The Rising Tide of Fluffy Thinking

Is it just me or are we about to reach the Stupidity Event Horizon? It's a tired old line, I know. But this is not just normal stupidity. This is a special kind of unthinkingness that seems to be creeping in. I am, of course, referring to The Colour of Money.

For those who don't know (oh how I envy you) The Colour of Money is a new ITV quiz show wherein what, for want of a better word, we will call contestants attempt to win massive cash prizes by successfully predicting the amount of money that is held within 'cash machines' dotted around the stage. There are twenty to choose from each containing between £1000 and £20,000. 'Contestants' pick ten at random wherein a grotesque spectacle ensues.

The screen comes to life and begins to count up in increments of £1000. The 'contestant' attempts to hold his or her nerve and shout STOP! at the right moment; that moment being the one just before a horrid big X appears on the screen accompanied by a sound effect which is the non-verbal equivalent of "twat!" indicating that they have cocked up and lost the lot. All the while the 'contestant' mouths silent prayers to the god of greed and laziness. This is all fairly harmless in and of itself. What worries me more is the fact that the 'contestants' actually appear to believe that they can predict the contents of the machine.

Lets get this straight. There are twenty machines. They are randomly assigned an amount of money. There is no pattern! You can't figure it out! You only get to choose half of them so you can't even do it by a process of elimination. But this doesn't seem to penetrate the terminally mushy minds of those involved in the show. They ponder, they mull, they scratch their craniums in agitation attempting to make the mental leap that over a decade of compulsory state funded education has failed to convince them is not possible! I watched with growing rage as one particularly deluded individual turned to her three companions (what are they there for!?) and asked in all earnestness "what do you think?" and thereby revealed to all that while she knew the word "think" she had not a clue what the action entailed! The sad truth is that they don't think.

It's sad, it's infuriating and it's everywhere. We are surrounded by people who seem to believe that logic and reason are optional extras. Nice little additions like throw-rugs or table lamps. Non-essential. It terrifies me. And why does it terrify me? Surely they're harmless creatures who will live out their confused little lives in a blissful state of incoherence? Maybe so. But a mind devoid of logic is mana from heaven to those with despicable agendas. The vile and coldly intelligent types who are all too logical despite how much we may wish to believe they are crazy. The sort who send mentally disabled people in to war zones with bombs strapped to them. If we are wandering dribbling towards international mental meltdown then it will be the devils among us who benefit.

Getting Older and the Vagaries of Perception

I have come to a conclusion. I'm not getting older. Biologically perhaps. Chronologically most certainly. But psychologically I'm as young as I ever was. My dad tells me of a time when someone in his mid twenties would be pretty much a carbon copy of his father. He'd dress the same, speak the same and act very much like a classically middle aged person. But these days that doesn't seem to be the case. I have the same dreams, pretty much, as I did when I was sixteen. I have the same drive, the same ideals (mostly) as I did then. I am, for all intents and purposes, in a state of perpetual youth.

But there's a twist. While I am no older than I ever was, other people are getting younger. The average undergraduate is quite clearly no more than twelve years old. Look at them! They're a bunch of pre-pubescent chimps! They may have all the bits in the right places and their reproductive parts might well have dropped already but that doesn't change the fact that, while I have remained unchanged by the constant drumming of experience in to my eyes and ears and whichever other convenient openings to which this experience has been able to gain access, those who have come after me have actually been able to avoid becoming older entirely and have in fact begun to regress.

Something terrible has clearly occurred. Or is it so terrible? Perhaps this is just evolution's way of preparing the human race for immortality. It's bound to happen eventually isn't it? After all, we're supposedly pretty close to finding and disabling the genes for all sorts of terrible deadly ailments. We will soon live in a world free of cancer, devoid of degenerative brain diseases and, with any luck, where the gene that encourages people to listen to music through tinny speakers on their mobile phones while on packed buses has been found, given a bloody good hiding and obliterated once and for all. So when we do find the gene for death and flick the switch to standby we'll already been in a state where, mentally at least, we've become perpetual young adults! No need to worry; Jonathan Swift was wrong. We'll not all spend eternity as haggard old cretins but rather as horny twenty-one year olds with great skin, abundant hair and a never ending drive to dance on tables.

On the Subject of "why?" and the Irony of the Medium

It is the year 2059. You're a young, bright and hungry Undergraduate. You're hungry because you've just taken out the equivalent of a mortgage to fund your study and are, therefore, subsisting on protein pills and whatever in the future passes for Pot Noodles. You're studying Social Anthropology. You're first lecture? Jade Goody Studies. I kid you not.

You may not have thought about it this way yet but trust me; Goody is a phenomenon. A true world first for humanity. At no time in history has a life like hers been even remotely possible. We are living now in a world where a woman of no particular virtue and who has contributed nothing of any special worth to the human race has risen to a level of fame that was once reserved for the talented, the hardworking or at the very least the absurdly wealthy or privileged. She was born a nobody. She lived an unremarkable life for just over two decades. She applied for Big Brother 3 (2002 series). She became, overnight, a household name. But this in itself is nothing special. Not these days at least.

Jade was just one of a clutch of contestants to appear in Big Brother 3. She exists now among a sprawling number of "reality TV stars" who have appeared on various programs. A small number have gone on to live in the public eye to a greater or lesser extent. Jade, however, has gone on to live and will soon die, in the full glare of publicity. For those who don't know, Goody went on from Big Brother 3 to appear in Celebrity Big Brother (something about that is just so incestuous!) where she went from famous to infamous in a storm of race-shame, she had kids with another "reality TV star" and has, throughout, appeared in magazines, on TV shows and maintained a public profile out of all proportion with any personal richness she may or may not possess. And now, just shy of thirty years since her unregarded and inauspicious birth, she is about to die of cancer, tragically young and in terrible pain. Her wedding, a macabre fairy tale, has provided the final flourish.

What does it mean? How is Jade Goody a worthy topic for the student of the future? She represents the first of a new breed. A breed of public figure who live their lives in the media, who exist to be observed. She doesn't provide any great example nor does she invoke any great admiration. If anything she makes those who watch her feel superior! But she does provide something. What it is I don't know for certain but I can hazard a guess. We hear all the time of the atomized nature of human society in the modern, post-industrial, secular twenty-first century. We are disconnected, in so many ways, from those around us and any sense of true belonging. Through the likes of Goody we feel some kind of bond. She unites us and is, for better or worse, one of us. In a society where more and more people are choosing to reach out and broadcast their lives through Facebook, Twitter, Blogs and so on, there is clearly a very real need to be addressed.

We are at a point in human history where the issue of privacy is high on the public agenda. The ID Card scheme, DNA databases, CCTV, monitoring of emails and phone calls. We fear that our private lives are no longer private while at the same time we choose to make more and more of our lives public by our on volition. This apparent contradiction can be seen as a generational turning point. Very soon the first generation who have never known a world without the internet in almost every home and reality TV snooping in to the minutiae of 'normal' people's lives will come of age. They won't see the distinction between public and private in the same way as their parents. With technology embedded in everything we do becoming more hyper-connected every day and information sharing bringing about a new forms of consumerism and new ways of socializing the student of 2059 will see the early twenty-first century and the Jade Goody phenomenon as the moment when a new world was born.

So there you have the 'why?' of this blog. I'm writing here about a world that is changing in a very particular way. Just as the 9/11 attacks brought about a new era in international relations and the discovery of DNA changed the way we understood the nature of the natural world, the Jade Goody story is a bookmark in history. We will understand social anthropology as pre and post Goody. The irony of the medium should be obvious.