There always has to be someone who spoils it before we even get there, eh?
Let's not bother. We'll stay in and embrace some clean water instead, for National Clean Your Aquarium Day. Any excuse to play something from these guys... ooh, wait - looks like they've got a new song out!
Here's another way to clean the air. Today is also the International Day for Countering Hate Speech so this seems pretty appropriate...
Oh, would some
Power the gift give us To see ourselves
as others see us! It would from many
a blunder free us, And foolish
notion: What airs in dress
and gait would leave us, And even devotion!
So ends one of Robert Burns' most famous poems (well, the English translation of it anyway, which I'm sure will horrify some of you), in which Burns writes about seeing a louse crawling on a woman’s bonnet in church. At first
he’s disgusted by the sight, though by the end of the poem he turns more
philosophical. If we could see ourselves through other people’s eyes, he argues,
we would lose all our pretensions and realise that no one person is better than
anybody else…
Nice idea, Rabbie, but many of us spend far too much time
worrying about how other people see us. Welcome to FOPO – Fear of Other People’s
Opinions. Here’s a for instance…
Someone I know – we’ll call him Tiberius – finds it hard to
make small talk with colleagues or discuss his life outside work. He can handle
more formal discussions about work-related matters in a relaxed fashion, making
jokes when appropriate, and generally feels like his opinion and experience is
valued in those circumstances. But when everyone starts chatting about what
they did last night, what they’re doing at the weekend, what they’re watching
on TV or what music they like… he clams up. If someone raises a topic he has an
opinion on – say they mention a TV show he’s actually watched or a band he has
some knowledge of – he’s not afraid to chip in. What he won’t do is set the agenda.
He won’t mention a show nobody else has been talking about, and he certainly
won’t tell them he’s been out to see Craig Finn or Lucinda Williams over the
weekend. (In case you’re wondering, Tiberius goes to a lot of the same gigs I
do. We don’t go together because, to be honest, I find him rather tedious company.)
Why won’t Tiberius tell his colleagues about the great time
he had watching Craig or Lucinda? Why would he rather pretend he’s done nothing
at the weekend? Why won’t he ask them if anybody’s watching the final series of
Curb or if they saw Fargo Season 5 – the best one yet? Well, only Tiberius
would be able to answer those questions for sure. But here are a couple of
suggestions…
1. Tiberius doesn’t feel that his own life would be of interest
to anybody else. (There’s a huge irony here in that Tiberius spends a great
deal of his time chronicling said life on a blog that very few people read – I’m
not linking to it, to spare you the agony. But he does that, he claims, purely
for his own mental health, and it’s a bonus if other people read it, though he
really can’t understand why they would.)
2. Tiberius does not wish to be judged by his own interests
or opinions. If he tells people he watches Curb, they might think he’s a sociopathic
misanthropist like Larry David. And mentioning any kind of musical interest
outside the mainstream is a certain way of finding yourself stereotyped or
pigeon-holed, labelled and tagged. You like country music, Tiberius? Yee-haw!
You like ROCK? Do… I… need… to… talk… more… slowly… so… you… understand? You
like Taylor Swift too? Sad old man desperately trying to cling onto his youth
by appearing hip? Bruce Springsteen? I never liked Born In The USA… too
jingoistic for me. No, expressing any kind of musical preference just opens one up to stereotyping, prejudice and general all-purpose ignorance… and the last
thing Tiberius wants is to get into an argument defending his tastes… because
that would just make him look touchy.
Why does Tiberius care what other people think? To answer
that question, I turned to our old friend Mr. Google, who directed me towards psychologist
Michael Gervais at The Harvard Business Review. Gervais has written a couple of
articles that jumped out at me, one called How
to Stop Worrying About What Other People Think of You and one called Stop
Basing Your Self-Worth on Other People’s Opinions. The first of those is a
bit too Inspirational for me – it concludes by suggesting we tackle self-esteem
issues by cultivating our own “personal philosophy” or mission statement… but
then, this is The Harvard Business Review, and Gervais’s clients do include “world
record holders, Olympians, internationally acclaimed artists and musicians,
MVPs from every major sport, and Fortune 100 CEOs”… so what do you expect? (Clearly he's overcome any of his own self-esteem issues a long time ago.)
Still, best
not to consult Dr. Gervais if you're a mediocre loser like Tiberius. His article did
however reiterate something we’ve discussed here before – how the monkey brain
fears being ostracized by the “tribe”.
Unfortunately, FOPO is part of
the human condition since we’re operating with an ancient brain. A craving for
social approval made our ancestors cautious and savvy; thousands of years ago,
if the responsibility for the failed hunt fell on your shoulders, your place in
the tribe could be threatened. The desire to fit in and the paralyzing fear of
being disliked undermine our ability to pursue the lives we want to create.
The second article was more enlightening, particularly when
it discussed the core principles of self-worth, and how everybody judges
themselves by a different yardstick. For some, academic prowess trumps everything
else. For others, it’s physical appearance. It could be financial stability or sporting
ability or just being a nice, caring person… we all have an internal barometer
of success, and they’re all attuned to a slightly different wavelength. Which,
when you think about it, makes seeing ourselves through other people’s eyes a
bit of a non-starter. Someone with an athletically-attuned mindset might look
at Tiberius and think, you’re getting a bit flabby, mate, isn’t it time you hit
the gym? But if that doesn’t match Tiberius’s own metric… he'd rather people thought he was a good writer and a genuine human being... so what’s the point in
even trying to make a comparison?
Other people's lives Seem more interesting 'cause they ain't mine
Gervais gets to the crux of the matter when he discusses “externalising
your self-worth”, in other words, trying to conform to other people’s metrics.
Externalizing our self-worth,
when it works, can yield short-term benefits. We get emotionally and chemically
rewarded when we succeed. Our hypothalamus produces dopamine, often referred to
as the feel-good neurotransmitter. Our self-esteem gets lifted, leaving us
feeling safe, secure, and superior.
But dependency on external validation
and social approval has a dark alter ego that reveals itself over time because
outsourcing our self-worth undermines the basic human needs of competence,
autonomy, and relatedness.
Woah. There’s quite a lot to unpack there. I fear we may
have to return to Tiberius next week…
This is my last week off with Sam (after a few days back in purgatory last week) before the hard slog through till November (when I finally start my new job). So a few more days out have been planned... and a few more middle-aged King Cnut mumbles have been expressed.
Last week I spoke (at length) about how They are slowly trying to phase out real money in favour of digital / card spending, something that C agreed with greatly (pointing us all towards this article which shows that it isn't just middle-aged Cnuts fearing the end of money). Well, here's the latest chapter in that tale of woe... car parks.
A number of city centre car parks I've encnutered over the past few weeks have refused to let me pay for my parking with coins. The machines are taped up with bin bags, forcing us instead to use their parking apps. Occasional signs describe this as a covid measure, while others say nothing, which implies this is the future.
Like a true King Cnut, I refuse to use parking apps. I've tried and the hoops to jump through are just too many. I want to put a few coins in a slot, grab my ticket for the dashboard, and go. If I have to put my registration number into the machine (to stop me sharing a ticket with another driver... remember how nice it was in the good old days when someone offered you their unused parking ticket?), that's about as far as I'll go. But I'm not logging into one of the three dozen possible parking apps and giving them my life story (not to mention bank details) just to leave my car for a couple of hours on a piece of scraggy wasteland. I'll drive on and find another car park, thanks.
But I know my days of doing that are numbered. The faceless oligarchs who own our car parks don't want to pay attendants any more, and they certainly don't want the hassle of sending someone round to empty the ticket machine, count up all the coins, and take them to the bank... not when they can get us to shoot our digital cash straight into their veins. And I'll tell you who I feel sorry for the most. This guy...
Here's ten songs about parking and parking lots. Because song writers prefer to use the Americanism (I couldn't find any car park songs)... probably because most of these guys are Americans (apart from the ones who sing about valet parking - Brits with too much money, obviously!).
I do love a great opening line, yet it's been almost three years since I did Volume 1 of this particular Top Ten. So here's ten more cracking openers... see if you can identify them from the lyric alone. Click the link to see if you're right. (Except number one: you can have that for free.)
I hope that comment can be taken as me being ironic, not sexist. I certainly don't think the writer of this song was sexist. Quite the opposite. I think his point was more: sometimes it's the little things that drive us apart.
Look, far be it from me to try and sway the voting on JC's ICA World Cup this week, but really... that's so clearly a better opening line than "This and that, they must be the same". (Although I'm guessing C will disagree.)
