Truth in Apophthegmata

I was recently browsing a collection of pithy sayings – there is often hidden depth in cynical barbs and old wives’ tales – and came across these little gems:

The Ginsberg Restatement of the Laws of Thermodynamics:

1. You can’t win
2. You can’t break even
3. You can’t quit

Freeman’s Commentary on the Ginsberg Restatement:

Every religion, or philosophical doctrine, is rooted in the negation of one element of Ginsberg’s Restatement, for example:

1. Capitalism is based on the assumption you can win
2. Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break even
3. Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the game

Amusing, of course, but perhaps also something to think about. I do agree that most of our attempts to provide some kind of grander order or meaning to the world stem in truth from our own psychological insecurities, writ large.

Religion and Philosophy are a societal expression of an ego defence mechanism. Ego defences are unconscious psychological strategies designed to protect the self from an otherwise traumatic situation, thus allowing someone to cope with reality while still maintaining their sense of self . There’s nothing wrong with an ego defence mechanism, provided it doesn’t become pathological and destructive to one’s overall well-being. Equally Religion and Philosophy, of whatever flavour, can be socially beneficial, provided they are not allowed to overwhelm each other and become pathologically doctrinaire.

Of course, the more astute reader has already noticed that this ideological position is in itself a philosophical one, as would be any expression of opinion in such matters. So it may simply be my own ego defence mechanism. Perhaps so, perhaps not. I don’t insist upon it. After all, to cite another aphorism, this time from satirist Dorothy Parker: “you can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think!“

Beware the dead mouse of life

The story depicted by the image above is currently running as the “And finally…” item on many news bulletins. You can read the full story by clicking the pic; the essential facts are that a man found a dead baby mouse (minus tail!) in his loaf of bread, though happily managed to avoid accidentally eating it.

Freakish stories like this get a lot of media play; you only have to look at the length of the list of related articles at end of this post for evidence of this. I think it is because of their blend of the commonplace and the grotesque, and I couldn’t help noticing a wider metaphor.

Most lives are generally bounded by known elements: we live in a particular town, tend to shop at the same places, go to work in a familiar setting, see the same people after work. These boundaries provide a predictable structure and routine that we learn to live by, and very rarely venture outside.

However, sometimes an unexpected event will occur. These freakish incidents – like the gruesome mouse in a mundane loaf of bread – often appear as if from nowhere and disturb our equilibrium. The reason they are powerful is that they damage our sense of identity. The loaf is no longer a loaf; it is macabre apparition. A ghoulish doppelganger of what it once was and should still have been.

Without a clear sense of self, we can react in unhelpful and atypical ways to the stress caused by the unexpected event. In short, we lose control and make mistakes because our integrity has been lost. If we understand who we are and who we want to be, before the unexpected event occurs, it will not disrupt our life as much. We will find a way of working around the insult to our identity, and these positive coping strategies will let us continue a pleasant life.

Related Articles

• Mouse found baked into loaf of bread (telegraph.co.uk)
• Non-essential ingredients | Open thread (guardian.co.uk)
• Firm fined after dead mouse found in loaf (bbc.co.uk)
• It’s a miced loaf (thesun.co.uk)
• Father making sandwiches finds mouse found baked into loaf of bread (independent.co.uk)
• Bread Maker Fined Over Dead Mouse In Loaf (news.sky.com)
• Dead mouse found in loaf of bread by dad – picture (mirror.co.uk)
• Dead Mouse Found In Loaf Of Bread: Premier Foods Fined (photo) (nowpublic.com)
• Dead mouse found in loaf of bread (bbc.co.uk)

A life of pleasure

The discussion in my last post about the peak experiences wine can offer has led me to think more about the contribution of sensual pleasures to a joyful life.

When my father retired, he let me rummage through his rather nice collection of pens and select a couple for myself. Being quite practical, I chose a ballpoint – a burgundy Montblanc Meisterstück Classique – thinking that a simple ballpoint would be of most daily use. But as an indulgence, I also chose a Parker 75 in its later Premier variant and finished in sterling silver ciselé, for more occasional use.

In the final analysis, I found writing with a fountain pen so much more enjoyable that I routinely choose to carry one in preference to a ballpoint. A fountain pen offers a different – and altogether more sensual – sensory experience.

Firstly, it is naturally treated with more respect in terms of the pressure applied to paper, as the nib does not require a heavy hand and in fact would rebel against one. Secondly, the slight extra friction – the “scratchiness” – of a fountain pen lends it a tactile and auditory quality that is entirely missing from the anodyne ballpoint. Third, the script is visually different to that imparted by a ballpoint: the ink is more even and saturated. Finally, even the smell of the ink in the moment it takes to dry is different, not to mention that this brief pause at the end allows for due consideration of what has been written.

Thus, writing with a fountain pen actively engages four out of five senses in a way that a ballpoint cannot. Beyond accidently chewing the end off an old biro once, I have yet to find a way to reliably integrate a gustatory experience into writing and so engage all five senses, but I live in hope!

The point is that an item that I initially considered a mere indulgence has now become an essential pleasure. I have since acquired another fountain pen, a Montblanc Meisterstück 146 in the classic black resin, but the Parker 75 Premier remains my favourite, probably because using it also reminds me that it was a nice gift from my father.

Noticing the world around you, and the many little sensory pleasures it offers, makes it a more intriguing and welcoming place. This is not indulgence; this is experience. A merely practical life can never acquire the richness of experience that an aesthetic life offers.

The Pleasure of Delayed Gratification

After my last entry lambasting the indefinite procrastination of pleasure, it is worth discussing the importance of delayed gratification. This is the deliberate postponement of satisfaction in order to maximise eventual pleasure, and can apply to many fields, although it was brought to mind today by my intent to open the pictured bottle of Chateau Soutard 1990 over dinner midweek.

Fine wine is a good case study for edification of principal difference between procrastination and delayed gratification. Good wine tends to improve in the bottle over time until it reaches a maturity capable of delivering a peak experience, before gradually fading away. Every wine will have its own moment of maximal pleasure although the exact timing and duration of this window will vary according to the wine, and according to the tastes of the drinker.

Being able to resist uncorking too soon allows one’s desire and aspirations for the first glass to rise. This heightens the pleasure of finally reaching that day, and so should add an extra layer of piquancy to the wine itself. By contrast, the procrastinator will fear to ever uncork the bottle, always wondering if another year is needed before the wine is at its best. Perhaps the bottle is never drunk at all, but even if it is, the procrastinator finds the flavour soured and the fruit long gone.

Decide when to reap the harvest of life, but then act decisively. Delay with purpose, not fear, for the maximum possible pleasure.

Procrastinating Life, Hastening Death

We are born once and cannot be born twice, but we must be no more for all time. Not being master of tomorrow, you nonetheless delay your happiness. Life is consumed by procrastination, and each of us dies without providing leisure for himself.

- Epicurus, the 14th Vatican Saying

The topic of death has been playing on my mind recently. I have blogged about death previously, but my most recent post, combined with the blog entry of a friend, has motivated me to revisit the topic. The more I consider matters, the more I feel that Epicurus is correct.

The image of Death as the Grim Reaper is responsible for much of the structure of our society. Together with Birth, it provides a narrative structure of life, with a beginning and an end. There naturally follows a desire to be able to tell a good tale – to give the ending some drama and meaning – much like the successful denouement of a play.

This encourages us to measure our achievements against those of others, to consider our status in the eyes of the world and in posterity. Will our descendants speak fondly of us, will others still read our wisdom after we are gone, will some part of us thus live forever? All of the structures of society stem from these core concerns.

The problem with this way of thinking is that it forces us to view Life as an unfinished work-in-progress, not to be considered complete until we die. This is a dangerous way to interpret our existence as it encourages us to procrastinate happiness in favour of working on our image. What is the true value of respectful descendants, or the admiration of a future world, or a glowing place in the history books, when we are dead?

I would argue, there is none. It can offer us no joy after we are gone.

Thinking and planning ahead is always going to be part of ensuring joy over our entire lifespan, but essential planning should not be allowed to mutate into indefinite procrastination of pleasure. The true value of Life is not in the tale that will be told of us after we are dead, but in the joy of the living.

Seeing Green

Excellent article from the BBC today. To summarise, the gist is that most people earning £100k p.a. feel no better than if they were earning £40k. Readers earning sums towards the higher end of that range will probably be vigorously nodding their heads about now, but it almost always comes as an eyebrow-raising surprise to those earning less.

The truth is that £100k p.a. is simply not going to make a difference to most people. At least, not compared to their life if they were earning around £40k annually. There is a big tranche of annual incomes, from between around £40k and £150k, where the increase in income barely has any effect on the degrees of freedom the average recipient experiences.

Any income in that range limits to you to the same core lifestyle if you are married with kids. Mortgage, a couple of cars, a couple of holidays each year, full-time jobs with long hours and some occasional little luxuries. Maybe school fees, too. The location of the mortgaged property and the holidays may be of different, so too the age and nature of the cars and the luxuries, but the point is that the lifestyle is really no different and therefore it would be unreasonable to expect the experience to be different. It is comfortable, but still stressful and time-consuming.

The only reason people within this range of incomes feel the need to earn more is simply because they have trained themselves to expect the holidays/house they have got used to. To use a phrase from the article itself, this is a gilded cage.

The way to escape the cage, if your income is in that range, is to choose a different lifestyle. If you do not wish to have children and a spouse, there is a real material benefit to earning more. If you are happy with the property you already live in, the extra income becomes very disposable and if used judiciously can allow you early retirement. If you control your expenditure to what actually pleases you, rather than what society expects you to spend upon, you may even find that you can change your lifestyle to one that requires less work, and still retain enough income to make you happier than you were before.

Insight into what you want out of life should drive what you do, the hours you work and your income level. Many people never grasp this and so only get out from life the meagre remainder left over after deducting the costs of meeting conventional expectations and artificial obligations.

Grail shoes

Those who know me, know that I love my shoes.

As with any good addiction, there’s always room for one more pair. My overflowing shoe racks, already weighed down with pairs for every imaginable occasion, disagree with this principle most strenuously, causing me to operate a strict “one in, one out” policy.

Which leads me to “the grail shoe”.

As coveted as the Holy Grail and rife with similar symbolism although marginally more attainable, these are the shoes I yearn to have. They are what I consider to be the archetypal pinnacle of a niche, for which I would sacrifice an existing pair to acquire the grail.

At my apex of the black loafer ecosystem is the Andy from Berluti, pictured in a lighter colour at the top of this post. It is named for Andy Warhol, who was the first bespoke customer of the brand’s current scion, Olga Berluti. The sleek and shapely Andy is available in the ready-to-wear range and would be perfect in black, with just a little mottling and bronzing to add depth of finish. I would happily swap out my current Ermenegildo Zegna Couture black loafers for these.

My second grail pair would be Corthay’s Vendome:

This oxford wingtip shares similar sweeping lines to Berluti’s Andy, but effortlessly adds the detail of brogueing and medallion without overwhelming the look. These more informal elements would allow for a more unusual colour, and I think the Vendome would be stunning in a dark green, similar to that of the Bucy (also Corthay) pictured below:

I am not quite sure which existing pair would lose its life in my wardrobe so that the Vendomes could live. Probably either my dark green suede John Lobb court slippers (worn only seldomly with black tie, and I already have alternate shoe options for that dress code) or a pair of dark brownish-red Salvatore Ferragamo Tramezza monkstraps (which I currently wear with similar outfits to those that I could pair to the hypothetical Vendomes).

As you can tell, I have a very different shoe ethos to New York’s Mayor Bloomberg but any man who cares enough to resole his shoes rather than just bin them is A-OK with me.

I wonder what your shoe ethos is? A shoe for every occasion, or one pair to rule them all? And would you sacrifice them all for a grail pair?

The Soothsayer

Looking back at some of my recent posts here and my comments across other WordPress blogs, I noticed several were – either directly or indirectly – about trends. By my very nature, I enjoy thinking about trends. Finding patterns, noting precedents, determining likely associations, extrapolating those correlations forwards; this is how I understand the world and manage it.

I tend to interpret the world as a set of systems and networks that can be nudged in one direction or another by the application of a little judicious pressure here or there. Observe, interpret, narrow down the options, but never let yourself be rigidly fixed to just one. It is a worldview that appeals to my somewhat controlling nature by letting me predict, plan and above all, always have an escape route handy!

This way of understanding the world means that I tend to enjoy seeing, and working with, the bigger picture: I don’t like dealing with details when I can get someone else do that for me, and I get irritated when others try to insist that I carry out adminstrative minutiae if I cannot see a beneficial outcome to my life in doing so. It explains why I became a psychiatrist, and also why I prefer independent work to being tied to a large organisation where decisions are made for you.

I remember reading Isaac Asimov’s Foundation book series as a child and being fascinated with his concept of psychohistory. Psychohistory, within Asimov’s fictional world, was a mathematical discipline that combined statistics, history, sociology and psychology to allow predictions to be made about the future large-scale course of humanity. This is a wonderfully intellectually appealing concept to me.

Of course, no such discipline exists in the real world, though fields like cliodynamics, macroeconomics (especially cliometrics), and social network analyses offer the dim prospect of its creation in the future. For them to succeed, these fields will need to be integrated with others, including geography & geology. Human history has been influenced by the world around us, and key variables including the location of natural resources such as water, land and fuel will continue to effect major changes on our future trajectory.

Understanding the world and so being happy within it is fundamentally related to understanding the people within it, since we function within a complex and heavily intertwined network. A key aspect to managing this network is using prior experience and pattern-recognition - applying your knowledge of trends – to spot when you cannot alter an outcome.

Then you can learn not to worry about such situations, allowing time for relaxation. I find myself most at peace when separated from the need to analyse and interpret, and when instead indulging in simple aesthetic joys that appeal to a different part of my personality.

Shot of Pauillac, anyone?

It may have taken a long time, but the UK has finally lost its number one position in yet another market.

China is now the world-leading buyer of Bordeaux, overtaking the UK in market value terms for the first time. The Chinese market is now over 90 million Euros, and the producers have adapted by making a number of interesting pairing suggestions for their wines (e.g. St Emilion for pigs’ feet and Margaux for duck tongues). Mind you, the intricacies of pairing may have to take second fiddle to educating the Chinese market on rather more basic issues:

Shaun Rein, head of China Market Research in Shanghai, says many Chinese people are still unfamiliar with the traditional conventions of red wine consumption. “They either put ice cubes in it, or they drink it in shots,” he says.

“I’ve seen people drink $1,000-plus bottles as shots.”

- linked ibid

The rapid growth in the Chinese market has also had a marked effect on prices. I blogged previously on my own humble mid-market en-primeur purchases this year, but at the higher end of the scale prices are soaring, and even my purchases will probably appreciate by the time I receive them.

I would suggest that this speculation is leading to an asset bubble in wine, but the growth in the Chinese market is at least partly based on their rapid structural development – with India probably not be far behind – meaning the bubble is unlikely to burst imminently.

Data, data, everywhere

Today saw the publication of more scientific evidence supporting my position on the topic of weight loss that I discussed a while ago.

It is interesting to see how the culture of evidence-based medicine has led to an explosion of data and associated studies, which often proves little more than what is already self-evident. This is especially so for audit-based study rather than fresh research, but the problem of inefficiency and unnecessary duplication of work applies to both fields. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely appreciate it when a good scientific study verifies the benefit (or otherwise!) of an intervention. But the sheer obsession with evidence that now exists is indicative of a broader cultural malaise resulting in a society focused on data rather than people, and it is not unique to medical practice.

We have a historically unparalleled ability to extract immense amounts of data from our daily lives. We are monitored, measured and tracked continuously. CCTV cameras, security access cards, withdrawing money from a bank, using a credit card, making telephone calls, using sat-nav, browsing the internet, even sitting quietly reading a book in a library… almost everything we do generates an electronic papertrail and all that data can be collated, processed and analysed. And much of it is.

Correlations inevitably emerge, hypotheses will be formed and theories are generated which can then draw significant and sometimes conflicting followings. In this situation evidence is more often used as a propaganda tool than a means to reveal truth. Every new bit of data is interpreted within pre-existing intellectual positions rather than being used to drive us towards deeper understanding and a better appreciation of an underlying truth.

Innovation – the ability to think outside conventional paradigms – is stifled rather than encouraged by this obsession with evidence and data. Protocol is followed at the expense of originality. The excessive amount of data and the studies that emerge results in analysis-paralysis and a tendency towards ineffective intellectual inertia.

The individual genius, unless of a fearsomely driven character, will become exasperated by the burden of needing to prove his position to the world and will withdraw from an active role in society in favour of protecting himself from it. Thus, in the longer term it is our culture that will suffer for this excessive reliance on “evidence”.