Taking Care

I have recently had need to actively contemplate the things I can do to take care of myself. I had a cold but the mild kind that still allowed me to go to work. A lot of thinking (while sitting on buses) involved keeping track of what I needed to buy to ensure I was well-fed and medicated (even if just on comforting placebos). Now my temp work has ended and the care regimen has to shift focus somewhat. Rather than rushing to fit everything in, my focus is now on making sure I overcome inertia and get things done. Luckily a lot of the things that are good for me are things I enjoy. Or is that what defines the things that are good for you? Here is a list of some of the things I try to do to keep well (in a whole person way rather than just bodily)...

* Rest including sleep is paramount. While working I was focusing on this more than in my younger days by cutting short time with friends. I figure that some company is better than none even if it takes an act of will to draw yourself away from the dinner or party or whatever. Now while between work I'm getting more sleep and so the focus shifts to other things.

* 'Colour And Movement' is my phrase for walking out the door and experiencing the world. I feel that helps define any day. Even just a walk to the corner shops allows me to experience good things like sunshine and a larger body of atmosphere than you can fit in a house. It allows me to observe things in the neighbourhood which stimulates curiosity and contemplation. For instance the children of some neighbours had a model town (complete with railway line) constructed from junk in the front yard. I love seeing things like this. It also allows me to interact, even superficially, with humanity as I buy an iced coffee from a shop keeper.

* Exercise is always something I have been a bit suspicious of. The parts of our culture that promote exercise and sport are ones I had to be wary of from a young age. Making an asthmatic kid run round an oval in the rain to turn them into a more robust person can have the opposite result of making them averse to such punishing behaviour. Nonetheless I recognize that if I want to do particular things in my life then I have to keep at them. I rely on public transport and in the middling suburbs I frequent that involves a degree of walking - quickly and over distances. Fortunately I also love walking. And I have a bushland-shroud creek I can walk to. I also love swimming once I'm in the water. It is the freedom of movement water affords that I enjoy. The getting to the pool via the change rooms can take another act of will. Meeting a swimming buddy motivated me to do that most recently.

* Human Contact is utterly vital for me. I belong to a species that has evolved in groups. For me frequent and prolonged interaction with others is most gratifying. The Internet helps as communication is a form of contact and I regularly exchange information with many. However face-to-face contact is better. In any give week I average three to four chances to be with friends and this is a deliberate plan of mine. Talk is part of this but so is the engagement of expressions and gestures using faces and hands. So are hugs of greeting or parting with the right friends. The odd massage (whether giving or receiving) is good to. Of course that can come from professional non-friends too. Lunch and a massage at a shopping centre anyone?

* Food is tastes and textures and that feeling of satisfaction in your tum. Even the most basic of things are a joy. And then there is the creativity of cooking which I need to do more of. Once I make the decision to do so and have the right ingredients and tools (including the right playlist) then it can be all the fun of making mud pies in the back yard but with a reward at the end. And if Transformers ever told my anything of value it is that energy is precious and what is food but our Energon?

* Skills And Interests are the things that keep me happy while I'm alone. If I'm allowed to engage in these then I will rarely be bored in those times I am alone. Once more the Internet is a boon for me because almost anything can be interesting and sites such as Wikipedia tell me all sort of wild and wonderful things. Other relatively passive acts include consuming shows like Dr Who. Then there are the more active past-times such as writing and sketching.

I could structure this entry different and go on much more. But I have to go off to meet an old friend for coffee in a distant suburb soon so I shall draw this to a close. I have described things that I do to keep me well and noted that I enjoy them. To elaborate I enjoy the variety of them. Any one of them for too long would pall. All of them regularly keeps me happy. But am I happy because I do them or do I do them because I'm happy? Time for an anecdote:

I walk into a grocer I regularly visit humming a tune. The shop keeper says that my singing indicates I'm happy. I say that it is the singing that makes me happy. She smiles. I make my purchase and go.

Who was right - me or the shop-keeper? Do I wisely act in ways that make me happy or am I just configured to be happy with whatever I do. The longer I live the more aware I become that much of what we are is determined by biology. I may like to think I am prudent but possibly I'm just lucky to have an effective economy of happy hormones in me. I'm tempted to expound on my philosophy of happiness but - once more - is that something that will only work for someone who is similar to me? It is on that sad note that I will end this post about happiness.

Cross-posted here.

Incompetence In Context

It is many months since I discussed work here. Last time was a personal sharing of anecdotes. This time however I am discussing a theme that may well apply to many or even most workplaces. I draw on my own observations and conversations with friends over time. The issue I consider is incompetence within workplaces.

Words are descriptive but they also take on connotations, whether positive or negative. My impression from media and mass culture is that "incompetence" is almost as negative a term as "corruption". This has always struck me as odd. Is lack-of-skill almost as worthy of derision as is deliberate deception and manipulation for the sake of nepotism and personal aggrandisement? In the meritocracy that our political economy aspires to be possibly the answer is yes. However I now suspect that the former can produce the latter.

I meet some old Korner friends weekly to practice skills-of-craft and chat. One of our recurring topics of discussion is workplace interactions and we sometimes lament having to work with incompetent colleagues. It is very frustrating and makes work for the competent that bit more difficult. However I sometimes wonder how difficult it must be for those who are deemed incompetent. I have also come to the conclusion that most competence or incompetence is contextual.

Take someone who has the skills and experience for a particular job and insert them into a wholly new workplace. They will still need to become familiar with that exact job and how it fits into the wider human environment of that company. All the processes and procedures. All the exceptions to those processes and procedures. All the internal politics. All the history. Suddenly spending much of your week in a new setting with strangers who share with you nothing but the need for an income will only come naturally to some.

Orientation and training becomes vital for the new employee but frequently such a service will be limited. The existing employee charged with training the new one will usually still have work to do. Just how much will they effectively impart of what the newcomer needs? How many times will they answer questions or help with mistakes? And now I turn to the newcomer themselves - how many times will they ask questions or admit to mistakes?

I think it is a good practice to admit mistakes and ask for advice on how to rectify them. It helps a new worker to improve what they do. It also can prevent small mistakes from turning into bigger mistakes that resurface in a week. This is how I do things and such transparency is serving me well in my current role. However I get the impression that some behave differently.

Some feel that to keep a job and win the respect of others they must pretend they are better than they are. Or possibly they sense the frustration occasionally felt by those who supervise them and shrink from making the difficult admission now even if frustration will turn to anger later. So they let things pass. They hide things. If they are discovered they may try to transfer blame to others (preferably in a different department). Suddenly incompetence turns into corruption.

I would be in error if I suggested that the sole origin of corruption is incompetence. There are also greedy and self-serving desires. This is hardly surprising in a work context given that the primary motive for everyone to be there is economic. Add to this a competitive ethos that exists in much of our professional lives. Want to do well for yourself? Act bigger than you are. Blow your own trumpet. Scratch the backs of your back-slapping mates. Celebrate the go-getting self-starting 'guns'. This is a kind of meritocracy but only selects for particular skills of self-advancement.

This ethos I describe only possesses so many workers. There are still plenty who are focused simply on getting the job done. But they can only do so much. Can you get your job done and then help a newer worker get to the same level of workplace-specific competence as you? Or will that just detract from your own ability to do your job? A super-competent person may well manage both. A merely competent person will be inclined to take care of themselves. For many workers it becomes a case of sink or swim. And pretending to swim can postpone the sinking.

If we conceived of lack of competence as something that arises by inserting someone into a particular setting rather than as something intrinsic to a person then we may do better at addressing the problem. If we turned a negative into a merely descriptive term then we may draw it into the cold light of day rather than have it hide in the shadows. Allow incompetence to expose itself and as a bonus we may well eliminate a lot of petty corruption. But to do that we need to say mistakes are okay and that shortcomings are only human.

How can this happen? The 'guns' need to get over themselves and pay more attention to the nuts-and-bolts of work. The workers focused on getting the job done need to be more accepting of the sometimes frustrating newcomers. And the newcomers need to make a commitment to themselves to ask questions and admit mistakes.

It can be difficult to be so honest. It starts at the interview - if you present as a wonderful abstraction of yourself to Human Resources and this gets you the job then you may well feel locked into that same masquerade for the duration of the job. Whether the effort is worth it is something everyone has to decide for themselves. I prefer transparency.

Cross-posted here.

Odd Notions

Tonight I will discuss some notions relating to the conduct of intimate personal relationships that I happen to find odd. Some will agree with me while others will disagree. What we consider peculiar is very much a product of ever-changing personal experience. As a child I considered the concept of sex rather peculiar. You know how you can utter a familiar word over and over till it seems nonsensical? Well I can still find the concept of sex to be a peculiar thing if I contemplate it with a particular mindset. Most of the time it is anything but odd.

We are introduced to concept after concept in life in a staggered progression. As one thing becomes normalized another comes along that challenges us. Queer identity? Okay. Polyamory? Sure. The more we are exposed to matter-of-fact instances of something the more we understand them as part of our human environment rather than as abstractions that exist only as descriptions that are beyond our ken.

Then there are the things that you have been exposed to all your life which continue to seem odd and it is to a few of those that I now turn. I want to stress that these odd notions transcend orientation and relationship model. I think they can be embraced or resisted by anyone. And I think discussing them can more effectively allow us to decide what we truly think of them...

Subsuming The Self For A Relationship

Nobody is an island. Everyone is co-dependent with many others. I need the person who sells me my iced coffees and the person who drives the bus taking me to work. Conversely they need me to help ensure demand for what they do. These may seem trivial but society is constructed on such connections. With that in mind it is nonsensical to suggest that I can ever be "a complete person" if your criteria was that I can survive as a hermit. But let us assume participation in society as a given and move onto the notion of needing a relationship status to be complete - this one is surprisingly common and rather concerning.

A relationship can bring joy and purpose and fulfilment but to tether sense-of-self utterly to having a relationship has got to limit self-development. I suppose if you had a relationship that you could be assured of (or the ability to always find more) then limiting self-development would be okay. Possibly I only say this because of having spent a lot of time between relationships. But I suspect that to be 'well-rounded' is beneficial whatever your circumstances (I also have a hunch that a developed sense-of-self is also an attractive characteristic).

Some may think I am arguing for the need to be a more self-centred or even self-serving person. I think it is a matter of degrees. The test is impact on your own life and that of others. I feel that we can be committed to the happiness of others while still serving our own happiness. I think these can be complimentary aims in life. And possibly if you are good to yourself you can be good to others too.

Friends - Lovers - Exes

The notion that friends and partners are wholly separate things has been odd to me for as long as I have both had the former and contemplated having the latter. Both good friends and good lovers have much in common - they can be companions in shared activities, allies in challenging times, confidents for your more private reflections. I and many of my friends know from personal experience that one can become the other (and vice-versa). And yet in much of society there is the dichotomy saying that the two are discrete, so much so that many would rather look for a lover from among strangers than among friends. I can only imagine this produces all sorts of frustration and difficulty. It also drives an industry of singles nights and speed dating so I suppose it is good for the economy. However all those romantic cul-de-sacs stranger-dating produces allows me to discuss another matter - whatever shall we do with exes?

I will admit that if every relationship conducted was with a stranger drawn from an anonymous crowd then the challenge of interacting with exes may never be faced (well assuming you never run into them at the shops). However life is rarely that modular. Chances are some of your friends will have become their friends. Will you ask them to choose? This happens and can produce schisms in friendship groups. My experience tends to be of groups in which it is accepted that friends can become lovers and that exes can still be friends. It can be difficult and takes more work to manage the necessary transition with appropriate distancing. But it can also be nice in the long-run. Why did you become interested in them anyway? Surely some of the things that attracted you also make someone a candidate for friendship. I suppose that depends on your own criteria for attraction. Possibly having partners who are cute but shallow is okay as long as you have dedicated friends to turn to for D&Ms once those partners become exes.

I would rather partners be more friend-like and if some friends also happen to be attractive then so be it. Nobody has to act on every attraction but what if you did? Well one way of managing this challenge would be to keep well away from anyone attractive except for those you can quickly negotiate a relationship with. Seems like a formula for a lot of awkwardness to me.

If it ends then it was never worth it

The ends of relationships can be excruciating experiences (I sometimes feel the same of the starts but that may just be me). Some relationships are conducted in such a way that feelings of resentment or mistrust make sense. In such cases I understand that the legacy of the ended relationship can then forever be tarnished. However there are only so many cases like this. In other cases the exes simply wanted different things or changed and drifted apart. In those instances I am sometimes surprised by the degree of negative feeling that persists over time towards past relationships. In many cases I have gotten worthwhile experiences that have enhanced my life. They exist as more than memory because they can also alter who you are, even for the better, getting back to that 'well-rounded' thing.

Here is my take on relationships that were "good while they lasted". Yes you have lost something in it ending and are poorer for it afterwards. But remember that before the relationship you were also poorer for its absence. Okay so you never knew what you were missing then but I refer you to the enhancing experiences you have now had. Possibly I am unusual in that I live in a fuzzy personal present that incorporates much of my memory and imagination and that allows me to be more philosophical than someone who more fully lives in the moment.

* * * * *

The odd notions I have touched on here are common in society and everything from movies to magazines promulgates them. If I am a product of my society why then do I find them odd, as I have done all my adult life? Well, the scenes I move in tend to look on them critically and allow everyone to freely choose the extent to which they accept or reject them. Even the most conventional among us still have our own independent personas and can therefore mix confidently with assorted friends and even count exes among them. Many surveys report that respondents say they trust family and friends far more than media and politicians to provide them with information. It should hardly be surprising then that it is my own human environment that impacts on me more than the more distant one of wider society.

There is another possibility - that while I see my own sets of friends and wider society I will miss the existence of all the many many other scenes others experience that I never will. It may well be that the closer you look the more you will find that the odd notions I describe here are odd for many others. Also if I think more honestly about that much-derided popular culture I will notice that it exhibits both trends and counter-trends (for instance there was rather a lot of cross-dating happening among the key characters in the long-running TV show Friends). Possibly we all do freely choose the extent to which we incorporate these notions into our lives. I hope so. But if you find yourself accepting the sense of all of them at once then I suggest you take a closer look at them and whether they do in fact make sense to you.

Cross-posted here.

Marco Polo Pesto

From this old post you can see that I am fond of 'fusion' foods. I have to pause here and say that all cultures are the product of cultural cross-pollination and that nothing is purely one thing or another. But in the context of dishes I think 'fusion' refers to a deliberate act of mixing elements that are currently regarded as distinct. This is descriptive of my latest recipe - Marco Polo Pesto.

I have named it for the Venetian explorer who traversed much of the Eurasian landmass and documented his travels (in particular his time as a guest of the Mongol emperor of China). It takes the Italian form of pesto and seeks to give it the function of a Chinese condiment. It is however entirely of my making and I cannot attribute any authenticity to it whatsoever. Nor can I say it is an original concept as a quick search of the Internet will show you that many others have developed similar recipes.

The motivation came in part from a desire to be inventive and also for a desire for convenience. I love how stirring some pesto into boiled and strained pasta produces a very quick meal and wanted something similar with a different flavour. The rest was a case of thinking of ingredient substitution and getting to work with my mortar and pestle. There is coriander and chives rather than basil... cashews rather than pine nuts (something commercial pesto does anyway)... ginger rather than garlic... and my cheese substitute is coconut cream (making this a vegan food as long as you carefully check the ingredients lists of constituent processed ingredients). So onto the recipe itself.

Ingredients: Raw Cashews (3 to 4 handfuls), Coriander (20g), Chives (10g), Ginger (4cm x 2cm x 2cm), Coconut Cream (150g), Soy Sauce (3 to 4 tablespoons), Sesame Oil (3 to 4 teaspoons), Chinese Five Spice (3 teaspoons), Chilli Powder (1/2 a teaspoon)

Note that amounts are approximate and in some cases fictitious. I resent having to offer them at all as my methodology involves getting a bunch of stuff that will fit in my shopping basket and then messing with things in the kitchen. This however is a description of more-or-less what happens.

Preparation

A mortar and pestle has such a lovely look and feel and has associations with both cooking and ancient magics. Some of what follows may work better with a food processor but I chose the tiring way (also I only own the old technology).

Crush your cashews into a fine slightly sticky powder. There will be small lumps left over and this is okay. Put the crushed nuts into a bowl. Add the Five Spice mix and distribute it evenly into the powder till its colouration has shifted from beige to a pale brown.

Finely chop both the coriander and chives. The former is more difficult to cut than the latter due to the presence of leaves. I even considered only using the stems of coriander but decided that was wasteful. Try to get the herbs as finely cut as you can and then put them into the mortar and pestle and mash into a pulpy mess. Put this into its own bowl.

Finely dice or crush the ginger and mix it in with the coriander and chives till it is a well-mixed part of the whole pulp. By now you are experiencing all kinds of smells but there is more to come.

Pour coconut cream into yet another bowl and stir the chilli powder evenly into it. I imagine all these ingredients could be combined in different ways and it would all produce the same end product but somehow I feel as if sinking the chilli into the coconut cream is a mercy.

Now you have three bowls. You also have bottles of soy sauce and sesame oil. It gets exciting now. Take a fourth bowl. These are biggish bowls by the way.

Add the sesame oil into the bottom of the bowl of final unity of ingredients. Now start portioning each of the the three mixes into the bowl and stir them thoroughly. You want to try to produce a consistent paste. Do so in small portions so you can get the mix of wet and dry right (in other words you may end having to discard some leftover ingredients).

As you are mixing contents of the three feeder bowls also add some soy sauce. This is a key ingredient as it provides saltiness to this dish. Keep on mixing till you have added all the ingredients you can. Give it a whiff. Dip a bit of crust into it and give it an experimental taste-test. Hopefully you enjoy it but remember that it will be better warm. It looks a lot paler and more speckled than Italian pesto.

Packaging And Presentation

Spoon your Marco Polo Pesto into a cleaned used jar. The amounts I suggest should fill two of those 190g pesto jars. Screw on lids and refrigerate. Now cook some rice noodles. Now remove your Marco Polo Pesto from the refrigerator. It will likely have a firmer consistency than Italian pesto and gouges can be left in its mass. Anyway stir two spoons per serve into cooked strained carbs. Consume. Tell me what you think of it.

Now a word of caution. This stuff is brand new so I simply cannot tell you its shelf life. Best to consume it within the next week rather than forget it exists. Serve it for friends at a dinner party or take some to work every day. Keep one jar and give the other to someone you wish to surprise and (hopefully) impress.

And finally feel free to vary this recipe to your preferences and cooking experience. Other pestos may come of this. I wonder what ingredients would go into a dessert pesto...

Cross-posted here.

Gumshoe Telepath Index

Here I present the seven instalments of my futuristic detective fiction story which still has the working title of Gumshoe Telepath in the form of links so that the entire tale can be accessed via this webpage.

1. Awake - Disturbed sleep and a holographic late-night call set the scene.

2. Brunch - In a cafe politics is discussed and coffee vanishes.

3. Run! - The exceptional plasticity of one brain is employed in solving organized crime.

4. Drunk - In a retro sports car heavy petting is interrupted for more important things.

5. News - Someone finally gets a clue and the news is way too relevant for comfort.

6. Mirrors - The implications of some neurons are so important they are worth killing for.

7. Maze - Our story ends in an alleyway with consequences for many more than just our intrepid protagonists.

Comments on the overall story are most welcome.

Cross-posted here.

Gumshoe Telepath: Maze

I have done it. I have completed something more than my usual very short story with this seventh and final part of Gumshoe Telepath. For now I will simply publish it but I will have to look over the whole story and possibly make some small adjustments for the sake of coherence. I wonder what the total word count is for this thing.

As we turned down one alleyway and then another I cursed my laziness. If I had only spent some of my spare time walking these alleys I would be on familiar ground. As it was I had spent hours of my life online and only now did that seem like a problem. Kristen seemed to think differently.

How could I tell what Kristen was thinking? Well it seemed she was projecting every thought to me, and deliberately, while also masking our presence from others. And what did she think? With a fanatical telepathic killer chasing us the best thing for us to do was get lost because then they would know only as much as we did.

We ran past trash cans and the only witnesses to our passing were a few rats. I wondered whether the Telepath Twin could interrogate the minds of vermin, but I only wondered in passing, because just then we found ourselves in a cul-de-sac. I turned towards the larger alleyway we had just run from, drawing my handgun, and motioning for Kristen to get behind me. A completely non-telepathic glare from her told me she resented this gesture, but she went along with it anyway. After all, I was the only one with a gun.

Kristen presented more information directly into my mind. The Assassin was accompanied by two armed military personnel of some kind, presumably the kind that the Government employed but could deny if they needed to. I feigned confidence, forming the coherent mental statement that this was good odds for us. Kristen smiled gently, but then her smile vanished and she stifled a sharp intake of breath. They were almost upon us.

First we saw a soldier, clad in balaclava and night reconnaissance fatigues, peep round the corner at us from the right, and in that moment I shot at him. Amazingly, my bullet hit, and our assailant crumpled to the ground. From that moment everything happened very quickly and what I remember could well be an approximation of events.

From round the same corner came the second soldier and she fired at me with calm precision. I was hit in the gut and slumped to the ground, my back resting against the left wall of our final refuge. From then on I was an observer, and the action played out for me like something from a fucking movie. I noticed mundane things such as the graffiti on the wall opposite me, declaring “Tracey 4 Stacey 4 Eva”. Here, far from the streets and front facades, surfaces lacked the usual Particulate Matter Repellent Finishing (PMRF) and so graffiti could still exist, and I found it somehow comforting. If these were my last moments then I would spend them in the presence of this lasting remnant of everyday emotional humanity. If only Kristen could be spared the same fate as me. What was happening with her?

She was facing the soldier and one other who had just entered the alleyway. He was dressed in similar military fatigues but I somehow knew that he was a Telepath Twin. His sister, who had masqueraded as a member of Congressional Security, was now in police custody over in Capitol City, having completed her mission of killing the Congressional Minority Leader. Here in the Bay Area was another Telepath Twin and it seemed his mission was to detect and eliminate a telepathic gift that Kristen shared with her mentor, the late Dr Pax. I started crying once more. For this once can I just blame the injury and blood loss of my gunshot wound?

The Telepath Twin locked his gaze on Kristen, a gaze which she returned, but while his balaclava-framed eyes declared anger, hers signified compassion. And I felt what she felt as she scrutinized the mind of her adversary. The Twins had lived a shitty life, filled with discipline, doctrine and deprivation, and Kristen decided she would rather be their victim than anything like them. The Twin must have sensed some of this because, aiming his own gun at her head, he sneered. And then Kristen closed her eyes, sighed, and everything went blank.

* * * * *

I woke in a hospital bed. The nursing robot suspended from the ceiling over my bed registered my return to consciousness and uttered, in the crisp neutral Trans-Atlantic accent of most institutional machines, a welcome and an assurance that I was recovering well from my injury. I was more interested in what had happened back in the alleyway.

“How did I get here? Who put me here?”

“I am authorized to play you a message at your assent.”

“I assent, babe, I assent.”

The face of the robot was a cluster of lights and lenses with one circular monitor in the centre. That monitor switched from a soothing teal to a recorded moving image. It was the face of Kristen and the accompanying message went something like this:

“Derrick I’m okay and I hope you are too. As soon as I overcame our assailants I called an ambulance and then stayed with you till your operation. You were lucky. I’m lucky to still have you in my life. But I cannot be there now and I’m sorry. I suddenly have other commitments to attend to. Here is some footage to help you understand…”

Suddenly I was looking into the alleyway from the perspective of those who had chased us there. I realized I was looking at micro-cam data from the uniform of the soldier who had shot me. Over the shoulder of the Twin I saw me, slumped to the side of the action, and there was Kristen standing in the centre of the scene, closing her eyes with a look of calm acceptance. A moment later the Twin just fell from view and then the soldier evidently fell over too.

“Derrick, while you cannot see it, at that moment I projected a burst of compassion into the Twin. I did it deliberately, but it seems that the desperation of our predicament enhanced my ability, and it thoroughly altered his consciousness. Every dormant mirror neuron fired at once and the shock sent him unconscious. But it did more than that…”

I guessed that the soldier and I were also rendered unconscious by the whatever it was that Kristen blasted at the Twin. Her face returned to the monitor image and told me more.

“As well as switching on his compassion I also switched on the ability of the Twin to project compassion into others. In his unconscious state it activated in an undirected manner. It affected everyone within a few kilometres and the handful of other telepaths within range also started projecting, so it started transmitting all over town and beyond.”

Wow. I bet there was a ton of crying. Kleenex-Xerox must have sold a lot of replacement tissue boxes the following morning.

“Another thing happened Derrick. Our erstwhile assassin transmitted directly over a much greater distance to his twin and then she did the same thing, resulting in what the media is calling a Compassion Epidemic growing from both the Bay Area and Capitol City to affect a huge population, including all the powerful players in global politics who gather in and around Congress.”

Again, Kristen replaced her own image with footage, this time from news reports showing a sudden slew of good news. There were a record number of induced coma sentences that were suddenly commuted. There were ceasefires and peace accords among Non-Congressional nation-states. Most significantly Congress fell into disarray. Why? Because all its members decided to take pity on themselves and take a vacation from the stresses of ruling the world. The Police suddenly had nothing much to do because violence statistics had suddenly become non-existent. Even the Masonite and O’Leery clans declared an end to “investing” in anything detrimental to anyone in the community and donated the bulk of their fortunes to non-showy forms of philanthropy.

One of the last things Congress had done while still in session was to establish the Pax Commission to investigate the impact of the Compassion Epidemic and its implications for the world. And then the smiling face of Kristen returned to the monitor.

“They made me the Commissioner for the inquiry Derrick! How fantastic is that? I have a lot of work to do. I have to get this right. I am the best person for the job and I have the resources I need to get it done. And I want to do more than just describe the phenomenon and suggest responses. I intend to show how we can use this power to reform the world. We can employ telepaths like the Twins to project compassion into more and more minds. We can develop more telepaths to have this skill. We can make a world worth living in…”

At that I started to get a bit dizzy. The nurse robot noticed and suggested I look at the rest of the recording later and rest now. I agreed. But I found it impossible to rest. What Kristen had told me was nagging away at me and while she was evidently thrilled by recent events, I was spooked by the whole thing, and by her own enthusiasm for it.

I should have been all for the application of this Mirror Neuron shockwave. It could produce all sorts of wonderful. But I also got the feeling that Kristen was intoxicated by it and her new role as its originator. It took decades to turn a self-centred kid into a caring adult and only sometimes did that work because so many things in our world worked in the opposite direction. But was flipping a mental switch the answer? Was flipping that switch the answer if it was Government that was flipping it? Kristen had always been a critic of the holders of power but was this just a new power to be abused?

The last words I half-heard from Kristen’s recording as I was losing focus came back to me as I finally drifted off into the winding pathways of sleep.

“The old way to rule was with a monopoly on violence. My power spells an end to violence and that is why they wanted to kill me. Now many have it and our numbers are growing. I sense you will worry but I will have to visit and convince you that it will all be fine. I can be very persuasive.”

Well that is a bit of an ambiguous ending. I do think that the world needs far more compassion and a part of me revels in the concept of paranormally imposing it on everyone but then I had to throw in a caution that possibly any kind of power has its problems. Also I think it fits my characters. Derrick will worry for Kristen even if she is correct and things will now be fine.

Find the rest of this story via this listing.

Cross-posted here.

Power Play

This entry draws on my observations and experience as someone who has been involved in a number of different friendship or common-interest groups for over two decades. That experience includes a progressive political party, a network of amateur choristers, and an interconnected scene of nerds and goths centered on one university but extending well beyond it. In it I consider the understanding and misunderstanding of power and the ways in which these perceptions impact on the lives of those involved.

If you think that I'm referring to a specific scenario that you are familiar with – well – you may be right. However you may also be wrong because every concept I discuss I have observed many instances of across different groups.

Distorted Perceptions

One fascinating thing I have noticed in political discussion and activity is the extent to which we have distorted perceptions of the power of various players. Sometimes a person or group will have an inflated sense of the power of others. Those of us who want to change the world feel that way. We think the powers-that-be who hold back change are entrenched and monolithic and cannot be shifted despite a history of contrary experiences. However this mindset is also held by groups we tend to oppose. Supposed ‘morality’ campaigners lament that the old standards they defend are slipping away (ironically I think they are more right than us and if they have seemingly become virulent recently it is because they are rightly becoming desperate).

Sometimes this distorted perception of power is a mindset but in other cases it can be part of a deliberate strategy. I have often observed a political party tell its followers that they are facing an overwhelmingly challenging campaign in which much is at risk. This can motivate ones volunteers and give them a sense of the heroic. Everybody roots for the underdog. Inflating the power of others seems to sometimes be a powerful act in its own right.

A Society Of Individuals

Over twenty five years ago then UK Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, made the bold statement that “there is no such thing as society”. That is a ludicrous thing to say. The implication made by this neo-conservative was that at most society was simply the plurality of individuals and that societal forces were a fiction. Most of us accept that just as we compose society so too society shapes who we are. However we can make the opposite mistake of discounting the impact of individuals on society. Particularly in small friendship groups many or most or even all individuals can affect the nature of collective behaviour.

I have made reference to this essay in the past and still find it useful. However it has its limits. The power of cultural memes within the groups I move in exists but I think there is another important phenomenon – the autonomy of every person to make decisions for themselves. I think there is a tendency in the groups I move in to overlook this or to think such volition is only exercised by the occasional 'opinion-maker'. In contrast I think everyone exercises this power for themselves.

I have come across cases in which it is believed that a tiny part of a group can dictate the opinions of the whole. This impression may be formed by looking only at those who are more vocal. What is overlooked is that even those who are silent are still forming impressions for themselves and we cannot simply assume that they are accepting whatever they are told. They may think different things. Or they make think the same things as an alleged opinion-maker but have come to those conclusions themselves.

Lurkers In Life

If you are anything like me then every statement and action and interaction you observe will affect your disposition towards others and help you decide just how close or distant you wish to be to every other person in your group. However if you are like me you will also keep your own counsel on many things. I suspect that many are like me - lurkers in life rather than just online. Possibly we are a problem. Nonetheless we exist and as a result many opinions will be masked by a veneer of polite neutrality.

Most of the time this is fine but in cases of tension or conflict it can make it difficult to discern just how much positive or negative disposition there is in a group towards a particular person or action. One will only factor in those known dispositions whether positive or negative. Changes in the tally of known opinion may however reflect shifts in unknown opinion. And if this body of guarded opinion makes understanding opinions difficult it can also make influencing opinions all-the-more difficult.

Groups As Scenes

What if I did want to influence opinion in a group. The kind of group I have in mind is pretty big and can comprise well over a hundred participants. It is tempting to think that all I need to do is sway the tiny number of opinion-makers or even somehow be one of them. This is wishful thinking because we are all our own opinion-makers. At best I can use opinion-makers to disseminate information widely that all participants will separately assess. But even that ability is limited because a big group is barely a group at all. It becomes more of a scene than a group.

A scene will comprise many inter-connected or overlapping groups distinguished by factors such as generation or behaviour. The young who still attend Uni and sit together most days will be distinct from those who have graduated and only meet on weekends at parties. And then there will be distinctions that exist within generations. I once described one difference in a scene as being between “those who like to drink and dance” and “those who like to smoke and chat”. If a host promotes one kind of activity over another then they will attract a particular selection of guests. How shall I have an impact on the smokers and the drinkers and the chatters and how can I even talk to the dancers as they swish and sway? Information flow in such a scene will be sluggish and sometimes never get to everyone (this is also the case with the much vaunted ‘grapevine’ that I find cannot be trusted to do its job of conveying gossip to all-and-sundry).

The Danger In Power

All these autonomous persons keeping opinions to themselves! All these distinctions that make a group into a diffuse scene! I will need to put a lot of work into having any impact on opinions faced with all this. And will the effort of becoming an opinion-maker be worth the return? Possibly it will be except that there is another problem - the danger of seeming more powerful than I am.

If I somehow manage to get identified as an opinion-maker then others will form an inflated impression of my power. That could make me a target if ever anyone interprets a change to group opinion as due to my ‘manipulations’. I return to my comment that “everyone roots for the underdog”. Conversely an effective way to turn someone into a victim is to cast them as a bully. Everyone forms and (sometimes) expresses personal opinions but my utterances are suddenly acts of power and I become subject to accusations of abusing that power. With this risk in mind the costs of assuming a veneer of power become prohibitive.

Better Look Big!

So why try to be powerful? I am sure there are lots of motivations but I will speculate on just one and it originates in the apprehension that we both lack power and need to be powerful to thrive. Consider this:

In a hostile world it makes sense to look bigger and stronger than you are. So like frill-necked lizards we try and make ourselves look big. Hiss! However we live in a more complex world than that. In this life there are many who try to be considerate and they will be sensitive to hints of vulnerability. Ironically if you present an impervious facade then you will more likely be subject to carelessness from those who think you can endure it.

I am lucky. I have resisted the temptation of bluster and bravado that our culture tells us is necessary for us to do well in life. I suspect that laziness has helped me there because such an act looks like too much work and I am shocking at keeping a straight face. I keep my counsel a lot but will at times express opinions like this in which I draw on many specific experiences and try and suggest some common themes. Others may find some of these reflections useful and if so then I will have had a scintilla of power. On the other hand most will never see it and I will be one of those autonomous persons that frustrate the hope of holding power in a group. And that is just fine by me.

Cross-posted here.

Memory Cathedral

I spent the past weekend in Adelaide to attend the end of the Adelaide Intervarsity Choral Festival (AIV) 2013. Even just a few days of visiting another city and interacting with interstate friends is both invigorating and exhausting. Here I shall reflect on that and on past choral intervarsity (IV) recollections.

* * * * *

The choristers of AIV had been to Victor Harbour for rehearsal camp and beautiful shots of that made me wish I had attended fully. On returning the choral contingent continued rehearsing at the University of Adelaide and I witnessed a bit of that. I also got regaled with acts I had missed from the camp revue while sipping a malted milkshake at the Pancake Parlour. Choristers work and play hard and much of what they do is musical.

The next day across the River Torrens this all culminated in a moving performance of works by Rachmaninoff and others at Saint Peter’s Cathedral. The gig was followed by a post-concert party at a bar we had exclusive use of which had a lovely old-world charm and a balcony looking over the city streets. There was singing and drinking and chatter.

The next day a recovery barbeque in Botanic Park allowed for relaxed hugs and final farewells. I miss a score of friends I barely interacted with but I’m still happy I saw them (I cannot name them all but some are depicted in the linked photo album).

My holiday was a truncated one and yet I did manage to spend some quality time with particular friends. I stayed in the Central Youth Hostel with Belinda and we visited the local produce markets, the Museum of South Australia, and a Thai restaurant in North Adelaide. I went lunching and shopping with Lisa and Ayla and got to see costumes they had worked on for assorted IV functions I had missed (particularly impressive is Lisa as a bat). And the long journey by car to-and-from Adelaide allowed me to spend more time with younger MonUCS Varia, Ryan, Meaghan & Ben (whose driving endurance and good cheer is fantastic).

I also spent some of my time alone if only to walk from here to there as I did assorted things. I had been to the City of Churches in the past and the overall lie of the land came back to me pretty quickly. And as I did this wandering the sensation of exploring another city started reminding me of other such experiences and other IVs.

* * * * *

There is a custom among university choristers of noting the participation of a member in seven consecutive IVs (seven for the seven alternating host cities). I am vague as to whether one has to be a full performing participant to say one has completed a ‘cycle’ so I will simply note here what I have done.

* For MIV 2012 I sang in the first concert of two and otherwise participated socially in the whole festival.

* For PIV 2011 I only visited for the last few days and only saw the second of two concerts. I also spent some of my time just wandering as I had never seen Perth.

* For CIV 2010 the only performing I did was for some promotional singing at the Bus Depot Market. For the fiesta itself however I was ever-present and a very helpful adjunct to the Committee.

* For 60IV (aka H1N1IV) in 2009 I attended for the second half of the festival and sang in the last concert.

* For SIV 2008 I attended for the first half of the festival and sang in the first concert.

* For BIV 2007 I only visited for the last few days and only saw the second of two concerts. This was another new city to me so I did lots of wandering of Brisbane.

Wow. This time seems both short in that it has gone quickly and long in that so much has happened in that timeframe. Also IVs have triggered some significant changes in my life and most of them for the better. Despite my somewhat patchy participation I feel as if I am a part of this crazy never-ending show. Even if I cannot continue to attend future IVs I will still do all I can to preserve friendships formed as a result of these seven amazing festivals.

Cross-posted here.

Mars

You may be familiar with Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version Of The War Of The Worlds (1978). It is an adaptation of the H G Wells classic science fiction novel War Of The Worlds (1898) in the form of a progressive concept album (which much more recently was made into a live musical). I enjoy the album but there is one part of it that has always annoyed me – the added epilogue.

The story is set in the time H G Wells originally set it but this epilogue has a setting contemporary with that of the music album or sometime in the future. In it the transmission from a NASA mission to Mars is suddenly interrupted and the sound effects used throughout the album to signal Martian presence echo and fade. This track was added, I suppose, to grant a contemporary relevance to the story, and to add an ominous note to its ending, but it annoys me because if human civilization had been almost destroyed by Martians in the 1890s then the subsequent history of space exploration, and indeed the history of all sorts of things, would have been very different.

Imagine your world has been almost conquered by aliens and the only thing that stopped them was Earth bacteria, which the aliens had zero resistance to and, in a display of selective intelligence, had somehow overlooked in their colonization plan. You are yet to have had any kind of human-versus-human world war. Chances are you never will now. All the efforts of all the nations of Earth will be bent towards preventing the Earth from ever suffering again at the hands (pseudopodia) of extra-terrestrials.

* * * * *

The existence of aliens, let alone hostile aliens, would likely have altered the disposition of humans towards each other. The differences between nation-states and military alliances would be diminished and the overwhelming similarity of humanity would be embraced. The value of saving ourselves from celestial terror would be paramount. It is likely that our emerging defence plans would include forward defence and who could blame us if a motive for this offensive strategy was revenge for all that death and destruction. I envisage a counter-attack directed at Mars with the intention of destroying rather than colonizing that world.

The first rockets – the V2s of Nazi Germany – were operating in 1944. Twenty Five years later, drawing on the same technology, the United States put astronauts on the Moon. Moonshot in 1969 was a product of decades of technological development spurred on by both hot and cold wars, but I suspect a Martian invasion would be an even greater motivator to technological development, assisted, not by super-power competition, but by cooperation between all the great powers.

The ability to get to Mars would also have been assisted by having the abandoned Martian war machines to study. Human ingenuity supplemented by alien tech would assist the process drastically. Still it would depend on the nature of the tech. I get the impression from War Of The Worlds that the Martians travel interplanetary space by means of projectile rather than propulsion. In other words the Martians capsules were thrown to Earth rather than self-propelled and thus key technology would be far away on Mars and impossible to study. On the other hand one could imagine humans developing a different way – possibly propulsion is the human method in my scenario.

If there was a way chances are we would find it. Without two world wars to distract us, and a fervent desire to get back at the bastards, one could imagine us in orbit and on the Moon by the 1920s. And from there? What then? I can imagine us mining the Moon to make artificial meteorites and hurl them at the Martians, causing a planetary extinction event. But would the Martians be prepared for us?

The Martians knew of us since they sent the invasion to us. However that act was itself one of desperation as they are described as coming from a dying world. Possibly, having poured resources into a failed invasion, they would then have turned their efforts back into rehabilitating their own world. Also, they had shown themselves capable of overlooking Earth microbes, so they could very well also overlook Earthlings. It could be that they had one chance, blew it, and now are at the mercy of the new and very dangerous kid on the solar block. I almost feel sorry for the slimy gits.

* * * * *

To my surprise I recently discovered that someone did think that the natural consequence of the War Of The Worlds story was an Earth retaliation on Mars. What was even more surprising was that this was done later the same year that H G Wells published his novel. I’m sure there are other more recent science fiction novels that do this but for it to have happened then alters some of my perceptions of literature over a century ago. An American author, Garrett P Serviss, published Edison’s Conquest Of Mars without approval from Wells, but with the acceptance of Thomas Edison himself. What this says to me is that fan-fiction is nothing new and that fictionalizing public figures is also old hat. Now it is all the rage – heck I only discovered this because I was reading a historical fiction novel in which Wells and Serviss are characters – but then? I would have expected more propriety in Victorian times. Tells you what I know.

* * * * *

There are superficially tantalizing aspects to the alternative history I have described. A united world which never had to suffer the trauma of two world wars is an appealing one. A humanity that has ventured into interplanetary space rather than just sent a few toy robots into it is likewise attractive. But other things may have come with this other history. A united world could still be one with lots of problems. The forces of totalitarianism that were developing between the world wars could have also developed but taken on a different form in which jingoism was humanocentric. We could have had a regimented planet dedicated to conquest in which everyone had to contribute to the never-ending effort of making sure nothing in the Universe was more threatening than us. This alternative is anything but tantalizing.

I think I will stick with what we had. And yes of course this is a silly discussion because Wells was simply mistaken – we know now that “the chances of anything coming from Mars” are zilch. Which gets me back to the musical version – we were pretty sure of that in the 70s too and that just makes the added epilogue even more annoying.

Cross-posted here.

Linkages

2012 is almost over and I find I am busy with assorted things like house-sitting and tent holidaying. This makes it more difficult for me to do my usual two posts per month so for this entry I am presenting a sort of flashbacks entry in much the same way that television shows present flashback episodes.

I have chosen one entry for each of the topic labels I allocate to posts at Lazy Luddite Log. I have also selected only from the more recent stuff that is cross-posted at Originaluddite. So here I go...

Life Experiences

With such posts I describe happenings in my life at the time of writing. In Summer Holiday I tell of a getaway similar to the one I am off to sometime today.

Nostalgia And Reminiscences

The moment a post has past it arguably becomes a snippet of nostalgia. However other posts of mine look back at things in the past at the time of writing and tend to consider how popular culture has changed. Cups And Saucers is one of those and refers to some icons of science fiction.

Internet Observations

Now and then I will comment on ways in which I think Internet usage is affecting our behaviour and I did this in Webface.

Images

The World Wide Web is full of graphics and yet my presence there is mostly in text. Sometimes I will try to add some interest to an entry with a photo and all such posts are given the Image tag. In Four Corners I link to a number of images and try to get an Internet Meme happening (at the time only one friend adopted the meme).

Music Related Stuff

One of the things that interests me and at times actively involves me is music and so sometimes it gets an entry. Particularly during holidays I tend to listen to my favourite band who I tribute in Queen Sized.

Creative Writing

Sometimes I try my hand at writing a short story. Here in The Deep Calm I present a fantasy story that, like a number of others, has water as a key motif.

Political

Occasionally my writing gets political. Like any member of society I have opinions on some of the more controversial issues we face. In Misanthropy I argue that prejudice in its many forms is fundamentally childish in nature.

Philosophical

In some posts I can muse in a rather wishy-washy way on the nature of things. Sometimes however I can be more precise. We still live in a world in which religion is a powerful force (as if anyone needed to remind you of that just following Christmas) and in Supernatural Moral I express my concerns with evangelical religion.

Recipes

This exercise has shown me that it has been too long since I posted any recipes. That in turn is because I have done nothing innovative in the kitchen for ages. I have stuck with my same old concoctions except for the odd but of ingredient substitution to satisfy particular friends. This is one thing I hope to remedy in the New Year. And now I'm hungry. Time to log off and get on with life.

Cross-posted here.