Daybook 7.

(2017)

A journey.

Living at the latitude I do (about 54 degrees north), when it gets light again after the winter, it’s like I have arrived back home after a long, hard, terrible journey through some region of dreary, cold darkness. Even though I haven’t physically moved at all. The seasons are a sort of travelling without moving. When, in summer, I think about the winter from earlier that year, it seems as if I was in some other country then. And every summer feels like a new experience because it’s such a contrast with the intervening winter. - But, at the same time, sometimes memory makes last year’s summer seem nearer than the recently passed winter. When it’s warm and sunny in summer I remember better the things I did in the same weather in last year’s summer, and so those things seem more recent in time than the winter.

The end of the matter.

Jack: Look, just imagine this conversation never happened, OK?

Mary: What conversation?

Game play.

What if you were about to play a game and then you found out that you would lose. (Never mind how you knew, you just knew.) Would you still play? Similarly I could ask: if the spectators knew would they still watch? But I know that the answer to this question is yes. Because sports fans do watch recordings of old games.

Actors.

It is common for films to use known named actors. By which I mean ‘movie stars’: famous, established actors. And these are almost always (and for females not even ‘almost’) good-looking actors.

But if I am watching a film and I see an actor I have seen in some other film this makes me aware that I am watching an actor and not a character and this spoils the movie. I see them as an actor or as some previous role that they have played. For example I think: “oh look, there’s Matt Damon” or “oh look, there’s Jason Bourne”. (Or if I half recognise them then I am distracted by the thought: “I’ve seen them in something else but what is it?”.)

Either way I am more aware of the fact that I’m looking at people pretending to be someone else.

The only reason there are star actors in films is to satisfy the desire of the audience to ogle good-looking and/or famous people. But that’s not really got anything to do with the quality of the actor’s performance itself. When making a judgement about how much you like the acting in a film it doesn’t seem right that your judgement is in any way determined by how good-looking and/or famous the actors are. In the same way that it wouldn’t be right if your judgement of a film was determined by the film being set in place that you like, for example if it was set in your home town. Or if your judgement was determined by some music that you really like (from elsewhere) being in the film.

Movie-watchers will say that it doesn’t matter if there are known actors. Because those actors are convincingly playing a different character. But I don’t see how that is the case. Regardless of how convincing they are they will still be recognisable as themselves. I admit that there are some screen actors who make you almost forget who they are. But these are extremely rare, I can only think of: Alec Guinness and, sometimes, Anthony Hopkins.

Suppose someone you know turned up one day and were pretending to be someone else, you would say: “you’re not someone else!”.

And no matter how convincing a star actor is at being different. They won’t be as different as someone who was literally different, ie an unknown actor. So then why not just hire a different actor instead? Instead of getting an actor who is good at pretending to be lots of different people, just hire whatever (so far unknown) actor is the best at being the sort of person that the character is.

The desire for famous actors is taken to confusing extremes. For example Nicole Kidman playing Virginia Woolf, not even recognisable with prosthetic makeup. About which we should also ask: if they need prosthetics then why not find someone who doesn’t?

Using a well-known actor in your film is like filming in London even though the story is set in Barnsley. And then telling people to imagine it’s Barnsley. All this because people prefer looking at London.

Imagine the story of a film is that there was a character in the beginning 20 minutes who was unassuming but then afterwards, unexpectedly, became the main character. If you cast a famous actor then this won’t work because their fame will give away to the audience that they are going to be the main character in the film.

Another thing: acting and realism. Acting never imitates successfully. You can always tell acting from real behaviour.

Liberal police state.

I think it’s OK for liberals to enforce strictly (by “any means necessary”) a law which forces people to be liberal. Sounds like a contradiction but it isn’t. Being a liberal means you don’t approve of forcing people to change their way of life simply because you disapprove of it. So if Mary’s way of life includes forcing other people to change their way of life simply because she disapproves of it. Then you can force her to change her way of life so she doesn’t do that any more.

Democratic police state.

A modern democracy is not (despite what the straight-forward analysis of the word says) simply “what the majority want”. It also means the application of certain principles such as free speech and the rule of law. Which are applied regardless of if the majority want it or not.

Cartoons 1.

Mickey Mouse is an example of (‘modern’) non-representational art. Mice don’t really look like that. Mickey is a distorted picture of a mouse in the same way that a Picasso cubist portrait is a distorted picture of a person.

Cartoons 2.

I grew up watching cartoons on TV. I never stopped to think: wait a minute this is a talking rabbit, how utterly bizarre!

Smokers.

Sometimes something happens and I think: I haven’t seen that for ages! Like someone recently came up to me holding a cigarette and asked me if I’d got a light. That used to happen quite a lot decades ago. (It would have happened even more if I looked like a smoker.) Who are these people anyway? If they were regular smokers they would have a supply of matches (or a lighter) at all times surely. I sometimes imagine they’ve just suddenly decided to start smoking so they’ve rushed out and got some cigarettes but, in their haste, forgot to buy matches.

Television.

The word ‘television’ refers to the machinery but it also refers to the content, like when people say ‘television these days is rubbish!’. They’re not referring to the actual hardware when they say that.

Kindle.

When Amazon launched their e-book reading device the name they chose for it is a word associated with fire, the sworn enemy of the book.

Secret history.

It would be very difficult to write a history of sexual manners. Because in the past people didn’t talk much about that sort of thing. Now they won’t shut about it.

UK plc.

Sometimes a politician will say that they want to run the country like a business. But what would that be like? Everything would be organised the way the internal organisation of a business is organised. There would be no unemployment, in the same way there is none inside a business. Businesses, unlike countries, wouldn’t accept even (the commonly accepted unemployment rate of) 4% of their employees doing nothing. Also, if the business was the whole of the country you wouldn’t be able to fire anybody or make anybody redundant (“let them go”) unless you were prepared to deport them. Or execute them.

Reading.

I prefer reading short articles on the internet to reading books. The purpose of writing is to convey ideas. And ideas are not book sized. Short articles are better suited to the size that most ideas are. In this sense the internet is better. Because it is more likely you will get short articles on there than book length stuff. The way books works is someone has an idea which fits an article. But the book publisher says: we can’t publish this, it’s not cost effective, it’s too short, can you pad it out into a whole book? But on the internet this issue of cost-effectiveness doesn’t arise.

Encyclopedia democratica.

Why does Wikipedia only have one article per subject? What if someone reads an article and thinks: “I could write something better than that!”. There should be alternative articles on the same subject. And then readers can decide which is the best one. So, maybe my question is: why is there only one Wikipedia?

Examples.

I really hate it when I have to think of examples. So imagine I say to someone that the Mac OS is in many respects better than Windows. And they say: give some examples. And my mind will go blank. Maybe this block is just caused by the pressure of having to come up with something immediately. (In this case though I CAN think of something: on the Mac OS you can change the name of a file without having to close the file first.)

Meritocracy.

The other side (the downside) of meritocracy is rarely celebrated but you can’t have the positive side without the negative one. The sad fate of lazy talentless people is also an example of meritocracy in action.

Sources.

In political debates on TV the participants should have to give a source for every ‘fact’ they quote. The way academic journals do.

Other people.

We can never understand what it’s like to be somebody else. When we try to do that all we are doing is imagining ourselves in the exact circumstances and situation that they are in. But it is still ourselves.

Fairness.

In a distribution situation where we don’t want to just use a “first come first served” rule somebody might say: look let’s make it fair we’ll hand these out alphabetically. And then we’d ask: what’s your name by the way? And they would say Anthony Aardvark.

Prioritisation.

If you prioritise your tasks too much then there’s the danger that some things will just never get done! The lowest priority things would only get done if you had nothing else to do but that never happens. The other danger of spending time prioritising your tasks is that you could have just spent that time doing some of the tasks. You could spend all your time prioritising and not actually get anything done.

Suffering.

When we are suffering very badly with something. And then we meet someone who is suffering even more than us. That makes us stop and think. The first thing we think is: “How dare you suffer more than me. Nobody can suffer more than I am doing right now.”

Prejudices.

I don’t know what prejudices I am subject to. For example, until the comedian Bill Bailey drew my attention to it, I didn’t realise that I saw a builder who smokes a pipe as more trustworthy than one who smokes cigarettes.

Work conditions.

Mary: Hey can you guys please stop chatting and get on with your work. We need to have these reports done by the end of the week.

Jack: But stopping us from chatting would be counter-productive. The occasional breaking off from work to have a chat with colleagues makes us feel more relaxed and therefore improves our work output.

Mary: You might as well insist that I ought to buy you all cream buns to eat. Because that will make you feel better and so increase output. You’re grown up enough to be able to produce the same output with or without the comfort of either chatting or cream buns. You might need to work harder but so what.

Jack: Yes we are able to do what you say. But we’re also able to produce the same output with no heating in this room so why don’t you just switch that off as well!

Sexism.

In some places they (still!) don’t give girls an education. But, at the same time, they think that women should have the sole responsibility for bringing up children. Which means that they want their children to be brought up by stupid people.

Degrees.

When I hear on the news about some horrible thing that has happened. Then I think to myself: this means there must be lots of less horrible things that have also happened but which I’m not finding out about because they did not make it onto the news because they weren’t sufficiently serious. For every murder I hear about there will be quite a few attempted murders that I don’t hear about. For all the “few bad apples” there will be many slightly mouldy apples.

Misogynist.

I am a misogynist, the only thing I hate more than women is men.

Life.

People want to “do something with their lives”, they want to “be someone”. But isn’t that just vanity? Maybe you should just live the life you’re given. You could try to improve yourself but that might mean you spend your whole life trying to have a different sort of life. Trying to be something you’re not. And failing. Thus ending up with no life at all! Of course I do realise that the advice “live the life you’re given” is deeply conservative, it’s not far off from “know your place”. And it would probably mean that poor people should remain poor.

Working class anti-socialism.

I don’t think there is any affinity between working class poor people and socialism. Working class people are just as likely to believe in the freedom to get rich and in not bothering about people less fortunate than them.

Windows.

In the Windows Operating system the Desktop is really just another folder. I find this a bit confusing because the Desktop is presented as something else, ie not a folder.

Normal.

All normal people are the same but each not normal person is not normal in their own way. (As Tolstoy almost said.) It’s OK to class all normal people together but it would be wrong to do that with all not normal people. A not normal person is as different from some other not normal person as they are from some normal person. If you put normal people together they would get on. If you put all not normal people together then there would be much conflict.

Personality.

I’ve never had to worry about getting into a clash of personalities because I haven’t got one.

Fairness.

Jack behaves unfairly towards Mary and then he says to her “life’s not fair”. And she replies: “this isn’t about life, it’s about you!”.

Judgement.

I think less of someone if I find out that they play video games. And then I think: am I being too judgemental?

People.

There is a question: where do people come from? Not children. But adult personalities.

Aggression.

Is aggression innate? This is an old question. I think: yes it’s natural for humans to be aggressive. But it’s not natural for humans to be natural.

Two myths.

I hate the fact that people don’t talk seriously about life in general. Questions like how everyday life works. Some people feel embarrassed talking about this sort of thing.

And the people who do talk about it talk about it in the wrong way. They start talking about the “meaning of life”. Or they will dispense empty platitudes. Such as that you will get on if you just “be yourself”. And that “material things won’t make you happy”. The two big things of this type are: “work hard and you will succeed” which is right-wing. And “all people are equal” which left-wing.

Slackers.

The reputation of rock musicians (especially of the 1960s) is that they are drug-addled slackers. They should get their hair cut and get a proper job.

But this can’t be true. Because to be a good musician of any sort you need to be disciplined and hard working to get anywhere! You need to practice frequently and be on time at rehearsals and be co-operative with other people such as your fellow band members and event organisers. It’s all very corporate.

Anti-adult.

Is there an anti-adult culture amongst children? Encouraged by adults. The kind of thing expressed in the book “The Little Prince”. They lament that we have to grow up and leave our children’s fantasy world. They think this dreamy child’s world is better than real (grown-up) life. Similarly art lovers and storytellers do that. And it also reminds me of philosophers like Plato who denigrate the ordinary real world in favour of some other mystical realm. I find all of these rather disturbing. Because ordinary real life is all we’ve got. So why encourage the despising of it?

Class and age.

Age is like class, it’s a group thing. But it’s intrinsically mobile because everyone starts young and ends up old. Imagine if class was like that. Everyone passed through all the social classes. They started upper class wealthy and ended up paupers. Not because of anything they’d done but just because that’s how things worked.

Power.

People talk about power. They’ll say so-and-so is a very powerful man. Or: people are trying to get power. But to understand that remark we need to say power to do what.

Or do they just want power for the sake of it? Just to brag about how much they have even though they don’t exercise it?

Striving.

It’s good to try to improve your standard of living. But by how much? There must be some point where you can say OK that’s enough.

Passive resistance

As used by Gandhi. This is a neutral technique, it can be used by fascists as well as hippies.

Evolution as degeneration.

Bacteria do the same thing that humans do but they do it more successfully. That thing being survival. Humans do survival less effectively and less efficiently. (Meaning they don’t survive as much as bacteria, and, to the extent that they do survive, they do it using much more resources.) All this means that evolution is in some sense a degeneration. Successive organisms are less good.

Social evolution is also degeneration (which is the kind of thing Rousseau would say). In the old days people used to socialise with other people in their group. They do too now, via social media, but it’s of a lower quality (no face to face interaction) while requiring a greater degree of technological infrastructure. If you are a hunter-gatherer where you have a reliable food supply and it’s warm enough to just live outdoors then what more do you need to be comfortable? They could be as comfortable as we are but less intensively. But was that it? Were they “noble savages” or were their lives “nasty, brutish and short”?

Watching TV.

If you watch broadcast television you are allowing someone else to decide what you watch. This was more true when there were less channels, like in the 20th century.

Oral history

This is often just people saying things such as: I moved to this town on this date then I got a job at such a place and I got married to so and so. But where’s the details? And also the why? That’s what is often missing from oral history. How did you decide where to move to and why did you want to move in the first place? When you go the job exactly what process did you go through to get it?

The details.

I’d like to watch a travel documentary film that was just about the details. If it was about a city then it would consist of footage of houses, interiors of houses, streets, street furniture, drains, drain covers, shops, cafes, gardens, cars, schools, hospitals, the postal service.

Sometimes when I am watching a movie I find myself paying attention to the backgrounds, the wallpaper in the rooms, the paving in the streets.

Rebels.

In some wishy washy liberal mind-set the rebel is a romantic hero. Regardless of what the rebellion is about.

Fundamentalists.

This doesn’t mean people who only believe in just the fundamental principles of the religion. On the contrary, it means people who believe in ALL the principles down to the last tiny insignificant one. Not all fundamentalists are bad. For example the Amish.

Corruption.

Funding of (and donations to) political parties is controlled. But why does it matter when, ultimately, it’s the electorate who decide? I might give a billion dollars to Jack’s party but if the electorate don’t like his policies then it won’t matter. Is the idea that Jack’s party will use that money on slick advertising which will persuade the electorate to vote for them? But then the problem is people’s susceptibility to advertising rather than donations.