Autobiography

He is but a man, although to define “man” is a task in itself. We can leave describing and defining man as a whole to the anthropologist. Our man is much easier to explain and describe, although perhaps his motives for behaviour are not as easily understood as, for example Dostoevsky's 'Prince'. Where behaviour and motive fulfil a story and its framework, this should be left to literary giants, for this is no story.

Our man has a name which not only affects how other perceive him but also how he sees himself. His parents had given him a name which reflected, perhaps unconsciously their hopes and dreams for this, their first child. All of the paths they feel they have missed, the experiences they wish they had have been projected upon their first son.

A man amongst others cannot only act for himself and this is certainly the case for our man. Outward actions and inward motives may be achromatic negative however, and he revels in this; finding comedy like the Greeks. Laughing at the tragedy which personifies human experience. Does this show poor morality on his behalf? No. It only shows awareness of the conditions he must live in, if he is to live at all. So he writes these down and frames them as somebody else's experiences, using them in the same way that masks are used in Noh.

Why study at all?

I've been paying attention to the political debates regarding the future of education in Scotland. This has often come round to people asking what the purpose of education is. To some, it is the opportunity to learn, simply for the sake of learning. The search for truth and knowledge is as noble a pursuit as I think is possible. For others, the purpose of education is to provide the economy with a workforce at all levels. These two viewpoints are invariably always going to appear in any discussion on education but my recent thoughts are that they are not mutually exclusive and I'd like to explain why I think so.

The viewpoint of academics themselves is that learning for the sole purpose of learning should be an unequivocally available feature of any first world society and is one of the most important aspects which can help those in poverty remove themselves from that situation. I often find myself of this view, and I think that a university degree in philosophy or history is just as valuable and important as a science or vocational degree, such as engineering. Both a philosophy and an engineering degree provide the individual with a deep and complex understanding of how the world works. Engineers have an in-depth knowledge of the mechanisms of the modern industrialised world whereas philosophers have in-depth knowledge of the mechanisms of the modern rational world. University education and a hunger for knowledge has given both of these individuals tools to better understand and manage not only in our society, but in other societies as well, albeit in very different ways. There is a reason that the three most powerful MP's in the UK (Cameron, Osbourne and Clegg) all studied philosophy – it teaches you how to argue and how to elucidate arguments; how to think rationally. Both the engineer and the philosopher have equipped themselves well for employment, yes. But this is not always the primary concern for either.

The second viewpoint is that education is simply to put bodies into jobs and to provide a workforce capable of enhancing the economy. In this viewpoint, those who study at university for the sole purpose of learning are often discounted. The popular media are very fond of the term “Mickey Mouse degree” in which philosophy and sociology are oft quoted. These”Mickey Mouse degrees” are claimed to add nothing to society and nothing to the economy because they do not train people in a trade or allow them to make an obvious way to contribute to the economy. Where I think this view fits in with the first is in the notion that to improve anything, you must be self critical, innovative and possess the relevant skills to make things change. If a business is floundering or wishes to improve, they must evaluate themselves critically in the same way a sociologist or philosopher would objectively evaluate an argument or a theory. They must be innovative enough to solve any problems they come across and to exploit any strengths they find which any student involved in any subject in the realm of 'humanities' learns, no more so than those who study economics or business. Finally, the relevant skills to make things change have to involve critical analysis of texts which anyone who studied literary classics will know. Practical intelligence is having a way with words and being able to argue your case well enough to convince people who are sceptical. This is tested no more than in the humanities, many of which are classed as “Mickey Mouse degrees”.

Even if you are of the opinion that all higher education should be specifically tailored to a specific industry or role, you cannot argue that having a flexible skill set that allows you navigate many employment environments is anything but a good thing. You also cannot argue against an education which allows individuals to explore a number of vastly different career choices before deciding on what they want to. Both of these things are compatible with both viewpoints I outlined at the start. Strict arguments from either side completely ignore this shared ground, including those from MP's and the people who run the country, as entrenched as they are in party politics rather than improving this countries education system for the better.

Abandoning Facebook

After posting my last blog regarding social media, I felt a bit of a hypocrite.  I use Facebook more than most people I know, but usually only in short bursts on my phone.  Nevertheless, being constantly connected to Facebook meant I never missed anything and was able to comment on and reply to everything instantly.  Some would say this was a great thing and a step forward.  I think of myself as being very honest with myself and it wasn't until I wrote the last blog post on social media that I realised what the real cost of Facebook was for me. I'm sure if you use Twitter more than Facebook, this may also apply.

The first issue is the dissociation between online and offline society.  My offline society (what a cynic would call "real life") consists of classmates at university, of whom in a class of 72, I regularly speak to maybe 10 at the most in any depth; my closer friends and family which number around 10 and include the guys I grapple and spar with.  That's a close network of about 20 off the top of my head.  My Facebook society numbered around 250, most of which are acquaintances or classmates I rarely speak to, or people I knew previously but don't really talk to any more.  I'm a very sociable person and will speak to anyone about anything at any time, however real-time interaction with people I regularly only interact with online seems to have affected my attention and ability to converse in real life.  Performance wise, I converse in the same way as before but mentally, there are relatively large pauses and gaps where my typing would have been before.  I also have found myself wanting for words more often than I would have previously.  I can only assume this is where I would be putting a word into Google to check I'm using it in the right context.  The thing is, I don't ever need to do this - I only do it because the opportunity is there online.  So my online interactions change my offline interactions and conversations in a negative manner.  I have usually been known by friends as a pretty fast thinker, especially with humorous retorts but there have been more than a few occasions where I could not think of anything to say, funny or otherwise.

Another issue which comes to mind regarding Facebook is the intense interest in the minutiae of a passing acquaintances life.  Because information is passed so fast, unsubstantiated rumour can be widespread in minutes, and an enormous game of Chinese whispers can change the original meanings beyond comprehension. The problems of real-time text only interaction are not new but because the inter-relations resemble a huge Venn diagram on Facebook, it presents a whole new problem.  The main problem I have personally is the one of not interpreting intended meaning.  This is just an aside though.  My main issue is with the first point I raised.

Because of this, I have deleted my Facebook profile.  My studies have been affected by distractions (not just the internet) and so I have constantly asked myself what a scholar of the 19th century would do in this situation.  Facebook is not one of them.  Maybe blogging isn't either, but I'm not playing at being a scholar all the time...

Thoughts on social media

We constantly feel like we are missing out on something; there always seems to be something new that makes us feel that if we could be a part of it, we could maybe be happy, even if only for a short time. With the internet now as common as pavements, the speed at which modern life, and modern trends move can sometimes further the suffocating feeling that you are being left behind, last felt when you were 2 years old and your mum walked too far ahead and you felt the first pangs of dread in the pit of your stomach.

Enter social media.

You no doubt use social media in your life. You are reading this blog after all, and found out about it through your Twitter feed or Facebook timeline. Further than that, commenting or sharing videos on Youtube, pictures on Yfrog or Flickr, sharing links and contents on Tumblr or even voting for a D-list celebrity’s ballroom dancing efforts are all ways you may participate in or use social media.

This may feel like a godsend – finally you can create the headlines, or at least participate in new red top furore regarding the latest celebrity gossip. There is somewhere and some way you can keep in touch with the fast moving lives of everyone else. The trouble with this is that social media is self perpetuating and eventually becomes anti-social.

The ultimate aim of social media is to allow everyone to feel as if they have some semblance of control in their daily lives, which they may feel move far too fast. However, what is often found is that you are spoiled for choice and social media ends up choking the “life” out of your social life and rapes your inbox with thousands of updates and invites to the new social media phenomenon. All conversations and real life interactions either end or start with reference to or involvement in social media or social networking. The art of conversation and debate has been replaced with braying noises, acronyms and reference to internet specific memes that don’t ever work in real life and make you look a bit sad if you bring them up.com

Of course it almost seems a bit nostalgic to explain the positive side of social media. Spreading news of protests in Egypt, Libya, Iran and even the UKUncut and associated student protests all over the UK through social media has been almost crucial to the whole protest effort in terms of individuals keeping up to date with where protests were taking place as well as news from the protests themselves. Social media has also been able to provide an alternate look at what we are being told officially on the news and gives people the opportunity to speak freely, where traditional media has failed them. However, with their being no editors on Twitter or Facebook, and sparse if any moderation on comments pages for newspapers and the BBC’s news stories, people are expected to self edit. Given a keyboard, the internet and anonymity, people can say horrific things and truly speak their minds. For example: http://ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyougolivethere.com/

Education Island

The education system in the UK is pretty messed up. No matter where you sit politically, this seems to be a common opinion. We all know that education is of exceptional importance at any time but even more so now that investing in education may be the best way to beat recession. The contentious point is what needs changed and who is to blame. If you read the Daily Mail or the Express, you no doubt blame a spontaneous rise in “poor teachers”. These poor teachers who sometimes infect whole schools have seemingly come into teaching simply for the pensions and the term time holidays and do not care about teaching. Building straw men has been the prerogative of these bourgeois rags for years and passing the blame to people who are far far too busy looking after the future of the future generation to properly oppose these allegations is not surprising at all.

The real issue here is that of control.  The control that individuals feel they have over their own learning, the control that teachers have over what they teach and how they teach it and the control the individual school or education institution has over who they hire and fire and how they spend the money they have available to them.  Teachers with more control over their own teaching can adapt to the rapidly changing cultural environment children and teenagers grow up in.  What limits this control is the introduction of competition between schools which supports learning by rote and teaching to the test.  This in turn results in the creativity of teachers being limited as well as limiting the achievement of students. Encouraging competition between schools as if they are individually accountable business entities is only suitable if they are indeed individually accountable business entities. This is the direction both the previous New Labour government and the Con/Dem coalition government are moving education.

The main reason this will not work with the education system is that it will create an even wider achievement gap between the social classes. For the education system to be competitive, there will have to be individual controls over fees and multiple sponsorship or funding revenues. This would create islands of education, where attractive locations receive the majority of funding and unattractive locations receive much less.  Therefore, state funding for education should increase, rather than be cut. Relying on finding private funding streams puts disadvantaged schools at even more of a disadvantage. This is unfair because the reason these schools are disadvantaged in the first place is because they have been tested in a way that they can't possibly succeed, with emphasis on testing for number of high grades rather than emphasis on testing for difference between expected and actual grades.  This however assumes that we want a fair system. 

Of course, a "riot" is better news and easier to understand, even if the understanding promoted goes against contemporary understandings of crowd behaviour.

The Modern Lurgy

Even today, a lot of what we know in medicine, psychology, philosophy and literature is influenced by the Ancient Greeks. Some ideas however, have fallen by the wayside. The Ancient Greek understanding of depression is one such idea. This held that depression was an imbalance in humors, bodily fluids which dictate an individual's personality and health. An imbalance signified some sort of illness or ailment. While discredited, it gives the first scientific attempt at understanding depression. This was classed as melancholia, after the Greek word for black bile which was thought to be the cause of depression. Melancholia was later used as a catch all term for any depressive thoughts of behaviours.

Nowadays, melancholy has fallen by the wayside in favour of the catch-all term of depression. It's a good bet that most people have complained of feeling depressed at some point in their lives. The difference here is that while melancholy was used as a term for all low mood, depression is a clinical term for a serious mental illness which can ruin the life of an individual. Not ruin as in "having a bad day", ruin as in "suicide". However, just as people use lurgy as a catch-all term for any combination of symptoms from influenza or a cold, people use depression as a way to express their mood. And if you want to talk etymology, that may just well be valid.

It isn't just depression however, a large number of mental illnesses are used in such a liquid fashion.When things get busy and Jones is rushing around like a lunatic, you may say he is manic. Debbie likes to keep her desk clean because she's a bit OCD. You can never tell which face the boss will show today, he's such a schizo. That boy that got a bit lairy in the pub at the weekend? Turns out he stabbed a boy and got put in the cells, he's a psycho!

On one hand, this can be understood in post modern terms. Language is liquid, and to ignore that is to be branded a Luddite (although I've always had sympathy with the machine breakers). Words are appropriated to suit new meanings as and when people want. That's the beauty of language and always has been, see Shakespeare for example. On the other hand, these words are medical definitions of, in many cases serious mental illnesses. There are three problems with this. Firstly, to call your friend a schizo is to use the word in the most crass and tabloid way you can. Secondly, to use it as an insult is to create a negative connotation of a mental illness. While this has been covered previously with swearing and with homosexual slang, the third point is that in doing this, you are trivialising schizophrenia. It fails to become a significant problem because of the alternative definition. It makes schizophrenia harder to understand, and it isn't the easiest of mental illnesses to categorise or define in the first place.

This trend has caused psychologists, psychiatrists and all medical research to potentially over-classify mental illness. The DSM is a tome of a publication used by clinicians to diagnose mental illnesses. The most recent update is due in 2013 but there is already growing debate as to whether all minor mood shifts and behavioural abnormalities are being classified as mental illness. Some have even called it a "medicalisation of normality". A section called "Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders" is also creating a large rift. The biggest issue is whether the whole system needs to be scrapped and the idea of mental disorder be revised completely.

There's no witty buzz line here, no catchphrase. This is a serious issue that can be understood through the theory of liquid modernity. The medicalisation of normality can be seen as linked through the casual use of medical terms in everyday parlance. In an effort to escape from this, more and more conditions have been created until almost everyone fits under one umbrella and can be classified as mentally ill in one way or another. This detracts from the seriousness of a condition which, as Rollo May puts it, leaves the individual with “...the inability to construct a future”, as in the case of depression.

Suck a cock, you mother fucker!

Two nations divided by a common language.
Oscar Wilde

When we talk of swearing, we all know what that means. Swearing by it's very nature consists of uttering words which represent taboos in our society, thus swear words change to suit the context. What doesn't change are the taboos. Genitalia, sex, the anus, excrement, discharge. These are the common areas which are twisted into insults such as fuck, cunt, shite, arse, prick, tit etc. Another area of swearing however, is that which insults personally. I mean, we all have some form of genitals, be it a cock or (my personal favourite for cringe factor) a minge. But not all of us are homos or bastards, or motherfuckers or bitches, for example. It's these I want to examine more.

Using a word to insult someone often takes a predictable course. Inventive swearing and insults are rare and often funny – think Monty Python & the Holy Grail's “I fart in your general direction” scene. The swear words which we use, that are most common, indicate something about our society because of the fact they are taboo. We know what it is to call someone an arse and we don't need to study etymology to work out the meaning in a particular case. Arse = behind you, at the back or bottom = you're backwards. To call someone a fag though, is completely different.

As has been drummed into public conscience, to insult someone by calling them a fag implies by connotation that to be a fag is a bad thing, hence insulting to be called one if you are not. We live in a time where gay rights are being adopted as standard, and rightly so. That being called gay is still an insult says a lot about how successful this strategy has been. Of course, if you say to a homosexual “you're so gay!” it may be a compliment but again that depends on the context in which that word is used. One idea which is overlooked by those who are easily offended is that people using derogatory homosexual terms don't often mean that the target of the insult is actually attracted to people of the same sex. Rather, they refer to the perceived negative aspects such as men being effeminate or women being manly, or even a woman being particularly feminine. Stereotypes, in short.

The word bastard on the other hand, is exceptionally old fashioned in that it is an insult derived from being conceived illegitimately. Those who see children out of wedlock are now seen as old fashioned and in the minority. Since there are an estimated 3 million children born to single parents in the UK as of 2009 surely “bastard” can't be an insult? As we know, someone will still be insulted if you call them a bastard, although it may now be used in more abstract terms - “that toaster is such a bastard”. Ironically, a google search for bastard toaster reveals a band by the same name! Nice. So how come, without the taboo, bastard is still considered insulting? Turns out I've created a straw man. Middle England (middle Britain even?) still sees being a single parent as a negative thing. This is represented in the media, with the Daily Mail springing instantly to mind and thus is perpetuated. The solution? Creative swearing. Associating a swear word with everything clouds the etymology and the true meaning. Since language is liquid, fag can now mean “loud and obnoxious Harley bikers”, and bastard can mean anything you want.

Motherfucker by the way, doesn't refer to incestuous behaviour but rather a term coined by slaves to describe slavers who fucked mothers. So there. Swear free.

Seven Days with Silly Goons

A large hole has been left in Channel 4’s broadcast schedule since the demise of Big Brother.  To replace this, or rather to keep the Big brother audience Channel 4 have opted for the fairly obvious replacement of another interactive, reality based show.  This new show, “Seven Days”, is in most ways the complete opposite of the ideas which made up Big Brother.  Where BB was held completely in a purpose built house, Seven Days is filmed entirely in the “real world”; Instead of Big Brother style evictions, the cast of 7D are in it for the long haul, potentially forever, as Channel 4 ominously put it.  The show’s characters are still handpicked but instead of casting entirely on causing conflict as they were in BB, 7D’s cast seem to have been selected for their almost painstaking normality and therein lies one of the main problems.

            The premise of the show is that a number of people are filmed over the course of seven days and on the seventh the show is edited and broadcast.  The interactive element comes from viewers sharing their feelings via Channel 4’s “chat-nav” website (hopefully they also chat-navved the person who created this term right out the door by means of a toe up their arse), through twitter, facebook and all other associated cool social media outlets.  This means that the people on the show can see how much everyone hates them as the show airs, and cameras will be there to catch their reactions for the next episode.

            Channel 4 are obviously working on the assumption that underneath the general public’s celebrity obsessed veneer, people are just straight up nosy and love nothing more than voyeurism.  Big Brother showed that we don’t care whether someone is a celebrity or not, only that we can heap scorn upon and deride complete strangers from the comfort of our own sofa.  With this knowledge, Channel 4 have decided to give us a window into the dull lives of middle class Londoners living and working in Notting Hill, hoping that we find this entertaining because it gives us someone to fixate our all consuming hate on anonymously.

            People will always want what they can’t or don’t have under the illusion that the grass is greener.  It’s our nature and what drives us forward.  Thanks to Seven Days though, those who earn less than £20,000 and/or don’t live in London can see how much duller their lives are compared to our own.  This show is hate-gossip for the 21st century slob who can’t even be bothered to meet real people to moan about.  Or if you prefer not to be as cynical as me, it gives world weary gossipers who have grown tired of using their noses to poke in the affairs of their workmates and neighbours a brand new opportunity to be nosy about “real” people with whom they would have had no chance of meeting before.  Fantastic!

            Thanks to Seven Days, not only do we get to see spoilt middle class girls moan about having to work as models, hopefully we can also see these same girls break down – almost live – thanks to the interactivity and immediacy of the social media element of the show.  The self absorbed 26 year old whose only concern in life is that mummy is leaving her in charge of an interior design business will most likely be seen in the next episode having a temper tantrum and snorting cocaine in mummy’s bathroom, tears streaming down her expensive cheeks if the bile on twitter under the hastag #sevendays is anything to go by.  Go on, stop reading this and read how much twitter almost unanimously hates this show and its cast already.  Seven Days is going to be a roaring success.

(If you got the Jamiroquai reference in the title, award yourself 10 points)

Don't Fight, Meditate

If you are one of the many who meditate daily looking for the base of your spirituality, you truly have a momentous task. To shed the day to day drudgery that modern life consists of is something most people prefer to do with copious amounts of drink and drugs at the weekends. To rid yourself of the repressed emotions hidden inside almost every one of us or even try to ignore the pull upon our actions caused by emotions and free yourself from all ties with the physical world is a daunting but wholly understandable goal. Whether you subscribe to yoga, zen, buddhist or other types of meditation such as self hypnosis it is accepted that clearing out the debris is hard work and you may only get a mere glimpse of what is underneath in your whole life. Trandescending the physical world and being so focused that you access a different reality is what people who practice meditation work towards.

It's hard to blast the hard work that people put into meditation because it is a fantastic stress reliever and most certainly helps a lot of people. The problem with meditation is that it is a solitary path to enlightenment and you certainly can't meet your mates in nirvana. This problem can be easily solved, but only if you are so inclined. And so to boxing. Well, any martial art or combat sport which includes sparring as part of its regular class really. Boxing, kick boxing, Thai boxing, wrestling, judo etc are all forms of combat sports which are built around actually striking or opposing your will upon another person as opposed to theorising the issue. What's the link? Pure being.

When you get punched in the face, you aren't thinking about work or what shopping you need to get. In fact, if you are thinking about anything like this then you are really only saying "please, hit me in the face again". No, you cannot actively think of anything. Your instincts kick in and you work from reflex. In a split second, a choice is made to either fight or fight back the tears. In seconds, you can throw back the many layers of conscious thought and feel something that those who meditate will work towards for many years. In one uncomfortable moment, you both feel nothing at all and the overwhelming experience of feeling your undiluted pure being.

Finding enlightenment in being repeatedly struck in hand to hand combat is not for everyone however. Your granny will most probably show as much interest in participating in the fistic arts as she would in wrestling bears. However, in a post Fight Club world where people ask "What Would Tyler Do?", we are more likely to accept violence into our lives if it is purported to have esoteric or artistic merit. Just as Albert Markovski and Tommy Corn found at the end of I Heart Huckabees, a sharp strike to the face produces a trandecendal experience which is hard to access without hallucinogenics, not to mention the sense of camraderie you will feel with the many other people training with you, giving and taking along side you. If you feel meditation is too lonely or it simply isn't having the benefits you hoped it would, volunteer for a punch in the chops.