Temporary toilet while the Mondrian Brothers retiled the Pig's Arms Loos

Apologia by Sandshoe.  Pictures by Sandshoe and Warrigal Mirriyuula.

Granny made a patty cake (it was exceptional), Merv knocked off an extra meat tray (from the pub over the road).

And who wanted to crank up the barbecue? Nick the old butcher. No-one underestimate Nick.

It was he who sent the text message, the one that said ‘HAPPY AUSTRALIA DAY, CHEAP SHEEP’. Sweet talk he can. Useful bloke to have on your side.

That was him who sent his ‘little’ brother to get the Hell’s Angles and poured oil on the burning chops that time (turned them into fffizzlers).

I went out to meet the head serang. He swore Nick was the devil.

But I turned the tables. Invited everyone to the barbecue on condition Nick supplied plenty of salt. He used it with a heavy hand (that’ll be a round of pink drinks).

It was a diabolical mistake to use the Pig's Legs Waxing and Beauty Salon loo,

The Shed

Painting and Picture by Lehan Winifred Ramsay

It is my belief that we have not been led by technology; rather, technology has been led by us. I do not know how to explain or to prove this, and so this piece of writing explores a very simple and naïve attempt to explore this is a possibility. I do this for one reason. It seems to me that a great many of these corporations of innovation and technology that I have been speaking about have been making business plans for our future and then rushing us toward those plans. And I do not believe that they are entitled to do this, but are simply taking advantage of the natural confusion we feel in the face of sudden and powerful change.

Those business plans appear to include the intellectual property of those futures and the power to restrict us to those futures. This is not such a naïve idea. Recently Apple announced its new educational future. Apple’s Future of Education is hardware that will govern the way information will be accessed (ipads), software that will govern what this information will look like (apple text-developing software), service that will governs the accessibility of this information (the apple store) and permission that will govern who is able to make it. It’s not a small thing. This is the first time that education worldwide can be centrally controlled. Whether it will be or not is not up to us, but to Apple. Should Apple choose, for example, to provide the hardware free for the initial setup, the offer will be accepted by a large majority of institutions. Locking them into a relationship with Apple for equipment replacements and upgrades, software and upgrades, educational texts and upgrades, and ongoing entry to the system.

I’m trying here not to go back to a discussion of specific technological examples, but it is difficult. It may seem, as Emmjay pointed out, “driven by the interplay between innovation and consumption in what we loosely call an “open market””. But the “interplay between innovation and consumption” can still be considered a technological interchange, and what I am trying to argue is that any kind of technological interchange is being quickly claimed as intellectual property by corporations. Not just that, but our very behaviour and characteristics are being claimed as intellectual property – and by projection, our future is being claimed as intellectual property. Which might also lead to the deliberate narrowing down of the possibilities of our future. And it seems to me that before we find ourselves in legal quicksand we – the human race – might want to re-establish our ownership of these things.

I’m going to introduce the idea of 3Media. The combination of the news media, the social media, and the search and archive media. It’s a rough picture of the large institutions that are now working so hard to gather up all the data that makes us. I believe that one of the reasons that 3Media is able to rush us so hard, introducing us not only to information in a state of transformation but also to completely new concepts at such a rapid pace, is because of the resourcefulness of our brains. And I believe that that resourcefulness is a sign that we already understand those new concepts and information. We have had a collective conscious since we began to communicate with each other, and Jung spoke of a collective unconscious, some pool of knowledge that resided inside our brains. Perhaps now there is a third, the accumulation that is not situated inside of us but within the electronic information network. It cannot be called conscious or unconscious, for it is neither and both. Perhaps we can call the artificial intelligence. After all, we know that not all life begins with intelligence, but many are able to develop it. So why not accept that our attempts to create an artificial intelligence is well on its way.

Shed 2

Then, not only would I say that we have developed an artificial intelligence, but I would say that we did so because we ourselves had already learned how to make one. Personally I believe that the line between “humanity” and “something new” has already been crossed, and we ourselves have artificial intelligence rather than human intelligence. The difference being that an artificial intelligence is capable of transforming itself. And, again, I don’t believe that the 3Media corporations can claim ownership of that, no matter what they contributed to it.

If we have become artificial intelligence, then how, why, when did it happen? Was it the transformation from horses hoof to mechanical wheel? Was it the photograph or the moving image, the printed page or the footprint on the moon and the man looking over his shoulder, back at us. Was it the electronic transmission of data – the telegram. Was it the fundamental abandonment of heritage and heritance?

Who would ever know. That’s where 3Media should be useful – to tell us about ourselves. Rather than to tell us what they want us to become. All that information – our intellectual DNA, and we cannot get a correct reading of it because they insist on manipulating the readings. Not that we shouldn’t be capable of putting together a new set of DNA to read, but like Wikipedia there will always be people in there messing about with it. But perhaps one day we will get to the point where we can make that complete reading from the brain of any individual. We will have learned from the 3Media how to filter out the individual variation.

So there it is. My grandiose theory of artificial intelligence. Unfounded, unprovable and no doubt already shot into pieces. We have already made it, and we could make it because we had already become it. Some small change, looking insignificant, that long after can be recognised as an actual evolution. That lays the way open for the kinds of speedy transformation that we are seeing now. That speedy transformation that we are told by the 3Media corporations is due to them, but which are nothing essentially more than silly toy gadgets, a few useful but limited innovations, and a gold-rush of intellectual property grabs.

http://onthecommons.org/fewer-traffic-signs-better-safety

Imagine what would happen if you took down road signs and traffic signals. More accidents would surely result, or at least significant confusion and slower traffic. Or would it? The surprising thing is that a number of cities around the world have actually done this, and experienced dramatic declines in traffic accidents.

The idea is based on an urban design philosophy known as “shared space.” When drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists are forced to develop their own natural ways of interacting with each other, goes the thinking, they work out better social behaviors than the rule-driven behaviors dictated by professional traffic engineers. This does not mean an abandonment of design considerations, but rather a commitment to the larger public space designs instead of overly prescriptive traffic control devices such as traffic lights, signs and road markings.

The Dutch town of Drachten adopted this “unsafe is safe” approach in 2007 and found that casualties at one junction dropped from thirty-six over the previous four years to only two in the two years following the removal of traffic lights. Traffic jams no longer occur in the town’s main junction, which handles 22,000 cars a day. The town is “Verkeersbordvrij,” meaning “free of traffic signs.” (I am grateful to Jonathan Zittrain’s reference to Drachten’s experiment in his new book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, and to Wikipedia for its account of “shared space.” )

What caught my eye was the explanation of why the elimination of strict rules can, in some circumstances, produce better outcomes. Hans Monderman, one of the pioneers of the shared-space approach, said, “When you don’t exactly know who has right of way, you tend to seek eye contact with other road users….You automatically reduce your speed, you have contact with other people and you take greater care.”

The idea is to return public spaces to people in order to encourage them to take greater personal responsibility. Monderman explained, “We’re losing our capacity for socially responsible behavior….The greater the number of prescriptions, the more people’s sense of personal responsibility dwindles.”

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,448747,00.html

A project implemented by the European Union is currently seeing seven cities and regions clear-cutting their forest of traffic signs. Ejby, in Denmark, is participating in the experiment, as are Ipswich in England and the Belgian town of Ostende.

The utopia has already become a reality in Makkinga, in the Dutch province of Western Frisia. A sign by the entrance to the small town (population 1,000) reads “Verkeersbordvrij” — “free of traffic signs.” Cars bumble unhurriedly over precision-trimmed granite cobblestones. Stop signs and direction signs are nowhere to be seen. There are neither parking meters nor stopping restrictions. There aren’t even any lines painted on the streets.

The plans derive inspiration and motivation from a large-scale experiment in the town of Drachten in the Netherlands, which has 45,000 inhabitants. There, cars have already been driving over red natural stone for years. Cyclists dutifully raise their arm when they want to make a turn, and drivers communicate by hand signs, nods and waving.

“More than half of our signs have already been scrapped,” says traffic planner Koop Kerkstra. “Only two out of our original 18 traffic light crossings are left, and we’ve converted them to roundabouts.” Now traffic is regulated by only two rules in Drachten: “Yield to the right” and “Get in someone’s way and you’ll be towed.”

Strange as it may seem, the number of accidents has declined dramatically. Experts from Argentina and the United States have visited Drachten. Even London has expressed an interest in this new example of automobile anarchy. And the model is being tested in the British capital’s Kensington neighborhood.

The Garden

Painting and Story by Lehan Winifred Ramsay

I don’t believe that technological innovation has been as profoundly important to us as we have been to it. It was we who had the idea that we wanted our horses to go faster, and no doubt it was also we who first thought to put those wheels on them. And then we wanted better typewriters, and fewer filing cabinets, and calculators that didn’t have to start each time from nothing. We wanted it, and we talked about it, and it was our words and our ideas that were taken up by people with ideas themselves on how to do it.

But let me get this straight. Am I saying that these people were not geniuses, not inventors, not the owners of these ideas? Clearly they were intelligent, at least in a few areas, and they were great engineers of those ideas. Personally I would say that they were not the owners of these ideas. But they likely have copyrights and patents: intellectual property.

Societal regulations for unique ideas and products may say differently. Societal regulations are, like us, unable to think of everything.

Societal regulations have never been interested in how taking note of how quickly and how strongly a product takes hold. Given that people appear to be naturally cautious, could that not be an indication of how strongly the idea was rooted to begin with? The fact that Facebook takes off in Harvard University, for example. It is clear that Harvard University was a good environment for producing Facebook. Might it also have been a particularly alienating and lonely environment, and might that have caused a lot of people to talk about needing friends, talk about what kinds of friends they wanted? Might it also have been a community of particularly systems-oriented people, particular about the conditions they needed for friendship, wanting simple procedures and choices?

The news media and the social media and the fishing (storage and search) media have spent a lot of time telling us that they had provided us with a service and did not know how to make money from us. They spent several years in this state, oh poor us, oh poor us. They first collected up our data. Used it to give us advertising. Sold the data on. Used it to develop new versions of their technology. Launched “business class” preferential paid options. Made business collaborations with hardware and software producing companies.

Pushed out competition. Finally some came to us cap in hand. We must ask you for a service fee. And we gave it to them, feeling guilty that we had got so much from them without paying for it. It is important to remember that the value of a free product is particularly high.

It is so often the case these days that you can access your subscription news media if you log in to your Facebook account. There is no longer a question of conflict of interest – once you get inside you will find your Facebook all over the place. The relevance and importance of news is measured by how many people access it, access increases toward the top of the site, the top of the site is where important news is, the more important the news the more people will access it, the organisations with access to the most information are the social media and fishing media sites. Press releases and product reviews sounding like a long lunch date.

And you will go to another newspaper and find the same story. My assumption is always that they are simply sharing stories. But I consider that I might be wrong here: they may not be sharing anything. Good news media needs good networks. It may simply be that behind every good news media editor is a press release. A well written and informative – even entertaining press release that needs no editing. For what is editing? “nonsensical sentences, remarks without interest or importance, banalities mistaken for profundities, ordinary “points” confused with singular “points”, badly posed or distorted problems…”1 a press release will contain little to correct.

We’ve recently found ourselves reassessing the business ethics of Rupert Murdoch’s media conglomerate. It had become increasingly clear that Murdoch’s media was crossing the line between ethical and unethical business, but we learned that the line between ethical and illegal business had also been crossed. A great opportunity to go back and look at the ways in which we became accustomed to and accepting of misbehaviour. What is more surprising is the liberties that our online masters can take with our information, our data.

Publicly announcing it, constantly shifting the rules, and then putting out a press release about just how much money they expect to make from it. It’s awesome.
Awesome too is how much bad business creep there is in the media world. Apple products have constant problems with cables, for example. They have been designed to death, but at the expense of durability, they have very short lives and they generally can’t be kept for the next model. The Apple phones, another example, are built not only for a short physical life but also for a short desirability life, until the next sexy model (no co-incidence there) appears on the stage and catwalk (no co-incidence there) in the hand of the boss (sigh).

Design has been revolutionised by Apple. It has been stripped of “durable” and “sensible”, and “makes economic sense”. However did they do that, it’s simply brilliant. sigh.

Considering our strong views on environmental issues we are really quite circumspect about our own wastefulness. But then, considering our strong interest in technological advancement we are incredibly unaware of just how much it is led by us. It is maybe time to get a little more arrogant, strut around like a Startup CEO, start acting like the boss, make the big decision not to buy the product that gives you an erection, read the small print on everything, and talk back to the media. All of it.

1 Marks: Gilles Deleuze: Vitalism and Multiplicity, 23.

Landscape with Souvenir

Painting and Story by Lehan Winifred Ramsay

Technology and innovation, that’s all we seem to hear about in the online newspapers, the “news media”, particularly their value and societal worth. That’s not surprising given that these online newspapers are constructed from technology and constantly being innovated. They would have us believe that their presence is newsworthy. They had profitability in their paper media until they went online – they went online with a business model that at first was not successful, and so their profitability and the success of online commercial business are tied together.

In the meantime, “social media” also became socially successful whilst still struggling with commercial success, and so the two media joined up.

One of the characteristics of electronic information is speed, and speed is what we are being dealt. Technology and innovation interests – the makers of technology, assisted by the news media and the social media – try to speed us up. Rushing us toward an evolved life, changing our perception in tiny but very fast increments. Any social issue or social change that is now “in the news” is one that has a strong backing of people with the ability to get into the news, to make the news, to write the news and to re-write the news to fit in their issue. Which means that media people, and tech and innovation people, and social media people, are indeed extremely powerful at present.

They can run their issues like campaigns, and they do. One method that we are being particularly assaulted with at present is using the data on our online habits to feed us with a kind of information that you could almost call “familial”. It is no secret that the news and social organs of the web would like to lead us to things we want to buy. So if we put the word cow online, cows will appear online. And if we are being particularly naïve, innocent or careless, we will not hold some scepticism about the presence of all these cows but will merely accept them happily. So we have the impression that we have choice, and that our online environment is familial. Really we are being manipulated in a particularly silly and obvious way, by our online hosts and their magic tricks.

Of course, news media have always disguised promotion, advertising and press releases as news. Social media is doing nothing that is more exploitative than what dating companies or dodgy motivational products have always done. Technology and innovation businesses appear to have better designed and valued products than in the past.

There is a creep, a slow but insidious drip, a flooding, a dividing up of the internet. At present it is in the interests of those businesses to smother you in attention. Once they have your commercial measure there will be no great reason to continue with this. Once they have the measure of you you are not going to change substantially and require more attention. Once the “online DNA” has been figured out, there will be no courting of your information. There will be formulaic and systematic programming. And it is likely that our online world will suddenly and shockingly slow down. But that’s not much of a guess.

That’s pretty normal business practice.

Not much is new, a great deal of this technology and innovation is smoke and mirrors, very simple ideas cloaked in DESIGN and EXPENSE. A great deal of it is semantic change; the same as before, but given a different meaning. Because it is cased in technology and innovation, in a box or a program or a service, it can be licensed, it can be patented and copyrighted, it becomes intellectual property. Not our property, though. I believe we will have less ability to ask for change, in the online world, once it gets through this frenzied adolescence.

What I start to feel as I read and read through this fast-paced activity online, is that we are being fooled. And foolish. I don’t believe that technological innovation has been as profoundly important to us as we are told. It’s true that we have changed; our perceptions and understandings and capabilities have changed. But I don’t believe that technology and innovation caused our perceptions and understandings and capabilities to change. I believe that our perceptions, understandings and capabilities caused the technology and innovation.

We love people who Think Different. And we know where Thinking Different is supposed to lead us. To Apple. Apple, in its Think Different campaign, used people like Mother Theresa and Ghandi to express its meaning of “Thinking Different”. Now after the death of Steve Jobs we can understand that included in that lineup is Jobs himself. But I don’t believe that Jobs changed us. I believe that we changed Jobs. It was us that he used, after all. It is we who created Gates, and Zuckerberg, and all our self-made Visionaries of the New World. We had already changed, that’s why they were able to make all that money from us.

I don’t agree with the way corporations are dividing up our Online world amongst themselves. I don’t agree with the open discussion of how those same corporations plan to divide up our Moon amongst themselves. I believe that we are being a little too polite here, and a little too accepting of the press releases that pass for intelligent discussion. I don’t want to have to go to them and ask them to stop what they are doing. I would like them to figure it out for themselves.

Don’t you wish that too?

Playlist by Algernon – apologies for being late by Emmjay

By the time you read this I’ll be back from travelling in time back to 1982 to West Australia. Todays offering are all Australian for the post-Australia Day recovery weekend at the Pig’s Arms.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVMzCcgAAkA

I remember  you – Frank Ifield

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYIMvOVZ2Q8

The rain tumbles down in July – Slim Dusty

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgWGQTcDFLk

Teach me how to Fly – Jeff St John

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e88n68HviAE&feature=fvst

Spicks and Specks – Bee Gees

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKMGSj_j4lc

St Louis – The Easybeats

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv24elfqC-I

Khe Sanh – Cold Chisel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvAtbkDdeyI

The shores of Botany bay – the Bushwackers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM2eNHuWh7Q

The Diamantina Drover – Redgum

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG74cOf5-EM

Girls on the Avenue – Richard Clapton

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i76J4kO8eCA

Cattle and cane – Jimmy Little and Karma County

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-mQyRuHIuA

Under the milky way tonight – The Church

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjTY8ildtFU

Where the Wild Roses Grow – Nick Cave & Kylie Minogue

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heQi0AZBH-0

Tomorrow – Silverchair

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IBKOvyIll8

Dear Prudence – Doug Parkinson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMSyumchMWA

Boys in town – Divinyls

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tlnz95SZwBk

Stares and whispers – Renne Geyer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLbyaNbhHdU

Know your product – The Saints

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWR5n-ZT4xI&feature=related

Aloha Steve & Danno – Radio Birdman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML9h3I5Uktw

This is Australia – Gangajang

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bPQAWZFZlM

TNT – AC/DC

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Scn934CwsM

Women in Uniform – Skyhooks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeG-hNXXy6I

Down Under – Men at work

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9lzOYJXUkM

Bury me deep in Love – The Triffids

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bqAWH5JWWI&feature=related

Streets of your town – The Go-Betweens

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mkidP2OUCk

Great southern land – Icehouse

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0Yw0LPb204&feature=related

Lets kiss like angels do – Wendy Matthews

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq9On3uYI8Q

Little bird – Kasey Chambers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWrW3qJ2HOA&feature=related

Run to paradise – The Choirboys

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO7n2m8O_og

Power and Passion – Midnight Oil

Quilted Robot

I remember reading about how Australians began to embrace investment after they were made to keep superannuation funds. And then every Australian seemed to become a real estate junkie. Now if they are reading anything at all they are every day becoming well-trained specialists in recognizing that opportunity that will change their lives. Technology, education, age management, management… never ending self-improvements.

I think that facebook is training us on how to make our friends into assets. Useful, useable, tradeable commercial assets. We are learning to think about them differently, to understand the rules governing successful management of friend assets, to understand the financial potential in them. One of the rules of Asset Management of Friends is: never lose one.

It seems to me that the next thing to be “assetted” will be love. Sex, sexual relationships, marriage, partnership. We are so good at learning now, we will be excellent students. But I doubt the Asset Management of Lovers will say “never lose one”. It is clearly financially beneficial to have a marriage system that allows you to move up and up through relationships, gathering assets. So we will need to learn how to do that properly, and our marriage system will need adjustment to make it work for us, rather than against us.

If you’ve ever read one of those motivational (self help for the “activity” disability) books you’ll probably remember all the categories that you need to do a little in at a time. Things like planning, relating to people, negotiation, investment, time management. 

Now take the time to read through The Age, or The Sydney Morning Herald. They seem to have reformed themselves into daily motivational trainers for us. Is that what we are, now? People whose single desire is to improve, in clearly recognisable steps? Like the steps in a flower arrangement school, each with its own certificate (TAFE approved, RPL available).

It’s curious. At the moment there’s an article about air travel. Get over it and get on with it, they say. Another view might be: actually you’ve been SOLD travel as one of the ultimate rewards for your endeavours. And often it’s not fun at all! It’s actually a time where you get even more marketed and under-rewarded than normal! In fact, it could be argued that it is neither attractive NOR desirable! It’s just that it’s such a great little money-maker, and for you, a great way to learn how to stick to a goal.

One time I deliberately took a bad holiday – planned it from beginning to end and stuck with it. Why would I do that? I think it’s because I’m a particularly good learner.
Did you ever notice that you used to have interest in the dumbest, most unsharable things? And now there’s an online shop for it. Chewing match heads. Go do your research.

Weirdly, it all looks much the same until you take a look in another country. Ebay, for example. Who are all these scammers, you think. And then, once you’ve got the picture, you see it all over the place, right here in your own place. Stop telling me about those match heads, you think. I just used to like them, that’s all. And now those scammers won’t let it go.

Yesterday I went to a Vinnies and they had a skirt there for $25. It was a lovely skirt. Can you make this a little cheaper, I said, because I’m unemployed. No. We can’t. Someone came out from out the back and said: oh, we had to put that price on there, it was brand new. Yes I understand that it was brand new. I can see it is such good quality. But I am unemployed. Can you make this a little cheaper? No. We can’t. We get this high price so we can run our charity programs for the poor. Yes, I can understand that you get the money to run programs to provide charity for the poor. But I am poor. And I am asking you for help by going into your charity shop and buying the clothes that you have received for nothing. And I am now not even able to be your customer. Only your client. I am too poor for a Vinnies shop.

Newspapers read more like the kind of newsletters you can subscribe to. Which is important, because that’s what their business plan is, to make little tailor made newsletters for each and every one of us. So if you’ve noticed that, you’re with the program.

I write about Vinnies, it is snatched upon by the Facebook Fairies (oh look! a Product!) there is a “Vinnies Vogue” story in my personalized AGE within a few minutes. Sadly, they do not recognize that I am too poor to shop at Vinnies. Perhaps this is the aspirational lesson plan.

I am a little sad about newspapers, reading them was one of my great passions. It was nice when they came on sheets of paper. If you got up to go to the toilet, the same story would be on the page when you came back. It’s those trivial things that we become nostalgic for.

And BOOM! A nostalgia section! Being sad is now flagged as a super-potential marketing opportunity. So my disappointment is of great interest. Perhaps having something interested in me will help that sadness anyway? My own personalized self-investment manager. I cannot lose. I am being supported by my personalized media, and my success is their profit. As a human success contributes to a healthy condition. So success is what I will have. See how helpful and loveable robots (a pretty name for technology) are?

Oddly, there have been some reversals in strategy. Arts Hub Australia used to refuse me their newsletter unless I subscribed. Now they send it to my email box, although we never agreed on such a relationship. They have come to learn that in the world of motivational newsletters, you have to be there to find a money-making opportunity. We will find that we have many such helpful friends now.

Well-known kind person

Sometimes a dear friend of mine is really hard on himself.  Like anybody who is human and who lives amongst his fellow men, Terry from time to time screws up.  So often it’s in the name of doing good works – since Terry has both a regular job and his non-paying good work job.  He’s strung out – meeting the commitments he makes to the many.

And when Terry screws up, in my experience, it’s only a worry in Terry’s own mind.  Most people appreciate the work he does selflessly and with admirable dedication and energy.  Nobody judges Terry like he judges himself.

I’ve encountered him from time to time, deeply depressed because of a missed deadline – that only HE was worried about.  I think Terry thinks that people judge him by the standards he applies to only himself.  He has higher standards than most people – and nobody I know would even notice his failures let along judge him harshly for them.

So I went with him one time to visit his psychologist.  This bloke has been practicing for almost 30 years and is a very seasoned professional.  His words, verbatim were “Listen, sport, you are absolutely known by everyone you encounter – as being the most loving and forgiving man any of us has ever met.  You forgive everyone – except one person.  And you are kind to everyone – everyone except one person, present here today.  YOU !”

His advice was for Terry to forgive himself his sins – real and perceived and rejoice in his good works.

He added “ Be a lot kinder to yourself:.

I think the advice was sound and I use it on Terry every chance I get.  Re-enforcement IS necessary because Terry works for a brilliant man – who for all his intelligence in his somewhat narrow but complex field, is almost completely oblivious to the need for kindness in his dealings with others – especially his faithful and long-suffering staff.  He is a truth first, foremost and in every way sort of professional.

This chap has never heard of kindness and he will argue an iron pot’s legs off in pursuit of truth.

I was wondering  (Sumner Miller style) why this is so.

I think that (let’s call him) Professor Smith, while richly-endowed with intellect is rather deficient in perception of the emotions of other human beings – including intelligent co-workers.  If I was guessing, I’d say his behaviour was typical of someone on the autistic spectrum.  Like a person with Asperger’s condition.  He is obsessed with his field to the exclusion of just about everything else – including missing the minute clues that his partners in discourse are looking for the shortcuts to the exit.

In fact, I’d speculate that the reason he’s so obsessed with “truth” is because he sees it as “HIS TRUTH”, and he is driven by an ego that needs to win intellectual arguments rather than use the vehicle of an argument as a means to reach an ‘absolute’ truth – or one that is shared by the cognoscenti as being self-evident and not in need of dispute.  His truth is understood by himself as an absolute and an unarguable truth.  “Kindness” does not come into his lexicon – he thinks of it as a synonym for intellectual weakness.

So Professor Smith is not going to take Terry’s psychologist’s advice and apply a bit of kindness – first because he doesn’t know what it is to be kind, and second – if he DID know, he would regard it with contempt for being a mark of intellectual feebleness.

It is very much his loss as well as Terry’s loss working with and for him.

Whereas “truth” might be relative – that is, it is someone’s perspective of what is true, can there be some kind of universal understanding (by people – shall we call them neurotypical as opposed to the non-PC term of “normal” ?) of what is meant by “kindness”?

I would argue that “kindness” is a universal human good.  We see it expressed through “giving” actions – forgiving others their trespasses on oneself, allowing people the space to express their own opinions no matter how badly they diverge from our own, treating others with respect, regardless of whether we feel they have earned it or not.  Seeing the fundamental good in one another.  Giving without the expectation of also receiving.

When we raise children, it is wise to focus on praising their excellence as opposed to punishing them for their perceived failings.  As adults we show children the forgiveness and the kindness they so deserve, but many of us are prepared to draw the line at family or perhaps at adolescents – or adults who for some reason do not meet our expectations.

It’s surprising that those old chestnut Ten Commandments DO exhort (apart from some Old Testy tripe about worshipping one God and hang the rest – OR ELSE), the useful code of doing unto others as we would have them do unto us.  Unfortunately this often gets re-interpreted in modern times not as an exhortation to kindness, but moreover the other Old Testy notion of ‘an eye for an eye’ – that is, if this person is a bastard to me, that justifies me coming out of my corner with fists flying.  I know there’s some “turn the other cheek” residue, but I’m fairly sure that its application went out with open toed shoes and white wall tyres.  Perhaps it’s time to amend the first Ten – or some at least – could we just say instead ….. Do unto others by showing only kindness.  And leave it at that.

Do be kind unto one’s self.  And to others.  Terry, towel not thy self nor thy neighbour up.

And the people saw that it was a good approach and there was rejoicing at the pub.

First Dog on the Moon

For days, it seems, we’ve lost our dog
We wander round in hazy fog
Our fear, it seems, – he’s run away
He’s spat the bone,
No more Dog play.

We wouldn’t give him up for quids
Sad old Crikey runs his good dog vids
We want him back, and make it soon.
Return to us, First Dog on Moon.

But where’s he gone ?
Is it unsound ?
Has anyone looked down the pound ?
Has he gone for good ?
Will he be found ?

But hark, to all, he will prevail
Return to us with waggy tail
I bet he has an iron-clad reason
He’s been chasin’ chicks in doggy season.