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Muddled minds
Visited my mother in the care home this afternoon. She is probably the only sane one there, apart from the staff; it's like having a mole in the place.
Gladys went on the rampage last night. She told my father, who was sitting in the alcove off the main room reading by a table lamp, that he was using her electricity and she wanted him out by the morning. My father pointed out that the others in the main room were using electricity too, but Gladys replied that the electricity there was for general use.
Gladys had a go at Ada shortly after this. Ada stood her ground but was pushed over for her pains. Gladys had another go at her later on; my mother said she could hear slapping sounds and the staff intervened. One told Gladys to calm down, to relax. Gladys retorted that she wasn't going to calm down, she was enjoying herself.
During an afternoon of painting and sewing, one old woman (no need to say that, they're all old) said that she wanted a drink. She was offered water which she disdainfully refused. What do you want? asked the occupational therapist. Whisky said the woman. Doctor's orders. I always have a glass of whisky after lunch. The staff indicated that she wasn't getting any. Nice try said the OT which made the old woman laugh.
Thought for today
Right from our earliest days our habits of thought and ways of looking at things are being moulded by circumstances almost beyond our control. In the family, the school, the district in which we live, the social class to which we belong, we are surrounded by customary modes of thought and behaviour, which we adopt as a rule without question; for most of us naturally dislike being thought different from those with whom we are in daily contact. And these close ties breed loyalties which we are naturally loth to disown. In later life, we are apt to think that the world in which we grew up was the best of all possible worlds, and to regard the customs and notions which helped to mould our own selves as the acme of wisdom and sound sense, never reached before or since. We refer to our own times as a kind of golden age; we call them the 'good old days,' compared with which the present is decadent and degenerate.
RW Jepson, Clear Thinking. An Elementary Course of preparation for Citizenship, 1936
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8.10.06 20:23
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What changes?
I have found another interesting book among the hundreds accumulated by my parents. Unpopular Opinions by Dorothy L Sayers, 1946. It's a collection of 21 essays. One written in 1938 is entitled 'Are Women Human?' Here's an extract.
A man once asked me--it is true that it was at the end of a very good dinner, and the compliment conveyed may have been due to that circumstance--how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. "Well," said the man, "I shouldn't have expected a woman [meaning me] to have been able to make it so convincing." I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also.
Indeed, it is my experience that both men and women are fundamentally human, and that there is very little mystery about either sex, except the exasperating mysteriousness of human beings in general. And though for certain purposes it may still be necessary, as it undoubtedly was in the immediate past, for women to band themselves together, as women, to secure recognition of their requirements as a sex, I am sure that the time has now come to insist more strongly on each woman's--and indeed each man's--requirements as an individual person. It used to be said that women had no esprit de corps; we have proved that we do--do not let us run into the opposite error of insisting that there is an aggressively feminist "point of view" about everything. To oppose one class perpetually to another--young against old, manual labour against brain-worker, rich against poor, woman against man--is to split the foundations of the State; and if the cleavage runs too deep, there remains no remedy but force and dictatorship. If you wish to preserve a free democracy, you must base it--not on classes and categories, for this will land you in the totalitarian State, where no one may act or think except as the member of a category. You must base it upon the individual Tom, Dick and Harry, on the individual Jack and Jill--in fact, upon you and me.
Thought for today
Thinking is no substitute for information but information may be a substitute for thinking.
Edward de Bono
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9.10.06 20:33
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Sixty-six years ago
Here's an interesting paragraph from Unpopular Opinions by Dorothy L Sayers, published in 1946. It is from a speech she delivered in 1940 entitled 'The Mysterious English.'
England is an adventurer and a collector of unconsidered trifles. It would be true to say that she did not conquer her Empire; she did not even very deliberately acquire it in the interests of her trade; the fact is that she collected it casually, and almost accidentally, in a spirit of lighthearted adventure, as a sailor will collect monkeys and parrots, and, like the sailor, found herself committed to looking after the creature. The English, though they have done a good deal of conquering in this kind of way, have never considered themselves to be a nation of conquerors, in the sense that Hitler understands the word, or even as a Caesar would have understood it. We do not see ourselves as invaders of conquered territory. It is true that if you turn out the Englishman's luggage you will find it full of bits of land of alien origin; but the possessor will explain, with perfect sincerity, and more truth than you might suppose, that he never had any idea of foreign conquest. He was just roving about the world doing a little business, when he came across something, the Elgin Marbles, or Cleopatra's Needle, or an island or so, or possibly half a continent that nobody seemed to be looking after, and he just slipped it into his pocket to take care of it.
Thought for today
But whatever excuse politicians may have for prostituting language to the concealment of thought, there can be none for us. And as a rule we offer none; our dishevelment is sheer sluttishness. We think that correctness and comeliness do not matter, provided we say what we mean; unaware that without correctness and comeliness we cannot say what we mean, but often say more, or less, or the precise opposite.
Dorothy L Sayers, The English Language, 1936; published in Unpopular Opinions, 1946
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11.10.06 19:50
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A poor diet
Watched You are what you eat on telly last night. Some people are stupid. The woman featured, an eighteen year old, stuffed herself with hamburgers and processed food, and was, hardly surprising, fat and constipated as a result. Actually fat is putting it mildly; she was enormous. What was surprising was that she seemed unaware that she was what she ate; unaware that her diet did her no good. A diet like that would make me poorly in no time.
What was omitted was the cost of her diet. Ready cooked food is expensive. She must have had more money than sense. She must have been behind the door when the brains were dished out.
The programme and the books I've been reading recently made me think that we are fed a diet of processed prose. Short sentences, because the writers can't manage long ones without tying the readers in knots; sentences with the meat (and sometimes the meaning) removed; sentences with the fibre removed. This becomes the norm and we don't realise what we are missing. When the fat woman on the telly was shown wholesome food she didn't know how to cook it.
In the library this morning I found a book about citizenship for GCSE students. The style put me off. It had lots of colour, little pictures, and small blocks of text as if the author expected the readers to have short attention spans. Reminded me of the Ladybird books I used to read in my primary school years.
Quote for today
Being invited to people's bathrooms is a popular idea, for you really get to know people when you have used their bathrooms a few times. Not the least of the factors which contribute to intimacy is the fact that English plumbing is still worked by a chain. Every chain has its own idiosyncrasies. Many of them simply defy the uninitiated to manage them properly. Consequently, dignified hostesses, when showing you where the bathroom is and which towel is for you, have also to give a lesson in managing the chain.
A Canuck in England
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12.10.06 20:26
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Mental indigestion
Been reading On Liberty by J S Mill. Those finding Clear Thinking heavy going should try this one. There are few paragraphs to a page (slightly less than A5). It is interesting but, I find it like rich cake, best taken in small amounts.
My mother is in the process of setting up a bank account with the same bank that my father uses. This means that one private banker can deal with both their accounts which will make things easier for me as I keep an eye on their finances.
Today I received a letter from the person who is dealing with opening the new account. She requires proof of my mother's identity even though she already knows my parents and my father has had his account with the bank for at least forty years. It seems that my 82 year old mother who is deaf and almost blind has to prove that she is not a terrorist or someone trying to launder money. We are all guilty now until we prove otherwise.
Thought for today
All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.
J S Mill, On Liberty, 1859
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13.10.06 20:15
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Never enough time
Retirement has not brought me endless time as I suspect many think that it does. How people can be bored in their retirement beats me. I always have so much to do. Maintaining a home takes time. Today I washed and ironed curtains. Not one of my favourite activities but one that needed doing. The curtains look better for it.
There were no gales last night so drunken youths must have been out. On my early walk I passed an overturned wheelie bin, an estate agent's board on one car, and a wheelie bin on the car parked next to it.
Some of my neighbours use their garages to store everything but their cars. I'd throw out stuff rather than do that. My car, apart from my house (ha, what house?), is the most expensive item I own.
A book about the fifties was reviewed in yesterday's The Times. This made me wonder how a particular decade can be considered good or bad when people change from one decade to the next. Even if society changes little, people will have changed because they will have aged and their circumstances will have changed.
The award ceremony for the RIBA Stirling Prize for architecture was televised last night. This apparently is the most coveted accolade in British architecture. One notable absence from the ceremony, to my eyes, was the wearing of ties. Men wore suits and smart shirts but no ties. They left the top buttons of the shirts undone which made it look as if they hadn't time to finish dressing. I wonder how long before they turn up in jeans and T shirts.
Thought for today
The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes.
J S Mill, On Liberty, 1859
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15.10.06 20:18
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Food for thought
Here's an extract from On Liberty by J S Mill published in 1859.
It will be said that we do not now put to death the introducers of new opinions: we are not like our fathers who slew the prophets, we even build sepulchres to them. It is true we no longer put heretics to death. ... But let us not flatter ourselves that we are yet free from the stain of legal persecution. Penalties for opinion, or at least for its expression, still exist by law; and their enforcement is not, even in these times, so unexampled as to make it at all incredible that they may some day be revived in full force. In the year 1857, at the summer assizes of the county of Cornwall, an unfortunate man, said to be of unexceptional conduct in all relations of life, was sentenced to twenty-one months' imprisonment, for uttering, and writing on a gate, some offensive words concerning Christianity. ...
There is a class of persons (happily not quite so numerous as formerly) who think it enough if a person assents undoubtingly to what they think true, though he has no knowledge whatever of the grounds of the opinion, and could not make a tenable defence of it against the most superficial objections. Such persons, if they can once get their creed taught from authority,
naturally think that no good, and some harm, comes of its being allowed to be questioned. Where their influence prevails, they make it nearly impossible for the received opinion to be rejected wisely and considerately, though it may still be rejected rashly and ignorantly; for to shut out discussion entirely is seldom possible, and when it once gets in, beliefs not grounded on conviction are apt to give way before the slightest semblance of an argument. Waiving, however, this possibility--assuming that the true opinion abides in the mind, but abides as a prejudice, a belief independent of, and proof against, argument--this is not the way in which truth ought to be held by a rational being. This is not knowing the truth. Truth, thus held, is but one superstition the more, accidentally clinging to the words which enunciate a truth.
Have we progressed much in 150 years?
Thought for today
Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them.
Dion Boucicault (1820 - 1890)
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16.10.06 20:25
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