If You Only Knew

It struck me today how very odd communication by telephone actually is. I was sitting on the toilet doing what men do when they sit on toilets when my mobile rang. Now some would say that it was foolish in the extreme to even answer the phone whilst doing what I was doing but, in a rather mindless manner I pulled my phone out and answered. I then had a very normal conversation about life and work (notice those two things are separate) before hanging up and finishing up.

What I think is extremely odd about this is the enormous discrepancy between what the person on the end of the phone thought I was doing and what I was actually doing. I’m not suggesting that the person actively thought about what I might be doing (although that slight echoing sound was a dead giveaway) just that they probably imagined me in my house, or in the my car or out for coffee, non of which were even close. It then gets stranger to think that I have no idea what they are doing. My friend could have been on top of Kirsten Dunst and I wouldn’t have had a clue. The question is: how much more interesting would the world be if we could some how see exactly what someone else was doing while on the phone to us? Of course the pragmatic and/or cynical among us will say that it wouldn’t be very much more interesting at all because most of the time they would be doing very boring things or that when video phones are more widely used we shall see exactly what they are doing. However the kind of watching I’m referring to here is the purely voyeuristic kind where the watcher remains entirely unseen and un known.

What I imagine we would see is people in their natural state, for once, wholly unaffected: as your boss tells you that the poster really has to be done tomorrow he is squeezing some enormous zit on his forehead, or perhaps as your girl friend informs you that you should really get a hair cut she is prancing around in her underwear to the softly playing ‘Dirty Dancing’ sound track or even as your mother tells you that she is doing well since Granddad died she is brushing back a tear that just won’t go away. Sometimes it’s even more extreme: I heard a story of a journalist who was in a war zone being fired upon and was fearful for his life. He quickly called his family on a satellite phone and got his youngest daughter who gravely informed him for several minutes about the kid who was picking on her at school.

I’m not suggesting for a minute that we are missing out on something special or that telecommunications is robbing us of precious time spent together because, obviously if it weren’t for cell phones we couldn’t have half the conversations we do have. However, what I am saying is that if you find you self on a boring call to someone imagine what he or she could be doing. It will add a whole new dimension to your phone calls. Put aside those conservative thoughts and imagine them lying naked in a pit of jelly while seventeen virgins dance naked to the beat of a Tibetan yak drum. The thing is, they actually could be and you’d never know (apart from the tell tale rhythmic drumming).

Better still, engage in some truly adventurous phone calls. Indulge your self by realising that you could actually do anything you like and no-one will ever find out. When else can you talk to your boss all the while plucking your reoccurring back-hair? If you know someone is going to ring, make the most of it: take all your clothes off, put pegs on your nipples and get in a bath tub full of baked beans - you know you want to.

The Human Condition

I find it unimaginable that anybody would go to the effort to invite you, Tim, to an evening of supposed joie de vivre and then not even bother. Unless of course maybe you arrived after the focus of the gathering had been reached, and the general populace had moved into more of a recovery and away from a paticipatory mode, possibly having having partaken too much of the table and bottle, merely passing time in a stupor in no fit state to fully appreciate your good self.

This is a common enough complaint and one which seems to be not only confined to social gatherings. All through society people seem to just switch off and merely existing, unthinking and dead. It is ironic that the social structures that enable them to live in this way rely on an active participation and when this is lacking they also die and become open for corruption. How often is it that our better angels are shouted down by the demons that also fill the void of our soul? While I agree that our species does have enormous capacity for goodness and love these seem but abberations when the sum of our actions is considered. The rest a mixture self interest and indifference.

By opting out people deprive the system they are told they love, democracy of its most required feature, that of an informed public. We have created a world for ourselves where we are no longer needed to participate or even be human, just functionaries. How can it be that less than two centuries after fighting so vigorously for the right to be acknowledged as worthy of recognition the masses no longer seem to want it? Is is that they have seen that it is of no value to them, are they bored, or is it one of those intangibles that it is simply enough to be recognised in the first place and then it no longer matters?

As I was sitting in a cafe today reading about upcoming elections I wondered whether it was that the world is just too big. When democracy was born there was a directness about it that people could grab hold of. For example in Florence at the start of the Renaissance the Signori held office for two months and at the end of this period those who were fortunate enough to be a part of the process gathered together and elected their next leader. Nowadays who could say that they actually affected anything. In the US they talk about whole states as swing states, what about the others are they a foregone conclusion and if so what is the point of turning up at the polling booth. I wonder if we are not interested because we didn't have to fight for it, much like how dynasties falter once the founders pass on, the passion has been lost and the privilege taken for granted.

It's the Devil in Me (part 2)

I was reading the paper just yesterday and read a summary of that hostage stake out in a Russian kindergarten. What I read filled me with a profound sense of despair; for all my bold posturings about Television being the 'sickness that is ripping apart the western world' it seems there is a far greater sickness that lurks in the human psyche. These soldiers had taken hostage children and parents and then proceeded to blow them all up when their impossible demands weren't met. It stuns me that the same species that brought forth Monet and Rembrandt could also bring forth such insatiable evil. It's the same species that brought forth you and me.

I think why it really got me was that I just expected it to turn out okay. But it really didn't; it turned out about as badly as it possibly could have. The irony of course is that despite that fact that the 'world is shrinking' and we're 'all part of the global village' there was absolutely nothing any one of us could do about it.

Are we all capable of doing such horrific things? Is it just a part of our nature along with soccer and sculpture, Pokemon and poetry? Everything in me cries out that this surly can't be the case, that we are innately good and it is only in some twisted, mutated back-water of our gene pool that such disastrous tendencies exist. I find however that history does not support my view; the bloody butchering of innocents has been the human race's almost constant companion over the centuries and I would be hard pressed, when reading the almanacs of human tragedy and triumph to assert that the beauty has outweighed the pain.

The only hope I fear lies in the minutiae of individual existence, the smile on a small child’s face at a foolish game, old couples still holding hands after decades together, people at airports, a teenagers first painful crush or the comfort that only old friends can give. Perhaps there is even hope in my silly heart bleeding for those poor mums and dads in Russia. However, even here I find corruption in the stupid lies I've told out of insecurity or the people trodden on to get ahead, and I'm left with the feeling that we are constantly on a knife edge, poised between the good we could do and the bad we are so capable of. Surely the only question that remains is which one I will choose today? The problem is I sense another rather more cynical one: how long will this passion last? How long until it is just a little too hard and a little too costly to keep doing the good? Hear at last, I may have found ‘the devil in me’.

It's the Devil in Me....

Tom what you wrote has struck a cord with me; my very being is resonating with an unwholesome, and disgustingly self-righteous desire to tell you that you have succumbed to the ultimate evil. As I read your last post I became increasingly aware of a feeling of complete and utter repulsion. I honestly would rather you had written about some sort of porn addition or come clean about a dastardly crime you had committed than hear you talking in such blasé fashion about the sickness that is ripping apart the very fabric of western civilisation. I refer, of course, to Television.

As a brief illustration let me recount for you a situation that I have found myself in time and time again of late. It was a Tuesday night about a week ago when I received a phone call from a friend, who for the purposes of this example shall be called Bob, inviting me round to his house. I was informed there would be several others around there whom I would know and I wrongly assumed I was in for a pleasant evening. Upon arriving at the address I entered the lounge and realised, to my horror, that I had been lured into a trap.
Let me recount the scene for you: my first thought was that everyone must have been eagerly awaiting my arrival, for they were all sitting in a semicircle, eyes wide with anticipation looking in my direction (not an unusual response when I’m entering a room). I, head swelling with importance, made some pleasant greeting which was met, to my surprise, with grunts and vague nods in my direction. It was at this point I realised something was horribly wrong. These people were not looking at me at all; they were of course glued to the television which sat in the corner happily soaking up the attention that was rightfully mine. I sat down disconsolately and began to watch the garbage that spewed forth from the black box all the while thinking, ‘I could just as very well stayed at home, saved myself the petrol and actually done something worth while with my evening’. Such thoughts were occasionally punctuated with, ‘I’m going to bloody kill that bloody Bob.’ Eventually the programs of ‘interest’ were over and the TV was finally turned off. Instead of bursting forth into fantastic and scintillating conversation we just sat there stunned, mumbling pathetic excuses for why we suddenly all felt so awkward. Then muttering things like ‘oh I’m so tired’ and ‘is that really the time’, people began to leave.

I wanted to shout at everyone: Is that it? Is that what this little group of friends is all about? Is this the sum total of our relationships these days? Did we just meet up to watch tele together? When I go around somewhere I want to talk to my friends, find out how they actually are, hear about how Bob’s mother just got diagnosed with cancer, how Kathy’s cat just had kittens or about the most beautiful girl that Jim ever saw at the dairy. I don’t bloody care about some fictional family in America, or some overweight bachelor in London; what I care about are my friends, joi de vivre – the joy of living, the very stuff of life! Television is robbing us of some of the most precious times of our lives, times when we could be creating memories that will stay with us until we die. No one is ever going to say in 10 years time, ‘hey remember the time we sat round at Bob’s and watched the 13th episode of the 2nd series of Malcolm in the Middle?’. Television is robbing us of our goodness and love, it’s sucking the very soul out of great friendships, it’s making us so lazy that we forget how to talk to each other, it soaks up hours and hours of our time and all the while it’s filling us with materialism, lust, greed and any other form of vice I could care to mention.

As I got back in to the cold vinyl seats of my car I could just imagine the little black boxes in homes the world over, all smiling smugly, congratulating themselves on a job well done.