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Muchness

I went to see the new Alice in Wonderland movie this weekend. Not a great movie. Not a bad one either. It was good. Good is fine with me.

I mention it here not because I want to post a review but because a line in that film had a particularly strong impact on me. I don't recall the exact wording but in one scene the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) turns to Alice and says 'You've lost your muchness. You used to be much. . . muchier'.

That line stuck with me. It stayed in my mind all evening and all night. In the morning I woke up and there it was, sitting there like a little yappy dog wagging its tail and waiting for me to figure our what it wanted.

And then I did. The Hatter was telling Alice that, in the time since her first visit to wonderland, she had lost something. Something about herself. He called it her 'muchness'. Something that made her more herself than she had become. Her essence. Her sense of and understanding of her own self. She'd 'grown up'. We all do. But does that mean we must lose ourselves?

I think the reason it stuck with me was that I've often worried that I was losing my sense of self. My understanding of my own essence. Diluting myself to fit in with the world. I guess it happens for two reasons. Either you feel the need to conform to society to achieve your aims or something about yourself causes you pain and you want to block it out. I've had both. Years of what I hesitate to call manic depression made me fear that feeling of utter happiness and oneness that comes with a manic episode because, like Pavlov's dog learned to associate a bell with dinner time, I have learned to associate that feeling with the horrible depression that comes after. I yearned for flatness. A calm sea. By doing so I rejected myself. I allowed my fears and the pressures of the world to make me hide. I've decided to not do that any more. Life is too short.

I think maybe Frank Turner said it best. So I'll leave you with this, from Photosynthesis:

'If all you ever do with your life is photosynthesize, then you deserve every second of your sleepless nights that you waste wondering when you're gonna die'.

How very true.

Personal Finance 2.0

Finances are complicated. That's a given. I believe that things can be made easier. The following is an outline proposal aimed at just that.

The Finances Summary Page

This would be a web service sponsored by the state but run by the private sector overseen by the FSA.

The service would provide a monthly summary of your finances in one place. It will include any loans, Higher Purchase deals, bank accounts and credit cards. The summary would simply point out basic metrics that point towards good or bad financial management such as the amount of debt you have in short term unsecured debt, how costly that debt is and so on as well as the likelihood that you could make savings by changing the way your finances are geared and how substantial those savings are likely to be if you were to choose to do something about it.

The output should be simple. You see a summary of available cash, savings, debts and non-liquid assets and a red, yellow or green status that informs you of how healthy your financial situation is. If you see a red status you know that it is worth looking in to transferring debts, re-financing loans or taking up other options.

This financial dashboard would be the jumping off point for any and all changes to your financial status. It could be linked easily to official assistance programs as well as services offered by the private sector to help people. It may also inform people if they are missing the opportunity to make their money work harder by checking how much they are placing in ISA or other high yield savings accounts.

This service could be run at little cost and with few security concerns as account specific information is not held there. Link this to other context specific information such as the birth of a child or retirement and you have a wealth of possible benefits.

The Endless Dance

Some things never change. Some things seem to change but actually don't. A few things seem to not change but really do. A tiny number of things appear to change and do, in fact, change.

What's interesting here is not so much that the above is true, but the fact of it being true. That is to say that we, as a species, are poor judges of our own reality. You hear people say that things are not always as they seem. This is true. You hear them say that there is a massive amount that we do not know. This is also true. Individually we know almost nothing and as a species we know a smidgen more than almost nothing. What worries me is that our lack of knowledge and understanding of reality is frequently used to justify belief in things about which which we know even less.

Does the below scene ring a bell to anyone?

Person 1: So I heard this sound on the stairs and I went to see what it was and there was no one there. Then, a second later there was a big bang and I went to the front room and the chair was on it's side! It must have been a ghost!
Person 2: I don't believe in ghosts.
Person 1: Well how else could the chair have turned over?
Person 2: I don't know.
Person 1: Well there you go then!
Person 2: Well . . .
Person 1: You're such a skeptic!

You see what has happened here? The lack of information about one thing has been taken as confirmation of something of which we know even less. The only sensible conclusion would be that something happened but we don't know what. We can't know what. Insufficient data available.

The lack of logic is not surprising really. We see this sort of thing all the time. What worries me more is the fact that the term 'skeptic' has now become almost entirely a derogatory term. To be skeptical is considered awkward, boring and mean. You are expected to believe. If you ask for data, information, evidence or proof you're a kill joy. It seems that to question a deeply held belief is in itself rude. You may make someone feel bad if you point out flaws in their worldview.

Well this is my stand. I can't claim this is the greatest and noblest stand ever made. This isn't civil rights or women's lib. This is merely a call to arms for the forces of reason. You don't have to believe. You don't have to accept. You can be a skeptic! You can demand reason. You can request clarification. You can choose to hold no position. It's better to know that you don't know than to fool yourself that you do. Skeptics of the world, unite!

Senseless Sensibilities

So David Jason puns on the radio and we lose our heads! OK. This is a short one cause really this will make me cry if I think about it for too long.

The offending remark appears to have been as follows:

Q: What do you call a Pakistani cloak room attendant?

A: Mahatma Coat!

Yes. That was it. Apparently race groups have been up in arms. The papers are writing shocked little stories and all those involved have apologized for the "offensive" gag. Really? Honestly? What exactly was "racist" about that joke? Did the gag suggest racial inferiority? Did it demean an ethnic group? No! It's a play on words. It's a pun about language. Is it funny? Not really. But really why are we all so sensitive at the moment?

When the world faces such real and present danger does it make sense for us to waste our energy on such trivia? Short answer: no.

Networking, Serendipity and Never Ending Hope.

Life is so unfair! Honestly. The good guy doesn't always finish last but he doesn't finish first as often as he deserves either. Bad things happen to good people while worthless idiots sail through as if borne aloft on the sweet breath of angels. You can try and try and still fail while blind chance brings fortune to the undeserving.

You know what? I wouldn't have it any other way. People are often blind to the converse. As terribly unfair as life can be, that very unpredictable nature means that no obstacle is truly a bar to success. No matter how unfavorable the odds the little guy can still win out. You might not be lucky enough to have been born in to money, or with fantastic connections or even clutching a winning ticket for the genetic lottery; bestowing upon you good looks, immense intelligence or boundless health and energy. But you never know! In a world were virtue is the only path to success the unfairness of it all would be staggeringly worse than it is now. Hope, in so many ways, rests on unfairness.

So there you go. You really should be happy to live in such an unfair world. No matter what your circumstances might be; you have hope. But that's not good enough for you is it? No, I can see from here that you're not going to be happy sitting back and crossing your fingers. Here perhaps we need to look to the classics for some answers. Now I know Machiavelli isn't a name often heard associated with much that is good. He's remembered as the bringer of immorality. But he did have some interesting things to say about luck. He said that a Prince must learn to master his fortune. That is to say, if you want to be the boss, you have to make your own luck. This suggests that luck isn't some ephemeral concept beyond the reach of human intellect. Luck may be unpredictable but that doesn't mean you can't play the odds.

There's a rather wonderful book called The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I urge you to read it. He argues that we may not be able to predict future events but we can position ourselves in such a way that we are more likely to benefit from what may or may not happen. By understanding the impact rather than trying to predict the likelihood of future events we can prepare for what life throws at us. We can also proactively go looking for luck. Psychologists like Dr. Richard Wiseman have studied what makes people lucky and the fact of the matter is lucky people behave differently. They place themselves in situations where good things can happen to them. Luck, it seems, is something within you. This is where networking comes in.

A professional network is a powerful generator of serendipity. There's a lot more to it than just talking to people and being sociable of course. To begin with you have to make a choice. You have to choose to be genuinely interested in people and what those people do. Ask questions and really mean it. By understanding the people you work with you'll come to understand the myriad possibilities each relationship holds for your personal and professional development. Understand what people are trying to do and why they are motivated to do it. Much of the time this may seem to be of academic interest only but the more connections you make the more chance you'll come across a connection with practical applications. Understand how people are connected to one another. This takes time and the payoff is cumulative. Before too long the connections crystalize and the energy you're putting in starts to pay dividends.

Freedom of Speech

You're a bastard. You're stupid. You're mother is a cheap slut and you're father likes to touch up small children on the weekends. You represent all that is wrong with the world and personally deserve to die in horrible pain while the swirling ghosts morality taunt you with pithy one-liners and wave burning pictures of all your dreams in your contorted and loathsome face.

Hallelujah! Freedom of speech kicks ass! I can't tell you how morally enriched I feel having exercised my human right to say whatever I damn well choose no matter of its level of accuracy, usefulness or benefit to society. It really isn't possible to find the words. Largely, it must be said, because it's all just complete toss. The above was not an example of free speech. It was an example of threatening, slanderous and self indulgent crap. The trouble is that few people understand the distinction.

We do live in a confused and sorry world sometimes. A world where extremists and subversives have become the champions of free speech while the nominally mainstream have so clumsily abused logic that they find themselves in the role of some sort of Orwellian thought police; protecting the masses from the insane utterances of laughable fools while throwing away that which makes democracy possible.

Take the recent Geert Wilders debacle. He made a film criticizing the Koran and was invited by a small number of Lords to come to England and present the film. Now lets not get bogged down here. The film may well be disagreeable to many but it breaks no laws and Geert Wilders himself is not a criminal. He's an elected member of parliament in the Netherlands not some paramilitary gunman. The reasoning behind barring him from the UK? His presence might provoke violence from Muslims! Where do we begin? Is it the fact that such a stance tends to suggest that our government agrees with him in the assertion that Islam is to violence as a media studies degree is to unemployment? Is it that it patronizes an entire religious group? Is that that our government seems to believe that the best way to avoid unlawful behavior is to pander to the potential law breakers and restrict the freedoms of the law-abiding? Worse than all of this is the fact that once again an individual with extreme views has been able to present himself as the champion of freedom. Banning him not only increased his profile but actually made the UK look small minded rather than the other way around.

Let us be clear. Freedom of speech is not the right to say whatever you please at any time and damn the consequences. Freedom of speech is the right to criticize ideas. Especially ideas associated with established powers. While many may wish to pretend that what goes on in religious circles is somehow separate from the world of politics and public life the truth of the matter is that religions are little different from political movements. So banning someone from criticizing a religion is little different from banning the criticism of a political party. That alone is worrying enough. And while I may, if I wish, vociferously protest against the beliefs of a political party it would not be OK for me to attack personally the individuals within that group. A person can be slandered, an idea cannot. That's the difference between free-speech and harassment. We must allow open debate and we must allow those with objectionable views to express them. What we must not do is confuse freedom of speech with the right to attack, oppress and marginalize. But how can the average man in the street be expected to understand the distinction if those who claim to know how to run the country can't see it themselves?