the tube and the singularity

sometimes you have to earn money. you get a tube job, that is tube as in toothpaste. in this kind of thing you get squeezed out over time. by the end you are fully squeezed and maybe all bent up to get the last drop out of you. no dignity required or involved though former generations who did the same job were awash with dignity. now the opposite to this is the singularity (nothing to do with ray kurzweil). the singularity is a genuine one off, a raised finger would be the obvious thing to say but actually it is NOT a rebellion it is an act of contradictory alliance. things in opposition may be working together. facing the global as we do you can beat yourself trying to come up with universalisable ideas (democracy for all, free trade, stop global warming, stop war) or you could realise that all that has ended and now the only way to avoid being a tube, getting used up, is to create or be in singularities...

why sceptics always fail to convince...in the end

We all know them: the professional sceptics who make a living debunking such things as the paranormal, uri geller, psychics and tarot card readers. Yet as soon as one generation of sceptics dies, their work, seemingly never finished, is taken up by a new generation. But just as the Gellers of this world can never convince everyone, neither can the sceptics.

By the way, for the record, I am sure that Geller is a fraud (I met an Israeli who knew him before he was famous and claims he originally did the psychic stuff as a magic trick...like Derren Brown he only became famous when he claimed it was FOR REAL.)

But really the reason the sceptics fail to convince is because they suffer from 'it's-nothing-but-itis". They are knee jerk reductionists. And just try telling a painter that red and green are 'nothing but different wavelengths' and you'll get an inkling of what's afoot. We can be sure of one thing- life is NEVER 'nothing but'.

The problem lies in what is going on. The sceptic is looking for a way to make the uncomfortable implications of the psychic go away. The sceptic is, in fact, a kind of believer. He or she has seen that if telepathy is true then it changes everything. It means that a lot of science is based on wrong assumptions- and that's too big a contradiction for their thin shoulders to bear. But a scientist needs broad shoulders; a good one will know half of what he took for gospel as a student will be overturned in his lifetime- or else be like Rutherford denying Einstein to his grave. And a shrug of the shoulders is all that is needed for something as peripheral to everyday life as telepathy.

For therein lies the rub- psychic phenomena are always singular- I have just read a very convincing case of an adopted boy who was suddenly plagued by dreams that his real mother was being plagued by bears in a cold northern place. His adopted mother was concerned and rang hospitals in Alaska which was all she could think to do. Finally she connected with the real mother who was dying of AIDS in...Alaska. So the son, who was able to finally meet his real mum, got to assuage his fears (to some extent) before she died.

But mostly this sort of thing doesn't happen, and science needs regularity to make its predictions.

Of course we all know science doesn't run as Karl Popper suggested- a single 'negative' where there should be a positive is airbrushed away- Ptolemaic astronomy was more accurate than Copernican, at first, owing to the number of ingenious workarounds that had been developed. So the sceptics shouldn't fear- they should have more faith in the stalwart strengths of science.

So a sceptic is revealed as someone who actually hasn't much faith in anything, but a lot of belief instead. Belief in this case means an intellectual drive to assert what ought to be the case. Whereas faith is a confidence that when something works you don't try to fix it, you use it.

We, the ordinary punters, torn between sceptics and psychics, don't need belief in 'our system'. We have faith in the world as a mysterious place that will always surprise us, but not every day. Especially if we live routinised lives within well worn boundaries.

people think in categories

Famously in the 1970s A&W burgers launched a campaign called 'the third is the word' where they sold a 1/3 pound burger for the same price as a quarter pounder. For some reason it failed and never took off. At a focus group they found people saying "why should we pay the same price for a third of a pound burger as we do for a quarter pounder".

Some assumed that the punters were so thick they couldn't do fractions and that customers believed a third was smaller than a quarter. OK, maybe a few...

What I think occurred is that the very strong category of 'quarter pounder' had outstripped its connection to the real world of weights and measures. I think the consumer probably thought that quarter pounder and third pounder were kind of like the same- so price became the big issue. The strong category of 'quarter pounder' worked to 'stop thought'- or at least confuse it.

When you enter a world with strong categories don't be surprised if no one understands your subtle point. Their minds are simply too 'wired in' to cope. Using the strong categories beloved by others really means nothing new is being communicated.

The value of things that are outside categorisation is that they may, just, be listened to or looked at....

saltmines #2

If you want to becomes wiser, put yourself in an environment where being wise happens more often. Find the place where acting wisely is easier. What are the everyday surroundings of a wise person?

why poetry is essential

I hated poetry up until the age of 13 or 14.

I thought it was a con. That it was deliberately vague. Nonsense words that adults pretended meant something.

Aged 13 or 14 I fell in love and thought: where kind I find out about love? I know: poetry.

So I started to read it. So now I wasn't hostile, just not that interested.

Aged 16 I watched a TV program about Craig Raine who wrote 'martian poetry'- that is, poems with startling and clever show-off metaphors. Not much rhyming. (Rhyme scares people who 'don't like poetry'.) Suddenly a thought came to me: I can do this!

I started writing poetry. I worked out how to do it and began to look at all forms of it. I grew to love the intricacies of making words rhyme and puns ceased to be annoying and became intriguing.

But the best thing was that I learnt how to understand non-literal, metaphorical communication. If you aren't able to read between the lines, see levels within levels and understand when something is an analogy and when it is meant to be literally true then you will be at a grave disadvantage....

the notion of perfection

The notion of perfection is necessary as a template, something to aim for, a map.

But it is not the territory. The territory is ugly, messy, sometimes beuatiful at dawn, but otherwise a right old hodge podge.

People try and make the territory perfect and forget that it never can be. Knowing when to ditch the notion of perfection and when to use it as a spur is the skill you need to acquire.

More damage has been done by people misusing perfection as a concept than almost anything else bar rank stupidity.

creating versus worrying

My old friend and bestselling author Tahir Shah wrote on a social media post that his new year's resolution is "create, create, create." Given that he is highly productive people who want to create may take notice. The wrong frame of mind to be in when you are making something new of an artistic nature is "is it good enough?" The right frame of mind is to be like a kid in front of a mound of clay eager to get stuck in and so keen to know what will be created. Think create, create, create and be eager to just make stuff. Maybe if you're lucky people will like it. But in a way you've already been paid.