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February 5th, 2010
January 8th, 2010
04:26 pm
I get this strange feeling that even with people with whom I'm friendly I'm some sort of intellectual target, which is getting rather annoying. Now it's true that I do provoke obsessive fact checking and celebrations over pedantic victories by being so ruthless in my own dealings with people with regard to factual accuracy. But sometimes it seems to just go way overboard and people seem to delight in pulling apart quite innocuous statements I've made, accusing me of either:
1) Pretence
or
2) Idiocy
Charges which, you'll notice, cover both ends of the intellectual spectrum, driving me into the middle.
I don't expect people to sit at my feet and listen enraptured as I wax lyrical about literature, because I actually don't know a lot about proper critical appreciation of books and would always defer to others' expertise on this. However, I equally don't expect my favourite book to be attacked as proving either pretence or idiocy, because it suggests neither. I'm not an expert on literature, but I have got further than Jade's second autobiography as far as literature goes.
If people want to attack me on my home turf, then fair enough. Politics and science I'm certainly happy to bar no holds (just to be clear, I'm a professional scientist and although not an expert on politics, it is a subject close to my heart which I've certainly learned a lot about on an amateur basis for nearly two decades now). But lambasting me for my choices of books, that just seems to be unfair and not fun for anyone.
As I'm writing this I'm sort of thinking I probably do bring it on myself, because I am rather in-your-face, as the expression goes.
But I would note also that there only quite specific types of people who do these things to me.
And I would note further that in my view those kinds of people are just fractionally stupider than I am.
Zing! 1-0 to me.
Damn, lost the seriousness at the end there. But you get the idea.
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December 16th, 2009
08:28 am
Stephen Fry, that highly overrated polymath, recorded a podcast in which he admitted to having consistently made an error in judgement in the past, and in which he announced a change of heart and exhorted listeners to do the same. That error was accusing American people from having no sense of irony. I sort of followed him, but the words of Bill Hicks echoed in my brain:
"That's what fundamentalism breeds, man. No sense of irony".
I'm not here to quote overrated polymaths or underrated messiahs. But I would like to do something similar here today.
Accusing the populace of Britain of being stupid has become somewhat of a national pasttime among just about any wannabe purveyor of humour who's ever finished an Austen novel. It's something I've indulged in the past myself. There are a lot of things wrong with our culture, and bashing everyone else for being "thick" is one way to console oneself.
It is also, of course, a brilliant way of telling everyone how clever you yourself are. Perhaps at first decrying the coarsening of our culture served a function as a bulwark against further attack, perhaps it was a call to arms to Orwell-readers everywhere to stand up and be counted. But now it is becoming repetitive, classist, self-serving, and tedious.
I am not entirely clear whether people are thicker now than they were sixty years ago. In a trivial way perhaps they are, scraping passes in GCSEs that wouldn't have taxed thirteen year olds' in times gone by, referring to "East Angular" ad nauseam. I don't know. I think perhaps in another trivial way the modern individual is more intelligent, capable of considering and integrating points of view presented in different ways by different media in a way that the more traditional education system never even envisioned. I don't know. There's a book about this which I have always suspected to be nonsense, but that shows what I know because I haven't even read it.
Regardless, there are two main points here. Firstly, accusing everyone of being thick does blunder rather across the minefield of what intelligence is and how it should best be measured. Doggedly insisting that intelligence best be measured with reference to the correct use of apostrophe is a view which, while not impossible to justfity, certainly demands justification, which nowhere will be found in the reams of "debate" and "excoriation" you find on this subject. Taking a longer view of intelligence, it can only really be defined (like height, say) with reference to the average of a population. Or, who knows, maybe everyone's packed up the apostrophe and prefers batting averages of the Sri Lankan test team now? Clearly we can argue which is better or worse, but blandly deriding the population for being "morons" does nothing to advance this debate.
Secondly, and crucially, one would hope that the presumed intelligence of these commentators might bring them to offer some analysis of why everyone is so "moronic" and what can be done about it. Talking about idiocy without reference to Murdoch, Cowell, Blair et al. is unhelpful and intellectually bankrupt. If cultural depth and erudition are so important (which, yes, they are) I would suggest that offering a way out of the swamp would be better than sneering and insulting those most caught in it.
I would lastly offer a little aside which is that, in my view, holding people who are largely marginalised from higher society and spoon fed cultural horse shit to keep them cleaning toilets for the higher echelons to be completely responsible for their lack of education and intellectual curiosity is naive and right wing in the worst kind of way.
Herends my m'accuse. I've done it myself in the past, but let's knock it off and let's not have any more sodding books about it (I'm looking at you, that unfunny guy I forget the name of who's released one for Christmas, of all marketing opportunities). Let's try to understand what is good and bad about our culture and the people who have to live in it, and let's be constructive and offer succour, not bile, to the malnourised minds of the populace.
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November 27th, 2009
03:09 pm
I hate to do this because I'm going to post something very opposite next chance I get, but have a look at this:
http://www.quietriots.com/
It's some bollocks about getting things changed, as if anything on the internet ever made any difference.
But what is so striking is how petty everything is. Bank charges, Ryanair (not carbon emissions, extra charges), Jed-fucking-ward.
Oh boo-hoo Britain, you have to pay a surcharge on your credit card when you book your ludicrously cheap holiday to some godforsaken country where beer is 40p a pint and weekly wages are half that.
I don't mind people complaining, that's fine, and I'll be the first to say that people's real feelings about their own real lives are important no matter how petty they might seem to an African diamond miner who's had his legs blown (or sawn) off.
But the idea that any of this stuff is actually IMPORTANT to anybody else on the planet is just frightening.
Yet another exhibit in the forthcoming "Death of democracy" trial.
There's some quote somewhere about "you can judge a person by the size of their concerns", and I'm a big believer in that. Anyone who thinks credit card surcharges by Ryanair who are too cheap anyway, moron, is a big concern really needs to grow up.
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October 24th, 2009
08:06 am
The thing I was going to post isn't nearly as interesting as I thought when I started. Suffice to say I'm back on the exercise wagon after four weeks of foot injury/ evil chest infection (consecutively, when it would have been better to have them at the same time) and I'm feeling very good about life.
In lots of ways my life is much better than it was in my mythical mid 2004 pre brain tumour bliss and when I'm not being annoyed about being ill (which exasperates me so much because the brain tumour years saddled me with so much illness) or being annoyed about having a lot of debt (which annoys me because the brain tumour years saddled me with brief un and under- employment) I feel very good about things. So that's good.
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October 10th, 2009
11:25 am
Wow, I haven't posted for ages. I find myself with fewer and fewer of these great philosophical problems which I somehow find useful to ramble about on the internet. The problems remaining are, in no particular order:
1) Being socially adept without being massively arrogant and overbearing.
2) Stopping being just a fevered consumerist, not racking up debts but not really reducing the current debts at the rate I should. What terrible grammar. Can't be bothered to correct it.
3) Trying to figure out whose fault it is that I'm not like other people (e.g. not interested in travel) and what should be done about it.
4) Deciding whether I'm a callous psychopath or whether my family really are that annoying (hint: it's both).
Hopefully 2010 will see the arrival of a Chris Beeley Junior which I imagine will pose philosophical quandaries of its own while sapping the energy and time I have to answer them.
In other news, I'm doing some teaching on a forensic psychology doctorate next year, which is pretty exciting, and surely 2010 will also see me finally become a published author, which is less a good thing than the ceasing of something bad. Having a PhD for a year with not one publication to my name is a bit embarassing to be honest.
And I still hate doctors but that whole issue seems a lot less interesing now than it did when it first came up.
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July 27th, 2009
07:00 pm
I've got a really great "why I hate doctors" post. But I'm too knackered and I have a horrible cough. I'm writing this to remind myself to tell the world why I hate doctors some time.
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July 17th, 2009
07:57 am
I've been thinking about this a lot anyway, but a conversation I had with my mum and then another one I had with my wife (missanthropii, I mean) made me think about it even more.
I was telling my mum the other day that I was pleased because all my career related effort can now be focused on career and not on increasing my pay grade, because I'm more than happy with the one I'm on now (although the pay does go up over time, so I'll be even more happy in a few years, but you get the idea). There have been some ludicrous moments in the last year when I've been doing things purely to try to get a pay increase and not because they were actually the best thing at the time.
Anyway she seemed decidedly nonplussed with the idea that I should be happy with the pay grade that I'm on. I forget the reasons she gave but I think it involved paying the children's way.
And the conversations with missanthropii seem to have the general form that childcare is very expensive and we both need to earn large amounts of money to pay for it.
We've already stepped up to the plate finance wise in paying for the mortgage. Now we have to worry about money in order to do what nature intended and reproduce. We're already comfortably past median income.
It's funny really. I look back on my childhood now and there was this perfect elision in the household between doing something worthwhile and earning a lot of money. How convenient that was. So I would dream about being a geneticist, and pretty early on my real frustrated career ambition (clinical psychologist) and I could dream about having lots of money at the same time.
Some people get to maintain this elision their whole lives, but I can't say I have. I've already turned down an invitation to apply for senior research fellow which would have been a SIX THOUSAND pound pay rise. So what are the attitudes of the people around me? Am I following a higher calling or just robbing my children?
(I should quickly point out now that nursing the vulnerable for minimum wage is A LOT NOBLER than what I do and my job only seems noble compared with other, more babylon, things graduates get up to. Like what (nearly) every single person I went to Balliol with does).
Real life reminds me of the Sims videogame. If you just have two adults in the house it gets too easy and before long the house is filled with super fit and hyper intelligent lawyers with huge TVs having casual sex. But when they die the house just stands empty. Having children is a good way of increasing the difficulty level in the Sims and also makes it a more fulfilling experience.
I'm down with that. I'm training for another marathon. I like a challenge. But this reminds me of another game (hold on to your hats everyone).
Rome: Total War. Now Rome: Total War is a fabulous game but it does have a bit of a cheat in it, in that it artificially makes it hard to build a big empire. Basically, the bigger your empire the more chaotic and expensive it becomes. Now I'm sure this is somewhat realistic but the game goes way over the top in how hard it is ruling, say, England and Greece at the same time.
That's what all this stuff with the children feels like. I've come through everything life has thrown at me, conquered the England of caring for my dad, vanquished the Greeks (PhD plus good job) and now the rules have changed again and there are some more (artificial) goals for me.
I think as I society we need to learn to say "Satis! [enough!]"
This relates to another topic I may come on to another day. I'll summarise it in a line for you.
The secret of happiness is low expectations. The secret of success is high expectations. You basically have to pick a side.
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June 11th, 2009
08:01 am
So, the inevitable post defending the BNP. We all knew it was coming, might as well get it over with.
My facebook page has exploded with condemnation of the BNP from people whom I wasn't aware had any political beliefs whatsoever. The only problem is, they seem to confine themselves to criticising BNP voters. Apparently they are "stupid", "tw**s" and "c**ts".
Well, stupidity, as I've said before, doesn't explain right wing views, immoral behaviour, or anything else. The only thing it explains is making statements that are obvious and popular but ultimately ill thought through (see what I did there?).
As for being the other two things, well, I'm not sure. I've never tried living on an estate where two generations of residents have been unemployed. I've never been made redundant from a shitty job in a factory and languished on the dole for two years while my kids' shoes slowly approach their total destruction. And I haven't spent my whole life consuming right wing media written by loads of rich Oxbridge graduates that is designed to somehow align me to their low tax low regulation worldview despite the fact that it not only offers me nothing but ultimately harms me.
I'd walk a mile in their shoes first, personally. I decry as "tw**ts" and "c**ts" those with good educations, nice lives, people whose views are their own, and not forcefed or borne out of adversity. People who should know better.
I would advise all my facebook friends to do the same. And, of course, the BNP owes a lot to the Daily Mail.
Ooh, one more quick thing. We got this massive union jack poster through our door regarding the European elections. I showed my wife and got her to guess the party. She guessed BNP. The slogans were all correct for BNP too- "fairness", you know, all that bollocks.
It was Labour. They have totally abandoned the socially progressive left wing as far as immigration, the EU and taxation goes. So I blame them partly too.
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May 8th, 2009
07:33 am
Lest we forget:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2006/jun/22/politics.economicpolicy
In case you can't be bothered to read it, it's Gordon Brown fellating the bankers and idiots who would shortly lead us into global catastrophe.
He's a lying murderer too, of course.
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May 4th, 2009
02:11 pm
Post the second:
Once I started my keep fit life and my physical tone began to improve I dreamed that one day I would be able to put up two pictures of torso(e)s [what is that damn plural of torso?]- mine and Justin Timberlake's. The idea being that they would be equivalently attractive and mine would win because it had a PhD.
I have kept this dream alive for 6 years. However, I have finally accepted that the reason that people mock me for having moobs is because I do, in fact, have moobs. The moobs definitely have pectoral muscles underneath, but they are, in actuality, fleshly protuberances. Ditto my belly which contains powerful abdominal muscles but also has a soft layer of flesh over it.
The reason for this of course is because of the amount of food that I eat. I love to eat huge pizzas and massive bags of crisps and drink litres of Coke and all the good stuff. I mean, mostly I eat very sensibly and moreover vegetarianly but I do like the occasional pig out. I do think that considering how active I am (nearly all weeks containing at least four training sessions, sometimes as many as six) I have a fair balance between my love of food and my activity levels.
So in this post I would just like to say that I think the standards of appearance we have in this country are way too high and that it's no wonder people go round hating themselves all the time. I'm pretty rock solid in pretty much all areas and I still regularly get mocked for my appearance. My legs are composed of four cylinders of bone and muscle and nothing else.
It seems likely that people choose to mock me because they sense that I consider my appearance to be satisfactory. But still. Their mocking makes sense in the cultural context where it takes place, and I think that this is a sad thing.
I shall continue in my quest to become so super fit that I can eat loads of crisps and pizza and not have moobs. But I'm not sure I fancy my chances.
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10:43 am
Post the first:
I've had some money problems for a while, what with the mortgage and the end of my PhD and whatnot. I've still got a bit of credit card debt. It was all a bit horrible for a while. But I'm now on the payscale which will feed and clothe my children for life and the debts which I have (car, student loan, credit card) are all slowly dissipating over the next few years.
So I feel all right about money. I'm not quite at the trying to give money away stage, but I'm not too far off.
And I'm known as someone who likes nice things. Big TVs, 60 pound bottles of scotch, PS3s, all that stuff. It's just none of those things really costs all that much to an adult. What I'm NOT known as is someone who dreams about Audis and Jaguars and all that bollocks and £600,000 houses.
My dad was always one to cultivate the idea of having enough. I'm not being pious and congratulating myself for living in penury. I have a very comfortable pleasant life. But what the fuck are all these people who earn four times as much as me and still desperately need more doing? They often seem to justfiy the rewards by talking about the long hours and hard work.
But in that case why bother? Why not just get a car that works, but doesn't replace your penis, a house that comfortably holds the people and the stuff in it, and have a nice job that doesn't have long hours and all that bollocks?
It's not even greed, really. I'm greedy, insofar as I want a PS3 and an HDTV. And to eat out occasionally. I'm very greedy for those things. It's just I'm not greedy for £60,000 cars. People who are? Well, they're idiots? Or something?
I'm getting vague here. But it's very strange. Doubly strange when you consider that our whole economy runs on greed, and that my wages are paid with greed. The stupid kind, not the normal kind.
Hmm.
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April 5th, 2009
04:12 pm
Sometimes I feel like I've lost the point of this Live Journal, and the fact that it exists and that I don't regularly update it bothers me. I've just been thinking about this and re-reading some previous entries. Hey, they were great. Who am I to chop off such a source of wisdom and (rare combination) erdution?
So yes, this month's theme, which, inevitably, comes from A Book (two books):
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_ss_w_h_?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=tammet&x=0&y=0
Daniel Tammet is a majorly cool dude whom you may have heard of, an autistic savant who learnt Icelandic in a week and can tell you what 82 to the fourth is without too much difficulty.
He's written a book about how HIS brain isn't amazing, EVERYONE's brains are amazing. Statistically, this isn't true, of course. But his general point is that while his brain concentrates its efforts on numbers and grammatical constructions, most "normal" people's brains are highly adapted for face and social processing. The whole thing reminds me of a book which I haven't read:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Outliers-Story-Success-Malcolm-Gladwell/dp/1846141214/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238944721&sr=8-1
I really like this argument because it resonates with something which I have believed for a long time, which is that people are basically what they want to be (notable exceptions notwithstanding).
So people who CARE about literature and classical music and mathematics and whatever other "clever" stuff aren't actually clever in any truly meaningful way. They just like clever stuff.
People who CARE about the plot of Eastenders and CAN'T see that it's just LOADS OF SCREAMING and DISASTERS roughly STITCHED TOGETHER by MORONS aren't actually "not clever" in any meaningful way. They just like "not clever" stuff.
Any argument which denigrates or elevates people who engage in either type of activity in favour of the other pre-supposes superiority of that relevant form.
Now this is an argument that we can all have. You can tell from what I've written that I don't like Eastenders. I wouldn't say that I go around perpetually consuming classical music and mathematics all day or anything like that but I certainly like to expand my mind in that way (there is another kind of mind expansion associated with Eastenders watching, the details of which I refuse to give here).
But we're getting into the realms of opinion here, clearly. You can't DEMONSTRATE the superiority of one over the other. Neither camp should try. I'm arguing for a kind of happy relativist utopia where it isn't true that nothing is true but it IS true that nobody knows for sure what's true.
People don't arrive on earth labelled with "opera" or "Corrie". People basically live the lives they want. People who can run fast want to be able to run fast. People who can read about calculus without shuddering want to read about calculus without shuddering. And people who want everyone to love them for their ability to stand around in bars talking nonsense want to be able to do that. No need for emnity on either side.
Stereotyped notions of ability and superiority actually just boil down to choices. That person over there has different taste as to what constitutes a worthwhile life to you. He or she could easily clamber over the fence and stand on your side, but they'd rather eat their own flesh.
Daniel Tammet enshrines this principle brilliantly because his whole brain is wired way over to one side. But reading his writing you can tell that he's had a good old walk on the other side, and he liked to visit, but he sure as hell wouldn't want to live there. Good for him, I say. Truly an inspirational geezer.
Oh yes, one last thing someone said to me once: two kinds of people in the world, those who are interested in politics, and those who are interested in soap operas. Says it all really.
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March 16th, 2009
01:09 pm
It's funny, working, which I do enjoy, nonetheless gives me an urge to shop. I never think about the new PS3 titles Killzone 2 and Street Fighter IV at the weekend, and by 12pm on Monday my finger's hovering over amazon.
I know work exchanges boredom for money, but does it need to have such literal consequences?
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March 13th, 2009
06:38 pm
I had a great idea for Tesco. Instead of messing about with those Vouchers for Schools and all that nonsense why don't you just
PAY YOUR TAXES, WHICH WILL BE SPENT ON SCHOOLS, JUST LIKE ALL US DECENT FOLK HAVE TO.
Just a thought.
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February 26th, 2009
04:38 pm
I've had an ethical consumerism post boiling away for ages now, so I'll get it out now.
I'm vegetarian, I don't know if I ever mentioned that before, but I am. I have been for about 13 years now, which when you put it like that is a very long time. I started out very strict, but to be honest I have always thought that we have dominion over animals (e.g. in medical research) and over time I've become a bit lazy, eating gelatine, that kind of thing.
I skinned and ate a rabbit a few years back on a survival course, on the grounds that it was shot cleanly through the neck and didn't suffer. That's always been the thing with me and vegetarianism, it was the cruelty, not the death. I've always said that if I kept the animals myself, gave them names and killed them cleanly, I would totally eat them.
I've really lost my way now, I eat loads of fish (in restaurants at least) and I can't bring myself to give a toss really. I can feel my vegetarianism slipping away and if I wasn't married to one (and certainly if I was married to an omnivore) it would be gone.
I know this isn't very interesting so far, but there's a point I want to make. Vegetarianism is a kind of ethical consumerism. I have always hated ethical consumerism, quite apart from the fact that it is some kind of hilarious oxymoron. There are two main reasons.
The first reason that I hate ethical consumerism is that it represents a tiny amount of global trade and essentially just hides all the evils of production from thick white middle class people. So ethical goods are all made with oil. You can't avoid oil, oil makes everything now. They make oil into food and food into oil. Even if they're not made with oil, the money that buys the ethical produce is itself unethical. So the ethical industry parasitises the efficiency of the non ethical sector. It takes wealth and energy created with unethical means and turns it into cliquey niche crap for stupid middle class people. It makes no sense.
The second reason that I hate it (hate IS rather a strong word, isn't it? Blame Marie Claire) is that it takes intelligent ethical consumers away from industries and bundles them into a special niche where they can't do any harm. So we're all buying organic free range eggs and that leaves all the poor stupid people to buy battery.
This is just not good enough. There shouldn't be any battery eggs at all. My buying organic eggs at triple the price just makes me feel moral. I know the EU is banning battery cages, but the alternative is also still really cruel, so that's not the point really.
We shouldn't be demanding free range organic eggs. We should be demanding pictures of the chickens on the boxes. And pictures of the pigs on packets of bacon. Then let's see people buy them.
The whole thing just smacks of "yes I know people are being murdered in their beds by oil companies and chickens are basically being tortured their whole godforsaken lives, but I've tokenistically avoided one or two of these products so I've done my bit". Governments need to regulate these things and if it means we can't have chicken two nights a week, then so be it.
And that's why I don't think I should be vegetarian. Because I'm opting out and doing more harm than good. I think I should buy "ethical" meat products, but more than that, demand that no others are made or sold in my country. I know I'm undermining my own argument by suggesting that I should buy ethical produce. I'm buying it for taste purposes (I mean moral taste, not real taste, obviously). The difference is that I'm not pretending that it's really "ethical" or that it really achieves anything other than making me even more smug.
Oh yes, that's the third reason why I hate ethical consumerism. Because it blames us, the poor twats who work for a living, for all this waste and destruction. I'm forever being told that I'm being a bad person for buying these products, Nestle or whatever, but it's really not my fault is it? I'd love to vote for someone who promises to rid the world of all these capitalist demons, but since our democracy is broken and our newspapers are owned by disgusting evil plutocrats I can't even do that. Wait until I actually CHOOSE this world, with all the famine and death, just so I can have a cheap chocolate bar, then berate me for it. But since all this shit was pretty much set up when I got here and I've done nothing but criticise the whole set up for the last 19 years I don't really see why I should have to share the blame just because I like chunky Kit Kats.
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04:04 pm
My 30th birthday was very enjoyable. There were quite a lot of people there, quite a disparate bunch really, and I would say most of them give a toss about me, which is nice.
Ever since, well before really, I've been really pondering about what it means to have friends and to be a friend. People talk a lot of fine words about friendship, but I don't buy any of that crap at all. I've heard so many stories of people who just get dumped by their whole friend group, out of the blue, for no good reason. It sounds truly awful, without wanting to exaggerate too much I think I probably wouldn't bother with friends any more after that. I'm not good with rejection.
So let's start from the top. People talk a lot of fine words about romantic relationships too. That's basically all crap too. Romantic relationships serve a function, they are based on reciprocal altruim, and 99% of the time when that reciprocity is broken, that's it, no more relationship.
So my new rule of relationships is absolutely based on only one thing. Hypothetically, tirelessly nursing the person as they die from a brain tumour and lose all their intelligence and personality. That demonstrates non-reciprocity. Anything else is just horse shit.
Okay, so where does that leave friends? Nowhere, really. No-one is going to tirelessly nurse their friends through brain tumours. I hope I've laid enough foundations for the argument for it to be clear that I am suggesting that they are based purely on reciprocal altruism.
But we do have a lot of fine feelings about them. And we do talk a lot of fine words about them. Personally, I consider myself to be A Good Friend insofar as I treat my friends (relatively) unselfishly. But then I bet everyone says that.
I'm intrigued also about this because it seems like in our society having more friends is something to be proud of, and contrariwise. On the face of it having more complicated nets of reciprocal altruism doesn't seem to be much to write home about.
Of course, the reason why people have more friends is because they are in some sense superior in certain ways to the people whom people don't want to be friends with. When you listen to people talk you would think that the characteristic of being "nice" determines a lot of this, but this is of course complete nonsense. In the main I would say people have friends that entertain them, regardless of how nice they are. That's why there are loads of nice lonely people and loads of people who really should be burnt in a ditch who have loads of friends.
I would characterise friendship, therefore as:
Reciprocal altruim + Reflected glory.
I know in my heart this is true, and yet I can't help having all these really profound notions about friendships that would evaporate as soon as either of those components even took a brief holiday. I don't know why humans lie to themselves and others so much, but it really twists my melon.
I should point out to close, incidentally, that I am not really meaning to denigrate the way that humans relate to each other. People are basically selfish. Pretending otherwise, even in marriages, never mind about friendships, is just silly. Plus treating your friends substantially better than you treat everyone else just because they like the same type of books as you is a bit crap anyway.
I think I would rather defend the actual transactions between humans on a day to day basis, which can be quite profound, rather than the institutions that have sprung up around them, which as I've said here seem to really just be myth.
And other more abstract institutions seem more defensible, as well. Like the law, under which everyone is equal, even if they are a bit shy. Or the principle (not enshrined anywhere that I know of) that the world belongs to everyone on it and is not to be selfishly exploited by any one individual or country.
These ideas aren't just based on being nice to people who pretend to care what you think by asking lots of questions, then maybe engaging in a bit of reciprocal altruism for 9 months until you get bored with listening to them and replace them with some idiot who drinks too much and ruins evenings by disagreeing with everyone.
I've started off on one, so I'll stop now. You get the idea.
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February 24th, 2009
09:43 pm
Eep, I forgot all about lent this year, I've been so busy.
I'm going to give up fags, for one thing, because I'm training for a marathon and just because.
And me and the wife are giving up buying plastic. Any plastic we already own is okay, and anything that we are given that is wrapped or made of plastic is okay, we are just not allowed to acquire any.
Except for bread and milk, which we clearly need.
It makes absolutely no sense at all, even less sense than the junk food year I had, but it will be interesting to marvel at how shit our lives are because we can't buy plastic. And it will keep me off buying computer games until my pay rise, which occurs just before Easter Sunday.
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February 23rd, 2009
09:22 am
Quick film review:
Go see Bolt. It reminds me of Toy Story a bit, but it had me and my wife crying tears of joy (the ones you get when you watch the Simpsons) pretty much the whole way through.
It's fun in 3D too, and at Cineworld you can get in for the same price as a normal film if you go in before noon.
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alii_cat's journal
