How To Have Better Conversations

First, be more attractive. Second, earn more money. Third, accrue more power and/or fame. Whatever the strategy, try always to convince others that you hold the higher-status position in every interaction. Then, naturally, they will listen. Fail and you'll find yourself browsing self-help titles in a bookshop at the other end of town. Or reading this blog post in incognito browsing mode, placing all your hope in the effectiveness of strategy number four: be more philosophical.

Here is how.

Step one. Remember that fear is the quintessential human emotion. As Hermann Hesse might put it, fear looms large over the life of man. Everyone is afraid, paranoid or anxious more or less always. There are two broad categories of fear. First, there is the fear of sheer bad luck - plane crashes, house fires, cancer, old age. It stems from our awareness of the Universe's majestic indifference to human affairs and our susceptibility to accidents, disasters, illness and the melancholy passing of time. Second, there is the fear of people. This is at heart the point of Halloween, a festival celebrating our deepest darkest fears: that everybody else is a monster and that at any point they are liable to turn up at our doors, unannounced, demanding things under the threat of repercussions. Worse still, we need the little gremlins because we have evolved to require affection, love, validation and esteem.

Step two. Realise that the knee-jerk reaction to fear is control. Every superhero story ever is at its core a form of power porn. It is our number one fantasy: that we control our environment, that we exercise agency and self-determination, and that those we love behave how we expect them to. We have evolved a whole sleuth of psychological tricks that enable us to exercise control upon one another: shame, infatuation, intimidation and so on. There are two broad categories of control. First, there is control by seduction. By attempting to seduce people, we inadvertently attempt to control them: to make them be nice to us, stick around, offer us their time, attention, energy and genes. If this person is infatuated with me, the logic goes, then I have some measure of control over them; and if I can control them, then they can't hurt me. This also applies to lesser degrees of seduction, such as when we merely attempt to make ourselves liked or popular. Second, there is control by status play. This is where status anxiety comes in. Earn more money, accrue more power, gain more fame and, the logic goes, people will do what you want them to. They will offer you love, affection, validation and esteem, or leave you alone, or listen to you without interruption. That is the high-status strategy, though it is worth noticing that a low-status strategy can be just as valid: if we look frail, insecure or poor we may obtain the desired outcome by signaling that we are happy to concede the high-status position, or that we are happy to receive love, attention etc as a form of patronage, or are not worth troubling with and ought to be left alone. High-status people might be better respected, but low-status people are better liked. The point is only to notice in what ways we try to control people: do we try to seduce them, intimidate them, appease them?

(One method of control that I think is worth noticing, chiefly because it is so subtle yet so pervasive, is the tendency not to listen to people, or to listen to them but not take their words at face value. In doing this, we essentially substitute our own image and interpretation (read: prejudice) for the actual human before us. Instead of believing them when they say they didn't want that job or that promotion, we imagine they're lying to us or to themselves in order to avoid admitting failure. Instead of treating them like individuals, with their infinitely unknowable otherness, with a rich and deep experience of existence, we reduce them to single dimensions: their job, their social status, their accent, their family and friends, their relationship, their hobbies, their political leanings, whether they're a cat or dog person, whether or not they read the same books or favour the same ideas. Everybody does this. Very rarely, if ever, do we try to imagine ourselves walking around in their skin or feel curious about their real needs, truest values or most defining experiences. This is probably only natural, since that level of empathy costs time and energy which we simply don't have enough of. Yet we could do better. At present, it seems to me the only person whom we offer this level of empathy to is a lover  -and even then for a limited period only. This I think is why most people seem to have lost faith in "just" friendships achieving anything like a meaningful connection. This is a pity. It both puts too much pressure on that single romantic relationship and deprives us of a certain richness of experience that can only come from empathising with a diverse number of people. But back to the main point.)

Step three. Become self-aware. Now that you know how fear looms large over the life of man and that the knee-jerk reaction to it is control, pay attention to yourself in every interaction. Breathe. Relax your shoulders, let your shoulder blade carry them (it is what they are for). Bend your knees slightly to remove pressure off the knee caps. Balance your head on your shoulders. Breathe again. Be aware of your body language: are you signaling high-status (body stretched into the surrounding space, neck and torso exposed, steady eye contact) or low-status (constant jerking of head and shoulders, asking for permission, apologising for no reason, making self-deprecating remarks) or a combination of both. Are you trying to seduce or intimidate? How does this person scare you? Are you secure in your own sense of self? Do you feel certain of your own values? Is imagining yourself through their eyes causing you to cringe or feel proud? Do you consider the "lense" through which they view you or the world superior or inferior to your own? And breathe. Again breathe. Always breathe. It's the only thing which will stay with you forever.

Step four. Become aware of others. How are they breathing? What is their body language signaling? Are they trying to seduce you or intimidate you? What are they likely to be afraid of? What are they actually saying? Are you listening to them and believing them or substituting your own interpretations for what is being said? What do they look like? How do they see themselves? What do you suppose they do first thing in the morning? How do they make you feel? Above all, be curious. You will be surprised how effective that is. Some of the most appalling words and behaviours can be deflected if met with curiosity - why do you suppose they are checking their phone while you're in the middle of making a sensitive point? what could they be afraid of? what might they be concerned about?

And now, for the fifth and final step, the secret ingredient to having better conversations. Ready?

Step five. Stop trying to control them. This might sound simple but in fact requires an astonishing level of intellectual and emotional maturity. To make it easier, imagine you're God: you want everyone to love you and worship you and maybe not have any other Gods besides you, but you must accept the existence of free will. Imagine you could force them into a sense of love, loyalty and awe (you are after all God), yet at the same time realise that unless they are offered willingly, these offerings would be pretty meaningless. You don't just want these people to love you, you want them to choose to love you. Otherwise, it doesn't count. Right there is the necessity for a certain level of intellectual and emotional maturity. You must bow before others' right to their own agency. No matter how firmly you believe it would increase their own happiness and bring about their own utmost good, no matter how painful to watch them mistakenly ignore you and single-mindedly pursue their own destruction, in the ideal world the only person you should ever desire to control is yourself. Not your loved ones, not your enemies, not your children. Think of it like the free-will defense to the problem of Evil, but with the nice upshot that it isn't a fallacy on account of how you are not, in fact, omniscient/omnipotent. Now, of course this is a fantasy - we will always try to control one another, that is just what members of a social species do. Yet it is a useful notion to bare in mind.

How does this lead to better conversations? Well, I think the ultimate goal of disinterested conversation (when we are not pursuing other ends) is to feel - if only briefly - connected. It is to be seen, really seen - heard, really heard - understood, really understood - and accepted. It is to escape the narrow confines of your own person.  It is to feel the thrill of another free intellect focus its own independent mind upon your separate and inevitably lonesome existence and relieve some of that loneliness, even if just a little. It is to have your own sense of self confirmed and your particular experience of existence recognised. It is to feel together. Yes, it takes two to tango, but someone has to make the first step.

Bilibin's Letter About the Campaign - War and Peace

I enjoyed reading this section so much that I have decided to share it here.

It is 1805. The Russians have recently lost the Battle of Austerlitz against Napoleon and have since been retreating. Despite this obvious retreat, the Russian aristocracy continues to believe in the myth of Russian invincibility and dismisses the facts of war as the fault of incompetent allies.

Bilibin is a wry, skeptical yet very talented Russian diplomat, here writing from the front to a friend back home - Prince Andrei Bolkonsky.

For context - a few chapters before this letter was presented the following anecdote: a letter is received by the Russian Army from Napoleon; this letter causes some confusion because the chiefs of the army are unable to decide how to address the reply ('Your Majesty', 'Head of the French Government', 'General'?); finally, one character suggests, jestingly, to address Napoleon as 'Enemy of the Human Race'.

This is one of the funniest pieces of prose I have ever read.

Since the day of our brilliant success at Austerlitz, as you know, my dear prince, I never leave headquarters. I've certainly acquired a taste for war and it is just as well for me. What I have seen during these last three months is incredible. I begin ab ovo. The Enemy of the Human Race as you know attacks the Prussians. The Prussians are our faithful allies who have only betrayed us three times in three years; we take up their cause but it turns out that The Enemy of the Human Race pays no heed to our fine speeches and in his rude and savage ways throws himself on the Prussians without giving them time to finish the parade they had begun and in two twists of the hand he blows them to smithereens and installs himself in the Palace of Potsdam. 'I most ardently desire' writes the King of Prussia to Bonaparte 'that you should be received and treated in my palace in a manner agreeable to yourself and insofar as circumstances allowed I have hastened to take all steps to that end; may I have succeeded'. The Prussian generals pride themselves on being polite to the French and lay down their arms at the first demand. The head of the garrison at Glogau with ten thousand men asks the King of Prussia what he is to do if he is summoned to surrender. All this is absolutely true.

In short, hoping to settle matters by taking up a war-like attitude it turns out that we've landed ourselves in war and what is more in war on our own frontiers with and for the King of Prussia. We have everything in perfect order, only one little thing is lacking, namely a commander in chief. As it was considered that the Austerlitz success might have been more decisive had the commander in chief not been so young, all our octogenarians were reviewed and of Prozorovski and Kamenski the latter was preferred. The general comes to us, Suvorov-like, in a kibitka and is received with acclamations of joy and triumph. On the fourth, the first courier arrives from Petersburgh. The mail is taken to the field marshal's room, for he likes to do everything himself. I am called in to help sort the letter and take those meant for us. The field marshal looks on and waits for letters addressed to him. We search, but none are to be found. The field marshal grows impatien and sets to work himself and finds letters from the Emperor to Count T, Prince V and others. 

And he bursts into one of his wild furies and rages at everyone and everything, seizes the letters, opens them and reads those from the Emperor addressed to others. 'Ah. So that's the way they treat me. Ah. No confidence in me. Ah. Ordered to keep an eye on me, very well then, get along with you' so he writes the famous order of the day to General Bennigsen: 'I am wounded and cannot ride and consequently cannot command the Army. You have brought your army corps to Pultusk, routed: here it is exposed, and without fuel or forage, so something must be done, and, as you yourself reported to Count Buxhowden yesterday, you must think of retreating to our frontier- which do today'.

'From all my riding,' he writes to the Emperor, 'I have got a saddle sore which, coming after all my previous journeys, quite prevents my riding and commanding so vast an army, so I have passed on the command to the general next in seniority, Count Buxhowden, having sent him my whole staff and all that belongs to it, advising him if there is a lack of bread, to move farther into the interior of Prussia, for only one day's ration of bread remains, and in some regiments none at all, as reported by the division commanders, Ostermann and Sedmoretzki, and all that the peasants had has been eaten up. I myself will remain in hospital at Ostrolenka till I recover. In regard to which I humbly submit my report, with the information that if the army remains in its present bivouac another fortnight there will not be a healthy man left in it by spring. Grant leave to retire to his country seat to an old man who is already in any case dishonored by being unable to fulfill the great and glorious task for which he was chosen. I shall await your most gracious permission here in hospital, that I may not have to play the part of a secretary rather than commander in the army. My removal from the army does not produce the slightest stir - a blind man has left it. There are thousands such as I in Russia.'

The field marshal is angry with the Emperor and he punishes us all, isn't it logical? 

This is the first act. Those that follow are naturally increasingly interesting and entertaining. After the field marshal's departure it appears that we are within sight of the enemy and must give battle. Buxhowden is commander in chief by seniority, but General Bennigsen does not quite see it; more particularly as it is he and his corps who are within sight of the enemy and he wishes to profit by the opportunity to fight a battle 'on his own hand' as the Germans say. He does so. This is the battle of Pultusk, which is considered a great victory but in my opinion was nothing of the kind. We civilians, as you know, have a very bad way of deciding whether a battle was won or lost. Those who retreat after a battle have lost it is what we say; and according to that it is we who lost the battle of Pultusk. In short, we retreat after the battle but send a courier to Petersburg with news of a victory, and General Bennigsen, hoping to receive from Petersburg the post of commander in chief as a reward for his victory, does not give up the command of the army to General Buxhowden. 

During this interregnum we begin a very original and interesting series of maneuvers. Our aim is no longer, as it should be, to avoid or attack the enemy, but solely to avoid General Buxhowden who by right of seniority should be our chief. So energetically do we pursue this aim that after crossing an unfordable river we burn the bridges to separate ourselves from our enemy, who at the moment is not Bonaparte but Buxhowden. General Buxhowden was all but attacked and captured by a superior enemy force as a result of one of these maneuvers that enabled us to escape him. Buxhowden pursues us- we scuttle. He hardly crosses the river to our side before we recross to the other. At last our enemy. Buxhowden, catches us and attacks. Both generals are angry, and the result is a challenge on Buxhowden's part and an epileptic fit on Bennigsen's. But at the critical moment the courier who carried the news of our victory at Pultusk to Petersburg returns bringing our appointment as commander in chief, and our first foe, Buxhowden, is vanquished; we can now turn our thoughts to the second, Bonaparte. 

But as it turns out, just at that moment a third enemy rises before us- namely the Orthodox Russian soldiers, loudly demanding bread, meat, biscuits, fodder, and whatnot! The stores are empty, the roads impassable. The Orthodox begin looting, and in a way of which our last campaign can give you no idea. Half the regiments form bands and scour the countryside and put everything to fire and sword. The inhabitants are totally ruined, the hospitals overflow with sick, and famine is everywhere. Twice the marauders even attack our headquarters, and the commander in chief has to ask for a battalion to disperse them. During one of these attacks they carried off my empty portmanteau and my dressing gown. The Emperor proposes to give all commanders of divisions the right to shoot marauders, but I much fear this will oblige one half the army to shoot the other.

Have you ever read anything more delightful? I love Tolstoy.

Knowing Feelingly

The other week I watched a video where composer Rob Kapilow quoted Yip Harburg as having once said "words make you think thoughts, music makes you feel a feeling but a song makes you feel a thought". I reckon design has a similar ambition. When you walk through a Palladian archway or use a Philippe Starck juicer or swipe to dismiss a notification, the design helps you feel a thought (calm, playfulness, ease). Successful design creates the satisfying sensation of innate mastery, of (to paraphrase King Lear) knowing something "feelingly".

This "knowing feelingly" is a wonderful and immensely useful idea because humans suffer grievously of forgetfulness. Our minds are like sieves. Names, facts, dates, aphorisms, the sorrows of loved ones, the humanity of others, the steps of formatting an Excel spreadsheet and the principles of a virtuous life - we forget and forget and forget.

The frailty of memory is a designer's worst nightmare because she desperately needs you to learn how to use her product, yet must teach you do to so in the design alone. Sure, there are user manuals, there are tooltips and forums and Google, but the most successful products are often those which don't require anything besides themselves. Somehow we guess to switch off the radio by rotating the volume dial anti-clockwise until it clicks; we pinch to zoom, we push to walk through doors without a handle. These designs succeed because they talk directly to the senses, make use of habits and meet our expectations, without placing additional burden on our already strained, exhausted conscious minds.

From reading 'The Design of Everyday Things' by Don Norman it would seem that in design the common trick for dealing with faulty human memory is to put some of the knowledge required into the surrounding world. Of course, planting memory cues around ourselves is common practice: we make use of notes, reminders, calendars, assistants and apps of every kind. Yet design does do something more. Where most of these signals still require an engagement of our conscious mind (we need to read the text from the note on our dressing mirror that reminds us to 'be kind today' and deliberately place ourselves in that frame of mind), design knows this is ineffective. Conscious thought is effort habitually shirked. So design uses external cues that talk primarily to the subconscious mind. Icons, art, photography, music, rituals, tattoos. Removing handles from doors which can only be pushed, embedding the notion of serenity into the very shape of a building. These are things which make us feel thoughts. It's the thoughts we feel that we remember longest.

Don Norman postulates also that great design works on three levels: visceral, behavioural, reflective. The visceral level is where our senses are intimately satisfied, because the thing is pleasurable to touch, smell, hear, hold or look at. Design at the behavioural level means that it makes good use of our existing habits (meaning skills) and expectations (meaning experience) so we can master it without extensive premeditation (meaning in flow, as satisfying and intuitive as playing an instrument or riding a bike). The reflective level is where we find the product embodies our values: an electric car with a low emissions footprint or a responsibly sourced piece of furniture.

I think these levels - visceral, behavioural, reflective - go from least to most forgetful. Advertising needs constantly to remind us that something is fair trade or organic or for a good cause, but the smell and taste and touch and look of a product are inherent. The more meaning can be communicated in the first two levels, the more immediate and longer lasting its understanding.

Furthermore, it occurs to me that the visceral, besides being more immediate and harder to forget, has yet another quality: it regenerates. By this I mean that although we become desensitised to physical sensations in the short term, going away for any length of time makes the sensations once more as fresh as ever. We might tire of feeling proud of our low-emissions cars or responsibly sourced bedsteads, but we can never tire of beauty, flavour, scent or sound. No matter how much sunshine we experience, we will always want more. Perhaps this is why art, as Proust will have it, helps us discern with new eyes: it is the visceral component that reminds us to perceive anew.

So we forget, but forget slower and tire less of those things which we get to know feelingly. Design, like art, embeds this knowledge in the surrounding world whence it may be readily retrieved any time we need to find our way reliably back to an important idea. And the most lasting representations are those which at once seduce the senses, engage habits and expectations and stir reflection in the conscious mind. So instead of that inspirational quote on the dressing mirror, perhaps we should instead surround ourselves with embodiments of thoughts - through art, design and certain other people.

Is software a good or a service?

To paraphrase The Hidden Complexity of Wishes - how would you ask an evil wish-granting genie to get your Mother out of a burning building? A gas pipe explosion will technically remove her body from the premises, but may not be quite what you had in mind. Such are the imperfections of language that all written law must ultimately be subject to intelligent human oversight. In their terms and conditions (T&C) software companies judiciously refer to themselves as ‘service’ providers. Are they?

Much of commercial law turns on the issue of accountability: when things go wrong, who pays? Broadly, three frameworks govern the question: contract law, common law for civil wrongs or ‘tort’ of negligence and statutory strict liability. Until the advent of mass production, contract law dominated. But industrialisation posed a new problem: privity of contract - the concept that no rights or obligations arising from one can apply to third parties - also meant no way for final buyers to make claims against producers since they rarely dealt with them directly. In Winterbottom v Wright (UK, 1842), Mr Winterbottom was denied compensation for injury when his poorly constructed mail coach collapsed because the Lords feared precedence: ‘the only safe rule’, they concluded, ‘is to confine the right to recover to those who enter into the contract’. It was not until courts introduced the concept of negligence, through pivotal cases such as Donoghue v Stevenson (UK, 1932) or MacPherson v Buick Motor Co (US, 1916), that buyers were allowed to get around privity. Yet negligence still requires plaintiffs to show ‘fault’, meaning blameworthiness and responsibility. In contrast, strict liability only requires that a tort occurred, regardless of culpability. If a product is defective, it does not matter producers followed the correct procedures: they are still liable. Product liability is the most important strict liability regime and it, crucially, applies only to manufacturers of products and not service providers. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers - all still handle liability under the frameworks of contract law and negligence. It makes sense that software companies should prefer to trade under strict T&C (i.e. contracts) and avoid strict liability as much as possible.

Yet buyers may have more rights if software is considered a good, not a service. Replacement, reimbursement and damages are all easier to claim. In the US, courts have made the distinction on a case by case basis: is the software bespoke or mass-marketed? Did the buyer claim investment tax credits? Did the sales aspect predominate? Most notably, when bundled with hardware (as in laptops, Fitbits, Tesla cars), software will almost certainly be considered a ‘good’ and subject to Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC). Only this week, Microsoft paid $10 000 in a small claims court in California over a faulty Windows 10 upgrade. True, considering software a ‘good’ for the purpose of UCC has been more common than considering it a ‘product’ for the purpose of strict liability (‘good’ and ‘product’ are not perfect synonyms but the difference is still under debate). Yet invoking UCC makes invoking strict liability more likely. As the Internet of Things expands, expect more such rulings.

Already, in the UK, a key facet of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (an EU directive implementation which updated and standardised previous consumer legislation) was to deal explicitly with ‘digital content’ and confer upon it the rights and obligations buyers would naturally expect. Under it, T&C are no longer binding if they ‘exclude or restrict the trader’s liability’. Ultimately, evil genies and T&C might be a necessary part of life, but mere crafty wording will not amount to genuine, binding consent. To agree, stop reading this now.

Why We Still Haven't Cured Cancer

Almost half a century since President Nixon started the ‘war on cancer’, President Obama promised ‘a new moonshot’ so that America may become ‘the country that cures cancer once and for all‘. Yet serious problems have a knack for persisting despite high-minded -- if overly optimistic -- political speeches. Despite decades of research and billions of dollars in public and private funding, cancer remains one of the world’s likeliest killers. Why?

Broadly, cancer is caused by uncontrolled cell division, when the mutation of a small set of genes causes cells to multiply indefinitely and invade the space of healthy neighbouring tissue. But cancer is best understood as a chemical process. Each cell contains the full human DNA - around 24000 genes - and each cell division makes a full copy. A gene is a sequence of chemical bases that instructs cells to turn glucose and oxygen into energy and which amino acids and proteins to manufacture, encoding information such as when to multiply and when to self-terminate - the programmed cell death known as apoptosis. Carcinogens are anything that corrupt this chemical code: radiation that breaks ionic bonds, and substances and viruses that disrupt cell metabolism or bind to DNA directly and change its structure. Still, perhaps the most insidious carcinogen is sheer bad luck: chance mutations over a lifetime of cell divisions. While DNA can self-repair, it won’t if the mending instructions themselves are damaged. Therefore apoptosis is key in preventing cells with gene mutations from replicating. However, if the signal for self-termination too is altered, cells will both multiply indefinitely and continue to replicate the initial mutations, making further DNA corruption more likely. This is why in tumours mutations tend to accumulate. Fixing all this is hard for many reasons.

First, every cancer is a different disease. Not only is leukemia different from melanoma but every tumour is caused by a different set of genetic mutations such that no two cancers are ever the same. Every tumour follows a unique genetic path so that one person may live and another die having the ‘same’ cancer and taking the same medication. Second, surgery is not always feasible, radiation is difficult to target accurately and the drugs known collectively as chemotherapy cannot distinguish between rapidly dividing cells in tumours and cells whose rapid division is legitimate and vital, such as those in hair and stomach lining. Finally, the accumulation of mutations makes it hard to identify the genes that started the process. Without knowing those it is hard to develop personalised medication or predict the effectiveness of various drugs on individual people. This is a problem big data can solve. Alas, because genome sequencing has only been possible for little over a decade, some of the world’s biggest genome databases still have only thousands of samples. Many millions may be required.

Yet change is under way. In 2008, whole genome sequencing could be purchased for $350,000; today that cost is under $1000, with results in two and a half months (the Human Genome Project took 13 years). Further, people who use DNA testing companies can chose to share their genomes with researchers, helping solve the data problem. Together with better computing, this can make the development of personalised treatments feasible. In 2000, Bill Clinton declared it ‘conceivable that our children’s children will know the term cancer only as a constellation of stars’. Overly optimistic, perhaps. Yet replace ‘children’ with ‘grandchildren’ and it might just come to pass.

On Melancholia and Being Jollied Along

September is my favourite month. Summer, even in London, was torrid. Not continually and not so hot as might prevent people from venturing outside, but enough to bring to mind pictures of tropical beaches and to feel like Summer. Summer needs to have made itself felt for September to be properly celebrated and relished.

It happened yesterday when I went for a stroll in Victoria Park. It was a lovely day. Not a day of splendid sumptuous mid-Summer, with throngs of happy people crammed in pubs or sprawled in patches of shade with board games, blankets and beers, but a day of quiet, sober loveliness, with overcast skies yet still clear clement weather and a gentle breeze. It was quiet. It was peaceful. It was balmy and placid and then, for a brief moment, I felt it. Beneath the bright sunshine, mixed in with the light puff of air, barely audible dissonance in the swift flow of harmony, a faint, noiseless, yet unmistakably distinct - winter chill.

Summer is over.

The name for what one feels before this change of season is not despair, nor apprehension, nor regret, but an emotion too often banished from everyday use and polite conversation: melancholy.

My Oxford Dictionary of English defines melancholy as a feeling of "pensive sadness" and sadness, even the pensive sort, seems to terrify people. The social norm is, at least outwardly, a state of more or less permanent excitement. Alain de Botton puts it best when he observes that people are relentlessly and without variation trying to jolly us along. A limited amount of amused frustration might on occasion, and only intermittently, be tolerated - so long as it's funny. But if anyone ever commits the social faux pas of admitting to any other kind of emotion, he is immediately met, depending on the audience, with either sternness, pity or concern.

This is a little crazy. It signals that we live in a society fundamentally unable to tolerate its own full range of emotions. And here is the thing: melancholy is glorious.

This is why September is my favourite month. Melancholy at this time seeps into the air and is to be breathed in and seen settling everywhere. It is the quiet comedown after the intense joy of Summer, when we wake up to the memory of winter to come. It is the sadness of letting go and the quiet joy of acceptance - because seasons pass and we too are one year closer to passing ourselves. September is the month to celebrate the dignity of Impermanence.

Yet this doesn't happen. People seem fixated, a bit manically, on the hope that science and technology are gleefully employed in bringing about the end of history and that immortality is just around the corner. Yay.

This may well be a noble pursuit and maybe the species will flourish and immortality is possible. But in our own lives, meaning the set of people currently alive, we do rather need to make a bit more room for melancholy. Because, and this is true, we will die. Let that sink in for a moment.

Before you cringe and hastily move along to more polite sentiments, take a solitary walk. Celebrate September a little. Allow a drop of pensive sadness to insert an inch of perspective into your daily grind. You might discover that melancholy, if quiet and understated, is in fact rather nice. It is tuna sashimi to the chocolate fudge brownie ice-cream of everyday life. Autumn is melancholic and life is pretty miserable most of the time. One may manage to enjoy both of them, nevertheless.

In Praise of Doing Nothing

I have been unemployed for 73 days and during this interval have been asked what on Earth I spend my time doing by at least one person, on average, about once a day. Compared to their own lives, most of everyone rightly feel that I am astonishingly time-rich and surely must have achieved something with all this wealth. How am I not immensely bored? I am reassured that they, surely, would be.

Alas.

Time is money so tracking how it is being spent can yield useful insights. For the past 3 years I have tracked my expenses purchase-by-purchase with a precision of two decimal points. The result has been a stark insight into exactly how much I require to live at precisely what sort of standard of living (in Dublin, Seattle or London) as well as some pretty good ideas for how to manage myself financially. For instance, I discovered that (up to a certain threshold) getting rid of belongings actually increases my disposable income by a good few hundred pounds a year and gives me at least 5 extra hours of leisure weekly.

For the past two months I have done the same tracking with time. Here is what I concluded.

First, that everything takes a lot longer than you imagine. However long you think something will take, it probably takes four times longer. The average book takes 7 hours spread over two weeks. Reading The Economist takes 9. An hour-long lunch with a friend in London actually takes four: two hours of travel, one hour at the actual rendezvous and one hour to shower, get ready, get distracted by someone completely different sending you a cat video and so on. While the fixed cost of social encounters tends to stay predictably at around three hours, any time alcohol is consumed the time spent in actual company will pretty much double. A good idea here is to schedule in advance hard deadlines for ending drinking sessions.

Second, we spend a ludicrous amount of time on, essentially, crap. Doing laundry, booking tickets to comedy shows, cooking, looking up things to do, shopping, commuting, washing dishes, looking after pets and plants and gardens, making sense of bills, paying them, running petty errands, arguing with people in call centers, planning holidays, planning parties, planning dates, planning work, reporting to others about the plans, more shopping, more laundry, more food preparation and so on. It takes me almost half an hour daily just to clean my teeth (I floss). About a third of every day is spent on nonsense - the sort of stuff rich people delegate to underlings. Next time you gush over how much Elon "Iron Man" Musk gets done in a day, remember he never has to spend an hour on the phone explaining to someone in Newcastle his precise employment situation.

Third, we are under permanent siege from things wanting our attention. Here is the unrelenting flow of news, over there some video or article or book or author your friend really really wants you to have a look at, next to them marketing and spam in every communication channel, on top the unbroken nagging of errands at every step and above all that constant voice: 'I should look into this'. And that's not counting any kind of cat videos. If your mind is a house then the world is a permanent flood pushing in an interminable quantity of debris and sweeping away everything that was there beforehand.

Take care.

Even in a state of unemployment it is possible to spend your entire time doing what eventually feels like nothing whatever. I have averaged only about four and a half hours of proper study daily and I'm counting certain YouTube channels in this.

This is not a complaint, really, just a simple observation. We all contribute to the noise. I certainly do (this post included). But it is important to remember we need time for introspection.

I don't just mean an hour in the evening while you struggle to fall asleep. I mean hours and hours of long walks thinking very hard and in a way that is systematic about what is going on with the world. Time set aside for contemplation; for appreciating the glory of a late Summer's day; for digesting everything that has happened to you (sometimes years and years ago); for trying to distinguish how to deal with other people and what is important, what is worth pursuing,  how to achieve your dreams and what those dreams are. You need an immense amount of time for all this.

It is only when you take this time that you realise how remorseless a deluge washes away unceasingly the precious time you have on this planet. As I write this, my phone has been making sounds in the next room almost without interruption. Ping ping ping. People and institutions sending terabytes of information at me and demanding attention. Even when you are not asked to do anything, you are asked for time - to open your mind to intelligence and data and opinion. This will besiege and crowd your own reflections out of existence. Insomnia and an inability to focus is how my mind likes to take revenge.

You must notice the constant harassment. Take a lot of care what information you allow to enter your mind. Be very conservative upon which things you bestow your attention. Don't let the world and its agenda trample over your own thoughts if you expect any of them to blossom.