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mental health

[ 8 minute read ]

WARNING - evokes thoughts and ideas on bestial violence, division and hierarchy (dogs fighting)

This is about how the pen is mightier than the sword

Get a licence

'He should be on a lead!'

Throughout the whole of yesterday, inspired by a headline on one of the online news websites, I had a mind to show how evoking emotion can lead people towards a conclusion that can be cemented by confirmation bias; with conclusions that confirm an idea that has lain transparent, gossamer-thin, and nascent, but, through skillful nurturing, becomes more opaque; and as it does so, less open to good counter-argument. I 'hemmed and hawed' at how I would do it; whether I can do it, even whether I should do it. Can I pull it off? I had a theme in my head that I am certain would draw support even though I intended to present it in a surreal way; an oblique approach allows others to make their own minds up; I believe this is the strongest and most abiding force, that of being guided (tricked) into transmogrifying a narrative into something that fits one's own perception and interpretation of the world.

Such is my expectation that the drive of the subject, by dint of it being contentious, would evoke, what may indeed be biased agreement in a large segment of the world population, I, perhaps foolishly, made no attempt to even try to consider a different way to demonstrate the power of words and how they influence opinion. I was going to write a short story but I realised that I cannot control any after-effects. I decided that it is better to present the scaffolding and not the facade. Hopefully, this will cause some people to read a bit more objectively. So, make no mistake, I have an intention and an agenda, but it is an open one.

     'Did you hear? You have to get a licence now if you want a live-in boyfriend?'

A long time ago, people in the UK needed dog-licences if they kept a dog. The details of it are not really the point here. If dog-breeders needed the same licence is beyond my guess. I think the idea was born from a melding of bifurcated opinions that had emerged from both the dogs' perspective and from dog-bite victims. How can we protect the public?

I suppose many dogs were a bit wild and perhaps mistreated and were more than a little scared of strangers and defensive. I think a dog, as a pack animal, needs to assert its authority by it's fighting prowess. Annoy a dog and you can expect a warning snarl and then a nip, perhaps from lying down position, and then an aggressive standing stance with head lowered, and then a violent advance that will be something that you cannot extract yourself from. You must now fight it.

     'Did you hear? We no longer need to buy dog-licences because dog owners are better at understanding their pets' needs.'

That, if you got the connection and ran with it with your own thoughts, is how, by tapping into a long-standing, not yet fully fully considered, belief that men are brutes, gives us the idea that a comparison can be made between a woman's higher intelligence and reasoning ability and that of a less intelligent animal which presents itself (the animal) as though it acts solely on some kind of primordial instinct. People need a licence to keep a dog and women need a licence to keep a man. The point is a higher and reasoning intelligence is considered apt to be in a controlling position over a lesser more instinctive intelligence. Dodgy, huh?

Clearly the two speeches above are uttered from, first, a female perspective and then, from a universal perspective. Now a speech sentence from a male perspective.

       'Did you hear? We can now check to see if our girlfriends are sane by whether she has been granted a licence or not.'

What may first have appeared to be a device (a licence to keep a man) to protect women in my dystopian world as recognising and portraying men as 'cavemen' brutes; and as such need to be kept on a leash, is now a psychometric test as to the suitability of women as girlfriends, from a male perspective.

Now I have opened a can of worms. For many people, I have pulled the rug from under their feet. I expect the overriding thought, for them, is that I am a misogynistic brute. However, to some extent I have deliberately tried to make this happen. The task for me now is to be successful in assuaging (negating) that feeling. Instead of dampening the heat of a blaze though, I must take away the smoke of poorly consumed wood that I intentionally added to the fire, along with the dry tinder that acted as an accelerant.

I am a man. Like a dog, I sometimes act instinctively. And, like a dog, I am a pack animal. Just the same as a dog, I will have picked up bad habits right from birth, through childhood, adolescence, and into adulthood. But, even as an adult, because the world is changing, much of what once seemed proper behaviour, that arose from attitudes of a past time, is now 'deemed' to be inappropriate. Even the use of the word 'deemed' leaves opens the subject; just like a flare-up in a fire when a piece of paper is thrown onto embers. It offers an idea that I do not agree with an idea formed by others, of which I am contemptuous. But it slips quietly in because it follows the word 'seemed' in the same sentence.

There is now a burgeoning world view that social media has some kind of effect on children, social development and behaviour. There are moves and pilot studies to understand the effects and how to eradicate negative influence and effect from social media activity.

Psychologists debate which has more effect on an individual's behaviour; nature or nuture. Was the successful person pre-determined to be successful because they had good genes, or was the parenting and social education of the successful person influential in allowing a good academic education to be absorbed and implemented.

When dogs fight, the owners have their expectation that dogs will fight suddenly realised. The attitude, in the main, is to drag them apart and one owner will probably berate the owner who did not keep their dog on a leash. When men fight on a Friday and Saturday night in the UK, as long as no-one is not hurt too badly they are dragged apart by friends and bystanders and everyone gets to go home. The wounds remind the fighters over the next few days that they should be wary of a probability of future wounds if they act in a similar way. The police, if they deal with men fighting, are loathe to lock them up, but invariably do if they consider that a flaring up is inevitable, and then later release the fighters, after they have calmed down and sobered up.

You can see that, in the UK, men are indeed considered to be similar to dogs. Hence, there is a need for responsible people to register their men with the local authorities. Since dogs cannot be the owner of other dogs, it falls upon women to step up and claim men as their possessions. 

Here then I have introduced some ridicule into the subject. It is crazy to think that men need to be licenced right? What you may have missed in considering this comedic conclusion, is that I have inferred that women are a different species. Anyone who said to themselves, 'Yeah, he has a good point, men should be licenced, and who better than women to apply for those licences', no matter how briefly they held that weird thought, they unwittingly absorbed a potentially damaging concept by way of a back-door.

This post is not intended to create any long-standing ideas of any differences between males and female, or humans and animals. However, by highlighting animal behaviour, there is an expectation that many of the peripheral thoughts around supposed differences were illuminated in our minds, were momentarily considered, reshaped, and stored again. That is how opinion can be deliberately, and inadvertently, changed by both canny and poor writing, and of course, careless reading.

By the way, I would be grateful in knowing if a woman wants to claim me as being potentially useful to her. I am house-trained and have learned to use my hands to eat.

UK

Samaritans - phone 116 123  'Call us any time, day or night' - 'Samaritans works to make sure there's always someone there for anyone who needs someone.' 

https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/contact-samaritan/

Childline -  Open 24hrs & days a week. Contacting Childline Call us free on 0800 1111 or find out how to get in touch online. Whatever your worry, day or night, we're here for you. 

https://www.childline.org.uk/get-support/contacting-childline/

All my posts: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551

or search for 'martin cadwell -caldwell' Take note of the position of the minus sign to eliminate caldwell returns or search for 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser.

I am not on YouTube or social media

You can read edgier posts on some similar subjects on my own website martincadwellblog.hegemo.co.uk  (opens a new page). Or my site, hegemo.co.uk for my viewpoint on mental ill-health (opens a new page). Look for the tabs at the top of the site, which you may have to drop down.

Learn how I introduce and describe a character by getting another character to do it: https://www.hegemo.co.uk/creative-writing/

[ 3 minute read ]

The room faded

That Mulberry Molasses you have at the back of the fridge since forever, tastes good in black coffee with a drop of vanilla essence. You can really taste the dark, and strangely seductive fruity promise of a full relationship before a wash of vanilla reason joins the briefly intriguing conversation. The taste is complex and is much like walking on a quiet beach at dawn with the attractive person from the party, not looking for, but open to a hiding place, only to be hailed by the person's partner. You search each other's faces for the same desire you both feel and see it reciprocated and then look towards the cheery but woolly interruption. Again, a glance at each other and then you exhale. 

Oooo! The first sip was sharp and bitter, but there was something in it. Ah, perhaps the pairing was not quite right. But just as you find some features in other people queer and then they become quaint with anticipation, the second sip carries with it a knowledge of what to expect; it allows a deeper sense of flavour to be appreciated. It is much more like the long snog after a first kiss on New Years Eve; hungry and explorative; and mutually giving. There is a mustiness like a light perspiration of flavoured alcohol has permeated the freshness of perfume and scent that was applied hours ago. The kiss and the smell is organic. It is almost primeval and immediate in its intent; now it is tasted. With the kiss broken the taste lingers. But it will be a memory of that moment when full desire of an illicit encounter was unfulfilled. A look into each other eyes and then another deep promising kiss, and then the sounds of the noisy room comes back and you are separated by the crowd; the moment and chance has gone.

I drank only one cup of coffee like that yesterday afternoon and didn't finish it; but there was still some left in my large mug, so I made a fresh coffee over the top of it. The mulberry was still there and the vanilla accompanied it and if I had been looking out a window out of a party I would have seen them leaving together as they should do. I would have looked longingly at one of them and known that without the other, the promise would have been filled but the guilt would surpass the pleasure. Despite the overwhelming sweetness it has in itself, Mulberry Molasses without vanilla makes coffee dark and bitter. It fails to sweeten it. Adding a fruitiness it competes for dominance and fails. Instead it highlights the dark and bitter nature of black coffee that even added sugar cannot erase. I can tolerate eating sugar from a spoon but an equal amount of Mulberry Molasses is too sweet. In coffee, it is a quick and hungry grope in a dark alley; good-looking but ultimately cheap and treacherous. In marriage, it is better behaved and mature and must always be only a soft moment of 'maybe' and never something that needs to be secret.

I wonder, if I add milk to the coffee, mulberry molasses and vanilla,  I might legitimise my relationship with Mulberry Molasses in coffee. With milk acting as a soft blanket, the vanilla, if I add it, might be the smell of a home that comforts us as we embrace. The sharpness will still be there in the background, but it will be a memory of our first kiss when our teeth and foreheads bumped, and the touch was truly and honestly ours, without guilt, secrecy or regret. 

All my posts: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551

or search for 'martin cadwell -caldwell' Take note of the position of the minus sign to eliminate caldwell returns or search for 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser.

I am not on YouTube or social media

[ 6 minute read ]

Vicarious Mistakes

I have so much more to learn

I am fairly certain I made a mistake in the previous post I wrote yesterday morning; on the subject of third person narrative, most commonly found in self-help books and such; though successfully used in fiction: 'Bright Lights, Big City' by Jay McInerney in 1984, which was adapted into a film starring Michael J Fox in 1988. All that is true and can be found at:

https://reedsy.com/blog/guide/point-of-view/second-person-pov/ 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright_Lights%2C_Big_City_(film)

and if you want to waste a lot of your data download allowance:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094799/

The mistake I made was through what I call a 'vicarious mistake'. A vicarious mistake, in my mind, is the repetition of someone else's mistake while believing that there is no mistake. It comes down to 'Who do you really trust?' A weak example of a vicarious mistake is to use a double space after every full stop when you write. That used to be the norm in Britain. I had a girlfriend who taught MBA's at Exeter University and most of her classes had foreign students. My girlfriend insisted upon her students to always use a double space after every full-stop, so they did. I told my girlfriend double spaces are archaic. It is an archaic practice. It is true. She stopped telling her students to use a double-space after full-stops. However, if any person was told by one of her students to always use double spaces after every full stop because they themselves were told by my girlfriend to do so, they, the person advised by her student, would be repeating her error and making a vicarious mistake.

Vicarious mistakes happen all day every day across the world and our attention is drawn to them when someone realises they have been doing things wrong and says, 'Oh! I have always done it this way!' because they were shown to do it  that way. (There is actually a double space after the italicised 'it' - for letter spacing purposes; learnt in calligraphy lessons)

I made a vicarious mistake by omission in yesterday's post. The source I had for learning about 2nd (second) person narrative was a person who failed to explain that, as with first person narrative:

'I went to the shops. It started to rain. I got wet' 

and third (3rd) person narrative:

'He/She/They went to the shops. It started to rain. He/She/They got wet'

2rd (second) person narrative can also include the centre sentence 'It started to rain'.

I failed to include any sentence in my earlier example in yesterday's post that was merely descriptive. Not every sentence needs to have a character in it, such as, 'It started to rain'.

If you want to read about POV and narratives you might go to:

https://reedsy.com/blog/guide/point-of-view/

Some of the following uses a fourth (4th) person point of view 'we' and 'us'.

Lying and Paltering

Suppose someone is asked, 'Did you eat the last piece of pizza in the fridge?' There are a range of answers that we might consider to be not honest.

Let's assume a single person answering did eat the last piece of pizza in the fridge. 'Not me' is an intentional lie by commission; 'I ate some' is an intentional lie by omission because it does not include the information that the 'some' is the last piece. 'I ate the cake' is an intentional lie by obfuscation because if it is true directs the questioner away from their question. This means it is paltering. The last, 'What pizza?' is not lying at all but is using obfuscation, diversionary tactics and delay to avoid confessing anything.

In economics, 'needs and wants', amorphous as they are, are regarded to have more value for different people and at different times. In order to be able to keep track of the value of these needs and wants they are given values known as 'utils'. See the Diminishing Margin of Utility in economics for an accurate explanation. The American (no cookie opt out) Investopedia (https://www.investopedia.com should be able to give a succinct definition. Use the drop down menu at the top left of their page to be able to search, otherwise: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lawofdiminishingutility.asp

Diminishing Margin of Utility If I am hungry, I place more value on the first pork pie in a pack of four than on the second; more on the second than the third; and so on. By the time I have eaten the third, I may have had enough or I am just bored with pork pies. This means that I could give significantly more 'utils' to the first pork pie then the fourth pork pie. The utility of filling me up has been accomplished by eating the first three pies.

In my local shop I discovered mince pies in multiples of three. There were packets of 18 and 27. Odd number, twenty seven isn't it? I suggest, most people might stop at eating three mince pies one after the other, so packaging four mince pies together is a waste of a unit from the manufacturers point of view. Is it a vicarious mistake to put four mince pies in a box, after commodification of products was universalised? I think so. Yet, is a triangular box more expensive to produce than a rectangular box? (a square is a special kind of a rectangle because it has four right angles and two opposite sides of equal length twice). I am slightly digressing in that I am drifting away from how much value we place on eating and what preferences we have. However, the number of mince pies in a box links two things: utility; and a suggested move away from making the same marketing mistake (vicarious mistake or inherited mistake).

If the owner of both the pizza and the cake places more value (utils) on the pizza than on the cake, it may be preferable to confess to eating their cake and withstand their wrath in the hope they will go away after venting their anger and forget about their much more precious pizza. In fact, what might actually happen is that the person who ate the cake may get vicariously blamed for also eating the pizza, if someone else ate it. Yet, with no confession for eating the pizza from any party the heightened anger felt by the owner of these foods for the loss of the cake is less than the sum of the loss of the cake and the pizza directed at two separate individuals, or even a single individual if it occurs as a single event.

So, if someone eats someone else's pizza and cake, it may pay to 'palter' by confessing to eating the cake in response to 'Did you eat my pizza?' or the last piece of pizza. A manipulator, despite never be asked about the cake, may reason that it is best to take the hit for eating the cake so everyone can move on, even if someone else ate the pizza.

The American Psychological Association says in an article 'True Lies: People Who Lie Via Telling Truth Viewed Harshly, Study Finds' (2016) that when people are asked an uncomfortable question they often will continue to tell the truth but without answering the question itself to create a mistaken impression.

References

The American Psychological Association (2016)

https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2016/12/true-lies