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[14 minute read]

Agency or agency? Part One

 Mental Health issues

Roget’s Thesaurus and dictionary, or the Internet?

From the 1962 edition, Roget’s Thesaurus has five entries for possible noun meanings;

agency; instrumentality; action; management; commission.

Eight diversions including ‘action’ which splits off into nine branches and management which splits off into 8 branches and commission which has ten relevant near synonyms, ostensibly under authority, as in ‘to have authority’. And it is perhaps this that I am most interested in alongside, under ‘instrumentality’, ‘effectiveness’. When combined, I am considering someone who has agency in their lives, for the purposes of maintaining their life to a level of that which meets their satisfaction, to have ’authority to be effective’ in their life. However, when someone downloads an app on their phone, have they given over agency to a third party technology firm?

The Oxford English Dictionary website largely reflects my understanding of how we miss out on peripheral information which could be useful to us later or immediately. The page mentions that ‘there are eight meanings listed in OED’s entry for the noun agency’. Impressively, it also gives nearby entries, which would be the words you would see on one of their pages in a book-type dictionary.

https://www.oed.com/dictionary/agency_n?tl=true

And yes, you can log in with your local UK library card, under Institutional Access.

In fact, the OED does not reflect, concur with, or mirror my understanding or sentiment. For me to believe otherwise would be madness. I am not the first to have an understanding that some avenues of seeking information are fraught with danger (There be dragons in uncharted waters) or, following the water theme, there is only a puddle of facts, or there may be a cascade or a fountain, of information. Determining where we get information should not be just about getting information; it should be from sources that allow us to make links to other seas of knowledge. When I say ‘links’ I do not mean canals or even rivers (though these are more organic). ‘links’, is not a modern word and it has been used as a verb for a long time, and today means, clicking an onscreen icon or text to open a new page on a device with a screen. I don’t even mean that. No! I mean how a tide ebbs on a beach and leaves rockpools that invite exploration and scrutiny. I mean a pastime of discovery, of hope and disappointment; a hunt for answers (or crabs).

Read a map or use SatNav?

So many of us use SatNav to guide us in our journeys from one place to another. I was once a professional driver. I can tell you that a SatNav should only be used for the final mile of travel. The whole of the rest of the journey should be by way of following a map and an A-Z of the city you are to visit. We should take back our decisions to go where we choose to avoid traffic and delays. The best use of a SatNav is to get you out of trouble. Follow the A-Z until there is a police incident right before you and then because the SatNav is on, do a U-turn and follow the SatNav to a safe place to stop and look at the map and A-Z again. Knowing where you are is both reassuring and interesting. I will give you an example of lazy driving; my own. I have always wanted to visit Chartes Cathedral, in France. I had to drive to Madrid, in Spain having set off from the south of England. Foolishly, I did not look at a map of France to see the alternatives routes I could take. Suddenly, I entered Chartes and there was the Cathedral. Two things then happened. My experience as a multi-drop driver told me to never stop unless it is for fuel or a breakdown, and my fatigue and reliance on the SatNav had sent me into a passive role. In effect, the ex-multi-drop driver was in control and driving, and the owner of an International Relocation business, me, was asleep at the wheel. I saw it there, only a couple of hundred metres away, but drove right past Chartes Cathedral. I was switched off; stupefied; semi-conscious; a passenger in my own life; dulled; blunted; unalert and boring. Effectively, the plan to get to Madrid overrode the formation of any new ad hoc plan to enjoy the journey.

Back to the reality of taking away the mundane task of being awake in England.

‘York Way is a major road in the London Borough of Islington, running north for one mile from the junction of Pentonville Road and Euston Road, adjacent to King's Cross railway station towards Kentish Town and Holloway.’ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York_Way

You don't need to understand the route I am describing or even know London, England at all. You only need to look at a map.

York Way runs parallel to the A1 (Upper Street, Pentonville), which is to the east. The cars on the single-carriageway A1 during evening rush-hour are practically stationary. A SatNav will direct drivers to take this part of the A1 to go North from the major East-West road, the A501, City Road. Need I go on? Okay; at 5pm during the week, York Way is so empty that I have driven at 40mph for over a mile, taken a right turn on Fortess Road, at Tufnell Park, and driven at 30mph until I joined the A1 in Upper Holloway where the A1 is a dual carriageway. Any London A-Z will show this as a good route, just as is Caledonian Road, which is between York Way and Upper Street (A1). Never mind, just go to sleep and be a passenger behind the steering wheel. You never wanted to have agency over your lives anyway; you just didn’t want your parents to have it.

From the book of Joel (in the Bible) Joel 1:v5:

‘Awake, ye drunkards, and weep; and howl, all ye drinkers of wine, because of the new wine; for it is cut off from your mouth.’

Joel goes on to mention a nation that has come upon his land, strong and without number. This invasion has destroyed the vines from which new wine is made. Make what you will of that. Just picture an idyllic life in a rural setting in the sun and then take away the light from the sun and use only LED lights during the day. Take away the warmth of the sun and the fresh air and enclose the garden so the air-conditioner, dehumidifier, and heater are not wasted. Take away the smells of the flowers and rinse the air free from scent. Then you have my concept of blindly using a SatNav.

Bus timetable or phone app?

I worked in The Netherlands for a while and would catch the bus to Leiden, a major university town, in Holland. It is pronounced Ly-Den. I would wait for the bus without knowing when it would come, content in watching the Dutch world pass by. When the bus came, I would say, ‘Leiden alstublieft’ (alstublieft means please). The bus driver would say ‘Leide?’ (Ly-Der), and I would say, ‘Yes’. If I asked to go to Leide, the driver would say, ‘Leiden?’ (Ly-Den), and I would say ‘Yes’. This is an amusing quirk of catching a bus that could occur in any country, including our own. Catching a bus is not a dull, uneventful, journey of no value. Yet, so many of us use phone apps to see where the bus is and when it will arrive. I suspect this is because there is no recognition of an opportunity to engage with a moment in time that is significantly different to other times and has so much potential for activities that other times do not hold.

I had a new girlfriend of just a few months. I had booked tickets for a play in Plymouth; she lived in Devon. I had agency over the evolution of the day effectively. Of course, she would also share decision-making and she was a strong woman, and could end her participation in events at any time; of course. 

While we were still in her home, she instructed me to phone for details on train arrivals.

     'Are you going to phone, or do I have to?', she said, stridently annoyed at my relaxed attitude towards chaos.

I already had a printed timetable in my pocket; of course I did. I duly phoned and told her train times. To her, it seemed the world, with me in it, had obediently returned to a state of control. Within the same breath I ended our relationship. By this time, I had recognised that she didn’t want to live her life; she wanted to have lived it. She didn’t want to be going somewhere; she wanted to have already arrived. I reasoned the end of the relationship thus: When would we be able to explore the train station with our eyes while sitting on a worn bench eating an expensive stale sausage roll and pulling faces at  the rancid coffee bought on the platform? When would we have a moment to idle and meld into the ebb and flow of the station? When would we be able to smile at the other waiting passengers? Never. We would forever waste time in our homes, twiddling our thumbs while we wait for the taxi that will drop us off with just a minute or two before we would be whisked off on a silent train. You might think that all the fun things we could have done on the platform could be done now, on the train. There is one problem though, we cannot get off the train; we cannot change our destiny; we have given agency of our lives over to the taxi-driver and then to the inevitability of the train movement and arrival. Caught in a tide over which we have no control we won’t find the moment to just softly say, with any real and overwhelming conviction or sentiment, ‘I love you’, or ‘You make me smile’, or something. Our lives together would always be on the clock; segmented into episodes of how to best give our freedom away. It would be fettered by preparing for the moment when we must act; when we must march over to another ‘fairground ride’ over which we have no control and have paid handsomely for.

My, now ex-girlfriend, wouldn’t get on the London Underground; she preferred the buses. I love the Underground and Metro systems across the world. There is a growing sense of anticipation on the London Underground of the arrival of the train that announces its imminent appearance with a whoosh of warm and humid air just before it leaves the tunnel and meets the platform. I love that nobody looks at each other in the eye. I love that teenage girls who are friends sit on opposite sides of the carriage and signal to each other which of the young men standing between them have the best bum or bulge, with little head nods directed towards the winner of their secret competition. I love that they think it is fine to objectify men and judge them on their physical attributes because it is only a looking game for them, which they will grow out of. I love that they are not looking at their Smartphones. I hate that they are not looking at their Smartphones because they are safely tucked away so no-one will steal them. I love that they are forced to play little games that connect them to each other and their environment. I know that they can't get a signal for their Smartphones.

If I catch a bus to work each day, I know when the bus arrives; I don’t need an app on my phone because the discovery has already been made. If I am to only catch a bus once, let’s say to get somewhere in a city I don’t know, I don’t need an app on my phone; I will simply look at a bus timetable or swear because there is none, or ask someone who might know something. You never know, perhaps that elderly person at the bus stop will not get to speak to another person for the rest of the day. In any case, I will experience catching a bus and riding the bus or a train. If I love it, am bored by it, cramped because I have long legs, or just hate it; at least I will be alive and not be someone who just wanted to have lived, but never understood how to.

Cook now or cook later? Smart Meters

Some time ago I shared a house with someone who did not believe that chips could be made at home. I also shared a house with someone else who did not believe me when I told him that mashed potatoes is made with potatoes. He thought mashed potato comes out of a packet, and to actually boil and mash potatoes was the wrong thing to do in a kitchen. I had to show both of them what to do with potatoes.

I like making chips (strips of potatoes deep-fried in oil); sometimes I make crisps (very thinly sliced potatoes deep-fried in oil). I also live in an area which has no gas supply. Good restaurants have gas cookers or naked flames because control of heat is essential for cooking well. Cooking on an electric cooker is much, much harder than on a gas cooker. This may be a contributory factor in determining whether people eat healthily at home. Learning to cook with electric WILL give poor results.

A case in point: Most of the UK homes, I think have SmartMeters for the electric supply. They told us that we would save money because we could see how much electric we use. It is very rare that the power used by an electric device is not displayed somewhere on the exterior of an electric appliance. For example, a typical kettle, in the UK, uses between 1700 Watts and 2200 Watts (2200W). Do you need a counter-top device to tell you that you are using, say, 2200W per hour to boil water for your cup of tea? Of course not. Do you need a counter-top device to tell you that if you watch a television that uses 230W per hour, for four hours and twenty minutes you will have used 1kW, or one unit of electricity that has a known price attached to it? Of course not. SmartMeters have not been installed for your benefit; they were installed to notify the electric supplier of your usage and the overall usage of the area in which you live. 

Power supply is fraught with immense difficulty. Electric is difficult to store in large quantity. This means that the actual power generating stations must be agile and adapt extremely quickly to demand and just as importantly, reduce the supply when it is not required. Take for example a major sports event shown on the telly. If there are advertisements many people will get up and boil their kettle; not for the fun of it or to release tension, but for making tea and coffee. This puts an enormous strain on the power grid. SmartMeters have the capability of baffling the amount of power they supply at any given time and are controllable by the power suppliers; you know, the ones who send you a bill for your electric. 

SmartMeters can both limit the quantity of power that passes through them and the rate at which power passes through them. So, it may be that no more than 11kW per hour can ever pass through a SmartMeter, or during the times I want to make chips and need a good supply of unfettered excellent quality electric to make them crispy (usually tea-time) the rate of electric for my whole area is slightly reduced by the power suppliers because everyone else’s SmartMeters told the suppliers that there is usually a very high demand of electric at that time. 

The problem for the power generators (power stations) and controllers of the national grid is that they cannot just press a switch to reduce supply when everyone suddenly finishes cooking for themselves and their families. Oh Boy! Do the power suppliers want us to use microwave ovens that use 750W to 1200W for short periods of times; power usage that would be staggered over time within a regional area? Oh Yes. This is very much a lecture on whoever has knowledge has control over others.

So, do I make my chips now, or when no-one in my village is hungry? I have no agency on when I can make good chips at tea-times. Except that I do; I have a camping stove that uses gas canisters. Not only can I accurately control the heat, I can do it independently of everyone else’s predilection to all eat at the same time. WooHoo! I can control my life a little bit with cooking gas on a camping stove.

To make UK crisps at home you need to salt very thinly sliced potato slices (one of the grater type things that slices works well) and leave for a hour or so for the water to run out of the potato slices, and then deep-fry them in small batches at less than the highest temperature, to make sure the rest of the moisture evaporates off. They do need to be carefully watched because they go from soggy to golden very quickly. Also, they need to be taken from the oil still a bit soggy, to cool, which will allow them to brown a little more as they go crispy.

Blog address for all the posts: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551

[ 11 minute read ]

Some of this might be historically true

Mental Health issues

People once had money........

Long ago, when humans were sane and had control over their own lives, they were happy. They had agency over their lives. They were a people who made decisions for themselves. ‘Ah ha!’, you cry, ‘Children had decisions made by their parents for them!’. You’re right; until they grew up, moved out, and experimented with the world under their own terms and then discovered that they were actually really rubbish at being responsible. That is when they made friends with their parents, instead of resenting them for interfering in (and ruining) their lives. Once these clueless teens realised that they needed help, they looked around for it and found it in their parents. They then respected their parents. They didn’t realise it, but they respected them. Advice was given to them, along with options that were available to them, and then they navigated the problems and nasty bits of life and got on with their lives. Mum and Dad didn’t fix it for them and so they gained respect for themselves. Because they respected themselves, they looked after themselves and then died; usually naturally, in old age, with money.

Then the world was given home computers, but not before Atari gave some of the adventurous people, ‘Pong’, an on-screen tennis game. ‘Pong’ was fine, it wasn’t addictive; it was only played when they were bored. Boredom meant they had not done enough to entertain themselves. Boredom was a punishment for not leaving their homes and socialising through exercise.

Granted, for some in the halcyon days of long ago, exercise was only given to the right arm that went from waist to chin height, waist to chin height, waist to chin height; with single repetitions of, perhaps, twelve to fifteen per hour, for four hours; and during, and between, this arm-exercise plenty of fluids were taken on-board, while a great deal of socialising took place. Scattered among these mostly male fitness-freaks were a few women. For most, that exercise was restricted to Friday and Saturday nights only; unless a religious holiday, or the last day of the year fell during the week. The reason the weekday restriction was in place was for two reasons only; it was expensive exercise; and this kind of exercise, conversely, impaired work capability. People were greatly respected for this self-imposed responsibility. Arriving at work on a Monday was much celebrated among work-colleagues.

However, for many people, lifting an ever-decreasing weight, twelve to twenty-four times per hour for four to five hours per night was so enjoyable that they did not restrict it to only two days each week, and were so keen to feel the burn the next day that they took no nights off. These people had lots of money! Their work was well paid, and there were whole packs of them with well-fed spouses and children in their warm homes. The only drawback for these people was that too much of this kind of exercise impaired their judgement and they made decisions that they regretted the next day. However, this recognition of making a mistake meant that they were continuing to learn and they were pleasing themselves in making resolutions to improve; in effect, much like their recently ‘left-home’ offspring. Everyone was happy.

Sensible people in the same industries, however, stayed at home during the weeknights. They had other harmless ideas that would never lead to harm. Many of us, today, fondly remember the grandparents of the presently afflicted. Bless them, they could never have known what they had harboured in their safe homes, while their raucous peers eshewed the three channels on the TV, in the UK.

The digital two-player Atari ‘Pong’ game, played through a television set with a home-owned console, was as harmless as tilting a little glass-covered square to manouver a ball-bearing through a maze. Yet, the analogue ball-bearing in maze game was better; Oh, far better! There was a building sense of anticipation that had rising waves and falling troughs of achievement, that if the maze was completed, resulted in such satisfaction and attendant cascading dopamine, that it took many seconds to recover from it; and a sibilant ‘Yes' was commonly heard, at this time. The point is, that people mostly had agency over their lives. They could put the gadgets down.

Then, after a fascinating period of new gadgets; which came about through the invention of the magic transistor; a digital switch (current on – current off) and other arcane digital discoveries and manifestations; a small fraction of the world’s population were told that they could have their own little spooky box that would not only replace their home typewriter, but allow them to make endless copies of their carefully scripted letters to their Councils and Bank-Managers, AND they had real-time editing of those letters. Many homes were cleared from rubbish, both on the floor and in the air; scrunched up balls of paper frustratingly hurled at a bin that didn’t respect their aim, and ‘Dammit!’ vanished. Not only was the typewrite gone but with one of these new digital typing machines that strangely also allowed home accounts to be digitally kept, the bin became nervous from lack of use, and miserably and quietly kept to heel. The kids liked this replacement box and keyboard too, because for a vast amount of treasure (that realistically materialised only two times a year - one being a religious holiday) the games that were played in the amusements arcades, the ones that had bred from the fecundity of new supplicants to the digital games, and moved from the periphery of small nations surrounded by sand and salty water, into the medium sized conurbations, were now available a the flick of a switch. Nobody, however, could afford ALL the games in the palaces of flickering lights and digitally created ‘clangs and dings’, for their home use. The electronic section of a sea-side transported to a town stayed for a while longer next to cinema, without the sea gulls and fish and chips.

Initially though, it was only the serious adults who wanted to appear ‘mentally contained’ to their bosses, and bank managers who bought this home office. They wondered what else to do with it, and separated themselves from their, by now, dreary spouses, to instead push around some digital letters. The strongest mental exercisers found that they could produce digital images and psuedo-presentations. It was, at least, better than the telly, and since they almost never exercised only one arm and never the other arm, found that they could get some separation from their mindlessly raving peers, and a smidgeon of relaxation, not least through silence, unless you discount the music, (with rubbish sound reproduction) they keep on them. Their kids were a bit disappointed as well, because the anticipation of winning a reward of tiny financial wealth by inserting a two pence piece into a glass covered electric machine with a reciprocating wall that may serendipitously push their money into a pool of hundreds of other coins to make them move towards a edge of a precipice that had an access hole to the outside for players to collect their reward, still remained quite firmly at the edges of small countries and in large conurbations, next to the cinema. So, anticipation of a positive reward, lasting for only a few fleeting seconds, was still absent in their homes. Things, however, were about to change.

A bit before 1996, there was a tribe of Japanese technocrats who realised that kids wanted to keep digital pets in their pockets. Finally, anticipation of a dead pet hooked a generation. They gave us ‘The Tamagochi’. The End was Nigh. The Sinclair ZX Spectrum and Atari’s Pong just could not cut the mustard; they were ‘Marmite’, while Tamagochi was crack cocaine.

Today, everyone is an avatar extra in ‘Stepford Wives’ with a perfect life, despite living on a run-down UK Council Estate; or a blur of a person, more excitingly present in both the past and the present, simultaneously in multiple places, but not, consciously, at the breakfast table.

Just so you know, in early 1990s Britain, no-one was surprised to have to wait ninety days for a parcel to arrive; To even think of Just-in-Time supply chains was quite simply madness. Inventory costs, or keeping things in warehouses makes up about 25 per cent of the cost of supplying an item, so if someone ordered something, before Just-in-Time logistics, it had to be ordered from China, or Taiwan, or some other far-off manufacturing country. Unless, it was manufactured in one’s own country or the one next door.

‘We had joy, we had fun. We had seasons in the sun. But, the joy couldn’t last because the season’s went too fast.’ Lyrics in ‘Season’s in The Sun’ sung by Terry Jacks.

..........and then technology arrived.