I made the mistake of re-reading a book about the Situationists recently (The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International by McKenzie Wark). I'm going to explain why I did this so you don't have to.
Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, psycho-geography, derives, detournaments and potlachs. A lot of their best jokes wound up as graffiti on Parisian walls in 1968.
I still didn't get it. What were they complaining about, exactly? What we used to call consumer society back in the 1960's? The Invisible Committee complain as much, forty years later, about self-improvement and (what amounts to) the ubiquity of the media conglomerates. What is it with French intellectuals and pop culture?
Something about pop-culture in the 1960's made Guy Debord think something new was happening? Organisations were starting to understand how to manipulate the news media. There was more advertising and it was more eye-catching. Even though the Beatles reminded us that money can't buy me love, the Sunday supplements were telling us that some nice new furniture would sure make life more comfortable and stylish. Pop-culture might have been trivial or merely amusing in the past, but now, Debord seemed to be suggesting, it was being used to was alienate ordinary people from each other and from a sense of community and commonality. For the nefarious purpose of making Capitalists richer.
Seems to call for a revolution of some sort. For French intellectuals at the time, that could only mean a political revolution. Wait. Didn't the Russians try that? And it didn't really work out too well. The Chinese weren't doing so well either, for all the hero-worship of Mao Tse-Tung. Political revolution without an accompanying social revolution had proved to be meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Political revolution was no longer possible, but without it, all other forms of 'revolution' are mere changes of fashion. Quite the corner to paint oneself into.
Nevertheless they felt that one has a duty to do something to protest, undermine, and generally not be so damn gung-ho about Capitalism and all its works. Hence the celebration by some French intellectuals of la perruque (otherwise known as 'skiving' in English), of minor acts of sabotage, of not going along with the system, petty thefts of time (visiting the dentist in work hours without 'making up the time') and other resources (searching for personal purchases on the company internet). The Invisible Committee, descendants of the Situationists, suggest communes that survive on a mixture of Welfare fraud, self-sufficiency, and part-time jobs. Even they admit that won't last long, but they don't suggest the next step. And it amounts to saying "find like-minded people", which is the last resort of the desperate.
These are petty acts, literally petite: 'small, insignificant'. The difference won't appear to the third place of decimals in the annual accounts of Groupe Casino (owners of Monoprix and others) or Amazon. That pettiness is the reason I just don't get the Situationists and their descendants. Haven't people been doing this since the first Egyptian to hide round the back of a pile of pyramid bricks?
Situationism and its descendants, Invisible or not, seem to have been taken up by people who don't find their current life entirely satisfying, but don't find it dis-satisfying enough to do anything about it. They do not want to engage in, say, Trade Union activism to improve their working conditions. Many of them have jobs that pay reasonably well but are mere bureaucratic roles (university lecturer, for instance), and they want to believe they are not just drones. They engage in la perruque, pay tradesmen in cash, insult everyone else's job (by calling it BS), and maybe even pay cash instead of card. This proves to them that they are resisting. For what that's worth.
Probably not the supporters Debord and the others were looking for, but in the end, a theory is judged by how it really-exists, by the company it keeps.
Thursday, 7 October 2021
Monday, 4 October 2021
Showing Up
It's a show business term, meaning to arrive on time no matter what mood you're in, how much sleep you didn't get last night, or how sick you're feeling. Showing up is what you do when you have no enthusiasm for anything, don't want to be doing whatever it is, and couldn't give a flying damn if whatever it is never gets done. Showing up is when you do stuff despite yourself. It's when you grind through your tasks and routines even though you really want to stay home because you have run out of energy, and you have no interest in anything except maybe sleep and junk food.
Eventually that mood passes, through no action of your own, and all that Showing Up means you do not have to spend the next four weeks getting back to where you were before the slump set in.
What nobody tells you is that every time you Show Up, it takes a little bit more from your capacity to feel joy and spontaneity. Show Up too often and life starts to turn grey as an August sky in England: you will not know why you are doing anything, because nothing gives you pleasure any more. You can tell people who have Showed Up too often: they never stay a minute longer than they need to, because they are not getting any pleasure from being there or anywhere else. They prefer being on their own, doing nothing that needs to be done.
People who no longer have a real reason for getting out of bed, but work a job, exercise, eat right, get regular sleep, keep themselves alert and clean: these are the maestros of Showing Up. It's what anyone who does not want to become a pathetic mess of a victim does: sober drunks and clean addicts; divorced men whose children are alienated from them; men who are never going to have a girlfriend. It's what people who almost made the Olympic team do for the rest of their lives. It's what husbands and wives in dead marriages do because their religion won't let them divorce or they can't live on their own. It's what kids who were dropped from the band do, when the band gets its first hit. It's what the children of emotionally absent parents do, unless they turn to drugs and booze and promiscuity.
Normal people do not do this. Normal people react to a hard knock by putting on weight, drinking more, turning into couch potatoes, eating badly, sleeping erratically, turning up at work unshaved now and again, having bad days right in the middle of the office, and taking up with unsuitable partners. Normal people can let themselves go, get Type II diabetes, get overweight and flabby, or lose weight and look like they might snap in the wind. Normal people do not Show Up. They expect to be taken as they are, because what else should they do?
Showing Up is not a virtue. It's a necessity. The alternative is unwashed clothes, flab, and Type II diabetes.
Some people treat it as a productivity trick, the way some people treat not drinking as a productivity trick. Not drinking when you don't have a problem with booze is harmless. Showing Up when you don't want to be there is not harmless. It's what strips you of the capacity for joy and pleasure.
I spent at least a decade of my life Showing Up, and it was way too long.
Now I have to figure out how one lives without Showing Up.
Eventually that mood passes, through no action of your own, and all that Showing Up means you do not have to spend the next four weeks getting back to where you were before the slump set in.
What nobody tells you is that every time you Show Up, it takes a little bit more from your capacity to feel joy and spontaneity. Show Up too often and life starts to turn grey as an August sky in England: you will not know why you are doing anything, because nothing gives you pleasure any more. You can tell people who have Showed Up too often: they never stay a minute longer than they need to, because they are not getting any pleasure from being there or anywhere else. They prefer being on their own, doing nothing that needs to be done.
People who no longer have a real reason for getting out of bed, but work a job, exercise, eat right, get regular sleep, keep themselves alert and clean: these are the maestros of Showing Up. It's what anyone who does not want to become a pathetic mess of a victim does: sober drunks and clean addicts; divorced men whose children are alienated from them; men who are never going to have a girlfriend. It's what people who almost made the Olympic team do for the rest of their lives. It's what husbands and wives in dead marriages do because their religion won't let them divorce or they can't live on their own. It's what kids who were dropped from the band do, when the band gets its first hit. It's what the children of emotionally absent parents do, unless they turn to drugs and booze and promiscuity.
Normal people do not do this. Normal people react to a hard knock by putting on weight, drinking more, turning into couch potatoes, eating badly, sleeping erratically, turning up at work unshaved now and again, having bad days right in the middle of the office, and taking up with unsuitable partners. Normal people can let themselves go, get Type II diabetes, get overweight and flabby, or lose weight and look like they might snap in the wind. Normal people do not Show Up. They expect to be taken as they are, because what else should they do?
Showing Up is not a virtue. It's a necessity. The alternative is unwashed clothes, flab, and Type II diabetes.
Some people treat it as a productivity trick, the way some people treat not drinking as a productivity trick. Not drinking when you don't have a problem with booze is harmless. Showing Up when you don't want to be there is not harmless. It's what strips you of the capacity for joy and pleasure.
I spent at least a decade of my life Showing Up, and it was way too long.
Now I have to figure out how one lives without Showing Up.
Friday, 1 October 2021
On Being Lazy
Lazy is unwilling to do work or use energy.
Engineers use the word to describe part of a system that doesn't do anything unless it has to.
Lazy people don't avoid doing things. (That's indolence.)
They avoid making a big fuss and bother about getting whatever it is done.
Lazy people tell the truth. Then they don't have to remember what they said.
Lazy people tidy the house up once and then put stuff back where they got it from.
Lazy people have a routine. Then they don't have to think about what to do.
Lazy people have simple wardrobes. Then they don't have to think about what to wear.
Lazy people cook simple, healthy food. Because it takes three minutes to make an omelette, and thirty minutes to leave a chicken breast in the oven.
Lazy people work for a living. Have you any idea how hard criminals graft?
It's how you do the work, not the work you do, that makes you lazy.
Lazy people use the right tools for the job. It's easier that way.
Lazy people start a new job by working hard to understand and master it. Then they can do it all in the morning and kick back the rest of the day.
Napoleon said he preferred clever lazy Generals: they would get what he wanted done with the minimum of fuss. What did he do with the stupid, energetic ones? Those he had shot.
Lazy people do things that need doing, not things that some busybody thinks should be done.
Lazy people have time to do the things they want to do, because they are not busy doing make-work.
"Busy" does not mean "useful". It means "occupied with a task" or "having too much to do" or just "fussy".
Lazy people work smart, not hard.
And never do today what could be done tomorrow if there's something else you'd rather be doing today.
Because, when someone else describes you as "lazy", what they mean is you're not doing what they want you to be doing, when they want you to do it.
The boss gets to call you lazy, because he's paying.
No-one else does, because they aren't.
Engineers use the word to describe part of a system that doesn't do anything unless it has to.
Lazy people don't avoid doing things. (That's indolence.)
They avoid making a big fuss and bother about getting whatever it is done.
Lazy people tell the truth. Then they don't have to remember what they said.
Lazy people tidy the house up once and then put stuff back where they got it from.
Lazy people have a routine. Then they don't have to think about what to do.
Lazy people have simple wardrobes. Then they don't have to think about what to wear.
Lazy people cook simple, healthy food. Because it takes three minutes to make an omelette, and thirty minutes to leave a chicken breast in the oven.
Lazy people work for a living. Have you any idea how hard criminals graft?
It's how you do the work, not the work you do, that makes you lazy.
Lazy people use the right tools for the job. It's easier that way.
Lazy people start a new job by working hard to understand and master it. Then they can do it all in the morning and kick back the rest of the day.
Napoleon said he preferred clever lazy Generals: they would get what he wanted done with the minimum of fuss. What did he do with the stupid, energetic ones? Those he had shot.
Lazy people do things that need doing, not things that some busybody thinks should be done.
Lazy people have time to do the things they want to do, because they are not busy doing make-work.
"Busy" does not mean "useful". It means "occupied with a task" or "having too much to do" or just "fussy".
Lazy people work smart, not hard.
And never do today what could be done tomorrow if there's something else you'd rather be doing today.
Because, when someone else describes you as "lazy", what they mean is you're not doing what they want you to be doing, when they want you to do it.
The boss gets to call you lazy, because he's paying.
No-one else does, because they aren't.
Tuesday, 28 September 2021
If This Is "Vintage Wolfe" What Does That Make Me?
Browsing the fiction department in Foyles the other week, I found this...
Um. I read this when it first came out.
It's now "Vintage".
That wasn't supposed to happen.
And yet, it did.
Friday, 24 September 2021
Two Shots of Regent's Park
Sis and I took a stroll from Primrose Hill through Regent's Park the other Saturday. The view from Primrose Hill needs more than an iPhone to do it justice, but the view over the Regent's Canal and the playing fields are okay. I had no idea there was so much space given over to football pitches, and it looked like every third amateur football team was out that Saturday. And why not?
Tuesday, 21 September 2021
The Drums Are In The Middle
Where are the drums in your audiophile soundstage?
They're in the middle.
Which is odd, because in the studio, the drummer is usually in an isolation booth. A very isolation booth. Nowhere near the middle of anything.
In the mix, the drums are always in the middle.
Those are the rules.
Because at a live gig, the drums are always in the middle. (Even in an orchestra.)
Here's your starter for ten. All those speakers on and around that big stage. Stereo or mono?
Nope. Those speakers are mono. Maybe different frequencies from different parts of the speaker cabinet, but all the speaker units are relaying the same thing on both sides. (Unless they want a sound effect.)
Live concert speakers have to be mono, or most of the audience would get a horrible sound experience. Like sitting behind the horns at an orchestral concert.
The soundstage on a CD is not an attempt to present what was in the studio (there's no studio for EDM, for one thing).
It's an attempt to create a kind-of-live experience.
So now you're going to mix the first CD from a new band. There's a limited budget for mixing time. What do you do?
Make all the channels equal, both sides.
Just like it would be at the gig.
Then throw in enough differences to spread the sound between the speakers. Maybe shift the guitar slightly to the right, the bass to the left, the keyboards to the right of the guitar, but keep the sax solo in the middle. Because that's what would happen at the gig. Maybe someone wants the chorus voices to be well to the left and the synth to the right.
Yep that sounds good. Next track.
A bunch of the CDs I have must have been made like that.
And a lot were not.
(YMMV via You Tube and your hi-fi.)
Modern abstract music depends on sound design for its effect. Orchestras have a bias to the right where the horns, cellos and basses are. EDM is designed to swirl around between the speakers. Though the voice is usually in the middle, because that's where we expect the singer to be on stage.
But the results all have one thing in common.
The drums are always in the middle.
They're in the middle.
Which is odd, because in the studio, the drummer is usually in an isolation booth. A very isolation booth. Nowhere near the middle of anything.
In the mix, the drums are always in the middle.
Those are the rules.
Because at a live gig, the drums are always in the middle. (Even in an orchestra.)
Here's your starter for ten. All those speakers on and around that big stage. Stereo or mono?
Nope. Those speakers are mono. Maybe different frequencies from different parts of the speaker cabinet, but all the speaker units are relaying the same thing on both sides. (Unless they want a sound effect.)
Live concert speakers have to be mono, or most of the audience would get a horrible sound experience. Like sitting behind the horns at an orchestral concert.
The soundstage on a CD is not an attempt to present what was in the studio (there's no studio for EDM, for one thing).
It's an attempt to create a kind-of-live experience.
So now you're going to mix the first CD from a new band. There's a limited budget for mixing time. What do you do?
Make all the channels equal, both sides.
Just like it would be at the gig.
Then throw in enough differences to spread the sound between the speakers. Maybe shift the guitar slightly to the right, the bass to the left, the keyboards to the right of the guitar, but keep the sax solo in the middle. Because that's what would happen at the gig. Maybe someone wants the chorus voices to be well to the left and the synth to the right.
Yep that sounds good. Next track.
A bunch of the CDs I have must have been made like that.
And a lot were not.
(YMMV via You Tube and your hi-fi.)
Modern abstract music depends on sound design for its effect. Orchestras have a bias to the right where the horns, cellos and basses are. EDM is designed to swirl around between the speakers. Though the voice is usually in the middle, because that's where we expect the singer to be on stage.
But the results all have one thing in common.
The drums are always in the middle.
Friday, 17 September 2021
How To Avoid an Understaffed NHS and Logistics Industry Next Time
The next time there's a pandemic, or some other major incident, we cannot have a crucial proportion of the nurses, lorry drivers and other such key people upping and going home, never to return.
It's obvious we can't leave it to employers to be sensible about this. For the last couple of decades, at least, the NHS has preferred to use agencies to strip entire graduating classes out of third-world countries, instead of training UK-resident and rooted people. No adults in charge of recruitment and training there then.
The UK's time in the EU let UK employers get away with egregious recruitment and training policies. The last industry that messed-up that badly was banking, and that is now regulated to within an inch of its capacity for mis-behaviour.
Same thing has to happen with employment.
Bear with me for a moment.
The Employment Regulator would, on an industry-by-industry basis, review the roles and tasks within each industry, and separate them into essential and non-essential. A proportion of those roles judged 'essential' would have to be staffed by UK resident and rooted people, and the employer would need to demonstrate that they had training schemes in place to maintain that proportion. That proportion is the Essential Role Threshold (ERT). Expect it to be around 95%+ of the roles.
Non-essential roles can be staffed by anyone.
What's an essential role? One which is required to ensure the proper functioning of the society and economy. Lorry drivers. Nurses. Doctors. Firemen. Paramedics. Train and bus drivers. The guys who clean sewers. Telecoms engineers. Supermarket workers. Farmers. Policemen. Judges and other Court officials. Electricity, gas and water maintenance guys. Air traffic controllers. Pilots and aircrew. Plumbers. Builders of all trades. Armed Forces, MI5/6 and GCHQ (for which the ERT is 100%).
What's a non-essential role? Anything to do with marketing, sales, accounting, media, entertainment, fashion, cosmetics, restaurants, sports, and general management. Nurses and doctors are essential, but NHS bureaucrats are not. Neither are HMRC staff, journalists, lawyers, local and central government workers and any other bureaucrat.
It will get subtle. I'd say the people who run the BACS and other banking payment systems are essential, but the people who run the management information systems are not.
Anyone can do a non-essential job. Important to understand that point.
A company with essential roles would need to meet the ERT for those roles. Only legal UK residents with roots here would count towards a company's meeting its quota. The company can hire who it likes to do what roles it likes, but a multi-lingual renting bachelor who speaks three languages and has a readily transferrable skill doesn't count towards the 95%. Neither does anyone with dual (or more) nationalities or foreign partners. Or who has a property for personal use outside the UK. Outsourcing not allowed for essential roles. Onshore only. (Details to be clarified.)
Companies with over a certain number people in essential roles would need a training scheme in place for those roles. The NHS has to have training. A small firm of plumbers does not. People could do the training on spec and pay for it themselves, as lorry drivers do now, or companies could pay for someone to train, in a refund-or-work arrangement.
For these purposes "employing" includes "using subcontractors", so Pimlico Plumbers, which does not employ plumbers, would need to demonstrate that it has training scheme in place to replace its subcontractors as they leave. Swiping other people's staff does not count. (Details to be clarified on this one. Courier companies have the same problem.)
An organisation looking to make staff cuts would not be allowed to cut essential workers unless it could demonstrate that it had cut all the non-essential workers that it could.
Companies that could not reach the Essential Role Threshold within, say, five years of the Act coming into force, would be required to close down that part of their business.
The whole thing is monitored by the Employment Regulator.
The effect would be to restrict employment in essential roles to legal UK residents. People from other countries would still be able to work in market research, banking, advertising, women's fashion, non-food retail, manicure and personal care, restaurants, and a scad of other industries and roles.
It's a thought.
It's obvious we can't leave it to employers to be sensible about this. For the last couple of decades, at least, the NHS has preferred to use agencies to strip entire graduating classes out of third-world countries, instead of training UK-resident and rooted people. No adults in charge of recruitment and training there then.
The UK's time in the EU let UK employers get away with egregious recruitment and training policies. The last industry that messed-up that badly was banking, and that is now regulated to within an inch of its capacity for mis-behaviour.
Same thing has to happen with employment.
Bear with me for a moment.
The Employment Regulator would, on an industry-by-industry basis, review the roles and tasks within each industry, and separate them into essential and non-essential. A proportion of those roles judged 'essential' would have to be staffed by UK resident and rooted people, and the employer would need to demonstrate that they had training schemes in place to maintain that proportion. That proportion is the Essential Role Threshold (ERT). Expect it to be around 95%+ of the roles.
Non-essential roles can be staffed by anyone.
What's an essential role? One which is required to ensure the proper functioning of the society and economy. Lorry drivers. Nurses. Doctors. Firemen. Paramedics. Train and bus drivers. The guys who clean sewers. Telecoms engineers. Supermarket workers. Farmers. Policemen. Judges and other Court officials. Electricity, gas and water maintenance guys. Air traffic controllers. Pilots and aircrew. Plumbers. Builders of all trades. Armed Forces, MI5/6 and GCHQ (for which the ERT is 100%).
What's a non-essential role? Anything to do with marketing, sales, accounting, media, entertainment, fashion, cosmetics, restaurants, sports, and general management. Nurses and doctors are essential, but NHS bureaucrats are not. Neither are HMRC staff, journalists, lawyers, local and central government workers and any other bureaucrat.
It will get subtle. I'd say the people who run the BACS and other banking payment systems are essential, but the people who run the management information systems are not.
Anyone can do a non-essential job. Important to understand that point.
A company with essential roles would need to meet the ERT for those roles. Only legal UK residents with roots here would count towards a company's meeting its quota. The company can hire who it likes to do what roles it likes, but a multi-lingual renting bachelor who speaks three languages and has a readily transferrable skill doesn't count towards the 95%. Neither does anyone with dual (or more) nationalities or foreign partners. Or who has a property for personal use outside the UK. Outsourcing not allowed for essential roles. Onshore only. (Details to be clarified.)
Companies with over a certain number people in essential roles would need a training scheme in place for those roles. The NHS has to have training. A small firm of plumbers does not. People could do the training on spec and pay for it themselves, as lorry drivers do now, or companies could pay for someone to train, in a refund-or-work arrangement.
For these purposes "employing" includes "using subcontractors", so Pimlico Plumbers, which does not employ plumbers, would need to demonstrate that it has training scheme in place to replace its subcontractors as they leave. Swiping other people's staff does not count. (Details to be clarified on this one. Courier companies have the same problem.)
An organisation looking to make staff cuts would not be allowed to cut essential workers unless it could demonstrate that it had cut all the non-essential workers that it could.
Companies that could not reach the Essential Role Threshold within, say, five years of the Act coming into force, would be required to close down that part of their business.
The whole thing is monitored by the Employment Regulator.
The effect would be to restrict employment in essential roles to legal UK residents. People from other countries would still be able to work in market research, banking, advertising, women's fashion, non-food retail, manicure and personal care, restaurants, and a scad of other industries and roles.
It's a thought.
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