I have had yet another cold / cough / fever over the last few days - I've tried to take a long weekend twice since the start of October and this happens and it is not restful.
So here's a blast from the past. Song of the Wind from Santana's Caravanserai album. I shared a room in my first year at university with a Santana fan who loved this track. It's been many years since I last heard it and how is it exactly than so many memories can be buried in the sound of an organ chord, or the exact way a note gets bent on the guitar?
Listening to it now, I get the feeling it was a jam. The band sets a groove, and Carlos just starts playing. That was how music got made then, and the musicians really were that good - they didn't do anything else but record and tour and play - and they had grown up with the example of the great jazz extemporisers.
Monday, 11 November 2013
Thursday, 7 November 2013
Low-Odds Campaigns (3): An In-Conclusion
(Apologies: this is rambling on much longer than it should, but I didn't have the time to write a shorter post on it.)
I've been arguing that participation in low-odds campaigns breeds an Outsider attitude, where one either has to distance oneself from the process (e.g. job-seeking) or adopt personal goals that are not what the spectators think they are (e.g athletics).
To maintain a low-odds campaign, I need a strong motive and the willingness to alienate myself from the common experience of my friends, acquaintances, and family. This applies to sobriety, exercise, job-seeking, or skill-, knowledge- or culture-acquisition. Even getting girls, when done right, is about detaching my ego (so I can take the rejections) from the pursuit of the goal. It's not about self-discipline, "getting down to it", "getting on with it" or any of those cliches that the Normals use. It's mostly about removing the distractions, which, since "other people" are the main source of distractions, is why it's isolating.
That's why achievers tend to be messed-up, withdrawn and otherwise not one of the guys having the craich Saturday night. Getting good takes time and energy. Survivors are similarly messed-up, withdrawn and otherwise not one of the guys having the craich Saturday night, because what they've been through separates them from all the regular people and their safe, lucky lives.
Most people don't want to be alienated from their mates and family. They want to hang out with their mates and discuss the exact uselessness of the striker who failed to score; they want to couch-surf Saturday Night TV and discuss the precise merits of the meretricious competitors; they want to feel part-of, even if it's only by feeling the bass from the sound system in the club. If they don't fall into work within about three months, if they don't get a girl after a few tries, they get dispirited. To avoid that, they settle for jobs and girls. They can settle because they don't have highly specific skills or experience, and they don't have high standards for employers or women. Sounds harsh, but the Normals know it's true. Find me one play, film or novel that shows someone becoming good at something or fighting the odds that doesn't lament the "cost" in terms of estranged friends and lost love.
Do we sustain low-odds campaigns because we're Outsiders, or do we become Outsiders because we sustain a low-odds campaign? Outsiders with self-discipline can and will sustain low-odds campaigns. I suggest that being forced into a low-odds campaign often makes Outsiders out of Normals.
What I wanted to do at this point was issue a warning about how turning entry into the basic rites of social and economic participation - employment, marriage, independent living - into low-odds campaigns will lead to social collapse. Of course it does nothing of the sort. What happens is a polarisation. Employers offering high-quality (okay: highly-paid) jobs will maintain, if not raise the standards they are looking for, knowing that they will have plenty of candidates to choose from. The rest will lower their non-essential standards, knowing that people will simply not be willing to make commitments when the expected rewards (probability x salary) are not high enough. These employers don't offer much by way of training, but then they don't ask much by way of qualifications: they are usually looking for the "right fit". If that right fit happens to have a small tattoo on her shoulder which is only visible when she wears a sleeveless summer frock, the employer will wave objections to tattoos - especially if she's doing a back-office job. And if times are bad enough, a special breed of a-hole employers will arise, offering low wages to exactly the kind of sucker they need - as for instance the companies that employ all those kids to process PPI refund applications. No decent person with a choice would do the work, but someone desperate for a job could just convince themselves they have left some key part of their identity somewhere it can't be damaged, and take it.
The giant corporations still run, but because they aren't the high-paying employers they run with slightly less effectiveness and higher friction than before. The talent-based boutique houses still attract talent, it's just that they also need customer-facing people because the talent can make its own rules - which is why the few customer-friendly creatives and consultants kill in business. I will pass over the public sector - it's a strange land about which I know little and suspect much.
People still try to buy houses and flats even if the prices are stupid high. They still think they have "careers" even if the organisational pyramid is about ten layers from receptionist to CEO. They still chase after marriage even when the divorce rate is forty per cent over twenty years. Boys still chase after girls even when the girls are over-weight and under-charming. Partly because there's no other game in town, and partly because it's the game they grew up with, so it seems normal. Oddly, in some people, this can increase their commitment to the whole crazy system: since they had to work so hard at it, it must be worthwhile. But most people just know they are living in a fake world, which as long as that world feeds them and entertains them and gives them shiny new toys and upholds the myth that they, as individuals, can always make their lives better… as long as that illusion gets maintained, everything works. Until the day it doesn't.
Outsiders withdraw, participating in the economy but not the society. Normals carry on participating in both. Until the day there are none left, because even the most bloke-y bloke in the sales force has had one too many struggles with what shouldn't be that hard. Then we're all Outsiders. Capital carries on - it always will - though it will look different.
How badly can Capital and State treat their employees and taxpayers until those same customers and voters turn round and stop? I don't know. There are times I think the Normals have an infinite capacity for self-deception and abuse, and the point with Outsiders is that we don't revolt, because we don't care. We're the soldiers who don't shoot at the crowd.
I've been arguing that participation in low-odds campaigns breeds an Outsider attitude, where one either has to distance oneself from the process (e.g. job-seeking) or adopt personal goals that are not what the spectators think they are (e.g athletics).
To maintain a low-odds campaign, I need a strong motive and the willingness to alienate myself from the common experience of my friends, acquaintances, and family. This applies to sobriety, exercise, job-seeking, or skill-, knowledge- or culture-acquisition. Even getting girls, when done right, is about detaching my ego (so I can take the rejections) from the pursuit of the goal. It's not about self-discipline, "getting down to it", "getting on with it" or any of those cliches that the Normals use. It's mostly about removing the distractions, which, since "other people" are the main source of distractions, is why it's isolating.
That's why achievers tend to be messed-up, withdrawn and otherwise not one of the guys having the craich Saturday night. Getting good takes time and energy. Survivors are similarly messed-up, withdrawn and otherwise not one of the guys having the craich Saturday night, because what they've been through separates them from all the regular people and their safe, lucky lives.
Most people don't want to be alienated from their mates and family. They want to hang out with their mates and discuss the exact uselessness of the striker who failed to score; they want to couch-surf Saturday Night TV and discuss the precise merits of the meretricious competitors; they want to feel part-of, even if it's only by feeling the bass from the sound system in the club. If they don't fall into work within about three months, if they don't get a girl after a few tries, they get dispirited. To avoid that, they settle for jobs and girls. They can settle because they don't have highly specific skills or experience, and they don't have high standards for employers or women. Sounds harsh, but the Normals know it's true. Find me one play, film or novel that shows someone becoming good at something or fighting the odds that doesn't lament the "cost" in terms of estranged friends and lost love.
Do we sustain low-odds campaigns because we're Outsiders, or do we become Outsiders because we sustain a low-odds campaign? Outsiders with self-discipline can and will sustain low-odds campaigns. I suggest that being forced into a low-odds campaign often makes Outsiders out of Normals.
What I wanted to do at this point was issue a warning about how turning entry into the basic rites of social and economic participation - employment, marriage, independent living - into low-odds campaigns will lead to social collapse. Of course it does nothing of the sort. What happens is a polarisation. Employers offering high-quality (okay: highly-paid) jobs will maintain, if not raise the standards they are looking for, knowing that they will have plenty of candidates to choose from. The rest will lower their non-essential standards, knowing that people will simply not be willing to make commitments when the expected rewards (probability x salary) are not high enough. These employers don't offer much by way of training, but then they don't ask much by way of qualifications: they are usually looking for the "right fit". If that right fit happens to have a small tattoo on her shoulder which is only visible when she wears a sleeveless summer frock, the employer will wave objections to tattoos - especially if she's doing a back-office job. And if times are bad enough, a special breed of a-hole employers will arise, offering low wages to exactly the kind of sucker they need - as for instance the companies that employ all those kids to process PPI refund applications. No decent person with a choice would do the work, but someone desperate for a job could just convince themselves they have left some key part of their identity somewhere it can't be damaged, and take it.
The giant corporations still run, but because they aren't the high-paying employers they run with slightly less effectiveness and higher friction than before. The talent-based boutique houses still attract talent, it's just that they also need customer-facing people because the talent can make its own rules - which is why the few customer-friendly creatives and consultants kill in business. I will pass over the public sector - it's a strange land about which I know little and suspect much.
People still try to buy houses and flats even if the prices are stupid high. They still think they have "careers" even if the organisational pyramid is about ten layers from receptionist to CEO. They still chase after marriage even when the divorce rate is forty per cent over twenty years. Boys still chase after girls even when the girls are over-weight and under-charming. Partly because there's no other game in town, and partly because it's the game they grew up with, so it seems normal. Oddly, in some people, this can increase their commitment to the whole crazy system: since they had to work so hard at it, it must be worthwhile. But most people just know they are living in a fake world, which as long as that world feeds them and entertains them and gives them shiny new toys and upholds the myth that they, as individuals, can always make their lives better… as long as that illusion gets maintained, everything works. Until the day it doesn't.
Outsiders withdraw, participating in the economy but not the society. Normals carry on participating in both. Until the day there are none left, because even the most bloke-y bloke in the sales force has had one too many struggles with what shouldn't be that hard. Then we're all Outsiders. Capital carries on - it always will - though it will look different.
How badly can Capital and State treat their employees and taxpayers until those same customers and voters turn round and stop? I don't know. There are times I think the Normals have an infinite capacity for self-deception and abuse, and the point with Outsiders is that we don't revolt, because we don't care. We're the soldiers who don't shoot at the crowd.
Monday, 4 November 2013
Low-Odds Campaigns (2): Training Not Winning
There's another way of being an Outsider, and that's to get really good at something. The mindset you need to do it well, and not in an obsessed-tortured-genius manner, is pretty much guaranteed to remove you from Normal.
To the regular spectator, track and field athletics is about who can run fastest, throw furthest, jump highest and generally beat the other guys on the day. It's about winning and it's about records. More than that, it's way better when someone they identify with actually wins. There's a reason athletes get sponsored, and only some of it is because they are at the top of their event. This applies especially to the supporters of the underdogs: it was just the sheer amazingness of being there at all, in the Big Stadium, sharing the track with the legends. For most of history, that's what it was about for the athletes as well.
Then it all got serious. Coaches and psychologists noticed that most athletes who were motivated by exhortations about beating the other guys, or the glory of taking part in a great event, only went so far. they got discouraged if they didn't make the podium now and again. They wouldn't train or try past the level required to stay on the national team, and after that, what was the point? The top ten are usually better enough and consistent enough to beat everyone but the others in the top ten every time. (this is why someone invented the saying: "it's not the winning that counts, it's the taking part." With the longer careers and increasing demands of the training and competition schedules - no setting up the hurdles with champagne glasses now -
some other form of motivation was needed. What the psychologists discovered was kaizan - continuous improvement. An athlete may never be good enough to win, but they can take pride in the fact that their personal best keeps on getting better. Not only that, but sports psychologists suggest that their athletes don't think about the occasion, the crowd or the contest. The athlete is focussed on personal improvement, on the minutiae of technique and maintaining a steady, balanced state of mind that isn't demotivated for months by a loss or sent into a panic by a Big Event, party because there's always another Big Event soon.
Now if that sounds sensible? Now look at the state of mind of the athlete. Their validation comes from their engagement with their own process, not with any of the institutions around athletics. Win or lose on the day, it's about doing as well as they can, and the medals and public applause are not the point. The ultimate athlete wins and wanders back to the changing room, oblivious to the event and the award ceremony. The spectators aren't really watching a competition, but a group training session in which competing and winning is just a by-product.
But isn't winning the point? Most people want a win, they want a payoff: a medal, a round of applause, a stack of cash, a new pair of long legs in the bed Sunday morning, a pay rise or promotion. They want to get high and down and boogie, they want treats and rewards and fungible payoffs. And they want to brag on it with the guys over a pint.
That illusion that it's really a competition is carefully maintained and hyped for the general public. Athletes are couched by professional PR's to be upbeat, say good things about their rivals and coaches, and make it sound like they care where they finished. But competition is not the point. Training is the point. And that's definitely not how the regular folk see it. They want to focus on the moment of competition, not the weeks of preparation.
To the regular spectator, track and field athletics is about who can run fastest, throw furthest, jump highest and generally beat the other guys on the day. It's about winning and it's about records. More than that, it's way better when someone they identify with actually wins. There's a reason athletes get sponsored, and only some of it is because they are at the top of their event. This applies especially to the supporters of the underdogs: it was just the sheer amazingness of being there at all, in the Big Stadium, sharing the track with the legends. For most of history, that's what it was about for the athletes as well.
Then it all got serious. Coaches and psychologists noticed that most athletes who were motivated by exhortations about beating the other guys, or the glory of taking part in a great event, only went so far. they got discouraged if they didn't make the podium now and again. They wouldn't train or try past the level required to stay on the national team, and after that, what was the point? The top ten are usually better enough and consistent enough to beat everyone but the others in the top ten every time. (this is why someone invented the saying: "it's not the winning that counts, it's the taking part." With the longer careers and increasing demands of the training and competition schedules - no setting up the hurdles with champagne glasses now -
some other form of motivation was needed. What the psychologists discovered was kaizan - continuous improvement. An athlete may never be good enough to win, but they can take pride in the fact that their personal best keeps on getting better. Not only that, but sports psychologists suggest that their athletes don't think about the occasion, the crowd or the contest. The athlete is focussed on personal improvement, on the minutiae of technique and maintaining a steady, balanced state of mind that isn't demotivated for months by a loss or sent into a panic by a Big Event, party because there's always another Big Event soon.
Now if that sounds sensible? Now look at the state of mind of the athlete. Their validation comes from their engagement with their own process, not with any of the institutions around athletics. Win or lose on the day, it's about doing as well as they can, and the medals and public applause are not the point. The ultimate athlete wins and wanders back to the changing room, oblivious to the event and the award ceremony. The spectators aren't really watching a competition, but a group training session in which competing and winning is just a by-product.
But isn't winning the point? Most people want a win, they want a payoff: a medal, a round of applause, a stack of cash, a new pair of long legs in the bed Sunday morning, a pay rise or promotion. They want to get high and down and boogie, they want treats and rewards and fungible payoffs. And they want to brag on it with the guys over a pint.
That illusion that it's really a competition is carefully maintained and hyped for the general public. Athletes are couched by professional PR's to be upbeat, say good things about their rivals and coaches, and make it sound like they care where they finished. But competition is not the point. Training is the point. And that's definitely not how the regular folk see it. They want to focus on the moment of competition, not the weeks of preparation.
Thursday, 31 October 2013
Low-Odds Campaigns (1): Making Outsiders
Most of the things we do in our daily lives are learnable and predictable: we can learn to do them properly, and what we learn works every time. Making an omelette, shaving, buying the weekly groceries, driving a car from here to there, using the diary on your phone, swiping into the office, making half-useful comments during some interminable conference call at work, booking a theatre ticket... you get the idea. Stuff where your actions interact with Nature (omelettes), or with people who are following the rules (driving), tends to learnable and predictable.
At the other end of the scale is the really important stuff: job searching, number-farming, new product development, athletic competition, scientific and mathematical research, starting a band, electoral campaigning in a hard core Opposition constituency or getting your book published or your movie made (never mind distributed afterwards)... to name but a few. Stuff where you need other people, usually pretty much people who are total strangers, to approve, buy, and otherwise accept what you have made, or in some cases, the product that you made that is you... that stuff is not just hard.
It's random. Anything that depends on someone else saying that I nailed it is always going to have a strong element of random. This isn't the random of competition where I do well but on the day someone else does better - that's fair, that's the game. This is the random where what I did yesterday doesn't work today, where what plays in Putney doesn't work in Woking and positively bombs in Brighton.
Sometimes the random gets overwhelmed by numbers: they have fifty vacancies and ten decent applicants, guess what? I get a job. They have fifty vacancies and five hundred applicants, guess what? I get a formulaic rejection. And I know someone who got one of those jobs, and they are much the same as me in all relevant respects. There is nothing I can do right, and very little I can do that's guaranteed to sink the deal. Name any rule, there's always an exception. There's little to learn from rejections, because the rejectors usually use carefully neutral language to be polite and avoid legal action. Even when they do give real-sounding reasons, those that aren't about shaming are about personal preference - unless I really did turn up drunk or unwashed. It's random.
Combine a process that requires another person to give you the nod with a high applicant-to-opportunity ratio (anything over 5:1) and you have a low-odds campaign. What I'm going to suggest is when low-odds campaigns are compulsory, or nearly so, there are unexpected and undesirable consequences.
Let's say I'm out of work, looking for a job and the labour market has a case of flu. I do two things. The first is the mechanics of the job-search process. Then there's a bunch of stuff I need to do to survive that process. I cut down on expenses and simplify how I live to conserve money; claim benefits if I can't avoid it (it's amazingly depressing to do given how little time it actually takes and it exposes me to a bureaucracy that can send me to zero-hour no-money no-skill jobs just to keep thier numbers looking good). I need to un-identify myself from employment so that I don't feel worthless because I'm unemployed; I learn to value myself because I'm fit, healthy, interesting, have an immaculately clean house (I have to keep busy, right?), can cook nourishing low-cost meals and have read the entire canon of classical literature on my Kindle for free (the TV subscriptions go in the first month). If I'm one of the creative minority, I can work on some low-cost projects. I discover that much of my social life costs way too much and as a consequence I stop seeing a lot of "friends". I discover that my "networks" weren't about me, but my role at the company, and that nobody knows who's hiring. I learn to maintain my spiritual and intellectual health independently of the world of work and a lot of normal social contact. And by the way? People who can't do almost all those things collapse and rot inside. I have no idea how a married man with children survives, but here's a clue: I don't think they do.
If you think this sounds character-building? Well, maybe it is, but look at the character it builds. I no longer derive any sense of value or identity in the institution of employment, nor much from the company of other people. I have survived without the support of "networks", of acquaintances, of social life, and probably without, uh, adult intimacy. I don't have a career, which requires emotional investment, but a day job; I focus on skills and re-sellable achievements, not on making your institutions work; I have seen behind the curtain of the mainstream job-seeking and career advice and smelled the bullshit.
This is an Outsider. And there's more ways of getting there than being out of work.
Monday, 28 October 2013
Cascais
Cascais is the seaside town where rich people live who don't want to live in Lisbon. It's where Lisbon people "go to the beach". The train runs along the coast and reminded me a bit of the run along Dawlish Warren in Devon. Go for the park, the Paula Rego Gallery and a bunch of other culture. When we went it was grey and windy, so not the best day for lingering.
The beach and fishing boats at the Passeio Dom Luis I; a small cove near the Marina; the Courtyard of the Museum Condes Castro Guimarães; a bit of the Parque Marechal Carmona, with peacock and peeling trees; the Paula Rego Gallery; and the main beach front at Cascais. I have no idea what that silly lego building is or why.
The beach and fishing boats at the Passeio Dom Luis I; a small cove near the Marina; the Courtyard of the Museum Condes Castro Guimarães; a bit of the Parque Marechal Carmona, with peacock and peeling trees; the Paula Rego Gallery; and the main beach front at Cascais. I have no idea what that silly lego building is or why.
Thursday, 24 October 2013
Thanks For Sharing - Review
Now this is how you make a movie about sex addiction. A swift digression brought on by a little scene at the start of the movie: one big difference between the 12 Step Fellowships in the USA and in the UK is that the American courts do order attendance at 12 Step Meetings, and it's clearly been the conscience of those groups to co-operate. I was the joint secretary of a reasonably large meeting for a year, I've done committee service and I've read the manual (yes, there's a manual) and I have never been approached by anyone asking to have me sign their card, nor have I heard of it, or even read about it in the manual. I think this is because the Courts here don't regard 12 Step Fellowships as suitably official enough, but I have a feeling that UK AA and others wouldn't co-operate even if it was asked. Can you see the headlines? "Driver who killed Annie (4) pronounced cured of alcoholism by AA". That's the British press for you. Nah. I don't think I'm voting to put anyone in the way of that.
Hollywood portrays 12 Step Fellowships sympathetically - a LOT of industry people are in it, and it's worked for them. But this movie isn't cute about it. Okay, so none of the guys will ever look like Mark Ruffalo, nor will any of the gals look like Pink (who appears as Alecia Moore and is Jolly Good Too). And I doubt there are as many slim good-looking women in New York as there were in the movie: America is the land of the obese. And of course, nobody her age looks like Gwyneth Paltrow. Not even her.
There was just one scene that had me muttering "yeah, right, as if", when the Tim Robbins character has a row with his son after presumptuously and falsely, as it will turn out, accusing him of stealing some Percocet. Robbins goes into a Korean grocer and can't take his eyes off a black girl with hot pants and an afro who clearly time-warped in from the early Seventies, while he orders a bunch of lottery tickets and a fifth of bourbon. Just in time, his mobile rings and he's saved by the call for help from a fellow addict. My problem is that his character was a gajillion years sober, and while YMMV, mine tells me that I couldn't make that much sobriety if I reacted that strongly to anything. The people with long-term sobriety I know are nice enough and polite enough and they do their duty when called on, but they are pretty frikkin emotionally stable. After my friend's funeral, I blew off the rest of the afternoon, went home, ate some cake and chocolate (but not stuffing it), watched Rent and burst into tears over the "Will I lose my dignity / Will someone care" song. (As indeed any human being with feeling would.) That was it. It didn't occur to me to take a drink or light a cigarette. However, I've heard people with fifteen years talking about their slips, so…
I'm not going to talk about the rest of the movie: it's full of scenes that ring true, or are true, because I've been there. The writers clearly know what they are talking about. And if you've ever worried that maybe you look at too much porn, or think about what some random woman would be like in bed too often, or your partner thinks you want sex too often, then go see this movie, and watch the scene where Josh Gan rubs himself up against a Chinese girl on the train. Yeah. You don't do that and nor do I. But those guys do.
Oh, and there was a killer line about triggers. "Anxiety, that's a big one".
Identify? Moi? Meme pas!
Hollywood portrays 12 Step Fellowships sympathetically - a LOT of industry people are in it, and it's worked for them. But this movie isn't cute about it. Okay, so none of the guys will ever look like Mark Ruffalo, nor will any of the gals look like Pink (who appears as Alecia Moore and is Jolly Good Too). And I doubt there are as many slim good-looking women in New York as there were in the movie: America is the land of the obese. And of course, nobody her age looks like Gwyneth Paltrow. Not even her.
There was just one scene that had me muttering "yeah, right, as if", when the Tim Robbins character has a row with his son after presumptuously and falsely, as it will turn out, accusing him of stealing some Percocet. Robbins goes into a Korean grocer and can't take his eyes off a black girl with hot pants and an afro who clearly time-warped in from the early Seventies, while he orders a bunch of lottery tickets and a fifth of bourbon. Just in time, his mobile rings and he's saved by the call for help from a fellow addict. My problem is that his character was a gajillion years sober, and while YMMV, mine tells me that I couldn't make that much sobriety if I reacted that strongly to anything. The people with long-term sobriety I know are nice enough and polite enough and they do their duty when called on, but they are pretty frikkin emotionally stable. After my friend's funeral, I blew off the rest of the afternoon, went home, ate some cake and chocolate (but not stuffing it), watched Rent and burst into tears over the "Will I lose my dignity / Will someone care" song. (As indeed any human being with feeling would.) That was it. It didn't occur to me to take a drink or light a cigarette. However, I've heard people with fifteen years talking about their slips, so…
I'm not going to talk about the rest of the movie: it's full of scenes that ring true, or are true, because I've been there. The writers clearly know what they are talking about. And if you've ever worried that maybe you look at too much porn, or think about what some random woman would be like in bed too often, or your partner thinks you want sex too often, then go see this movie, and watch the scene where Josh Gan rubs himself up against a Chinese girl on the train. Yeah. You don't do that and nor do I. But those guys do.
Oh, and there was a killer line about triggers. "Anxiety, that's a big one".
Identify? Moi? Meme pas!
Monday, 21 October 2013
Grey Skies, Colurful Town, Lisbon
More than any other town I've seen outside Italy, Lisbon is about colour. And just like the title says, even when the sky is grey, the place is still in colour.
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