[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.