In praise of specifics

On writing courses they will teach to you, that to make writing come alive, you should write for as specific an audience and subject as possible. Write for the one-legged Eskimo about the 10.37am tea break. 

This holds for other aspects of life too.

The music goes round on radio 2 (Desmond Carrington) might be an hour of German language pop (and nothing recent either) which entertains me so much more than Absolute's focus grouped generica.

Place a personal ad for moth enthusiasts in Bolton and you'll be stepping out with a lady on Friday night. Describe yourself tall with GSOH and no-one will reply. It's not about being wacky, it's about being specific.

No football fan will watch a champions league game full of superstars if a relegation scrap between AFC Wimbledon and MK Dons is on the other side.

Specific Jim

I think there's a strong case that specifics are more interesting. Yet, there's a cautious drive that tends us to be generic. 'Thanks for your copy Mr Socks, we'll just bland it for the everyman.'

Now normally I link my observations back to a proper philosopher but I don't know of any in this case ( do let me know if you know of any). So I'll name the idea myself. I'll call it Specific Jim after my nickname for my boy who knows very precisely how things ought to be. 

 

Never read signs

I've found another philosophical justification for one of my grumpy tendencies.

I've decided to not read signs. It is not just the bad grammar (that needless capital letter or that apostrophe). It is that I have found, on the whole, that they tell you nothing that you couldn't decide on your own using your own common sense or common courtesy.

Laminated diktat 

Would you run headlong towards the cliff edge if the sign hadn't warned me? Throwing a child off a slide head first with his arms tied to his side might be in your scheme of sensible behaviour but I suspect you'd make the right call regardless of the helpful bullet point list from the authorities. 

If you have ever taken a thermos flask and sarnies into a cafe and tucked in without buying any of their food, you are a bit odd, I wouldn't need that specified to me by laminated diktat.

You can make these calls yourself and save yourself the time of reading the sign.

Weber - the steel cage

Weber had spotted that modern life and its institutions had become rule bound. That bureaucracies formed around institutions and with them brought their own procedures. From a company's HR team to a state's tax regime. Sport need rules but its joy is suffocated by an ever expanding list of micro-rules.

You can't escape these structures. The interesting observation that came with it was that following procedures came to replace making personal moral judgements. Follow the rules and you don't need to make a choice. It's easier.

He called this the steel cage of bureaucracy (usually mistranslated as iron cage). 

I heard an old timer policeman on the radio bemoaning the young plods for being unable to exercise judgement, instead being bound to the rulebook. He might have given the biscuit thief a warning, the newbies will literally lay down the law.

Isn't it better to think through your own moral judgements? Unthinking morality is less valuable and slavish rule following always leads to the Somme and the gulag. 

Apologise after 

A brilliant rule of thumb is to just apologise afterwards. If your own common courtesy compass leads to conflict with parky, saying sorry once is still quicker than having to spend hours reading signs.

I can't find a thinker who has worked this up though. So this folk morality isn't the territory of this blog, even though it works.

Do I need to say don't ignore road signs? No because your own judgement will have concluded driving on the right hand side of the road (UK) is stupid. 

I trust that you are nice, do what you think is right in the park.

    

Muddy and most of all short

Trouble with me is that when I'm face down in the mud being shouted at by a man in camouflage; I think about Thomas Hobbes.

British Military Fitness is refreshingly untouchy-feely. No excuses, no gloves, no water and you do those press ups properly. Because it is blokey and bantery and the trainer knows what he's doing, it is great fun. We did it as a one off work thing, me and the Finance department had a lovely time.

Made me think Hobbes was on to something 

Hobbes says a strong all powerful leader is vital for a state. The alternative being the freedom which results in chaos and crime. Famously he said life in the state of nature is bloody, brutal and most of all short.

Better to submit to supreme authority and have the trains run on time.

Coats and hegemony

I've never had much truck with it. I'm a liberal who isn't writing in a civil war context. I don't undertand why there isn't a middle ground between obeying God's representitive on earth and starving to death. Liberal democracy? 

Sometimes though it works much better to just be told what to do, rather than tedious consultation that results in grey compromise.

I also read in the Economist that periods of one state hegemony tend to result in better conditions for free trade. Hegemony meaning sustained dominance, cultural, military and economically (USA recently). It's the same idea; things work better when you just do what the man says.

Hobbes also wore the same coat for 40 years. There's a theme with philosophers and coats, I'll return to it another time.  

Soft skills or hard cash? Blair, determinism and the misplaced ego

Tony Blair recently said that he was so good as an international peace summit mediator because had had empathy.

He understood the pain of one party and was able to convey those emotions to their enemies. We all, at root, have human feelings and children to protect.

I won't dismiss these soft skills entirely. Experience at work tell me that the talent, determination and people skills of individuals are ultimately the key the getting stuff done. I think there's more to it though.

It's all about the cold hard cash?

Blair also said that this modest recognition of his superior empathetic qualities was a hard thing to accept as he'd been brought up in the Marxist school of economic determinism.

This states that the world evolves though economic states inevitably and there's nothing the individual does that affects that. Feudalism, capitalism and finally socialism will happen due to factors inherent in those system. For example the competition for finite resources and markets must lead to conflict within capitalism and to it's decline. The world rolls over us, we don't really make a difference.

As a liberal I'm a champion of an individual's impact on the world. Not least as it's depressing to be subject to external forces. But there's something in this underlying forces argument.

Individuals are just the icing on the cakes

The soft skills argument oversells itself. The waring parties wouldn't be at the table if the threat of US military wasn't lurking. I wouldn't be at the table being all caring with Tony because I'm not the prime Minister of a G8 country with a massive army, a predilection for invasion and a say in the movement of E.U. cash. Tony's Princess Di eyes are just the icing on the cake.

The X Factor winner is Christmas number 1 every year because the machine behind it provides 20 weeks of prime time advertising. The pretty singer can sing, the tune might be ok but if they had all that when they still worked in Greggs and no-one bought their records then. Icing on the cake.

Finally to Orwell: 'Pacifism is the preserve of people who live in a country with a large navy'. His point being that if you are overrun by goths, you would grab your pitchfork. Only in the Home Counties, over a glass of Chianti can you afford the luxury of such values because the Royal Navy sits in the channel sinking Vikings.

Larger forces are at work than the emotional intelligence of men who have honed their soft skills.         

Walkie Scorcer and schadenfreude

There's a new glass skyscraper in London nicknamed the Walkie Talkie and it's gone a bit wrong.

Its concave shape is channeling the unusual 2013 summer sunlight back into the street in a 'death ray' (no-one has died but that's what they are calling it for headline purposes) of ultra violet. It is now nicknamed the Walkie Socrcer.

I find this very funny. It's a really big problem (to make a whole London street unusable) on a really big scale. And it's cost billions.

It is satisfying when really big things mess up, why is that? We do enjoy a tall poppy with egg on its face (we also do enjoy a mixed metaphor).

For me it is because I earn very much less than these people who make really big mess-ups and yet I rarely mess up in my job. Well I do mess up, let's be honest but not often and only on a small scale. 

The architect in this case is cheerfully blaming other people for all this. Maybe it's just chutzpah that separates high earning fallible humans from low earning fallible humans? Someone clever than me will solve this problem though, don't ask a non-quaified schmuck like me to.

Thinkers on schadenfreude

Schopenhauer thought our delight in others' mishaps was 'the worst trait in human nature'. Kant said it was a 'devilish wickedness'. Now i'm starting to feel bad.

Phycologists put the need to enjoy poppy wilting down to low self esteem. So now I feel guilty and worthless.

There's hope though. John Portman of Virginia University is my savour (2004). He thinks we do it because of our sense of justice. We think somehow others are deserving of their banana skin. Whether they actually are deserving is less important than the fact that society works better when we have a sense of justice. A sense of consequences for bad behaviour and reward for harmonious traits. 

Phew, I can laugh at balls-ups afterall.

       

Marx, the Pet Shop Boys and matters of the trouser

The song 'Love is a Bourgeois construct' (Pet Shop Boys) came on the radio the other day and my companion asked what they were on about.

The DJ of course made a proud boast of his ignorance. We do in Britain, we hate clever. 

This is what it means:

Marx thought the monogamous relationship and the family were just ways of perpetuating the class system. Capital flows to the heir, the rich stay rich and the class system wins.

Communal living and free love were much preferred.

Romantic old devil wasn't he?

It seems a bit silly but the Victorian family was a pretty easy thing to dislike. The hypocrisy of men enjoying the female servants, the clear subordination of women and the shoving of children up chimneys.

Much easier to fault that than our current view of cuddles (say, that of Kendal and Briers in The Good Life).  

Marx also disliked things which made poor people a bit happier and distracted them from their condition. This prevented revolution. Snogging and football (religion famously) keep you off the baracades. 

It's pleasing to summarise swathes of political history

Sitting in an English garden waiting for the sun, on Sunday, I was asked to describe the relationship between the political parties and business. No really.

Seeing as I'm always pleased with concise summary, I'll share what I said.

The Tories in the C19th were the party of the landed aristocracy. It was the Whigs who represented the emerging new money of business spawned by the industrial revolution. The whigs were for free trade against the vested interests of an old order which inhibited business.

By the turn of the C20th the Conservatives had bolted on nationalism while keeping their Burkean opposition of change. The Liberals had emerged from the Whigs to now champion the beginnings of a welfare state. Labour had appeared and was the party of the working man.

By the late C20th the Conservatives had embraced a free market ideal more akin to the old Whigs. When Labour dropped it's fourth clause (which stated business should be nationally owned) all three main parties ended in pretty much the same place with regard to the market. Give or take a penny on capital gains tax here or there.

While Liberals had various other core principles it could be a lack of clear representation of either business or worker hindered it's electoral chances through the C20th.

My listener seemed quite happy with that.