The Disability Hierarchy 3: Only Yourself To Blame

Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;

I never saw a brute I hated so;

He must be wicked to deserve such pain.

- Robert Browning, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came

Healthy-living is not a moral duty and if it were, everyone's a sinner. However, in order to be an acceptable disabled person, you must be seen as having done everything within your power to be healthy. You can't be merely an innocent victim of misfortune, you must be immaculate.

It is shocking how deep this goes and how hard some people will try to absolve themselves of responsibility. Some people reach for bastardised religious and New Age ideas around karma, sin and laws of attraction which state that disabled people either did something to deserve it or else subconsciously wished it upon themselves. Many more healthy non-disabled people believe that they are personally responsible for being in good health and therefore people who are not simply can't have tried hard enough.

I guess this performs a few psychological functions. One is to make non-disabled people feel safer about their status – in the same way that believing that money is fairly distributed makes wealthy people feel safe. The second is to make non-disabled people feel superior. And as such, even some disabled people indulge in this behaviour.

The way this effects treatment of disabled people who are considered responsible for their impairments is absolutely horrendous. It is sensible that ongoing behavioural problems should be taken into account when it comes to certain medical treatment, but the Minister for Disabled People's repeated statements about alcoholism and Disability Living Allowance strongly imply that someone with severe impairments is simply not disabled if they have addiction.

This sort of thing is massively inconsistent. Someone who becomes paraplegic in a sky-diving accident rates higher than someone who contracts emphysema after a lifetime of smoking, who in turn rates higher that someone who contracts HIV from unprotected sex, even though all three were engaging in morally-neutral risk-taking activity. How someone got sick has no bearing on their experience of functional impairment or disability, and yet I once saw folk on a disability messageboard reject a newbie who had HIV on the grounds of “you can't be disabled if it's your fault.” *

Regardless of your impairment, being significantly overweight brings you right down in the hierarchy, despite the fact that obesity is a very common and an obvious effect of restricted mobility, let alone metabolic disorders and the side-effects of many medications. If you're fat, people - sometimes strangers - will openly speculate that if only you lost weight, your physical health would improve, your brain chemistry would adjust, your genes would rearrange themselves, your limbs would grow back etc.. Whilst our culture regards fat folks as universally unhealthy, it also regards them as magically immune to all medical conditions which are not related to being fat. Since fatness is considered a result of greediness and laziness, if a fat person has an impairment, it has got to be his or her fault. Find any discussion about disabled parking on a news website and there will be complaints about the people having disabled permits just because they're fat. In many minds, fat people and disabled people are two mutually exclusive groups.

And of course when it comes to genuine over-eating, whilst under-eating to the point of physical complications is considered a serious mental illness, over-eating to the point of immobility or even death is considered uncomplicated greediness and a bit of a joke.

I need to write about mental illness in another post, but one of the major issues with the low status of people with mental illness among disabled people is the idea that mental illness is at least partly self-inflicted and therefore those impairments don't count. The status of people with Bipolar Disorder has shot up in recent years, partly due to having an adorable sane-seeming wit for a poster-child, but partly due the increasing public understanding that bipolar appears to have a genetic origin. If it's straightforward genes, then that's not your fault. Some people with depression, anxiety and stress are also massively disadvantaged by genes, but that's less easy to determine. The fact that most other factors contributing to mental health are entirely out of a person's control – brain-architecture, hormonal balances and events, and most of all very bad things that happened to you - is utterly lost. And then there's the fact that someone with chronic depression has failed to pull themselves together after they became ill.

Because even if you are slim and have a bad luck impairment, you will never escape this issue of responsibility. If they're not running marathons up mountains with dolphins, real disabled people featured on television are usually in the process of trying to get better, trying some new pioneering treatment or technology, full of hope for a non-disabled future. They are an inspiration to non-disabled people. A fairly recent flipside to this is that disabled people who are seeking death by euthanasia are almost seen in the same light – they are, after all, aiming for a place where they're not disabled any more. They too are considered brave (including the bravest man Terry Pratchett ever met). In an article about the suicide of John Hinkleman, a friend of the artist summed this up nicely;

“The bravery for him to get up and go through that door was staggering. [...] He beat MS. It takes away the control of your life but this gave him control.”

(The comments thread (together with those on all articles everywhere about these cases) mostly concurs, but funnily enough there is a debate about whether people who jump off Beachy Head are also brave, which of course they aren't because they are mentally ill. And not being real disabled people, people with chronic mental illness are denied the possibility of a noble exit.)

Christopher Reeve was a truly excellent cripple because, as well as being an injured superhero, he first felt suicidal but then declared that he would walk again, despite that being not merely against the odds, but absolutely impossible at that time or at any time in the forseeable future**.

As a person with chronic illness, I fall down the hierarchy simply for getting on and enjoying life, and neither wishing to kill myself nor spending every ounce of energy on pursuing a cure which may or may not exist. I have been called a pessimist for not being engaged in expensive, entirely unproven and in some cases, effectively disproven alternative treatments. An acceptable disabled person never stops trying not to be disabled. This is perhaps especially the case with chronic illness, because cultural ideas around the Sick Role.

Even if not engaged in some kind of a therapy, an acceptable disabled person must be seen to be doing the right thing all the time. If I am seen to over-do things, fail to eat properly, take my meds, manage my sleep, or if I am seen not to be doing as much as I could be, perhaps taking too much care of myself, then I become a less acceptable disabled person. And naturally, anybody who feels that they have the right to judge, is likely to find fault in how I behave. If only I lived my life exactly as someone else imagines they would live my life, then my health might be a lot better. Hmm.

Disabled people's lives belong to them. And until we've established a nightmare dystopia where everything everyone does, consumes, inhales or fumbles about in the dark with is tightly controlled for their own benefit, disabled people have the same rights and no more, both to healthy-living and self-destruction as everyone else.

* To make this situation even more horrible, it turned out that this person had contracted HIV following a sexual assault. Even in the West, there are plenty of people with HIV who didn't knowingly take any risks at all. But even those who did do not deserve to have a terminal illness, let alone the treatment that goes with it.

** It's worth saying that I believe Reeve himself was more sensible – and thus less inspirational – than it was often reported. For a while he was unpopular with disabled activists because of the emphasis he seemed to place on finding a cure for spinal cord injury. From everything I've read, I think that this has more to do with spin than the man himself.

The Goldfish Guide to Dealing With Doubters #1

I've been meaning to write this one since before Christmas when a couple of bloggers got me thinking about illness and doubt. It's going to wind up a couple of posts, but I'll try put something frivolous in between. Anyway...

First, Never that Easy had been asked to diarise her pain levels and had a conflicted response to seeing it all mapped up.

“I want to print it out and stick it on the refrigerator, or e-mail it to everyone I know or ever met and be like: "See?!? This is what it's like to be me: This is what I'm dealing with. Look at all those 5s and 4s!!! Now ask me again why I'm not working but instead 'sucking up your social security'!" At the same time, I want to hide it... I'm a little bit ashamed of it, that it's gotten this bad. I want to ignore it, to not have to face it.”

Meanwhile, Seahorse has been dealing with a sister.

"But no, apparently I'm not disabled because I walked in town last weekend. This 'miracle' proves that I am not disabled. Forget the fact that I was in bed for several days after, and went straight into a wisdom tooth infection.

Oh, and my eyes burn too brightly these days, apparently."

Since then, Andrea has also touched on this in her excellent You just don't get it
Frida Writes has also written eloquently on this subject in the past, and both Gone Fishing and Cusp have long-running battles with insurance companies which involve this issue.

Lots of people have aspects of their lives which are subjected to the skepticism of others, but chronic illness is special because of the Tragedy Model of Disability. This is sometimes called the Charity Model and it is this aspect – the way in which disability is seen as a charitable status, which is most important here.

Despite the way that systems work in real life, the practical, medical and financial help sick people receive is still regarded by many as a sort of charity. Often even equality legislation is spoken about as if it is out of compassion that employers and service providers should accommodate us. Charity is act of generosity and kindness, whereas social justice is about the duties we have toward one another. Charity, unlike insurance, requires recipients to be deserving as opposed to merely entitled - and there is an enormous difference.

This model enforces a power dynamic between non-disabled and disabled people, particularly those of us who are need lots of practical, medical and financial help. This makes it socially acceptable for non-disabled people to speculate about our varying degrees of "legitimacy". There is nothing worse than an undeserving charity recipient, and they must be rooted out.

People with chronic physical or mental illness perhaps bear the brunt of this because our stories are untidy. We have symptoms which are invisible, which fluctuate and which seem to be on a spectrum with normal experience (fatigue is extreme tiredness, depression is extreme sadness etc.). If ever challenged, it is impossible to prove our degree of impairment - there are no blood tests or scans which demonstrate how much something hurts, how difficult it is to concentrate and so on.

All this makes doubt very hurtful and threatening. To the extent I may be said to have achieved it, it has taken an awful long time to stop feeling guilty about the cost of my existence to everyone else, to stop feeling a need to justify myself, to demonstrate that I've done everything I can to get better and I do everything I can to spend my time productively.

Thus the first problem in dealing with doubters;


Self-doubt.

The first rule of dealing with doubters is to realise that your experience is legitimate.

Most people with chronic illness will, at some point, have doubted themselves. Denial is a standard stage of grief, so having phases in which we doubt our own perceptions of illness is entirely natural – if rather uncomfortable. The last time I had this was only last year, when my pain got worse. It was so bad, it was actually difficult to believe what was happening, even though it was intruding into my consciousness twenty-four hours a day. Even now, I wonder whether I can be remembering right, but then my pills are very good.

So doubt makes some psychological sense, but not logical sense. It is possible to have erroneous beliefs about an illness (what it is, what its caused by etc.), but that doesn't make your illness illegitimate. A symptom is a symptom. A symptom may be entirely imaginary, but it is still real to the person experiencing it – and considering that possibility won't make it go away (or it might, but if it did, you wouldn't have the problem any more).

Self-doubt can be dangerous as well as demoralising. It can delay us getting the medical help they need once scary symptoms kick in. But I guess people with chronic illness probably have to go through it, and revisit it from time to time. People who never doubt their own perception of reality tend to end up starting religions, invading small countries or dedicating their lives to provide goats with glamorous eveningwear.

Our sense of legitimacy is more than whether or not we trust our experiences. Because of prominent models of disability, we often inherit odd ideas about whether our experiences count enough to ask for help or reasonable adjustment.

For example, lots of chronically ill people refuse to identify as disabled, even though chronic illness is responsible for some of the most severe functional impairment and attracts some of the worst disabling treatment (especially mental illness). People often don't claim benefits and services they are entitled to, because they don't see their needs as great enough. Lots of people who have very poor or painful walking wind up stuck at home rather than using wheelchairs, not always through shame, but rather a sense that wheelchairs are for people who can't move their legs.

When we do accept what we're entitled to, we've often had to justify this to ourselves and thus almost expect to have to justify it to other people. But the worst thing we can do is to fall into the trap of thinking we have something to prove. Dealing with doubters is about dealing with other people's problems in order to make both our lives easier.

The Myth of Monetary Meritocracy

I am afraid I have unpopular thoughts about the Credit Crunch. Well, the crunchiness may have passed; the BBC News website renamed the crisis a Downturn and even had a snazzy logo to accompany related stories (although they appear to have abandoned this). Meanwhile, back in October, Radio 4 had a season of programmes about the Credit Crash. Generally a crunch comes just after a crash. For example, if you fell against a stack of cereal boxes in the supermarket, it would kind of go crash and then crunch in quick succession.

For the UK at least, it is more of a Credit Crumble. It is undoubtedly bad news but for the time being it has been blown out of all proportion, with all manner of chaos, panic and disaster headlines when nobody is in mortal danger. We are poorer than most people, and whilst we're certainly aware of the increasing cost of fuel and food, there is significant room for further economy. It did tickle me the other week when a shop-assistant made me aware of a multi-buy offer on kitchen roll, saying in the gravest of tones,

“That's a saving of nineteen pence and in these troubled times, nineteen pence can make a big difference!”

Which is rather melodramatic coming from someone who takes no more than three minutes to earn such a princely sum*.

But all this has got me thinking about our ridiculous attitude towards money – an attitude which caused this problem in the first place and is going to make it all the more painful. Yeah, it's that kind of monster of a post, but if you make it to the bottom, you can have a picture of a terrapin!

The trouble is that we believe that money should be fair. It can't be. Money is just numbers. In this economy, these numbers are regulated by almost entirely by supply and demand (capitalism). Supply and demand are not fair.

Something you are going to sell to someone else – whether it is a thing or some work you can do – is only ever worth what somebody else is prepared to pay for it. Whilst hard work, skills, talent, intelligence, charm and cunning may increase the price you are paid, your control over the matter is very limited. If you are a brilliant footballer who gets all the right breaks, then you can make millions of pounds and compare your working conditions to slavery.

But most people who are brilliant at football never get to play for money. If you are a brilliant car mechanic or a fantastic florist, then there is a fairly modest upper limit on how much money you can make. This blog is not worth any money, and yet is infinitely more valuable than the work of certain newspaper collumnists who get paid a small fortune. Much fewer people read here, but much more charming, more discerning and generally better-looking people, which is a far more valuable reward.

A person cannot work themselves rich. Some people are smart, skilled and/ or work very very hard and accumulate massive wealth, but only if what they have to supply happens to meet a demand – that is, they get lucky. Most rich people were born rich. Meanwhile, most talented, hard-working, brilliant people are on average incomes, at risk of hardship should they fall upon bad luck such as unemployment or ill health. And thus a proportion of the most talented, hard-working and brilliant people are relatively poor.

But capitalism is not a bad thing. Financial inequity is not the same as social inequality. In order to make sure of this, we have things like a minimum wage, universal healthcare, education and the welfare state. We have certain controls on financial activity and the amount of social and political power that money can buy. And fortunately, once you don't have to worry about a roof over your head, having enough to eat and a little to spare, money doesn't make a great deal of difference to one's happiness. Work (renumerative or otherwise) has its own rewards. And our value as human beings has absolutely nothing to do with the money in our pockets.

The trouble is that most people don't believe this. Not truly.

Our particular cultural work-ethic is highly individualistic, based on personal economic reward. A good job is first and foremost a well-paid job. People have some choice about the work they do and some make altruistic choices, but principly, the purpose of work in our culture to provide for oneself or one's immediate family, for one's own independence, security and happiness. These things, we are told can be bought – a principle we have reiterated several times a day. Everything is for sale; in any given ad-break we are sold sexual attractiveness, physical wellbeing, a happy family and the envy of our peers, all in the form of yoghurt or soap powder.

Stuff being the principle reward in life, it would make sense if people were rewarded according to their virtues. And we would very much like to believe this. Certainly most governments sell us economic meritocracy because it puts everyone in our place; those men have power and earn many times the average wage because they are the very best people for the job – you are relatively powerless and poo because you're not so bright and didn't work as hard as they did. And look at the chav thing; people love the idea of an underclass of people who are in the gutter because of their own personal failings – and love to hate them because even though they remain poor, they do appear to have a lot more stuff than they deserve.**

And this has ruined our economy. The first effect is (or at least was) hubris in the face of short-term prosperity. During the boom, those who were doing well thought they'd earnt it. Home-oweners spoke about the artificial rise in house-prices as if this was something they had achieved through hard work – and something for keeps, which of course it wasn't. Meanwhile, in the City, people were making money in all manner of strange and inventive ways and oh, how very well they were rewarded!

If you believe that your wealth is a product of natural justice, then it is difficult to conceive of it ever going away. I am not going to work any less hard in the future, so I shall always be this wealthy. In the context of reduced financial regulation and a sustained economic boom (so sustained that many young city types had never known any different), this got completely out of hand.

The second effect is that most ordinary people, most of the time, don't actually perceive that they are doing well at all. Most people you speak to will complain that they are either underpaid, or that they might have enough coming in but they pay too much tax.

This is not greed. Surrounded by messages which say that the accumulation of stuff is the reward for virtue and the thing that's going to make you happy, respectable, secure and so on, you're bound to feel short-changed. You're smart and you work very hard, so why shouldn't you have all the shiny things you want – shiny things that far less smart, less hard-working people seem to have?

In this culture people who have no problem paying for essentials nevertheless become very frustrated with financial limitations. One friend recently complained that there is no state help for people like her, because benefits and tax-credits are means-tested according to your income and don't take into account how much money you have going out. Yeah, I know. And yet I sympathise; she works very hard, and only wants decent things. A decent house in a decent area, a decent car, decent holidays, decent technology. Since this standard of living is a struggle, she feels like she's going without.

Add cheap credit into the equation, and an enormous personal debt problem results. I don't work or own property, and yet even I was receiving offers of thousands of pounds in loans. Treat yourself, the literature said, give yourself the break that you deserve.

Now, I don't believe that people need protecting from themselves, ought not to be loaned money or subjected to advertising. I think people who have borrowed beyond their means for non-emergency purposes are responsible for their choices. Not that they need berating; it'll be tough enough as it is just now and anyway, some degree of luck is always involved. Some first-time buyers got 125% mortages – which seems ludicrous - but others in their peer group got help from Mummy and Daddy and hardly took on any burden at all.

However, we are all free to reject this culture. For our own sake, for the sake of an economy which impacts on everyone, and for the sake of the environment. Money is not moral. The consequences of our attitude towards it are.

This enormous terrapin and its similarly proportioned friends live at the school where Alexander goes to nursery. Previously, I'd only seen terrapins the size of small apple (though not quite that shape); these were the size of a melon (though not quite that shape). And no, I don't have any pictures of kittens - the terrapin will have to do.


* In fairness, I was buying kitchen roll in Poundstretcher, conscious that I was paying 0.4p a sheet – closer to 0.3p with the special offer, as opposed to 0.5p a sheet in Wilkinsons and a shocking 0.7p a sheet in Tesco. In case you wondered (I'm pretty sure you didn't), if you take absorbency into account, Wilkinsons is the best value – it is about the same quality as Tesco, whereas the Poundstretcher stuff is very thin. I hope this confession mitigates for any degree of sanctimony above... and it takes two minutes and four seconds to earn 19p on the UK minimum wage – a few seconds longer after tax.

** Meanwhile, we participate in the exploitation of the poor in other countries and use more than our fair share of the planet's resources because we don't really believe that the world could be as extraordinarily unfair as it is – but that's another subject.

Party Dresses!

The thing about the dresses that come into the shops at this time of year is that, even if you hate everything that's fashionable in any given season, these dresses are always lovely. It's always the most gorgeous fabrics; velvet, satin, chiffon and tafeeta and despite the permanent prominence of black, those that come in colour are usually very nice deep colours. And they're always the nicest shapes, effectively gift-wrapping that most beautiful form in all of nature, the adult woman. Well, it is true.

I guess this is more about aesthetics (or possibly lechery) than some girly thing about dressing up; I have never been invited to anywhere where I might require a dress anything like these. If I were, I would find more fault with them. For one thing, I am an odd shape and don't usually fit into dresses. They are all incredibly skimpy given that it's winter, this is Britain and women tend to feel the cold more than. None of the dresses are fair trade or made from recycled materials and despite their expense they are the sort of thing which one wears very rarely, perhaps only once – and needs shoes and things to match, and don't get me started on the sheer hell that is shoe-shopping. If I were in the market, I'd probably make one myself. Out of an old sack.

In fact, I'm not sure quite who it is who wears the dresses that come into the shops about now. Most women never need a dress like this - I reckon that the sort of Christmas parties where women were posh frocks only happen in movies or perhaps for Office Parties if you worked in a really swanky office where they had mahogany desks and lead crystal mousemats or something. British high schools have started having “proms” in the last few years, but I think that happens in the summer.

My sister is the one person I know who owns these sorts of dresses, but then she goes to lots of weird weddings (you know, the sort that don't have a pirate theme) and does lots of concerts in orchestras where the chaps dress up like penguins – I don't think the audiences dress up so much. However, the one time I did go shopping for dresses with her was incredible; at one shop they gave me a cup of coffee while she tried something on. Free! Although at the end of that trip, we found the perfect item, full length, bright red and extremely flouncy, for £5 in a charity shop.

Anyway, since my futile and frankly slightly shameful window-shopping is usually conducted at home by myself, and since there is a very small chance that someone reading this might want to buy a dress this year, I thought I should share with you the top three dresses that I have seen this year.

3. This one I like because it is a great curvy shape (too many of these dresses require the wearer to be stick-thin). It is also almost black (it's described as graphite) and therefore fairly safe, also sparkly so one isn't a dark mass from the neck down. And the sparkly balance is just right; a lot of sequined dresses may be dazzling to behold, but make a person look like they put on their chainmail but forgot the suit of armour. It is from John Lewis and is called an Elise dress, like the car or whoever Beethoven wrote that tune für...

2. This is my second favourite mostly because it is a very nice colour and it is has a very pretty neckline (I'd be such a good fashion writer, all so very very nice). Also it is called a Boudicea Dress for reasons I can barely fathom, and I like the idea of a woman who was glamorous enough to wear such a dress turning up at her party in a chariot. It is from Monsoon.

1. This is my most favourite, because despite everything I said, I guess I imagine this might suit me if my fairy godmother showed up and it did, by some bizarre manufacturing error, fit. It is a lovely purply shade of red, it's got two textures in it and I don't know, it is sensible enough such that I probably could find some excuse to wear it between now and the End of Days. It is called a Matt & Shine dress and is from Marks & Spencers. It's also the cheapest out of these at £55. So I think practicality won the day despite myself.

Debenhams probably have the biggest range of dresses, including an entire section of red ones. Also, if you are a funny shape and did want a party dress, you can "design" one and get one made in the UK through somewhere like StyleShake which I've never used but looks like a great idea.

I don't think shops will mind me pinching pictures for the purposes of admiration, but I shall merely link to what is by far the ugliest party dress I have seen this winter. It is leather. It is gold. It is pretty much without shape. And it is £175. Any positives? Well, I guess could easily be wiped clean...

Not the end of the world

This is one of those times in life where a lot is going on, and life seems to be moving in a very positive direction. Yet instead of feeling great about this, I find myself anxious. It's coming and going, I'm not consumed with worry, but that it is coming at all is a source of great irritation.

The subject is pretty much unbloggable at this stage. But as with anything worth bothering with there are lots of uncertainties. Worse case scenarios are scary, but very unlikely. Up from the bottom, there are scenarios which could be very stressful, but remain unlikely. However, this is a risk we've decided to take because if all works out (most likely scenario), it should be very good. Obfuscation is making this sound terribly exciting – it's really not, at least not for anyone else.

I hate worrying. I hate that about myself. For I am, alas, one of nature's worriers and in recent years I've worked very hard at suppressing this tendency. All the nonsense I used to worry about still occurs to me, but I have learnt to close that book and move on. To some extent.

The thing I hate most about worrying is the possibility of wasting time. My maternal grandmother is in her eighties now, but has wasted an enormous proportion of her life to upset and worry. Probably the greatest and most ironic source of her anxiety is illness and death. Even now, when one might have thought she had triumphed over those two spectres as much as a person might hope to, she worries terribly about diseases she might acquire, about vague symptoms which she fears may indicate something sinister.

I wouldn't suggest that older people should not worry about their health, but one imagines that age brings significant perspective; at eighty-something, you're lucky to be around at all and you're even luckier if you're mobile and independent. George Bernard Shaw got to ninety-four and died of kidney failure; he damaged his kidney when he fell out of a tree. Now that's the spirit!

It is the greatest waste of time worrying about one's health. If it is worth worrying about, it is worth making a doctor's appointment and waiting to hear what an expert things. If it is going to get worse, then you are wasting the time you have now when things are not too bad. Even if you are going to die soon, then you are wasting the time you have now when you are alive and blissfully ignorant of your impending demise. I mean, it's not as simple as that if you really are going to die, but I mean during the stage when it is merely a persistent cough, a curious lump, a steady loss of blood from the jugular vein or whatever.

The same applies to all Bad Things Which Could Happen. Say the unbloggables go wrong and disaster strikes in a few months time. Well, everything is okay now. And of course, everything may continue to be okay and I will have wasted all this okay time. Because Bad Things are going to happen in life. Jobs are lost, marriages fail, hopes are dashed and people die – often with poor timing. However, these things are relatively rare in the course of life. Hopefully, there are periods of years where none of these things occur to us as individuals.

Often the things we worry about are Super Bad Terrible Things which hardly ever happen to anyone, or perhaps haven't ever happened yet. I don't know whether anyone was actually worried about the end of the world happening yesterday, but people do worry about that stuff, as Jack wrote about earlier in the week. Human beings will not go on forever, but it is unlikely that we will be destroyed by a single whoosh!, or indeed a bang! and almost certainly not a pertwang!. There are far less dramatic and more preventable disasters we should concern ourselves with.

So anyway, although this post is being written largely in an attempt to reason with myself, I shall nevertheless provide my five top tips for coping with a worrisome mind:

1. Accept that despite all the logic, your mind will be troubled by this stuff from time to time. This is natural and can't be resisted – any more than we can stop farting. But much of the time, that's all it is; sometimes there is a problem that needs wrestling with, often it is just an emotional waste product.

2. Worrying a lot about unlikely or fanciful events is usually symptomatic of some other problem. It is important to make a conscious effort to look after oneself, address sources of stress, watch our diet, exercise and sleep.

3. A cliched but nevertheless excellent test - and sometime cure - for worries is to write it down or tell someone about it. Often the mere thought of sharing this thought with someone else forces one to realise how silly it is and thus cure it. If not, putting it down in words or talking it over can often do the trick.

4. Keep a list of the most important things in your life. These may include people, your job and past-times, aspects of yourself and your life which make it worthwhile. Most of the things I worry about have very limited bearing on any of the items on my list. When I consider this fact and concentrate briefly on the many good things I have going for me, I gain a lot of perspective.

5. Schedule a time to worry. This is a trick which I find very useful. If you find yourself anxious a lot, decide that you shall give your worries your full attention at a certain time of day, for at least ten or fifteen minutes. Decide what time that'll be, use the same time every day and stop everything else for that period. Almost always, I find those worries that haven't fizzled out in the mean time can be reasoned with and resolved quite painlessly.

Having said...

Having said I had returned, I am now feeling guilty for neglecting you. But once again, I was busy then tired. Last week it was a shopping trip to Cambridge, which was great fun. I spent £6.25. It was a spree!

Well it's not quite September yet. Come September, I shall blog more regularly.

How it should have been

When Alexander was born, I made a promise to myself not to mourn for the auntihood I might have had. Even saying that sounds melodramatic, but I have a manipulative imp and this is just the sort of thing it'll pick on when it wants me to feel sorry for myself.

Alex was born exactly ten years and one day after I acquired these limitations. I was never going to be any other kind of auntie. Before Alexander was conceived, I didn't know I was going to be any kind of auntie and whilst I had my hopes, I wouldn't have had any complaints if it wasn't to be. Alexander is a gift. And he can only be better off having me as opposed to no auntie at all.

But. This week Alex and Rosie have been staying at my folks, I've seen a lot of them both and earlier in the week I began to feel rather sad and guilty.

Alexander is the most physically active not-yet-two-year-old I have ever encountered. He can sit and play quietly or be read to, but he seems to need to spend most of his waking time hurtling about, dancing and climbing things. Fortunately he is also very good on his feet and resilient; he doesn't often fall over, but when he does he generally picks himself up and carries on without complaint. At the play park, he heads straight for the big children's climbing frame.

So there's a part of me that minds that I can't play all the games he wants to play. And I feel very guilty that I can really only cope with a few hours of his company before I am fantastically exhausted. And when fantastically exhausted, I need and desperately want to be away from him as soon as possible. Which is an awful way to feel about a small child, when they're not even playing up.

And I was thinking about this when I read (I forget where) someone lamenting the tragedy of their becoming disabled with, “I should be playing football with my grandchildren!”

The focus of loss is a personal thing - maybe this was a relative young person who had been a keen footballer - but it struck me as an interesting kind of should. Because of course, lots of grandparents can't play football with their grandchildren. Personally, I knew I was lucky to even get to know all four of my grandparents; I know people are living longer and healthier lives than they were, but still. I imagine impairment would be quite different for parents; there are some roles it must be very difficult not to be able to perform oneself, but the rest of us? We're all here to throw in whatever we've got to offer. It's all complimentary, for both parties.

Then we were visiting my Gran and I had taken a very restless Alex into the garden. I followed him to the end of the garden once and back and realising I couldn't do this a second time, I sat down in the middle of the grass and watched as he ran ahead. He took his place on the bench and waited for me, rather anxious to find I wasn't right behind him.

So I waved at him and he waved back. Then he watched me for a moment and giggled. He waved at me and I waved back. Then he ran at me, with opened arms and smiling face and at such tremendous speed that he knocked me right over. This, he thought, was very funny.

After that I found several other games that involved Alex moving about a great deal while I stayed very still. My favourite was one where I threatened to come grab him and made very slight movements as if about to pounce; Alex would run away giggling, then edge back towards me, still giggling, until some twitch of the finger sent him running again. And thus I got over myself.

It has been a lovely hectic week. I shall now enjoy the silence and catch up with my blog-reading. Oh and happy Independence Day to my American friends, hope you've all had a good one.

An O. K. Computer

I'm writing this on my new computer! You may remember talk of a new computer about one year ago. Well, I finally got one. It is not a MacBook. In fact I had the following exchange with my sister's friend who became interested in our conversation:

“Is it a Mac?”
“No,” I say, “It's made by a company called Asus and it runs on Linux.”
“What the hell is Linux?” he demands.
“Linux is a family of open-source operating systems, named after the programmer Linus Torvaldes who was Finish or Swedish, or possibly a Peanuts character.”
“Oh,” he says, disdainfully, “Well if it's not a Mac...”
“Basically, Linux is what all the cool kids are using now.”
A shriek. “What?!”
“I'm afraid so.”
“But everyone in Starbucks has MacBooks!”
“Exactly.”

It is true that all the grooviest people are using Linux, at least my homies Vic and Mr Bunny are and they are two of the hippest cats I know. If you imagine those Mac adverts with Robert Webb representing Apple, David Mitchell representing Microsoft (although in fairness he doesn't), well if Linux was to be represented, it would be by Jimi Hendrix walking on and doing something like this. But since David Mitchell really represented all PCs, I guess my new computer is David Mitchell - but come on, he's the one we all fancy if we're honest with ourselves.

Of courseＩwas far more concerned about the fact that it was the cheapest, lightest most shock-proof computer I could find with a word-processor and a wireless card. And the most exciting bit is the aforementioned word-processor which actually saves to disk and I can use the same machine to go on-line. Otherwise I just have the guilt that tends to accompany new toys, which I have to combat with the knowledge that it's really a new tool and one I've been struggling without for a long time.

It is very diddy, about the same size as The Complete Winnie-the-Pooh, so a bit bigger than a bible but smaller than a dictionary. As a result, the small keyboard takes some getting used to, but I would say I have average dexterity and I've just about got the hang of it (it's not like one of those raspberry devices where you have to cut your fingernails to a point to hit one key at a time). And it works. And it saves files to disk. Amazing!

The Goldfish Guide to Stress-Management #2

I did a post on the BBC Ouch Blog if anyone wants to read something completely different. Otherwise I shall press on with this.


A bit about feelings

Stress-management does not benefit a great deal from naval-gazing, but it can benefit from a little applied self-knowledge. One's reaction to any given situation is unique. It always amuses me when there are surveys in the news about the most stressful job - the last one suggested was librarian of all things - when whether or not work is stressful depends on much more than the job description. The thing that probably makes most difference to stress levels in the workplace are the people you have to work with and under. But then there's pay and conditions and all sorts of subtle stuff about the meaning or futility of what you have to do, the systems you're working with and up against.

All that, and then how you react to it. We all have strengths and weaknesses with this stuff; a person might be really run into the ground by her job in the library, but when she finds herself in a train crash, she is the person who calms everyone down and rallies her fellow passengers to rescue the wounded and escape the wreckage. People who end up really suffering with situational stress are not less hardy than anyone else; they merely found a situation which they are particularly ill-equipped for.

I have a close friend who has the same condition as me, to a worse degree, but who always seems to cope much better with the ups and downs. Initially, this made me feel very guilty; clearly, I was a wimp. Not only was I a duffer, but a completely pathetic one.

Later, this became quite useful; if my friend could cope, and I hadn't noticed the halo, then it wasn't necessarily for me to go through what I was going through every time I got a little worse. There must be reasons, other than my "weakness" that made it so difficult for me. Some of those reasons I managed to identify. Nothing to do with anything you might call damage, but stuff to do with lessons I had learnt and ideas I had about myself and my place in the world which became problematic in that situation. The obvious example being the importance of education; wouldn't have done me any harm at all had I not been sick, but as it was I thought that without education I was nothing, and I now found myself out of education.

Even having sorted this and other issues out, my friend still seems to cope better than I do. And I don't suppose anybody could go what we go through entirely unaffected by the sudden loss and uncertainty that relapse entails. But I cope much better than I did because I have a better understanding of how I tick and what knocks my pendulum off kilter.

Probably the most valuable piece of information to dig up is what you actually afraid of; stress is basically about an ongoing state of fear, after all. And the answer isn't about a scary event, but an emotional consequence of whatever events you are afraid of. Guilt, shame, loneliness, worthlessness; that sort of thing. Sometimes simply working out what your big fear is can be enough to realise it is unfounded.

So to more practical steps;


Triggers

One cannot expect to live a hassel-free existence, so when one is in the thick of a crises, one needs to control those things which make life much more difficult. Everyone has slightly different triggers, but often people don't identify them or attempt to control them. This is all part of life, they think, stuff you have to just deal with. Not necessarily so.

Controlling triggers requires discipline; anything which involves patience when you are in a state of anxiety can be terrifically difficult. But it can be learnt and you can get better at it. Once again, it is all about the choices we make.

There are three sorts of stress triggers:

(a) Triggers you cannot avoid.

These are things you pretty much have to go through (having made certain choices). These cannot be avoided, but they can often be controlled. For example, one can take little holidays from the crisis. You can't pretend a problem doesn't exist, but you can leave dealing with that problem alone for a period of time. Have days when you don't talk about it, when you don't do any research, make any phonecalls, don't do anything which concerns the crisis. You can't choose not to think about it, but you can reason that there's no point thinking about it now because you're not going to act on any of those thoughts.

(b) Triggers that you can avoid and should avoid.

I think this is probably the set that folks think about the least. I would break this one into people and activities.

I have known so many adults who have someone, usually a parent, sometimes a sibling or even a friend who is a persistent source of stress in their life. They either dump all their troubles on your shoulders like it is all your doing, or they blunder into your troubles as if they are the world's authority on everything. No individual has to be endured, unless you brought them into the world yourself. If you don't want to dump them altogether, manage your contact with them and avoid it altogether when you're in crisis.

As for activities, well stressed-out people are often drawn to activities that wind them up. It's transference again; the wind-up is an emotional distraction, but it can only make things worse. For example, when I'm stressed-out I am drawn to news stories which I would positively avoid any other time; the sort of stuff that just outrages you, but which you can do nothing about. I know other people who are just spoiling for a fight when they are under stress and start an argument about the slightest thing. But none of this stuff is an effective vent and usually we feel worse than when we started.

It's like a big itch you feel compelled to scratch, but knowing that's exactly what's going on is a big step towards resisting the temptation.


(c) Triggers that you can avoid but shouldn't avoid.

The classic example is the person who, in tremendous debt, avoids looking at their credit card bills or doing their book-keeping. Or the couple who are barely talking in an attempt to avoid the ooh-nasty conversation they really ought to have.

The trick with this stuff is to approach the matter as coldly as possible. Set time aside as soon as possible and sort out the paperwork, have that conversation, go to the doctor about the funny lump and so on. Enlisting the assistance of a friend or family member can help a lot, because meeting up your ally involves a schedule you are committed to.

You can choose to run away from the problem, but hiding in the bushes in the hope it'll go away is generally a bad idea.


Over-stimulation and the empty hole.

An obvious remedy for stress is relaxation, but there is a good reason that folks struggle with this.

A person gets used to a certain level of external stimulation, such that when the world goes, the brain will get compensate for the "silence". The inability to sit quietly without falling asleep

If a child lives in an environment where there is always noise and flickering light from television or computer games, often with conversations competing with the technology, then their brains will get used to a very high level of external stimulation. This makes it nigh on impossible to sit in a classroom and pay attention to a teacher - as an individual they'd probably have a better chance if the teacher was competing with a television programme. However, they'd be even better off if their little brains weren't under so much strain in the first place.

Adults get like this too via a different route. When we're stressed, boredom is a real problem state. As soon as we're not occupied by some activity or other, all the worries and nonsense get aniggling. It becomes a constant battle to avoid boredom and to avoid silence. Stressed people frequently need to have the radio or television on in order to go to sleep. Unsurprisingly, such people then find themselves falling asleep in all manner of inappropriate places where stimulation levels have dropped below a certain point - like when you're having a conversation in a quiet room and the other person has paused for thought.

The only solution is to seriously work at reducing the levels of stimulation in our lives. Try to do only one thing at a time. Learn to spend time in silence, to be comfortable in that state. Set aside just five minutes in a day to sit and do nothing but watch the clock. Initially, the worries and nonsense will come in a wave, but if you just let it be, it probably won't last even the whole five minutes.

Another good tip is to set aside worry time; a period at the same time every day where you allow yourself to cogitate over all the things troubling you. When they come to mind elsewhere in the day, you don't simply try not to think of them, but you take note and schedule your concern for later in the day. Generally, by the time worry time comes around, most of the things that were bothering you earlier have either resolved themselves or seem insignificant.


I haven't quite finished, but I might post about something different next time in any case.

Making the least of the January Sales

So it's 2008 and we still haven't solved this wee problem of climate change. Who would have thought it?

This is a good time of year to think about such things, mostly because many people are feeling hard up and it is much easier to be environmentally-friendly when you're living on Queer Street. Indeed, as far as your British consumer is concerned, by far the most significant behavioural change an individual can make is simply to buy less stuff. Every single little thing we purchase required a certain amount of energy to produce and transport to us. And we have a lot of stuff.

Of course, nobody has a great investment in promoting this message and amidst the constant barrage of messages equating stuff with happiness, it may sound a little depressing.

Here in the West, spending money is a national past-time. It is quite extraordinary compared to other cultures and our own culture just a few generations back. People always wanted stuff, people always aspired to have nice things for all sorts of practical, social and psychological reasons and they always will. But that doesn't mean Epirucus wasn't right.

Is there any relationship between the stuff we have and our quality of life? Financial security is one thing, but that's quite different - and sometimes incompatible - with having a load of stuff. This culture of constant buying is not sustainable. Even if it wasn't for the small matter of climate change, it is not economically sustainable. And indeed, it's not psychologically sustainable; frankly, I think it makes us miserable. None of us have enough money to buy all the stuff we think we want. The last person who actually used the phrase "hard-up" to describe their financial situation is actually one of the wealthiest people I know. But they are hard-up in the Mr Micawber sense; lots of people owe money and feel that they can't afford things which they need.

Epicurus, by the way, is my second-favourite Greek and people imagined that his household, intent as they were on a life of pleasure, was a place of orgies and hedonistic consumption (thus epicurean). In fact, having studied the matter in great depth, Epicurus hit upon what we really need:

"Of all the things that wisdom provides to help one live one's entire life in happiness, the greatest by far is the possession of friendship."

So there you go.

Anyway, Sage has given up buying stuff for New Year and many other bloggers - lead by Andrea at A peek inside the fish bowl - are participating in the Shopping Embargo 2008, giving up non-essential buying for the first two months of the year (a project I came across through Nna Mmoy Andrea, who has written a number of super posts about The Green Family).

I think this is ambitious and very much worthwhile, but as Sage pointed out in an excellent post, to be environmentally-conscious can sometimes be a little like belonging to a religious sect which can alienates those who feel they can't commit to the entire doctrine. Therefore, some suggestions about reducing the amount of stuff you buy, without making any solid promises or feeling that you're missing out:

1. Use the stuff you have. Often revisiting old stuff can be as rewarding as brand new stuff; books you haven't read and movies you've not seen in an age. If you enjoy the things you actually possess, you will have less desire for the things you haven't got yet.

2. Use is a much better measure than need when it comes to making purchases. The issue of need is very difficult to wrestle with, and one can end up feeling very guilty about the slightest luxury - at least I can. A far greater sin than having things you don't need is having things that you don't use. Nobody needs two dozen pairs of shoes, but if you have them and each pair gets an outing at least once every few months then that is far better than a person who has just two pairs of shoes and only ever wears one. One is wasteful, the other is not.

3. Share your stuff. I must say it is second-nature for me to consider who I might pass a book onto once I've read it before I actually buy it. Borrow stuff and lend stuff, and where appropriate, give things away. Don't be afraid to offer people the stuff you don't want; so long as you make it clear that you will not be hurt by their refusal. Otherwise sell stuff on eBay and offer things up on Freecycle.

4. Identify truly useless purchase. The magazine or newspaper you barely flick through, the cosmetic magic potion whose promises never deliver and so on. Make sure that the only things you buy out of habit are bread and loo-rolls. Or at least that sort of thing.

5. Beware The Radish Principle. This is when, in the summer, you want to buy some radishes to go in your salad, and at the supermarket you can buy two packets of radishes for the price of one. Only you don't particularly like radishes, it's not like they can be used up in any recipes you know of and so you neither need nor want the extra packet of radishes. Only they're free! Free radishes!

This is the kind of heart-breaking moral quandary I face in my life. I hope you sympathise. Point is that however cheap something is, it is not good value for money unless you actually want it.

Do you get the impression that all I ever spend money on is books and groceries? Hmm, not quite.

Because you're worth it

My first attempt at a proper post in about a month...

This is a kind of Bare Bones of Equality post. During my recent brain-plummet I read this post at Screw Bronze! Elizabeth writes,

"Which gets me to my question, what use am I as a human being? Why should anyone come to help me eat, or help me to the bathroom, or help me to bed when I can’t move? Why should I be taken care of? What purpose do I serve in our national and social framework? The plain fact is that I am not well loved by many people: my family whether immediate or extended isn’t interested in assuming the burden. The reality is that care isn’t coming from family. So it falls to society. And I, as a rational member of society (albeit only barely rational in this level of pain) don’t see the gain."

Finding myself to be rather less active and productive than Elizabeth, I decided to climb into the compost bin so that at least my decomposing corpse could nourish the plants. Only [...] pointed out that it would take ages, it would smell really bad and in the meantime, he'd have nowhere to put the old teabags.

In any case, I do know some of the answers. Of course, what we know doesn't always hold sway over what we feel, especially when we're in great pain and/ or feeling particularly frustrated by our limitations, and I've felt, said and written this sort of thing often enough. I want to emphasise that I'm not criticising Elizabeth for writing such things. However:

The founding assertion of egalitarianism is that every human being is of equal value. From this, it follows that everyone should be given equal opportunities in life and equal respect.

Like all fundamental moral tenants this (a) demands lots of qualification and (b) goes against a small but significant part of our human nature. Naturally, I consider my friends and family much more important than anyone else in the entire world. Most of us are, to some extent, attracted to convenient groupings and hierarchies. But as with our murderous inclinations, we must not bring these feelings into the way we behave in society. We don't have to send everyone a Christmas card, but we do have to give everyone the same chances in life - and indeed for life.

In fact, the only issue about my life which can be called into question is its viability, rather than its value. There are often rumblings along the lines that disabled people can only possibly be seen as equal when a society is affluent enough to indulge us. This isn't true; our value does not change. However, if two of us catch deadly Umbungo Disease and there's only one dose of cure, then the chances are that the best possible outcome (a life saved) can be achieved by giving the dose to the other person. If I am on a sinking ship with a shortfall of life-jackets, well someone else probably has a better chance of staying alive and swimming to safety than me. Morbid, but extremely unlikely events.

Those who disagree are often drawn to even less likely Desert Island scenarios. If I am one of a party stranded on a desert island with very limited resources, then I am going to be much less useful than everyone else. I will make no contribution. Worse, I will actually take resources from other people. The best possible outcome is only achieved if I am strangled and roasted for dinner (although cook me very thoroughly or you might catch something).

In fact, perhaps I could be very useful; the first thing I could do is seize the conch and solve tricky moral dilemmas like this one, reassuring my companions that I should be kept alive - advice I'm sure they'd all appreciate. But why?

This is not about sanctity of life. Capital Punishment is an absolutely ludicrous idea in a society that can well afford to imprison people for life, but on our desert island it would be impossible to secure a person who poses a threat to the rest of us, so they'd need taking out. Their existence effectively becomes inviable.

Nor is this isn't about arguing that whilst I cannot contribute physically, I may be able help put imminent starvation and death into perspective with daily poetry-readings. It doesn't matter if I can play no useful role at all. I remain of value because I am a human being. This doesn't mean that people should abandon raft-building and start constructing ramps so I can get about all over the island; even the most modern disability law, adjustment made to enable people with impairments to access the world must be qualified as reasonable given the circumstances and the resources available.

The alternative isn't a situation where we settle into some sort of "natural" hierarchy with those who are most useful at the top and those who are apparently useless being left by the wayside*. The alternative is a perpetual and bitter argument in which everyone attempts to argue for their own indispensability. Not only is the usefulness of an individual quite impossible to measure, but it is constantly changing and inextricably connected to the activities of other people.

Let's float our rudimentary raft away from that accursed island and back to the real world. In terms of contribution weighed against consumption, living in the West just now poses a small problem for everyone, and ecologically, the very richest people use the most resources. But we were talking about individuals within single societies as opposed to geopolitics, weren't we?

Let's take someone useful - a doctor, perhaps? A medical doctor is always useful, right? I wouldn't argue with that. However, even their usefulness is subject to variation. In the absence of technology, medicines and other resources, a doctor's powers to heal are very limited indeed. Then again, in a society where everyone enjoys good hygiene, nutrition, safe living and working conditions, a doctor's usefulness is somewhat less than it would be, say, in a war zone.

Also, in order to be as useful as possible, a doctor also depends on several other roles to be fulfilled. People who organise paperwork, who make appointments and so on. Nurses who perform less expert but no less essential roles (that's the theory). People who keep things clean. Then everyone who helps to provide equipment, medicine and so on and probably half a dozen other roles I haven't thought of. All very important, very useful.

So the reason doctors are so useful is that they can save lives and improve quality of life. Teachers don't directly save lives, they do the quality of life thing, but that's a little more complicated. What about lawyers? Or accountants? People who work in telesales? The prime-minister? The Beckhams?

And how do these roles - which people are paid to do - compare with those roles which people are not paid to do. How does a fire-fighter rate against an excellent parent? How many of us feel we owe our happiness, sanity or even our lives to our friends? Might it actually be the case that lots and lots of people are far more use outside of the thing they get paid for?

Nobody is without a role. Even the most severely impaired person plays some role in the lives of others; should we suppose that this is negative? That anyone truly takes more than they give? Economically, they may - I do, and because of the stage of life that I happened to get sick, I always have**. However, I do help support the existence of others; I am a patient, a client, a customer. People like me provide a convenient scapegoat for an incompetent and corrupt government. And then there are all the other things I do for people which matter terribly to me but are kind of irrelevant, being conditional on how sick I happen to be.

Now, all this doesn't mean we don't have responsibilities towards one another, and that we shouldn't all aspire to live a virtuous life and all that. Only our value cannot be diminished by involuntary limitations on what we are able to do.

That having said, it's bloody frustrating and changing levels of dependence and loss of self-sufficiency are a rock solid git to come to terms with. So everyone is allowed to feel like a waste of space from time to time.


The other day, Fluttertongue referred back to a post she wrote about being "done to" which offers a spiritual perspective to the frustrations of inactivity and is well worth a read.


* When something is by the wayside, well surely the wayside is at the side of the way already? I lose sleep thinking about that sort of thing.

** None of us should be ashamed of this because, as I've said before, it is a universal insurance policy from which everybody has an equal right to claim should they find themselves in need. Medical, practical and financial assistance is provided for us as it would be provided for the most economically productive person should they have a nasty accident tomorrow (which might well happen). It is the (bad) luck of the draw who finds themselves in this position, however much they have paid into the system through tax. Meanwhile whilst voluntary and family carers get a very raw deal, most are making a choice; care provided by the state is unequivocally consensual and indeed, renumerating. People who do this work deserve respect and appreciation, but this is not charity.

An Unbearable Weight of Non-Existent Responsibility

So now the down time is getting me down - even though I am still gradually picking up. Unfortunately my brain has entered a delightful phase of vivid nightmares and frequent waking, leaving me with three or four intact (if incoherent) dreams remembered every morning. This is exhausting. Especially as my subconscious seems to be stuck on the same record. This isn't the most powerful example, but it was one which made enough sense to put down without having to convince you that giant rabbits could be considered a real threat to human survival if you saw them in the same context I did;

I am running a library, which is open twenty-four hours a day. I am in charge and my only staff are a bunch of small and undisciplined children, who are no help at all - in fact they give me more work because I have to keep them out of trouble. Now this library, which is vast and inexplicably hilly, has been created by the kindness of members of the public who have donated books they'd finished with. Unfortunately, they've done this by simply placing old books on the shelves and there is no order to them whatsoever. I'm trying to work out the quickest and most sensible way of putting the books in some sort of order, at least by genre, without closing the library even for a half hour.

Meanwhile, a serial killer begins to operate in the library. I have to work out who is doing it and bring them to justice, at the same time as looking after my staff of children, who I am now very worried for. Also, the local mayor is coming to visit, so I also have to collect forensic evidence and shift the bodies which keep turning up, out of the way in record time so that the mayor doesn't see. Amid this chaos, I wake up.

This is typical. Sometimes it is far more dramatic; one night I was climbing down a ladder (found under a manhole cover outside a particular Catholic Church I know) which descended into the fires of Hell. I went down there to talk to Lucifer and see if I could convince him to lay off the human race for a bit. It wasn't that I was an important or powerful person who might have this capacity, it was just that if I didn't have a go nobody else would. And it was very scary.

I frequently have phases of these types of dreams when my health isn't doing so well. I've probably written about them before. The two features they always always have are

• some massive central and pretty much impossible task I have to perform and
• one or more small vulnerable thing I have to look after at the same time - this can be almost anything from a fetus in a jar (!) to a collection of hamsters without cages or suitable boxes to put them in.
  

Now, these are the sort of dreams I should be having if I was a world leader considering whether to go to war. But me, the Goldfish, couldn't exactly have less responsibilities. Apart from basic survival, everything I do, I do out of choice and nobody else is relying on me to do it. The heaviest responsibility I have had this week was the need to make a phonecall to the water company because I noticed the Direct Debit to them didn't leave our account at the beginning of the month. So why the heck should I be feeling like this?

I've written before about the perils of having a strong internal locus of control when events are, in reality, somewhat outside one's control. However, I do wonder whether this is also wishful thinking on the part of my subconscious; perhaps deep down I wish the things I do - which always require significant effort because of what I'm up against - actually mattered. Which they don't. Whilst I know I have value in all sorts of ways, I am the least important person I know. And of course, right now, I'm doing very little of any significance whatsoever.

No, I'm not sure that's it; I am feeling rather stressed out and muddled by my Things To Do List, the number of unanswered e-mails, etc.. Rather as I might if I was trying to save the world, I really wish I could turn off time for a few days to get myself together.

In any case, I'm boring you with this stuff in the knowledge that the mere act of putting it down often exorcises the demon. I shall come out from up my own arse shortly.

Guilt is a Useless Emotion #2

One of the reasons I don’t blog much about the environment, is because I personally believe that guilt is capable of destroying the planet, or at least altering the surface of the planet beyond a point where it is hospitable for human life. Really. Guilt, as opposed to greed or laziness, is the cornerstone of public resistance to expert messages on climate change. And yet it is quite difficult to talk about this stuff without inspiring that dreaded emotion.

The most profound and easiest response to our guilt is denial. Denial can take many forms, sometimes the more absolute this is not happening as well as this change is not man-made through to this is someone else’s problem and nothing I can do will make a difference. Most of the people I talk to about climate change come up with a variation on one of these. But it is a defensive move, what they are really saying is, “Don’t talk to me about this. I don't want to feel bad about this. It is not my fault.”

And truthfully, it isn’t.

It is not your fault that climate change is happening! Were you present, powerful and in possession of all the facts, two hundred years ago when we started using fossil fuels in our technologies on a massive scale? I thought not. Therefore it is not your doing.

No living organism can exist without making some impact on the environment around it. Some things are pretty much condemned to causing harm to other things whenever their prosper; parasites as well as certain bacteria, viruses and fungi, for example. As someone born in the twentieth century, you were born into a world where we were already dependent on all sorts of unsustainable resources and practices. We were already using fossil fuels, which are by definition, a finite resource. Even if there is no climate change at all, this stuff will run out and before it does, there is likely to be a great deal more conflict and suffering over it.

Meanwhile, unless the vast majority of scientists, who we regard as intelligent, good and conscientious on most other matters, have either made a horrible mistake or are attempting to purposely mislead us over a sustained period of time (in which case, we might as well start entertaining Creationism and Flat Earth Theory), this is also bringing about a dramatic change in our weather systems, one which is likely to become extremely dangerous to human life at some point – when and in what way remaining areas of genuine controversy.

You and I were born into a crisis situation, a crisis which people didn’t foresee and one that has only become glaringly obvious in the last few decades. It’s okay. Your conscience is clear. And indeed, if it all goes to pot, if the human species is overwhelmed by floods, hurricanes, famine and disease within tens or a few hundreds of years, it shan’t have been your fault either.

In fact, this isn’t about you and your conscience at all. To chose to act on Climate Change is a positive choice to make a meaningful contribution to everyone else around the world for many generations to come. Many of us who are alive today are not going to see many of the negative effects of Climate Change, not the real horrorshow stuff. But I believe we can fix this. We must.


On which subject, please listen to this years Reith Lectures with Prof. Jeffrey Sachs; this guy rocks, is optimistic about our ability to sort this mess out and won't make you feel guilty, I promise.

Guilt is a Useless Emotion #1

I reckon, if we’re really going to save the world, we have to get shot of all this guilt.

Truth is, there is some comfort in the hair shirt. Punish yourself enough, and you feel better about it. Enter a cycle of sin and repentance and you don’t have to worry too much about putting right your mistakes, let alone doing the right thing in the first place. It is liberating, to accept that you are a repentant sinner; doing any actual good in this life is a bonus.

For this reason, both in terms of my egalitarian beliefs as well as environmentalism, I am strongly opposed to making people feel guilty. If you succeed in making people feel guilty, you have lost them.

It’s like with nutrition. Anxiety about weight and health has created an entirely false morality around nutrition. We talk about the naughtiness of certain foods even though (sorry in all that) there is nothing naughty about a chocolate cake. If it is a stolen chocolate cake, particularly if it was stolen from a small child on its birthday, well that’s pretty naughty. However, if you just bought it with your own money (as opposed to money obtained in an armed robbery), well you are entitled to it. You can eat it all by yourself, every last crumb and they’ll be no thunderbolt. I promise. Cross my heart and hope for a slice.

Unfortunately for those who want to lose weight, this morality around the nutritional value of food (as opposed to its origins, production and transportation which have real ethical consequences) doesn’t dramatically alter the way most people eat. For one thing, it is inconsistent; read enough of the wrong sort of magazines, and you will read every food product there ever was condemned as fattening or bad for your internal Feng Shui or whatever. So folks end up simply accepting that they are bound to feel guilty about their weight, guilty about very much of the food they eat, and little changes. If I lost a pound for every time I heard someone say, “Oh, I mustn’t eat this, but…” I’d be nothing but skin and bone.

I did encounter a chocolate cake at the weekend. Five women in the room ate some, but not one merely accepted the offer without condition.

“Only a very small piece for me, please.”
“Oh I mustn’t, but I suppose it is Easter.”
“Do you happen to know what the GI is?”
“I just know it’ll go straight on my thighs.”
And I, by far the podgiest in the room, declared, “I’ll have as much as is left after this lot, thanks!”

Not really, but arguably, guilt around food does more harm than good because ‘bad’ foods become an indulgence, a digression with which we reward our good behaviour or comfort ourselves. After all, where there’s no straight-forward avenue of repentance, guilt doesn’t feel good; it actually makes you feel extremely sorry and extremely powerless. So we rebel against it.

As with chocolate cake, as with the rest of the universe. It is this rebellion which does so much damage for those of us who believe we can make the world a better place. It is at the heart of all backlash, all denial about privilege, inequality, the impact of our actions upon the environment or any other ethical subject there is. It also cause conflict between those of us who share very similar objectives.

But worst of all, it can stop us from accepting responsibility, which is quite a different creature.

The Great Purple Hair Dilemma of 2007

As you’ve probably gathered, my hair is one part of my appearance I have regular crises about. This is because it is the one thing I have some control over.

I tried to dye my hair purple last week, but as a friend wisely pointed out, purple was one of the last colours they managed to invent an effective dye for, so it seemed unlikely I would be able to develop such a thing myself out of herbs and berries. My concoction involved a large quantity of henna, and now I look rather like Veronica here. I didn’t seriously expect it to work, if I’m completely honest. I shall call my concoction Agent Orange in tribute to Eternal Sunshine.

So after much arm-twisting, I was persuaded to buy some purple dye. It arrived today and suddenly I am in crisis.

Do I want purple hair?

There's a bit of guilt in here. During the first couple of years I was ill, I used to feel terribly guilty about wearing colourful nail varnish. Because really I should have been at school and at school, where I wouldn’t have been allowed to wear nail varnish. Similarly, I feel guilty about the idea of having purple hair when, if I was in regular work, I wouldn't get away with it.

And I'm thinking, if I have purple hair, will people think, no wonder she’s not got a proper job, she has purple hair?

Or will they think, ah, there’s the Goldfish, you can tell she is an eccentric artistic type as she has purple hair?

Or will they think, poor woman, not only has she been crippled by the Dreaded Lurgy, it has also turned her hair purple?

And is it all right to have purple hair in rural East Anglia? In Whitby, nobody would have blinked a heavily powdered eyelid, but there might be a lot of porphyrophobia around these parts.

Also, and this does occur to me, perhaps I am (ahem) too old to have purple hair? I am twenty-six; maybe I really should have got all this sort of thing out of my system in my teens. I don't much like it when people who grow up, but most people do and most people expect me too. And what will my mother think?!

I am also conflicted because the dye is called Manic Panic, and I'm not sure I am very comfortable endorsing a product which uses mental health terms to advertise cosmetics (although they are punks, and punks may be a special case). But then the colour is called Purple Haze and I like that.

It will be a fairly dark purple as I have no intention of bleaching my hair before hand. And it will eventually wash out. And if I do do it, I am going to wait at least until the end of next week, after I have met and made a good impression on my new GP.

But what do you think? Do you think? Can't you see this is important, dammit?!

Next time I shall return to far more trivial matters. In the meantime, check out the 35th Carnival of Feminists at the F-Word.


Edited: I also told you that the Disability Blog Carnival was today, but it's not until next week. I appear to have lost a week. Then I read something that said today was Maundy Thursday. I was completely oblivious. Is this Easter Weekend coming up then? What? How? My apologies if I befuddled anyone else.

(not so) Great Britain

I really wanted to write something about yesterday’s 200 year anniversary of the Slave Trade Act, which abolished the British slave trade. I don’t agree with calls for an apology, because I strongly believe that in order to gain anything from the study of history, we have to be rational about it. Apologising to dead people on the behalf of other dead people is rather irrational. Casting ourselves and others in the roles of historical characters is both irrational and very dangerous, especially when we are assigned our parts according to the colour of our skin.

I believe the greatest lesson we get from the Slave Trade, and from the much greater machine of British Imperialism (which fucked over many more millions of people than it actually enslaved) is the power of moral expedience. And funnily enough, discussions about abolition over the last few weeks have brought the legacy of this to the fore.

I am genuinely fascinated about why people should feel defensive about slavery. I don’t, partly because it is indefensible, but mostly because I was not there, I have no guilt on that score. What I do have is an acknowledgement that the reason I grew up in a relatively safe and prosperous part of the world compared to others is not because Britain is inately Great and groovy, but because Britain was an aggressive military power that invaded and exploited other countries of the world and made a packet. They turned a quarter of the world pink in the days when pink was a macho colour.

Cannot be undone, alas. The impact of the British Empire, i.e. a comparison between the way things are now and what they would have been like had this not happened, is incalculable. It’s a bit like asking what the world would have been like circa 400AD – or indeed today - had the Roman Empire never existed. We’re talking about hundreds of years, many generations of people, all manner of social and scientific progress taking place at the same time. Which is not to say that we must regard the British Empire as a morally neutral fact of the past. The Roman Empire isn’t either; they committed similar atrocities, but for example, if they hadn’t happened to nail a certain Jewish political rebel to a cross for his troubles… well we just can’t imagine.

What this acknowledgement should mean, as with any position of privilege or advantage, is that we have a responsibility to help support those people and countries which are struggling, to support themselves. Which is a complicated and messy business when it comes to dynamically different cultures. But is even more complicated when you bring racism into play.

Which brings me to the most problematic demonstration of this moral expedience. There have been many daft objections made to the idea of apologising for slavery, including the fact that it wasn't just us, without the participation of African and Arab slavers, we'd never have had a trade, as well as the truly incredible idea (the most recommended comment on the BBC News Have Your Say page) that Africa should thank us for stopping slavery when we did. However the most interesting objection is probably that

We cannot and should not apologise for something which everyone thought was all right at the time.

Two major flaws with this argument. The first is that generally, people who do bad things think they are doing the right thing at the time, or else don’t realise that what they are doing is so very bad. That’s why people say sorry, having realised their mistake; really bad people don’t say sorry because they never realise their mistake.

The second is that slavery was never ever all right as far as one somewhat vital group of people were concerned. Who am I talking about? The Quakers? No, not them. Uh, oh yes, I remember! The slaves!

People in Africa did not weigh up their options in life and think that slavery was probably a reasonable career choice. Even though we are talking about an age in which living and working conditions for many Britons were pretty appalling, ordinary working class folk here had at least a handful of fundamental freedoms. Like being paid for work. Like not being put in chains. Like not being raped. Like being able to have relationships, families and so on without outside interference. Like being allowed to grow old. Life was tough, but life was ours.

The reason you put someone in chains is because they are not a passive victim; they do not want to experience what you are subjecting them too and they are otherwise likely to run away or defend themselves. This alone, in the absence of any of the accounts we have from slaves or former slaves, or our knowledge of slave rebellions, demonstrates that it was never all right.

However, one major legacy of the British Empire is the idea that those people don’t know any better. We were no less moral as human beings a few hundred years ago than we are today and as such, we had to justify moving in to other people’s countries in order to pinch their natural resources - a real bugger in those days, as you can hardly pass a spear off as a weapon of mass destruction. When it came to invading other European countries, this had always been argued in terms of defence or some claim involving our royal dynasties. When it came to countries several hundred thousand miles away, it became a little trickier.

At this point, race became really handy. We’re busy stealing people’s countries. Conveniently, they're all a different colour from most of us. Well, clearly these people are less intellectually sophisticated than us because they don't have guns. And although Africans were building pyramids whilst we were patting our backs at being able to make vague circles with random lumps of rock, none of these chaps is wearing a tie. Clearly, these people don’t really know their own minds. We’re doing them a favour, putting their labour to good use.

And so we start putting this in scientific and religious terms. Just as we did with women at the time, we used pseudo-scientific and religions concepts to explain how the present order of things as the natural one. But whilst women were cast as weak and silly but basically fluffy and harmless, the negro was cast as a dangerous creature, a moral, sexual and religious threat.

This particular fairy story was only written a few hundred years ago, and yet we're still struggling to dispose of it today. The trouble is the combination of this legacy and the legacy of inequality. As I'm always harping on about, folks in our society are very much wedded to the idea that bad things don't happen to good people, so when we see that the developing world, much of it our former colonies, are still, well, developing, we suspect that they're just not as Great as we are. And when we see problems in impoverished areas of the inner cities with a high black population, we tend to think that there must be something wrong with black people, as opposed to those particular people and the society in which they live.

And the greatest tradegy is that the same mentality allows us to excuse or apply moral relativism to the slavery which carries on both in the UK and elsewhere. Those people don't really know any better. They've got themselves into trouble. If they were really suffering, and they had their wits about them, well then surely they could get away and do something else?



Two important points about this post. The first is that I've use the first person plural in the vaguest of senses. It wasn't really us or we that did this stuff, but it is my society that carries the legacy I describe. The second is that the picture is much bigger than this, but I only know my own country.

The weirdest media coverage of the abolition anniversary was a radio play on Radio Four called Slavery... the Making Of, which you can listen to any time the next week. It starred Lenny Henry and Brian Blessed. No, I am serious. I am yet decided on whether this was immensely brave, or immensely silly. I'm thinking probably a bit of both.