In Decline.

The monthly Pole Dance post.

Why Samuel Barber’s Adagio in B minor might be my theme tune this month.

……And then things got strange…….

Iv’e had a really bad day although one that, ultimately, was rescued by a kindly farmer with a gert big pick up truck…

The day here started with a minor accident : my partner sat on her glasses which resulted in us having to go into town to get them repaired – in itself not a great hassle and maybe just one of things sent to make us go and have coffee in town.

After coffee though I decided to take a wander around the open market and this time, I spotted some wooden planes on the stand of the lady who sells broken down tools and a few secondhand books among the usual tat. Having always taken an interest in vintage tools and their use I wondered about having a go with the wooden equivalent of my Stanley Jack Plane : only the previous week i’d watched You-Tuber Rex Krieger’s video on how to choose secondhand wooden planes so I kinda/sorta knew what to look for : the upshot of that was that the planes on display would have been very expensive firewood !

It was what happened next that was both strange, unnecessary and maddening.

While I was busy being the strange old guy that was sighting along the bases of wooden planes to see if it was worth buying one, there was a conversation going on between one female customer and the lady who runs that stand : they seemed to be putting the world to rights. On deciding that I wouldn’t be buying my first wooden plane that day (there’s a much better one on Ebay this week) I moved around to the front of the stall to peruse the books on display, When I did that the woman who was there all but stepped on my feet, did elbow me in the ribs as she squeezed in front of me while loudly saying sorry, sorry in the kind of way that actually means ‘not sorry and get out of my way annoying old man’. I honestly don’t think that it was me suddenly having a rush of neurosis but what older people often get in supermarkets near Christmas time : in brief – elbows at dawn if you are even remotely in their way.

I’ll admit that I growled a bit.

Later on that morning, once we’d got home, I noticed that it was a nice day and so decided to take my recumbent trike out for a longer ride to get some much needed exercise. For something a bit different I dropped down the steep hill out of the village first and then had to take the seemingly endless climb out of the valley eventually turning onto one of this areas smoother and better maintained roads.

What happened next was that at around my turning point I got either a flat or puncture in one of the front wheels so I was essentially rattling along on the rim that side : i’m pretty sure I trashed the tire that side. Anyway, I pulled in and wondered what to do next – you see, I had taken off my behind seat spares and tools bag in which I carry things like spare tubes, tools and my mobile phone. I could neither call anyone or start to change an inner tube so after a few minutes stood thinking I picked up the back of the trike and started walking slowly towards home – at that point maybe seven or eight miles distant.

As you can imagine I was pretty downhearted : I couldn’t contact Jackie and neither could she contact me and after a few hundred yards I was unsure if I even had it in me to walk that far taking part of the weight of the trike. I think not because not only do I have the after effects of several strokes but I think my right knee is failing and I think is overdue for a bearings change.

On the ride out I noticed a St Georges cross flag fluttering in the breeze in one corner of a farmer’s field : arguments for or against British patriots aside it’s more normal in Cornwall to see St Piran’s cross being flown (black cross on white background). As I trudged slowly back up that hill I noticed a lad in that field and then a bloke on a quad bike in the same field so I thought to chance my luck by asking if either of them had a car tire pump. One of the two went off and fetched a battery powered tire inflator so I thought perhaps that my luck was in and that I could limp home.

The only real problem is that the route home includes a long and steep descent into the valley and I can normally take that at around 75 Kph – I don’t even know what that is in Mph but it’s probably a long way past tire shredding speed. Luckily, in a way, the tire wouldn’t stay inflated and bless me but the quad bike owner went off and brought his pick up truck over and we heaved the trike into the back and he very kindly drove me (plus trike) all the way home.

On the way home though…….things got a bit strange…..

In my long distance/ultralight hiking days other hikers would speak, in hushed tones, of trail angels that turned up unexpected when you really needed one, well today what happened to me is that I met a trail angel working in a field for which I will be eternally grateful. When I climbed into matey’s pick up truck he pointed to the little key fob attached to his ignition key and asked me if I was ok with it : it was a key fob sized picture of one Donald Trump. Now, there is no way that I would have started badmouthing his choices anyway having just pulled out all of the stops to deliver me home, what happened though is that we fell into an immediate and immediately deep conversation that was the exact opposite of what I’d overheard in the open market that morning except that we weren’t so much putting the world to rights but plumbing the insane depths of the FUBAR situation we both felt the UK and the world to be in.

I won’t detail the conversation, especially in the he said/she said kind of way but it was way beyond politely passing the day either with your rescuer/trail angel (on my side) or the hopefully interesting old guy that is willing to talk about the things that he spends a lot of time thinking about. The best way I have of putting across where we went with that conversation is to use an analogy from one of the few things that I know a bit about : personality psychology.

The direct lead-in to this is a conversation on a podcast I heard recently which asked the question ‘what thing or things are wrong with the world’ ? – the presenter was trying to get to the one thing that his panel members thought was the single worst thing : I failed on that, at least in my own mind and ended up with four things of nearly equal weight.

Anyway : here goes with my analogy with the Big 5 model of personality psychology.

Using the Big 5 model of psychometrics it’s possible to determine, with some accuracy, the point on a scale someone inhabits in 5 different psychological traits, these being best remembered in either one of two simple mnemonic tools OCEAN (open ness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism ) or CANOE. each trait can be self determined using a simple language model : for example I could say that I know I am low on Extraversion (I am an introvert) but high in open ness – taking a big 5 traits test gave me a percentage score for each one.

If now I was writing an undergraduate essay on this subject I would have already had to reference all of the above : thankfully i’m not though – what I am trying to do is create an engaging analogy.

The Big 5 model works in the realm of language that we use every day : we know what we mean when we describe a person as say an extrovert or maybe not very likeable. We can go one degree of detail higher in that a recent modification of the model as a Phd broke down each trait into two slightly different factors. It is also possible to go in the opposite direction as a person’s traits are basically a melange of the effects on the brain of the two chemicals (neurotransmitters) Serotonin and Dopamine. Although technically accurate about what goes in a person’s brain it’s not of great help to us until we know quite a lot about neurophysiology and neurochemistry. We use language every day and generally we have the words that we need to use.

There are times when language fails us as was the case last year when secular biologist Brett Weimstein was in discussion with psychology professor Jordan Peterson. I don’t remember the exact conversation now although both admitted that they have both had times where the normal language we use every day is insufficient to explain what we are trying to say. Peterson has described it well in the past and Brett Weinstein was almost shocked by his need to use words such as evil, demonic and spiritual warfare.

We may not be comfortable with those words today and their are few instances we might want to use them in conversation : I might describe our Prime Minister as a total fuckwit and a communist as a response to his own tiresome and regular use of Far Right to insta-label anyone he disagrees with. I wouldn’t though automatically describe him as evil although I might say that some of his policies definitely are. What I might use the words, evil, wicked and demonic for are things like the murder of Charlie Kirk and the way his opponents are now celebrating as though murder is a good thing.

That’s kind-of where we went in our brief conversation : words that we wouldn’t normally hear or use ourselves. It though (that murder and it’s aftermath) are but one of the things this month where my normal use of words has been inadequate to say what I really think. For temporary completion I should add the several university campuses, their student bodies and several stage managed protests now gleefully celebrating the rapes, abductions and murders in Palestine. The conversation that I joined in on (what’s wrong with the world) is a bit like describing personality using the language model system of the 5 Trait model : useful and accurate enough in normative (normal) psychology but less useful when describing the variants on disagreeable people – that needs a different model.

As with trait psychology though we can go downstream one layer with a language that reasonably describes what’s wrong with the world in a normal language model : my own version came out as 4 things – Hatred, Hubris, Entitlement and Pride.* Almost a 5 trait model then but to really say what we think is wrong seems to need to go outside the bounds of everyday language just like the problem that Weintein and Peterson did.

*That’s where I left it except that I kept thinking that my four point model of what I see as being wrong with modern society : on further thought I made it a five point model having recently been watching some YouTube videos that seem to play on the themes of Avarice and Greed so my new version is Hatred, Hubris,Entitlement, Pride and Greed. As with the Big 5 model that doesn’t satisfy serious psychologists and neuroscientists my model wouldn’t satisfy the deep thinkers and religious types.

Best Wishes Y’awl……Wa-oh