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Mental Health
[ 9 minute read ]
You frazzled yourself
Oh me oh my! Everybody is after something all the time. Such dissatisfaction I have never before experienced. I keep banging on about people seeking validity of themselves; because I am amazed at how pernicious it is. I had a conversation with my doctor a while ago and forgot to ask if people were different before the Covid 19 thing. Of course, anyone who followed the rules and locked themselves down will be different to how they should be now. Likewise, anyone who didn't lock themselves down will be different to how they should be because other people locked themselves down.
An expansion: I didn't lock myself down. I just carried on as usual. Oh no! How irresponsible! No, I had no need to change what I do to conform with not spreading diseases. When the UK Government said 'socially isolate yourselves' to the people, I thought, no change there then. I found it interesting that most people were not actually acting normal for themselves, when they stayed at home. Normal for me! Welcome to my world.
I read somewhere that people have a distorted way of recalling the past. Most people, I believe, cannot remember what the world was like five years ago. I understand that we use selective memory to recall our childhood. It never rained during Summer holidays at the sea-side, for example. I don't think social media chatting platforms have changed much from how they were five or six years ago, except that everyone seems to think that it is entirely normal to use one. I have an email from my tutor that contains a link to an app to be able to make a booking for a one-to-one 'tutorial' initial telephone meeting. Why? Why does the tutor think that students want to meet the person who marks their assignments? And, why an email address to send a link to an app to be able to receive a telephone call? It is really confusing to me. Either I was affected by Covid, or I am one of the few who wasn't.
The point I am getting at, in a round-about way, which I am only now starting to understand, in the way people now process anything, is that conventional rules for communication are ignored, unheard of, or obsolete. There is a technological reason for that, but it is the human factor that interests me.
Have technology will use it
I met a woman in her sixties in an ALDI car park, 2021. Just in passing, but I like to talk; you know, to people, not VDUs - like computer screens and phone screens. Let's just separate that out: Typing (texts and emails); looking at a moving picture (face-time, video-conferencing); and telephone calls. Talking to people is none of those. Phone calls is talking to thin air, hoping that we are heard. Typing is moving our fingers and the only response is alpha-numeric characters appear on a screen; and talking to a screen is precisely that. There is no-one there. It is all fantasy. We are all just hoping that someone is there to receive our message. No, we TRUST that there is someone there. We believe it. Believing someone is there when they are not, is so close to being psychotic that most of us would be paralysed with fear if we knew that, that is what we are. That is where we are currently at. We have to get a reply to our cries in the air.
Back to the woman in the ALDI car-park.
'I haven't spoken to my grand-children for six months!' she wailed. I inwardly shrugged, 'And?'
This woman, I thought, can remember when we didn't see relatives for years at a time, yet she is emotionally wiped out when real conversation is denied us. I couldn't help thinking, 'Welcome to my world,' when people bemoaned their isolation. 'What!' 'What is wrong with you?' 'What?' 'How needy are you?' At the time, I thought that this woman's grandchildren would probably be relieved that she is absent. I imagined that they would groan when they were called to the phone to face-time Gran. But they wouldn't have been, unless they were previously bribed into liking Gran with sweet treats, or money. The fact is, they were probably brought up to misuse communication devices.
I have a low qualification in Business Administration. One of the things that was taught is what form of communication is appropriate when and why. Phone someone in an emergency. Text someone a burst of information, such as an address, or meeting time. Texts are notes for someone else to read. They are not chatting messages. Email someone with a report or draft contract. Emails are not, definitely not, for chatting. Providing a link in one of these to another form of communication is just plain nonsense. Mixing up communication platforms requires the recipient to switch their attention. It demands something of the recipient that is outside of the form of communication.
Try this; I got an email containing an app link to arrange a telephone call. Just phone me! You have my number! leave a voice-mail message! Q-U-I-C-K-E-R! Why over-complicate a conversation? Even though I have a SmartPhone, I won't ever be using it for emails or accessing the internet. Why not? Because emails should not be text messages. Emails are opened on computers so links to websites can be included. To presume that anyone is foolish enough to open an app using a computer must mean that Covid fried their brain. 'Use any means to communicate! Break convention! Ignore cyber threats!' The conspiracy theorists must be peeing their pants laughing at this madness. Invent a disease to make people use digital communication with a desperation that causes them to be careless about cyber-security and maintaining security of their personal details. Make them show their faces on phones with service contracts so we can use facial recognition in shops and at airports. Dean Koontz would love this time. We all know of '1984' by George Orwell. Koontz wrote, 'Night Chills' in 1976. (Published in Gt. Britain in 1977 by W.H. Allen & Co. PLC)
It is not without some dark bemusement that I read about people having their mobile phones stolen right out of their hands. If you have £200 would you walk around holding it right in front of your face?
'The police won't do anything!'
Why should they? If millions of people decided to walk into brick walls and then phoned for an ambulance, the emergency-call-handlers would be compelled to ask? 'Did you deliberately close your eyes while walking towards a brick wall?' They would look at each other in their office and roll their eyeballs. 'Covid! Another person affected by Covid!'
If someone is instrumental in my immediate future and offers me a chance to 'chat', I have to do it because I am certain that they are ill and will be negatively affected by my puzzlement as to why they want to 'chat'. If they are instrumental in my immediate future, I have to make sure they don't dislike me for blanking their need; because I have to pass through a period that allows me to later distance myself from their confusion. Yes, I am being harsh. I recognise that people have the same universal need, but to satiate it, I have to become an addict, like them, to 'chatting' to thin air or a video display unit (alpha-numeric characters or digital images - it's all the same to me). Of course, this offer of a 'chat' may come from someone who thinks I need to inanely chat.
But I know what most people really want. They want to build a rapport. What I don't understand is why I have to do something to make them feel more comfortable. Personally, I don't need to set up a procedure to build a temporary rapport with someone, because I don't use people and I respect people. Whenever someone needs to build a rapport with me, I am forced to lie to them to make them go away and leave me in peace. 'Yes! Yes! We are getting on fine! There is no need to worry!' I don't want anything to do with someone that is so insecure as that, without them also knowing they are mentally unwell. Generally, it is professionals that need to know they are doing their jobs right. If they don't know, I suggest they are in the wrong job.
I ran a very successful business a while ago. One learns to separate one's personal life from business. Today though, UK businesses have taken the stupid Americanism of personalising everything. In business and marketing, this is the after-sales service. 'You bought.....Do you like it?' or 'You are important to us, so we will pretend to show that, by making sure we don't have to waste time satisfying our obligations to our duty.' They do this using a universal means. Texts and emails. I think, 'Just sell it to me, or deliver it and I never need to know you even exist.' No, instead, why don't you just waste my time with inane conversation? But in reality they are hoping that their mediocre attitude and incompetence will not be noticed. It is not excellent. Why would it be? All they have to do now is sweet talk people who want to feel valued and validated for being fooled.
I know what cognitive dissonance is. I know why people feel it. How about businesses just doing what they are supposed to do and adhering to a good code of practice so customers do not expect more than is actually available?
I had a valid complaint about O2 services (UK telephone service provider). Their policy is, if the customer asks to speak to a manager, don't quibble, escalate the conversation or complaint. O2 doesn't do that. They have inadequately trained staff trying to sell more services like upgrades or something similarly ridiculous. Why would anyone upgrade? I just get what I need to satisfy everyone else, and then I stick to it. That wasn't true, but it is now; it has to be this way.
I bought some operating systems a while back to avoid MS Windows continual upgrading. The reason for doing this is because I recognised that eventually hackers would find a way in, that I will not be able to detect. In the past, whenever I detected strange software on my computers I simply formatted the hard drives and loaded an operating system from a DVD. The data on a DVD does not change. This means I can run the same operating system on two identical computers and only allow one to access the internet. Any changes in performance is detectable and directly attributable to downloaded updates. Now we have A.I. as a standard feature in our lives. It is even in used for searching the internet. I don't want assistance that favours what everyone else wants. However, at last, I have found an operating system that was created before Unlimited Data plans were a thing. It currently recognises that it uses a 'metered' internet connection, so it has paused ALL updates until it detects an unmetered internet connection. So, it will not download any updates, and most importantly, any that use A.I. to assist me by scanning my internet and computer use, and getting to know me. No updates make it harder for hackers to use Trojan Horses.
You frazzled yourself
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
[ 9 minute read ]
You frazzled yourself
Oh me oh my! Everybody is after something all the time. Such dissatisfaction I have never before experienced. I keep banging on about people seeking validity of themselves; because I am amazed at how pernicious it is. I had a conversation with my doctor a while ago and forgot to ask if people were different before the Covid 19 thing. Of course, anyone who followed the rules and locked themselves down will be different to how they should be now. Likewise, anyone who didn't lock themselves down will be different to how they should be because other people locked themselves down.
An expansion: I didn't lock myself down. I just carried on as usual. Oh no! How irresponsible! No, I had no need to change what I do to conform with not spreading diseases. When the UK Government said 'socially isolate yourselves' to the people, I thought, no change there then. I found it interesting that most people were not actually acting normal for themselves, when they stayed at home. Normal for me! Welcome to my world.
I read somewhere that people have a distorted way of recalling the past. Most people, I believe, cannot remember what the world was like five years ago. I understand that we use selective memory to recall our childhood. It never rained during Summer holidays at the sea-side, for example. I don't think social media chatting platforms have changed much from how they were five or six years ago, except that everyone seems to think that it is entirely normal to use one. I have an email from my tutor that contains a link to an app to be able to make a booking for a one-to-one 'tutorial' initial telephone meeting. Why? Why does the tutor think that students want to meet the person who marks their assignments? And, why an email address to send a link to an app to be able to receive a telephone call? It is really confusing to me. Either I was affected by Covid, or I am one of the few who wasn't.
The point I am getting at, in a round-about way, which I am only now starting to understand, in the way people now process anything, is that conventional rules for communication are ignored, unheard of, or obsolete. There is a technological reason for that, but it is the human factor that interests me.
Have technology will use it
I met a woman in her sixties in an ALDI car park, 2021. Just in passing, but I like to talk; you know, to people, not VDUs - like computer screens and phone screens. Let's just separate that out: Typing (texts and emails); looking at a moving picture (face-time, video-conferencing); and telephone calls. Talking to people is none of those. Phone calls is talking to thin air, hoping that we are heard. Typing is moving our fingers and the only response is alpha-numeric characters appear on a screen; and talking to a screen is precisely that. There is no-one there. It is all fantasy. We are all just hoping that someone is there to receive our message. No, we TRUST that there is someone there. We believe it. Believing someone is there when they are not, is so close to being psychotic that most of us would be paralysed with fear if we knew that, that is what we are. That is where we are currently at. We have to get a reply to our cries in the air.
Back to the woman in the ALDI car-park.
'I haven't spoken to my grand-children for six months!' she wailed. I inwardly shrugged, 'And?'
This woman, I thought, can remember when we didn't see relatives for years at a time, yet she is emotionally wiped out when real conversation is denied us. I couldn't help thinking, 'Welcome to my world,' when people bemoaned their isolation. 'What!' 'What is wrong with you?' 'What?' 'How needy are you?' At the time, I thought that this woman's grandchildren would probably be relieved that she is absent. I imagined that they would groan when they were called to the phone to face-time Gran. But they wouldn't have been, unless they were previously bribed into liking Gran with sweet treats, or money. The fact is, they were probably brought up to misuse communication devices.
I have a low qualification in Business Administration. One of the things that was taught is what form of communication is appropriate when and why. Phone someone in an emergency. Text someone a burst of information, such as an address, or meeting time. Texts are notes for someone else to read. They are not chatting messages. Email someone with a report or draft contract. Emails are not, definitely not, for chatting. Providing a link in one of these to another form of communication is just plain nonsense. Mixing up communication platforms requires the recipient to switch their attention. It demands something of the recipient that is outside of the form of communication.
Try this; I got an email containing an app link to arrange a telephone call. Just phone me! You have my number! leave a voice-mail message! Q-U-I-C-K-E-R! Why over-complicate a conversation? Even though I have a SmartPhone, I won't ever be using it for emails or accessing the internet. Why not? Because emails should not be text messages. Emails are opened on computers so links to websites can be included. To presume that anyone is foolish enough to open an app using a computer must mean that Covid fried their brain. 'Use any means to communicate! Break convention! Ignore cyber threats!' The conspiracy theorists must be peeing their pants laughing at this madness. Invent a disease to make people use digital communication with a desperation that causes them to be careless about cyber-security and maintaining security of their personal details. Make them show their faces on phones with service contracts so we can use facial recognition in shops and at airports. Dean Koontz would love this time. We all know of '1984' by George Orwell. Koontz wrote, 'Night Chills' in 1976. (Published in Gt. Britain in 1977 by W.H. Allen & Co. PLC)
It is not without some dark bemusement that I read about people having their mobile phones stolen right out of their hands. If you have £200 would you walk around holding it right in front of your face?
'The police won't do anything!'
Why should they? If millions of people decided to walk into brick walls and then phoned for an ambulance, the emergency-call-handlers would be compelled to ask? 'Did you deliberately close your eyes while walking towards a brick wall?' They would look at each other in their office and roll their eyeballs. 'Covid! Another person affected by Covid!'
If someone is instrumental in my immediate future and offers me a chance to 'chat', I have to do it because I am certain that they are ill and will be negatively affected by my puzzlement as to why they want to 'chat'. If they are instrumental in my immediate future, I have to make sure they don't dislike me for blanking their need; because I have to pass through a period that allows me to later distance myself from their confusion. Yes, I am being harsh. I recognise that people have the same universal need, but to satiate it, I have to become an addict, like them, to 'chatting' to thin air or a video display unit (alpha-numeric characters or digital images - it's all the same to me). Of course, this offer of a 'chat' may come from someone who thinks I need to inanely chat.
But I know what most people really want. They want to build a rapport. What I don't understand is why I have to do something to make them feel more comfortable. Personally, I don't need to set up a procedure to build a temporary rapport with someone, because I don't use people and I respect people. Whenever someone needs to build a rapport with me, I am forced to lie to them to make them go away and leave me in peace. 'Yes! Yes! We are getting on fine! There is no need to worry!' I don't want anything to do with someone that is so insecure as that, without them also knowing they are mentally unwell. Generally, it is professionals that need to know they are doing their jobs right. If they don't know, I suggest they are in the wrong job.
I ran a very successful business a while ago. One learns to separate one's personal life from business. Today though, UK businesses have taken the stupid Americanism of personalising everything. In business and marketing, this is the after-sales service. 'You bought.....Do you like it?' or 'You are important to us, so we will pretend to show that, by making sure we don't have to waste time satisfying our obligations to our duty.' They do this using a universal means. Texts and emails. I think, 'Just sell it to me, or deliver it and I never need to know you even exist.' No, instead, why don't you just waste my time with inane conversation? But in reality they are hoping that their mediocre attitude and incompetence will not be noticed. It is not excellent. Why would it be? All they have to do now is sweet talk people who want to feel valued and validated for being fooled.
I know what cognitive dissonance is. I know why people feel it. How about businesses just doing what they are supposed to do and adhering to a good code of practice so customers do not expect more than is actually available?
I had a valid complaint about O2 services (UK telephone service provider). Their policy is, if the customer asks to speak to a manager, don't quibble, escalate the conversation or complaint. O2 doesn't do that. They have inadequately trained staff trying to sell more services like upgrades or something similarly ridiculous. Why would anyone upgrade? I just get what I need to satisfy everyone else, and then I stick to it. That wasn't true, but it is now; it has to be this way.
I bought some operating systems a while back to avoid MS Windows continual upgrading. The reason for doing this is because I recognised that eventually hackers would find a way in, that I will not be able to detect. In the past, whenever I detected strange software on my computers I simply formatted the hard drives and loaded an operating system from a DVD. The data on a DVD does not change. This means I can run the same operating system on two identical computers and only allow one to access the internet. Any changes in performance is detectable and directly attributable to downloaded updates. Now we have A.I. as a standard feature in our lives. It is even in used for searching the internet. I don't want assistance that favours what everyone else wants. However, at last, I have found an operating system that was created before Unlimited Data plans were a thing. It currently recognises that it uses a 'metered' internet connection, so it has paused ALL updates until it detects an unmetered internet connection. So, it will not download any updates, and most importantly, any that use A.I. to assist me by scanning my internet and computer use, and getting to know me. No updates make it harder for hackers to use Trojan Horses.
Me, measured in conversation; I get it now.