Sunday Stroll Along The Canal in Utrecht

Once or twice a year I stay with a friend who lives in Utrecht. The more I go over to the Netherlands, the more I like it. Just walking through the streets is restful. Even when it seems, that the Dutch had started their Christmas shopping that weekend.

Friday Afternoon Around Culemborg

Culemborg is a Utrecht dormitory about fifteen minutes south by train from Utrecht. It dates back to the 1300's, with a market square, a church, a very fancy town gate (bottom photo), a modern railway bridge over the river, but no road bridge, so there's a the ferry that runs from about six in the morning to ten-thirty at night. 70 cents the single trip for foot passengers. We had lunch in a cafe - there are quite a few decent-looking restaurants and cafes there - and crossed the river, where the wind was cold, but the cottages picturesque, then returned to the town, stopping at the shop with the marzipan pig to buy some marzipan sweets for desert that evening.

The Art of Non-Conformity (2): What Non-Conformity Isn't

So we were talking about non-conformity, and how it has nothing whatsoever to do with being prepared to sit around ramshackle airports in poor countries waiting for the pilot of the held-together-by-duct-tape DC3 to sober up and fly the plane, while eating vegetarian tacos and re-coding your client's website. It may sound exotic, and it narrowly beats commuting in suburban London, but it's not non-conformity. Non-conformity in those circumstances would be finding a doctor to give the pilot a vitamin B shot to help him sober up.

Non-conformity isn't about not following rules or not doing what everyone else does. To do anything that resembles an organised activity, from playing chess to driving (even in Naples), requires you to follow some rules. This is one of those points philosophers don't make enough of: to "do" anything that other people can recognise as our doing X means that we have to follow the rules they have for doing X. If we start moving chess pieces around at random, nobody will think we're playing chess. They will either think we're bonkers, or being silly. Even Mornington Crescent has rules - it's just that the rules aren't about what you think they're about.

Conformity is about following the rules when you have forgotten why, or never knew why or just because you like to follow the rules. Bridge clubs are full of old people tut-tutting at the newbies who don't know that a bid of three clubs is never followed by four hearts except when your partner has bid one no trumps and it's the third Thursday after Lent. Professional players will tell you that these "rules" are guidelines: you use them, don't use them, according to your judgement of the situation. Pros always say stuff like that, no matter what the subject. The point for them is to go home with a shed-load of money. But the point for the amateurs is to take part in a ceremony that confirms them as being insiders, members of the club and good social team players. Process is more important than results. (Which is why even now I recoil inwardly when I hear people talking about "process" in business: the point of business is to make a product people want at a price they can afford that leaves you with a profit. Not following a "process" that like as not has no positive effect on profit. But that makes me a non-conformist.)


Non-conformity is not about being random or ignoring common social conventions. If you have the opportunity to bathe on a regular basis and don't, that doesn't make you a non-conformist: it makes you smelly and anti-social. If you don't return things you borrow, that doesn't mean you are questioning notions of personal possession, it makes you a thief. If you do things without thinking the consequences through, that makes you impulsive at best and a dangerous and irresponsible twerp at worst. Some rules and conventions are there to enable co-operation and the smooth passage of business and human affairs. Mess with those when it matters and you're just an a..hole.

Non-conformity is about following the spirit of the law and focusing on the results, not the letter of the law and the ceremonial trappings. Non-conformists treat everything as a guideline, each rule applicable in perhaps many circumstances, but not in all. On a clear road with turns you can see round, why not have fun using the full width of the road? In heavy traffic, stick to your side. As for ceremony and process: those are regarded as optional, content-free and to be performed only if it will result in getting what they need. To a non-conformist, "process", "convention", "the way we do things" are not real. Reality is creation, getting results and making things happen. If there's one thing that most non-conformists do, it's jay-walk.

A conformist gets a large chunk of their identity from following the rules and taking part in the ceremonies. A conformist goes to Church because they like the routine, the feeling of being with other people, and of being in the place. The non-conformist goes because they need the religion: if they wanted to be surrounded by people, they would sit in a cafe. When they don't need the religion, they don't go. The non-conformist is not defined by what they do, and that's scary, if not actually a contradiction, to most people. After all, isn't "you'll do anything to (insert objective speaker doesn't share), won't you" one of the standard junk-drama put-downs?

The downside of non-conformity is steep and deep. I am never going to one of the gang, because being one of the gang means committed, unquestioning acceptance of their rules. Ain't going to happen. There will be something in my body language and facial expression that suggests I'm deciding or otherwise judging for myself. I'm not supposed to do that. Other people want to know that when they do X, I will automatically approve, and when one of the Other do Y, I will automatically disapprove. That way they don't have to worry about being judged they because they know just what to do. I mess all that up, because I insist on starting from scratch every time. And people don't like people who are motivated by results: they prefer ceremony. The merchant middle class that emerged across Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries upset both the aristocracy and the workers exactly because it was focussed on results, on profits and on political change.

The benefits of non-conformity? I can't think of one, to be honest. It's something that you're born with, or start doing very early in your life. At some point you find yourself choosing to be where the crowd is not. And when I think of it, that's the main benefit. And if you understand what I meant by that, you too are similarly cursed.

Things I Saw Where I Lived and Walked: Around The Brunswick Centre

Some Sundays are nearly perfect. The Sunday I took these pictures, I drove in to central London in thirty minutes, ran two miles in 16:50, swam the fastest I've ever swam, saw Mademoiselle Chambon at the Renoir, and had these blue skies to walk under.

The Renoir Cinema has been underneath the Brunswick Centre for as long as I've been watching movies. It used to be one large auditorium with the seats arranged in curves, and was split into two screens a long while ago. It's part of the Curzon art-house chain.

Back in the 1970's the Brunwsick Centre was a concrete wasteland with the little hut of the Renoir box-office in the middle. If you were blindfolded and dropped there, you might think you were in Soviet Russia or a northern council estate. Which you were: a Camden council estate, that is. I visited the Renoir a few times in the early 2000's when I was working over in a City telco, and it was still pretty dire. The Giraffe cafe was there. I think.

Then someone refurbished it and brought in the shops and cafes. When I started working at The Bank in 2007, I went to see a movie there, and was amazed. Because it looks like this...

When I came out from the lunchtime show, it was even more busy. But then, the whole area has changed. It used to be deserted, but at almost any time there are people walking around, even if they are tourists going to Heathrow via Russell Square tube. I've written about the Goodenough College before, so here's a view of Marchmont Street on the other side of the centre. London did not look like this in the 1970's. And I know which I prefer.

The idea of a health store with a pavement cafe being open on Sunday in Camden on Marchmont street, or the Italian on the corner of Marchmont and Tavistock being open, in 1970? It would have been un-thought of, it would in fact have been impossible to think. Philosophers would have given you elegant explanations of the idea of the logically impossible and used "pavement cafe in Camden" as an example of the logically impossible.

And yet here it is. With two Americans talking about "pro soccer" over their cappucinos. Which is something that would have been equally impossible to think in 1970.

The Art of Non-Conformity (1): The Review

Recently I read a book called The Art of Non-Conformity by Chris Guillebreau. You know how that happens. You're browsing, you pick up a book, it seems to have things to say on the pages you turn to, presto! Another pop-culture slip.

I grew up in an era when "conformity" was a grey, grey word to colour parents, teachers and people with clerical jobs. (Oddly, manual workers were neither conformist nor non-conformist: they were "the workers" and as such outside cultural judgement.) Back then we knew what it was people were conforming to: marriage, children, job-for-life working for a bank or one of the nationalised industries or in government, washing the car on Sunday and middle-brow culture. It meant fitting in with what other people said they expected you to do and believe.

An updated version of this is roughly what Chris Guillebreau means by "conformity". I think he makes two mistakes. The first is that post-modern capitalist economies don't want you to conform, except to your employers' dress and IT codes. Expecting you to conform to anything else would mean setting standards and training people and generally making commitments, and post-modern capitalism needs to be able to dump it, outsource it, price it out of your salary range and generally melt it into air at any time with minimum disruption and expense. The second mistake is that conforming is not about product choice and how we make the rent, and many of the choices we make are constrained by the numbers. Most of us have to work 9-5 because most jobs are 9-5, not freelance. Most of us have to work at what we're good at rather than at what we love, because what we're good at pays and what we love doesn't. Following your bliss is viable if it so happens that your bliss pays enough, or you are prepared to live very cheap.

Indeed, the book's title should be "Live Cheap and You Need Never Go Into The Office". He's a web developer and seemingly one of the few who are good enough to find enough clients prepared to let him work off-site, which not many clients are prepared to do. He only needs some telephony to do his job - sometimes, I'm gathering, sat phones so he can dial in to a client conference call in the middle of Africa. (That strikes him as cool, but I think it's a little... disjointed.) He travels a lot - not in a Tyler Brule style. He's not going to Biarritz for dinner at Restaurant Phillipe, but to Azerbaijan, Syria, Turkey and other Poor Countries. His idea of fine dining at lunchtime is Chipolte and he's a vegetarian, which keeps the costs down. He's also prepared to sit around airports for a day waiting for connecting flights, delays and the like, on cut-price airlines. Going to poor countries makes your income last a lot longer, and provides months of comparing your material circumstances with Poor People, which makes you feel a lot better about yourself than a few weeks in Manhattan or Kensington.

If I said that books like this were actually commissioned by corporations and western governments to convince you that it's your fault you're a wage-slave tied to a soul-crushing commute and job, which given your skill-set you can only change for a different soul-crushing commute and job, you would mutter something about "Corporations and governments aren't that smart". He may not know it, but he's blaming the victim, the favourite tactic of the oppressor and his lackeys. If only we had the gumption to Do What We Love And Find Someone To Pay Us For Doing It, we would be happy and unafraid of being replaced by someone in Mumbai. Good thing Chris likes web development, which he can do from a rooftop cafe in Syria, and not Java enterprise systems, which would mean he would have to be on-site right up to the day they at-will terminated him.

I felt cheated, because a book with this title should be about more than working freelance, which is a way of life that takes a particular character and mind-set that most of don't have - which is why we don't do it. Non-conformity is about just a lot more than how you make your pay-cheque and where you go on vacation, and there are moments he addresses that stuff, but not for long enough.

There are three posts in this series. The next one is the philosopher's analysis of the idea of non-conformity.

Audrey Runs In Paris

"Audrey runs in Paris" was the slogan on the back of a woman's black tee-shirt. We were boarding the 8 line metro at Bastille. It was so early, the only people out were going somewhere for their morning run.

"Audrey". It's an interesting girl's name: classic without having overtones of social class, rare but not unusual. You've heard the name more often than you've met girls called Audrey, because you've seen the poster for Breakfast At Tiffanies so many times. Audrey Hepburn was nothing like the characters she played but made you believe she was. It's a brave parent who christens their daughter Audrey. An Audrey is going to be good at her job and responsible without being serious, with a suggestion that she might just be a little more fun than the Fun Girl in the next booth.

"Runs". Not walk, stroll, daydream, swim, take taxis or buses. Not hide, work, play, party or get stoned. She might do all those things, but what she wants you to know about her is that she runs. Exercises, glides over the pavement in her Nikes, sweats lightly and politely, and she runs somewhere particular, that she needs to take the 8 line to get to.

"In Paris". She's an American in Paris. She runs in Paris, and you are just visiting. She runs here, so she works and lives here. She's on the metro in the east, so she lives in one of the arondissements, not in the banlieues. Maybe she works in banking, or fashion, or perhaps as for one of the French companies that own the bits of the UK that the Spanish don't own.

"Runs in Paris". She runs in Paris - and Paris is not where people go to run. They go to shop, to look at the art, to bathe in the atmosphere, to listen to the organ recital Sunday at Saint Sulpice, to walk by the Seine, to walk in the parks and stroll round the markets, to sit in the sidewalk cafes and eat in the restaurants. But Audrey runs in Paris. Audrey does unconventional things, and running Paris is one of them. Perhaps she dances to drum-and-bass, and is into Wittgenstein, and white fish recipies, and plays Earl Hines and Art Tatum CD's in her flat, and only watches Jacques Rivette movies on her iPad.

One day she will know it's time to go back to the States, and then Audrey will run in Central Park when she does, but until then, "Audrey runs in Paris".

How Bureaucrats Make The World Uglier: Example 13,258 of 100,000,000

Those of you who cross Hungerford Bridge, which takes the Southern South-Eastern railways north of the river to Charing Cross, on foot will recognise this sight.

The bureaucrats will say that the spikes are there to stop people trying to jump across either for the thrill or to put graffiti there. And you just nodded along. Whereas I say, it's not the bureaucrats' business whether someone wants to jump across. But it is their business to give us a pleasant public space. Which this ghastly scene is not. They will say they could be sued by the relatives of someone who jumped, if they didn't put discouraging spikes up: I say that the legislation should make it clear that Railtrack, or Westminster Council, or whoever, are not responsible for the stupidity, drunkenness, desperation or foolhardiness of the public. Which means you and me.

You may say that this is a fine line: between guard rails to stop us falling into the river and spikes to stop us jumping.

The real point is this. Every time you pass that scene, or one of the thousands like it, you are reminded that the this country is not managed for your benefit, but for the mitigation of financial risk to the State and companies, and to this end, the servants of both will do what they want, when they want, with as little thought for the effect on your world as they can be bothered to show. You are the victim, and they are the bully.

Except here's the funny thing. One of you works there. In the Department For Putting Up Ugly Spikes. And when you decided to do that, you forgot you were one of us, and thought like one of Them. You left behind your citizenship when you swiped in the door and became a lackey. Millions of people do it every single day: in fact, I think the British go to work specifically so that they can mis-treat and abuse each other, and make each other's world a nastier, more ugly place.