I have begun to read the book 'The Spirit Level' by Wilkinson and Pickett. It is an interesting book which strikes a chord with me. I don't intend to review it, nor summarise it fully, but this post (and any subsequent ones) is intended to be a summary of what I read and my thoughts on it, for me to return to later.
They start off with some simple graphs showing that measures of quality of life, such as the UNICEF child wellbeing index, life expectancy and a range of health and social problems all correlate to greater or lesser degrees with inequality in rich countries, but not with GNP or per capita measurements of wealth.
This is not to say that inequality is important across the world, because poorer countries do show a very strong relationship between these things and wealth. It is simply that this relationship is not a straight line, but reaches a plateau which the richer countries have already hit.
I have raised this in discussion and not been believed, despite the relative fame of the book, and the same person also wondered if this plateau were gradually moving, so that countries need growth in order to remain at the top. This could only be due to technological progress, rather than directly from growth, since growth would merely move a country along the plateau. If technological progress is important, but not other forms of growth, then a measure such as GDP which incorporates both, but mostly other growth, is not an appropriate goal for countries to chase.
His point probably comes from data on happiness, which follows a similar pattern, in that increases in happiness get smaller and smaller as income rises, until it too becomes a plateau. There is some evidence that the income at which people hit this plateau rises over time. I wonder if this might be explained by GDP growth, societal inequality and the need to keep up. It might also, as part of 'keeping up', be a feature of human nature always to want improvement (well, it certainly is; this feature might be influencing the income threshold for happiness). If humans are as happy as they could be on 25,000 dollars a year, but humans also have an intrinsic desire for improvement, then 5 years later the same person who was happy might be discontent if he's still earning that amount and able to buy the same things.
The authors then have a number of chapters examining the health and social problems that they chose earlier, but individually. Aggregating them together tends to emphasise what they have in common, so splitting them up might reveal points where inequality is more or less important.
They start with trust; trust directly follows income inequality, both across nations and US states currently, but also as we look back in time. Statistical analysis can look for the probable direction of the relationship and show that it is most probably one way, such that inequality reduces trust. Trust is easy to measure, but does it matter?
Well, trust has been linked to health and lifespan. This is probably not via the common factor of inequality because it applies within small communities; those who are not trusting but are rich enough to live in wealthy, trusting neighbourhoods still show this effect, even though the relationship between inequality and lifespan has not been reproduced at such an individual level. Trust matters in dangerous situations; white families in New Orleans after the hurricane were allowed to pass; black families were shot. If you're scared of theft you'll keep your windows closed even in a heatwave, or if you run a Norwegian cafe, you'll stop leaving blankets outside for customers to use. The authors mention gas guzzlers and Chelsea tractors, but only in the context of the names: Defender, Shogun, Raider, Commander, which show a preoccupation with looking tough, even at much greater cost both initially and in refuelling. I feel compelled to add my own thoughts about these giant cars, which are that Chelsea mothers buy the abominations because they're safer.
That is safer for the occupant, but much less safe for everyone else. In traffic collisions the heavier vehicle wins, and these vehicles are bigger than an average car. Cars are much safer nowadays, but if you want to be even better off, you'll buy a slightly bigger car than everyone else, increasing your safety at the great expense of everyone else. The reasoning is, of course, that your baby takes priority over worthless things like other people's babies.
This is why we end up with solid cars, and why it's currently safer to drive than to walk or cycle in the UK (although that figure includes very safe places like motorways, where we don't find pedestrians or cyclists, so it's not comparing like with like. The figures showing that motorways are much safer than anywhere else also support my opposition of speed limits on them).
What else can we examine? Well, women have better lives and are less discriminated against in more equal societies. On this subject, men and women have lower death rates when women have equal status, and women's status has its negative effects on women even if they're rich and therefore high status for other reasons. These findings imply the general principle that rich people (men, in the studies on women's status) have death rates that are affected by status inequalities, even though they might be perceived to benefit from status inequalities, since they're at the top.
They then conclude by suggesting that inequality increases the social distance between people, making them see 'them' as 'them', rather than more of 'us'.
Wednesday, 8 September 2010
Friday, 25 June 2010
Baby boomers
I have just listened to a radio programme called 'Baby Boomers on Trial'. It was mostly smug self-justificatory propaganda on behalf of the Baby Boomers, suggesting that they haven't been so selfish after all. So I'll address some of the arguments they presented.
When it comes to the housing boom, partly this is to do with all of them wanting housing, where once people apparently accepted renting. So they suddenly demanded it, houses were built, builders made a profit and new owners experienced positive equity as the demand stayed high after the change in culture. It was a one-off conversion of countryside into more monetary value, combined with population growth. That makes them a lucky generation, and one might suggest that this wealth could be shared.
The argument that house prices are now too high for new owners partly because of the intermediate generation between the Baby Boomers and the new one doesn't spoil the fact that whereas wealth was created for these previous generations, it's still in their hands. New generations can't access new houses because they're owned already and there are strict planning restrictions keeping what remains of Britain's countryside safe. So it was a one-off wealth grab for two generations, including the Baby Boomers. What was lost was countryside.
The solution offered in the programme is to allow others to do as they did: relax the planning restrictions. However, justifying injustice by allowing others to do the same is not a good argument. When it comes to sacrificing the future for current wealth, it's the same argument the Baby Boomers apply to environmental degradation and national debt.
From housing, the programme moved on to inheritance, explaining that despite David Willett's assertions, it looks like wealth is being passed from generation to generation: that people can inherit wealth from their parents, allowing them to get on the property ladder and sharing the wealth of the Baby Boomers. There was the decency to acknowledge that life spans are increasing even faster than predicted, and that Baby Boomers do seem to be finding ever more ways to fritter away that inheritance. However, I think that it's a more fundamental point that if society has a high 'entry threshold' for a prosperous life, the fact that this threshold can be passed by inheritance doesn't make a high threshold a decent or acceptable thing. Inheritance might be an indicator of more wealth mobility than if there were no inheritance at all, but it's appalling for social mobility.
If you must inherit wealth from your parents to have a hope of accelerating yourself into wealth, then only those with rich, caring parents will get anywhere. That is not a good thing.
Similarly, the fact that grandparents are caring for their children and grandchildren does not change the problem that this care is necessary, and that the grandparents' generation created it. Social mobility is highest, I think, when people are able to stand alone and cope by themselves. Society should be aiming to help every man be an island (except for his dependence on society), not ensuring that everyone needs friends, family and rich parents.
Good family bonds are, I have no doubt, a rich and wonderful thing, and that Baby Boomers are keeping them strong is very worthy of them, but it's not enough. Society should not rely on these things, and a process that has taken society from one in which a person can fend for himself to one in which support is necessary is a bad process.
The programme even brought up the argument that old people retiring and drawing pensions is a good thing, because it frees up their jobs for the new generation. If jobs were a finite resource, it might be a good argument. But since both the old and new generations should be working, it holds no weight at all. Jobs can be created, and should be. I don't know how long they searched for young people suggesting that old people should retire, but it's a stupid and entirely flawed argument, and to trot these people out as justification for the excessive pensions burden is not a real response to the sensible arguments being made. Pensions were introduced when people lived a year beyond the retirement age (on average). People now live 20 years beyond it. It's no wonder that this great pyramid scheme is looking unsavoury. Adjustment of the retirement age is vital to prevent this giant injustice from burdening the coming generations.
Finally, of course, we get to the spurious and specious arguments about quality of life. Let me summarise them: 'since they're going to have better lives anyway, we can't have done anything wrong'.
It's the same argument that would justify a thief stealing from a rich man, a drug addict burgling a house or a soldier deserting during the race to Berlin. The rich man will have a better life despite the thief. The home-owner will probably still be happier and wealthier than the addict, and the war will be won nonetheless.
However, those things are irrelevant to whether it's right or wrong to do the actions I've mentioned.
Living standards have risen each generation (probably with an exception or two) for hundreds of years. With each technology that's invented, more possibilities arise for how to spend one's free time, or how to fend off the mishaps of life. This is a normal process, and the fact that the newest generation will have better lives (in this respect) than the Baby Boomers does not justify the reckless squandering of the environmental and financial future. This is in addition to the consideration that GDP growth is hardly a useful measure of anything except environmental destruction. The Baby Boomers should probably be paying even more for raising GDP so high.
The march of technology is separate from a generation's duty to pay for itself; it is not collateral for the pile of debt and pensions obligations that the Baby Boomers have left the future. When they were enjoying the boom times, they voted for more spending, and now the recession has made the country borrow hugely, building debt that should have been paid off in the boom.
As with the housing boom, this programme tries to present it as perfectly natural that instead of leaving none of one generation's debt for the next, the one-off change of rules is fine and decent. The generations before them kept (or at least believed that it was right to keep) their debts as their own, and left technological progress as a legacy that they had enjoyed and others could enjoy.
The Baby Boomers built new houses and enjoyed a housing boom, unlike the previous generation or the subsequent ones. This was a one-off shift from restraint, protecting the countryside, that benefitted one generation, and now that the boomers have enjoyed this one-off use of the country's potential, they are justifying the new generation's housing problems by looking back at previous ones.
Previous generations tried to leave a good financial system; the boomers are leaving a mess and a lot of debt, and are now justifying it by suggesting that new generations can leave debt to their children, by pointing to the economic growth that they achieved and from which they hugely benefitted, and to the technology that has been created in this time.
The shift from all previous generations' attitude that economic growth and technological progress are things to enjoy and pass on, to the boomer's suggestion that they are things to enjoy, and take payment from the future for, in exchange for having produced them, benefits only one generation; the one that successfully gets given progress for free and yet does not give it for free. Curiously enough, it is these people who are justifying it. If they really think that technological, financial and social progress is good collateral for debt, then they owe so much to the generations before them (especially the generation immediately preceding them, that fought in two wars!) that they should probably give away all their wealth at once.
They didn't get on to denying climate change, as a justification for burning all the fossil fuels, or to addressing other environmental problems, like over-fishing or intensive agriculture. It wouldn't justify it, even then, since the utility future generations might be able to get out of fossil fuels is enormous, given that we anticipate continuing technological progress. Therefore the use of fossil fuels for immediate, quantifiable benefit must be weighed against the vast benefits that the future might get.
I suppose that the radio programme could have been alright, if only it had been billed as the feel-good programming it was, not as an episode in the objective and factual 'analysis' series.
When it comes to the housing boom, partly this is to do with all of them wanting housing, where once people apparently accepted renting. So they suddenly demanded it, houses were built, builders made a profit and new owners experienced positive equity as the demand stayed high after the change in culture. It was a one-off conversion of countryside into more monetary value, combined with population growth. That makes them a lucky generation, and one might suggest that this wealth could be shared.
The argument that house prices are now too high for new owners partly because of the intermediate generation between the Baby Boomers and the new one doesn't spoil the fact that whereas wealth was created for these previous generations, it's still in their hands. New generations can't access new houses because they're owned already and there are strict planning restrictions keeping what remains of Britain's countryside safe. So it was a one-off wealth grab for two generations, including the Baby Boomers. What was lost was countryside.
The solution offered in the programme is to allow others to do as they did: relax the planning restrictions. However, justifying injustice by allowing others to do the same is not a good argument. When it comes to sacrificing the future for current wealth, it's the same argument the Baby Boomers apply to environmental degradation and national debt.
From housing, the programme moved on to inheritance, explaining that despite David Willett's assertions, it looks like wealth is being passed from generation to generation: that people can inherit wealth from their parents, allowing them to get on the property ladder and sharing the wealth of the Baby Boomers. There was the decency to acknowledge that life spans are increasing even faster than predicted, and that Baby Boomers do seem to be finding ever more ways to fritter away that inheritance. However, I think that it's a more fundamental point that if society has a high 'entry threshold' for a prosperous life, the fact that this threshold can be passed by inheritance doesn't make a high threshold a decent or acceptable thing. Inheritance might be an indicator of more wealth mobility than if there were no inheritance at all, but it's appalling for social mobility.
If you must inherit wealth from your parents to have a hope of accelerating yourself into wealth, then only those with rich, caring parents will get anywhere. That is not a good thing.
Similarly, the fact that grandparents are caring for their children and grandchildren does not change the problem that this care is necessary, and that the grandparents' generation created it. Social mobility is highest, I think, when people are able to stand alone and cope by themselves. Society should be aiming to help every man be an island (except for his dependence on society), not ensuring that everyone needs friends, family and rich parents.
Good family bonds are, I have no doubt, a rich and wonderful thing, and that Baby Boomers are keeping them strong is very worthy of them, but it's not enough. Society should not rely on these things, and a process that has taken society from one in which a person can fend for himself to one in which support is necessary is a bad process.
The programme even brought up the argument that old people retiring and drawing pensions is a good thing, because it frees up their jobs for the new generation. If jobs were a finite resource, it might be a good argument. But since both the old and new generations should be working, it holds no weight at all. Jobs can be created, and should be. I don't know how long they searched for young people suggesting that old people should retire, but it's a stupid and entirely flawed argument, and to trot these people out as justification for the excessive pensions burden is not a real response to the sensible arguments being made. Pensions were introduced when people lived a year beyond the retirement age (on average). People now live 20 years beyond it. It's no wonder that this great pyramid scheme is looking unsavoury. Adjustment of the retirement age is vital to prevent this giant injustice from burdening the coming generations.
Finally, of course, we get to the spurious and specious arguments about quality of life. Let me summarise them: 'since they're going to have better lives anyway, we can't have done anything wrong'.
It's the same argument that would justify a thief stealing from a rich man, a drug addict burgling a house or a soldier deserting during the race to Berlin. The rich man will have a better life despite the thief. The home-owner will probably still be happier and wealthier than the addict, and the war will be won nonetheless.
However, those things are irrelevant to whether it's right or wrong to do the actions I've mentioned.
Living standards have risen each generation (probably with an exception or two) for hundreds of years. With each technology that's invented, more possibilities arise for how to spend one's free time, or how to fend off the mishaps of life. This is a normal process, and the fact that the newest generation will have better lives (in this respect) than the Baby Boomers does not justify the reckless squandering of the environmental and financial future. This is in addition to the consideration that GDP growth is hardly a useful measure of anything except environmental destruction. The Baby Boomers should probably be paying even more for raising GDP so high.
The march of technology is separate from a generation's duty to pay for itself; it is not collateral for the pile of debt and pensions obligations that the Baby Boomers have left the future. When they were enjoying the boom times, they voted for more spending, and now the recession has made the country borrow hugely, building debt that should have been paid off in the boom.
As with the housing boom, this programme tries to present it as perfectly natural that instead of leaving none of one generation's debt for the next, the one-off change of rules is fine and decent. The generations before them kept (or at least believed that it was right to keep) their debts as their own, and left technological progress as a legacy that they had enjoyed and others could enjoy.
The Baby Boomers built new houses and enjoyed a housing boom, unlike the previous generation or the subsequent ones. This was a one-off shift from restraint, protecting the countryside, that benefitted one generation, and now that the boomers have enjoyed this one-off use of the country's potential, they are justifying the new generation's housing problems by looking back at previous ones.
Previous generations tried to leave a good financial system; the boomers are leaving a mess and a lot of debt, and are now justifying it by suggesting that new generations can leave debt to their children, by pointing to the economic growth that they achieved and from which they hugely benefitted, and to the technology that has been created in this time.
The shift from all previous generations' attitude that economic growth and technological progress are things to enjoy and pass on, to the boomer's suggestion that they are things to enjoy, and take payment from the future for, in exchange for having produced them, benefits only one generation; the one that successfully gets given progress for free and yet does not give it for free. Curiously enough, it is these people who are justifying it. If they really think that technological, financial and social progress is good collateral for debt, then they owe so much to the generations before them (especially the generation immediately preceding them, that fought in two wars!) that they should probably give away all their wealth at once.
They didn't get on to denying climate change, as a justification for burning all the fossil fuels, or to addressing other environmental problems, like over-fishing or intensive agriculture. It wouldn't justify it, even then, since the utility future generations might be able to get out of fossil fuels is enormous, given that we anticipate continuing technological progress. Therefore the use of fossil fuels for immediate, quantifiable benefit must be weighed against the vast benefits that the future might get.
I suppose that the radio programme could have been alright, if only it had been billed as the feel-good programming it was, not as an episode in the objective and factual 'analysis' series.
Saturday, 19 June 2010
Mother
My dear mother has her heart set on going to the family gathering, after she was in intensive care when my cousin got married. She knows she's getting old, and she has found a new lease of life since she got a computer and an internet connection. Her small world of telephone calls and coping with my father opened up. She still doesn't lead the sort of sociable life that most people do, but the gregarious woman was no longer so alone.
My sister visits her regularly, driving up from London for a flying weekend visit, although my sister does let her frustrations with visiting show in the form of stroppiness and unco-operativeness, and also by spending much of her visits on her laptop.
My mother means the world to me, and I visit her much less. I know foreigners who fly home more often that I get the coach, so travel clearly isn't enough of an excuse, despite the coach having the nickname 'Vomit Comet'. It's a sickening 4-hour drive each way, with no reading to do (unless I want to feel even more ill), and no laptop or podcasts (I own neither laptop nor mp3 player).
When I get home there's always washing up and cleaning to do, even before I start cooking proper meals and making more mess. It's one of the rare occasions my mother gets to eat properly cooked food, so it's not something I could omit in the name of rest. Cooking and cleaning for 3 is tiresome, though. As is my father's smoke, even before we get on to the stress of simply having him around, never knowing what interruption he's going to dream up next. I think I put it best when I explained that although he's no violent, and too incompetent to be manipulative, he's stressful because of his timing. Half-way through a television programme, or an interesting conversation, we'll hear his tramp on the stairs and I can feel the stress response starting. In he'll walk, oblivious (or unaware) of the climactic moment he's interrupting, and ask something inane like "How's it going?" Then he'll dump himself down, mostly in his armchair, but sometimes moving things you've left for a reason, and say something stupid about whatever is occurring. "Who is thta and why is he running?"
"Well, if you were really watching, you'd have just heard his name, and if you bothered to watch for another 40 seconds you'd notice the police behind him and the smoking gun in his hand!"
Or maybe he picks up my glass of water, from which I'm drinking, getting a nice layer of tar around the rim from his fingers, and then step in front of my mother to get her collection of empty tea mugs. Not to wash up, of course: just to get in the way and take them through to the kitchen so that I can wash them up later.
This leads me onto why he's so annoying: it's when he tries to be helpful or sociable that is worst. A dead weight on the household is bad enough, but he gets these things wrong. His conversations range from the racist to the misogynist, are always provocative (stupidly, such as "If I can't see it it's not there" when arguing over whether a refrigerator drawer that had just been emptied of putrescent vegetables needed cleaning to remove the mould) and never get anywhere, since he repeats arguments that have just been demolished like a broken record. So socialising is out because he's either offensive, a waste of time, or usually both. His cleaning is worse. Glasses that he 'cleans' he rinses, leaving them dirtier (c.f tar stains) than they were. When he hoovers, he can never work the machine. When he tidies, he puts things in the wrong place or presents them to the owner for immediate disposal, rather than piling them up for the owner to deal with at the right time.
This is frustrating because you never get to choose what to do. You might think that you're settled down for a film, but if Papa wants to hoover then either you do it yourself in 5 minutes, or you put up with an ostentatious racket for 15 minutes before he bursts in demanding that we summon the repair men (late in the evening) because the blasted thing is bust. So you get up, throw out the old hoover bag, put a new one in, sweep up the mess whilst choking on the dust from the breaking of the old one and go back to your film ten minutes later.
You might think that you're relaxing with a book, but if you hear that tread on the stairs, you might find someone snatching your drink, peering at your book ("Can I have a look at that?" Yoink) and then peppering you with questions such as "Why do you read this tripe? You should read only Dickens or Trollope." or "Why have there been no black symphonies?" If you're lucky, you might merely be presented with a book you finished earlier and hadn't yet put away. Putting it away himself is not an option, and nor is waiting for you to do it, although it's sometimes possible to have him agree to put things off until later. You've still been interrupted.
I sleep on the dining room floor becase my father's lair is next to my bedroom, and the smoke stops me breathing. It's not quite as relaxing as a bed. My bed's broken anyway: the removal men broke it when my parents shifted down a size and my father never got round to claiming any of the insurance.
My mother doesn't get out much, so she's always excited when I visit. Finally she can have nice conversations, go out with someone and do interesting things. She wants to go shopping (bright and early to avoid the rush, which I wouldn't normally bother with, although I will admit that crowds and wheelchairs don't mix, since people assume that we're as agile as a cat, not the ponderous mass of mother and metal that we are), go out to eat, get things she hasn't managed to get for a while and see the big wide world. She wants little jobs done around the house that have built up: get this from the garage, shift that, put this picture up, re-arrange that, re-pot some house plants and so on. It's all very understandable, very sweet and I can't possibly refuse.
All the to-ing and fro-ing, dealing with my father and helping my mother (even heaving myself up to make cups of tea when we're all settled is annoying) makes a visit a stressfulm tiring and busy event. And that's my weekend! I have to go back to work afterwards, not recover.
Meanwhile I've not had any contact with my friends, not done any exercise (I love running, and I go to the gym a lot), probably not eaten enough because my mother (innocently) and my father (belligerently) don't understand how much I eat, and not done any extra work, nor any of my housework. So the following week I have to work hard to catch up: I must keep up with work, do the washing and cleaning in my own home and see friends who I missed in the evenings I was away.
It's hard to summon enthusiasm to see the person I love most, and that hurts. The hurdles are so high. I can 'waste' a week when I'm here doing nothing much, by sleeping in, working late, having quick meals and going out or cooking properly, perhaps with friends, and still not only relax and have a good time but also get more work done than a week when I go to my parents.
I know that some people who visit their parents are pampered at each visit. They might be picked up from a train station (there's no train to my parents, unless I want to take as long as the coach and pay over three times as much), fed and watered, contribute only mildly to housework and sleep soundly. But I still feel guilty for not emulating the frequency of their visits. My mother means at least as much to me as theirs to them.
But can I let any of this show with her? Of course I can't! It would hurt her to think that visiting her was a chore as well as a joy. I have enough self-control not to snap as my sister does, and I'm aided in paying attention to my mother by not owning a laptop to distract me when I visit. The whole house is enervating in a way that is hard to describe. I can make a drink for a friend visiting me here, but when I'm slobbing with my mother in the evening of a visit just hauling myself out of the seat again seems burdensome. It's partly the smell; I remember when my father was away for 6 months when I was a boy and he had a job the old house suddenly became light and airy, and all seemed good in the world. My mother and I had a great time. I'm not sure I can describe the atmosphere my father creates other than as a 'pall of gloom'. It affects everything in the house, all the time, niggling at your nose, throat and mind. Always stuffy, always worrying about what will happen next.
And she wants to go to the family picnic. My sister can't make it, despite us both being told months and months ago to keep the day free. I think she forgot and agreed to go on Scout camp (she's a leader). So my mother didn't lose all hope, after missing the wedding and shifting all her hopes of seeing her family this year onto the picnic. I can rent a car and drive her there. Only I've got to let her down.
My job, which I need not to go bankrupt, starts soon. And I need to be there at lunchtime on the next day after the family picnic, with an 8-hour train journey from St. Pancras. Do the trains go overnight? Will I have time to drive a car from here to my mother, to the picnic and back round the circuit again before going to London? If both answers are 'yes' then I won't sleep that night, which will make my first day or two in my job difficult.
My sister visits her regularly, driving up from London for a flying weekend visit, although my sister does let her frustrations with visiting show in the form of stroppiness and unco-operativeness, and also by spending much of her visits on her laptop.
My mother means the world to me, and I visit her much less. I know foreigners who fly home more often that I get the coach, so travel clearly isn't enough of an excuse, despite the coach having the nickname 'Vomit Comet'. It's a sickening 4-hour drive each way, with no reading to do (unless I want to feel even more ill), and no laptop or podcasts (I own neither laptop nor mp3 player).
When I get home there's always washing up and cleaning to do, even before I start cooking proper meals and making more mess. It's one of the rare occasions my mother gets to eat properly cooked food, so it's not something I could omit in the name of rest. Cooking and cleaning for 3 is tiresome, though. As is my father's smoke, even before we get on to the stress of simply having him around, never knowing what interruption he's going to dream up next. I think I put it best when I explained that although he's no violent, and too incompetent to be manipulative, he's stressful because of his timing. Half-way through a television programme, or an interesting conversation, we'll hear his tramp on the stairs and I can feel the stress response starting. In he'll walk, oblivious (or unaware) of the climactic moment he's interrupting, and ask something inane like "How's it going?" Then he'll dump himself down, mostly in his armchair, but sometimes moving things you've left for a reason, and say something stupid about whatever is occurring. "Who is thta and why is he running?"
"Well, if you were really watching, you'd have just heard his name, and if you bothered to watch for another 40 seconds you'd notice the police behind him and the smoking gun in his hand!"
Or maybe he picks up my glass of water, from which I'm drinking, getting a nice layer of tar around the rim from his fingers, and then step in front of my mother to get her collection of empty tea mugs. Not to wash up, of course: just to get in the way and take them through to the kitchen so that I can wash them up later.
This leads me onto why he's so annoying: it's when he tries to be helpful or sociable that is worst. A dead weight on the household is bad enough, but he gets these things wrong. His conversations range from the racist to the misogynist, are always provocative (stupidly, such as "If I can't see it it's not there" when arguing over whether a refrigerator drawer that had just been emptied of putrescent vegetables needed cleaning to remove the mould) and never get anywhere, since he repeats arguments that have just been demolished like a broken record. So socialising is out because he's either offensive, a waste of time, or usually both. His cleaning is worse. Glasses that he 'cleans' he rinses, leaving them dirtier (c.f tar stains) than they were. When he hoovers, he can never work the machine. When he tidies, he puts things in the wrong place or presents them to the owner for immediate disposal, rather than piling them up for the owner to deal with at the right time.
This is frustrating because you never get to choose what to do. You might think that you're settled down for a film, but if Papa wants to hoover then either you do it yourself in 5 minutes, or you put up with an ostentatious racket for 15 minutes before he bursts in demanding that we summon the repair men (late in the evening) because the blasted thing is bust. So you get up, throw out the old hoover bag, put a new one in, sweep up the mess whilst choking on the dust from the breaking of the old one and go back to your film ten minutes later.
You might think that you're relaxing with a book, but if you hear that tread on the stairs, you might find someone snatching your drink, peering at your book ("Can I have a look at that?" Yoink) and then peppering you with questions such as "Why do you read this tripe? You should read only Dickens or Trollope." or "Why have there been no black symphonies?" If you're lucky, you might merely be presented with a book you finished earlier and hadn't yet put away. Putting it away himself is not an option, and nor is waiting for you to do it, although it's sometimes possible to have him agree to put things off until later. You've still been interrupted.
I sleep on the dining room floor becase my father's lair is next to my bedroom, and the smoke stops me breathing. It's not quite as relaxing as a bed. My bed's broken anyway: the removal men broke it when my parents shifted down a size and my father never got round to claiming any of the insurance.
My mother doesn't get out much, so she's always excited when I visit. Finally she can have nice conversations, go out with someone and do interesting things. She wants to go shopping (bright and early to avoid the rush, which I wouldn't normally bother with, although I will admit that crowds and wheelchairs don't mix, since people assume that we're as agile as a cat, not the ponderous mass of mother and metal that we are), go out to eat, get things she hasn't managed to get for a while and see the big wide world. She wants little jobs done around the house that have built up: get this from the garage, shift that, put this picture up, re-arrange that, re-pot some house plants and so on. It's all very understandable, very sweet and I can't possibly refuse.
All the to-ing and fro-ing, dealing with my father and helping my mother (even heaving myself up to make cups of tea when we're all settled is annoying) makes a visit a stressfulm tiring and busy event. And that's my weekend! I have to go back to work afterwards, not recover.
Meanwhile I've not had any contact with my friends, not done any exercise (I love running, and I go to the gym a lot), probably not eaten enough because my mother (innocently) and my father (belligerently) don't understand how much I eat, and not done any extra work, nor any of my housework. So the following week I have to work hard to catch up: I must keep up with work, do the washing and cleaning in my own home and see friends who I missed in the evenings I was away.
It's hard to summon enthusiasm to see the person I love most, and that hurts. The hurdles are so high. I can 'waste' a week when I'm here doing nothing much, by sleeping in, working late, having quick meals and going out or cooking properly, perhaps with friends, and still not only relax and have a good time but also get more work done than a week when I go to my parents.
I know that some people who visit their parents are pampered at each visit. They might be picked up from a train station (there's no train to my parents, unless I want to take as long as the coach and pay over three times as much), fed and watered, contribute only mildly to housework and sleep soundly. But I still feel guilty for not emulating the frequency of their visits. My mother means at least as much to me as theirs to them.
But can I let any of this show with her? Of course I can't! It would hurt her to think that visiting her was a chore as well as a joy. I have enough self-control not to snap as my sister does, and I'm aided in paying attention to my mother by not owning a laptop to distract me when I visit. The whole house is enervating in a way that is hard to describe. I can make a drink for a friend visiting me here, but when I'm slobbing with my mother in the evening of a visit just hauling myself out of the seat again seems burdensome. It's partly the smell; I remember when my father was away for 6 months when I was a boy and he had a job the old house suddenly became light and airy, and all seemed good in the world. My mother and I had a great time. I'm not sure I can describe the atmosphere my father creates other than as a 'pall of gloom'. It affects everything in the house, all the time, niggling at your nose, throat and mind. Always stuffy, always worrying about what will happen next.
And she wants to go to the family picnic. My sister can't make it, despite us both being told months and months ago to keep the day free. I think she forgot and agreed to go on Scout camp (she's a leader). So my mother didn't lose all hope, after missing the wedding and shifting all her hopes of seeing her family this year onto the picnic. I can rent a car and drive her there. Only I've got to let her down.
My job, which I need not to go bankrupt, starts soon. And I need to be there at lunchtime on the next day after the family picnic, with an 8-hour train journey from St. Pancras. Do the trains go overnight? Will I have time to drive a car from here to my mother, to the picnic and back round the circuit again before going to London? If both answers are 'yes' then I won't sleep that night, which will make my first day or two in my job difficult.
Wednesday, 9 June 2010
How to devise moral principles
Why choose 'death of a conscious, pain-feeling life-form' as your arbitrary distinction?
My quibble is with the link between harm and morality. I see no reason to base morality on causing harm. I chose to lead into this by pointing out that you have already qualified 'harm' as 'harm to pain-feeling, conscious animals'. The more qualifications one introduces, the closer one might come to your opinions, but these qualifications really need some sort of justification. Since the whole argument rests on this proposition, I think that discussing it further is worthwhile.
I think that the further qualifications come not through any set of fundamental principles that lead to them, but in an attempt to rationalise moral beliefs that are already held. This sort of 'post hoc justification' is common (as far as I know) in philosophy and science, but is really not good enough.
I suggest that we start with looking at why we do not cause harm to others and defining very clearly a moral principle there before we start trying to apply it to practical cases.
If we always think of the practical cases as we're devising a principle we might bias our ideas of what is logical by trying to make the principle's conclusions fit our preconceived notions rather than finding a sound principle and applying it in order to decide what our notions should be.
Do you think this defintion holds up for the purposes of defining meat-eating as harmful?
My quibble is with the link between harm and morality. I see no reason to base morality on causing harm. I chose to lead into this by pointing out that you have already qualified 'harm' as 'harm to pain-feeling, conscious animals'. The more qualifications one introduces, the closer one might come to your opinions, but these qualifications really need some sort of justification. Since the whole argument rests on this proposition, I think that discussing it further is worthwhile.
I think that the further qualifications come not through any set of fundamental principles that lead to them, but in an attempt to rationalise moral beliefs that are already held. This sort of 'post hoc justification' is common (as far as I know) in philosophy and science, but is really not good enough.
I suggest that we start with looking at why we do not cause harm to others and defining very clearly a moral principle there before we start trying to apply it to practical cases.
If we always think of the practical cases as we're devising a principle we might bias our ideas of what is logical by trying to make the principle's conclusions fit our preconceived notions rather than finding a sound principle and applying it in order to decide what our notions should be.
Thursday, 20 May 2010
Religious prejudice
I attended some talks at an international conference on science and religious conflict. What surprised me was the lack of scientific rigour in studies of this subject.
I was less interested in conflicts with a religious nature and more interested in religious conflict with science, and whether religion leads to conflict. The theologians and philosophers can talk all they like about religious doctrine, but what matters is the feeling of religiosity in the believers.
Religiosity is an accepted term in this field, it seems, but is hard to measure. It's easy to get weighed down by academic disagreements over pet theories about whether religious feeling can be divided into different classes (questing religion, for example, hardly follows the Western concept of a religion having unquestionable doctrine at all).
I would be happy with questionnaires about how often a person attends divine worship combined with a linear scale of religious fervour on which a participant must mark a cross.
The biggest problem with the research about religion and prejudice is the definition of prejudice, a point made by a philosopher (Ingmar Persson), but in a rambling and extensive way, in which he concluded that all opinion could be prejudice.
I agree with him to an extent, that the work has not identified prejudice well, but I wouldn't be so kind as to suggest that this is because prejudice is a vague, indefinable term. Measuring the effect of religious sentiment on an individual example of prejudice gives no meaningful results (despite the authors' conclusions). The study of which I am thinking concluded that religion can both create and dissipate prejudice, as was made clear in the different attitudes of religious respondents to homosexuality and Muslims.
This sort of conclusion is almost a truism. If something in which one deeply believes tells you that certain desires are sinful, you will be prejudiced against those with such desires.
What we really need to know is whether religion increases the general (or average) level of prejudice, if we can imagine such a thing. In animals the equivalent would be the level of defensive posture in response to strangers. In humans it is harder to conceive of an unbiased indicator because in-group and out-group sentiments are more complex, and so a 'stranger' might not necessarily be regarded as fully 'out-group', thereby destroying the usefulness of any experiments trying to measure attitudes towards out-groups.
If some behavioural measure could be used, without the volunteers' direct knowledge, that would truly tell us something about how religion influences people.
In order to find such a behavioural measure, we would need to assess how religion affects people's perceptions of who is 'in-group' and who is 'out-group'. Only then can we accurately provide each participant with behavioural cues that allow us to determine his responses to each type of category.
The other aspect of the study was the use of mortality salience testing, in which people were reminded of their mortality in order to make them more uncomfortable. Mortality and existential dread affect all humans, and religion certainly offers one way of coping with these inevitable aspects of intelligence. Hence religious people were less fazed by mortality salience.
An interesting counterpoint would be to examine whether religious people could be fazed (and therefore have their behaviour negatively affected) by other cues that do not affect atheists. For example, many scientific discoveries and theories directly contradict religious doctrines. Where atheists might be comfortable with such knowledge, religious people might be uncomfortable because the source of their comfort in situations including mortality salience is undermined.
The use of false comforts and the psychological conflict between knowledge and comfort therefore helps retard the progress of science.
This issue is now returning to previous, more philosophical, musings on this subject. It is the human need for comfort and familiarity, and the subordination of reason to emotions (such as this happiness with comfort, certainty, false purpose and familiarity) that is the flaw in our species.
Religion gives us purpose and absolute certainty in a world where these things do not truly exist. The need to have bedrocks on which to build our lives ruins our species.
Even in science we cannot do things properly. Instead of probabilities or likelihoods of truth we state a result as absolute truth if the result obtained passes a specific, arbitrary boundary of improbability if the conclusion were false. This arbitrary boundary allows us to state whether a conclusion is, or is not, justified in a binary manner. We should be stating probabilities of truth.
We need to accept the way science builds truth from 'truth density clouds' of results in the same field, just as physicists accept the use of probability density functions for small particles.
Science offers us accuracy, when used correctly, with increasing precision the more we use it. Religion offers us perfect precision but with completely ungovernable accuracy. And we as a species, with remarkable disregard for the truth, choose precision of knowledge over accuracy. We choose comfort over truth, emotion over sense, familiarity over curiosity and stability over progress: we choose religion.
I buck the trend of the species. I love truth. I get a little warm glow inside every time I break apart a puzzle and get the result, be it a puzzle of data, a riddle of life or analysing the foundations of a moral or political assertion. My certainty in life comes from the joy of applying logic and rigour; it comes from the truths I have so far uncovered (given the data I have) and the certainty that although the details of knowledge might change with new data, the beliefs I hold at any moment in time are the closest that I can get to the truth at that time.
As the Bible itself (almost) claims:
Magna est veritas et praevalebit
Great is truth and it shall prevail (a bit)
(I prefer the misquotation and mistranslation to the real version)
I was less interested in conflicts with a religious nature and more interested in religious conflict with science, and whether religion leads to conflict. The theologians and philosophers can talk all they like about religious doctrine, but what matters is the feeling of religiosity in the believers.
Religiosity is an accepted term in this field, it seems, but is hard to measure. It's easy to get weighed down by academic disagreements over pet theories about whether religious feeling can be divided into different classes (questing religion, for example, hardly follows the Western concept of a religion having unquestionable doctrine at all).
I would be happy with questionnaires about how often a person attends divine worship combined with a linear scale of religious fervour on which a participant must mark a cross.
The biggest problem with the research about religion and prejudice is the definition of prejudice, a point made by a philosopher (Ingmar Persson), but in a rambling and extensive way, in which he concluded that all opinion could be prejudice.
I agree with him to an extent, that the work has not identified prejudice well, but I wouldn't be so kind as to suggest that this is because prejudice is a vague, indefinable term. Measuring the effect of religious sentiment on an individual example of prejudice gives no meaningful results (despite the authors' conclusions). The study of which I am thinking concluded that religion can both create and dissipate prejudice, as was made clear in the different attitudes of religious respondents to homosexuality and Muslims.
This sort of conclusion is almost a truism. If something in which one deeply believes tells you that certain desires are sinful, you will be prejudiced against those with such desires.
What we really need to know is whether religion increases the general (or average) level of prejudice, if we can imagine such a thing. In animals the equivalent would be the level of defensive posture in response to strangers. In humans it is harder to conceive of an unbiased indicator because in-group and out-group sentiments are more complex, and so a 'stranger' might not necessarily be regarded as fully 'out-group', thereby destroying the usefulness of any experiments trying to measure attitudes towards out-groups.
If some behavioural measure could be used, without the volunteers' direct knowledge, that would truly tell us something about how religion influences people.
In order to find such a behavioural measure, we would need to assess how religion affects people's perceptions of who is 'in-group' and who is 'out-group'. Only then can we accurately provide each participant with behavioural cues that allow us to determine his responses to each type of category.
The other aspect of the study was the use of mortality salience testing, in which people were reminded of their mortality in order to make them more uncomfortable. Mortality and existential dread affect all humans, and religion certainly offers one way of coping with these inevitable aspects of intelligence. Hence religious people were less fazed by mortality salience.
An interesting counterpoint would be to examine whether religious people could be fazed (and therefore have their behaviour negatively affected) by other cues that do not affect atheists. For example, many scientific discoveries and theories directly contradict religious doctrines. Where atheists might be comfortable with such knowledge, religious people might be uncomfortable because the source of their comfort in situations including mortality salience is undermined.
The use of false comforts and the psychological conflict between knowledge and comfort therefore helps retard the progress of science.
This issue is now returning to previous, more philosophical, musings on this subject. It is the human need for comfort and familiarity, and the subordination of reason to emotions (such as this happiness with comfort, certainty, false purpose and familiarity) that is the flaw in our species.
Religion gives us purpose and absolute certainty in a world where these things do not truly exist. The need to have bedrocks on which to build our lives ruins our species.
Even in science we cannot do things properly. Instead of probabilities or likelihoods of truth we state a result as absolute truth if the result obtained passes a specific, arbitrary boundary of improbability if the conclusion were false. This arbitrary boundary allows us to state whether a conclusion is, or is not, justified in a binary manner. We should be stating probabilities of truth.
We need to accept the way science builds truth from 'truth density clouds' of results in the same field, just as physicists accept the use of probability density functions for small particles.
Science offers us accuracy, when used correctly, with increasing precision the more we use it. Religion offers us perfect precision but with completely ungovernable accuracy. And we as a species, with remarkable disregard for the truth, choose precision of knowledge over accuracy. We choose comfort over truth, emotion over sense, familiarity over curiosity and stability over progress: we choose religion.
I buck the trend of the species. I love truth. I get a little warm glow inside every time I break apart a puzzle and get the result, be it a puzzle of data, a riddle of life or analysing the foundations of a moral or political assertion. My certainty in life comes from the joy of applying logic and rigour; it comes from the truths I have so far uncovered (given the data I have) and the certainty that although the details of knowledge might change with new data, the beliefs I hold at any moment in time are the closest that I can get to the truth at that time.
As the Bible itself (almost) claims:
Magna est veritas et praevalebit
Great is truth and it shall prevail (a bit)
(I prefer the misquotation and mistranslation to the real version)
Marriage
Someone was playing devil's advocate, and here states an argument that he's heard many people use about whether we should allow gay marriage.
What is wrong with that?
There is no well-supported justification for the promotion of marriage, other than religious beliefs. I see no reason why arbitrary religious decisions should govern society, since we're not theocracies and the US specifically guards against such interference in public affairs.
Marriage could be said to promote child welfare, except that children grow up best in extended families with large support networks, not in 'nuclear' (two-adult) families. So we're not promoting child welfare: the focus on two adults rather than many adults is detrimental to child (and adult) welfare. People need more than one social contact to live healthy, balanced lives.
So marriage cannot be said to be best for the children (although it's not worst, either, since two adults are better than one). It has no practical worth. It is simply an artefact of religious dominance of our societies. Were we truly progressive we would discard it and promote extended support networks for children and adults.
However, the concept of devotion to one other for your whole life has such a cultural resonance in our societies that the emotional reaction to discarding marriage would over-ride rational argument. It doesn't matter that throughout history humans have typically remained with a partner for (on average) 7-10 years, and that lifelong partnership is unnatural and difficult for most people.
Marriage is sacred in our culture, even to many who do not acknowledge the existence of God. They still demonstrate the responses of those for whom things are sacred when you talk about marriage. Marriage cannot be questioned; it is an 'elephant in the room'.
The fact that if we deduce certain principles about marriage from current arrangements we find some things repugnant (not allowing gays to marry) shows that the current system is flawed.
When we try to adjust it to take into account more fundamental principles, such as equal rights, we find, as I have quoted above, that the adjusted rules of marriage lead to absurdities. This is because marriage itself is an absurdity.
Obligatory Slippery Slope Argument #1
If you break with traditional marriage, where can it lead? Can the same arguments justifying same sex marriage be used to wed three or more people? Three people and a large furry animal? A man and his sex toy (android)?
What is wrong with that?
There is no well-supported justification for the promotion of marriage, other than religious beliefs. I see no reason why arbitrary religious decisions should govern society, since we're not theocracies and the US specifically guards against such interference in public affairs.
Marriage could be said to promote child welfare, except that children grow up best in extended families with large support networks, not in 'nuclear' (two-adult) families. So we're not promoting child welfare: the focus on two adults rather than many adults is detrimental to child (and adult) welfare. People need more than one social contact to live healthy, balanced lives.
So marriage cannot be said to be best for the children (although it's not worst, either, since two adults are better than one). It has no practical worth. It is simply an artefact of religious dominance of our societies. Were we truly progressive we would discard it and promote extended support networks for children and adults.
However, the concept of devotion to one other for your whole life has such a cultural resonance in our societies that the emotional reaction to discarding marriage would over-ride rational argument. It doesn't matter that throughout history humans have typically remained with a partner for (on average) 7-10 years, and that lifelong partnership is unnatural and difficult for most people.
Marriage is sacred in our culture, even to many who do not acknowledge the existence of God. They still demonstrate the responses of those for whom things are sacred when you talk about marriage. Marriage cannot be questioned; it is an 'elephant in the room'.
The fact that if we deduce certain principles about marriage from current arrangements we find some things repugnant (not allowing gays to marry) shows that the current system is flawed.
When we try to adjust it to take into account more fundamental principles, such as equal rights, we find, as I have quoted above, that the adjusted rules of marriage lead to absurdities. This is because marriage itself is an absurdity.
Friday, 14 May 2010
Love and relationships
I was chatting to a friend who was pondering the role of love in her life. She said:
I asked how affection could be idiotic:
I cannot see how affection can be betrayed. Affection is not an agreement or a promise: it's a feeling. It is my own state of feeling towards another. Betrayal needs a prior agreement; some sort of trust.
My friend's reply can be summarised thus:
I still don't think that any betrayal can take place without an agreement, nor that trust is the right word to use about expectations. Trust is an understanding that the other person will keep his word or will perform his job well, or something similar.
I think that one's expectations of others' behaviour should be thought of as being more like the expectations one has of a computer, or a bicycle. If these fail to function normally, then it can be frustrating and annoying, but they can't betray you. On the other hand, the companies that made them might have betrayed you to some extent.
In the same way, I can't be betrayed by a complete stranger on the street. I can be surprised by one, but without the law being broken, which could be considered a common agreement between everyone, there is no trust between us that could be broken. When expectations are not fulfilled it's time to learn and re-evaluate someone, but not feel betrayed by him unless he's made a commitment that's been broken (such as marriage).
My answer remains sufficient:
If I were to get upset with David Cameron for ruining the country, it doesn't matter how deeply personal my feelings are; it's wrong because he hasn't yet. Things can be wrong and be feelings. Similarly, people who feel betrayed frequently have not been, and the feeling, the resentment and any actions following from that are wrong.
I'm not denying that they might be in pain, although I do believe that the pain would be less if they didn't mix up feelings of trust and affection in the first place, but that doesn't make the justification for the pain true instead of false.
This little discussion was with only one person, but I wonder whether she is representative of many people in the world. Do many people believe that their affection is enough to warrant feelings of betrayal? Would the world be a better place if people expected nothing in return for their affection?
That sort of affection is often called love: 'true love expects nothing but gives everything' is a sentiment that is often repeated. But it seems to me that most people act as though the opposite were true: one expects nothing from one's acquaintances, but expects much from closer friends, for whom one has more love. I might even add that this is perhaps why so many people stay as my acquaintances; I do not anticipate their feelings nor respond to their expectations, but remain myself all the time.
I had another conversation this week, in which we discussed emotional closeness and courtesy. One person wanted closer emotional ties and more effusion, and as part of this expected her responses to be anticipated, and behaviour altered pre-emptively. I am of the opinion that the essence of manipulation is the anticipation of people's responses and the adjustment of one's own behaviour to control those responses. I am very much against this sort of double- and multi- bluffing and anticipation. As with any bluffing situation, it can rapidly get out of control. If I am to anticipate a response, then I must behave a certain way. And if that person is to be courteous to me, then she should anticipate that behaviour, and pre-empt it with a behaviour of her own...
and we get endless guessing games about what people mean, and whether they want something or think that you do. It's pointless and silly.
Quite apart from the risk that the ludicrous scenario that I've just described degenerates into arguments or deliberate, malicious manipulation, it makes far more sense to avoid the unnecessary complexity of multiple anticipations and behave straightforwardly.
My friends are my friends because I enjoy spending time with them and because, I assume, they do not mind me. I would not call friends people with whom I had to adjust my behaviour in order to be liked; they would then not like 'the real me', and I would be constantly alert because I would be consciously changing myself, like an actor doing his job. That's not relaxing or fun, and we'd be better off doing different things.
It's a shame that a person expects others to adjust their behaviour to account for his personal feelings, because it leads to all these different problems that I have described. The straightforward tolerance of others' actions and the acknowledgement that hopes and expectations are not the same as binding agreements would go a long way to reducing the amount of argument and disagreement that happens at a personal level all over the world.
The big problem is that I cannot break through with my attitude: people expect my behaviour to change, and if I address this expectation with this sort of direct argument, that itself often counts as offensive and against expectations. There is no way in to start change.
This issue ties in with my thoughts on speaking one's mind and adjusting speech for sensitive subjects, or avoiding jokes about such subjects.
When I say I love someone, I am certainly expressing deep affection for them as well as a level of trust that I won't be made to be an idiot for having that affection.
But I am not convinced that those phenomena are some sort of Higher Plane
I asked how affection could be idiotic:
If the person were not deserving of said affection--if i were betrayed, etc.
I cannot see how affection can be betrayed. Affection is not an agreement or a promise: it's a feeling. It is my own state of feeling towards another. Betrayal needs a prior agreement; some sort of trust.
My friend's reply can be summarised thus:
I don't think I can wholly separate affection from trust. If I can't trust someone at all, there's no way I could feel that level of affection for them. I could feel some affection, but nothing more than the affection I feel for something trivial.
I don't need someone to participate in an agreement in order for my trust to be broken, which may be unfortunate, but that's how it is.
I trust that they will behave a certain way, according to what I've come to expect.
I still don't think that any betrayal can take place without an agreement, nor that trust is the right word to use about expectations. Trust is an understanding that the other person will keep his word or will perform his job well, or something similar.
I think that one's expectations of others' behaviour should be thought of as being more like the expectations one has of a computer, or a bicycle. If these fail to function normally, then it can be frustrating and annoying, but they can't betray you. On the other hand, the companies that made them might have betrayed you to some extent.
In the same way, I can't be betrayed by a complete stranger on the street. I can be surprised by one, but without the law being broken, which could be considered a common agreement between everyone, there is no trust between us that could be broken. When expectations are not fulfilled it's time to learn and re-evaluate someone, but not feel betrayed by him unless he's made a commitment that's been broken (such as marriage).
I don't think it's wrong for someone to feel betrayed, not for something that is deeply personal
My answer remains sufficient:
If I were to get upset with David Cameron for ruining the country, it doesn't matter how deeply personal my feelings are; it's wrong because he hasn't yet. Things can be wrong and be feelings. Similarly, people who feel betrayed frequently have not been, and the feeling, the resentment and any actions following from that are wrong.
I'm not denying that they might be in pain, although I do believe that the pain would be less if they didn't mix up feelings of trust and affection in the first place, but that doesn't make the justification for the pain true instead of false.
This little discussion was with only one person, but I wonder whether she is representative of many people in the world. Do many people believe that their affection is enough to warrant feelings of betrayal? Would the world be a better place if people expected nothing in return for their affection?
That sort of affection is often called love: 'true love expects nothing but gives everything' is a sentiment that is often repeated. But it seems to me that most people act as though the opposite were true: one expects nothing from one's acquaintances, but expects much from closer friends, for whom one has more love. I might even add that this is perhaps why so many people stay as my acquaintances; I do not anticipate their feelings nor respond to their expectations, but remain myself all the time.
I had another conversation this week, in which we discussed emotional closeness and courtesy. One person wanted closer emotional ties and more effusion, and as part of this expected her responses to be anticipated, and behaviour altered pre-emptively. I am of the opinion that the essence of manipulation is the anticipation of people's responses and the adjustment of one's own behaviour to control those responses. I am very much against this sort of double- and multi- bluffing and anticipation. As with any bluffing situation, it can rapidly get out of control. If I am to anticipate a response, then I must behave a certain way. And if that person is to be courteous to me, then she should anticipate that behaviour, and pre-empt it with a behaviour of her own...
and we get endless guessing games about what people mean, and whether they want something or think that you do. It's pointless and silly.
Quite apart from the risk that the ludicrous scenario that I've just described degenerates into arguments or deliberate, malicious manipulation, it makes far more sense to avoid the unnecessary complexity of multiple anticipations and behave straightforwardly.
My friends are my friends because I enjoy spending time with them and because, I assume, they do not mind me. I would not call friends people with whom I had to adjust my behaviour in order to be liked; they would then not like 'the real me', and I would be constantly alert because I would be consciously changing myself, like an actor doing his job. That's not relaxing or fun, and we'd be better off doing different things.
It's a shame that a person expects others to adjust their behaviour to account for his personal feelings, because it leads to all these different problems that I have described. The straightforward tolerance of others' actions and the acknowledgement that hopes and expectations are not the same as binding agreements would go a long way to reducing the amount of argument and disagreement that happens at a personal level all over the world.
The big problem is that I cannot break through with my attitude: people expect my behaviour to change, and if I address this expectation with this sort of direct argument, that itself often counts as offensive and against expectations. There is no way in to start change.
This issue ties in with my thoughts on speaking one's mind and adjusting speech for sensitive subjects, or avoiding jokes about such subjects.
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