Mickey Mouse, Mammon, and the Pope

Disneyworld, Las Vegas, and the Vatican City. Three disparate locations; one shared phenomenon.

At Disney, it’s parade-time; in Vegas, it’s in effect as you walk onto the floor of a casino and observe the players; and in the Vatican City I saw it a week ago as the Pope was driven around St Peter’s Square.

All three places become home to communal acts of idolisation and worship. Despite different form, the essential emotional experience to participants is identical. The three locations are each overwhelmingly artificial; designed and built purely to facilitate worship. This deliberate other-worldliness is enforced by a shared obsession with pristine cleanliness within their borders, and a rigorously enforced exclusion of competing idols. Even the decor is carefully chosen to aggrandise the object of worship. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the tromp l’oeil clouds of Caesar’s Palace, and the fairytale castle of the Magic Kingdom all fulfil the same purpose.

It is the human condition to crave a shared spiritual experience and anyone watching the Champions League final earlier this evening saw football provide the medium, and Wembley Stadium the setting, for a similar emotional experience. It is a desire to be part of something bigger than oneself, and so achieve a sense of immortality and overcome the transience of life and the permanence of death. Religion, Mythology, Folklore, the idols of corporations (including the famous Mouse), and even more abstract concepts like Money, all fulfil this tribal need of allowing the propagation of a cultural meme to the next generation.

Later on the same day I saw the Pope, I was mulling over these ideas while sipping espresso in the Piazza Navona and watching tourists and locals go about their day. What were they really achieving? What was the fundamental meaning of all this travel and pseudo-pilgrimage? It reminded me of the concept of “bucket lists” and their wistful attempt to apply some quantitative criteria to measure the significance of a life. Is it really enough?

It’s a very human thing to want to be able to say you have achieved something in life, even it’s just to have been happy. People talk about the importance of “a good death”, sometimes equating it to a painless sudden death at an advanced age. But I rather think it’s more about achieving a sense of acceptance about death: what Erikson would describe as having enough Ego Integrity to no longer give death a sense of importance in life, and so no longer need idols to worship.

Old Media, New Media

Image via Wikipedia

Faithful readers will have noted a lack of fresh posts recently. For that, my apologies. I was in Rome for a short break, and was fairly busy either side of the trip. Rome is a charming place, made more so by the pleasant weather this time of year, and my brief sojourn in the Eternal City sparked several thoughts that will hopefully develop into future posts as they intellectually ripen over the fullness of time.

When I logged back onto my blog after this absence, I was pleased to see a good handful of comments on my last article, and astonished to see a massive – if transient – spike in page hits while I was away. This is the power of a national newspaper linking to me. By way of thanking, and returning the favour, to Ms Smithers and Ms Tims, the link was in the first line of their Guardian article. Their editor will, I’m sure, now call me personally to thank me for the reciprocal link, and the untold trillions of extra readers he has now gained as a result…

More seriously, it demonstrates that even in this era of “internet journalism” (or rather, widespread internet commentary) the brand power of national newspapers still holds remarkable sway. In the light of the reported impact of Twitter and the blogosphere on weighty matters such as the Arab Spring, and empty froth like the Giggs super-injunction, it’s worth noting that most people still retain residual loyalty to trusted brands and weight the value of the information received through that brand identity.

The sheer mass of new information and commentary that is generated by the internet on an hourly basis is too vast to be processed on an individual level. And any search engine’s algorithm is ultimately open to manipulation and the law of unintended consequences. Even if it filters information adequately by subject matter, it struggles to do so by quality. In this environment of an uncontrolled explosion of data, I suspect people actually find themselves more likely to stick with brands they know for their information.

It is analogous to going into the local supermarket and being faced with 30 brands of detergent. Theoretically, one could choose any of the 30 brands, but instead, we usually buy the same one each time. The broader the potential choice, the narrower the effective one. The sheer breadth of options acts as a psychological constraint, the so-called Paradox of Choice. Of course, there is a “sweet spot” of options (probably 3 or 4), where one could actually be bothered to try all the brands and see which one they prefer. But we’ve moved far beyond that point, both in terms of detergent and information sources.

The outcome, of course, is that people do not – and cannot – choose rationally between the options. They simply follow a brand, or a crowd. Branding provides an intellectual short-cut to choice and trust. This applies to detergent, to information… and to people.

Why do you take photos?

Image by Capt Kodak via Flickr

Watching the amusing Business Nightmares (BBC2, Monday), the interview with a former senior Polaroid executive stood out. Polaroid is of course a company whose core product simply became obsolete for the mainstream user. He commented: “We weren’t able to see that people wouldn’t want a hard copy print; it sure came as a heck of a surprise that people wouldn’t want one…”

Then he paused and sheepishly admitted “But I don’t either”!

For many, the physical photo album has indeed become quaint, but let’s face it, those physical albums were only rarely looked through anyway. Are their modern digital equivalents viewed more, for all their greater accessibility? Probably, but I suspect there is still only a spike of initial views and then increasingly rare subsequent views.

Some photographs are taken with artistic aspirations, though perhaps pretensions is a more accurate word for the many taken with this intent but in the absence of talent. Others are taken for purely documentary or illustrative purposes in mind, be they journalistic or commercial in nature.

But the majority of photos are simpler snaps; taken to solely to mark a transient experience and commemorate the passages of life’s rituals. The documentary quality of the image is almost irrelevant in these cases; the emotional power of these snaps are nearly all in the acts of taking and sharing the image. I don’t Facebook myself, having an aversion to acquiring yet another time sink, but I’m struck by the avid taking and sharing of images by those who are on such social networking sites. The sharing of a photograph has an interesting dynamic tension: it works to define the sharer’s identity, but simultaneously the highly communal act requires others to pay the photograph attention to render it this definitional power. The photograph can thus be seen as a social transaction between the taker/sharer and the community, where the utility of the transaction is a mutual strengthening of interpersonal ties and roles.

This is a similar role to that of photos in their former hard copy incarnations. The leafing through the physical photo album was a ritual done at time of social or emotional need, to remind self and others of their respective roles through a remembrance of the emotional content of times past. This is the mythic power of the photograph, where it is not the content that matters, but the symbolism.

The photo is a conduit to emotional social resonance, similar to ancient folklore passed on through the oral tradition, or engrained ceremonial ritual such as we recently witnessed in the Royal Wedding.

If you have a favourite photo, do you love it for the image, or the emotional memory it evokes?

The Hunch

Perhaps it’s the residual imagery of that infamous Hillary Clinton advert from the 2008 Primaries, or simply my memory of too many nights on call for work, but when the phone goes off in the middle of the night, I rarely think it’s good news.

Contrast that with the widely-reported response of David Cameron, British Prime Minister, to his middle-of-the-night phone call from Barack Obama: he “had a hunch” that the call was to tell him that Osama Bin Laden had been killed.

Obviously there are a number of potential explanations for this. For instance, he could have had some advance notice of the operation either from the USA, or from British Security Services who had noted the build-up to the American action. I think the former is unlikely given just how few people knew about the operation. The latter is perhaps more plausible, given the large number of British assets that are operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan these days. Or maybe he detected something in the tone of the voice of the staff connecting him to the US President that unconsciously let him realise that the tenor of the news in advance. Alternatively, Cameron might simply be unwittingly retrofitting his memory to fit the subsequent events, something that we are all prone to do without consciously realising the distortion.

But if the hunch was genuinely his initial reaction, it speaks volumes about the man and tells us something more profound than he may have realised when he said it. There must be a remarkably strong underlying sense of optimism running through your psyche for a man – especially one in his position – to be woken up in the middle of the night, and to suspect that good news is the cause.

Optimism at a psychological trait is poorly understood but appears to be multifactorial in its aetiolog: it arises from a combination of heritable factors and learned behaviours. It is associated with better physical and psychogical health; optimists tend to suffer less mental distress from negative events. Taken to an extreme, it can become unrealistically Panglossian, but on a more proportionate level it certainly seems helpful to life.

Regardless of your voting preferences, knowing whether a politician is optimistic or not is crucial to how they will act when in office as politics is discipline involving a series of wicked problems. An optimist will approach those decisions differently to a pessimist. It is easy to be cynical about, say, Cameron’s Big Society concept, but if he really is as optimistic as the quote suggests, then it is likely to be a genuine belief of his rather than a mere political convenience. It also impacts on the austerity programme the government is undertaking to cut the deficit; an optimist would tend to want to trust research supporting the ability of the private sector to at least partially offset public spending cuts, and give less weight to the contrary position, whereas a pessimist would be unlikely to be as willing to believe. A similar argument can be made to a willingness to reform large organisations such as the NHS.

Optimism doesn’t just colour the decision itself, it can also affect the eventual outcome. I’ve already noted that optimists tend to suffer less mental distress when faced with negative situations. This can lead them to be more willing to make changes that translate the negative into the positive (adversity into success). There is also research to suggest that those suffering from clinical depression actually view the world in a hyper-realistic fashion: their pessimism lets them judge odds more accurately than optimists or even average non-depressed people would, but also demotivates them from making changes to then actively skew the odds back into their favour.

Right decisions are rarely obvious before they are taken, in politics or more generally in life. Understand how you tend to approach decision-making, and so learn to better trust your decisions.

The Modern-Day Monk

It is not surprising that several guests at Friday’s Royal Wedding were anonymously quoted as “feeling jaded” yesterday. Anticipation of great events is commonly followed by a drained numbness, even if the event meets elevated expectations. Life thus passes by as a series of interspersed highs and, if not lows, mediocre neutrals. Is this the sum total of the human experience?

Man has historically found three ways to neutralise this nihilistic perspective: fame, religion and propagation.

Fame, with its associated glamour, can be fleeting or it can last a lifetime. Occasionally it outlasts its originating source and is considered worthy – or notorious – enough to be important to historical and cultural record. Whether transient or semi-permanent, its nourishment to the famous person is thin when weighed against the permanence of death. It can sustain the mind in the short-term, but is ultimately lacking.

To combat this failure of Temporal Power to assuage anomie, religion developed to offer believers escape from death, whether through reincarnation or heaven. Such Spiritual Might remains a comfort to many, channelling and guiding human emotion into soothingly predictable paths. Like Temporal Power, it offers individuals a larger sense of self that is part of a grander existence than Hobbes’ description of Man’s life as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”.

But for many, meaningful fame is impossible (the Warhol-esque 15 minutes of reality TV or social networking hardly counts) and religious faith escapes them, or is actively shunned. Frequently, their final refuge is propagation and it is a rare parent indeed that does not think of their children as the best thing they ever did.

Creating the next generation is certainly a valuable role; I would not want to see the human species wiped out! But does it truly offer a solution to the impermanence of man? I suggest not; the real essence of even the best of parents is lost from collective memory within at most four generations. As long as the parent does not think too deeply about this inevitable historical dissipation, Familial Legacy can substitute for either Temporal Power or Spiritual Might and stave off despair at the prospect of death.

What if none of the above are to the liking of the individual, if all are thought to fail the essential test of overcoming fear of death and giving life meaning, what then?

Enter the Modern-Day Monk.

The archetype of the man who seeks spiritual enlightenment through disengagement from the world is an ancient one. We see echoes of his presence in all the major world religions, mythologies and philosophies. Traditionally, the Monk has sought physical separation from the world; either to wander alone or in the company of select fellow travellers on a similar journey. He has used asceticism as a tool to aid enlightenment. Asceticism encourages the abandonment of sensual pleasure and material wealth, deeming these to be distractions from personal growth.

The Modern-Day Monk follows a different path to individuation. It is not physical abandonment of the world that is important, but intellectual detachment. This detachment from the value systems of others (the Temporal, Spiritual and Familial spheres) nonetheless permits material and emotional engagement with the world. He is able to weigh up and measure situations and people rapidly, allowing only positive effects through to his inner self. He comes across to others as tolerant and moderate, as he has no need to be otherwise. He enjoys the world, but does not let the world rule his inner heart. And in the face of new challenges, he has an inner core of willpower – a clear sense of self – to neutralise against torment.

The more philosophically (or religiously) minded will have already identified the characteristics outlined in the preceding four sentence as the Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and Fortitude respectively. The virtues are named Cardinal for being the hinge (L. cardo) upon which rests the door of life. It is not the door to a physical retreat from the world as the first step to an afterlife. It is a system to support and enhance our human desire to be part of the world, while not being ruled by it.

The Modern-Day Monk lives well, as well as wisely.