fascism and communism

Fascism looks to the imagined past for its inspiration, it is nostalgic and fearful. Communism looks to the imagined future for its inspiration, it is hopeful and envious. In the current era all groups that use 'nostalgia for a more solid and predictable reality' are fascistic, even ones that look fondly on the communist past. That they believe their own propaganda is neither here nor there.

3 art thoughts

Art is the celebration of the fact that there is something rather than nothing.

Art is about the balance and tension between negative space and positive space within a frame.

Art and craft are on a continuum - not a line, but a circle that touches at both ends, which is why it is hard to separate them.

why has control freakery increased?

I remember the first time I heard the word 'control freak'- I was in my 20s- so this was the late 1980s. The term itself had first appeared in the US in the 1970s and had gradually filtered through to mainstream use in the UK and elsewhere. Before 'control freak' we had the more Freudian 'anal'. X is really 'anal' people said. Then anal sex became a mainstream topic (even featuring in Family Guy) and this term disappeared to be replaced by 'control freak'. 

Control freakery has increased in my lifetime. The less you FEEL in control the MORE you have to ACT as if you are in control. Control freakery is micromanaging things that don't need this approach. It is different to being a 'details' person. A control freak wants every leaf on their lawn hoovered up by a menial every day. A detail person is more concerned about the trees and plants and lawn as they interact. A control freak is someone concerned about details that don't matter. A details person is someone for whom a specific detail can call forth a whole vision. When doing a portrait such a person might start with a detail and expand out of that rather than making an overall sketch. An actor might construct a whole character from a certain pair of shoes and a cane. A details person is someone who sees the whole VIA the parts. A control freak only sees parts.

Control freaks see a scarey world in which everything is changing fast. Things have always changed, it is the nature of reality, but now the things that are changing affect basic security: shelter, health, family. Instead of embracing a radical form of flexibility the control freak doubles down and tries to change their little world in order to give meaning to their lives. As the nihilistic notion of a random world gains universal traction through the education system in the industrialised developed world the idea of a unified meaningful existence becomes shattered. When you disregard even theorectical notions of deep unity, meaning becomes harder to find. But micromeaning can be derived from being creative and building things and being a control freak is the form creativity takes in destructive people. They scrabble for meaning by imposing their will on others. It is a mild form of sadism...

But why has it increased? Because the overcomplicated nature of modern living encourages it. If your day is spent sitting in front of a computer screen sending emails that basically have no great meaning in the context of reality then you are going to look for alternatives. Micro meaning comes from caring for others, building things or how you face up to adversity. Modern institutions have weakened human ties and made caring a bureaucratic procedure, further diluting meaning. Building anything is another overcomplex dilute process. Suffering exists of course but victim culture tends to undermine a stoical response- so another path of meaning is closed.

America, anecdotally, is modestly rich in control freaks- one clue is the name having originated there. In as much as the US leads us down the path to modernity we can expect it to lead in exhibitons of control freakery. An additional reason more relevant to the US than elsewhere, is the insecurity of Americans in regard to identity. Like any colonial power they used their superior power to acquire the land from non-industrialised indigenous people. They then reneged on treaties in order to get even more land. It is a country in which the lies and deception (they are not alone in this, few countries are squeaky clean) on which it expanded are in the historical record- an uncomfortable fact for anyone trying to work out their 'US Identity'. Add to this the way status is determined in America by financial or media success. Of course this is a feature of everywhere in the world- but places with more 'history' and a population who are mostly indigenous allow for easier identity formation. In some places you only have to lived there a long time to be a somebody: there are no towns in the US that can boast churches built on sites that are thousands of years old- which is the case in the UK. And in Europe, to have a business for a long time (hundreds of years) even if it is small, is a meaningful thing. In America if you still only had a single shop after 400 years you'd be classed a loser- why no franchise? the American dream is to invent some product or business and then work out a way to mechanically reproduce it like a viral infection. Every high street with a Macdonalds and Subway and noting else...All this is good, as they say, for business, but it means that your status (which is a behavioural need of the human animal) is not assured by birth alone. You have to work to get it (rather than simply work to get food and goods). And that puts additional psychological pressure on everyone. Halfway through life you may wake up and realise you will never get the status you crave. The solution is start acting like a boss even if you aren't one. Start bossing your environment- in other words become a control freak.

It feels good to be the boss. In charge of something. But only if you are scared and a bit desperate. Welcome to the world of the control freak.

how do we screen out destructive people?

Traditional societies- preindustrial societies- operated on such a small and decentralised scale- that destructive people, if they gained control, were limited in their influence. More importantly, a traditional approach to life which emphasises family, growing food, managing wildlife requires individual acts of a constructive nature. Being a control freak or a tyrant isn't quite as easy. There were exceptions- but when you live close to nature you have to follow nature's rules which means honouring life forces rather than death instincts. In these societies destructive people stand out and can be avoided. There are no institutions for them to hide behind.

But once you have a modern industrialised state you have many many hidey holes for destructive people. These are people who are more pessimistic, more superficial and more lazy than most. The hard job of recongnising them is they are adept at hiding their true colours. The pessimistic can hide behind 'realism', 'making hard choices' 'getting things done', 'incentivising with money'. The superficial can claim an interest in art, religion, politics and literature- supposedly 'deep subjects'. The lazy can use constant pointless activity as deep cover.

If you run a business, are looking for friends or workers, are choosing to vote for someone how do you spot these covert destructors?

1. They love war metaphors and yet lack any real war experience.

2. They may talk of building things but their building plans fail.

3. They love office politics.

4. They are control freaks.

5. They attract masochistic followers.

6. Their hobbies are not creative.

7. They prefer centralisation to decentralisation.

8. They do not trust.

9. They do not take responsibility.

10. They like job titles rather than the reality of the job.

11. They prefer stupid symbols of 'progress' to real quiet work in that area.

12. They use email to shift the burden of work rather than to solve something.

13. They gravitate towards appearances rather than the obvious truth of a thing.

The problem is that we all have some destructive elements in the sub-personalities that run our lives. Depending on which personality we roll out, the level of destructiveness changes. This is where is gets confusing- when someone has a good sense of humour (usually a non-destructive sign) this may be a side of a better personality that has been tacked on to a more destructive one, which itself has been called forth by the demands of a job. 'Going over to the dark side' you might call it. Then the attractive qualities of charm and humour may become tools for a destructive ego- the classic sociopath. But humour is an odd thing. Many 'funny' people have none- and their stoneface is part of their act- a kind of sadism in fact. Destructive people lack humour in the face of adversity is my only observation. Normal people retain and rely on humour to get them through their failures. They readjust their perception of reality with humour. Destructive people try to break something instead.

shove your 10000 hours!

I have just been reading the superb and very readable biography of the Beatles by Craig Brown. I had until now fallen for the line peddled by the 10000 hour crowd that it was the hours and hours of drudgelike performing they did in Hamburg that made them the super musicians they became. Not a bit of it! After a lacklustre first perfomance they were told by the manager to 'make a show'. So Paul, George and John started to lark about- insulting the audience, sometimes fighting each other and most interestingly seeing how long they could stretch songs out for. Once they managed to stretch out a Ray Charles number for an hour and a quarter. Only Pete Best sat dutifully plugging away, his face set and sour. The others were...playing. And it is in play that we progress at any art form, not dutiful practise like some kind of robot. Learn to play, for therein lies experiment and interest and life! and to play for 10, 100 or 10000 hours is no big deal at all....

Polymaths rare in the middle

Being cursed with contrarian personality traits, I was beginning to turn against the current interest and spread of reporting on polymathic matters, after a years long infatuation with the idea of polymathy. I was beginning to try the odd thought experiment- what if successful people weren't actually polymathic at all but were really rather narrow minded? However I knew this to be false at the top of the food chain- the super achievers who are nobel prize winners and top entrepreneurs and other prominent folk are reliably polymathic, measurably so in the case of Nobel prize winners who are 22 times more likely to pursue some artistic interest than a regular academic scientist. 

My mistake, which I think is made by most people writing about multipotentiality, was to think that everyone else was not polymathicly inclined. But a recent survey of facebook, and serious reflecting on all the people I knew with 'normal' jobs, who are neither super successful or super rich or even very prominent- just regular folk- I saw that they were WAY more polymathic in their interests and hobbies and serious non-job pursuits than any of the above average 'successful' people I knew. In other words, the distribution of polymathy is hour glass shaped. People at the very top and people lower down are polymathic. Those in the middle, striving and struggling to be top of their field or CEO or some other malarkey are not. They haven't the time or the energy - which is needed for the all encompassing demands of the job. In the 1950s a successful headmaster was one throwing his golfclubs in the back of the car at 4pm on a Friday. Now the model of the successful head is one working nights and weekends to make his school the very best. Time spent on work is all part of modern virtue signalling. We only have energy left over for box sets and a game of tennis if you're lucky. But those who don't care about climbing the greasy pole can use their leisure time to pursue all kinds of things- helped by the internet which enables new pastime discovery at a rate never before experienced. And all the evidence is that they are very happy thank you doing just this. They are in no need of lectures on being various.

The hour glass distribution of polymathy means that the appeal is mainly to the people in the middle, the ever squeezed, still ambitious middle classes, losing out yet again.

fascism and communism

Fascism is rooted in fear. Communism is rooted in envy. What would you do in the 1930s knowing what you now know? These are some of the thoughts whistling around in my head today at the start of a new year. First, what do you do when the world is madder than usual and even the people you kind of agree with are making things worse? Do you retire to a hut in the mountains in 1933 and wait it out until 1945? 

I have always been fascinated by Malcolm Campbell who set successive world land speed records in the 1930s. he just ignored the politics and did his own thing. Likewise Shipton and Tillman- the great mountain explorers- pegging away at Everest as Auden and Isherwood made fun of them and wrote serious stuff instead. But time moves on and all of that is judged in a different light. The light that says how much of what you do reflects and refracts the cosmic light within and without? Are you alone but able to capture, handle and return some of that light, let it be seen? Or do you plunge into darkness while all around applaud. Doing your own thing with due regard to your nearest and dearest may still be the best course of action.