It's Nice to be Remembered

Is the reward of goodness aught save goodness?
- The Quran, Surah Ar-Rahman, 55:60

I just want to give account of a little gesture that made a difference. Such goodness does it represent, that it evokes an instinctive goodwill on my part to a person who can make such an honest and considerate gesture. Think of this as a way of acknowledging the blessing, and just one of the ways I can do that is to tell about it.

A few days ago I was on MSN pretending to be busy, and in a way I was, it was just that I was busy playing Civilisation IV and trying to conquer the world with the Greeks rather then doing anything actually productive which is the proper meaning of busy, and certainly what it is in my conception. So while my attention was focused on another screen; deeply embroiled in attempts to conquer cities that existed only as pixels on a map, a something remarkable happened.

A friend who I hadn't heard from in a while sent me a message on MSN. They said that they hadn't heard from me in a while, wondered how I was doing, since there seemed to be no reply and they had to get going, that they hoped I was well and that it would be great to hear from me sometime.

It takes something for me to say that I was strongly touched by such a simple and honest gesture that represented such a good thing to do. It acquired particular poignancy in light of my last post but one, in which I told of the attempts that I had made to get in touch with people and gained nothing but a lukewarm response in return. It was a great gesture. I felt that this person, so busy and like all of us wrapped in their own world, found time to think of me and wonder how I was and to wish me the best. Someone had found the time to think of me, minor, unimportant and utterly forgettable, but they had found the time, and this is a tremendous gesture.

What it boils down to fundamentally is that it's nice to be remembered. In the struggle and daily grind, that there are others out there who are rooting for us, who are on our side, and that while they can only afford the most tangential of physical support they are thinking about us even once in a while. Its so easy to lose touch with people and then see the obstacles to making contact as being insurmountable to regain what was lost, but if such small trivial gestures can have such power and evoke such a strong response in others as they did in me, then I would have to say that such a gesture is never wasted nor is it ever lost. It is a good thing to do, and there is no recompense for good except more good. This is a definite and paramount thought-good, good that can be done by merely thinking and it has a strong and lasting effect. After all I’m telling you about it 8 days after it happened, and my reaction has not subsided.

Fools and Angels: Change and Knowledge

Fools rush in, where Angels fear to tread.

I'm beginning to wonder about the relationship between change and knowledge. Specifically I'm wondering how much you need to understand something before it becomes right to change. Many people nowadays come and look at a social convention, a social regulation and conceive it to be ab initio wrong, that by the very nerve of something actually being a social rule - that someone has the gall to impose a convention upon the sovereign soul - is enough that it ought to be ruled wrong. I don't subscribe to this view.

I think that it is essential that there is a good knowledge of the system before you begin to change it. Systems are dynamic, and functional. They exist for a reason and previously in some social situation they had a useful role in regulating the behaviour of people so that people know what to expect from each other. They also functioned to smooth the wheels of society and to insure that people could interact within safe boundaries with each other. This was needed to reach a common understanding. Rules and conventions exist for a reason and are a representation of the knowledge of old which manifests in a then rational arrangement.

Now this is not a popular view in the modern era. People think that they are somehow empowered by a nascent self-awareness coupled with a false sense of pedagogical certainty that they can start to remake the world in their image. It’s surprising how confident we feel when we make such assertions but it's not that clear in reality and I don't understand how they can feel so sure.

I guess this all boils down simply when you think about it. To the wise person there are few opportunities, they see all the difficulties and all the challenges and all the complications. Consequently they can also see the opportunities that are few and meaningful that this knowledge can be exercised for. The ignorant person understands little of what he undertakes and cannot comprehend the true nature of his arguments nor how they are really likely to take effect in the real world. They are blind to what is obvious to the one who sees clearly, because the light of the mind is knowledge and their righteous vision is encapsulated and encouraged by ignorance and so they act precipitously and improperly

What I don't want it to mean though is that knowledge increases ossification in social structure. It causes change to be resisted with more then the normal force because those who are at the top of the intellectual pyramid see the whole panorama of the reasoning behind the rule and so can see the cogent need to resist change. I suppose this is good though, they see the need for active reasoning to make a change, they presume that the system has inherent value that is at least initially and that the burden for change lies on those who would make the case for it. I'm emboldened that the revolutionary movements of the 18-20th Century have been driven by intellectual movements that have advocated change driven on cogently argued principles. This last condition is what modern change arguments really fail to make out - the lack of real consensus in societal goals and direction means that change grinds to an effective halt.

Change and knowledge are ultimately mutually dependent - only real knowledge ought to drive change; pretensions to knowledge and mere information cannot suffice to make such a switch permissible. Too few people understand that nowadays – they feel the need to do something at all costs even if the action gains no ground, replaces one problem with another or ultimately adds only problems. This thinking is really the power of the fast world we live where results have to be instant but not actually progressive. Clear calculated directional change is no longer appreciated, its fruits take too long to appear and the efforts required of them are too bitter for the reaper to want to take the effort. We all lose by such thinking, yet it persists and persists, and we see no sign of it disappearing.

Meditations on Facebook

If it needs introduction, Facebook is the service that uses people's official college email addresses and acts very much like hi5 or myspace. Basically it lets you fill in all your friends and to keep track of them when they disperse into the wide world by virtue of the internet. Its recently begun its roll out in the UK to universities and high schools here after tremendous success in the USA and Canada and it's currently the gimmick of choice at Kings with many people using it or starting to use it. And so getting the odd few requests that I do, I've been spending a little time on the Facebook website after being gotten to start it by one of my other friends when it initially started its Kings roll out, I got to be a bit of a pioneer with it, and so I have the honour to okay all the 'friends' requests that come in as people come online with it.

And that's my problem with facebook.

For starters its the terminology - it terms all these people my friends. Maybe it's just me but friends is a strong word, its a loaded word and a significant word. They are important people that you trust and that you share a bond with. They are not every Tom Dick and Harry that you spent 5 minutes at with in High School, people who are nodding acquaintances or who you don't really get on with at all. Half of the people on mine aren't really my friends and I don't think they think that of me, so well why are we pretending we like each other on facebook? So many of the people that are on my facebook account are people I will never talk to again, that I have no intention of making the slightest effort to initiate contact with, let alone pretend their friends. Its just stupid. Why did I add them? Why are they adding me? I don't think we have more then a 'hi how are you' kind of relationship in the first place. What a waste of time and effort that you decided to add me. Yours and mine.

Conversely some of my best friends in the world are not on that net, and even if they were I would feel no need to add them. They're people who made the effort to stay in touch across all the effort and the odds, who felt that we had a bond that translated across thousand of miles that it would be worth making the effort. What's surprising about that is that they're so often not who you might expect, but when they do you realise what an impact you've had and what strength there is in that bond. All these things Facebook can't even begin to represent. People and impact far transcend notional lines of allegiance programmed into a computer tracking by email address.

My other gripe with it is that its totally pointless. No one uses it for anything; they just feel that if they connect up all the people they know in some sort of social net that this accomplishes something. Well I unsurprisingly have news for them - it doesn't. You don't achieve anything by drawing lines in the sand and pretending connections exist. Connections have to be real and substantial and they cannot be grafted out of pretence in their creation. We're not going to see each other ever again, nor have a conversation or pretend that we actually care what the other person is up to. At most we use it as a tool to show other people - our 'friends' who can see our profile - what wonderfully suave and socially apt people we are, with our tremendous social skills and vast networks. Yeah that's precisely what it is - a shallow showy pretence of contact that aids no one and wastes all our time.

Even when I've made the effort to get in touch with old people that have added me, just to see how they were and what they were up to, they haven't really made the effort to get back to me, or when they have they've been lukewarm borderline reluctant to make actual contact. So what was the point of adding me as a 'friend' if you don't even want any contact with me? If its just to make up the numbers well what is the point of that? The sad thing is that some of these people I thought it would be cool to get in touch with again. We were after all friends once upon a time and had a common understanding of some sort, which was lost through the effluxion of time, but hopefully somewhere rather murkily its there and we're at least somewhat curious as to what the other person is up to and how they've been on the rollercoaster of life. Guess I'm wrong about that as well.

Yet at the same time I can't reject these people when they request to be added. I have no intention of adding them - but why do them wrong by rejecting their request to be added. Is the pretence better then nothing at all? The feeling that we have reached out at least a little bit into the void great enough to supplant the total futility of our grasp? I don't understand why these people keep adding me - I just don't get it. But of course why deny their requests when they don't cost me anything, don't restrict me in anyway and seem a salutory guesture in the first place. I might as well in such circumstances for the time being. I'm beggining to think that my attitude is starting to shift, I don't want to be party to a farce nor have one continue. I'm not claiming friends that wouldn't lift a finger to help me if I needed it and I would rather have no friends then a thousand of that sort. I can deal with the former - I know myself tolerably well. Fake relations with fake people who I'm temporally as well as mentally done with and will never see again - that I don't need.

I cherish friendships and I won't have the word or the concept demeaned in my mind by a faceless company who wishes to profit by it in their desire to use 'neutral' language. Call it my acquaintance net and I might be more inclined to keep using it. At least it will then gain a single virtue of honesty.

Mohammed

Just Works

I haven’t posted anything in a while, and its probably more symptomatic of traveling rather then any indication to abandon the written word, but recently its been hard to put things into words. I have many ideas floating ethereally but none have come within grasping distance and crystallized in to anything that I would feel warrants a mention over here. I have a sense that something big is going on just below the surface and that I need to work it all out before I ever commit it to paper rather then trying to commit it to paper in an effort to work it out. I guess it’s a matter of things happening when they’re ready to happen.

I’m starting to adopt a no-nonsense attitude to life. Life is a rough and difficult place. Every day every thing you do will throw out a challenge at you. Even to do nothing is a challenge to yourself. I know people who are chronically unable to do nothing. And I think it’s a useful ability to have. To sit and wait, to endure and overcome are virtues that are increasingly uncommon in our modern world, and they are ones that I’m aware of as well but increasingly I find them in conflict with this desire to brook no nonsense.

There are certain things in life you have to do, certain challenges you have to rise to meet. And I’m not talking of great and glorious things. I’m talking about all those nasty little things that you like to ignore because they’re not as fun as playing games and chatting on MSN. Things like laundry and organization. Things like putting away what you took out, sorting your cupboard so that you can find what you want. Putting your pens away after you’ve used them. They’re all very trivial examples but I think they are what distinguishes the mind who lives in the present and is willing to engage with the world from that which is inclined to live in its bubble, and pretend that its bubble is meaningful because it offers sanctuary. I’m not impressed nor am I truly inclined to tolerate. But against my inclination I do because there are other things that are more important than that, but then you question the value of what you’re gaining compared to what you’re sacrificing. Peace for anger and frustration, fake amiability to avoid confrontation. Prices worth paying?

I’m also beginning to question my inclination to pull the slack for others, which is really what this post is all about. In one of my previous posts I said that part of being aware and responsive was a necessary corollary of being in such a state, but now I’m wondering why it is, and if it isn’t better to let others know what you think of them and their actions. The downside to this is that obviously you come across as a grumpy person, with a very abrasive personality that does no one any credit. Least of all yourself. Yet people do need to be reminded, and it seems gentle suggestions are about as useful as the paper they’re written on, i.e. totally worthless. It’s only when one gets angry or when one uses sarcasm or bite to make one’s point come across that you seem the change in behaviour that you desire. My parents have done it to me, and I understand why it works now, because that is what it seems to need to kick the lethargy and self-centered focus of most people from out under them.

And you know what, kicking the self-centered focus of people out from under them really seems like a good thing to do from my own slightly curmudgeonly perspective. Most people like I said are in the bubble. You need to puncture the bubble. The only way this can happen is if you do something dramatic or strong enough to puncture it, otherwise people keep going their merry way oblivious to the consequences and costs of their actions on other people.

On the other hand I’m sure that I’m guilty of doing this myself, but even if that’s the case I know that a gentle word is going to have as much impact as a wooden sword on the Enterprise, and that if you really want to make an impact you’re going to have to smash the hull pretty hard to get a response. Of course smashing hulls resonate long after they are struck, but the stress produced is neither beneficial to the hull nor in its long term interests. The analogy is apt if a little thin I feel. I don’t like being struck hard either for that matter, but I do know it works. And at the moment ‘just works’ is a very tempting idea.