strength, intelligence, etc.) and to also exclude values that I consider outmoded (mostly also religious values). Out of the original eight, I now have six left. Here they are, not in any particular order:

KNOWLEDGE
attention, focus, awareness (incl. of self), consciousness, discernment, sensitivity, perceptiveness
curiosity, love of learning, knowledge (incl. of self), understanding, intuition, foresight

GETTING THINGS DONE
enthusiasm, passion, hopefulness, optimism, motivation, commitment, dedication, determination, responsiveness
caution, prudence
efficiency
communication skills
diligence, industriousness
fortitude, courage
patience, perseverance, tenacity, resilience, stress-resistance, endurance
purposefulness
assertiveness, self-respect, confidence, autonomy, independence, self-reliance
flexibility, adaptability

HUMANITY
caring, mercy, nurturing, benevolence
consideration, thoughtfulness, tactfulness, discretion, courteousness, respectfulness (of others)
forgiveness
friendliness, kindness, gentleness, lovingness
generosity, hospitality, charity, sharing
sympathy, empathy, compassion
cooperativeness, helpfulness, altruism, unselfishness

JUSTICE
obedience, morality, sense of ethics
judgement, priotisation, decisiveness
equity, fairness, impartiality, justice
honor, integrity
faithfulness, fidelity, loyality
dependability, trustworthiness, responsibility
sincerity, honesty, openness, candor, truthfulness

TEMPERANCE
balance
humility, modesty, moderation, temperance
restraint, self-control, self-discipline

TRANSCENDANCE
appreciation, thankfulness
acceptance, contentment
detachment, equanimity, sense of humor, sense of perspective
wisdom

Now, if I can only find a way to turn this into a children's story ...

Cold turkey (internet style)

Lately, there have been a lot of coincidences in my life. Of course I know that most coincidences are really just the result of heigthened awareness of something (suddenly seeing things that were there all along), but still. The other day, I started investigating the seven virtues, with the idea of perhaps using them in a story. That very same day, on t.v., "click on-line" had an item on a computer game that used the seven virtures and vices.

And yesterday, while cleaning up some old books, I came across a letter of someone I met once, more than 30 years ago. Out of curiosity, I tried finding him on the Internet, but didn't. I did find several references to a woman with the same last name, who was apparently a well-known authority on computer addiction, and had lately been working on Internet addiction.

That very evening my router and modem died, and I was able to experience Internet withdrawal symptoms* first hand. It is terrible. So terrrible, that I am writing this entry from my place of work (a definite no-no in my book, but addicts will stop at nothing to feed their addiction ...)

*I first wrote "cold turkey" but later realized that in fact, it was more like being in a methadon program, because I still had access to a watered-down substitute version of Internet at work.

Postscript: I am back on-line again. My drug dealer/internet provider gave me a new router and modem, and it took me all of ten nerve-racking minutes to be up and running again. Sigh!

Communication problems

One of my (many, many) pet peeves is lack of clarity in written or oral expression. In the last few weeks, the issue has come up several times. At work, I usually spend a lot of time making my professional emails as clear as possible. I do this not so much as a matter of principle or courtesy to the reader, but more to avoid misunderstandings, which are very inefficient. Even so, the other day, I used my own mental shorthand in an email. As I hit the “send” button, I knew that there was something wrong, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on the problem, and I had already spent more than two hours whittling it down to a more palatable size, and needed to send it. It was not long before I got a request for clarification.

At home, people often assume that things will be better: the combination of shared experiences and the hours of practice often make it possible to communicate certain things very effectively. But other times domestic communication, and especially between partners, can be a complete disaster. My personal collection includes vagueness as an art form (“could you give me that thing from over there, honey?”) and the unfinished thought (as in “I was thinking that on Sunday we could …” followed by a long, totally meaningless silence).

I blame familiarity. Not that I would go as far as to call this kind of laziness “contempt”, but it is a bit like working in a laboratory with dangerous substances. After a while, you tend to forget how dangerous the substances are, and you start getting sloppy. Please note that I am not trying to compare family members with dangerous substances (although some are), just that you should take care not to assume that others will know what you mean just because you know what you mean. 20 years of marriage does not a mind reader make.

Of course, effective communication really is a lot of work. In my case, I have the added difficulty of having to cross cultural and linguistic boundaries, but even within the same language and culture communication it can be more effort than most people are willing to put into it. But – and here I return to one of my hobby horses – it is again a question of finding the right balance between the (often illusionary) short term gain and the long term advantage. Taking the effort to word things in such a way that they not only *can* be understood, but are very difficult to misunderstand, is good practice at work and home alike.

Now all I need do is find the correct cost/benefit ratio …

Getting what you want

This morning, sitting by the side of the pool, I saw human society in a nutshell. In and around the pool were children of different ages, watched over by several adults (myself included). Most of the time, the children swam and played happily. But ever so often, conflict would break out, e.g. over a certain toy. When it did, I could see the children apply a whole arsenal of tactics to get what they wanted. These tactics fall into two main categories: autonomous action, and recurring to an authority (a parent, other adult, or possibly an older child).

Autonomous actions can be split into physical actions, the most direct one being simply grabbing whatever it is you want. Or, if you are not strong or quick enough, you can try distracting the opponent first, then grabbing (best of course being a real distraction that allows one to safely claim that the other was no longer playing with the toy, but if that doesn't work, an unexpected poke in the eye can also be quite distracting). There are however two problems with the above "solutions": the risk of painful repraisal by the child who had the toy first, and the risk of one of the adults seeing you and intervening, by either taking away the toy again, or worse, by imposing punishment for bad behaviour.

(Of course, there is always the possibility of waiting for the other to lose interest in the toy, and grabbing it then, but that is an adult solution. When you are young, five minutes can be an eternity when every cell in your body is screaming for the surfboard/water pistol/ball etc.)

The second group of autonomous actions can be grouped together as "negotiating". But there is negotiating and negotiating. Usually, the child will start with a simple statement of what he or she wants, but this can range from the relatively polite request (can I have that now?), to a flat statement of fact (I want that!), to quite demanding (Gimme that!). When that doesn't work, and depending on their relationship to their opponent, they can resort to cajoling, pleading and arguing (in which case the central point is often an appeal to the other's sense of fairness), crying (attempt at emotional manipulation), or threatening (which includes threatening to tell the parents). And then there is the more rational type of negotiating, which usually includes a compromise or trade-off. Of course, this too is rife witjust h manipulation and power games, with older children often fooling the younger ones into accepting less than fair conditions, but it is definitely a step forward from grabbing what you want.

And then there is the other main option, which is recurring to an authority. In doing so, children apply most of the tactics just mentioned. The only difference is that adults are easier to manipulate emotionally. For little girls, crying usually does wonders to make a parent give you what you want (and hopefully at the expense of the other child); for little boys, anger is usually considered more appropriate. Of course, some parents are quite good at recognizing theatrics, but even those can't always be bothered to get to the bottom of an issue, the end result often being the short-term solution: grabbing the toy away from whoever has it, and yelling at your children to stop yelling.

Of course, what they should really do is teach their children how to negotiate fairly, and offer them help in the form not of decisions, but of ideas and alternatives. In the long run, that would definitely increase the total amount of peace and quiet. The problem is that that is really a lot of work. And work is the last thing on your mind when you are relaxing in the shade by the pool.

I think a lot of the people (read also classes/nations) are relaxing by the side of the pool.

Holidays

Just a quick note to let both my regular readers know that my recent absence is not laziness but lack of Internet access.

More things I love to hate

In one of my previous entries, I listed a few "things I love to hate", in an aside. Since then, I have been thinking a lot about the common denominator between them. But it's more fun to let you, the reader, try to figure it out yourself. Here are, in more or less random order, some of the things I love to hate.

filter cigarettes
alcohol-free beer
decaf coffee
sugar substitutes
sugar and caffeine-free cola
vegetarian hamburgers

perfume
high heels
make-up

breast implants
botox lips

OK, the last two are a bit of a give-away: everything on the list is about "faking it". The first set are all foodstuffs where we have taken out the key ingredient. This may be useful for those among us who want to stop smoking, drinking, going on sugar highs or getting too fat, but they should be temporary solutions, not permanent fixtures in our lives. If you want to avoid the risks of tobacco, stop smoking (I know it's hard, but it can be done), if you are worried about caffeine or alcohol, drink tea or water, and if you, like me, are worried about sugar, find a healthy substitute, not this artificial stuff with unknown side effects.

The second set are things women do - on purpose/consciously or not - to increase their attractiveness. Perfume, when used properly, can smell very nice, but does make it impossible to detect the natural smells, which can be quite important. According to a BBC programme I saw some time ago, smell is one of the most important crtieria for deciding on potential partners. High heels force the hips into a position that makes them look bigger, and big, tilted hips is interpreted as a symbol of fertility. Naturally red, enlarged lips and dark areas around women's eyes are also signs of fertility. In modern western society, we are bombarded by good-smelling, well-dressed women in high heels and make-up: more and more, this is standard office attire. I think this is a shame for several reasons, one also because it makes it all the more difficult to read the real signs when they are there. Personally, I prefer not be fooled, confused or manipulated.

As for the last two items on the list, all I can say is do it very, very well or not at all. There's nothing more disappointing than discovering how a trick works while the magic show is still on.

Not enough words to go round

Vocabulary, is what we need my friend
Vocabulary, is what we need
Vocabulary, is what we need, my friend
but there are not enough words to go round ...

The other day - for a reason that now escapes me, but definitely made sense at the time - I had to explain to my daughter of five what homonyms are. I find it very useful, explaining things to children, because you have to reduce things to their essence without oversimplifying. In the case of homonyms, my explanation basically came down to the observation that we do not have enough words to describe everything, so we often use the same word to mean very different things. The examples I gave to her included the Dutch word "zei" ("said"), which is pronounced exactly the same way as the pronoun "zij" (which means "she" or "her"). Luckily, she didn't ask why adults are so stupid as not to have language where each word means only one thing, and there is a word for each thing, because that would have been impossible to explain.

Take for example two very important words: "rule" and "law". Both can be used to mean "something that naturally happens more or less the same way repeatedly", such as in "laws of nature", or - more often in the context of human society - a behavior we would like to either impose or penalize, such as in "rules of conduct". How is it that we cannot invent some words without this built-in ambiguity? Or the word right, for example, which can mean quite a few different, including "correct" (as in "I am right") and "something you can lay a claim to" ("I have the right to remain silent"). And the list goes on and on. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say that the 5000 most common words in the English language probably have an average of 2-3 meanings each, or more. The average is presumably a lot lower for specialist jargon, but even there, you will find this problem: the word "pitch", for example, has three different meanings in aviation alone.

So how do go about carving a masterpiece of meaning, if words are such blunt tools? The answer, of course, is by creating context, or combining words with other words. This does not completely eradicate the possibility of error, but it does reduce it significantly. In the case of the example I gave to my daughter, for example, I had to admit the theoretical possibility that someone hearing "hij zei" ("he said") might actually understand "he zij" ("he she"), but in most cases, the second combination of words wouldn't mean anything, and listeners would reject it as a possibility without even really thinking about it.

To be continued ....

A quagmire of grey in the land of right and wrong

This morning, I posted an entry with some pretty heavy life-and-death stuff on how relative right and wrong is, and how what is right for some may be wrong for the rest, and vice versa. Usually, once I finish something, it will leave me alone. But no this time. As I walked down to the park near my house, I was struck by yet another example of the conflict of interests between the individual and the society at large. What I saw was a car parked in a space reserved for invalids.

This space for invalids was created about two years ago, but merging two existing parking spaces into one and placing a sign. I suspect that the original reason for creating the parking space was to either make it easier for invalids to access the park (in which the prohibition should coincide with the opening hours of the park), or the hotel nearby (which is open 24 hours a day), or both. Whatever the intention, there are often car. But judging from the number of cars without invalid stickers that park there, it is obvious that many people interpret it to mean that it is prohibited to park there during working hours.

The car I saw this morning (Sunday) was presumably yet another example of this. Being a "good" citizen who normally respects traffic rules and regulations, I was very tempted (as I often am) to check with the parking police, to see whether or not it is acceptable to park there, knowing full well that that might mean that the car parked there now might be towed off. But I won't. Not because I have any sympathy for the owner - I can even derive a certain amount of glee from seeing a poorly maintained car with French license plates be carted off to the impound - but because (and here comes the ethical dilemma) every car parked there, legally or otherwise, means better chances for me of finding a space. The parking situation is not exactly dire in our neighbourhood, but every space counts.

Now I expect some of you will feel some righteous indignation: have I no sympathy or respect for invalids?!? Of course I do. But in the more than two years since the creation of the special parking space, I have not once seen an invalid park there. Nor have I ever seen an illegally parked car being hauled off, which suggests to me that it does not happen very often. So, rather than petitioning city hall (possibly in vain) for the removal of a parking space which is probably hardly ever used by invalids, I allow the situation to continue.

One last note: it is funny to see how emotional people (myself included) can get about traffic regulations. In fact, I suspect that people can actually get more emotional about small, "trivial" issues than about important ones, because they feel that the small ones should not be an issue in the first place. So in fact, they not only get upset about the issue, they also get upset about getting upset.

Post scriptum (almost a week later now): you know how it never rains when you remember to take an umbrella, or how the superslow supermarket cash-out line suddenly starts moving quite briskly the moment you change to another line? Well, this morning, there was an invalid parked in the invalid space. All I needed do was complain and - as Deepak Chopra puts it - the universe will take care of it.

Moral relativism

While reading Obama's "The Audicity of Hope" I came across the concept "moral relativism", a term I didn't know existed, but which is a nice concise description of how I see things. It's nice to find a glove that fits: I am definitely a moral relativist. In fact, in spite of my general aversion of any extreme or fanatical position, I would say I am such a relativist that you might start to wonder whether I can distinguish between right and wrong at all. I think I can, but to me, right and wrong only exist in context. I am not talking so much about how ethics change with time (although they do), but more about the fact that there are different levels. There is right and wrong for the individual, the family, the group or class, the nation, the species ... and we spend a good part of our lives trying to resolve the conflicts that arise as a result.

Of course, it would be much more convenient to have universal rules of conduct, but I have yet to find them. Take our attitude towards life, for example. As a general principle, we want to protect it. This is seen as "only natural", and the drive is so strong that I still feel bad about a few tadpoles that I caught with my daughter some weeks ago, and that died because I didn't know how to take care of them. But there are situations where the general "life is holy" principle might be justifiably suppressed. I have great deal of sympathy, for example, for rape victims who do not want to have the child of their aggressor, especially since in most cases, it will mean taking care of them for years. And I have even more sympathy for the mothers of children who are the result of incest, where - in addition to having a constant reminder of what can only have been a traumatic experience - there is a significant risk of having a child with serious health problems. And I am not at all sure that life should be prolonged as long as possible, no matter what the condition of the patient. So here we have a conflict between the group interest, and the interests of one or a few individuals.

Or the disagreement about immigration, which arises from a number of different conflicts at the same time, namely between the rich (who stand to benefit from cheap labour for menial jobs), the immigrants (higher income), the lower class in the receiving country (unhappy about the competition from the outside), both nations (evening out of the income differences), the human race as a species (mixing of genes, when the immigrants stay and interrmarry), etc. etc.

I have no solutions for the above problems, but I would like to suggest that we try to avoid being unduly swayed by our emotions when deciding on them. Not that I am against emotion per se: as a survival mechanism, it has served us well for millions or years. But there are at least three problems with emotions: they are very imprecise and error-prone (having been badly frightened by a clown as a child may leave you with a lasting fear of all clowns), and they are or can be "contagious" (which can lead to mass hysteria, for example), and, like everything that has been hard-coded by evolution, they are slow to adapt to changing circumstances. In fact, thought is the only survival mechanism that can keep up with change. Which is why we rely on it so much. But there is a problem with thought as well: it not only helps us keep up with change, it can actually cause it. But that is a different story ...

Body language and ethics

As an offshoot of a course I just did, I am reading the Definitive Guide to Body Language. I have some reservations about some of the explanations as to why we do certain things, but it does contain many interesting observations, and some advice that may prove very useful as well. On several occasions, the authors mention a cause-and-effect loop between a pose or gesture and the emotion behind it, and suggest that you can change how you feel by changing your body language. Research has shown, for example, that smiling can improve your spirits, even if you do it on purpose, without feeling particularly happy. It seems likely that similar relationships will also exist between other emotions and the accompanying body language (frowning, adopting an aggressive or defensive pose, etc.)

Of course, this is just a one-person version of a two- or more-person phenomenon that the authors call "mirroring", and which consists of - usually unconsciously - copying the body language and accompanying emotions of others. Of course, most people would associate this kind of behaviour with fluffy white scatterbrained animals that bleat but I don't mind much when the result is bonding and reinforcement of positive emotions. I am however much less charmed by the flip-side of this coin, namely lynch-mobs and mass paranoia.

But what I am really interested in, is this. If - like most things that have been around a long time - there is an evolutionary reason for this mechanism, then it means that, however much we may like to look down on it, copying the behaviour of others is beneficial in the long run (which is the time-frame within which evolution works). Of course, it is possible that the negative behaviour serves a purpose all of its own, but I suspect that it is just a question of the benefits of positive reinforcement outweighing the negative aspects.

I do see certain similarities with a theory described by Dawkins in "The Selfish Gene", about how a society of "sheep" can tolerate a certain number of wolves, but that if the percentage for whatever reason surpasses a certain threshold, the balance shifts completely to the other (baaaaahhhd) side, and you get a society of wolves, with only a few sheep. All of which brings me to a very convoluted conclusion, namely that what we normally define as "good" and "positive" corresponds, albeit roughly, with "the long run" and "the majority".

Of course, being an individual with only another 30-40 years to go, I would rather be a wolf than a sheep ...

Parallelisms and projection

I think I may have mentioned in an earlier blog entry all the parallelisms that I see between my personal and my professional life.

Now, I realize that in fact, there is something else going on: it is not so much that there are parallelism, it is my own brain, projecting elements from my professional life (which after all accounts for a significant portion of my activities) onto my private life. Knowing (or at least suspecting) that I was going to be appointed project manager of a small project, for example, I read some books on project management, and suddenly, I started seeing everything around me, including my kids, my hobbies, my social life, and even my life as a whole as projects, with a specific scope, objectives and time-frame.

Next, I started researching databases, to be able to converse with our database designers without looking like a complete idiot. And suddenly, I am at my home computer, happily creating a relational database, standardized to the 3rd normal form (and wishing I could go to the sixth) with the names, addresses, telephone numbers and family ties of my friends and family. And just this week, I went on a management course, and suddenly, I see my kids as staff members, in need of Belbin analysis, and who need to be coached and motivated.

Now some people might accuse me of "having a one-track mind" or of "taking my work home". I am much kinder to myself. I think this is simply my way of processing information. I discovered a long time ago that I learn much better not by trying to memorize abstract concepts or rules, but by applying what I learnt as quickly as possible and/or linking it up to my daily situation, which often means applying it in places other than where was originally intended. And doing this also helps me around another (admittedly slightly strange) hurdle, namely the fact that awareness of the learning process can actually make it impossible for me to learn anything. When I was trying to improve my French, I had to get books that I wanted to read anyway. Getting a book purely for the purpose of improving my French would have defeated the purpose.

The problem, of course, with getting books that I wanted to read is that on the whole, they are a bit more difficult than the book you might choose to improve your language skills. But I persist, and I have good hope that soon (that is to say, within the next five years or so) I will have finished the French book that I chose to improve my French skills.

BTW I have another defense against the accusation that I take my work home: I also "take my home to work" by which I mean that I also export skills and knowledge from my personal life to the office. Settling arguments between my kids, for example, has taught me how to remain calm and keep perspective when everyone else is upset and/or unreasonable, a very useful quality in meetings.

Enough for today. I am a bit tired.

A tale of two showers

Warning to friends and family who sometimes come to visit: this entry is not for your eyes. Do not read it.

The house I live in has two showers. Shower number one is a proper shower, standing all by itself in a separate shower room, with its nice semi-circular see-through shower cabin with sliding doors, a shower head that can be adjusted in various ways and that stays put once adjusted, lots of pressure, the right kind of ventilation, and wooden floors that are a joy to walk on. Normally, I start my workday with a short but very pleasant shower in shower number one. It takes me about two seconds to get the temperature and pressure just right (the two are co-dependant: if you increase the pressure, you also have to increase the temperature to achieve the same sensation, in the same way as the wind-chill factor links wind and the sensation of cold), and then I spend somewhere between 3 and 7 minutes, just enjoying the shower and waking up.

There is only one disadvantage to shower number one: it is right next to the guest room. This means (he intones, with the type of voice that is normally used for the trailers of Hollywood horror movies where they try to compensate for the lack of plot by increasing the advertising budget) that when we have guests, I "magnanimously" let them use it, while I am reduced to using shower number two. Shower number two is in fact not really a shower, but a bath with a showerhead attached to the wall at the far end (the end where the taps are), a shower curtain that gets in the way (I hate the way it can cling to your body, and especially if the water on it has already gone cold), poor adjustment facilities (at its very highest, it just about comes level with my neck, which means I have to squat down to rinse my face and head), very little pressure and tiles with a very practical but not exactly sensual anti-slip surface.

Now you might think that I sound like a spoilt and pampered child, but as a parent, I know how important it is for children to express, not suppress, their feelings, and I think this is probably true for adults as well. This is not to say, of course, that you should necessarily act on those feelings. Acknowledging how you feel about something in fact often makes it unnecessary to take any action whatsoever. In my case, I hope that whining publicly about the loss of my lovely, wonderful morning shower will help me accept the situation more easily.

[clock ticking, time passing slowly ...] Nope, not working.

So on to the second line of defense, which is to imagine (but not carry out) the action you might take as a result of those feelings, the idea being that putting these ideas into words will help you see how stupid they are which - again - makes it unnecessary to do anything. In my case, the most logical action would be to kick the guests out.

[clock ticking, time passing slowly, me imagining dragging the guests physically out of the house ...] Yep! That makes me feel a lot better.

There is just one problem with expressing your feelings: it might be good for you on a personal, individual level, but your social life may suffer. Assuming that virtually no-one heeded the warning at the beginning of this blog (a very likely scenario) I can now count on flak/fall-out from ex-readers who used to stay at my place. Which is a shame, because I did enjoy their company, in spite of the shower situation.

I would take a shower to calm my nerves, but I have guests ....

Objective and subjective

I was going to write some more about hair, inspired by a discussion at work as to who had what kind of hair, and the fact that there are personal and cultural differences between the precision with which one might describe hair colors. I am sure whole generations of Dutch, for example, have been severely traumatised (not) by the fact that they themselves may have been of the opinion that their hair was golden brown, strawberry blond, deep chestnut, or a lighter shade of pale, but that according to their passports, they were either blond, brown, red or black, and nothing else. And I had wanted to link that to a discussion of objective and subjective perception.

But before I started writing, I checked out the meaning of objective and subjective, and came to the conclusion that etymology was much more interesting than hair color (or the perception thereof). But I will not bore you with information that you can easily find for yourself in any number of online dictionaries. What I have to offer instead is my only little collection of common English words containing the string "ject", which is derived from the latin "jacere" (to throw). Here they are:

eject, projectile,
reject, rejection, abject, dejected
subject, subjective, object, objective, adjective, conjecture

If we look only at the meanings that first come to mind, the first line of my list contains words that are mostly still used to refer to physical movement, and are therefore closest to the original concept of throwing. The second group segues gently from movement to emotion (not such a strange link, considering that the word emotion is a derivative of the word motion). In the third line the idea of movement has mostly been lost, and we have entered the world of abstraction.

I am sure this is leading somewhere, but I am not quite sure where yet. When it comes to me, I will come back and add it here. For the moment, I am just taking it as a demonstration of how very rich (and therefore also confusing) language can be.

Bad hair week

OK, I admit it. I have a hidden agenda. Although of course it is no longer hidden, now that I am telling you all about it. The agenda, or long-term goal, of this blog is to understand life, the universe and everything (and if you don't recognize that quote please check out Douglas Adams' work). And I propose to do so by examining the world around me, and try to reach appropriate generalizations/recognize patterns where I can. The general framework for this examination is the input (perception) - processing (analyzing) - output (conclusion) cycle that I must have mentioned in some earlier entry.

Attentive readers will by now have started wondering how the heck this is supposed to connect with the title of this entry ("bad hair week"). But never fear, there is always a connection. And it is not even a six-degrees-of-separation (or the Kevin-Bacon game) type of connection. It is very simple, and obvious (to me, at least).

All last week, I walked around with phenomenously bad hair. I have no idea how or why this happened, although I am not ruling out a combination of a freak growth event (it suddenly seems to be much longer than it was only a week ago), the change in the weather, and the fact that some days ago, I took a nap right after having washed my hair. But that is not the point. (If it were, I would probably refer to Stanislaw Lem's "The chain of chance", but it's not, and I won't) The point is that it made me look a bit like Boris Johnson (the mayor of London).

And the problem with that is that I really don't want to look like Boris Johnson, because of his reputation of speaking his mind without regard to the consequences. Now I am not saying he is the idiot some journalists make him out to be - I am quite sure the media milk each of his bloopers for what they're worth - but the point is that I do not want to look like him, because of the risk of "guilt by association".

Which brings me back to my no-longer-much-of-a-secret agenda, namely that one bad hair week can be used to demonstrate not just one but two of the ailments that we all suffer from. The first is the way our brain can link up two completely disparate issues such as "Boris Johnson hair" and stupidity, and act as if there were a causal relationship between the two, and the second is how perception can be more important that reality.

Recently, I mentioned this preoccupation of mine to an Englishman, who looked at me for a moment then said that in his opinion, I didn't look like Boris Johnson at all, but that I reminded him of Greg Norman, the Australian golf legend who also goes by the name of "Great White Shark". Obviously, this made me very happy (especially after I checked him out on the Internet).

Last note on this: my wife says it doesn't matter who I look like, I need a haircut.

Devaluation blues

All around me I see signs of the second law of thermodynamics - the one that says that things have a tendency to lose steam, run down, decay - expressed in human society. The examples that spring immediately to mind are schooling, money, words, and food, each of which seem to be worth less with the passing of time. But in fact, each case is very different.

First of all, I think that schooling is on the whole and in the longer run probably not getting worse, as everybody loves to say ("in my time, ..."), but better. Yes, there will be temporary ups and downs (in the order of magnitude of years, decades, and even generations), but collectively we know more now than a hundred years ago, and much more than several thousands of years ago, and schooling has definitely played a part in this. (This is by the way not contrary to the second law of thermodynamics: it acknowledges the existence of local anomalies, all it is concerned with is the the entropy of the system as the whole).

As for money (and the price of houses), its value goes up and down too. Of course, it has gone down now for a very long time, but this, I think, is linked to the fact that our economy is almost completely built on the idea that you have to grow to survive, which in fact is not necessarily true. There is also such a thing as stasis, and it might be good if we were to embrace that idea.

I already mentioned the devaluation of words in a previous entry, although I was talking specifically of curse words. But the same happens to any emotionally charged word, such as those indicating race, ethnic origin, culture, sexual orientation, etc. In the west, we have been obsessed with this long before the term "political correctness" was coined, as is evidenced by the long succession of names for migrant workers in Dutch society over the past fifty or sixty years.

And then we have food (and other consumables), which is suffering from the entropy of over-processing. It is like "overproducing" a record: there comes a point when every attempt at improving something just makes it worse. And I think we reached that point with food quite a while back. Here is my personal things-I-love-to hate list: decaf coffee, low-tar low-nicotine cigarettes, beer without alcohol, cola without sugar, hamburgers without fat, mayonnaise without eggs. (I could go on, but I am beginning to lose my appetite).

Last but not least, life itself is becoming less sacred. The Catholic Church may not yet realize it, but we have come to the point where having humongous families is no longer an option, or at least, not for all of us (I recently read that having large families is becoming a status symbol among rich American suburbanites, but I imagine this is just another local anomaly, which will iron itself out in the end).

The power of words

In the beginning was the Word ... (John 1.1, King James Bible).

I have always been fascinated with that line. It shows just how important words are to us. Of course, the heavens and the earth were created first, but even in the very first lines of the Genesis, it seemed worth noting what God called things: first God made light, then he divided the light from the darkness (a bit categorical, black-and-white thinking if you ask me) and then - drum roll, abated breath - he called the light Day, and the darkness Night. And a bit later he takes the trouble to call the dry land "Earth", the gathering together of the water "seas", etc. etc.

A more scientific-minded person might phrase things differently, and might maintain that the word was the beginning of civilization. A recent study (the details of which, unfortunately, I have forgotten) reported a correlation between increasing size of our brain and the increasing use of language, and suggested that it might be a case of positive reinforcement (the use of language being both cause and result of the increased brain capacity).

This was a study over many eons. I have not yet heard of any such correlation within an individual human life-span, so I am going to assume that my bigger-than-average head is not related to my preoccupation with words. (My wife, BTW, is always very happy to point out to me that there is no one-on-one correlation between the size of the skull and the size of the brain, nor even between the size of the brain and intelligence, and I am afraid I am going to have to concede her that. But I digress. Back to the power of words).

When I was a child, we used to say "sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me", as a sort of magic incantation against psychological pressure. It never helped me much, though: I have always been more worried about and hurt by words than by acts. Of course, maybe this is just me: maybe I am like the proverbial oversensitive princess who tosses and turns all night because of the pea under the many mattresses. But the mere fact that there is a saying indicates to me that I am not alone in this. Wars have probably been waged over a few words.

Of course, there is also the positive side, as I have mentioned in an earlier entry. Expressing thoughts in words can help clarify and even accept things. (A different, but related power is that of the blogger: say the wrong thing to a blogger, and he or she will hang you out to dry. They might not name names, but everyone will know. And saying the right thing to a blogger is not much better, because nine times out of ten they will pass it off as their own idea: I have caught myself doing this several times already. But I digress again). They may be very imperfect tools - communication problems all around, and it can take a long time to say even relatively simple things clearly - but they are definitely worth having all the same.

Final note: the power of words is not everlasting. The other day my daughter told me - using a phrasing that was more a request for confirmation than a statement of fact - that she had a five-year-old friend who claimed she was now old enough to use curse words. I confirmed that swear words should be used with care, not so much because they are "baaad" words (to quote George Carlin's "Seven words you cannot use on T.V.") but because a lot of people are hurt and/or insulted when you use them, and because they lose their power if you use them too much, in which case they won't be there when you need them.

Of course, the problem is compounded by the fact that only some people feel the effects of this devaluation (usually the ones who cause it in the first place), while others continue to be insulted and hurt every time they are used. This second group may in fact develop the emotional equivalent of an allergy for four-letter words, and become ever less tolerant of swear words.

More on this polarization mechanism later.

Minority languages: do we need them?

This afternoon, as usual in a country where people are more apt to talk about languages than about the weather, I got into a discussion about minority languages, and specifically the current measures to promote of Catalan, which many non-Catalan Spaniards feel go to far. This is in part due to the link between language and identity, which is so strong that reaffirming Catalan is in effect a way of rejecting the rest of Spain. And the rest of Spain feels it this way, which of course makes it difficult to think about the issue objectively.

I am not devoid of emotion on the issue either: up till now I have always argued that people should be free to use whatever language they want. To me, it has always been a question of the pendulum swinging back: over the past two centuries, during the creation and consolidation of nation-states across Europe national, uniform languages were imposed by the central governments (of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Great Britain, to name a few), to the detriment of minority languages. Now, along with changing views regarding the nation-state and the rise of the ideas self-determination and subsidiarity, it is swinging back, and languages that survived the slaughter (Frisian, Welsh, Gaelic, Catalan and Basque) are not only tolerated but welcomed - by those that either already speak these languages, or have a good motive to keep them alive.

But I have had this discussion several times without really seeing anyone change their positions, which means I should probably think things through even further. (Which is what I am doing now.)

The decision of the central governments to impose a single, official language was of course completely logical from their point of view. Having a single language makes communication so much easier and quicker, much in the same way that roads can dramatically improve mobility and trade, and that legislation can make all the difference in the world to the stability and efficiency of a society. You might even summarize the whole Roman Empire (and the European Union, for that matter) as roads, legislation and language (yes, alright, the Romans also brought wine, and it was also safe to walk the streets at night ...).

So do we really want to take a step backwards, and allow people to wall themselves off again? I am not sure. But I don't think that will happen anyway. I think that we are already moving towards a near future in which a large portion of the population of most countries will speak at least two and often three languages: their "own" language, that of the country they live in, and possibly also an "international" language. You can already see it happening now, and I see no reason to try to stop it. The only problem left now is which language to choose as the international vernacular.

Within the institutions, this is very much a hot potato, because for many many years, the main working language was French. But ever since the Swedes and Fins joined (1995), English has been winning ground, which is a thorn in the side of the Francophones. A friend of mine has the solution, however: he says we should just kick the British out of the European Union. That way, the issue would cease to be political, and we could simply let the majority decide (and at the moment, the majority is in favor of English). Much as I love this idea, it will not be necessary, I think: I can already see that Francophones are increasingly willing to speak English. And - with apologies to my English-speaking colleagues - on the whole, they are doing a better job than the Anglophones who for decades now have been mangling French out of recognition.