just realized...

...how big a defeat we all suffered in 2003 when we let that other war begin.

Krasznahorkai's lines from his book War and War come to my mind:

"so that by the end there was an extraordinary scene wherein, eventually, the whole of Almássy tér was laid out on the floor or stretched over the stairs or collapsed on the stone paving of the toilets, like the remnants of some peculiar battlefield where defeat is an idea that slowly creeps over the combatants, as if radiating from within them"

since then they all know they can sell wars to us. this way or that way, they started trying colonizing again. the ones who were once colonized started their counter attacks...all good things will be destroyed by the greedy...again and again...

World news highlights - as disguisting as it can get

What a week again! Just the headlines and links to a few news:

France makes it legal for police, military, politicians, etc. to monitor the internet use of its citizens without any special reason.

Japan makes it impossible to provide the public with sensitive information - whistleblowers can face severe punishment. Not as if the government would get its authority from the people or anything, oh no! Not as if people would be worried about what is going on in Fukushima, oh no! ... argh.

China is adamant about making others accept its unilateral extension of military zones, thereby raising tensions in the region even higher.

Romania passes legislation whereby politicians do not count from now on as public officials, so cannot be charged with corruption under certain headings. Bravo!

Russia "manages" to make Ukraine back away from signing a contract of intent to join the EU later.

Some Republicans in the US still endorse quite mistaken views on Mandela voiced by their influential former party members decades ago.

The UK government insists on being poor and only able to support business and raise the salary of its MP's, so further plans of drawing money out of the welfare system are announced.

Aaaand the radical right wings and anti-EU people are still on the rise.

One would think that this is when we would need most people who are committed to, know a lot about, and spread the word convincingly about humanism, democracy, and the programme of Enlightenment. People who can work with institutions, inform the public, convince decision makers, oppose economic lobby and gather public support for implementing virtuous decisions.

Instead, but maybe not surprisingly, this is the time when politicians across the world are calling a halt to the engine of humanitarian and democratic development, by cutting the funding or closing down the humanities and the social sciences faculties.

Hungarian literature

As much as I adore and cherish literature, and among many others, Hungarian literature, this great site has so far managed to fly under my radar:

http://www.hlo.hu/index.php

(The fact that it did so is more of an indication of the crudeness of my radar systems, and lack of time to read as much literature as I would like, than of anything else.)

Male and female brains - what do differences show

Finally, journalists have picked up on what I have earlier complained about: the total misinterpretation of data about brain structure and functioning.

Cordelia Fine wrote a short article, exposing the main problems well, citing much of the data and highlighting where the interpretations go wrong.

Robin McKie, science editor at The Guardian, also wrote a short summary about why certain interpretations of data are debated by scientists.

I was also happy to see that Rae Langton and John Dupré wrote a very much to-the-point letter on the issue.

And Susan Moore contributed an ironic, mocking piece. Makes a good addition - and I think in this case the harsher voice is absolutely justified.

What was really sad to see were the reactions in the comments: most people see such criticism as being equal with science bashing. I suppose these are people who never did research and cannot see the difference between a debate about a scientific question (how to interpret data) and a political question (should we rely on science in decision making? etc.). The participants in this debate are all engaged in trying to help get the best interpretation of the data. They don't have any problems with studying the brain, etc. But of course just by looking at data from tests you cannot make any inferences and draw any sort of conclusion.

A short follow up on Cameron in China

The BBC, naturally, covers David Cameron's trip. Cameron mainly came out with visions about great economic success resulting from closer UK-China cooperation. Read here. It is a fair bit of reporting, but if you look at the comments chosen to be displayed on top a funny picture emerges: only comments cautiously and 'cleverly' calling attention to the importance of economic development and the need for larger scale access to Chinese markets are displayed. No critical comments, no condemning comments. It is hard to believe there weren't at least a few reasonable ones.

The Independent also has a short cover on the trip. It sticks to the facts and what the politicians said, but there is an interesting small bit at the very end of the news: "Chinese government spending on medical services accounts for only 2.7 per cent of GDP, compared with 8.4 per cent in the UK, and Beijing has made increasing health spending a priority."

Take into account what the 2.7 per cent of the GDP can cover in a country which has a fragment of the established infrastructure needed to provide normal health care services. Bad roads, bad public traffic, not enough doctors and hospitals, expensive treatments. Not the type of policy we should advocate or look away from, if that serves our short-term interests.

Cakes and sweets for kumquats

Most of my entries are critical and morose. But some good things manage to cheer me up: yesterday my boss surprised us by bringing an absolutely fantastic self-baked carrot cake to work and sharing it with all of us. It was so far the best carrot cake I had in England.

Also, while looking around today I found that the most popular blogging kumquat seems to be a connoisseur of sweets! What a pleasant likeness. 

Check out all the great pictures and nice recipes: http://www.kumquatblog.com/ 

From the banal to the sensational...and back: brain science misinterpreted

Neurology is amazing: it enables serious scientists to study the brain and its interconnections with other bodily units, the external world, its internal connections. In turn they can use this data to understand how certain disorders, diseases, and injuries affect our main neural center. These results can then be used to help create treatments, medicine, etc.

But sometimes journalists overlook the obvious and think findings about the brain also give us some important insight, some explanations of why we are the way we are as persons. And when they do this they put the cart before the horse. (Note: scientists also do this occasionally.)

See this latest piece of scientific journalism: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/02/men-women-brains-wired-differently?CMP=fb_us

One cannot help but think of the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal's excellent comic on such cases. 

The main idea presented as a great new finding is that the average female and male brain are wired in different ways, with male brains exhibiting more connections and more activity in parts usually responsible for coordination and perception, and higher modularity, whereas on average female brains exhibit more connections and activity in parts usually responsible for social skills and memory. 

The clever scientist - Ragini Verma - then goes on and makes a claim reaching the level of a first-year Introduction to Anthropology class: "If you look at functional studies, the left of the brain is more for logical thinking, the right of the brain is for more intuitive thinking. So if there's a task that involves doing both of those things, it would seem that women are hardwired to do those better," Verma said. Don't get me wrong: Verma seems to be clever and I respect their results about the differences. It is just the inferences she and her team makes based on these particular results that I debate.

There are three major problems with all this:

1. It is not any big news that there are differences in average activity patterns in male and female brains. There were many earlier experiments (not targeted usually at this difference for its own sake) that indicated this (remember for example Baron-Cohen's work on Autism).

2. That the brain can be easily divided into a logical and an intuitive half is only true if you use very confused, ambiguous notions of logic, intuition, and emotion. People doing serious work on theoretical or practical reasoning, on belief formation, on emotions, or on plan formation all know that there are many-many systematic rules involved in all of these processes and activities. It is not the case, as laymen usually suppose, that emotional reactions are unsystematic. It is also not the case that you can think 'anything', or that the decisions which you make aren't regulated by several steps of filtering in different pieces of information (perceptual inputs, preferences, risk assessments, etc.). Strictly speaking, there is nothing unreasonable or irrational going on in these processes.

How can we then make distinctions between them? Based on their functions. Where do we get the labels for the functions and the ideas for how they work? From everyday, folk psychology. And if you carve up your brain based on which parts realize these functions you will end up with a picture of the brain as doing exactly what people thought it is doing. ("Oh my god, it really is thinking!") This leads us on to my last point.

3. If you use folk scientific concepts to identify brain activities you have zero reason to be surprised when you discover that woman and man are like what we think woman and man are. Why so? Because our everyday views are largely correct (largely means that on average they can be applied successfully more than with bad results). That they are correct does not show that they are natural, or that it is good that things are this way. Feminists think it isn't, and they seem to have good reasons for this. Also, it does not mean that from women exhibiting more emotional reactions it follows that their decision making is more influenced by emotions than men's. This is an inference not warranted by the thesis that more emotional reactions can be observed in female behavior.

"So what," you might say "the results are still interesting". After all our stereotypes are confirmed. Maybe we are right and man and women are just naturally different exactly in the ways in which our second-half of the twentieth century stereotypes suggested. The experiment was done on young people (between 8-22 years old) so you could think cultural influences cannot have a very significant effect at that age.

Not so fast. This concept of 'natural' is highly problematic. The way we lead our lives nowadays is in no sense like what it was when our body (including our brain) reached its current level of evolution (of course evolution is going on, but not much changes in evolutionarily short times, like a couple of thousands of years). So, what our brain functions show isn't behavior that is natural in evolutionary terms, since we do not live according to our most basic behavioral patterns that were successful two-, five- or ten-thousand years ago. They show what was successful in the past, in very different environments and for very different lives. Surely no one advocated that just because some of the major evolutionary changes took place in our brains a few thousands (or tens of thousands of years ago) we should live the way we lived then.

The other thing is the studied age: by the age of 8, culture weighs in massively in the behavior and development of people. Many people working on child development show that after 5 the personality is pretty much in place. Studies about implicit gender bias show that at 5-6 years of age children are already affected by gender role stereotypes. So, the functional differences can be in part the sign of very flexible young brains working in different ways when exhibiting behavior appropriate to the different gender roles according to which they have developed. The functional areas responsible for certain ways of thinking and behaving in girls who follow the gender-roles adapted by them will be more developed than in males who follow male gender-roles and hence engage in different behavior systematically. And this is not a big finding. Anyone worth her wits could have told you this is what you will see at the end of the study. (How much money and time did we put into this research? Which useless research areas are the most expensive? Where should we make cuts?)

Of course the objection and the last question is not entirely fair. We still need lots of data about the brain in order to better understand its working. Therefore such a big scale study is useful in the sense that it gathered much interesting information that can be put to good use in research aimed at healing and therapy. It is only useless if you try to make it work as an explanation of behavior based on gender.

Note: I'm not saying there are no differences between males and females within the human species with a biological basis, or that all stereotypically female values are bad, or that there might be in a society specifically female or male values, or that all traditional gender-role based identities are evil. The claim I'm making is only this: if you look at how the brains of young people work on the level involved in most of their everyday activities (higher order functions and perceptual functions) very likely you will find exactly the differences that underlie the lifestyles and roles expected from them.

The authors of the study say: "Overall, the results suggest that male brains are structured to facilitate connectivity between perception and coordinated action, whereas female brains are designed to facilitate communication between analytical and intuitive processing modes." Well, the study does not show this. But it shows that female and male brains are so adaptive that they can easily work in the ways required to lead to behavior conforming to gender roles, boys will do more sports which will develop the coordination related areas more and girl will engage in more small talk and playing directed at emotional understanding. And the realizers of different behavior are different brain activities. I would bet that the same study in 20 years would show different results, if gender roles get less entrenched.

On David Cameron's visit to China

It seems that in moments of international political difficulties British Prime Ministers have a knack for licking the wrong ass. This time David Cameron has shown us beautifully how he can go bone deep with his tongue between the ass-cheeks of Chinese leaders, retaining a broad smile on his face, sending messages from his twitter account "This is awesome! And if I succeed you all will be able to experience it soon too!"

It is understandable that he felt at ease in China: after all he is a busy man and it may have escaped him that just this week China pressed for a unilateral extension of its military zone, pushing it forward straight into Japanese territory. Great move mister Cameron! 

Quoting the great man (via this article): 

"We should be clear that there is a genuine choice for every country over how to respond to this growing openness and success. They can choose to see China's rise as a threat or an opportunity. They can protect their markets from China or open their markets to China. They can try and shut China out – or welcome China as a partner at the top table of global affairs." [Italics added by me.]

Lovely ideas! When another agent threatens to step into the line of global bullies, extending its  military control zone, trying to get foreign territories under its control, increasing its military spending, firmly rejecting values that are at the core of every decent European's value system, this is a truly nice time to emphasize the importance of being open to China. Note: he didn't emphasize being open to Chinese culture, not to judge every Chinese person based on the acts of their government, etc. No. Just accept the government. Get over the torture, no free press, and forced labour issues. China, a country whose government got furious with above mentioned PM just a year ago for even meeting someone they don't like. Bravo.

Good old Neville Chamberlain would applaud! Just recall him at his best:

"How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing. It seems still more impossible that a quarrel that has already been settled in principle should be the subject of war."

Sure. Why take sides in a conflict which partially our politics brought about? Or this other gem:

"My good friends, this is the second time there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Now I recommend you go home, and sleep quietly in your beds."

What insight. Such clever. At the same time Cameron is the strong man at home, balking at the evil immigrants, preaching austerity. The Telegraph, almost humbled by the chance of getting an insight into the terrible experiences such a great man has to endure day-by-day in the country he leads, reports that Cameron visited a factory where 10 out of 40 of the workers were from abroad. This is a car factory. Being the sharp chap that he is, Cameron blames British education: of course, after all if the English don't want to do skilled manual work because they can get better jobs you still should not give those jobs to people from poorer countries. Or does the reasoning go this way: capitalism and competition should apply everywhere, except maybe in England? In any case, bloody wonderful. Let's totally disregard that most people who come here seeking work aren't the ones with good diplomas getting the high salary jobs. They are the people who fuel your car, prepare your sandwich and clean the toilet after you. Not all, but most of them.

Such moves as patting China on the back, and topping that with an offer of a massage, show that Cameron clearly doesn't take the EU seriously, doesn't take its strong political and economic connections with Japan seriously, and has given in to the idea that since the UK cannot do much in military terms about that part of the world, they should just reap as much as they can via the usual way: getting in their companies.

At the same time, a fact that here in England is not too often mentioned: while they spend big money yearly on supporting the less-developed EU member countries, they also enjoy huge benefits from total free trade. Many UK companies got tremendous tax exemptions in Central- and East-Europe. They can also go on paying minimum wages and relying on non-fixed term contracts, firing employees after a few months. The profits are extraordinary and the bulk of it flows back to the mother companies on the Island. If Westminster cannot step up and stop those companies from taking and hiding the money in some remote offshore accounts, that's not the fault of the usurped countries. That's the fault of the inefficiency of his own government.

I can only hope he has shaved before going to meet the Chinese PM. Just so that his stubbly doesn't hurt the tender skin on the lower-back cheeks of his new 'economic partner'.

No intervention

It seems like a strange thought that the government shouldn't interfere and intervene in the business world. After all the government is pretty much what represents people and the most effective, powerful organizations that's supposed to enforce common interest.

Saying that the economy will sort itself out, seems to be a bit like saying:

"Don't touch the economy, because the economy is magic!"

Why would any system suddenly produce good outcomes for most people? And if it does not, why should our most costly defense system not be allowed to regulate it?

Bacon and Moore at the Ashmolean

I finally found the time to visit the Francis Bacon-Henry Moore exhibition at the Ashmolean. And it was well worth it!

As most temporary exhibitions at the Ashmolean this one is also small: it takes up only three rooms. Therefore it is very important that the selection of works be really good. Also, there is no space to present a lot of context, a very detailed story of the development. But the curators (Martin Harrison and Richard Calvocoressi) have done a good work and selected pieces both by Bacon and by Moore which highlight the major influences on them, connect their work to each other, and illustrate their major themes.

Of course besides fulfilling the above mentioned educational end aesthetic duties the exhibition offers more. In fact, it was a very strange and very personal experience. For some time I was appalled by Bacon's figures.Their grotesque movements, positions, the distorted faces, the flesh and bones made visible...I enjoyed the sensitivity and honesty of these works in a dark way. As statements about humans, as showing equally ferocious and ugly truths hiding below our skins. But today another aspect of Bacon's work struck me. It is the honesty of it. The figures stopped being threatening, although some of the pictures create the illusion that one has just stepped into a room where one is struck by the sight of these people doing there whatever they are doing. From threatening it went into compassionate. It appears now to me that what makes it hard to endure Bacon's works is the need it presents for opening up towards the vulnerability, the need for support and understanding that radiates from these figures.

Francis Bacon Second version of Triptych 1944 (1988, oil on canvas)

What appeared to be hostile monsters in the Second version of Triptych 1944 I suddenly saw as lungs, intestines, throats and mouths grown together in desperate, exposed positions. Why are they there? Who did this to them? Why is it happening? The focus shifted from the feeling of 'what is going to happen to me if I'm left alone with these beings?' to one of 'why would anyone do that to others?'

As I already mentioned, the exhibition created an exhibition that emphasizes important similarities between Bacon's and Moore's work. Some of Moore's statues almost call out for a gentle touch, or seem to suggest that their characters are already entrapped in a situation that is beyond help... In this way they make the onlooker feel powerless and lost, recreating the effect of those maddening situations when one's beloveds or friends need help and one cannot provide it.

I won't go on any longer about my experiences and what the works evoked in me. I suggest to everyone who can to go and see for themselves, and bring home a touching and humbling experience.

In case you are looking for a bit of introduction to their work, this interview with Bacon, and this short film about Moore (featuring himself, and showing how he handles the chisel) might be nice places to start.

Henry Moore Three Standing Figures (London, Battersea Park)

Bullshit worries about 'bullshit' jobs

David Graeber is one of those folks who do not help much to better the reputation of Anthropology, or tenured professors. His article 'On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs' went viral on the internet and every week a couple of my friends put it on their wall as if it would help them achieve some sort of revelation. 'Oh my, I might work in a bullshit job!' 'Wow, we would be so much better off if we wouldn't do all these jobs!' I can imagine them thinking stuff like this. But I cannot imagine that they actually spend one more minute thinking because then they would just close the tab with Graeber's article, blush because at first impulse they agreed with it, and then forget about it.

So, what's wrong with the claims of the article?

On bullshit jobs: Graeber claims that many service sector jobs (including admin jobs, but he also mentions jobs in transportation, PR, health admin, fast food restaurants, etc.) are meaningless, and the people who have to do these jobs are the worse off for this. They do not gain self-respect or self-fulfillment from working in these roles.

That's one of those 'oh, in the past everything was better (big sigh)' type of claims which do not make sense. When were masses of people employed in easy jobs which afforded them a living? In the middle ages? Clearly not. In the Roman Empire? Not really. During the Industrial Revolution? All those happy people toiling in the factories and mines? Or the ones sent off to the colonies? The proud ones in forced labor? In the early twentieth century? And why would everyone find a fulfilling job? If no one cares for sewage and cleaning will we be better off? A happier society with no butchers, because it is kind of hard and sometimes disgusting? Not to mention the early starts!

Graeber also laments the loss of jobs where people do 'real work'. It is true that it often causes problems if a skilled worker is replaced by a machine on the production line. But this is also more complicated than just the personal tragedy of that single individual. Probably the machine is more productive. Hence the company can make more profit. And then it can pay more taxes. And that goes back to public services. Also, people with only one skill-set were never in an easier situation. It was the false promise of the WWII enthusiasm and economic boom when people thought that they will have secure jobs 'til the end of their lives. But that was during the economic upheaval following the war. Not before that, not after that. And not in general terms: one of the reasons for it was that the colonies were still mostly under European control, so, they could pay for much of the losses of the European societies. So, if you do not just concentrate on your own neighborhood, you can easily see that this kind of comfort has a high price.

On the uselessness of service jobs: Graeber is one of those guys who didn't get economics 101. When you are thinking of what you pay for it is not only the material and the product that is involved. No one is - and shouldn't be - doing work for free. People's effort and time isn't for free. If someone prepares your food, walks your dogs, takes care of your kids, prepares your taxes, etc. that person is saving you time. The trick is to make good bargains: try to get the money you need to pay them in such a way as to be better off. If you can save 2 hours of work by getting your meals done, while you can pay for this with money you earn in an hour and a half you are better off. You can earn more in that half an hour, or even better, relax, be with your family, kids, walk your dog, read a good book, visit your parents.

Add to this that someone with good skills can probably earn more per hour - say an engineer - than someone without good skills. So, why would this person spend his or her time preparing food every day for a long time if he can in that same time earn more and thereby 1. she/he can pay someone else who doesn't have skills which are in demand, thereby helping that person earn a living, 2. provide better for her/his family and community, and self. So much about the loss of 'real jobs'.

Then take the rants about administration. People are shocked how there are more and more admin people about. Funnily, they always forget to mention that there are also way more people around, living for a longer time, being in better health (due in large part to well organized and accessible health services), enjoying more and more services. To coordinate all this demands larger admins, and yes, not proportionately larger ones, but exponentially larger ones. Why is that so? First, because the same amount of humans can create more data and do more types of things, have more demands, if they work more effectively. Which is just what technology enables us to do. Also, it enables us to enjoy our free time in many-many more ways then we used to. We get everywhere quicker, can communicate and therefore make decisions quicker, calculate and solve problems quicker, plan quicker, run experiments quicker. Maybe these things aren't easy to recognize for someone being as far from the competitive public sector as possible, but it is still so. These exponential growths in demands, opportunities, work output call for larger admin bodies to run well.

Graeber doesn't cite any statistics or any data confirming that bigger administrative structure makes things run less effectively. What does the decreased effectiveness then consists it? That he himself has to fill out more papers at work? Well, that's life: whereas earlier we used to have privileged positions in society where you weren't really accountable, that is not so anymore. Not as bad as you would think, at least not for the people who pay you, and the ones who you are supposed to serve.

Or that administration is boring? Sure it is. But nobody said it would be easy to live nowadays in a highly developed industrialized society. At least, not that easy that you have only to do what you enjoy and find fulfilling, and even that activity only for as long as you like to do it.

Stoic week!

Look, look! A wonderful idea, and a fun one to. Especially to people who are interested in practical uses of life-philosophies. Handbook, measurements, exercises. Have a great experience and try it out for a week what it is like to be a stoic.

Application and more info here: http://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/stoicismtoday/stoic-week-2013/

Pop psychology and the ideal character

When reading popular psychology and self-help books one often encounters that the aim of the writer is to help the readers 'to get it right'. What this means varies from book to book: it can be about becoming self-confident, more creative, less anxious, making better relationship choices, being less of a slacker, and so on.

The success of these works relies in their capacity to make people believe that they can actually offer them what they (often mistakenly) think they need. As with all simple solutions, these ones are also bullshit. But their popularity lies exactly in this. They do not do the careful analysis needed for proper treatment, they do not adjust for individual differences, and they do not tell their readers that what they seek is not achievable, or that for moral reasons they shouldn't achieve it. Although this might often be the case.

The idea behind this claim is always one of the following: (1) that everyone, independently of personal differences has the same potential to be (x) - substitute the desired trait in question in place of x; (2) that there is a norm of behavior and of feeling which everyone should aim to achieve - say, there is a norm of being social enough, of not being anxious, of being a happy person for most of the time, etc.

These assumptions then get coupled up with (3) the illusion of there being one more-or-less complicated recipe. You only have to think through it. And don't think too hard! God forbid, that you should actually think hard and long. The book isn't gonna sell if it can't be read on the train or in the evening before going to sleep. Also, it won't be popular if you have to think in a way that you aren't used to.

We can point out the following problems with the above: regarding (1), it can and should be admitted that there are individual differences both in emotions, in the reactions people have, in their interpersonal relations and skills, and in a host of other important personal qualities. Why then assume that (1) is true? Because it makes readers believe that they don't have to accept themselves, or work hard on realizing what would make them happy. Instead, they are led to believe that it is fine to want to live in the same way that others do or popular stereotypes suggest. These books do not make people reflective and make them think about whether their preferences are the ones they should stick to. They just affirm that they are, and they can actually be fulfilled, by everyone, in the same way.

The problem with (2) is similar. It suggests that it would be normal for everyone to have the same feelings towards the same things. We all should like funny series. We all should like dancing. We all should appreciate deep thoughts. We all should find poetry a bit dull and outdated, except if it is really easy to understand and is about love or emotional suffering. But why would this be true? Is there any harm in having very different preferences in social matters? If one co-worker is happy being silent, thinking about his own affairs, should she adjust herself to the preferences of the talkative people? Don't get me wrong, I'm one of the talkative, community seeking ones. And I can also see reasons for fostering community centered activities. They help exercise abilities which work well only in groups (like reasoning and planning), they help a lot for the more socially inclined people, the more insecure people can get reassured, and interaction also fosters a sense of community and leads to commitment. But does this mean that only these things matter or these things can only be achieved in one way? Of course not.

I'm not going to waste much effort on (3). Any person of a more mature frame of mind knows that there are no magical overall solutions. The interesting thing about life is exactly the multitude of little social-engineering tasks we are faced with. And of course if we don't like to bother with these we can devise good strategies on how to get into the sorts of situations we are comfortable with. But how you can do that while still getting good results for yourself will have to be figured out by you.

Doris Lessing passed away

Doris Lessing died. See the news here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-24979129

I read her book The Fifth Child a year ago. It was a shocking experience and very humbling. It actually helped me to understand those people - among them a very close relative - who cannot let the hands of their children go, even if this cripples their own and their families lives. It is a touching and terrifying account of the strength of attachment, and I think in a sense speaks well for the claim that a mother would belie her self if she would abandon her child in that way.

In the novel the father character grows distant and alienated from the child. Is is sad that he cannot help in supporting him, but the good side is that he is still there for his wife and is a firm financial support - don't underestimate the value of that in such situations.

A wonderful writer is gone now, and I hope many will take up some of her books and remember her in the best possible way: by reading her work!

Signs of getting tired...

Suddenly longing to read works which are totally unrelated to my research and I don't find generally useful or entertaining...
Suddenly being angry at people in the library who have a not-so-typical voice...
Suddenly starting to plan my holidays...

...are all sings that I'm getting tired of work for today.

Coetzee on Humanities and Universities

The link is here, it makes a good read during lunch break:

http://mg.co.za/article/2013-11-01-universities-head-for-extinction/

I agree with Coetzee very strongly that a certain amount of universities should be financed in keeping up decent humanities units. The question how many and how many students should be supported by the state to study there is a more difficult question.

What I've witnessed so far is that most Humanities disciplines are too difficult for a great many of the students attending, who then tend to blame their education instead of realising that they are not cut out for it. Of course I'm not saying that failure is only their fault. It might be the result of many components: engaging in these disciplines is hard, one needs a good background in culture and history, one needs to be motivated and willing to work hard (you cannot pick literature to learn a bit about good books, or German to learn the language). At the same time many of these diplomas are not preparing you for a specific job, so you will have to gather other skills after or besides your education if you want to land a job not related to your education.

Also, due to terrible financing schemes on the part of the government many uni's needed to accept huge numbers of students to finance their departments. This is very destructive for humanities. Instead of valuing a good academic stuff tutoring few quality students, and doing important work on culture, social issues, education, and cooperating with local communities and government on such issues, the teachers have to conduct mass classes to people who don't really know why they are there and often do not read the compulsory texts.

All in all, I would opt for retaining larger research and public engagement oriented humanities units, with less students.

Structure in Jude the Obscure

An interesting structural feature of Hardy's Jude the Obscure that I have just discovered, being half-way through the book:

1. Part first, chapter 2: helping animals (letting the birds feed on corn) - leading to problem (loss of job at farmer Troutham).

2. Part first, chapter 10: helping an animal (killing the pig quickly, instead of letting it bleed out) - leading to problem (Arabella gets mad at him).

3. Part fourth, chapter 2: helping an animal (killing the rabbit caught in a trap on the night of his aunt's funeral) - leading to problem (getting into a conversation with Sue at night and telling her that he'll give up his religious goals) - which then leads on to further problems (he loses even the small amount of motivation he had so far to resist his urge to be with Sue). 

The help Jude offers is quite ineffective in all cases, but it throws light on his compassionate and kind character. At the same time his acts of mercy symbolize that he is trespassing constraints: he ought not let the birds eat the farmer's crops, he ought to kill the pig in the best way for making money out of selling its meat, he ought to let the rabbit that someone else caught alone - the last one meaning the rabbit and Sue at the same time; Sue being caught in the marriage with Phillotson. A bad catch, so to say: the trap causes her much pain. But Jude ought no to interfere.

I do not yet know the outcome - I can make guesses. George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss keeps coming to my mind...Hardy depicts his characters in a similar way to Eliot as being driven to their fate by their passions. Both seem to point out at the same time the irrationality and pitiable lack of self-control of the character, while also criticizing social structures and institutions which do not give people like them the chance to fulfill their desires.

The fact that Jude's misfortunes are in parallel with his acts of mercy can also be interpreted as a criticism of lack of justice in the world. Those who follow the right moral principles will be frustrated in life because the dominant concept of what counts as rational, what is allowed does not leave room for the tender and gentle.

Help channels for typhoon victims

CNN has compiled a useful list of organizations that try to alleviate suffering and help the needy after the typhoon. See here:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/09/world/iyw-how-to-help-typhoon-haiyan/index.html

As usual with donations, every little helps - 5-10 dollars can make a difference.

Karoly Kernstock's paintings

Kernstock was a member of the group called 'The Eight', active at beginning of the Twentieth century in Hungary. They were a revolutionary group, and Kernstock played an important role in holding the eight differing characters together. I won't go into the details - partly because I'm still tired from being sick, partly because I have some friends and colleagues who know so much more about The Eight than do I that it would put me to shame if they read this. If you want to get a taste of what the exhibition was like in Budapest, at Museum of Fine Arts check out this nice account based on first-hand experience, by Stefan Van Drake. What I do want to share with you are some of my favourite Kernstock paintings.

Park detail (1908-1910?)

On the way home

Cardboard of the Glasswindows in the Schiffer Villa (1911)

The cold season

Being sick is a strange thing. People with the same disease lament different things sometimes. Or then again people with different illnesses have the same issues. For me the worst is the sense of being crippled. I don't mean this in the physical sense. Of course a cold, a flu, or even a more sever lung inflammation doesn't make you unable to move around and get things done. But in those periods my attention span becomes much-much shorter than usual. It is just hard to get things done.

Earlier when I became ill I just tried to ignore it as long as it was possible. This was okay around 10-12 years ago when my body somehow managed to draw an unknown resources and get through such periods. But nowadays I have to pursue a different strategy. When I notice that my immune system is in trouble again and won't hold against the attack I just switch to defense. I do minimal work - only the absolutely inevitable. I stay at home, have tea, do relaxing things like reading a good literature book, talking a bit with friends, have a proper cooking afternoon or read a few good poems. And sleep a lot. And hope that the storm will pass soon, the sky will clear, and I wake up feeling energetic and ready to complete all the items in the notebook.

Sadly, these passing sicknesses also affect my blogging. As much as I would have loved to update more often and finish three entries (one on the Hungarian exhibition at the Venice Biennale, one on philosophy of action, and one on feminism) I had to postpone writing them.

Your goals in life and your diploma

For a long time I bought into the currently dominant story with which governments are enforcing change in university finances. That is, I subscribed to the view that the universities should be used 1) to train people who can contribute to GDP, or 2) to train people who can do research on generally important topics, such as engineering, water cleaning, heart and lung diseases, etc.

I think this was a mistake and it was caused by a very one-sided view of things. Here is the stuff left out: the most often targeted courses and programmes for cuts are Humanities and Arts programmes. Critiques say that people finishing with such diplomas very often don't get jobs in the field in which they were trained. Thus, they spend years in the uni system, which is costly to the government, even if people pay high tuition fees.

But here is the deal. If a person is interested in a field, that means that he or she thinks the field important. If then that person studies the field she probably enjoys what she does. Even if she does not get a job in that field, a proper training might very well be necessary for properly enjoying works in that field (this is definitely true of literature, painting, music, but probably also of many other things). At the same time, many fields in the Humanities (teaching, pedagogy, linguistics) have lots of practical applications and there is need for well trained people in these fields.

Now, even if the people who received such training didn't get a job with it, it is very possible that 1) they acquired useful skills, and 2) that they can practice something that they like. Since money is not the only and most important thing for many of us, one can live a nice life with an average job, if one can at the same time do things in one's free time which one likes or loves. If the education has enabled one to do this in a fulfilling manner then it has bettered that person's life, and thereby also of those around her.

I think the main mistake that can lead us to forget that this might be a worthy goal of education in itself is that often in the media such people are represented as somehow having failed - they went to uni but they don't earn the big bucks. But many of us know since a long time: that's not necessarily what one wants to study for.

Frayn's 'The Tin Men'

Michael Frayn has written a funny and, according to P. G. Woodhouse, 'brilliant' book about the absurd workings of the modern university, where academia and administration are merged into a strange mutant. The Tin Men is a competent, workmanlike novel...Now, enough of this. What was it really like to read The Tin Men?

The book is short and witty, a good easy reading for long and tiring periods. Frayn's humor is great, but the novel becomes at some points monotonous. The plot doesn't propel itself forward, rather it is noticeably driven by the need to make more puns.

Some of the scenes would probably work better on film, being shorter and quicker and aided by mimicry and gestures from a good author. This is surely true of the ending of the novel, which is mostly filled with the running around of high-profile people, who are act like lunatics. Maybe in a movie one would be inclined to laugh all the way through, but during the slower experience of reading through the pages at some point one cannot resists asking the question: is this still funny? I mean, these aren't confused people, these are madman.

The lack of satisfaction I felt after finishing the book might have been caused by too high expectations on my part. I read Frayn's 'Copenhagen' with great pleasure, and that's much more the sort of work I prefer. I thought a book by him, that picks up the topics of ethics and artificial intelligence, would contain a much more sophisticated treatment of some of the main problems in these fields, even if only at the level of mentioning them in jokes.

Some of the passages where Frayn makes fun of the wannabe-writer Rowe are hilarious: Rowe begins by writing the reviews that will appear about his work first, and then goes on to write the novel itself, and subsequently commits all the mistakes typical of ambitious amateurs.

Altogether I would recommend the book, but it's not the sort of classic in humor that Douglas Adams is, nor the vivid painter of still human absurd like Joseph Heller, nor the genius of short grotesque like Istvan Orkeny, or the intellectually very fine-tuned works of Thomas Bernhard.

The Istvan Lovas scandal - should they eat shit?

Good ol' Hungary is at it again. Or at least Istvan Lovas is, one of the Brussels correspondents of the daily paper Magyar Nemzet (translating into Hungarian Nation), which is heavily leaning towards the current Fidesz-KDNP Government.

The story in a nutshell: Lovas wrote an e-mail to the journalists responsible for covering Hungarian events on international level, complaining that whereas they vividly depict the 'supposed' wrongdoings of the governing party, they don't inform the rest of the EU about any of the scandals the former governing party MSZP gets involved in. He ends his short rant by recommending the aforementioned media workers to eat shit.

You can see a Hungarian article on the scandal here:

http://atlatszo.blog.hu/2013/10/29/egyetek_szart_seggfejek_lovas_istvan_a_kulfoldi_tudositoknak

The page also contains Lovas's e-mail in English.

Truth be told: Lovas is right that the MSZP's affairs don't get much publicity nowadays aboard. But I think he is wrong about the reasons for this. Lovas implies that the Hungarian correspondents prefer MSZP and other parties in contrast to Fidesz-KDNP. That's bollocks. When MSZP was the ruling party international media was quick to deliver news about their wrongdoings. This happened both when the police reacted in a brutal way to some of the anti-government protests that sprung up after the 1956 ceremonies. Same thing applies to the case of ex-president Gyurcsany when someone got a recording of him beginning a speech addressed to his fellow MSZP members at a party meeting beginning thus: "We fucked up. We were lying in the morning, at noon, and in the evening."

There are two reasons why no one writes about MSZP but there is some coverage of the work of Fidesz-KDNP. First, Hungary is a small, quite insignificant country. Not too many care about news about the shady activities and mistakes of one of the opposition parties. Second, whereas MSZP's activity mainly harms Hungarians, the current Fidesz-KDNP government openly engages in anti-EU populist propaganda, took on board a very risky economic strategy to ease the debt situation of the country (we still don't see whether it will work or not), and they introduced modifications in the constitution and media law which can be used to the advantages of the governing party. These four things both go against much of mainstream EU thinking and values, and also openly engage with many of the EU's leading thinkers and politicians in a hostile way. Thus, they are more interesting as news material, more controversial and get more attention.

Lovas's character has often come under attack during the last few years. I think he is one of those people who openly engage in party rhetoric and do not even take the trouble of trying to appear balanced or impartial. In fact, this attitude gains him much popularity among far-right readers and the xenophobes. I think what makes his case really bad is that he knows the rules of the game very well, but pretends not to, pretends to be honest.

People like him are no use for Hungary, and not even for his party. He is a great example of those who - instead of trying to work at developing the country, gaining new opportunities, opening up and winning over territories in economic fields - are just satisfied with barking as loud as they can around the quarters of their masters, securing whatever personal gain they can, not caring for the consequences.

Does the untold speak? - How important is the unwritten in literature?

Sometimes it is hard to pin down what a book tells you. There are very straightforward books. Such are the ones where the writer tells you what his or her characters think, feel, want, and then also what happens to them, what they perceive, and maybe also tells you the author's/narrator's personal opinion.

But even with such pieces of writing it might happen that the structure also communicates something. You have to pay attention to what is said, in what order it is said.

Now, the most difficult thing is to understand that what is untold. Why certain things are left out. Or don't make sense. Or seem absurd.

An easy read is Joseph Heller's Catch 22. The narrator is also a character. We get an outer point of view of his actions, but can also, as it were, peak behind the curtains and see into his thoughts, etc. Also, we are given pointers to what unifies the narrative. The absurdity of the situation in which the soldiers live from they to day is often stressed. The lack of good planning and care for them as human beings is made fun of in the form of characters (Scheisskopf, the generals), and said explicitly.

But what about novels where much is left unsaid and leaving it unsaid if meaningful? I often asked this question since reading many post-1950 books. John Barth, in his Lost in the Funhouse, makes fun of making the narrative painstakingly explicit and self-reflexive. The story is not bad either, the fun made of the writing style is great too, and there is also a third, extra layer, delicious to lovers of literature, where the story (the little boy gets lost in the funhouse) interacts with the readers' being lost in the text which makes use of all the tools available to a writer of a prosaic short story.

Then again there are minimalists on the other end. In Brat Easton Ellis's books we often get a first person view of the world surrounding the protagonist. The descriptions of the world by these characters are usually very quick, very superficial, oriented toward looks, status symbols, media labels - the anchors of their fleeting attention, the lighthouses of their shallow but dangerous worlds. By making his characters so hostile to any deeper penetration into their inner Ellis creates a convincing illusion of both of having to do with such a person, and makes us feel a bit sorry for them. The people in his stories do not think or feel certain things, because they are not even able to. They don't have the conceptual skills, the mental sophistication, the psychological health and stability, the support from friends and family. What Ellis never writes about tells us a lot about the sadness of the lives of his characters.

It is noteworthy how certain important layers of life are absent from his characters's views (for example in The Informers, Less than Zero, Luna Park). The only novel where the political and the international aspects of the world manage to get a hold on the protagonist is Glamorama. Even in this case, due to the characters lack of any experience in the above mentioned domains, he is wholly unable to handle his life as it is suddenly flooded by life and death questions in the realms of politics. One might almost think that Ellis points out how easy it is to manipulate people in questions of international politics, how easy it is to make them back up terrible ideas.

György Dragomán's book The White King is also an interesting specimen. The book tells the story of a little boy growing up in the 1950's-1960's of Russian occupied Communist Hungary. The stories are first touching, interesting, but certain scenes become more and more absurd. By the end of the book it is clear that the narrator couldn't have grasped things in the way and on the level he did - there is too much knowledge about politics, everyday reality pervading the story. At the same time it also becomes evident that the child's accounts of violence that he encounters (getting beaten by the football trainer, being attacked by knife-yielding neighbor kids, etc.) cannot be true. One might at this point get frustrated and after finishing the book discard it as a bad one. But if one gives it a second thought it becomes obvious that the title does not just refer to the narrator's absent father. It also refer's to Lewis Carroll's White Queen. The whole story is a dream, made up of the memories of the now grown up writer from his childhood, made more radical and terrible by his childhood fears, and mixed with his present knowledge about the tyrannical system. Dragomán never tells us this explicitly. The way we can understand is by considering the narrative, the events and their likelihood.

In the above mentioned cases this kind of 'read-it-out-somehow-without-being-told' method works well. But a really popular and recently read book puzzles me. The piece is Kevin Powers's The Yellow Birds. The book is a nice one. Not very powerful, not as grasping as some others telling of terrible things. The reason why it isn't? Because we never really understand why Bartle and Sterling dropped Murph's body into the river. We never get told what moved Bartle to write the letter to the dead soldiers mother. We never get told what he got the prison sentence for.

First these instances didn't bother me. The book has enough content to carry you on without getting stuck. Some parts are so sad and expressive that they almost hurt. But then, at the end one asks some questions inevitably. Like 'How does this all add up?'

I read a review where the author thought that they do not. And that is a weakness of the novel. I admit, that was my first thought too. But then again, might it not be that Powers does not want to be one of the all-knowing narrators filling out the gaps in the consciousness and memory of his own characters to enlighten us of their inner working. It very well might. After all I can imagine Bartle as being shocked, tired, frightened. As being not that sophisticated. As not being in an environment that fosters reflexivity.

The question is, how sophisticated a writer is Powers? Can it be that the seeming incoherence and lack of explanation present at key points of the story is actually meant to make us aware that war and its effects do not fit our usual narratives neatly? That we will have to learn to accept that justification and explanation might be absent in strange ways from the actions and emotions of others?

I think such a lesson would be very valuable. Of course it does not matter much whether Powers intended to have this message or not. As anyone with a bit of skill in enjoying artworks knows the author's intentions only matter to a very restricted degree. We have to evaluate the work as it is. For me, this book achieved this feat. But I can imagine books better written, achieving this in an even more enjoyable and easy-to-grasp way.

On war

A powerful passage from Powers's book:

"Or should I have said that I wanted to die, not in the sense of wanting to throw myself off of that train bridge over there, but more like wanting to be asleep forever because there isn't any making up for killing women or even watching women get killed, or for that matter killing men and shooting them in the back and shooting them more times than necessary to actually kill them and it was like just trying to kill everything you saw sometimes because it felt like there was acid seeping down into your soul and then your soul is gone and knowing from being taught you whole life that there is no making up for what you are doing, you're taught that your whole life, but the then even your mother is so happy and proud because you lined up your sight posts and made people crumple and they were not getting up ever an yeah they might have been trying to kill you too, so you say, What are you gonna do?, but really it doesn't matter because by the end you failed at the one good thing you could have done (...)" pp. 144-145.

The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers

At the recommendation of a friend I acquired Kevin Powers' critically acclaimed 2012 book based on his experiences as a soldier in Iraq. I'm halfway through and this is what I can tell so far: the book offers one of those feelings for which I love literature. You just don't feel like putting it down. You want to linger in its world a little longer. You just want it to go on, and are already afraid that it will eventually end. You fear for the characters.

This book is well written, it has a good tempo, a healthy mixture of action-scenes, introspective-scenes, descriptions of characters and settings.

Also, what I just realized is that to be a soldier today for a Western person must be a terribly sad thing. A stupefying experience, except maybe if you are very rough. But as the reactions of most soldiers show they have lots of inner bruises to hide.   

Hope and Self-delusion

As Philippa Foot writes in one of her essays, hope is one of the virtues, and it is something important as it helps stick through hard times and great challenges. I like this thought. A hopeful person is probably less prone to be negative, and thus less likely to give up to early, to not to support her community in the face of difficult times. 

Another advantage of hopefulness might be that such a person might offer support to others. A hopeful person may be less prone to go 'all apeshit', as they say, and overreact when getting bad news. This way he doesn't strengthen the feeling of the person who trust's him with her problem that the problem is very bad. A hopeful person might provide calm advice, some supportive words, and maybe also a few practical ideas or good questions that point the way to a solution.

So, is hope all rosy? Not exactly. There are two things that matter. Hope can be exercised too much or about the wrong subject, and also for the wrong reasons. If one is hopeful in situations when there is an obvious danger that needs to be averted, one can do serious damage by remaining inactive. That is a problem people often point out with Christians who rely on divine intervention instead of, for example, medical treatment. Such cases draw criticisms that the agent rejecting medical treatment is irrational, since they are too hopeful. Even if there is a helpful, intervening God (I entertain this only as a theoretical possibility) it is not sure that 1) it would help in such cases, 2) in this particular case, 3) it would not help by offering the chance to get medical help, etc.

George Frederic Watts: Hope (second version, 1886)

A case where hope could be warranted, but one can still be irrational for being hopeful, is the case of a father who has an alcoholic daughter. The father hopes that his daughter will recover. Good thing, and hope can be a useful motivating factor that fuels his continuous support even after the roughest atrocities. But if he is hopeful for the wrong reason, his hope won't help him act in the right way. For example he might be hopeful because he has read many self-help books. These suggest things like 'everyone goes through difficult times, and that's a lesson we all need to get', or 'people need to fight their demons alone, and they will emerge stronger', or even just reading proper work without adequate training, and misunderstanding it. E.g.: the dad 'diagnosis his daughter with bipolar disorder. In fact, that's not the problem at all. The man does not seek adequate help, or tries to support his daughter with the wrong methods. In such cases the hope that would be beneficial if had for the right reasons can turn against those who should gain by it.

Some cases of placing too much weight on hope are instances of self-delusion. No matter that people didn't interact successfully with others earlier by following a certain set of principles, they still carry on. They base their hope that things will work out for them on some mistaken view. They might think that it was just that they did not get the right people as partners in business, or did not marry the right man. They might even think that they should actually take a firmer stance, since things didn't work out as they wanted them to work out. 'Now, it's time I do things my own way.' Whereby this led to some of the problems earlier as well.

It seems then that for hope to be a virtue one needs to have some constraints on it. If one is hopeful one should always assess what warrants the hope. If one finds the reasons convincing then hope needs no questioning. Also, being self-delusional about one topic does not mean that one is such about everything. As with other virtues, exercising hope in the right way needs practice and learning. And most of us screw up quite a few times on the way.

Mistaken stereotypes about 'women logic'

I've just recently been to a coffee in town. At the table besides me a few engineers (young professionals, not students) were chatting. I overheard them entertaining each other with the difficulty of programming a robot which can understand 'woman's logic'. I guess in most cases it is actually quite easy to explain to people like them the lack of sophistication behind such a label. But just to make sure, here are a few easy pointers to why talk about 'woman's logic' (especially in a demeaning sense) is just plain stupidity.

We have different concepts of rationality. Some of these applies to the capacities we posses as the types of animals we are. Such are our basic spatial positioning skills, our mathematical logic, our abilities to make inferences based on evidence, our mathematical skills, our skills tracking regularities in changes, etc. These are not specific to any gender.

'Rationality' is sometimes also used to stand for intelligence. Intelligence is gender independent - you find researchers, doctors, engineers, skilled professionals, mechanics, soldiers, and pretty much anything - requiring skill and doing well at school - among female population. Of course this only applies to countries where woman are allowed to get schooling, and throughout their upbringing and schooling aren't held back by harmful stereotypes they are made to adhere to, or pressure from peers.

What female agents seem to be more prone to do is placing value on emotions, personal relations (especially kin relationships). I emphasize 'seem' because I'm almost sure that most males are worried about, care about, etc. much more than they admit. Even if not, the explicitness is a difference. By explicitness I mean things that males often consider repugnant about female behavior, and hence, use discriminating terms like 'woman's logic' to talk about them. (Quick additional remark: valuing emotions and stable relationships is crucial to society.)

Such cases of making something explicit are for example being often worried about health of family members, about their emotional balance, getting stressed by cheeky remarks, etc. I do not even mention cases when females ask a male 'Do you still love/Find me attractive/etc.?' If you don't understand such games, teasers and affectionate jokes, you are not yet mature enough for a relationship. Just say something nice, complementary, and funny. No need to think your girl is really worried, expect if you start taking the question seriously. After all, that sends the message: 'Oh, I really have to think about this.' Silly response, isn't it?

So, what about the less obvious cases? Why do 'woman make so much fuss about things'? One obvious reason is evolutionary: females are hard-wired to care a lot about offspring. Also, social structures enable better survival chances for them and their kids, and more protection. A larger, healthier, more successful group can do better in terms of evolutionary fitness. These things do not depend on culture. They have evolved long ago, when small changes had higher stakes for staying alive.

Some other issues are culture influenced. Most of our societies are still male-dominated. Being male-dominated does not (only) mean that most good jobs are occupied by guys, and they get to make decisions for woman as well in many situations. It also means that this has been the situation for quite a long time, and hence the shape social institutions took, including norms of interactions, what's right and what's not, etc. have been heavily influenced by guys. I'm not making here any claims about this being good or bad. Just saying that this is the way it is. It seems to be quite likely that in many respects our communities are more physically and overtly aggressive than they would have to be given our current rates of food production. There is no need for as much vicious competition as was a long time ago. Of course competition does not disappear if more woman are elected. They also have in them to secure the necessary means for themselves and their groups. But the forms of aggression are different.

The male dominated character of culture places many normative behavior on woman. In most societies if one is not a good mother that still stigmatizes one strongly. Whereas if one is an awful father, one is reproach but not held responsible and blamed for the same degree.

Still, one might ask, if man and woman aren't so different then why are there so many visible differences in behavioral patterns? Well, already the question shows the fallacy of mixing up cause and effect. It is not that there are some differences in man and woman which would ground all of the behavioral differences between them. It is rather that there are some cultural expectations, stereotypes, social pressures, and basic hormonal processes, that are all involved in leading to such differences in behavioral patterns. So, it's not just inherent differences which cause different behavior, and then lead to different treatment. It is rather different treatment that causes different behavior.

One more thing. Different behavioral patterns aren't in themselves bad. If I would say 'let's change some of our social institutions which influence woman to behave in ways that bother man' that would not be much more than saying 'oh, yes, of course guys are always right, so if some of the less emphatic/sensitive/intelligent don't understand a piece of behavior without effort we have to change it!'. And that idea is bollocks.

Accepting the possibility of there being different but still okay patterns is a good step. And no, it does not mean 'anything goes'. It just means that you first think, and assess whether the difference is okay, or not. Obviously, differences in female and male behavior are perfectly fine. And, ideally, up to choice.

In general, if you don't understand someone, first don't blame them for not adhering to your standard of rationality (or 'logic'). Always try out different interpretations to see how you can make sense of their behavior. In most cases you simply don't exert enough effort to understand the other person. These skills can be learned and enhanced. So, before making jokes about 'woman's logic' think a bit about how logical your behavior would seem when you are emotional, moved, angry, stressed, tired, worried, etc. to others, who don't know you and are not sympathetic. See, you aren't that much of a role-model of rationality.

Stoppard's Arcadia at Oxford Playhouse

Tom Stoppard's Arcadia is twenty years old. It is still popular and often played. The piece is a well balanced mixture of comedy, romance, and a few intellectual topics. It comments on topics through the learning, development, and debates of the characters on determinism, on the development of physics and mathematics, on differences between rationalism and romanticism, as well as on some difficulties of research. During all this it still manages to be witty, in the good, Oscar Wilde-sense. (Note: in one of his other plays, Travesties, Stoppard uses parts of Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest).

The play was now performed at the Oxford Playhouse to celebrate it's twentieth anniversary. It was produced by the Oxford Student Company: Milk and Two Sugars. (Cast here.) It's hard to evaluate it in detail: the play has lots and lots of complicated discussions, and a storyline with several interrelated twists. I won't go into the details here. You can read the whole piece, or go and see it if interested.

The richness of detail draws away part of one's attention from the performance of the actual play. As one has to keep in mind many things, track all the relations between the characters - their romances, flirts, and rivalries - there isn't much energy left. Of course that I had this feeling tells that the actors were doing well. They managed to convey the story in an entertaining and accessible way. Some of the actors did excellently: David Shield's Septimus Hodge was clever, quick and critical, but a warm hearted young man at the same time. Amelia Sparling's Thomasina was charming and bright, brimming with ideas and youthful excitement. And Carla Kingham's Hannah was just as careful and a bit awkward as the written text suggests. I found a bit of difficulty with taking Ed Barr-Sim serious in Bernard's role. But I understand that for a student company it is hard to find anyone suitable for the role of a mature, established and donnish academic. Nevertheless, his performance in the scenes when Bernard becomes angry was a bit of a disappointment. Instead of a quick and clever, but dominant man, he rather portrayed a hysterical and self-important fake.

My only complaint would be about the directors work. The performance placed a lot of emphasis on the comical elements, and the characters rarely adopted serious tones. This way much of the darker tones and darker humor became too light, and its significance got lost among the many clever and cheerful riposts. Also, the more complicated elements of the plot were sometimes rushed through - the characters were portrayed as becoming very excited and quickly pouring out their ideas. This might have been disturbing for audiences who haven't met the text earlier or saw the play for the first time. And if one misses any of the story elements, some of the great jokes and surprises might be later incomprehensible.

All in all, the performance was a good interpretation of the play, focusing mainly on the fun site of the comedy. I do not want to suggest that the serious issues were downplayed, but they could have given more weight. Still, it was an entertaining performance, very good entertainment for Saturday afternoon, and material for interesting discussions with one's company.

What is natural for children?

A friend of mine voiced the opinion that it is important for kids to spend much time in nature. I always viewed claims aspiring to tell us that we should do something 'because it is natural', 'because that's how we did it always', etc., with suspicion. And not without any reason.

You often hear claims like: 'we should eat food X because it is natural food for us and our ancestors ate it always, and they never had cancer', or that 'in my time kids used to play outside a lot and ... [insert your favorite beneficial outcome for your life]'. There are three problems with such claims.

First think about it this way: evolution is a slow process. Most of the features of our body have evolved a long-long time ago (tens of thousands of years ago) and have changed little. Our basic structure is the same, our basic bodily functions (blood circulation, digestion, hormone transactions, etc.) are the same. And our ancestors have lived a very different life from ours. So, our body is basically not really 'made' for the sort of lives most people in second and first world countries live.

Nevertheless we live much-much longer and healthier lives than did our ancestors. Thanks to the development of moral skills and cultures we aren't killed by other humans at first sight, stronger individuals cannot just simply take what is ours or kill off our kids, males don't regularly rape females, we don't have to use physical violence to get our food, and so on. And thanks to medicine, fertilization, crops growing, vaccines and a whole lot of other inventions we are not subjects to mass early childhood death, to 30-50 years of average lifespan and so on. So, our inbuilt mechanisms aren't necessarily a good guide to how we should live.

Thanks to our basic architecture we are pretty adaptive and can lead lives substantially different from the ones our bodies evolved to live. And thanks to the lucky cultural basics we developed we did not became a fiercely competitive but a very cooperative race. Furthermore, we can now use these bodies in much-much more efficient ways than 'nature told us to', and have far greater knowledge how to gain pleasure, fight inequality, fear, depression, death and pain, than any other animal, which lives a natural life.

Second, The 'keep to the well trodden path' style of arguments deserve no credit either. What was working as a good rule of thumb ten, twenty, or fifty years ago has not much to do with what will work nowadays. Don't misunderstand me: it might work. There are social settings and economic areas where the structure remained largely unchanged since long time. Also, these rules might work due to luck. But they surely aren't rules you should accept because they worked earlier, or someone found them useful. 

This does not necessarily apply to rules which pertain to personal matters, such as family or relationship matters. Since in these things it is extremely hard to get right what is beneficial both for individuals in terms of subjective feelings of happiness, security, etc., and what is good for society, plus these categories are - as we have them nowadays - almost purely social constructions, it is very much possible that a good constellation is one that we hit on earlier.

Third, what about the personal experience based views, for example when your friends say that kids should definitely start doing a part time job when they are 15, or when they want their kids to learn music, since it was such an important experience in their lives? There are two problems with these kinds of ideas: one is, that they are based on subjective thoughts formed here and now. But these thoughts do not reveal anything about the real processes that led up to the stage one is in. It does not underpin a relation between one's satisfaction with certain aspects of one's own life and the earlier experience. Also, it does not take into account all the people who had the same experience, but failed in life in all sorts of way - they ended up lonely and suffering from it, jobless, homeless, and so on.

The other problem with these sorts of views - held by everyone - is that they are very likely to be affected by cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is a psychological mechanism at work in all of us. It ensures that we have a picture of ourselves and our lives that is easy to live with. For this purpose it very often 'cheats us'. For example, if we are wrong about a factual question and someone points this out, and later we get to know that we were wrong, we like to look for explanations that suggest that the question is still open. There was a problem with the proof, with the evidence. We didn't understand the question in the same way. And so on. Everyone is good at giving excuses.

The same happens in cases of relying on personal experiences of what was and what wasn't useful for one. Most people would like to see their relatives, their partners and themselves in favorable light. So, they like to glorify and justify their methods and choices in raising them, living with them. Therefore we often adopt methods, or justify adopting method that have nothing to speak for them. Except that adopting them makes us feel better about our own lives.

Also, in many cases it might be true that it is useful to spend a lot of time outside. Kids might have hardwired, innate developmental segments which only activate or work really effectively if they receive particular stimuli. But whether this is so or not can only be decided by neurology, psychology and education studies. It is not something you should take guesses at, nor should you take advice from non-professionals.

Should we abandon all such rules of thumb? All such 'traditional' advice? I think not. The problem is, that we do not have anything better to rely on as long as we don't have sufficient relevant statistical data. Professionals in healthcare, education studies, psychology, sociology and other fields are working actively to gather such data. You can always find good books, correct websites with the most up-to-date positions, gathered and interpreted by professionals. 

If possible, do not rely on journals or websites run by journalists or other non-professionals. They might misinterpret the data, or even the interpretation of the scientists. Usually understanding research results is very difficult. Don't try it yourself. Let the professional explain it to you. If you don't understand it try again, try harder. It's no one's fault. You just lack the skills and education. We all face this problem and no one is good at everything. Take your time. Ask for help. Learn a bit. And don't run to easier solutions, don't read esoteric and alternative stuff. If it seems too plausible and easy, it's probably false. And it can seriously harm your kid's or your own development.

The critical way is hard, but the only good one. See this for example.