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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Internalised Conformity

[4 minute read ] 

A long time ago, I used to read anything: cereal boxes at breakfast; the ingredients on cake wrappers; even the address on the plastic wrapping on multi-packs of toilet paper. However, I rarely read the little quotes that acted as prefaces or indicators at the very beginning of books. I would just dive right into the story. These quotes were included by the publishers, editors and writers to provide an idea of what to expect in the story. Usually they always seemed to be wistful. Writers might regard these quotes as foreshadows or foreshadowing. 

Just like moving home to a new area and not knowing that one end of a road I pass each day in the new town or city would be the best route to take me closer to where I want to be because I never read the street name at both ends, and then one day making that choice to pay attention and discovering a short-cut, yesterday I made a similar link in my head.

A long time ago, I was struck by the title of a Wilbur Smith book, 'The Angels Weep' and on this occasion I read the little quote in the first few pages:

...But man, proud man,

Dressed in a little brief authority,

Most ignorant of what he is most assured,

His glassy essence, like an angry ape

Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven

As makes the angels weep

 - Isabella

Act 2, scene 2, 146 - 151

That quote, particularly the angels weeping bit, stayed with me for many years. I couldn't remember the words but I remembered the angels. A while ago, I found that quote as a picture file online and saved it, and read it today. In the Wilbur Smith book the reference was not included. It is from 'Measure for Measure' by William Shakespeare, a play I need to study under the auspices of understanding how literature relates to power and whether it writes back to power. 

While it is not the other end of the 'road' I frequently pass and it does not provide a shortcut to anywhere, it does make me feel more at home in a place I have lived in for a long time. Of course, I am talking metaphorically; the 'place' is of course where I am in my learning, in my education and level of understanding stuff. It is to some extent the elusive 1% that helps to bind many strips of information together into a cohesive whole. Perhaps one day the address on the toilet-paper wrapper will also be as poignant. We know the ingredients on the cereal box is ever relevant.

Well! That was a private moment!

Striving to read and retain information is a self-imposed directive that I ruthlessly impose on myself. On a motorway, I hate missing my exit. There are two reasons for this and the first is by far the worst part for me. Suddenly I am lost; not so lost that I can't find my way back to the correct route but instead in a position of not knowing; not knowing how far the next exit is. The second reason I hate missing the exit is because I was asleep; I never know whether that exit was a restricted exit - can I come back down the other carriageway and still exit at this junction? Do I have to make my way across country, through congested towns? Of course, SatNav would take care of getting me to where I need to be to continue my journey but I eschew technology as being inferior to human understanding. Technology tends to be linear in its approach to providing information. Maps show me both ends of a street and how they link one place to another and SatNav just gives me a route. I cannot learn from SatNav.

In a book on psychology, 'Simply Psychology' by Michael Eysenck, there is a chapter called 'Social Influence and territorial behaviour'. I have the book open on a page that has a section subtitled as 'Kinds of conformity' (p260 Psychology Press Ltd. 1996). There are three main reasons to conform according to Kelman (1958) 'compliance, identification, and internalisation'. Briefly, they seem to be in order of actually wanting to conform. Complying with the majority even if an individual does not agree; Identifying with a role in society that someone has chosen; and conforming when someone is really in agreement with the views of those who are seeking to influence them. 

I suppose I like to conform to my own idea of what I should do. I am, however, not the first to read widely or do it deliberately just in case it reveals the other end of a metaphorical street of learning. My sister bought me a book on Psychology for my thirteenth birthday. I suspect she was thinking, 'Heal yourself, weirdo!' at the time. No matter; it was the best present I have ever received because it provided me with an idea that there is a conduit to understanding. I wrote about nostalgia a while back with a knowledge that we all might conform with a majority. If my family are in agreement about how an event unfolded in which we all attended and it differs from my memory, I have to conclude that any nostalgia I have is fictional. That would be like having the carpet whipped from beneath our feet, I suspect. Scary Monsters!I got the idea of nostalgia needing to conform with the memories of a majority from reading books on psychology. Wide reading has never been wasted. 

I am delighted that reading everything is 'internalised' in me. I continue to conform to my original idea, when I was sixteen, that everything is important and anything could be the missing 1% that provides the key to unlock the bonus prize of making sense of things. 

Indubitably, next year I shall be asked to consider power and corruption as Shakespeare showed it in 'Measure for Measure' with Angelo taking control in the Duke's absence. Just reading the play is like following SatNav for me. It will start at the beginning and finish at the end and it will, despite any sub-plots along the way that Shakespeare intended to enhance the journey, still be quite linear for me. The whole journey I might consider to be run in a train carriage at night. Being able to see anything outside, through the window, is nigh on impossible. Yet, if I re-read 'The Angels Weep', which for me is an easy and very enjoyable read, I am certain I will be able to glean something that will allow me to appreciate what Shakespeare was saying in 'Measure for Measure'.

Of course, I have already started to read about what was going on at the time of writing 'Measure for Measure' and I know where Shakespeare got the plot from. Linking the two will certainly add to my comprehension of the play and its intended audience.

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[ 6 and a half minute read ]

The Caveman's List

One of the things I dislike about communicating, is that there are rules to it that are not written down for the unwary to, well, be ware of. Of course, anyone who writes something down is using a form of communication. The words could be written, such like, as a shopping list. The words on the paper, or perhaps papyrus in Ancient Egypt, could be purposely recorded for a number of reasons, and the reason may even change as time passes. 

The Caveman's List 

Woolly Mammoth meat the size of twenty fist-sized apples, or at least four rabbits

So many nuts that it would take seven trips to carry them from the tree to the cave using only both hands, or one crushed handful of the leaves from the plant that has purple flowers shaped like ears

Ah, shopping lists for the people who are learning what to look out for, and are easily distracted by clashing two stones together as though they are fighting, or kissing. I found the words carved in a piece of stone I found in my garden.

Hakim, the spirit avatar I created, when I was sixteen, to protect me from harm while I am sleeping had an opinion; always welcome. Wild, or more creative, but definitely always welcome. Who wouldn't consider the view of an avatar who specialises in all things spiritual?

       'No. I think... No, they are the ingredients in a recipe.'

Harrari, the abandoned alien I discovered in a wood in which I had been living in, had her say; always welcome. Ruthless, and dangerous with it, one might think that I have no choice in letting her speak; but, her reasoning comes from a blending of an alien 'hyper-technological' existence and an absorption of knowledge on the flora, fauna, and things that we humans cannot see, on earth. As I say, always welcome and never, never denied, let's just leave it at that.

        'You both think too simply. You, Martin, are practical in your approach, and you, Hakim, are creative and living in the sensual. The writing on the stone chip is a Stone-age agreement to pay.'

It is not Hakim's job to understand bartering, but he knows that you can't get something for nothing.

       'Money?'

       'A credit note? I mused, a quiz on my forehead.

       'Money and credit is now the same thing. Your money was once a piece of something valuable that had universal value in the area in which it was used. But a merchant buying a large amount of stock could be robbed of the valuable universal 'coin', before they could hand it over to the supplier. Not only that, the accumulated 'coin' might be heavy indeed. The words are a record of a negotiation at the primary stage.'

       'That is why there are alternatives...or.' I nodded, realisation undoing the crease between my eyebrows.

It is easy to decipher the words on the stone, now under lock and key in my library, as meaning any of our offered opinions, and there is still more. It could be a purchase order that a boy was tasked to take to the cave-man shop. 

       'Run all the way there, and all the way back.' There was no expectation he would be burdened with goods.

Harrari, grateful that we understood the value of my discovery in the garden concluded with, 'Further thinking could open up an understanding into whether these cave-people understood 'bundles' of goods or were offering a Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA)'.

       'Marketing?' Hakim looked up from pretending to fill his imaginary pipe. He smoked it when Harrari bothered him, because he was convinced that she could not tolerate the smell. Open to a wide scope of possibilities while he was clutching his Diploma in Creativity, he now used his pipe to show that, for him, reason had reached a limit.

I smiled, but mostly inwardly. For all I knew, Harrari could smell completely rancid and could tolerate anything I might imagine. She almost never appeared in our human visual spectrum and I had to conclude that our olfactory senses were similarly limited, and work in a narrow bandwidth, because other than a, very infrequent, floral scent that seemed to originate from nowhere, I am pretty certain that I can not smell her. Even then, I might be smelling next-doors washing on the line. Yet....in Winter, in the rain?

My final pondering on how big a caveman fist, hand, or a rabbit might have been, was broken by my wife coming in. She didn't know about Harrari or Hakim; I had never told her about my past. I wasn't really sure that she even knew that she was married to me, because she spent a lot of time keeping away from me. She had some of her friends with her; even now she separated herself from me.

       'Hello, Martin' He winked at me, the one I had seen so many times with my wife, yet strangely never alone. Neither of us nodded. Social protocol loomed before us. Should we wrestle? Should I punch his perfect smiling face? Should I shake his hand? Hug? Or should I just politely say 'Good Night' and leave them all to it, whatever they thought 'it' is. I had my own idea of one version but there were too many in her group of friends to be about to play Bridge or Monopoly; four, and my wife made five in her group.

I left without responding to him, and similarly ignored the rest. They all looked remarkably familiar, as though I once knew them, but I simply could not remember their names. I knew that I once did, but they belonged to younger people; much younger.

Back home, in my own untidy mess and glad to be away from pristine neatness, I went into the library and checked that the stone was still safely stored. That guy really bothered me. In fact, I am not really sure he exists. After all, my wife has an exceptional imagination and might have invented him just to annoy me. How she could get me to perceive him was beyond me. Hakim and Harrari, between them, would help me to figure it out, if I ask them. I hoped it had nothing to do with that photograph on her wall.

Faced with a wide scope and scale of environments of interaction, we are constantly relying on our understanding of previous events for a template from which to work. It is sometimes said that when we are falling out of a window, our whole life flashes before us. Hakim would say that we are trying to send signals for help while flicking through a scrapbook of memories; memories that include spiritual help. Harrari, the perspicacious one in our group of three, with her analytical bent, would say that we are seeking a set of rules or formulas that have worked in similar circumstances to find a solution that matches not landing on the ground at a pace that would hurt us. Hakim wants an angel with wings, and Harrari needs her molecules to dissipate, and effectively become dust that is shifted by the wind.

Of course, it matters whether there are manuals for life; childhood; marriage; getting a job, or not. But I think I need to find a manual on how to read in an appropriate way. I need to understand why the writer wrote whatever it is they wrote, and what the writer left out. Unfortunately, there are no tests in the real world to be certain we have all read the same books and how we understand them, unless we write an essay that reflects back a good facsimile of the lessons to be learned, or in social environments, shake hands to say hello, or just politely say goodnight.