Daybook 14.

Don’t read this, it’s mostly just draft material that needs a lot of rewriting.

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Not communicating.

There’s that story, you know the one I mean, about the man who suddenly finds out that he’s a ghost and has been for years! What happened was that he died in an accident but then he continued to inhabit the world of the living as an invisible ghost. But he never realised this, poor guy, he thought he was still alive.

I can’t remember the exact details of the story and, now that I come to think of it, I must have missed some detail because it occurs to me: how was it possible that he could have gone all that time without realising? Wouldn't the fact he wasn’t interacting and communicating with other people the way living people do have given away that something was wrong? Like when he went to the store and asked for something and they just ignored him.

But then I think to myself that maybe he didn’t realise something was wrong because he wrongly assumed he was successfully communicating with living people even though he wasn’t. So every time he said something he must have thought people were responding to him. But they weren’t really. Like that thing when you see someone waving and you think they’re waving at you but they’re actually waving at someone else (clearly more worthy of being waved at) behind you.

But if this sort of thing was happening all the time that would be really weird. It would mean that he would be talking to somebody and they wouldn’t be responding to him. They would just be getting on with whatever they were doing. But he would take something about what they did to be them responding to what he was saying!

Of course all the above is just idle speculation. I don’t even know why I’m trying to make sense of the story. It’s just a story that makes no sense. It’s not the first one that doesn’t and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

But what struck me is that maybe there are some (non-ghost) people who are like that now and in real life. They think they are communicating with others but they aren’t really. I suspect that all that so-called communication on social media is like this.

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Notes for a theory of funny 1.

The more contrived the context of something humorous, the less funny I find it. So there are very few movies I find funny. A movie is such an enormously and obviously constructed artefact that something in a movie trying to be funny fails to be. But stand-up comedy or just hearing someone say the same thing in an ordinary conversation (which is a very un-contrived situation) will be funny. Conversation is a situation even less contrived than someone delivering a monologue which is what stand-up is. This is why the funniest stand-up comedy is where the performer is talking conversationally as if they were talking directly to you as an individual. And so a comedy act which was two people talking to each other would be funnier than the usual stand-up format which is just one person talking.

Notes for a theory of funny 2.

People were offended by a joke that the comedian Jo Brand made (June 2019) on a comedy radio show. She was referring to a recent trend whereby people were throwing milkshakes at politicians. She said: “certain unpleasant characters are being thrown to the fore and they’re very, very easy to hate and I’m kind of thinking: ‘Why bother with a milkshake when you could get some battery acid?’” And a bit later: “It’s purely a fantasy, but I think milkshakes are pathetic, I honestly do, sorry.” The context was a comedy radio panel show and the audience was laughing at what she was saying.

I was thinking: people who find this offensive are misunderstanding something here. It’s as if they are reacting to what JB said as if she had been serious in what she said. So imagine she was not a comedian and she had said those same words in response to a news interview asking her what she thought about the milkshake throwings. But she wasn’t being serious. She was being ironic. In particular she was saying (or rather pretending to say) something ridiculous about herself. That was the joke and that was why the audience was laughing. A similar joke would have been if she had been talking about people buying really big cars. And she had said: “Call that a big car, that’s pathetic. What I would do is get a tank and then I could crush other cars in the way.” The joke is that she is saying something over the top and stupid.

And then there also seems to be something like this comment is mocking people who get big cars. In the same way JB’s comments could be taken as mocking people who throw milkshakes.

Sorry 1: regret.

When you say ‘sorry’ what are you doing? Suppose Jack borrows Mary’s car without telling her and then he crashes it. Then he says sorry. Is he saying he regrets what happened. In other words he wishes he hadn’t have done that. But this is not personal to him. He could have been regretful in the same sense if somebody else had done what he did. You can regret something that you didn’t do. - Also Jack regretting it isn’t something special that Jack is doing. There would be something seriously wrong with him if he didn’t regret it. If he thought that what happened was perfectly fine.

Sorry 2: forgiveness.

Jack expressing regret is a necessary condition for Mary forgiving him. What does her forgiving him mean? Does it mean she won’t think negatively about him because of what he did. But why shouldn’t she think negatively? If he has done something bad then it would be wrong if she didn’t. Obviously in the context of all the things that Jack had done. If this was the only bad thing he had ever done then she wouldn’t feel very negatively towards him because of this one thing. - Or does Mary forgiving Jack mean that she won’t punish him. But why should she do that? If he deserves punishment then who is Mary to cancel that punishment? And if she did she would have to do the same for everyone else in the same situation. Everybody else who did something like what Jack had done.

Mainstream Media.

People complain about the influence of the MSM (mainstream media). But really the time to do that was the 1990s and before when the dominance of the MSM had not yet been vastly diminished by the internet. Back in the days when the MSM was the only source of news. Now there’s plenty of others. So if you don’t like the MSM, just don’t read it.

Spoons.

A spoon is just a tiny shallow cup with a very long handle.

Nice.

Anti-capitalism is often just about being nice, isn’t it? For example if some people were being unpleasant to Jack by stealing his money and goods then that’s not nice and everyone, including pro-capitalists would think (rightly) that the law should intervene. But if Jack’s situation is unpleasant because (under capitalism) his employment is precarious due to his employers having the freedom to hire or fire him at will. Or due to landlords having the freedom to increase his rent to whatever they want. Then pro-capitalists think that’s all fine! They don’t think we should be doing anything about this kind of not being nice. So, really, very left-wing regimes are just being very nice. Having lots of rules to stop people being unpleasant to each other.

Creation.

Do consumers always aspire to be producers? Like lovers of novels might want to write a novel themselves some day. But compared to consumption creation is such a difficult and tedious and boring thing to do. Compare eating with cooking for example. Or film-making to film-watching.

Figuring things out.

Imagine you lived somewhere and everybody refused to answer any of your questions. About how to do simple things. Like how to make a cup of tea. Or what those road markings mean. So you had to figure out everything for yourself. And they said: “you might not think so but this is really good because, in figuring things out for yourself without us telling you, you might come up with a better understanding or a better way of doing things”.

People.

Yes, I like people! But it’s like someone keeps offering me instant coffee with four sugars and when I refuse they say: “what? I thought you said you like coffee?”

Patriotism

A big part of patriotism is thinking that your place, the country that you live in, is the best. And that the way things are done there is the best possible way. But everyone in all countries thinks this! And they can’t all be right. The patriots of most countries must be wrong. So really it should be quite common for people to say: “we’ve seen how people do it in country X and frankly, that’s so much better than the way we do it. I mean I know we’ve been doing it the way we have for hundreds and hundreds of years and it’s our ‘heritage’ and it’s our ancestors’ traditions and suchlike but, you know what, now, having found out about country X, we realise that our ancestors were actually quite stupid and vulgar and tasteless. So let’s ditch our traditions and do it this new different way”.  But if someone did actually say anything like this their fellow countryfolk would accuse them of “rejecting their heritage”. That word ‘heritage’ has positive connotations. A nice warm glow around it. But what if you came from a family of slaveholders? That would be your ‘heritage’ then! And there’s nothing positive about that. Rather than ‘heritage’ the more neutral (and so better) word would be ‘background’?

Mind.

Mary: You’ve lost your mind!

Jack: No, I’ve found it.

Freedom of speech.

We feel we ought to prevent people being exposed to biased and ‘fake’ news, especially in a democracy during an election. But isn’t the problem here the people who are careless enough to be influenced by fake news rather than the fake news itself? If we are banning fake news then that means we don’t trust voters to resist malign influences. But that just means we don’t trust democracy!

Making friends.

This is sometimes about making someone into a friend. Where the ‘someone’ could be anyone. And the ‘making’ is something like getting them them to behave in a certain way. I don’t mean “against their will”. Rather it’s more just about showing them. As if you were teaching them to play a game that you want to play.

Honesty.

People put signs on their vans which say “no tools or money left in this van overnight”. They could be lying about this. Which is fine. They don’t need to be honest with potential thieves. (And non-thieving people won’t care if it is a lie or not.) It’s like if I say to a robber trying to take my watch: don’t rob me of this it’s only worth £10 to you, let me keep it and I promise I will give you £20 tomorrow. I don’t need to keep this promise.

Acquaintances.

I hate having acquaintances. I want to know someone properly or not at all. It’s a bit like how you shouldn’t learn about something superficially (“a little learning is a dangerous thing”). If you are going to learn about something you should learn about it properly.

Business.

You could have a capitalist country which was also socialist at the same time. But in a more well-defined way than the kind of thing that the term “mixed economy” refers to. So your economy would consist of private businesses who are there to make a profit. But there would be one business which was government owned and run whose aim was to provide a certain basic standard of living to everyone. It would provide basic housing clothing food and healthcare. Even if all the private businesses closed down this government business would still survive. (And I’m thinking that surely such a business would be quite efficient what with its horizontal and vertical integration.) This is very different from the current meaning of ‘mixed economy’ which is where you have a free market economy with the government tinkering in it.

Loneliness.

Some people feel unhappy because they are lonely where this means that their life lacks the pleasure and satisfaction which can be got from interaction with other people. But this is just one of a number of different satisfactions their lives might or might not include. Other things are: eating, reading, watching TV, doing sport, playing games, learning stuff, listening to (and playing) music, being creative in other ways. What if you weren’t lonely so didn’t lack interaction with others. But you lacked all these other things. Would that be OK? That’s a bit of an unfair question I know because it’s asking to assign a relative value to different pleasures. But maybe people overvalue having friends. Maybe having friends is a luxury. Or something that should be recognised as something that is out of your control like being good-looking or funny. Certainly good friends are a rare commodity. I mean people who are nice, warm, caring, sensitive, interested in you. Also we hate to be lonely because others around us aren’t. If everybody was as friendless as us then we might not mind so much.

Food fuel.

Is the food that you eat ever used by your body just as fuel to keep you warm? Like in winter you might burn wood in your house to keep warm?

Automobiles.

Why are there so many different kinds of cars? So many shapes and colours. I get the impression that everybody thinks old style car designs look better than modern ones. But if so then why don’t cars get made now according to the old styles? This is a bit like how in the past people used to live in small villages and communities where everyone knew their neighbours and everyone else and they were all supportive of each other. In the present day everyone says this was a better way of living than the way they actually live. So why don’t they live like that?

Inbox.

If you do things according to priority then the low priority things will never get done. You will always get higher priority things coming in. This is rather like how, if we spent taxes only on essentials like healthcare, then there would be no public museums or funding for things like sports.

Photosynthesis.

The Wikipedia about photosynthesis says “Photosynthesis is a process used by plants and other organisms to convert light energy into chemical energy that can later be released to fuel the organisms' activities”. What ‘activities’? We’re not talking about triffids here are we? Plants seem to create a lot more stored chemical energy in food than they need to it seems. Very suspicious.

Blocks.

I walk along streets and am aware of those streets that I am walking through but less so of what is between the streets. Of ‘the block’ and the buildings that make up that block. I’m talking about built-up areas, say in the centre of a town. Often the block is quite large but it’s like I don’t really know that it is there. A block might be 100 metres square. Which means there is a lot more to it than the buildings that I can see, the ones that are facing out onto the streets. On a map I can see that there are sometimes yards and alleys and courts inside a large block.

Decadent.

Suppose I see someone gets on the train and they remove their outdoor footwear and put on a pair of slippers they have brought with them for that purpose. I think: “how decadent!”. And then I think: “how organised!”.

Long term memory recall.

Is there some way I can improve this? In the sense of: suppose Jack and Mary both read the same novel and, after about a month, Jack has a greater recall of what happened in the novel than Mary. What can Mary do to have the same ability as Jack? So I’m not talking here about techniques you can use to remember particular material. Like ‘memory palace’ or mnemonics. Because they don’t improve your general ability to remember. Which ability doesn’t rely on techniques. Having said that, maybe using these techniques does improve your general ability. So: the more you use the techniques, the less you need them. ... When I do an internet search on “how to improve long term memory?” I get results about which are mostly about techniques often not psychological like getting enough sleep and exercising.

Rules.

Sometimes when people are expressing their dislike of some particular rules they seem to slip into the idea that there should be no rules at all. But that is something very different.

Liking.

If you put sugar in your tea does that mean you don’t really like tea, you are using sugar to drown out the taste of the tea? Contrary: if, after eating a kilo of chocolate you can’t eat any more. When you refuse someone might say: “I thought you liked chocolate!”.

Seinfeld.

At Bob’s party (season 9 episode 12) Elaine is in charge of people’s coats. Unknown to Bob she has thrown his coat out of the window (never mind why that’s a different story). Bob blames her but only because it was her job to look after the coats. Later she complains to the others that Bob is being unreasonable in blaming her - “as far as he knows someone stole it and that’s the person who should be held responsible” she says. (Bob is holding correctly blaming her but for the wrong reasons.)

Distraction.

The internet is distracting. If I am sat here on my computer doing something important it might cross my mind: I wonder what new movies are out (even though I never go to the movies) or I wonder what happened to X? or I wonder what the population of Hull is. To avoid this distraction I just write down what I want to know telling myself I will look it up later. Then I can carry on doing what I am doing. I usually find that, once I have finished what I am doing, I am no longer interested in whatever it was. The desire to find out about X was just a “passing fancy”. So this is one case where the saying: “don’t leave till later what you can do now” doesn’t apply.

The way it is.

People who boast that they “say it the way it is” are the ones who are the least likely to say it the way it is. Similarly people who say “I just say what I think” don’t say what they really think but just what they heard someone else say and it sounded good so they repeat it. They haven’t sat down and thought about what they are saying.

Busy.

It’s a commonplace thing to say that the modern world is so busy and frantic and stressful, especially modern city life. Compared to the past (or to ‘developing’ countries in the present) where life was slower and more relaxed. About which I think: really? How can life have been more relaxed in the past? When, for the vast majority of people, each day was a struggle against famine and poverty and disease and, quite frequently, war and conflict. Even in the (relatively recent) 19th century in the most advanced societies of that time (and it must have been worse elsewhere in the world) people worked 18 hours a day in factories. That sounds pretty busy to me. Or if they were in the countryside they would have to do similarly many hours of back breaking field and mill work to yield a measly few loaves of bread and some vegetables and scraps of meat if they were lucky. The only sense in which people might be busier now is that they are doing more to have more. But they don’t have to do that. It’s their choice. Past times busy-ness wasn’t a choice: it was do or die. So then the question is why do modern people choose busy-ness when they don’t have to? More generally: How do people decide what to do with their lives? How to live their lives. They study at fine educational institutions to get high-paying jobs and make families and furnish houses. How do they decide to do all of this?

Other minds.

I often, rather lazily, assume that the inner mental life of others is pretty much the same as mine. But it can’t be! For example I am a male and how a typical female views other males will be very different from the way I do. And there are so many other things that can’t be the same in other people’s minds. For example I have a very poor imagination. The minds of most other people will be more imaginative than mine.

I would say that part of knowing someone else’s mind is how they add up numbers in their head. Like for me the facts that 8+5=13 and 6+7=13 and 8+7=15 figure a lot.

I think things look better tidied away and I automatically assume that every one thinks this too. But other people might not.

Virtual SIM.

Instead of a sim card in a smartphone you could just sign in to say who you are. That way if you lost your phone you just sign in on some other device and sign yourself out of the lost one. And you could quickly hop between phones. Sign into a cheaper phone if you are going out somewhere where you might lose it. - After all this is how you set up internet access on laptop and desktop computers.

Sceptic deniers.

It’s odd that climate change sceptics are only sceptics about climate change. They’re fine with every single other thing that scientists say. Which suggests to me they’re not really sceptics at all. So what exactly are these people doing. Because on the face of it it’s rather odd. They are saying that the experts are wrong. But on what basis are they saying this? The thing is that in the past people have often been right to doubt the experts. For example at some time all scholars said that slavery was perfectly fine. And, experts are human too. They are susceptible to all the kinds of things we all are. Money, fame. But all of this still isn’t sufficient, for example, for some ordinary person off the street to say that they think vaccine theory is wrong. Then there is the fact that within the experts you often get a few who deny the consensus. So you will get properly qualified climate scientists who deny man-made climate change.

Quarantine.

DIdn’t people, centuries ago, quarantine themselves to prevent the spread of disease? Like the (famous example of the) village of Eyam in England (see Wikipedia article). But why did they do that when people didn’t know about germ theory?

Prison.

Suppose you did a crime and got sentenced to six months in prison. But what if you were really wealthy? Would they not confiscate your money and property first? It doesn’t seem right that you would just go to prison and then come back out and carry on. But there’s no way round it. If we confiscated money from the wealthy as well sending them to prison that would be unfair. If we confiscated money as an alternative to prison that would be odd. In the past there were such things: blood money.

Mockingbird.

The novel ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ is, quite rightly, valued for its sensitive portrayal of non-white people. But I found the rather caricatured depiction of “poor white trash” somewhat jarring. I thought: what if there was a novel in which black people were written about like that? (I’m sure that there have been plenty of these which are now, thankfully, long-forgotten.) Note: these remarks should not be taken as an apology for racism. As if I was saying: if it’s OK to write about white people like that then why isn’t it OK to write about black people the same? By the way that phrase “poor white trash” reminds me how, while working at some crummy office, I once remarked (in my best ironic comic voice): “the only people who work here are second generation immigrants and poor white trash!”. (Me being the first of these two things. If I wasn’t I wouldn’t have got away with what I said. Even then I’m not sure I did.) And then I remembered that a nearby colleague had parents who had migrated from Ireland and I pointed to her and said, laughing: “And you’re both!”.

My world.

When knowledge hadn’t reached the advanced stage it has now, then it was possible for one person to know everything there was to be known. (Apparently Thomas Young was the last person to know everything, someone wrote a book about this.) Similarly, in the past it was possible to know everything about your world. You lived in a small village and knew everyone else and you knew how everything you ate and used (clothes, buildings) was made and who did the job of making all this stuff. You could probably even do anything that anybody else in the village could do. But now I sit here and drink out of a mug and type on this computer and I know hardly anything about either. And I certainly couldn’t make them myself!

Spontaneity.

If you live an orderly and routine-driven life someone might say to you: “don’t you ever do anything spontaneously?”. No, but an orderly life can incorporate spontaneity. You could just schedule it in your diary: “Thursday from 3pm to 5pm, be spontaneous”. But the opposite isn’t true. It would be harder for a naturally spontaneous person to include order in their otherwise spontaneous life.

Competition.

The world is run by people who want everyone to live their lives competitively. I suspect that the great majority of people are way too laid back to want to live in such a frantic way. Despite this, the people who do want us to live like that will always get their way on this matter, given that they love being competitive and winning and getting their way.

Waiting rooms.

With ‘distributed computing’ you can volunteer for your computer’s downtime to be put to good use by other agencies. (See

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_volunteer_computing_projects

for examples.) Maybe we could do this in real life with people who are sat in waiting rooms (to see their doctor) or stood waiting for a bus or train. Like Milton said: “they also serve who only stand and wait”.

Exhibits.

At an art gallery or museum I find myself staring at the other visitors in the same way they are staring at the exhibits. People rave about how great a portrait painting is, how it captures the character of the subject. And I think: why not just go and look at a person?

The dark.

Jack: Are you afraid of the dark?

Mary: No, just the things in it.

Embarrassment of riches.

I live in an advanced prosperous western country where my lifestyle is (even if you don’t put it in historical context) staggeringly breathtakingly amazing. In material terms at least, an ordinary day of my life would be the best day of their lives for most of the rest of the population of the world. I turn a tap and hot water comes out any time of day or night. A few minutes walk away there is a warehouse stocking all sorts of different kinds of food, packaged up into neat little tins and boxes. Back home I can dial up any conceivable sort of entertainment and have it beamed onto a shiny screen whenever I want. And the strange thing is that the inhabitants of this country don’t really do much to get this splendid life they have. (I know I certainly don’t!) Sure people work, often many hours per week. But it seems wrong (in historical context) to use the word ‘work’ to refer to what they do. They don’t get tired out, they don’t get their hands dirty. They shower before their daily work, not after it. Embarrassment seems to be the only appropriate response to what they get. People in other countries, despite working harder, don’t enjoy such a standard of living.

Fighting.

It’s good to help people. But in a system based on competition, based on people fighting each other all the time, it doesn’t make sense to help someone. All you would be doing is helping them beat someone else. It would be like you come across two people fighting in the street but only one has got a knife, and so you give the other one a knife too. But really you should just stop the fight.

Saying.

When I say: “what? you didn’t know that!?” it sounds like a rebuke but really it’s just surprise. Like: “what you didn’t know you can use Google Maps offline!?”

Always the last to know.

There must be something wrong with how much attention I pay to things because everybody else always knows things I don’t. (Like “I didn’t get the memo”.) For example that time there was a change to the local government’s recycling procedures, other people knew about it weeks before I got the leaflet explaining.

Democracy.

In a democracy, as the population becomes more prosperous the poorest get treated worse. Because they become a smaller minority. And the smaller that a minority is, the more likely it is to be treated badly in a democracy.

Michael Gove.

People persistently say that Michael Gove said that “we’ve had enough of experts”. Meaning: “forget what experts have got to say, stuff them, what do they know?”. But he didn’t say that. What he actually said was (see

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michael_Gove)

“I think the people in this country have had enough of experts from organisations with acronyms saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong”. I don’t like the way in which what he said is being blatantly misquoted (ie quoting only half a sentence). Not because I’m a fan of Michael Gove or anything he’s got to say. On the contrary I’m quite opposed to lots of things he says. But if we think it’s OK for him to be casually and maliciously misquoted then it will keep happening. Eventually to people I do agree with. People who are saying things that are good and right. I suspect that the reason Mr Gove has been misquoted is that people think that what they say he said is what he really thinks. He really thinks that we should ignore what experts are saying if we don’t like it. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that were the case. But it’s not what he wanted to say. Instead of “experts” he should have said: “so-called experts”. 

Identification.

In every country there are laws saying that motor vehicles must publicly identify themselves at all times, ie display their plates. I’m surprised people don’t object to that more. Certainly if there was a similar rule that applied to people they would. I would quite like it though, everyone wearing name badges.

Christians.

What if there was a purely non-denominational Christian church. As far as I know there is no such thing currently. It would be a place which ran services that any Christian could attend. The format of the service would have to be quite basic. But it shouldn’t be too difficult to come up with something. Why is there so much variety in Christianity anyway? Is it the narcissism of small differences? - Also: Protestants should accept Catholics. Because, for Protestants, Catholics are still Christians. Sure they do some extra things which they (falsely) think are essential to being a Christian. But that doesn’t matter. Of course this doesn’t work the other way. A Catholic wouldn’t accept a Protestant as a Christian. Although the word ‘catholic’ would suggest they should given that it means ‘inclusive’.

Free.

I don’t like getting things for free. If I get a free month on an internet video streaming service then I feel as if I ought to let it run on for an extra paid month at the end to allow for the free month. Even though I am not using the service for that month.

Children vs adults.

St Paul says he put away childish things. But what are these things exactly? In terms of psychology only. If you could equalise the physical appearance of a child and an adult, so you only had their psychology, the way they talked and acted, to go on, then what would be the differences? If they played with toys then that’s a child. Or if they threw a tantrum

Eternal art.

We think timelessness is a necessary quality of great works of art. Consider Shakespeare, Beethoven, Michelangelo. But what if there was an art whose output was deliberately ephemeral. Like what if for sculpture all the productions were destroyed at the end of each year. And we never knew what kinds of things past people created.

Radiation.

People get freaked out when they hear the word ‘radiation’. They immediately think of nuclear (power/weapon) radiation. But radiation just means electromagnetic radiation which includes visible light and radio waves.

Nuclear radiation is harmful because it is ionising but radiation doesn’t become ionising until it’s at least of the frequency of ultraviolet light which is 750,000,000 MHz. The highest frequencies that cellphones currently use is 5G which is max 90,000 MHz. Wifi uses 2,450 and 5,000 MHz. Cordless phones use 1,880 to 1,900 MHz.

Maybe another thing is about energy levels. So Bluetooth uses 2,450 MHz which is the same frequency as microwave ovens. But you couldn’t use Bluetooth to cook your food! So it’s not just the frequency of radiation that you need to think about but also the amount of energy in it. This fact alone should be enough to get people to stop freaking out and look into the facts.

But don’t listen to what I’ve got to say.

Read stuff by people who know what they’re talking about.

Two examples of which are:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2012/sep/27/wi-fi-health-risks

https://www.collegesidekick.com/study-guides/physics/24-4-energy-in-electromagnetic-waves

But I don’t understand all of this fully. For example all that stuff about the energy in waves. If amplitude increases the energy content of radiation as well as frequency. Then, presumably, you could have very low frequency high amplitude radiation which would be dangerous.

Industry.

People use word ‘industry’ when they mean ‘business’. Like “fashion industry”.

Day-dreaming.

What is the exact content of my daydreaming? (Compared to that of other people?) It’s hard to pin down.

USA.

Why does the USA need to import anything from anywhere else? It’s such a massive and varied place. Like a world in itself. Surely they can be self-sufficient. But they import and export a lot.

Talking about novels.

After reading a novel you can say what it was about. And when people talk about novels that is the main thing they talk about. But could they say, in as much detail, what style it was written in? That is something that is much more difficult to talk about. I can say that I like novel A over novel B because I prefer the way A was written. But I couldn’t tell you exactly what it was about the way A was written that meant I liked it.

Broken.

There's no adjective word in English to refer to the non-functionality of a machine that has stopped working. People use the word ‘broken’ for when their washing machine doesn’t work. But the washing machine isn’t ‘broken’ because this suggests physical damage. The word ‘broken’ would only be correct here if the reason it wasn’t working was something like that it had fallen down the stairs. But that isn’t very likely.

Division of labour.

The division of labour yields efficiencies but also creates potential for disputes. You get economies of scale from specialisation but specialisation creates the new issue of the rate of exchange. So suppose that Jack and Mary both make their own bread and cheese. But then they figure out that they can specialise. Jack makes all the bread and Mary makes all the cheese. The time and effort required by Jack for him to make just the bread for both of them is less than that required for him to make both bread and cheese for himself. He could use the time and effort he has saved to make something else. Similarly for Mary. So they will both have more stuff at the end of the day. But then what’s the exchange rate? What if Mary says her cheese is worth more than Jack’s bread. So she wants more than half of the bread that he has made when she gives him half the cheese that she has made.

Division of Labour.

In human societies this is efficient. Natural variation helps by providing different abilities. But, unlike in nature these differences are preserved. For example you might get an individual who, by random (genetic) variation, has a very useful particular skill such as making particular sort of tool. But other than that they are very physically weak and so in nature they would be unfit for the environment and so would immediately die. If you have some way of working against nature and keeping them alive then this is good for the group.

Capital

Is capital like this? Say Jack makes a machine that makes bread. It produces an indefinite amount of bread with no effort. Everyone else is spending eight hours a day making enough bread for themselves. So Jack says to them: instead of making bread, work for me four hours a day doing something else and I will give you the same amount of bread that you would have made. Accepting his offer means getting the same amount of bread for four hours work instead of eight, so nobody will refuse! Suddenly Jack is fabulously wealthy. He has the whole population working for him four hours a day. They make him all kinds of things. But he could have given the bread free to people. It makes no difference to him.

Infrastructure.

Living in a modern western city at the beginning of the twenty first century, all the infrastructure (roads, railways, housing) is there. Like it was finished just in time for us. And we have got it all for free. Everything given to us by previous generations. So they have given us something for free which seems odd. But that’s bound to happen when you make something which is going to last hundreds of years longer than you. So suppose Mary builds a house. This might be used by lots of different people for the next 200 years or so. How can Mary get paid by all these future people for the use of her house? Say the first person she sells the house to is Jack. She could insist that he pay her an amount of money equal to the sum of all the money payable by all the succeeding residents of the house. But where will Jack get that kind of money from? If he did then it’s like he will be lending the future residents the money with which to pay Mary. And then they can pay it back to him later? But he won’t be around that long either.

Cow.

How easy to change someone’s mind? Show them a cow being slaughtered and they will become a vegetarian pretty quick.

Logical things.

Anyone can succeed if they work hard. Yes, but that’s not the same as saying “everyone can succeed if they work hard”. So: “anyone can win the sports tournament” meaning that any one of the competitors could win. But that doesn’t mean “everyone can win”. They can’t all win. - People say to someone having difficulty with something: every expert was once a beginner. But this does not mean the every beginner will be an expert.

Numbers.

When The Beatles come top in a poll this prompts many people to say: “The Beatles are so overrated, no way are they the best band ever!”. Maybe what has happened here isn’t that many people have put The Beatles as their most favourite band but that all people have put them as their second or third favourite band. You could have a poll where everybody put The Beatles as only their second favourite band but, because each person named a different band as their favourite band, then the poll would say that the most popular band was The Beatles. People don’t like to put The Beatles as their most favourite band. They prefer to put something that is more personal to them. Something that not so many other people like. Other bands people avoid like this are: REM and U2.

Rights.

The idea of democracy is often associated with that of civil rights. Sometimes these rights are even referred to as ‘democratic rights’. Things like freedom of speech, the right to a fair trial, freedom of religion. But these are actually the opposite of democratic rights. There is only one democratic right and that is the right to have (together with everybody else) a vote when it gets decided who the government is. Even if you have this vote it might turn out that you get deprived of, by the democratic government that got elected, of all your civil rights. Which means those rights are not democratic.

Conspiracy.

What if all members of a religion didn’t really believe any of it but they said they did because they thought everyone else believed it. This would be like some conspiracy theory where instead of just a few people suppressing the truth, everybody was doing that. Another, slightly different, example might be pre-Civil War southern USA. Where everybody said they believed in the rights of the individual but they knew they didn’t really because they kept slaves. I think what I am talking about here is covered by the term ‘doublethink’ from George Orwell’s ‘1984’. So it’s like a conspiracy theory where the people who we are hiding the truth from are the same as the people doing the hiding. Most people would say that they believe in liberal values of tolerance but they don’t really. They say that they believe in everybody being more or less friendly and co-operative and following the rules. But maybe, in real life, we do what everyone else does. Break the rules when we can get away with it. The press say they care about privacy but really they’d do anything to find out stuff about famous people.

Irony.

I don’t know if I properly understand what this is. If I had to come up with a general statement of what it was I would say it’s where something seems to mean something but actually the opposite is the case. For example sarcasm. Jack gets a small apple from Mary as a present and he says “wow, you are so generous!”. To indicate that this sentence means the opposite of what it seems to mean Jack uses an exaggerated tone. This then makes it clear that he actually means: “you are not generous at all”. And Mary can be offended by this criticism. But if that’s what Jack means then why not just say that? Why use sarcasm to say what he means in this roundabout way? - I think Socratic irony is sarcasm. Socrates says: “oh I’m so stupid I don’t know what justice is but you’re so clever because you know so why don’t you tell me then seeing as you’re so clever”. - But not all irony is sarcasm. For example suppose a soldier in the middle of a battle is seen wearing a badge that says: “forgive your enemies”. - Maybe also where something has the opposite result of what it’s supposed to. Like say X decides to build a wall outside his house to protect himself from robbers but his wall-building alerts him to some robbers who wouldn’t have know he was there otherwise and so they rob his house.

Gambling.

What is the pleasure of gambling? On the face of it gambling creates uncertainty and so it’s inducing anxiety. If I bet £20 on some horse to win a race. Then I am aware that I might lose that money which will be bad. Not only because I will lose £20 but I will feel like an idiot. When I sit an exam I feel anxious that I might fail. Gambling puts you in an almost identical situation. So where’s the pleasure? It’s not in the getting of some money. Because £20 is nothing. Even if I have £1,000s and don’t £20 won’t make any difference to me, yet there is still pleasure in winning £20 while gambling. So, is it in the winning when you feel relief that you didn’t lose? Certainly that sense of relief is pleasurable. And there’s also the delight in that you have somehow cheated fate. That the world has been good to us just for once. When normally it is against us all the time. There is some affinity between the pleasure of gambling and that of “getting a bargain”. The most intense gambling experience would be Russian Roulette. You deliberately put yourself in a situation where chance will kill you. And then it doesn’t.

Low self-esteem.

I get the impression that therapy aims to rid people of the feelings caused by them thinking that they are useless people. But at least SOME of the people who think they are rubbish at everything will be correct surely! In which case it seems wrong to persuade them otherwise. If you deny that a problem exists you are never going to solve it.

Basic punning.

1. I asked for ten apples and they give me twelve. I said: “that’s two many!”.

2. I don’t like football. It’s just not cricket.

Disability.

Things like clumsiness or absent-mindedness? Are these things disabilities?

Radio advert June 2019.

“Do you or a loved one forget things or occasionally struggle to find the right words. At St. Pancras clinical research we’re looking for people with mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimers disease to take part in a drug study.” But surely everybody occasionally struggles to find the right words. I do it frequently, never mind occasionally!

Grammatical ambiguity.

“Use this medicine only on your skin” could be read to mean that you shouldn’t use any other medicine on your skin apart from this one. The statement “No appointment necessary” could be read to mean that it is necessary for you to have no appointment.

Repression.

It is not a good thing if you are unable to express your emotions freely. That’s an accepted thing in ‘mental health’. But, similarly, if you can’t express your thoughts. By which I mean if you are ‘inarticulate’.

Relationships.

The idea that sexual attractiveness is a good basis for a human relationship is ridiculous. One thing is that it is too indiscriminate. So if some man marries a woman because of her sexual attractiveness then won’t he be distracted by other women who are more attractive than his wife?

Born.

I heard a call on a talk radio channel where the presenter asked the caller: “if your daughter turns out to be not gay won’t you be a little bit relieved because she will have a slightly easier life”. He (the caller) gave the answer (maybe as expected) ‘no’. And I was thinking, wow that is a really complicated question!

This is because to say ‘yes’ would be, first, kind of like saying that he didn’t think it was OK to be homosexual.

And also, second, it would be a bit like saying that he wished his daughter had never been born. Because if his daughter had been heterosexual she would have been a different person to the person she is. But I don’t think either of these things follows from thinking that it would be better for his daughter if she had been born not homosexual. - I am taking account of the fact that the daughter’s life might actually be better because she is homosexual. - Also, maybe this example would work better if it was set in the 1950s rather than now.

Dogs.

I don't like dogs but there's not many things that are funnier (‘life-affirming’ in a naive kind of way) than a dog with its head out of the window of a moving car. Probably with its tongue hanging out too. With the breeze in its hair.

Value.

What if someone wrote a book and they didn’t know how good it was but everybody else did and they had to persuade the author of this. Which is the opposite of what usually happens. Where the author knows how good it is and everybody else doesn’t and the author has to persuade them (by which I mean publishers).

Caring.

Suppose that I care about something. I take care of it I look after it. Is that caring? Like people use the word caring? But that word seems to be about feelings. But if I look after my house or car there’s no ‘caring’ as a feeling involved. Similarly if I pay my insurance premiums so that people less fortunate than me are cared for.

Cities.

I live in a city. The centre of it contains a lot of big stores. What if there was something else in the centre and the big stores were just scattered around the city. Is there any reason why the stores are all together in one place. Especially if they are selling different things.

Marital status.

Jack: Are you married?

Mary: No.

Jack: Divorced?

Mary: The only thing I’m divorced from is reality.

Toleration.

In many countries now the State tolerates all religions. It does but they don’t!

Good people.

What percentage of people are good?

Quality of Life.

There are two sorts of people who can not improve their quality of life. First very poor people who do not have any money. Second, very rich people who can acquire more things with the money they have but this will not increase their quality of life because of the law of diminishing returns. They have so many things that one thing more won’t appreciably increase their quality of life.

Talent.

I get the impression that very talented people are not nice. By which I mean they look down on untalented people and can’t bear to be around people less clever than them. (Saying: what you don’t understand that?! Or: what you can’t do that?!) Quite reasonably I suppose. Like everybody else they only want to hang out with people like them, ie people who are as clever as them. And it will be difficult for them to find such people because being very talented is rare.

Poor folk.

Why are poor people poor. I don’t hear people asking this question much.

Two obvious answers:

1. Employers don’t pay them enough.

2. They are too incapable to be productive.

Company.

What if one company diversified by buying and running all the businesses in one particular town.

Attack.

A herd could easily fend off an attack by just a few lions. But they don’t!

Book vs course.

I don’t understand at all why you can’t just read a book instead of “doing a course”. What's the difference?

Loners.

Many dropouts come across as individualists. Like they are saying: I don’t believe in conforming, I want to be free to do my own thing and not be part of a collective. But I suspect many of them are as much collective as anybody else. The only reason that they are not conforming is that they don’t like the particular collective which they are being invited to conform to. - We look down on obedience and subservience to the collective but these are only bad when they are obedience and subservience to a collective that is bad.

Monarchy.

How come no monarch ever did this. Run their kingdom with such massive efficiency that everyone is prosperous and so people in other countries want this guy to be their monarch too. Thus get acquisition of territory without having to have war.

Eddie Mair.

On LBC Eddie Mair (2019 sometime) did something slightly different to the usual topics phone-in. For one hour each day he asked people from a particular age group to phone in and just say how their life was going. So Monday it was people in their 20s, then Tuesday people in their 30s, and so on. One of the people in their 30s said: “there is no end goal because no matter where you go you always want to earn more money and you expand your lifestyle so you wanna go on more holidays ... bigger house, better car all that type of stuff”. And I thought: does that attitude still exist? It’s like 1950s American materialism. I thought we’d got past that now and people were more chilled out. But maybe not. Another thing that I found surprising was that a lot of the people who phoned in thought it was a really good idea to set up their own business. Is that part of the zeitgeist these days? But I don’t know how representative of the general population callers to a radio station are. I often think they should be do phone-outs (a term I heard someone on a different show use once) where they call random people rather than waiting for random people to call the show.

Distraction.

Sometimes it happens that I look at my watch because I want to know what the time is. And then a second or two later I realise that when I looked at the watch I didn’t read what the time was. In between deciding to look at the watch for the time and looking at my watch I got distracted by something else.

Pollution.

Three of my favourite things are also three of the most polluting things in the world: cotton, coffee and concrete.

Great people.

Some people want to meet artists (writers, musicians) they really like. But why? What is meeting them going to add to what you have already got from experiencing their works?

Fiction.

People who like detective fiction don’t really like fiction. They like puzzles. Like the way people who like sex films (pornography) don’t really like films, they like sex.

Funny thing 1.

Asking someone a string of questions. Without waiting for them to answer any of them. As soon as they start answering one question ask them another.

Funny thing 2.

Say to people: “Hey, look I got this new cellphone, it’s really amazing what you can do on this. You can type a little message on here and then press some buttons and then someone else really far away can get that message like straight away! How amazing is that!”

Music.

People who say: “oh I like all kinds of music” are displaying a shocking lack of discernment.

Furniture.

They should make furniture shops into cafes or restaurants. Do two things at the same time.

Ordinary.

Everyone wants to be a big-shot. But what’s wrong with just wanting to be an ordinary person?

Oblivious.

I often think that my reaction to things is inadequate. I will be out and see an old house or a group of trees or even a mechanical truck of some kind. And it feels like my reaction (emotional) is less than it ought to be. As if I am not paying attention. I feel like I should have the same reaction that, say, somebody would have who had just arrived here after living all their live in the Amazon jungle. (If I don’t then it’s like I am being insensitive and numb.) I should have the same feeling of astonishment. If I did then every day would be the best day of my life. But experience has worn out of me the feelings that would have been evoked if I was seeing these things for the first time. When tourists go to the Alps and marvel at the mountain scenery the locals say: “what those mountains, what about them?”.

Luck.

Governments of countries are judged principally on the health of the economy. Jobs, wages standard of living. But what if what governments do has only a tiny effect on this. And the wellbeing of the economy of any one country is determined by enormous global factors outside the control of any government. If a party gets elected to government during a period of stability and prosperity then you’re lucky.

Books.

It’s not legal to copy books. Is it legal to lend books to people? Note that if you buy an eBook it is less easy to lend it to someone else.

Fame.

Taylor Swift is famous. And, in his time, so was Louis XIV. How exactly were these kinds of fame different.

Wartime.
When I see that some book or music or art was created in, say, the year 1942, I feel surprised. As if I thought that during a war all other activity ought to have stopped.

Potatoes vs wheat.

To make food from wheat you have to remove it from the ground and then thresh, winnow, grind, make dough and bake. To make food from potatoes you just remove it from the ground, wash and bake.

Art and misery.

Novels and drama are often about people experiencing great suffering (King Lear, Anna Karenina). But who is this for? Is it for people who are in a similarly miserable situation (to comfort them)? Or for people who are not miserable (to remind them what it’s like to be unhappy)?

Debunking history.

Lots of history seems to be debunking. Cowboys didn’t wear cowboy hats. Victorians weren’t prudish about sex. But then that makes me think: how do we know what we know? Every time I hear something about something about the past I think: how do we know that?

Communism.

All the communist regimes in the West disappeared in the 1990s. In the interests of freedom of choice, shouldn’t we have allowed at least one to remain? So that all the people who really want to live like that can go and live there. In fact it should only be people who really want to. Anybody that doesn’t like can go someplace else.

Spellcheck.

I think this has improved my spelling. By constantly telling me when I get it wrong. Of course I need to pay a little attention to the correction.

Productivity.

Jack: Listen I’ve got this brilliant way to increase your productivity. Just get up 2 hours earlier every morning and you can get lots of things done!

Mary: But does that mean I also need to go to bed two hours earlier than I would have done.

Jack: Of course!

Travelling without moving.

Living as I do at about at latitude 53 degrees north there is quite a wide fluctuation of daylight and weather over the year. It feels as if every six months I am alternating between two different countries.

Ghosting.

- This is the practice of ending a relationship (of any kind) without any explanation. Or indeed any explicit acknowledgement that that’s what has happened. I guess this can range from “drifting apart” all the way to ignoring contact from the other.

- This reminds me of the free market in economics. You buy your groceries at one store. Then one day you decide to stop going there and you go to a different store instead. You don’t need to tell the first store that you are doing this! - As far as why people do ghosting. I figure it’s because it’s just too much stress and effort to have to say you’re ending things. But then I think: is that because the traditional way of saying is too messy and difficult? In fact really there is no “traditional way”. There’s not even a “way”. There’s no standard accepted way of stopping a relationship. (I’m still talking about non-romantic relationships here. With romantic ones there is a certain informal protocol to follow, certain stock phrases you can use.) Even if it was something simple as say Jack and Mary had got into the habit of meeting up every Wednesday evening to talk about movies. And then one day Jack found something else to do. What would he say? What if there it was the custom that relationships are begun and ended with a universally accepted very simple standard declaration. If you wanted to be someone else’s friend you could just go up to them and say: “I want to be your friend”. And they would say yes or no. And there wouldn’t be any awkwardness or embarrassment involved in this at all. And you wouldn’t be disappointed at all if they said no.

About friends though people sometimes say: “I’m not very good at making friends”. And I think what do you mean? Is “making friends” some kind of skill and technique, like baking bread? Certainly if it is then formalisations like the above will make it easier for people.

I remember when I was at school it seemed a kind of natural process. Similar people drifted together. There were certain groups, like: the hard boys, the pretty girls, the flashy kids. And then there was always a kind of miscellaneous group which consisted of kids who didn’t fit into any other category. But that wasn’t really a group.

Angry people.

What are people like? Some people seem to be uptight and rude. Like suppose you were reading out a number to them and you said “double eight”, then they would say: “you should say eight eight”. And they said it in a really disparaging tone. As if you’d committed some grave error. Or say they were reading you out a number and you asked them to repeat a digit. Then they would say: “I’ve said it once, I’m not going to say it again”. It’s like they are using small things to be angry at you. When I was at school a lot of the teachers were like this. If you had asked them they would have said they were just being ‘strict’. But they weren’t. They were just being rude.

Shakespeare.

I don’t like Shakespeare at all. The language is so arcane. And, despite what people say, there is nothing in the plays that gives us deep insights into human psychology. - Sure there are a few lines that resonate in a poetic. But that’s because they are arcane, not despite it. And their resonance is largely due to their constant repetition and resulting familiarity. - So, in my mind, the people who rave about Shakespeare, are in some way just ‘bullshitting’. Or, to use a more polite word, dissembling. I am unable to believe that they really think that Shakespeare is any good. And I think to myself: does it matter? The value or otherwise of Shakespeare’s plays isn’t exactly an important issue, now or ever. But then I think: maybe it does matter. The fact that some, otherwise perfectly sensible people, are dissembling like this is worrying. What else are they dissembling about?

Time.

Small animals perceive time slower. So, they might seem to have shorter lives than us, but in their experience, it might be just as long.

++++

June 2020.

Paying attention.

If you linger slowly over pleasures, then you need less of them. If I sit and drink a cup of coffee slowly. Concentrating on each mouthful. Then I’m less likely to want another one.

Reading.

Quite often I hear the advice: read more books. It’s usually phrased as read a book a day. And I think: just reading isn’t going to do anything if you don’t understand what you’re reading. I could read a book a day quickly. But I wouldn’t understand any of it.

Difficult.

Nothing is difficult to do. Only learning how to do it is difficult.

Electric toothbrush.

I have one of these which is set to make a buzzing noise after it has been running for exactly two minutes. But, if, while using it, I turn it off for a while, then when I switch it on again the timer isn’t reset. It continues where it stopped. There is a but to this but though. Because if I leave it turned off long enough, then it does reset. My question is: how long does it have to remain turned off for the timer to reset? I also noticed that this concept of an interruption being ignored is used in other contexts. Like in official contexts. For example there’s a rule that says that if you are a resident of a country for 365 days then you get certain rights. Then there will also be a sub-rule which says that if, you are absent for a short period, then that does not reset the count. For example if you are resident of 100 days and then go out the country for 3 days and come back. Then you don’t have to start counting again. But there’s will be a limit. If you go out the country for 3 years and then come back.

Blog

Does it still count as mental ill-health if it’s caused by circumstances? For example if you are being treated in an abusive way by someone you know. And this is causing you to feel negative mental states such as feeling upset then that’s not mental ill-health. I thought that mental ill-health is where the negative mental states are pathological. Like people who feel chronically depressed for no reason. Of course this does not mean that the negative mental states caused by circumstances matter less than the pathological ones. But it’s important to keep the distinction in mind. You can’t deal with them in the same way. Negative mental states caused by circumstances have to be dealt with by dealing with the circumstances. Unlike pathological states which have to be dealt with directly. I often wonder how much of all the negative mental states are caused by circumstances rather than actual mental illness.

Celebrity interviews.

Dick Cavett is supposed to be one of the greatest TV interviewers here. But I don’t see it. Like the interview with Orson Welles in 1970.

(See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NTOSevzp4w)

The Interview starts at time 06:00. DC starts by saying that he liked something OW once said which was: “I like people to talk to me but I hate it when they talk to Orson Welles”. Which is an odd thing for him to say given that he is about so spend an hour talking to Orson Welles! The interview is mostly OW just telling anecdotes. There’s not really that much of DC asking things. The first real question is something like: do you like seeing clips of your movies? This refers to the fact that the interview had been preceded by a clip from ‘The Lady from Shanghai’. OW tells an anecdote about how Harry Cohn had insisted on some background music in a critical scene of that movie, which spoiled the scene. In response to which DC says: “But it made him happy” (time 11:20). Which is just a silly thing to add to what OW had just said. I think OW looks aghast at what DC said. And says, rather mockingly I think, “yes it made him happy”. Next lame question: are you ever going to do a biography of yourself. A bit later DC says how he envies OW for having travelled so much in Europe. This prompts OW to tell an anecdote (time 20:35) about how he was in Germany and was sat next to Hitler at some event. This was when the Nazis were still just some comical fringe movement. OW says about Hitler: “he made so little impression on me that I can’t remember a second of it; he had no personality whatsoever, he was invisible”. In response to which DC says: “I wonder if under hypnosis it would come out”. Which is a stupid thing to say. OW has to reply: “no I think there was nothing there, that’s the whole point of the story that there wasn’t anything there to remember”. It’s like he’s saying: “didn’t you understand the point of the story, you idiot!”.

Communicating about problems.

Sometimes it feels I have a problem here in front of me. Like I was trying to build some structure but I wasn’t succeeding at it. And I ask somebody for help. They are over there somewhere and they ask me questions like: are you putting A into B? And I answer their questions. But really I need them to come over here and look at me trying to build the structure to see what is happening. But they won’t do that. Even though, to me, it seems obvious that if they did they could help me a lot better.

Healthcare welfare.

This will be rubbish? If you go to a doctor with an ailment. And he could sort it.

Education welfare.

This is rubbish. Teachers don’t care how well students are learning. There’s no attempt at accurately monitoring this. Never mind exams.

And don’t say: “if students are not doing well then it’s up to them to say so”. This isn’t true. Like if I have a car I will do a thorough check every year or so. I won’t wait for it to develop problems.

Lucky.

I once saw a poverty-stricken woman selling lucky clover in the street. I was going to remark: “well it didn’t do you any good did it!”. But I didn’t. Because it would be cruel. But mostly because she’d probably heard that joke hundreds of times before and would probably have berated me for being so lame.

Religion.

The function of religion is to make people good and to make them happy. It was successful at doing this for a long time because all the weird metaphysics it contained didn’t bother anybody. Once it started to matter then this is undermined the status of religion in general. Which made it harder for it to perform its function. If only religion could somehow ditch the metaphysics altogether. And keep the rest. You might say that it relies on the metaphysics to perform its function. So it makes people good by using the metaphysical idea of punishment in hell. But I don’t think it’s a simple as that.

Marriage.

In history (mine and the world’s) there have only ever been two options for men wanting to get married.

One, marry some person as instructed by your parents.

Two, mill around outside maybe yelling at girls as you drive past them in your flash car.

Internet.

I see business vehicles driving around marked with the name of the business and then also the website address. As if anybody writes that down and types it into the search bar! No they just Google the name of the business!

Information.

On an internet page I can see the names (links) of all the pages that this page refers to. Would it also be useful to see the names of all the pages that refer to this page? More generally in written information. Like if page A says that on page B you can find information X. But then I change page B so that information X is no longer on it. Then I need to change page A.

Intelligence.

At school as a child I noticed that, even at a very young age, say 7 years old, some children were already better at things than others. But they were only 7! They’ve not had long enough for there to be this divergence. To the, so-called, clever students I should have said “We’ve not been running this race long enough for you to have got so far ahead.”

Noticing.

When I was a lot younger, say about age 16, I knew about the 1960s. But it never occurred to me that the adults I knew, by which I mostly mean the teachers at school, were probably my age in the 1960s.

Seasons.

Things I have to relearn about the hot weather every summer. If you walk into a warm room and it is pleasantly warm and I think it will be nice to sit here. But I forget that that’s just how warm it is to me on entry. As soon as I spend any time in there I will get warmer and warmer!

The weather.

Obvious thing that should be on page one of every book about the weather. Why don’t clouds fall out of the sky? Or, another way of putting it, why don’t all clouds just release their water as rain. Some places answer it, like here:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-clouds-float-when/

But this is too technical. Also it should also explain why it does rain when it does.

Wireless.

Cable TV came after wireless TV. When TV first started it was broadcast.

Conversation.

If, in a conversation, I say, for example something like “I’m surprised you haven’t asked me about X”. And then they ask me about X. And I think: no, you shouldn’t do that. Because that makes it sounds like I have asked (that I want) you to ask me about X.

Sociable.

People who like to “keep themselves to themselves”. People that that song is about, the one that goes “I don’t want to talk about it”. I don’t like these people.

Immigrants.

Some natives of a country say they don’t like immigration because it means they end up being surrounded by foreigners. But, in a sense, that was always true. Many natives are foreigners to each other in that they are so different that there can be very little meaningful interaction between them. This is particularly true in a country where there are strong class divisions. Even before there were immigrants a middle class solicitor wouldn’t go and hang out in some working class pub. More generally, in any population, no matter what size, the number of other people that an individual will interact with will be small. The exact nature of the ones they are never going to interact with doesn’t matter. (There is something wrong with my line of argument here.)

Artefact.

I used to work somewhere where the core software used was so outdated that it couldn’t communicate directly with more modern systems such as Windows. In fact it was so old that it was hard to get any information about how it worked. Which is something, that a user would need to know to be able to use it effectively. Sometimes it felt as if it was a situation where there just wasn’t anybody who knew how it worked. So we were using it as we might use some natural artefact. And we were investigating it as such in an attempt to learn about it.

Other cultures.

Can we judge other cultures? Yes surely. If we found some people whose culture included keeping slaves and treating women like possessions.

Slavery.

We can tell that European slave traders knew slavery was wrong. Because they didn’t bring and keep lots of slaves into Europe. To do all the work.

Literature as art.

About the ideas that great literature “holds up a mirror to the human condition” or “give us insight into the human condition”. I don’t see that either of these things are true.

Species.

It’s odd that you get creatures of nearly the same species. I mean they are the same group of species. And yet they are massively different. Where you would have thought that difference would take ages to evolve. I mean I would have though such differences would mean massively different species too. So birds which look pretty much of the same species and yet on is a herbivore and one an omnivore. Or one is social and one is not. (Also, by the way, when do creatures become of a different species?)

University.

It felt as if they weren’t really interested in philosophy. And students in general weren’t taking it seriously. But then I felt like I was doing that snobbish thing of “I’m the only person who really likes this rock band, you’re just pretending”. To me it seemed they were interested but only in the sense that it was a means to an end of a successful degree. Once I saw them handing round a book called something like: “how to bluff your way through Philosophy”. Clive, who I last saw with his head out a truck window. I asked him what he was doing. He said “we’re gonna live in this”. There was that mature student who said Richard Dawkins is a fascist. And those students making fun of that guy with a visual impairment.

++++

[July 2020]

Controversy.

The pronunciation of the word controversy is controversial.

Olympics.

Olympics should have handicap system. Otherwise we’re just celebrating natural gifts. Like in the 100 metres, part of the winning is about have long legs. But currently handicaps seem to be just about giving weaker players a compensatory advantage. But the reason for the weakness should be taken into account.

Percentages.

If I use three spoons per cup instead of four then how much longer will the packet last? Answer would obviously seem to be 25% more? I am using 25% less so it will last 25% more. But then there’s that other thing about percentages which makes me doubt this. Because if you increase something by 25% of it and then decrease it by 25% of that. You don’t get back to the same. But in this case it’s right. Example if there’s twelve spoons in a packet, then four would last three days. Using four spoons per cup would last four days.

Socialising.

What if there was a place, like a coffee shop, where the rule was that anybody could talk to anybody else.

Shopping.

First world problem. Shopping for clothes. First, they styles change so so you can’t just buy same thing again. So you have to repeat the browsing process, trying things on to find something that fits. Second, the size of clothes is advertised in terms of the size of the person. They should be sold in terms of the size of the garment. This size of this should be described.

Gossip.

Conspiracy theories are like gossip. We like both because of the feeling of belonging we get when we share the knowledge we have.

Feeling.

We like fearless people, people who don’t feel fear or anxiety. They are mentally strong and have nerves of steel. But such people are often that way because they don’t feel things in general. Such as compassion and love.

Not talking.

The problem with those people who “don’t talk about their feelings” isn’t so much that they don’t talk about their feelings as much as that they don’t about anything about themselves at any more than a surface level. Their feelings, thoughts etc. (What more is there to list here?)

The Church.

When they say that sex should be for procreation only and not for recreation. To be consistent they should also have said that food should be for nutrition only.

Anarchism.

Is this just a political system where there are no rulers. No people who have the power to make laws. One way of doing this would be for some laws to get made. And then the rulers who made the laws just abolish themselves. Leaving no rulers. But the rules still exist as do agencies that enforce those rules.

Qualities.

Texture and temperature of food affects its taste. Loudness of music affects its effect. It seems like these things shouldn’t be that significant.

Cutting.

What is the relationship between a pair of scissors and a knife. You can use the scissors to do the kind of cutting you do with a knife. And it turns out there is such a thing as a kitchen knife.

Leftwing parties.

These want standard of living to be more fairly obtained. But what if you are a poor person who wants a better standard of living. You might not necessarily believe in fairness.

++++

August 2020

Together.

Arts and culture bring people together. No, they keep people apart. People choose their culture to distinguish themselves from others, to separate themselves.

Business.

This is all about competition and fighting. A business will pay more to “attract the best talent”. But don’t they think that there might be other places where that talent should go to. Like if it went to doing surgery rather than designing computer games.

Pi.

I knew that the ratio of the circumference of a circle to the radius is Pi. But I have just now (August 2020) realised that the ratio of the area of the circle to a square made of the radius is also Pi. And then I think: can we see how one of these facts follows from the other?

Educated.

We look up to educated and scholarly people. Even if this is that they are experts in the history of ancient Mesopotamia. But what’s so great about that? At the same time, uneducated people have things we can admire them for. But we don’t.

Mood.

Jack says: “I like reading about history”. But this is not entirely true. Because sometimes he is not at all in the mood for reading history and he finds it just plain dull. So he sits and waits for his history liking mood to take him. The mood to write, to go for a run, to drink coffee, to talk to his friends. All these are moods that fluctuate to some degree.

Life.

On the news you get a story now and then where they find some 70 year old man living in a shed and it turns out he has been there for the past 50 years, being kept by some horrid people to work for them.

Failure.

You often hear about how some inventor got told by people “it’ll never work!” but they persisted and it did work. But what about all the time the people were right and it didn’t work.

Liking.

If I don’t like something, I can’t imagine what it would be like to like it. For example I think 80s fashion looks horrible. But what would it be like if I didn’t think that.

Data.

Why don’t doctors ask always for feedback from everyone they prescribe medicine to. Like how effective medicine was. All this data would be useful.

Hebocracy.

Rule by teenagers. Once they get to 20 they stop being rulers. But they will be aware that they rules they make will apply to them when they are older, so they will be careful. So this is better then gerontocracy.

Reading literature.

With modern literature I get the impression that you need to read it differently somehow. So don’t do that thing where you read sentence make sense of it then move to the next and then fit them together. DON’T DO THAT. Instead just read it. Pay attention to what you are reading sure, but don’t make any conscious effort to try to make it make sense.

Insulted.

1. If Mary says she doesn’t like Jack. Doesn’t like him as a person. Then Jack might feel insulted. But why? Mary can’t like everybody!

2. You can only feel insulted if the insult is true. If Jack says to Mary: “you’re very bad at driving” and she isn’t bad at driving then this is just a lie, not an insult. If it’s true then it’s an insult.

Left-wing.

I get the impression left-wing liberal people do this. They start with cases of tyranny which is where some regime is exercising severe control of its population for the purposes of exploiting them. From this the liberals decide that all forms of control are wrong. But that doesn’t follow. Left wing people start from supporting revolution against oppressive systems like capitalism (which treat the ordinary people horribly) and then from there they seem to go to glamourising rebelliousness of any sort. As if rebellion itself was commendable. Sometimes this even seems to cover criminality. Although maybe that chain of argument is more specific. Something like: property laws only benefit the wealthy so stealing is a (justified) act of rebellion. But most stealing is done by oppressed people against other oppressed people.

Another way of saying all this is that leftwing people say they are against conformity. But sometimes conforming is necessary, in an ordinary sense. Like you have to stop at red traffic lights.

They are against authoritarian government. But that’s too broad. Depends on what the government is being authoritarian about. It’s like we say about someone, often about people in authority like teachers: “they are very strict”. Where this is meant to mean something bad. But strict about what?

Children.

School was spoiled by other children. Like anything I am doing now would be spoiled by children getting in the way! Children are nasty. They do that thing where they will notice a very small different thing about you and mention it over again. Like say you once mispronounced London and Lumden. Then forever they will remind you of that. Like they might make that your nickname.

I remember there once was a school head-teacher who once said your friends at school, age about 10, don’t matter. He was right. They matter as much as your pets do. Either way they’re not full relationships.

My political views.

Sometimes I say to myself: “I’m a socialist but I don’t believe in equality or social justice”. Or rather I believe in those things only when it means that without them people don’t get a basic standard of living the absence of which is affront to their dignity as a human being.

Small things.

(See daybook 13 about evil.) More generally, sometimes you have a problem and you can’t see what is causing it. This is because you are looking for one big thing. But actually the cause might be lots of small things.

Anti-capitalism.

People talk as if capitalism is the cause of our problems so we need to abolish it. But I often think that capitalism is symptom rather than a cause.

Employment.

There is something horrible about being employed to do a job producing something which you either have no interest in at all. An extreme example would be if you were a vegetarian employed producing meat products.

Facts.

It’s easy for facts to be misleading. For example if Jack complains about the noise from Mary’s house and she gets someone to measure it and they find that 95% of the time there’s no noise at all. But if the 5% of the time when there is noise is distributed unevenly over a number of hours. For example a 30 second burst of very loud noise once every 20 minutes on average. But where this is not exactly every 20 minutes.

City.

At some point it doesn’t matter how big the city is that you live in. Like if you live in a city of a million people then your experience of life won’t be any different if it’s a city of two million people. Because people live in what we might call “neighbourhoods”. And a neighbourhood could be defined as something like: whatever size (area and population) is big enough for  supermarket to open a branch in.

Anger.

Sometimes you get angry and then you stop and think: wait, the intensity of this anger is disproportionate to the thing I am angry about. For example you are really angry with someone because they have flung a cigarette but out of the window of their car. Realising that you anger is disproportionate doesn’t make you feel any less angry. But you think you need to root around to find out why you are so angry.

Socialism.

Right wing people say that Socialism is the politics of envy. I think it’s more that a lot of the people who support Socialism are engaged in the politics of envy. Which doesn’t mean that that’s what Socialism is. (Although what Socialism actually is, is anybody’s guess.) If I can express a cynical opinion here please. I think that a lot of people support Socialism simply because they are resentful of the wealth of others. They don’t want equality any more than the Capitalists they are fighting against do. These people aren’t against unfairness. They are only against it when they are being treated unfairly. If somebody else is being treated unfairly, especially when they are treating others unfairly (and getting the advantages of that) then they’re OK with it.

Apart from that (and continuing in my cynical vein) the other big group of people who support Socialism are the ‘virtue-signallers’. They like showing off how much they care about poor people. So there’s these two groups. The people who actually genuinely believe in equality is tiny. And I think a lot of them are just people who don’t care about being wealthy. And they think that other people should share their attitude.

Dropout.

People dropping out of University or college are called dropouts. I never did that but I am a dropout out of life. I refuse to participate because I want the terms to be: I want X, you tell me what I have to do to get X, and I will do X. That’s what I am asking the terms to be. But they’re not like that. Instead there’s just lots of pissing about. So then I don’t “succeed in life”. But then I don’t want that as it’s accepted anyway.

Political correctness.

Is there a right-wing equivalent to political correctness. The starts from the idea that you are not permitted to discriminate negatively on the basis of people’s differentness. But then it becomes broader than that. Something like how you can’t even mention or refer to those differences. So you can’t describe someone as fat. You can’t mention Christmas because not all people celebrate Christmas. Or anything in general which is tangentially associated to with discriminating negatively.

But I think there is an equivalent right-wing political correctness. Which is that you can’t interfere in people’s freedom ever. If you do then it’s called the ‘nanny state’. Examples?

++++

SEPTEMBER 2020

Social awkwardness.

A common instance of this is meeting some new person or people and not knowing what to say. Or: not having anything to say. But the problem here isn’t that someone is ‘socially awkward’. The problem is with the situation where some people are saying things where it is difficult for the new person to respond. For example suppose Jack has just met Mary and Mary says about how she’s been doing some work on Bayesian statistics. But Jack knows nothing about this sort of thing. So he doesn’t know what to say and so feels awkward. Or suppose Mary had said “you wouldn’t believe what I happened to me on the way here I saw a flock of geese flying over the road.” And Jack thinks: “now what am I supposed to say. Am I supposed to try to remember something interesting that happened to me on the way here?”

Reading.

Some people advise that you should read a book a day. And this will increase your knowledge. But none of these recommenders address the issue of comprehension. I could sit and read Aristotle’s Politics today. But I wouldn’t understand it. Understanding doesn’t come from reading lots. But from reading say just half a page of text. And properly internalising every sentence and the relation between all the bits of that text. So ‘reading a lot’ (as in “a book a day”) is meaningless. ... Note also that when it comes to “how can you read a book a day” the answer is all about speed. About how fast you can read.

Hierarchy.

Many organisations have a hierarchical structure. A corporation will have many layers of managers. But you could have an organisation which was more like a net (like the internet). There would still be some people at the top who decide which members do what. But you wouldn’t need managers to implement this. The members would just talk to each other.

Ask Reddit.

1. Is there anything you think is stupid or wrong but literally nobody else agrees.

Is there anything you were stupidly doing wrong for a long time and then you suddenly realised. (Example: I was not eating peanut butter because I thought it had butter in it.)

2. What surprising (maybe shocking) thing did you find out about someone that you had known very well for years or even decades? Something that made you say: “I thought I knew you!”.

(I haven’t put these questions on AskReddit because I they need to be phrased with a question mark at the end and I can’t figure out how to do that.)

3. Friendless people of Reddit: why?

Culture.

Why is there ever any new art? At some point, say 1900, we could have said: we’ve got enough now. It's not as if there's progress in the arts. The way new science is better than old. Maybe this is why the arts started producing stuff that nobody really likes. At that point there was more than enough stuff that people did like. Like: if you read a novel a month then you with 60 novels you have more than enough. After five years you can start again at the beginning.

Socialist Revolution.

First, People say Socialism leads to oppressive government and I think: yes sure, of course! Because Socialism is about cooperation and people aren’t naturally cooperative. They only cooperate down the barrel of a gun, when they are getting their heads knocked together by the people in charge. The important thing to note here is that being cooperative is something that’s to the benefit of the people; division of labour, economy of scale and all that.

Second, in a revolution situation you need to have extra strict government because a revolution means the old order has been abolished and people suddenly feel they have this freedom to do what they like! Because they were only obeying the previous regime pretty much out of habit.

Catch-up.

Mary: Hey do you want to have a coffee and catch up?

Jack: What do you mean catch up, I’ve never met you before.

Mary: Well then we’ve got a lot to catch up on!

Taste.

Is it possible that you decide (consciously or not) to like particular things in advance. Like you will decide to like some film before you have seen it.

Learning.

If Jack takes longer than Mary to learn how to do something does that mean he will be worse at doing that?

Socialism.

(See longer posts, eg Capitalism.) Is Socialism a modification of the market or the private ownership of capital (ie nationalisation). Where these are two different things? You could have nationalisation which didn’t interfere with the market. Like there could be a law that said anybody can set up a company doing, for example, healthcare. But they would have to do it with capital borrowed from the State. (Sometimes people talk about Socialism as if it was just a simple redistribution. As in you take money from those who have lots and give it to those who have less.)

Political Books.

I mean things like “The Audacity of Hope” by Obackarama. The only people who read these kinds of books are the ones who already agree with what they say. Also, more generally, books like this which “present a case” are worthless if they don’t also present all the arguments against as well.

Coca-Cola machine.

The Coca-Cola company kept the price for a standard 6.5 oz (190 mld) bottle at a nickel (5 cents) for a long time (1886 to 1959). Then they needed to increase the price but most sales were from vending machines which were expensive to modify to take more than 5 cents. Or rather: to give change from a dime (10 cents). So they tried the easier modification whereby a machine would dispense an empty bottle once out of every nine. (Presumably this was random.) So that’s 8 bottles for the price of 9. So that’s 5 and 5/8 cents per bottle. This is a neat idea! Although it discriminates against infrequent purchasers!

Political culture.

A democratic political culture relies on the electorate being knowledgeable but this is often not the case. For example the electorate will often complain about the length of time the legislative body, eg UK Parliament, is in recess. “How can they run the country when they take so many holidays” is a common complaint. But this is a misguided view based on not understanding that Parliament isn’t the Government. It’s the Government who are running the country, not Parliament. And Government doesn’t have recess. They are always there.

Obsessive.

Some people have interests they obsessively pursue. Like they collect stuffed toys. And we think: that person has no social life because of their focus on this obsessive interest. But it might be the other way round. Maybe they have developed this obsessive interest because they have no social life.

Plans.

Some people get annoyed when they have to change their plans. I think a good tip here is to always have a plan B. If you are planning a day out to the seaside. Then if the trains are cancelled and you can’t go you will be disappointed. But if you had a plan B of what to do in such an eventuality (visit your Aunt for a game of Bridge) then you won’t be disappointed.

What are Social Skills?

I’m worried that ‘social skills’ is one of those terms which is too woolly to be useful. I feel like I need someone to give me a more precise description. Internet websites about this kind of thing say: ability to Listen, empathy, conflict resolution, manners, respecting others.

I’m thinking there are more particular skills. Like, for example, knowing how to tell someone to shut up when they are being boring; knowing how to tell them that without coming across as rude. - On internet forums social skills are often taken to be things like: having the ‘confidence’ to ask a potential partner out on a date.

Town.

If I was a billionaire I could buy a small town with capacity for 7,000 people. This would include a production facility to make things to sell. But most of the stuff consumed in the town would be produced within it. It would be like a single company. And all the population would be employees. I would invite people to come live there. Or rather to join the organisation. I would have Church of England clergy running the whole show. Half male half female. It wouldn’t be a democracy. Because people would have joined voluntarily.

Entrepreneur.

An entrepreneur sets up a business. With some capital. Producing something. Some thing or service. Could be a restaurant. Or Electric Cars. The entrepreneur can make a lot of money and they deserve this because they taking a risk. They set up their business making X but people might not buy X. That’s the argument. But why does it have to be a risk? If they just asked people in advance if they wanted X then they wouldn’t have to take a risk on it. Also if it’s about risk then they should share their rewards with others who risked similarly. But for whom, by chance, it didn’t work out.

Book reading.

At last something that shows I am middle aged: I prefer paper books. Prefer them to Kindle, Tablet type stuff. One reason being I like skipping backwards and forwards. (And that is something that shows I’m getting older than middle aged, forgetting what happened a few chapters ago.) I also like the smell of books. And of paper books I prefer ones that I can hold open with one hand. Cup of tea in the other.

Pretty.

Must be annoying being an attractive young female. People’s behaviour towards you determined just by your appearance, difficult to get people to see anything past that.

Surface racists.

White people who don’t want non-white people living in their neighbourhood. They’re not racists in the sense of thinking white people are superior. But if you call them ‘racist’ which is the same term you refer to white supremacists then the surface racists will be more likely to become white supremacists. Almost as if they are thinking: yes I’m a racist (first definition) therefore I must be a racist (2nd).

Socialism.

This is often described as where the means of production are not privately owned. That’s a more precise statement that saying socialism is about equality. But the precise idea must link to the idea of equality somehow. It’s something like that individuals are not allowed to own something X which accrues wealth just by them possessing it.

And it does that by producing something that people want. So X here is capital like a factory. It’s something that produces stuff that people consume but X itself cannot be consumed.

Like the goose that lays golden eggs.

So Socialism says people shouldn’t be allowed to own capital. But why? It’s because it yields massive inequality.

I was thinking how it might be something to do with that you're not allowed to own capital in the same way that you're not allowed to keep knowledge of how to cure X to yourself.

But then also about the idea that the means of production will not be privately owned. Because the employees of privately owned capital are not treated well. But then what about other employees? Not all employees are employees of privately owned capital.

Reality.

I feel like the way reality is presented to me is false. Not in any conspiracy theory sense. More like the way, for example, armies in a war say they follow the rules of the Geneva Convention (and other ‘rules of engagement’) but I know that in reality they don’t.

Motivation.

On a session working on something, stop when it’s going well. Don’t stop when it’s not going well because that demotivates you from resuming.

Queuing.

This is socialist in the sense that there is a natural way of things happening which is that the people who can push their way to the front or can intimidate others to get to the front. Queuing suppresses this natural way of things happening. In favour of something that is fairer.

Communication.

I don’t like reticence. I want people to say what they think.

Convenience.

If there is some item I use every day I will put it in a place where it is more convenient for me to get. I’m not going to put it up on a shelf where I have to stretch and reach up. But then, at some other point in the day, I might to some stretching exercise. (Similarly, we have motor vehicles to save us the effort of walking. But then we go to the gym to run. Or we have machines to wash clothes. And then exercise our arms by lifting weights.)

Motivation.

About massive variations in motivation while studying learning. I’m sure this is one of those everyday things which gets mentioned so little that it become unnoticed. (In the way that things you don’t talk about become unseen.) Or is it just me? As a student some days I would (still do now) have variations of enthusiasm for learning. Sometimes I could just sit there for hours reading. Other times it seemed so boring.

Man On The Moon.

The theory that denies that men went to the moon was created by some people who got fed up with other the ones who say “what we put a man on moon and we can't do this?”

Love.

You can say I love my mother, I love my car, I love my dog, I love my wife, I love my children. All of which are true. Any word that can be used so indiscriminately has got to be worthless.

Distraction.

I get distracted reading or listening. I was listening to a podcast and the speaker said Parent Teacher Associations are very democratic: one parent one vote. And I started thinking: if a parent has two children at the school do they get two votes? Would that be OK. And then I realised I was not paying attention to the podcast. So I had to rewind.

Actors.

Watching a movie I think why does the hero look like that. The protagonist. I look at some other minor character and think, could they have been the protagonist? Somehow the protagonist always looks like a protagonist.

++++

OCTOBER 2020

Freedom 1.

Right-wing people are against state interference. But then they support the state interference which is making abortion illegal. In response to which they would say that this is different because it is to prevent one being harming another. But there are many cases of this latter where they don’t want the state to interfere. They don’t want the state forcing them to pay a reasonable wage to their employees.

Freedom 2.

Right-wing people don’t believe in the state limiting their freedom. But there are other things that limit their freedom. For example nature does so by forcing them to work so they have something to eat. What if the state said: if you join our group then we will free you from the way nature limits you. But we will impose some different limits to your freedom. Less onerous than those of nature.

Introvert

The introvert extrovert distinction is one that is commonly taken as a basic one about human personality. But it might be something else. For example people who like to put things away tidily and those who prefer to leave things lying around.

Loneliness.

This is sometimes described as not having anybody to talk to. But that’s not it. If I had some slack-jawed yokel to talk to, that wouldn’t help!

Facts.

There are some facts I feel like I should have at my fingertips at all times. Facts about the world that I ought to know. Like what the UK government annual expenditure is. Or what proportion of the US population is black. But I don’t know these things.

Anti-consumerism.

People who thing the money and possessions don’t make you happy must be against the idea of Socialism where that is about making sure people get a more equal share of money and possessions.

Procrastination.

This is mentioned in the context of student’s studying. But isn’t the issue more one of motivation. If you sit down with the intention of learning but then think you’ll do it later. This is procrastination. But why do you decide to put it off til later? It’s because there’s something else you want to do more. Like there’s something on TV or the internet. So the issue is actually one of motivation. Your motivation to do the learning that you had the intention to do originally. The issue of procrastination doesn’t arise for reading a novel or watching a movie.

Teen gangs.

Parents could organise their own gang. It would beat the others as parents have more resources than kids.

Spelling.

Sometimes reading books I find a spelling mistake. And I think, how is that possible? Like reading a book recently. A proper hardback novel printed on paper. And it said “wht” instead of “what”. That should have got picked up on a spell check surely!

Issues.

People have some issue and then they find out that it is something that professionals have identified and named. It could be Misophonia or Prosopagnosia or Aspergers. And the people with the issues think: oh I’m so glad, I thought it was just me but now I know this is a thing. But just because someone (no matter who) has given it a name this doesn’t mean its status is any different.

British.

Some left-wing people insist that (non-white) immigrants are British. As British as anybody else. Which winds up straight-thinking white British natives. What those LW people mean is that they think those immigrants shouldn’t be treated any differently (any worse) than white British natives. So why muddy the waters by pressing on the word ‘British’?

School.

Really at school they should teach you concentration and motivation. That’s it. Then just let you go like a wind up toy.

Sleepy.

When you get out of bed in the morning how sleepy are you? From 1 to 5 where 1 is fully alert and 5 is you have to force yourself out. (If you have a job and use an alarm then it will be the latter.) This question is about a tiny detail of ordinary life.

Autumn.

When it gets to Autumn and the daylight hours are reducing. It feels Autumnal. So then I pretend it’s Spring. So on 6 October sunset is 18:30. And that’s what time sunset is on 25 March. So I can sit here in the late afternoon and pretend it’s 25 March. And it feels so different!

Relationship advice.

When you’re in a relationship with someone it’s like you are too near it (the relationship) to see some things. Some things need you to stand back to see them. The advice would be to separate for about 6 months and not even think about it. Then go back and think about it and you will see things you couldn’t before.

Sign.

During this pandemic for a while every Thursday evening we were encouraged to stand at our doorsteps and clap for the Key Workers. I saw a sign which said “Give Key Workers a Pay Rise NOW. Give them a Pay Rise, not The Clap.” This should have said “A Clap” not “The Clap”.

Respect.

I’ve got a lot of self respect let’s face it I’m not going to get it from anyone else!

Food.

What if leaves and weeds were edible and nutritious.

Odd people.

Books about weird people are written for the edification of normal people but what if you are a weird person. Your experience of reading such books will be very different.

Mental health.

The very old advice was suppress negative feelings. Then the view changed and this kind of suppression was thought to be counter-productive. But maybe the advice is still the same. It’s just not called ‘suppression’ anymore. Things like meditation remove negative feelings.

Slow Learners.

Once they have learnt how to do it are they any worse at it then the people who learn quick? In fact maybe the slow learners will be better.

American Dream.

Anyone can be rich and successful. But note that this doesn’t mean that everyone can. Like in a lottery anyone can win. But not everyone can. This might be some kind of logical confusion. From “anyone can win” we get to “everyone can win”. But the latter doesn’t follow!

Freedom.

If you have natural rights. Like the right to freedom. Then do you also have natural obligations? Which limit your freedom. If you are born and you get told that some particular not very great life is this one that you must lead. And you don’t have the freedom to pursue any other. On what basis could you argue against that.

Internet.

I bump into someone and they ask me something. Something particular like, did I move ever get that table I was thinking about getting. But them asking me makes no sense. They could have contacted me at any time to ask. So they don’t really want to know.

Emotion vs reason.

Decide rationally, don’t let your judgement be clouded by emotion. But what does this mean? At some level all judgements are determined by emotion. Jack decides he wants to be an architect. Because he likes that kind of work and his liking is an emotional attitude. Same for all the other things about how he has decided to live his life, what to wear, what to eat, where to live, who to associate with. The emotion vs reason thing is really short-term emotion vs long-term (settled) emotion. So Jack shouldn’t let a transient desire for this car to determine him buying it.

Reading.

Novels don’t have “previously on”. I guess they expect you to finish within a week.

Restaurant.

To keep costs low it could serve only four different foods.

Regrets.

Jack: Do you have any regrets?

Mary: No. To have regrets first you must have figured out what you did wrong.

Books.

If I read a novel I can describe you to what happened. But I can’t do the same for the style it was written in. Or not as easily anyway. Neither is that the first thing that anybody would ask you about some novel you have read.

Stupid.

If you say “stupid man” that means: this is a man and they are stupid. If you say “stupid woman” it means (or it used to until recently anyway) “this is a woman and therefore she is stupid, ie stupid because she’s a woman”

Morals.

People could just be mildly aggressive. Could just shove someone. Or swear at them. The victim could do nothing. it’s too minor for one thing.

Science

When you touch something that’s cold to the touch. Like metal. Or some damp fabric. It’s actually at the same temperature as anything else in the room.

++++

November 2020

Equality.

Does co-operation imply equality?

So if 10 people co-operate to perform a task.

Then they are all equally essential to the task.

And they should get an equal share in the outcome.

Even though some people’s contribution was more difficult

or requires more skill.

Observations.

On the way to Tescos, when I cross the road at the junction near the Funeral Directors it’s a tricky junction. Cars turning in from three directions. I think: well if I get killed here it’s convenient because the Funeral directors are right here. A bit later there’s a house I walk past where there are dogs loose in the yard. High gates keep them in but also make it hard for me to see them, so I get surprised by them suddenly barking at me. I think, why is this allowed? If somebody was shouting at me from their garden in a similar way I could report them to the authorities.

Farmland.

Outside when I running I see lots of fields but nothing in them. Nothing growing! At the very most I will see a few cows or maybe horses.

Pomodoro technique.

Sometimes I read something and I think I’m going insane. I read about the Pomodoro technique and I thought: this, so-called, technique is just: “When you are doing a task which is going to take a long time, take breaks every half hour or so. And don’t get distracted by other things you could be doing.” That’s it. How can anybody in their right minds think that something as insubstantial as this deserves to be called a ‘technique”? Anybody who does think that is insane. Or I am.

State power.

The arguments that Right-wingers use against the Command Economy apply exactly equally to the family. It gives some particular individuals too much arbitrary authority which will be abused.

Equality and community.

In a proper community people don’t care about equality. Like a parent doesn’t resent their offspring being cleverer or better-looking than them. So in a community you would be pleased at the success of others, not envious.

Cultures.

It seems a commonplace these days that we should “respect all cultures”. But this is obviously not true. What about antebellum American South culture?

Climate change denial.

It seems wrong for ordinary people to question the conclusion that professional scientists have come to. On the other hand they are people too. Just because they are clever doesn’t mean they aren’t subject to prejudices. For example Economists are scientists too but I genuinely think that they have an unfounded prejudice in favour of free-market type policies.

Calories.

One gram of carbohydrate has 17 kJ. But what does that mean? Doesn’t it also depend on how good the digestive system is at extracting that 17 kJ? What if it isn’t. Then that one gram might be worth only, say, 15 kJ.

Annoyed.

Sometimes you get annoyed at something. Some small thing like this thing won’t fit on the shelf. And you think: wait, I shouldn’t be getting so annoyed by this. So why am I??

Feed.

Is there such a thing as a general internet feed?

(More precise than a News Feed as such.)

For example suppose I wanted an app that notified me immediately when:

- there is any change to the number 99 bus timetable,

- the price of the XYZ mutual fund falls by 2% in any one day,

- there is a murder within 10 miles of where I live,

- the weather forecast for my town says there is more than 50% chance of rain tomorrow,

- pop band XYZ announce any new tour dates near me.

- my local supermarket resumes stocking my favourite brand of peanut butter.

And so on.

Rather than me having to check each website individually to find out about these things.

Or having to set up email alerts on each website.

(Or does my question just betray a lack of understanding of what the internet is?)

Lots of tiny things that I need to keep an eye on.

Micro-feed. What I mean is a fine tuned feed.

Socialists.

They are often anti-materialists, they don’t think people should be so obsessed with the accumulation of stuff. But Socialism is all about people being bothered about not getting their ‘fair share’ of stuff.

Depression.

This isn’t the same as unhappiness, either in degree in in kind. It’s more like the feeling you get when you feel insulted.

Smartphones.

I have a cordless phone which has a blinking light to tell me I have missed a call. But, for my smartphone, I have to switch the screen on to see.

Facts.

Science and Religions often get into conflict about facts. Like the creation of the world, that kind of thing. But religious beliefs aren’t facts. They are too important for that.

50 per cent.

In a democracy a party has to get 50% to win. So you would have thought this party will be composed of the middle of the range of opinion. But it’s not. It’s always one side or the other. I would have expected it to be the middle of the range. With 25% on to the right and the left who are the extremists.

There’s something here I don’t understand but I’m not sure exactly what. It’s like a thermostat? When there’s a small change across the centre then the whole thing flips. Because the centre of each of the two parties is more distant.

Flitting between left and right. It would be better if there were gradual movement.

Secular sermons.

These would have the same content but with all the metaphysical references removed. Subject might be “are you a good person?”.

Hearts and minds.

Liberals are often bleeding-heart liberals. But a more solid sort would be hard-headed liberals. They would get results.

Preaching.

Instead of preaching Christianity should just set an example. And then people would follow.

Life.

Novelists depict private things in their work. Like conversations between lovers. But how do novelists know? That kind of thing isn't public knowledge. The most anyone ever knows is the private conversations they have.

Poverty.

This has got nothing to do with money. Imagine a town where all the people are unskilled, they don’t know how to produce food, make clothes or build houses. Then they will be poor. But not for lack of money.

Modern world.

If you have an old fashioned job floor mopping or fruit stall vendor then you're not really living in the modern world. You’re like on the outside of it.

ELI5.

All texts should be written as if they were for a small child. By which I main in basic sentences and simple vocabulary. Everything spelled out. This might sound odd but when someone is reading something which is going to explain to them something new then they stand in the same relation to it as anybody does to something new regardless of how old they are.

Advertising.

Advertisements for many things, for example, bank savings accounts, are accompanied by idealised scenes of family life, couple with two small children one boy one girl walking in the park. And I am wondering: what is this advertisement selling? Is it the savings account? Or that life?

Subtitled films.

People are mocked when they say that don’t like foreign language films with subtitles. But subtitled films are awful to watch. Your attention to the visual (which is the essential part of the film) is constantly being interrupted. Your experience of the film will be very different compared to that of a native speaker.

Children.

Small children are scary because it feels like they are “above the law”. Moral law as well as legal law.

Marriage.

How do acted out marriage ceremonies in films not result in actual marriage? They say all the same words. It’s not an actual priest of course!

Queuing.

As parable. The strong might persuade the weak to vote in favour of abolishing queuing.

Learning.

Academia has this noble idea about itself that it’s all about learning for learning’s sake. But there’s hardly anybody who believes that. It’s about money and prestige. Clever people aren’t any more nicer than other people.

Conspiracy.

The above is like a conspiracy as in cover-up. Where everyone is doing the covering up.

Driven.

People who are ‘driven’. I’d rather drive than be driven.

Movies.

At what point did violence in movies get realistic? I’m thinking of gunshot in particular. In the 1950s in movies people got shot and there was no blood at all.

Democracy

Suppose you have a large national democracy of 50 million people. And there is a city of about one million within that nation the majority (say more than 65%) want to live a certain way. But in the nation the majority of people want to live in a different way. Then that city has to live according to what the others want. That seems odd.

++++

December 2020

Trainspotting.

Hobbies which are just collecting all the facts about a particular thing. Why do people do that? It might be that there is a lack of order in their lives. And this hobby gives them that much desired sense of things being ordered.

Obvious psychology.

There are some odd psychological things which are so common that I don’t see their oddness. Like people get afeared in the night. But in the day time those fears are gone. They couldn’t even happen in the day time.

Weather.

If I don’t like the weather forecast of some particular forecast service I will go to a different one.

Happiness.

Most misery is caused by circumstances, poor relationships with others. And an absence of basic skills in dealing with personal mental states. But there is no provision for such things. There is no provision for ordinary unhappiness but plenty for pathological unhappiness.

Actors.

Some people are no good at acting. Or is it just that they don’t look like actors.

Children.

Where do children go? I can meet a 8 year old and they will have an identity and a personality. And then, 12 years later, I meet the adult that that child grows up into. And I won’t recognise them. They won’t look the same and they won’t have the same personality. And then I might ask: where did that 8 year old go? It’s the same as if the 8 year old disappeared and got replaced by completely different person. The fact that it happens over 12 years makes it easier. But if the 8 year-old was replaced with the 20-year old in one day. That would be different.

Tropes.

Fiction works with tropes. For example: realising X is the enemy (or something) by seeing something on their desk. I saw this recently in the movie ‘The Departed’ and then again in the TV series ‘Utopia’.

Reading fiction.

Experience of fiction. Character’s downtime. Like James Bond. What does he do the rest of the time?

Knowing.

I got a new microwave oven. But it’s impossible to know everything before you buy. For example this new one, the light comes on when you open the door. When the door is shut and the machine is off, then there is no light. When it is on then there is a light. My point is that there was no way for me to know that this was the mode of operation before I bought the thing.

Imports.

I don’t understand why a country doesn’t manufacture it’s own goods. For example washing machines. Why aren’t all the washing machines bought in the UK, made in the UK? It’s not as if the people living in the UK are not capable of making them? So then is the answer that other countries can make them cheaper? But why would that be?

Photographs.

I like looking at old photographs of people. Not posed portraits. But just people going about their everyday business. Like walking down the street somewhere.

Belief.

What if every single person in the Catholic Church is pretending to believe. Thinking that they are the only one.

Nerves.

People with ‘nerves of steel’ this is admirable. But this phrase means they are unaffected emotionally by things. Which means they are psychopaths. They will remain calm in danger. But they will also remain unmoved by suffering.

Mortality.

To not be worried by this just don’t think about it. In the same way if you are climbing a height the advice is: don’t look down.

Help.

The way shop assistants say “can I help you?” often doesn’t sound like an offer of assistance. IT sounds more like: “how dare you come into this store!”.

Growing Up.

So when children get to puberty and start to have sexual type feelings. Which is a major change in mental life. Then this isn’t discussed at all. It’s like a large heavy object has appeared in the town square but nobody talks about it. Sometimes they refer to it in passing. But that’s about it.

Capitalism and materialism.

These two things are put together. But you can be a materialist without being a capitalist. You might think that the pursuit of stuff is the only thing worth doing but, being a socialist, you think that everyone should get a fair share of the stuff.

Writer.

I don’t like people who want to be writers because they want to be published and famous. If I was to write it would be to write something that I like to read. In my mind I feel as if there is something that I would like better than all the novels I have read so far. It’s like I can almost see it. But I don’t have the skills to write it down.

Laughing.

Why is laughing (at funny things) associated with happiness? If you are laughing you are happy. But then if you are eating chocolate you are happy too. But laughing seems to associated more strongly. Almost as if it’s synonymous with happiness.

++++

January 2021

Armchairs.

Sometimes people refer to ‘armchair philosophers’. But that’s all philosophers! All philosophers can do what they do while sitting in an armchair.

Memory.

Sometimes I remember X. They died and this made me very sad. But then after that the memory of them is dying too. Slowly inside my head. Like the corpse of some animal that got trapped somewhere and is slowly rotting away.

Provisions.

There isn’t a ministry of wellbeing. By which I mean something that would make sure everyone had friends. But there are systems in place for other things. So this is like as if there were no provision for clean water but there was everything else.

Moods.

Sometimes in the mood for something. Other times no. But you can’t decide what mood to be in. It doesn’t work like that.

The World.

“Not everyone can carry the weight of the world”. So what do they do then?

Relationships.

The man-woman relationship just a brain fuck. That’s what a young woman told me once.

Difficult.

Why is everything so difficult. They want you to get a job get married etc. But there seems to be no attempt made to facilitate you doing this. While, at the same time, there is plenty of facilitation of getting other things. Such as sport or movies or food.

Trucks.

I see trucks, big trucks on the roads near where I live. But I don’t see the same ones again. So that means these trucks are not passing as part of a regular route they take. What does this mean?

Coments.

I read comments about some thing on the Internet. And I think this is what people in general think of this thing. But this is not true. Those comments are not a representative sample of what people think of this thing. Because the group of people who decide to write comments are not representative of all the people.

Politics.

There is an argument that goes:

Jack: The masses are oppressed and exploited by the government.

Mary: Really? But we have a democracy so that can’t be true: if the government was oppressing the masses then the masses would just vote them out at the next election.

Jack: No, because they have been brainwashed by their oppressors.

At this point I don’t know how Mary could respond.

Pseudo-profundity.

Usually in aphorism form. Like “The self is an illusion.” But then what is the subject of the illusion? - But some aphorisms can be good. Like “something about which nothing can be said is the same as nothing”.

Mental health disorder?

If your life is rubbish and this is making you feel awful then is that a mental health disorder? Surely not a disorder because to feel awful if your life sucks is a correct and normal response. If you felt great when your life sucked that would be the disorder.

Ice cream.

Jack: I try to eat healthy but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t some times have some ice cream.

Mary: Are you lying?

Jack: Yes.

Opera.

What if operas were sung in non-operatic singing voices. The singing voices that people use to sing normal non-operatic music.

Other minds.

Technophile gadget lover. Can they understand the mindset of someone who is indifferent to all of this?

Handwriting.

Recently I have been experiment with writing the letter ‘r’ lower case in the proper cursive way.

Worlds.

If you feel like you don’t belong in this world then you have to create your own.

Carers Allowance.

Why don’t they just give me some work to do? Poverty isn’t the shortage of money but the shortage of paid employment.

Medicine.

Suppose I had an intermittent pain in my leg. It came at random times lasting for about an hour each time. I could get some medicine for it. But let’s say that this medicine is effective for about four hours but it takes about an hour to work. This means that there would be no point taking it at the onset of the pain. Neither would there be any point taking it at some point with a view to preventing the pain for some future four hour period. Because if I took the medicine and then had no pain for the four hour period that wouldn’t mean that the medicine prevented the pain. It might just be that, given the intermittency of the pain, that it wasn’t going to be there anyway regardless of if I took the medicine or if I didn’t.

Order.

People who oppose conservatives who believe in order and discipline. So they believe in more freedom. But wait! What’s going in here? Do they oppose order or do they oppose the particular order that the conservatives promote. Which is often all about family and religion. You might believe in order and discipline but just not where that is the content.

Internet Forums.

You write out what you’ve got to say and then post it onto a forum. And it’s all like throwing something onto a heap of sand. It’s there for a while but is soon submerged by other grains of sand. Nobody will see it unless they actively dredge it up.

Music.

Sometimes I think listening to music isn’t good. It’s like the way depressed people often “wallow in their own misery”.

Drugs.

Using drugs and engaging in other (more or less) risky and edgy pleasures is seen as a characteristic of youth, teenagers etc. But you would have thought it would be older people who would engage in this kind of thing. If you are 60 and you become addicted to heroin it’s not going to ruin “your whole life”, because most of your life is already done. Also when you are young and healthy you have much pleasure in just being alive. This is less so the case when you are older, at which point you might seek to improve your pleasure in being alive from chemicals etc.

Vanity.

Having children is a supreme act of vanity. It's like you're saying "I'm so great there really should be another one of me". Fortunately genetics prevents us producing others exactly like us, it always has to be a mixture of two people. Two equally vain people.

Having children also says I’m perfectly capable of the arduous and difficult task of bringing up another human being. An assertion which is based on no evidence whatsoever, especially when it comes to your first child.

Deciding.

If there’s something you’re thinking of doing but you’re not sure whether or not to do it. And this indecisiveness is making you feel annoyed. Then the best thing is to just do it. Because it will make further indecisiveness impossible.

New things.

Saying ‘owning it’. Like an example someone told me once of some actor fluffing their lines. But they “owned it”. Another new thing is asking “is that a thing?”. When did asking “is that a thing” become a thing?

Ordinary life.

Bumping into an acquaintance. Having to say something. What if you just didn’t.

Meditation.

This is supposed to help calm a busy mind. Because this mental busy-ness is often a bad thing. But what if your mental busy-ness makes it difficult for you to meditate? In fact it does do that. So then this is baffling, isn’t it? Meditations seems to require you to have a non-busy mind for you to be able to do it. But, at the same time, an non-busy is supposed to be the outcome.

Meditation.

If meditation is about focussing then why isn't reading meditation?

Supermarket self-scan.

Sainsbury's have self scan the other way?

Expect.

Ambiguity in the word ‘expect’. If I say: “I don’t expect you to reply” it could mean “don’t worry you don’t have to reply if you don’t want” or it could mean “I predict you won’t reply because you are so lazy”.

Cleverness.

Pointless adulation of cleverness and bookishness. When I was at school they might get worried that I wasn’t able to solve quadratic equations. But the fact that I had no ‘social skills’ or no friends that didn’t bother anybody. We still admire clever people. But why? Our priorities are wrong here. We should admire caring people more.

MeToo.

People are reacting as if they have just find out this kind of thing is going on. But what did they think that phrase “who did you have to sleep with to get that job?” meant? This has been going on forever and nobody has cared and still don’t. We gave those men names like ‘cad’ and ‘womaniser’ and that’s that.

Another thing is that in movies young female actors MUST be stunningly beautiful. You NEVER get one who isn’t.

Shit Life.

Many artists have a shit life. Full of suffering. And that’s the reason they are so creative. They are trying to compensate for the horribleness of their lives by doing something to make their life better. If you have a great life already you won’t have any motivation to be creative. That’s why happy people don’t make great artists.

++++

February 2021

Fuck off.

I have a strong aversion to using the word ‘fuck’ in speech. But because other people use it I feel that I have to use it otherwise it seems as if I have failed to convey the strength of the sentiment behind what I am saying. So if, where other other people would say: “that’s fucking stupid” I say: “that’s totally stupid” that doesn’t work.

Talent.

If you work hard at your job not making a fuss. That makes people think you are good at it. But you're not. You're just putting in the work.

God.

This is God, ‘the father’. But what a father (or any parent) wants is for their children to be strong and independent. What father doesn’t want is for their child to be constantly grovelling to them. A father might even like children who have got the guts to stand up to him.

Opinions.

“No matter who you vote for, the Government always gets in.” People say this as if this is an interesting and insightful thing to say. It’s not. And “the government are bad” idea is nonsense.

Or (even worse): “Politicians, they’re all the same they never do what they say they’re going to do and they’re in it for themselves”. This politician-bashing you hear from the left too. But it is basically a right-wing anti-government idea.

Life.

If people say to you “get a life”. If you haven’t already got one the easiest thing might be just to create one. You have to create a whole life. Something which most people just get given to them.

Wages.

If we changed things so everyone got paid the same. You might be opposed to this because it meant your income reduces. But there will be people you pay who will now be cheaper to hire. Lawyers doctors etc. Having said that, there will then also be all the people who will now be more expensive to hire. Like cleaners and drivers.

Rebel.

The glamour of being a rebel. Next step find something to rebel against.

Running.

When I am out running. Running along a road and I have to run across a junction. I get an enormous feeling of wellbeing when a driver waves me on and I wave back. Or I wave them on and they wave back.

Narrative.

In fiction 1st person the ‘I’ is just another character. It’s not the author.

Employment.

Advertised event on Meetup. “The Secrets of Networking Part II: Connecting When You Can't Be In The Room. Tuesday, February 9 2021 3:00 PM EST” Says: “Nearly 85% of job positions are filled through networking.” Really! So it’s who you know not what you know. They’re openly admitting this now.

Cocoon.

People watch movies and some scenes stick in their minds. Is this because there are too few of these in real life? Recently I was trimming a hedge and accidentally exposed some kind of cocoon that was stuck to branch and the thing inside suddenly jumped out and flew away as if in giant panic. This stuck in my mind.

Success.

All successful people have got there by trampling on other people.

Politics.

The West interfered in the Middle East (Iraq war etc) and this resulted an increase in Islamic terrorism both in the Middle East and also in Western countries, especially Europe. Therefore those Western countries should not have interfered. But this is like: I, going about my ordinary business, walk down some road, and some other person says: “if you walk down that road tomorrow I will kill this kitten” and I walk down the road regardless. The kitten gets it but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have walked down the road. This is blackmail. And you might say that invading other countries and toppling their governments on a whim is NOT “ordinary business”. But for countries yes I think it is.

Employment.

What if someone offered you a job 2 hours per day. But that 2 hours was 10 minutes per hour which was every sixth minute of each of 12 hours.

Poetry.

This is deliberately obscure. The pleasure of reading it is akin to solving a puzzle. I mean a word puzzle like a crossword clue.

Socialism

Right wingers say that Socialism is all about envy. No, it’s not. Just Many of its supporters are.

War films.

If you have never been in a war a war film won’t do anything to convey to you what it’s like to be in a war. And if you have been in a war you won’t need to watch a war film to find out what it’s like in a war because you will already know. In fact not only will you not need to watch it but you won’t want to!

Poverty.

In the Middle Ages poverty was rife. There were no basic amenities like running water or heating in the cold. But those people could build cathedrals! They could have put that effort into the amenities. So the reason they didn’t have the latter wasn’t because they couldn’t but because they didn’t want to.

Character.

I have a compulsion to correct mistakes. Or rather to point them out. Like recently I got an email with ‘complimentary’ where they actually meant ‘complementary’. Actually saying ‘compulsion’ is too strong. But I want to. And I know that my motives for this are not good. I’m not even clear what the motives are. But I know they aren’t good.

Freud.

I don’t really know what this guy was saying. (In my mind I alway refer to him as ‘Sigmund Frood’ from the ‘Bill and Ted’ movies.) Sometimes we do things for motives that we aren’t aware of. But didn’t we already know that? Like the sour grapes thing. Which is where we develop a dislike for something. And we can’t see that it’s only because we have been denied it.

Fancy dress.

A very simple and cheap costume for Halloween would be to put a chalk marked letter ‘M’ on the back of your shoulder on a long black coat.

Pets.

(Unpopular opinion.) If you have a pet animal then there is something psychologically wrong with you. People say they like having a dog because it gives unconditional love? And I think: what? are you like 5 years old or something? This means you want some dumb animal to love without you having to make any effort. If you want a dog that means you want some creature who will be subservient. But I want all my relationships with others to be a relationship of equals. A pet is like a living toy.

Caring.

If Jack cares about Mary that means he is empathetic and/or sympathetic, meaning something like that he feels moved by any suffering she is experiencing and he is glad when she is happy. But what good is all that to Mary? Surely the point is: can he and will he do anything about her suffering? Caring in a different sense is productive. In the sense that say Jack owns a car and he cares for it. As in he pays attention to its operation he runs regular maintenance checks and does repairs and that kind of thing. What if Jack was utterly unmoved by Mary’s suffering but he conscientiously alleviated it every time. Which might include ‘emotional’ members such as giving her a hug and reassurance.

If somebody says to me something like: “I'm worried that you're not well” I think what have you got to be worried about, I'm the one who's not well!

Socialism.

This is difficult to implement because it is based on lots of rules. So it relies on everybody following the rules. The rules being things like what price you can buy and sell things. And how much of whatever you can produce. Capitalism is more about an absence of rules. It’s saying do what you want when it comes to buying and selling. So it’s easy to implement. There’s no danger of people starting to follow rules when you’ve told them not to.

For example if we have the rule that you need to queue then someone can break that rule. But if you say we aren’t going to have any rule about how gets served first then you can’t do anything in opposition to that!

CBT Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

This is based on the idea that negative mood states (depression, anxiety, anger etc) are based on negative beliefs and thoughts. So the trick is that when you see see a negative thought creeping into your mind just, so to speak, do that thing where you stick your fingers in your ears and say “la la la not listening”. Until the thought goes away. The hard bit is getting good at spotting the negative thoughts and of getting into the habit of ignoring it.

The Weather.

Even though I live in Britain with its very changeable weather, I insist on dressing the way the weather ought to be for the time of year, not the way it is. Why should I let the weather force me to be constantly changing my dress! And if all this means that I am too hot or too cold or too wet as a consequence then so be it.

Smarts.

I don’t have any of those skills which you need to “get on in life”. To me a lot of them are about how to manipulate and outwit other people. It’s all about being wily and devious.

Language.

Suppose I was talking about illegal drugs with someone and I said: “Well I can’t say I’ve ever taken drugs so that’s that then”. Which sounds like I am saying I’ve never taken drugs. But really I might just be saying that I can’t say. Because if I did then I would get arrested.

Manipulation.

I hear it said that we are manipulated by corporations into buying certain things. But how much of this is just up to people not being careful. I remember the Newspaper scandal in about 2010 when the ‘News Of The World’ newspaper had accessed a murdered girls phone to get information. But isn’t that the fault of the readers who buy the papers. On reading the information the readers should have said: “how did you get this information?” and then objected strongly to the obvious answer. And then stopped buying that newspaper. And so then it would have gone out of business. I’m not denying that groups of people manipulate others but often the situation is due to the people being manipulated allowing it to happen.

Stories with a message.

Like ‘Jane Eyre’ highlighting the position of women. Or ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ about slavery. But I don’t want novels to give me a message about the world. To

Smartphones.

On a landline I get a blinking light to show a missed call. But with a smartphone I have to press a button to see. Or keep it with me at all times.

++++

March 2021

Liberty.

Some people (Americans) are obsessed with the idea of Liberty. And their enemy is Tyranny. And I think: when they say they want Liberty, what is this? The Liberty to do what? There are different reasons why some Tyrant might be depriving us of Liberty. A Tyrant might be, for example, preventing us running our business so that the Tyrant has no competition and then they can enrich themselves. On the other hand a ‘Tyrant’ might be depriving us of the Liberty to, for example, exploit other people by paying them starvation wages. This is not for the benefit of the Tyrant but for the benefit of the wage workers. In general it seems that the Liberty people are afraid of losing is the Liberty to be Tyrannical towards other people.

A government that does things that restricts the liberty of its citizens is considered bad. But there can be instances when it can be good. If a government does things to encourage its citizens to give up their liberties to each other in the sense of entering into agreements with each other which are beneficial to all parties.

If I am unable to do something I want to do because of poverty is that an absence of liberty?

Nervous.

Gets nervous when around other people. And also when NOT around other people: needing someone around to say that everything’s OK.

Communication.

On my landline phone if I miss a call then there is a persistent blinking light which tells me this. It won’t stop blinking until I have checked to see who called. All I need to do to find out that there is a missed call is look at the phone. But there is nothing like this on a smartphone. If I miss a call then I won’t find out about it until I press the button to turn the screen on so that then I can see the notifications on the lock screen.

Ambiguity.

I got a letter from the hospital and one of the things it said was to go to their website and complete an online form. When I got to the form it asked me for my “patient number” and it said I could find this “patient number” on the letter they sent to me. I looked on the letter and there was nowhere on there where it said anything about a “patient number”. However it did give a “hospital number”. Now it was obvious that the “patient number” the letter was referring to was the same as the “hospital number” on the letter. And yet, to my mind, this wasn’t good enough. So I phoned the hospital to check. And a nice lady said: “yes that is a bit confusing isn’t it”. Which made me feel better about having phoned them to check.

Making friends.

Friends or dating, general relationships with others. Common advice when meeting is make a good first impression. Be careful not to “say the wrong thing” (faux pas). And I think: no, I don’t want to meet people who will judge me based on first impressions. Or people who will be judge me based on a single wrong thing might say. People who aren’t prepared to make some effort to get to know me really. And neither will I make an effort to make a “good first impression”. Yes I should make an effort but this should be to present myself as I really am. Not just present my best side.

Authentic.

In films set in the past, say the 1950s, all the cars look immaculate. This is because the only 1950s cars available for film makers to use will be ones owned by collectors who will have keep them in perfect condition. Nobody will own a 1950s car and have it in used and beat up condition.

Woke posturing.

It’s leftwing kitsch, like (as Milan Kundera says) going on marches. Just to clarify: I am a massively left-wing person firm believer in communism etc. So I’m not complaining about ‘woke’ just because I’m from the opposite viewpoint.

I don’t want to descend into psychobabble but it’s like it’s all about people fighting to show how ideologically pure they are. Also, it alienates ordinary left-wing people. The idea is that if you aren’t perfectly OK with people of different races and sexual preferences then you are a horrible person. You must love all these sorts of people.

Writing.

Explaining something verbally is different from writing. So, suppose Jack knows Mary who is a geologist. And one day he casually asks her: “so what’s a sedimentary rock”. She would try to explain. But she wouldn’t phrase it like this (the first sentence of the Wikipedia article on sedimentary rocks): “Sedimentary rocks are types of rock that are formed by the accumulation or deposition of mineral or organic particles at the Earth's surface, followed by cementation.” If she spoke these words to Jack in reply to his answer he would think there’s something wrong with her.

Writing is always more ‘formal’ in some sense. Which doesn’t help. Sometimes you get written instructions and then someone gives a verbal version which is easier to understand.

People.

I like well-tempered people. They might have a bit of an edge to them, sometimes giving you a withering look. That’s fine. What I don’t like is wild mood swings.

Scam calls.

I love getting scam calls. It gives me a chance to shout and swear at people. Something which I would never otherwise do.

Lost.

Jack: I haven’t found it anywhere.

Mary: Have you looked?

Jack: No.

Men.

I don’t know if this is just something that men do when talking with other men. Maybe women do it when they are talking with other women. I remember once there was a song called “Heaven is a place on earth” sung by Belinda Carlisle. It was being played in the background and one of a group of males I was with remarked something like: “in bed with her that’s heaven I bet!”. It’s the inappropriateness of the remark that I object to. My objection could be interpreted as prudishness but it’s not.

Love.

You can love someone you don’t like. And I don’t mean by this that you don’t like all about them. That there’s some things you don’t like.

Reading.

I often listen to music while at the same time reading. And I feel like this is wrong as I should be giving my “full undivided attention” to either one or the other. It’s almost as if I said that I often read two books at the same time.

Wrong.

Everybody thinks they are right about everything all the time. Because nobody thinks they are wrong about anything. If anybody thought a belief of theirs was wrong then they would have stopped believing it by now.

People.

Sometimes I prefer it when people are VERY unpleasant rather than just mildly unpleasant. Because when they are only mildly unpleasant then I have doubts. I think to myself that maybe it’s just me overreacting. When they are VERY unpleasant there is no such uncertainty.

Relationships.

(Unpopular opinion.) Serious long-term relationships between human adults (for example marriage) shouldn’t be based on sexual attraction. Because sexual attraction is not a ‘human’ thing particularly. Neither is it stable enough to base a long-term thing on.

Judging.

You can judge someone without being judgemental. In the same way you can express an opinion without being opinionated. I can “say what I think”. But that’s not the same as proselytising.

Abuse.

Recently people have been exposed for abusing their positions. I’m talking about abuse in the form of extracting sexual favours. And the positions are ones of authority in sports, music and entertainment, that kind of thing. And I find myself thinking: I always assumed that this was just commonplace. There’s a thing people say: “who did you have to sleep with to get that job?”. In fact I often think that that’s the ONLY reason people (by which I mean men) aspire to positions of authority. So that they can use those positions to extort sexual favours from others. - I should also add that there is more to the behaviour of these people than a simple desire for sexual doings. Because that kind of thing can be easily got by other means. You don’t need to extort it from people you work with.

Mental health.

I hear it said that the Covid pandemic and lockdowns (year 2020 etc) have caused people’s mental health to suffer. But if you have negative mood states due to circumstances that’s not a mental health thing is it? Because it’s all circumstantial.

Love.

Your other half. Does this mean they are the opposite of you? Certainly the original as described in Plato suggests that. Or are the two halves two halves of the same thing. Which suggests your other half is a clone.

Tortoise.

Can’t remember now where I heard this but the reason why the Hare and Tortoise story favours the Tortoise is that Hares are too busy to read stories.

What.

Multicultural diversity. But diversity can be seen as fragmentation and lots of differentness. Which engenders conflict. Do supporters of diversity not want integration? It seems as if both diversity and integration are lauded but these two are in conflict.

It.

I wish people would stop saying things like: if you try hard enough you will get what you want. As if there were no other factors other than you trying. Of course there’s nothing wrong with encouraging people to aspire to better, all other things being equal.

Priest.

How did Jean Meslier live I wonder. His whole life one big cognitive dissonance.

Parenting.

For all complicated jobs eg crop growing, carpentry, accounting. (Maybe even not so complicated things, for example cooking.) Not everyone can do these well enough. And yet when it comes to parenting everybody thinks they can do it well enough. But some won’t be able to.

Words.

I saw a sign that said “licensed to sell alcohol for consumption on and off the premisses”. That sounds like it means that any alcohol sold must be consumed both on the premisses and also off the premisses. So you would have to drink some inside and then go outside and have a sip too.

Lost.

It's only people who are lost who ask “how did I get here?”.

Change the world.

Karl Marx said the point is not to understand the world but to change it. But I’m thinking that if it’s your aim to understand the world then you should put aside any ideas you might have about how it ought to be changed. Because these will interfere in your understanding. For example if you think X ought to be abolished then when you are going about trying to understand it this might distort your understanding of X to make it (even) worse than it is.

Everyone must get prizes.

This is wrong if it means everyone must win. But it is true if it means everyone must be valued. Because everyone does have a value. Maybe not equal value. Actually in a sense yes equal value. In a system of division of labour everyone’s contribution is necessary for the outcome. For example medical surgery, the guy who makes sure the knives are clean and available is as much essential as the surgeon. If that guy doesn’t do his job then the operation will fail as much as it will if the surgeon doesn’t show up.

Another way of saying all this is: we shouldn’t tell everybody that they are great! Some people aren’t. The thing we should be focussing on doing is treating even the not-great people well.

Social issues awareness.

Somebody raises awareness of some issue, eg the plight of some minority or children or animals. And this is thought of as good. People called ‘activists’ arrange street demonstrations about the issue. And that’s how change happens. But it seems rather arbitrary to me. As a method for establishing what people want. What about all the other issues that haven’t got someone to raise awareness of them. It’s all rather arbitrary. It’s a ‘shoutocracy’ rule by those who can “should the loudest”.

Eugenics

We want to stop people being born who have, for example people Downs syndrome. I suspect that some opponents of this think that it is the same as saying to existing Downs syndrome people “we wish you’d never been born”.

Opera.

Sometimes in an opera someone sings a song. For example in Rossini’s “Barber of Seville”. But that doesn’t make sense because everybody is already singing all the time. So how is that a song? Maybe in an opera a song should be signified by the opposite, ie by the singer just speaking the lines.

Social world.

If you are a woman then your perception of the social world will be completely different from that of a man. I don’t feel like I appreciate this fact enough.

Relationships question.

Suppose you are in a serious relationship with your partner and they describe some problem they are having. Such as with their employer or with their family. And you listen to them but then decide that your partner is the one who is in the wrong. And that their employers or family or whatever are right. But then it seems wrong to tell your partner this. It seems as if you should support them and be on their side. But what if you can’t be? But also note this doesn’t affect how much you love them. Despite that fact that you think they are wrong. And then I guess there’s the next stage where you tell them. And then they are unhappy with you for not being on their side.

Film version.

Watching a film version of a novel is like reading an abridgement. But nobody does that any more. And it would be frowned upon.

Depression.

Sometimes when I hear someone say how they have been suffering from depression I feel like saying: of course you are! What did you think was going to happen?

Book Clubs.

I don’t really understand Book Clubs.

FIRST

People don’t really go to Book Clubs for the stated reason. Which is to tell others what they thought about some particular book. And to find out what others thought about it. It’s not as if the attendees were sitting at home thinking “I really want to tell people what I think about this book”. Not to mention that if that is what they want then they could have just said something on GoodReads or some other internet platform.

The real reason people go to Book Clubs is to meet people. Maybe make new friends. My main point here is: so why can’t attendees just say that? It’s like they have to pretend they are there for a different reason, namely to say what they thought of some book. Which is a massive evasion and not conducive to good relations between people. I mean if you are interacting with people based on a pretence.

(A footnote to the first point. I can see how people might not want to admit they are there to make friends. If you don’t admit that you are there to make friends it makes it easier to fail to respond to some other person who is trying to become your friend. It’s like a kind of ‘plausible deniability’.)

SECOND

Books are written to be read, not to be talked about and to use them as conversational material belittles them. While books aren’t there to be talked about but there are plenty of things which are. By which I mean they are more appropriate subjects of conversation. For example your thoughts about life in general. When you read a book then it’s not ‘natural’ (I can’t think of a better word) to form an opinion about that book. But there are plenty of things which it is natural to form an opinion about. Things in your ordinary life. Like your employment, education, relationships, diet.

(Aside, TS Eliot said that “criticism is as inevitable as breathing” by which he means that, contrary to what I am saying here, forming an opinion about some work of literature is a natural thing to do. To which I would say: it might be natural to you Mr Eliot and your academic mates but not to anybody else.)

Because it is not a natural thing to do it is also very difficult. It is more difficult to articulate your opinion of a book than of other things.

It would be more natural to talk about your experience of reading in general, rather than just of some particular book.

Shame.

Revenge porn victims can take their own revenge by doubling down, and putting more similar images on the internet themselves. As if to say “fuck you” to the perpetrators, whose aim was to make the victim feel ashamed. Of course this isn’t an easy thing to do. But what has the victim got to lose?

++++

April 2021

Disabled.

I think I might have mentioned this before but there is some kind of association between disability and evil. For example many of the James Bond villains are disabled (or physically different) in some way, even if it’s only something very minor like a third nipple. Or a more extreme case with Darth Vader. - There is a more general issue here which I might have mentioned elsewhere. It’s got something to do with the word ‘good’. There are two senses of this, one moral and one practical by which I mean the way you might say: this is a good car. Meaning it is a something which has to a high level the qualities you expect in a car, it’s reliable, fuel-efficient, comfortable. If you say “a good man” this would then mean a man that was something that had the qualities you would expect from a man. And health would be a major part of that. Someone with only one leg would be a bad example of a man. But then this gets confused with bad in the moral sense. And then I get the impression that this is what Nietzsche was talking about. About how, in the good old days, ‘good’ used to mean big strong powerful etc but now it means being nice to other people.

Mirrors.

If there were no mirrors and no cameras and no pictures then you would never see your head and face. And you would never know what you looked like. (Or: if all those things were inaccurate.) Despite thinking that you do.

Equality.

Where this means equality of standard of living. But that’s not what people are striving for is it? People want more from life than a good material standard of living. It’s more the non-material things such as status. Which might just mean the respect of others. And, to the extent that people ARE striving towards a good material standard of living it might be that this is only as a means towards the end of status.

Debate.

Some thinker A writes his theory about X. And then someone else B presents some reasons why X might be false. But surely A isn’t stupid and they could have mentioned those possible criticisms themselves and dealt with them.

Democracy.

This is rule by the people for the people. In my mind I take ‘people’ to be everybody, ie not just the majority. Also, more importantly, I want to go with the “for the people” rather than with the “by the people”. Which is very non-standard I know. Because that would mean if there was a system without any kind of “by the people” ie with no voting or consultation of the people. I mean without any mechanism by which they are asked how things should be run. But which was still “for the people” in that it was the best for them. One important thing about focussing on “for” not “by” is that you could have a system that was just “by” and it end up not being “for” the people. For example 100% of the people might vote for everyone’s standard of living to be determined by lottery. Where there was a 5% chance that you live in abject poverty. And so you would have a place where 5% of the population lived in abject poverty. That wouldn’t be a system that was “for” the people.

Mood.

People eat nice food (chocolate etc) when they are in a bad mood. To cheer themselves up. I often do the opposite. I will save nice food for when I am in a good mood. Because if I eat it when I am in a bad mood the experience of the nice food is spoiled by my bad mood.

Success.

We like successful people not failures. But success in a competitive system is about beating other people. So every person who is successful in any field only got there by beating other people.

Racket.

The Church is a racket in the sense that they persuade people to interpret their life-problems as due to them being ‘fallen’ and then the Church can save them.

Meaning.

If I say “Mary will be there at 7” this is just a prediction. If I say “I will be there at 7” this is a promise. But the sentence form is the same in both.

Texts.

Many religions have some written text at their core. For example with Christianity there is the New Testament. But it is impossible to understand what Christianity is by just sitting and reading the New Testament. For example when you get to Matthew 3 we have John the Baptist talking about “the kingdom of heaven” but it doesn’t say what this is. And then we get the Baptism of Jesus but it doesn’t say what the significance of Baptism is. It’s like this text was written for people who knew all this stuff.

Value judgement.

You make a value judgement, J, saying that your way of life is the best one. But then are you also making a value meta-judgement that your judgement J is a good judgement.

Propaganda.

Definition of ‘propaganda’ is “information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view.” But then some text that promotes anti-slavery (for example the novel ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ - I haven’t read this but I assume what it is.) This is biased in favour of the anti-slavery view, it doesn’t present the pro-slavery arguments. So this is propaganda.

God.

There are arguments about whether or not God exists. But the word ‘exist’ seems too mundane to apply to God. Mud exists, trees exist, cats and dogs exist. To apply the same word to God as to all these things seems wrong.

Profundity.

Some people confuse profundity with opacity. Saying something which is very vague and doesn’t make sense. For example “the self is an illusion”. But then what is the subjecte of this illusion?

Death.

People who are suffering from a terminal illness. What if, before you get the bad news, you are given a pill that takes away your fear of dying.

Cinderella.

What if Cinderella had not only been excluded from the party. But she been forced to still attend. So she was made to sit and watch everybody else have fun but she couldn’t join in.

Self-help.

I once watched an interview between Larry King and Tony Robbins. The latter was explaining something like “how to get rich”. It wasn’t exactly that but it doesn’t matter, it could have been anything he was explaining “how to do”. Because all he was saying was: “It’s really simple to get rich. Here’s the method. First make a plan as to how you’re going to get rich, make sure you do all you research and reading. Second, carefully implement that plan. Do it carefully mind! And there you have it. Guaranteed success.” As if he was saying something here.

Future.

Sometimes I see some future date, for example 2345. And I think: wow wouldn’t it be great to live in the future. But then I think: this is the future where I am now. I am here in the year 2021 and that is as much the future (to people in 1697) as 2345 is the future to me.

Stress.

People say they are stressed out. As if ‘stress’ was the name of a particular feeling. But it’s not. For example Jack might be frustrated at Mary’s uncooperative behaviour. And he will say that she is stressing him out. The most accurate word to use to describe what he is feeling is the word ‘frustration’.

Psychoanalysis.

Some examples of psychoanalysis are given here

https://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-psychoanalytic-theory.html

These are all based on the idea we aren’t always conscious (aware) of why the contents of our mind are the way they are. Especially the content of motivation. But this is nothing new is it? DIdn’t we already know that? I mean even before Sigmund Frood talked about it. For example ‘sour grapes’. I know this isn’t always non-conscious but often it is. Or things like ‘buyers remorse’. Or other biases. Like recency bias. For all of these we arrive at a state of mind without being aware of how our arriving at it is happening.

Climate change 1.

Non-scientist skeptics will often refer to disagreements amongst professional scientists. But what is the significance of this latter? For example there are reputable scientists who question the idea that too much salt is bad for you.

Climate change 2.

In the climate change debate it seems as if both sides aren’t being open about the motives for the opinion. Both sides seem to be saying that they have dispassionately examined the facts and arrived at their conclusion about whether or not it’s true human activity is contributing to climate change. But really the people who believe it’s not true are ones who, if they were children, would think they should not have to “clean up after themselves”. And the ones who think it is true do so because they think that consumerism and consumption are distasteful and that they have some pseudo-mystical obligation to the planet and/or they want to demonstrate their goodness. And because of these things they need to find something good to do and so will incline to believe that humans are causing climate change. So that they can then oppose this human activity and so be good.

Entertainment.

Drama is included in this, the theatre. But I might go to see ‘King Lear’. That’s not very entertaining. If, afterwards, someone asked me: “did you enjoy that?” I wouldn’t know how to answer.

Shepherds.

The Church uses the analogy of shepherd and flock. But shepherds aren’t nice to their flock! They eat them.

Words.

Why is there no single word (adjective?) in English for “not my cup of tea” as in the phrase “it’s not my cup of tea”. The closest I can think of is ‘displeasing’ but it’s not natural to say “it’s displeasing”.

Individuality.

We experience other sorts of people. But we don’t really notice how different they are. If you live in a large city then almost all of the people there will be so different that you wouldn’t be able to usefully interact with them. Individual self-expression is encouraged but the downside is that everyone is cut off from everyone else being too different. Sameness has its value too!

Feudalism.

This system was based on feuds?

Clever.

I’m quite good at expressing myself in words. Not brilliant. Also I have always been a quite studious person and interested in intellectual type things. On the basis of all these things I find that people constantly say to me: “oh you are so clever” or “you are obviously a very intelligent person”. And I think no I’m not. Or rather I think no you have no grounds to make such an assertion. The evidence on which you are basing your assertion is insufficient. It is possible for someone, via the way they express themselves, to create the impression (but I don’t mean intentionally) that they are intelligent. Also just because I am interested in intellectual type things and I read about them doesn’t mean I understand it very well. ... The other thing about the way people say “oh you are so clever” is that I think: really is that the shallow way you judge other people. Just based a few things you’ve noticed.

++++

May 2021

Depression.

People who are depressed because they think their lives are awful then also have to deal with that horrible feeling that comes from that thought. It’s like adding insult to injury.

Consciousness.

Language and consciousness (ie having a soul) are linked. Being conscious, aware of your mental states is the same as talking about them.

Running.

When I am running along the pavement and there is a bus stop ahead of me and a bus on the road behind me going in the same direction as me. I worry that the bus will stop thinking I am running to get it.

Morals.

If you stop to help someone who has fallen over in the street. Do you do it because of empathy? Or because it’s the right thing to do.

Criticism.

About some film or other someone might say, negatively, “this is style over substance”. And I think: yes! that’s exactly what I want from a film. I don’t want substance.

New Testament.

I don’t have anything, any other texts from the same period with which I might compare the NT writings. It’s as if I had Dickens but nothing else from the 19th century at all.

Time.

If I experience time slower then does that mean it takes me longer to do things?

Social.

If you invite someone to something it’s immediately awkward. Because any refusal will be taken the wrong away. There literally is no way to refuse without that happening.

++++

June 2021

Employment.

People get employed to positions of authority by talking bullshit at interviews. So we are run by bullshitters.

Pricing.

Supermarket websites have lowest to highest price sort option. But this should be lowest to highest price per unit. So not item price but price per 100g or whatever.

Implementation.

I see shop signs (during the Covid Pandemic) saying “only three people at a time in this shop”. (Actually they often just say things like “only three people” but we know what they mean.) But then how do they want to implement this? Do they want potential customers to come into the shop and count the people in there already? Really they should have some sign outside the shop saying how many people are in there. But how would this be kept up to date? I was thinking there could be three objects outside the shop and you take one when you enter. So if you see there aren’t any then you know that there are already three people in the shop. But then such objects would be being constantly touched by lots of different people which is in itself increasing the risk of transmitting the disease!

Uniforms.

Whenever I see pictures of World War high-ups the first thing that always strikes me is: “wow, did these guys love dressing up or what”. Sometimes I think that their sole motivation for having a war was so that they could show off their fabulous costumes. Especially the Germans.

Shakespeare.

It’s odd that these plays are in verse. How many plays are written in verse? In this sense his plays are more like opera. In the sense that the stories are pretty awful and the only thing that makes the thing is the language. Like in opera, nobody likes opera for the stories. If there was a play of an opera plot with the just the words spoken and the music removed nobody would go and see that.

Socialism.

There’s a left-wing idea which is that we’re not all winners and that even losers should be treated with some respect. The right-wing people refer to this as “everyone must get prizes”. They take the left-wing idea to mean that everyone must get the same prize regardless but it doesn’t necessarily mean that. And I suspect that the right-wing people also are thinking “why should losers get prizes which I might have got!” To me this betrays their rather mean-minded attitude to life. To them life is all about getting prizes. ... The left-wing idea is all about inclusiveness. The “everyone must get prizes” means everyone must be valued somehow. It doesn't mean all have to be equal.

Reading.

https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-1364,00.html

The question is: “The stomach digests pretty well everything sent down to it. How does it avoid digesting itself?” and the answer given is: “THE STOMACH does not digest itself because it is lined with epithial cells, which produce mucus. This forms a barrier between the lining of the stomach and the contents. Enzymes, which make up part of the digestive juices are also secreted by the stomach wall, from glands with no mucus barrier. To prevent the cells which produce the enzymes from being digested in the process the enzymes are produced in an inactive form, as zymogens. It is only when they pass the mucus barrier lining the stomach, and reach the stomach proper, that the enzymes are activated by other secretions and they can begin digestion of the food in the stomach.” This answer (first two sentences) just says that the stomach doesn’t digest itself because the wall is lined with mucus. But then this just raises the question of why isn’t the mucus digested. The answer might as well just have said that the stomach doesn’t digest itself because it is lined with something that can’t be digested. The rest of the answer after the first two sentences answers a different question. Namely why it is that the glands that produce digesting enzymes don’t get digested by those enzymes.

Welfare vs Tax.

About ‘assistance’, ie means tested benefits, in the UK welfare system. It is means tested so claimants must prove their means. For example if they have earnings they must provide verification, evidence, to say how much. But in the tax system you just fill in a form to say what your income is, no evidence required. At the very most the system relies on others (employers) telling the tax system how much they have paid you. But in this respect I would have thought welfare and tax should follow the same rules regarding verification. Given that, from the State’s point of view they are just two sides to the same balance sheet: welfare is how much money the State pays you, tax is how much you pay the State. - The other difference between welfare and tax is that the former is affected by capital as well as income, but tax is not.

Heretic.

Imagine I was in a perfectly Christian country and I expressed my doubts. This would be taken as me expressing heretical wrongness. And then we have a conflict situation between me and the Church. But it’s not. It’s just me being conscientious. And needing help with that. Expressing my doubts is me asking for help from the experts. It’s not me having a go at them. Although almost certainly they will take it like that.

Experts.

Some people, eg deniers of human-caused climate change, question the experts, the scientists. Similarly some people question the experts on the efficacy on vaccinations. And I am thinking: on what basis do these people question the experts? Is there any sense in which it’s OK to do that? I refer to that whole antibiotic resistance thing where the experts seemed to change their mind. I mean about the “you must complete the course” thing. (Although that never made sense to me in the first place.) But more generally I suspect the the line of thinking that people have is: scientists are experts, sure, but they are still human. And so they will have interests that will influence them the way all people do. A classic example is that scientists will ignore herbal medicine because it puts their position of the people who know how to be healthy in danger. But this is just an allegation. No proper scientists would ever ignore anything.

Recycling.

I like doing this. For environmental reasons of course. But I think mostly because the alternative, namely landfill, is just plain stupid. Landfill is saying: we’ve got some waste to get rid of. So let’s just dig a hole and dump it in there. How stupid and crude is that. That’s what bothers me the most. Of course this point is also related to sustainability and so is an environmental reason kind of.

Talking.

I want to talk to people about things that they have thought really hard about. I want them to explain their reasoning and thought processes. I don’t care if they are right or not. And when I say I want to hear what people have really thought about it. It’s a bit like the way you might want people to say things “from the heart”. Say things they really mean. And which aren’t just superficially meant.

Metronome.

If a clock is slow then it might measure some activity that takes 5 minutes as taking 4 minutes. Someone else who wants to repeat that activity in the same way will end up doing it too fast. It takes me a while to get my head round the exact phrasing of this fact.

The Good Life.

Two things are to be good (morally) and to be happy. Already there can be a conflict between these two. We might be happy exploiting others and stealing their stuff but we can’t because we need to be good to. I mean if we want to lead a Good Life. There is also a third thing which is non-stupid. I could be a good happy person by obedient servility towards others without the correct motivation. And at the same time be happy by being drugged up to the eyeballs. This would be a good and happy life but it would be stupid. I think living “in harmony with nature” is an important non-stupid thing. When I produce waste product I could just dig a hole and dump it in there. But it would be less stupid (more ‘beautiful’?) to carefully disassemble my waste so that it returns into nature seamlessly.

Do-gooder

I heard Frank Skinner observe that we have insulting terms for things which aren’t bad. For example “do-gooder” and “know-all”.

National government.

It seems odd that one region has to conform with what the majority of the nation wants. You could have one region of a country which was 80% left-wing but, because the right-wing party are in power in the country then that region has to follow right-wing policies.

Self Help.

I like the idea of this but most of the material produced under the name of self-help is rubbish. A lot of the good stuff is quite simple. For example if something upsets you ask yourself: will this still bother you six months from now?

Obligations.

If you live in a society then you have an obligation to people less fortunate than you. Right-wing people find this irksome. But then their complaint is rather like that thing people say: “I didn’t ask to be born”.

Problems.

If you have a problem then it’s a good idea to talk it over with your friends. The one problem that you can’t do this with is: “why don’t I have any friends?”.

Society.

The right wing, they want there to be winners and losers. And they don’t want to help the losers because that would risk their victory. But in the long term this is against their interests because then they are lumbered with a large proportion of useless people. In a competition you wouldn’t help your opponent with tips on how to be better. But in real life it’s in your interest to do that.

Power.

In a free market economic power is decentralised. Everyone can bargain in the free market. Is that better or worse than centralised power? Like in a command economy it’s centralised. I might prefer that. Decentralised it’s harder to deal with. Harder to pin down.

Liking.

I have seen a lot of movies in my time and the ones I really like are the best things ever in the world. But as for saying “I like movies”. Yes, but I don’t like 90% of the movies I have seen. So no I don’t like movies. It’s a bit like saying “I like food”. But you only like the food you like. - So watching movies is an odd thing to do. (Similarly reading novels.) Because before you start you don’t have any certainty that you will like it. Compare other pleasures like: eating a particular food that you like, visiting a place you like. With these you have the certainty in advance that you will enjoy it.

Money.

If someone steals £10 from me I don’t care about the £10, it’s the fact that they stole from me. In the same sense it’s possible that ALL desire for wealth (and resulting standard of living) is motivated by factors other than the actual money or anything material. For example if I have a low standard of living it’s not the fact that I have a low standard of living that bothers me but rather the fact that I feel like I deserve better. And that other people are preventing me from having better.

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July 2021

Daughters.

I would have thought people would prefer daughters to sons. For examples: say a king has four daughters. Then he could, in principle, end up with four grandsons who are each kings of a country. But if he has four sons he could only have one grandson king at the most.

Moderates.

As a moderate I dislike people who hold a more extreme version of what I want. Because they will be taken as representing my side of the argument and when they are rejected my moderate version is also rejected. So they make it less likely that I will get what I want.

Education.

In the education system there is much conflict between students and teachers. The latter have to spend an enormous quantity of time and effort in maintaining discipline and exercising control over students to make sure they perform the learning. So there are sanctions (like if you don’t do your homework) or prizes to encourage learning. All this seems odd to me. So the aim is for students to learn. So surely the only issue is: what’s their motivation to learn? All that the teachers need to do is instil (or uncover) the motivation to learn and then that’s it. The teachers then will become redundant. No need for all the control. The students will just learn under their own steam. Like wound up clockwork toys doing their thing. And when I say motivation, what is this? Well it must be something. If I am a student what is my motivation to learn? All I need is for this to be explained to me. One thing is I need to be shown that is to my material advantage. In the same way that I have a motivation to learn how to use the transport system because then I will be able to go places. So I will sit down and learn how to use the transport system. I don’t need anybody to exercise control over me to make me do this.

History.

The saying that people who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it. But I just heard Dominic Sandbrook on his podcast saying that often it’s the opposite. People who study history are doomed to repeat it. They read about the unresolved conflicts and become angry and want to right those ancient wrongs. Some groups of people will say: your ancestors were nasty to our ancestors so now we’re going to get revenge. And if Adolf Hitler had forgotten all about the First World War after it finished then he might have been less intent on reviving the same conflict. More generally revenge relies on memory.

Politics.

I think all political conflict boils down to one thing. And that thing is people fail to see that what politics is is all about figuring out how to live with other people. Instead people think politics is about taking sides, so they join parties. And then it’s all about how they can get their way. By which I mean get their way about how to live with other people. And the whole thing becomes a fight. For example what if 80% of the people said let’s live together in such a way that your standard of living depends on chance to such an extent that you might have such a poor standard of living that you die of starvation. That would be a democratic victory. But it wouldn’t be right.

Thinking.

Conspiracy theorists (like Covid-19 deniers) say “think for yourself”. What they mean is “believe what I do”. Where what they believe wasn’t arrived at them thinking for themselves. It was just something they heard and believed. This kind of thing is very common. So when somebody who really does think for themselves comes along we might end up dismissing them as a conspiracy theorist.

Frequently.

I don’t like the way people use the word ‘regularly’ when they mean ‘frequently’. So the advice is brush your teeth regularly. But then I could brush my teeth once a year regular as clockwork.

Grammar.

It should be “I could n’t” not “I couldn’t”.

Fiction narrative.

Sometimes we know something the characters don’t. But sometimes it’s the other way round and the characters know things we don’t. Like the narrator isn’t omniscient.

Depression.

Is it just the feeling that matters? So people who kill themselves it’s not because they think their life is horrible. It’s the feeling they feel as a result of that. Although I guess that feeling is part of the horribleness of their life.

Feeling.

I hate litter not because of the litter as such but because I feel as if it’s an affront to me and the rules.

Traffic.

I once analysed the traffic light schedule at a junction. I mean from the point of view of me as a pedestrian. This is a junction where traffic arrives from four directions. The traffic lights go in a cycle and I made a note of the details of the cycle. Like that for so many seconds traffic from the north gets to go and then so many seconds of traffic from some other direction. The reason I did this was because I thought: this is one of those things that I experience every day and yet I don’t really experience it because I don’t know the details of it. Similarly I know that the sun rises and then sets each day. But I’m not aware of the direction it rises and sets. And of how this changes over the year. Of course this is probably because I don’t need to know it. With the traffic knowing the details did help a bit because, after analysing it, whenever I got to the junction I was more aware of what was going to happen. Because one of the other things I made a note of is how exactly the traffic light schedule is affected by a pedestrian pressing the button which leads to the “green man”.

Right wing people.

RW people have the attitude: “why should a talented hardworking person like me suffer from the disadvantages of having to look after people who are untalented and lazy”. And yet these RW people don’t mind accepting the advantages got from people who are more talented and hardworking than they are. We all accept these. None of us are as talented as all the great scientists and inventors of the last few centuries. And yet we accept all the things they made.

Austerity.

People hate austerity economics but Buddhists must love it!

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August 2021

Leaflet.

When you unfold a leaflet you get from a medication box you can’t refold it the same way. (Nick Abbot 30 July 2021.)

Monarchy.

Even if we think of monarchy as tyranny. Tyrants are vain and crave the adulation of their subjects. If their subjects are poorer than the tyrant of a neighbouring country they won’t like that and so will do something about it won’t they?

Achievement.

People who ‘push themselves’. They aren’t that great. It would be better if they did what they did naturally, with some natural motivation. Forcing yourself to do something is just as bad as someone else forcing you to do something. Instead of pushing yourself you should do something to increase your motivation.

Podcast.

I like the Planet Money podcast but they always have to present the facts as part of a some story. So something about lease rents for mobile home parks. The facts could have been stated in two minutes but it’s mixed in with narratives of people’s experiences of what happened to them.

Feeling bad.

If you are feeling bad about yourself and then you hear about someone who is in an even worse state than you. And then you feel better. This means that your original ‘feeling bad’ was not about how bad your state was but it was about how much worse it was than other people’s. This is all about how you want to be better than other people. Rather than about how you want to just be in a good state.

Confusion.

I created a balance sheet for my tax payments. Entry in column 1 is the tax column which is for amounts I owe to them. So I input here amounts of tax I owe as and when the Revenue tell me. Entries in this column increases the amount in the column 3 which is the balance owed column.

Where balance is amount I owe to them. If this balance is negative then they owe me money. Then I have column 2 which is where I put payments. This decreases the balance figure in column 3. So far so good. But then the Revenue give me a refund. And I’m not sure where to put it on my sheet. It turns out that if I put it in the tax column then that affects the balance in the right way. But it seems odd that I have to treat a refund in the same way as the Revenue saying I owe them some tax. But that does does make sense. Because if they give me some money that increases the amount I owe them.

Hubris.

I you sent me an email message and I didn’t read it in detail but just skimmed it, glancing at a few words and said to myself: “oh yes I know what this message is saying, I don’t need to read it in detail”. But I was wrong about that.

Tidy.

An easy to spot sign of lethargy is when I don’t hang my clothes up on a hanger on a rail when I take them off but just sling them across the back of a chair or on the bed.

Conversation.

If I start a conversation by describing something that happened to me recently. I don’t think that’s a good way to start. Because where does that leave the other to go?

About Philosophy.

Realising things like the difference between “I do not want to be famous” is not same as “I want to be not famous”.

Life.

Your life is OK and your house etc. But then one day you visit someone and their life and house is so much better than yours. Not just materially but in other ways too. And when you come back to your life and house and doesn’t seem that great. And you have this weird feeling. What is that? It’s not exactly envy. But maybe something similar.

Details.

If you ask people about the details of their lives like for example what kind of soap they keep in their bathroom. Then this is looked on as a bit weird. And yet this is only the same thing as how, in Literature, they talk about ‘flat’ and ‘rounded’. In reference to the depiction of fictional characters.

Proverb.

“You have the watches but we have the time”. This is based on a pun. Time means what the watch says or it means time the passage of duration.

Story.

What if all your life you have seen a particular sort of bird flying round in the town where you live. And then one day you mention these birds to somebody else and they say: “what birds?” and it turns out you’re the only one who can see them.

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September 2021

Communism.

In the interests of freedom of choice, why didn’t we just leave one country as a communist one? I mean in Eastern Europe or Russia somewhere after the end of the regimes from about 1990. It wouldn’t have had to be very large. About 5 million is more than enough for a viable country. (That’s about how many people live in New Zealand.) And there must have been that many people keen enough on the old system to want to continue living with it. The only problem would be where would you put it exactly? And what would you do with the all the people already there who didn’t want to live in a communist system. They would need to move out. Maybe do a straight swap with the people moving in.

People.

I see people represented on TV movies etc. And then I look at the people in real life as I walk around. Which of these could be a character in a TV drama? I ask. Not all of them.

Family.

Could you have a three parent family? A couple get together to have children. And then one other adult who doesn’t want to have children of their own contributes as well.

Street.

Houses are usually spaced apart to allow access and for light to get in and for people to have some outside space. I imagine a street of houses where this latter is on the roof rather than at ground level. So then the houses can be a lot closer together than usual. You will only need the outside space for access by vehicle on the street outside. The roof will be where people can get their light instead of sitting in a yard or garden outside on the ground floor level. Also inside the living space would be on the upper floors. Sleeping rooms would be on lower levels as they don’t need light as much.

Education.

People say you don’t need an expensive education to become successful. Look at all those entrepreneurs who made it big after dropping out of school, they say. Which is fair enough. But then why is everyone so keen to get into the best schools if it doesn’t matter?

Ideology.

Left wing is equality and Right wing is liberty. Both are daft. People aren’t equal and never will be. And we can’t have as much liberty as we want because we live with other people, we rely on other people and have obligations to them: no man is an island.

Fame.

Is this something different depending on the time? So actors and sportspeople are famous now. But would you have said about King Louis XIV in 18th century France that he was famous?

People.

I spend a lot of time wondering what people are like. Which is odd because I am surrounded by them all the time. You would have thought I could just ask.

True Crime.

There is a lot of stuff about murders. But I would like to read a detailed true crime account where it was a very minor crime. Petty theft. Or low level drug dealing. But described in as much detail as the murder stuff gets.

Some remarks on Running.

I acknowledge fellow runners.

Drivers signal me with their hands to give me way but they don’t realise that the light sheen on the windscreen means that I can’t see them.

I sometimes take a shortcut so I can speed up my journey forgetting that I am not going anywhere.

Me.

Taciturn, reticent, aloof. I feel as if this is how people see me. But that’s how I see everyone else. Or rather something similar.

Mind.

Is having ‘presence of mind’ the exact opposite of being ‘absent-minded’.

Logic.

I say: “If you give me £10 I will give you this coat”. Suppose you don’t give me £10. And then I give you the coat. You might think that this means I was wrong when I said “If you give me £10 I will give you this coat”. But this is not true. “If A then B” does not imply “if not A then not B”.

Newspaper tagline.

“We say what you think.” They articulate it, because you can’t do that for yourself. So then it’s like the Socratic philosophical midwife.

Internet.

Some things that I find horrible. The way in which when you are just about to leave a web page you get a message. I mean a message which comes up because it has detected that you are about to leave. This is horrible like someone pleading with you on their knees: please don’t go. The second thing is on YouTube thumbnails. When you do ‘pointer over’ the video runs through little repeating. That looks like someone has been trapped in a little jar and they are repeatedly banging against the glass trying to get out.

Anyone.

If you work really hard then anyone can become a billionaire. This is the advice. But this isn’t the same as saying everyone can become a billionaire. So: if you train hard enough then anyone can win the sports tournament. But that doesn’t mean everyone can.

Buses.

I once saw a sign that says: “one bus every 10 minutes or less”. This is confusing because ‘less’ suggests that it’s less frequent. But it means less than 10 minutes. Which makes it more frequent.

Wrong.

If I ask: “what is better: an apple or a chair?” I know there’s something wrong with this question. But I can’t say exactly what. Because you could compare the values of these things even if they are not comparable, couldn’t you?

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October 2021

Escape.

People read novels while on holiday in a different place. But being on holiday in a different country is already an escape.

Fairness.

Socialist type policies are fair but the worry is that many people who vote for them aren’t voting for them because they are fair but only because they are better off with them.

God.

If you believe in God and that he created us then you don’t need religion. Because God will have created you with the implicit knowledge in how to be good. Just use the sense that God gave you. You don’t need any further guidance from priests etc.

Control.

Men needed to control women's sexual behaviour (via marriage) because if a man let his wife sleep with other men then he wouldn't be able to be sure that any children she had was his. (A woman can easily tell which children are hers but men can’t!) But now we have contraception and DNA testing so none of this applies any more! Something which has mattered for millions of years is not irrelevant.

Time.

I know I’ve mentioned this before but it’s odd how time accumulates. So if you do something for 6.5 minutes a day for a year that comes to just over 39.5 hours. Like full time week of work. Which seems too much!

Self-conscious.

Is it a British thing, not to want to draw attention to yourself? Even wearing a face-mask when others aren’t. But that’s odd because wearing a face-mask people can’t see who you are!

Travel.

Some people say they like to travel and I think: I don’t need to leave the country to meet foreigners.

Interaction.

Mary: We should get together some time.

Jack: No, I’m busy that day.

Wavelength.

If you’re not “on the same wavelength” as someone then you can’t explain this to them. Because that would assume you are on the same wavelength!

Wanting and getting.

If you fret about not having the things that you want but can’t get then you can become so distracted that you fail to get the things that you can get.

Lying.

Mary: I’d be lying if I said that it doesn’t get annoying sometimes.

Jack: Does it get annoying sometimes?

Mary: No.

Remember.

Mary: I can’t remember the last time I’ve had such fun!

Jack: Is that because it’s been a long time since you’ve had such fun or because you’ve got an awful memory?

Critical.

Are critical people more likely to be depressed? Being critical about information means assessing it properly including consciously looking to see what might be wrong with it. If this becomes a habit then you, maybe not consciously, start doing it with everything. Always looking for the negative. And so finding it more often than people who don’t do that.

Wasted.

So, in short, the free market system works like this. We need a widget-maker. So we get a few people to learn this and then we get them to fight it out and whoever is best gets the job of widget-maker. But this is a very wasteful way of doing it. All that time that the “unsuccessful applicants” spent on learning could have been spent to better effect.

Left-wing.

I am left-wing but I find most other left-wing people to be either posturing, pretentious and self-righteous. Or people who are only in favour of left-wing policies because they resent the riches of the wealthy and want a ‘level-playing field’ so that then they can get rich too. Or maybe not even a ‘level-playing field’ but something that would favour them over others.

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November 2021

Poor people.

I am aware of many people have the opinion: why are we trying to help poor people? Surely the way it works is that some people are more able than others. And the ones that aren’t able will suffer and die. And that’s as it should be.

Death.

When you tell people that one of your people has died they will say “I’m sorry”. At which point, to break the mood, you should respond with: “you should be!” or “well it’s a bit late to be sorry now!”.

Will-power.

There is a cute argument which goes: you can’t ask people to exercise will-power, for example to give up eating so much. And this is because you need to have will-power to exercise it in the first place. And some people have a stronger will than others. Some people are more determined. All this can’t be right though. There must be circumstances where it is reasonable to ask anybody to be more wilful?

Detective fiction.

I must have said this elsewhere. People who like detective fiction don’t like fiction, they just like puzzles.

Motivation.

How can I do things without motivation? I think the context of this question is something like: being a student and forcing yourself to study. Or even going to work. But then I think: I can’t believe that people do these things without some motivation. I mean without in some sense wanting to do these things.

Crossword Puzzles.

This is a word guessing game. You could have a game which was a list of clues and you have to guess the words from the clues. This is part of what a crossword puzzle is but there’s more to it than that.

In a crossword puzzle there’s also the fact that the words fit into a grid. This makes it easier because getting some of the words will give you some of the letters of some of the other words.

You could have had this second element on its own too. The puzzle then would be that you get a list of words and you have to fit them into a given grid. (Or something like that anyway!)

You could have both elements of the crossword puzzle but without a grid. So you have a list of clues but then also there’s some codes which tell you that some letter of some word is the same as some other letter in some other word. So it might say letter 5 of word 1 is the same as letter 4 of word 6. And so on.

This post is all about understanding what a Crossword puzzle actually is. You can spend a lot of time doing crossword puzzles without actually stopping to think about what they actually are.

Nazis vs Jews.

The Nazis were against the Jews because they alleged that the latter had established some nefarious conspiracy whereby they were manipulating the whole world. But, if this was true. If such a small group of people were clever enough to pull off something like that. Then wouldn’t you want them on your side?

Semantic Satiation.

This happens because we usually read words whole and not via the letters. But when we repeat a word over and over then we do notice the letters more. Which then makes the word become unfamiliar. And then so we think that we don’t know what it means.

Power.

Economic power. This is what capitalists have. But it’s just as much something that is had by people who have certain talents which they then sell. Where this is as significant, although maybe not as conspicuous, as what a capitalist who owns a factory does. Suppose there was a community and you were the only one who could bake bread. That would give you power.

Conversation.

This is like a game. Or a dance. Each participant needs to follow the rules or it doesn’t work.

Time.

I have started to do the washing up resulting from a meal while I eat that meal.

Other people.

When someone tells me something which isn’t detailed. Like “I work in a bank.” This tells me nothing. It is too generic. So then I have to ask for details. But the right kind. For example the detail of which bank they work at isn’t that important.

Coffee shop.

What if you had a coffee shop where you just brought your own coffee. They just supplied hot water. And you paid for the number of hours you were there.

Mood.

Sometimes while thinking generally I will think something that creates a negative mood. I continue thinking moving onto some different thing. But the negative mood persists. And then I think: why am I in this mood, I can’t remember what it was I thought just now that put me in this mood. And then I do that thing where I trawl back a bit to find out.

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December 2021.

My Struggle.

As the title of an autobiography ‘My Struggle’ is rather pompous. What if Adolf Hitler had called his book ‘My so-called life’ instead. How different things would have been. And both titles are equally applicable to anybody’s life. You are free to choose either.

Social.

Someone invited me to a social event. I don’t like such events or the so-called ‘socialising’ contained therein. The interactions that we get there seem to me to do little more than treat with utter contempt the idea of any possible genuine social interaction that there might ever be between people. It is dinner party conversation where a good time is had but there is very little by way of what I would class as worthwhile communication.

In this case the invitation was from an acquaintance saying they were inviting people in order to “catch-up”; people they had “lost touch with”. I felt like replying:

About the “lost touch” I wasn’t aware that you were ever in touch with me in the first place. Or that I was in touch with you. (Or with anybody else for that matter.) And as for saying you want to catch up that would be like me just grabbing some stranger off the street and saying to them: “hey, let’s get some coffee and catch up” and they would say “what are you talking about I’ve never met you before” and then I would (smugly) say “so we’ve got a lot of catching up to do!”.

Another thing is: what? you want to resume contact even with the people you didn’t particularly care for?

But I say I will go anyway. Somewhat like the way a cat paws at the thing you hold out to it even though you have done the same and then pulled it away at the last minute so many times before. Even the cat knows it is futile, it has a look of futility on its tiny little cat face. But what else is it going to do when presented with that shiny thing?

Life.

My simple question is: can I get a description of social life. How it works. This would include: “what is marriage?” And also “how do people get jobs?”.

How the whole shebang works.

Shepherds.

In Christianity priests are portrayed as shepherds. But shepherds keep flocks to be eaten!

People.

Some people stress that people are not nice. Cruel, greedy untrustworthy. Right wing people say this and what they mean is: this is inevitable and you need to stop thinking you can change it. But when I say it I feel like I am saying it more in the sense: before you can solve a problem you need to acknowledge that it exists.

This includes saying things like: “all people aren’t equally capable”.

Cold War

This is a normal state of affairs between people in a free market. Or maybe in life in general.

Explaining Einstein.

Looking back at a clock behind you while moving forward at the speed of light. The clock will never change because the light from it will never reach you, it will remain looking like it did before you started moving at the speed of light. This is a cute and simple way of explaining. But maybe too simple.

Dejection.

While walking around daily I see people who are strangers to me. I strongly suspect that this is mentally bad for me that it somehow puts my mind on edge. Like (as I think I have said elsewhere) my mind responds by thinking about who these people are what kind of lives they lead where they have come from and where are they going. I think to myself: it’s not natural for humans to be surrounded by so many strangers, historically we have always lived in small groups where we all new each other.

But this encountering of strangers all the time is all-pervasive in modern life. This, and maybe other things like it, might be the unnoticed explanation of otherwise inexplicable bad moods that people find themselves in.

Habits.

Having ingrained habits is not always a bad thing. Civilisation is a habit. Obedience to authority. But habits are broken more easily than we think. Like in revolutions.

1984.

Rewriting the newspaper record the way they did in George Orwell’s novel is easier on the internet.

Drivers.

When I am crossing the road drivers stop and wave me on which is nice but they don’t realise that sometimes I can’t see them because of the glare on the windscreen.

Podcasts.

Sometimes they talk over each other and don’t realise that we can’t hear.

Absolute Power.

Just because someone has the right to exercise a power doesn't mean they can do that. So, a hereditary monarch has the right to exercise absolute power but they might or might not have the capability to do so.

Certainty.

You get certainty out of uncertainty because you don't know if a particular incident will happen but you do know statistically how many will happen. For example it’s very uncertain if the next coin flip is heads or tails. But out of a hundred I can safely say it will be about 50%.

Repression.

It’s bad to repress your feelings. That’s what people used to do in the olden days. But is this right? Isn’t what they did something more natural which is cultivate the habit of avoidance of undesirable feelings.

Sex.

As a sensation sexual arousal requires more than other pleasant sensations such as the last of food. The pleasant food taste sensations are got by putting food into the mouth. But sexual arousal requires some kind of mental activity as well. Some thinking almost. Which is why written pornography is so effective. Because words are akin to thoughts.

Cold.

I live somewhere where it gets cold (0 to 5) degrees in the winter. And sometimes I think that it would be nice if I lived somewhere where this didn’t happen. But then I think no I like it this way because then I appreciate summer more.

Unpleasant.

Sometimes when somebody behaves unpleasantly towards you. But only mildly so that it’s kind of borderline and it seems unreasonable to complaint. So then you are relieved when they do something really horrible. Because then you can complain.

Unhappiness.

This is reflective. Unhappiness is caused by thinking about your situation. Fortunately most people are too busy to be unhappy. They don’t have time to reflect.

Long term.

Sometimes I encounter a small problem say while using a computer but I will put up with it because I can’t be bothered to spend the time and effort to do the research to find out how to fix it. This is bad short term thinking. Because a solution would save me time and effort in the long run.

Random people.

I would like some way of meeting random people. Just to find out what they are like. In the same way that I might visit different countries to find out what they are like. The meeting people thing would have to be done under controlled circumstances of course. Like seeing animals in a zoo.

Schools.

A useful thing to teach me would have been all the bus routes. How to get from one to the other. And then trains.

Life.

How do I know what life is like? I assume that people are more or less civilised. But it might be that they are horrible, with people being nasty to each other all the time. Imagine a place where everyone is nasty to each other all the time. They only act in their own interests. We would say that the place where we are now is NOT like this. But what if it was?

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