Idées fixes

Definition: A fixed idea; an obsession, a usually delusional idea that dominates the whole mental life during a prolonged period (as in certain mental disorders).

Here are some of the milder variants, shared by whole swaths of the western world:

• Education is going downhill: children are still learning a lot (quite possibly more than I did when I was their age), and I don't mind so much if some of the things they are learning don't fit in the "classical" school curriculum.
• The youth nowadays has no respect! (see also the quote attributed - almost certainly erroneously - to Socrates). Some things are eternal, like noise and filth in city streets, and older generations being upset with younger ones. Every generation just reinvents this particular wheel; morals like discipline and obedience certainly go up and down, but had the trend been as systematic dowward as some people believe, western civilisation would have ended long ago. 
• Crime is on the rise: crime rates goes up and down, and are notoriously unreliable, because they depend on the willingness of people to report them, which varies according to their perception of whether reporting them will make any difference. 
• Each year is noticeably hotter than the last (because of global warming). In certain parts of the globe, average temperatures are indeed going up, but the differences are far too small and the variance far too great for an individual human to detect something like that. You need lots of measurements, taken by very precise instruments to reach that conclusion. (This is not the same as the phenomenon of the much more reliable method of calculating averages by asking many people to give their estimation - apparently much more reliable than one might think - because this concerns a change over time, which is not at all the same thing as estimating the temperature at any given point in time.)
• Old is good (or better): some old things are good (or at least good enough: the fact that they have survived so long is proof), and some are not. If things (ideas, beliefs, taboos, rules etc.) are lost in time, however, there is probably a good reason for that. Sometimes, solutions or rules that were perfectly good and useful in one type of society (nomadic, agricultural, or industrial) no longer fit the new situation, and often, this is because of the accumulation of information. The most common exception to this are the eternal truths at the core of most religions that are continuously "forgotten" because they are difficult to express and even more difficult to apply in daily life.

A change of scenery

I have always thought that going on holiday didn't make much sense - I am perfectly capable of relaxing at home. Sure, I like a break from the normal work routine as much as anyone else, but I don't need to do it somewhere else. But just now I had a thought: what if this obsession with a change of scenery were just the last vestiges of an ingrained, ancestral need to move around, the way we did before we invented agriculture? What if the nomadic lifestyle had somehow left a genetic imprint, making it impossible for us to sit still for very long? And if so, am I different because I was born that way, or because I have moved around so much in my life?

Just another thought. Not one that I actually entertain seriously (it is on par with the classical thinking error that giraffes have long necks because they stretch it to reach food), but a funny one anyway.

The Chimera of Control (2)

Since the last time I wrote about this subject, a few other examples occurred to me of things that seemed like a good idea at the time. Some were meant to stimulate, improve or increase:

• Better roads do not always lead to less traffic problems: people just move further from the city (because housing is cheaper), and allow traffic to increase to "intolerable" levels again;
• More efficient dishwashers might reduce the amount of manual work, but tend to increase the total amount of dishwashing done, because people will use more plates, cups, glasses, pans etc., knowing that it hardly costs any extra effort. (Personally, I think one dishwasher load a day for a family of four should be more than enough, but I suspect that the average is higher;
• Special subsidies for single parents (usually women) tend to increase the number of divorces (real or not), and create hordes of men who have lost their role as parent;
• Financial aid to corrupt developing countries often ends up in the pockets of those that do not need it, and who only make the situation for the poor worse;  
• Cheaper consumer products might sound like a good idea - nice for the consumer, and for the producer - but more consumption and more production also leads to more waste (and a wasteful attitude, especially when the price drops so much that it is cheaper to replace a broken or damaged product than repair it), which is usually bad news, either in general, or for other people (third world countries and/or your descendants).
• Cleaning up other people's messes (or solving their problems) might feel like you are giving the right example, but it also removes an important stimulus for them to (learn to) do it themselves. (The trick, of course, is to find the right balance between the two, and distinguish between situations where people really need your help, and situations where they need to brave it out themselves).

and others were supposed to repress, suppress, block, eradicate:

• Attempts to eradicate or at least reduce the number of certain organisms does not always work. Unless you succeed in killing them off entirely within a closed area (say a small island), hunting foxes and rabbits just means they have bigger litters, and "unnatural" selection through insecticides,  antibiotics and disinfecting everything only results in resistant strains. (I have yet to see conclusive evidence of this, but I suspect that overcleanliness makes  us weaker, because our immune system does not get enough "exercise". Our bodies were designed to fight germs, following the advice of many advertisements and desinfecting everything only shifts the problem. The only time this does make sense is when the risks of not doing are very high, such as in operating theaters.)
• Trying to suppress certain behavior (alcohol, prostitution, drugs, gambling, certain dangerous "sports") may make that behavior more interesting and/or desirable, both for potential users and for those that make a living out of selling these things. In a sense, this is the same idea the one expressed in the well-know U.S. gun lobby slogan "if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns": if you ban alcohol, the trade goes underground (see the wiki article on Prohibition) and the very act of being illegal invites all kinds of other unwanted and/or criminal behavior (violence, extortion, bribery, corruption, etc.). As far as drugs are concerned, politicians might be reluctant to admit it, but police forces around the world are have known for a long time that you cannot "win the war" on drugs. Fighting an individual drug is like hunting foxes: the only way to win is to eradicate it completely in a closed environment. But once you do that, some other animal (=drug) will jump in to fill the vacuum you have just created.  Much better is to regulate trade, and - like germs in the operating theater - only try to suppress behavior that in itself presents a clear and immediate health risk to people other than the user. By this argument, and considering the high numbers of gun-related accidents and incidents, gun ownership should be much more heavily regulated than alcohol, drugs, or gambling.  And prostitution should be even more heavily regulated than gun ownership, because of the health risks and because making it illegal stimulates human trafficking. Of course, that leaves the issue of who picks up the bill for the damage that users (smokers, idiots who try to snowboard down the North Slope, etc.) do to themselves, but I will leave that for another entry. 
• Trying to prohibit copying is similar to the above (see also this entry), with the difference that the most important risks of allowing it are financial; I will save that for another entry as well.

Free will and the limbic system

Thought for the day (extracted from a post on free will that I have tried to write for the last three years, without much success): Free will is to the nervous system what power is to the limbic system.

Risk management in the family

The conclusion (if you can call it that) of a previous entry about different approaches to risks when bringing up children was that it is important, however difficult, to distinguish between unnecessary risks, which should be avoided, and risks that can be reduced by controlled exposure.

Here's another installment on the same subject: psychological tactics to use. Most parents would prefer their children to stay away from drugs (certainly including cigarettes and alcohol, and possibly even chocolate and coffee, or at least, excessive use thereof), to stay within the law, to find a good job, to give and receive love and respect etc. But how to do this? Some time ago at a social event, a colleague suggested giving the wrong example, because teenagers generally try to avoid doing what their parents do. (I assume this was a joke, but I am not 100% sure - she brought her case with considerable vigor and conviction). Unfortunately, of course, this type of reverse psychology really only works for responsible behavior. Children are perfectly happy to copy irresponsible behavior.

Some people (including, to a certain extent, my own parents when I was young) try to protect their children by minimizing their exposure to people with a less desirable lifestyle (criminals, drug addicts, prostitutes, etc.), but that type of protection only leaves children completely unprepared and clueless on how to react to certain situations or people. I think that in most cases, limited (and controlled) exposure to less pleasant and/or potentially dangerous things is a better tactic. It is a bit like vaccination: you expose yourself to small doses of potentially dangerous germs in order to allow your body to make antibodies. That, and informing them as fully, honestly and objectively as possible about the possible consequences of certain choices. And then sit back and hope they do what you want them to do ... :-)

Popes and population

Irreverent thought for the day: I know leaders are different from the people they lead in many ways, but I can't help thinking that the guidelines of Catholic Popes (and especially the more recent ones, who have had opportunity to see the effects of overpopulation and unprotected sex) would have been much more practical  had they given up celibacy and bred like rabbits, in which case they would have discovered long ago that there are many situations where the "every soul is sacred" maxim - like most one-size-fits-all rules - is really not a good idea. (Personally I think it would have been more consistent had they preached what they practice (i.e. celibacy), but that would be going against the grain of human nature). 

Differences and similarities (1)

They say that Eskimos have many different words for snow, and that this is because snow is so important to them. Apparently, the Eskimo story is not true, but I can personally vouch for the fact that Spaniards (or at least, the ones I know) distinguish between many different types of bread, all of which look, smell and taste exactly the same to me. I have been going to Spain on a regular basis for the basis 30 years, and I am still unable to make even the most basic distinctions between fresh bread - to me, bread is bread: if it's fresh, I like it, if not, I like it a lot less. Other than that, all bread is basically the same.

I have the same thing with cars, and I know why: I couldn't care less. For me, cars are a method for getting from one place to another. I am of course aware that the type of car you own also sends a message about who you are (or who you think you are), but I prefer to judge people first on the basis of criteria other than their social group or standing.

I am sure many readers from the West will have also thought about the old cliche that people from the East "all look the same", even though we all know that they don't, and that it is just a question of distance: those of us who grew up in the East have absolutely no difficulty recognizing individual Chinese among a crowd.

What is interesting about these different situations is how other people react when you fail to distinguish what is obvious to them. In almost all cases*, you are either put into the "insider, in the know" category or the "clueless outsider" category.

*I have to admit that I have no idea how Eskimos would react to my absolute ignorance about snow, but I do know other people who care enough about snow to distinguish different types (namely people that ski), and they definitely have a - often poorly hidden - condescending attitude towards those of us who don't.

Child's play

The human mind works in mysterious ways. Well, mine does, anyway. Just yesterday, in a few small steps (some sideways), it linked the Spanish financial crisis to Cat Stevens.

I was out for a walk in a small provincial Spanish town, and I happened upon one of the many victims of the housing bubble burst: an enormous plot of land. all ready for urban development. Al the infrastructure was there: water, electricity, streets and streetlights, but no houses, and no traffic (the area was open to pedestrians, but closed off to cars). It didn't take me long to realize that the site would be the perfect place for my children to learn to roller-skate.

All along one side of the embryonic urban sprawl were earlier solutions to the same problem: the jam-packed city blocks of high-rise buildings from the seventies and eighties. And they got me thinking about  "La Colmena" (The Beehive) by Camilo José Cela, put to celluloid by Mario Camus in 1982, and about a line from a song by Cat Stevens: "Well you crack the sky, scrapers fill the air. Will you keep up building higher until there is no more room up there?" Here's the original recording, from 1970:

And a more recent version:

The song is called "Where do the children play", and the answer to the title was right in front of me: the children play where the grand plans fail.



P.S.
True to form, I cannot help but think of other examples of songs about housing and children. such as Village Ghetto Land, in which Stevie Wonder sings "children play in broken glass", and Little Boxes by Malvina Reynolds, where the children grow up in boxes, then go to university where they are put in other boxes, but "come out all the same".

Accident prone

I have one friend who collects broken bones, cuts and bruises and insect bites the way other people collect stamps or shells. To the casual observer, you might think he is accident prone. I think, however, that he probably suffers about the same amount of mishaps as anyone else with the same lifestyle: he goes for long forest walks and picnics (hence the insect bites), rides a bicycle whenever he can in spite of the fact that his environment is not very bicycle-friendly (hence the broken bones), and does all the home repairs he possibly can (hence the regular cuts and bruises). Calling him accident prone is basically the same as accusing the one who does the dishes of being clumsy because he or she drops the occasional dish (childhood trauma peeking through here): it goes with the territory.

I have another friend who attracts bad luck in a very different way: he is constantly getting himself into situations that he could easily have avoided with even a whiff of common sense, and is then strangely surprised when people take advantage of him. And again, you might think that he is accident prone, while in fact he himself creates the conditions for his misfortune.

To me,  "accident prone" only applies if the person involved suffers more than average numbers of mishaps, all other things (including their own behaviour) being equal. And according to that definition, I am accident prone, but my condition is an extremely rare and exotic one, applying only to airport toilets and trolleys. 

Here's the thing: slightly more than half the times I need to go to the men's room at an airport, they are either closed for repairs or for cleaning. And the same with airport trolleys: I seem to have an uncanny knack of systematically choosing the one with a wheel that doesn't work, so that the trolley lists to one side constantly, and forces me to make a spectacle of myself by traversing the arrival hall at an angle, and puffing slightly from the effort. And the fact that I was unable to relieve myself because of the closed toilets does not help, I can tell you.

As a child, it was the other way around: I was unusually lucky in cards, and on becoming King for a Day: on Three Kings' day - the sixth of January - my mother would bake a cake and hide a trinket in it. The cake was then divided among family members and sometimes friends, and one to find the trinket became King for a Day. I found it eight times out of ten.

Looking back at what I just wrote, I cannot help thinking that this is some kind of instant karma (instant in the sense that it happens within a single lifetime, not from one life to the next): I had my share of extra luck, however trivial, as a child, and am now compensating for it by trivial misfortunes in other areas. 

All complete poppycock, of course, but still ...

Updating old entries

Like doing the spring cleaning in the summer, I have finally started making good on my promise to update old entries. In a very few instances, I actually deleted entries that didn't really seem to fit the format or general feel of this blog. In others, I did partial rewrites and/or added new ideas or elements. But mostly, I just added new elements to existing lists (which I always considered work in progress anyway).

I am sure that the majority of the changes are for the better. Problem is, very few people actually go back to read old entries, so here is a list of some entries I changed recently:

Venus vs. Mars
Alliterating antonyms
Funny transpositions

How not to change your life in three easy steps

I quite like self-help guides and articles on improving yourself and your life. But sometimes I get a bit fed up with the serious, well-intentioned tone. So here is my mini-anti-guide called

How not to change your life in three easy steps

1. Let yourself be paralyzed by frustration and fear of failure, or let fear make you do things that are against your own best interests. Or have completely unrealistic hopes and aspirations ... the effect is different, but the end result is the same.

2. Live in denial. Delude yourself that your life is just hunky-dory, and that there is no need to do anything to change it. If you are no good at denial, there are other options, such as overeating, binge shopping, overworking, over-exercising, designer drugs or more traditional ones. Nothing chases away the existentialist blues better than a good stiff drink. And don't be overly alarmed when habituation sets in, and you need more each time to achieve the same effect: it is worth it.

3. If you are physically attractive and good at faking intelligence, arrogance, scepticism and/or cynicism are good attitudes, preferably in public; if you are not, consider crawling into your cave, and cocooning in resignation and/or total apathy. Couches have a right to potatoes.

4*. Always blame others when things go wrong. And keep on blaming others until you end up anger and bitterness set up house in your life permanently.

*I know it says three easy steps, but things are always more complicated than they sound. Get used to it.

***

"We all have some emptiness in our lives, an emptiness that some fill with art, some with God, some with learning. I have always filled the emptiness with drugs." - Bruce Sterling, Involution Ocean.