In the entertainment we watch on TV, we are used to there being a sliding scale between fiction and non-fiction.  ‘Fictional’ stories are often ‘based on true events’ and documentaries can be ‘dramatised’ to make them more interesting.

This slide away from dispassionate reportage also exists with the written word.  There is pure fiction: stories made up from the writers’ or other people’s imaginations.  Such stories (whether short or novel-length) can also consist of material dredged up from, or skimmed off the top of, the unconscious, in which case they may be ‘based on true events’.  There are also historical novels, which may be a dramatisation of documented historical events (akin to the dramatised documentary) or be concocted stories set amongst historic events, or using historical figures.

And then there is creative non-fiction, a relatively modern term for documentary writing with a touch of creative flair.  It may be travelogue with interspersed passages of the writer’s subjective impressions or using a style that makes it a page-turner.  It can also include speculation, authorial reminiscences and side-tracking.  A master of creative non-fiction was David Foster Wallace (1962-2008), in, for instance, his collection, Consider the Lobster (2005, Little Brown & Co.); his writing style is as much an adventure as is the content of his essays.

I would class equipment manuals as non-fiction writing.  I expect them to be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  However, some I have seen read like (bad) fiction; some use indecipherable language.  One I have in front of me is for a special eyepiece for my camera.  I quote from it:

• “This product is a precise optical instrument, pleasing watch for to defeng the tide dust palliative, Doing not want to point to get I touch with the optical glass by hand,do not fall off to fall or hits.  [No, I’m not making this up.]
• In case that the immodesry makes dirty the optical glass, please use first to blow, the breeze brushes to use the dust clearance, then the soft and clena cloth wipes ligntly, ifstill not clean, can use the lens puer try paper be stained with a little amount lens the pure trying the liquid wipe lightly.Besides pure try liquid excluding,the other do not use.
• The outward appearance pleases use the soft and clean cloth to wipe lightly,do not use the organism melting agent cleaning absolutely.”

The above is an extreme example of the difficulty many non-English speakers have when trying to render another language into comprehensible English.  I am sure we could easily create similar nonsensical prose in converting English instructions into, say, Spanish, using only a dictionary, when a single word can have multiple meanings and idiomatic language is beyond our grasp.

Most autobiographical writing is creative non-fiction – we cannot guarantee that what we ‘remember’ actually happened.  ‘Remember’, after all, means to ‘put back together’ (re-member).  Clive James probably had it right when he called his contribution to the genre, Unreliable Memoirs (1980/2009, W W Norton & Co.).

Sometimes it is easier to turn ‘true’ events into a fictional account, especially if the ‘true’ events are hard to believe.  If they involve people we know and who know us, especially if they are family or friends, a fictional work allows us to declaim, “I made it all up.  If you see yourself in what I wrote, that is not my doing.”  If you write a nasty character based on an ex-partner, it is unlikely that s/he will sue you – doing so would dispel all doubt in the minds of those who may suspect you are telling the truth.

Whether something is fiction, non-fiction or something in between, would only matter to a reader who wants to rely on it to make sense of the world.  Imaginative writing can probably do that better than the other sort.

© 2013 Daan Spijer

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An interesting discovery was made recently in an attic in a very old house in Guilford, England.  It is a metal box, like a biscuit tin with a hinged lid, containing scores of small pieces of paper, each with a short message in tiny writing.Research has indicated that they date from the early seventeen hundreds.  The media has referred to them as ‘squawks’, a fanciful eighteenth century ‘equivalent’ of tweets.  They are fascinating one-way communications from a merchant ship plying the spice routes.  I have been able to obtain a copy of the complete collection and will share some with you here.

It appears that one of the trading ships was part of an experiment.  It carried on board ‘homing’ birds – the species is not specified anywhere.  It was apparently the brainchild of one Captain Runnian Quill.  The house where the ‘squawks’ were discovered belongs to his descendants.   Quill was eager to develop a method by which ships that were away for the best part of a year could get messages back to their owners.  The medium he chose – a small metal tube tied to a bird’s leg – dictated the brevity of the messages: limited to around 144 letters, although they seem to have squeezed in more in many cases.  He called them ‘gross miniatures’.

2 MAY. CANARIA ISLES. RAIN, SWELL 8 FT. SPAR CRACK. LAID UP. 3 MEN LOST 2 DAYS. STORM. FRESH WATER DISTANT. DOGS NUISANCE. WIFE ILL. PREGNANT? GOAT PREGNANT. NO MILK! BOSON IN BRIG. HIT MATE. CPT MP.

–

17 MAY. PURSUED BY FRENCH. HID MINDELO. SPANISH HELPED. NEW GOAT. WIFE PREGNANT! SUSPECT BOSON AND MATE. LEFT 3 ON MINDALO. PLEASE HAVE LAWYERS START DIVORCE. GOOD RUN SOUTH. PROMOTED LT. MP.

–

Some research has shown that the ship was probably the Landmark under a Captain Penrith, as this would explain his not claiming his wife’s pregnancy as his.  A Mortimer Penrith had lost his testicles in a naval battle in 1702 and had left the navy to command a merchant ship.  Records are scant and the Landmark’s log seems to have been lost, probably at sea.  There is a record of a Penelope Penrith, wife of Mortimer Penrith, having been divorced by him for adultery.  One wonders if she made any sort of life for herself on the mid-Atlantic island with either, or both, of her male companions.

–

22 JUNE. RECIFE IN TURMOIL, TROUBLE WITH OLINDA FARMERS. TOOK ON 12 DUTCH WITH SUGAR, COFFEE, TOBACCO, 5 SLAVES AND SUPPLIES. SOLD MUSKETS, NAILS, BEETS, WINE. RELIEVED BACK AT SEA. MP.

–

17 JULY. REST AT CAPE. DUTCH LEFT SHIP. KEPT ONE WOMAN, MARRIED HER. HAS 2 SONS. LOCALS SUSPICIOUS OF ENGLISH. D. E. I. CO. INSPECTED SHIP, IMPOUNDED TOBACCO. SUGGEST SHIPS AVOID CAPE. MP.

–

9 AUGUST. LANDED MAHENBERG. SHELTER FROM STORMS. LOCALS WILLING FOR BARREL PORT. GOOD REPAIRS WITH MAHOGANY. BOUGHT MALAGASY SLAVES. DUTCH WIFE ILL. INTEND TAKE HER BATAVIA WITH DUTCH SETTLERS. MP.

–

We can assume from the welcome the ship received in Mauritius that this was before 1721, when the French seriously occupied the island.  The Dutch settlers mentioned were probably ones left over from the earlier Dutch occupation and wanting to escape before French influence became uncomfortable for them.

The above was the last ‘squawk’ in the collection and we can only hope that they made it to Batavia, although there are no local records of the ship having made landfall there around that time.  There are, however, Penriths in Kolam, southwest India, and they claim to be descended from a shipwrecked captain in the eighteenth century, so the squawking captain may have survived; or at least his two stepsons may have, to pass on his name if not his genes.

© 2013 Daan Spijer

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I have made the journey across the country to witness three performances of two of my short plays, along with five other plays, at the local Favourite Shorts 10-Minute Play Festival.

I have sat here in the café for the past three hours, making my way through fresh juice with beetroot and ginger, Eggs Florentine, a coffee, a Turkish Love Cake, a cup of chocolate milk made with grated 85% dark chocolate, another excellent long black and all washed down with filtered water.  The only thing missing is excellent company.

Armidale is a very friendly town.  In the street, people readily smile at me and look me in the eye.  The place is full of people in their late teens and early twenties, because of the university.  It gives a feel to the place I haven’t experienced in other country towns I have visited.

I gained a lot from seeing my plays performed three times.  I could talk to the directors and actors between performances, see the performances change subtly and see the actors gain confidence with the works.  I can also see where I can make changes in the scripts and, in one of the plays, substantially rewrite it.

Playwriting is so different from writing stories, essays, poems, blogs or novels – the script is little more than dialogue for others to mould into a performance.  With the other forms, the finished work goes out into the world and each reader forms an individual relationship with it.  Each time a play is trotted out, it is likely to have a different director and different actors, resulting in a different staging, including new set and lighting.  I was surprised, at the first of the three performances this weekend, to see three of the parts I had written for men played by women (there had been a lack of available male actors).  It required extra suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience as well.  The audience usually doesn’t have access to the script, so their only experience of the work is through the cast’s interpretation and the reactions from the audience itself.

Even when I had written the words being spoken on stage, I found myself laughing occasionally at what was being said, partly because of what was being said, partly because, although I had written the words, I hadn’t heard them outside my own head. The impact of the humour was not due to surprise, any more than is the impact of the humour in a film or play we have seen a number of times before.

Both of my plays dealt with relatively light subjects in a light way.  They were not the best in the program.  The two best plays dealt with weightier matters; one with humour and depth, the other with gravitas.  The latter was a monologue (as was my piece, Be Mused) and was in the form of a poem, with ‘traditional’ metre and rhyme; however, not recited in a traditional manner.  The other best play had two derelict men examining issues around masculinity.

As voracious reading is important for any writer, so is watching stage plays essential for a playwright.  Reading and watching allows the writer to find out what works and what doesn’t, what communicates clearly and what puts the reader/audience to sleep.  One of my plays (Dealer Wins – with the male/female swap) did not work as well as I had hoped.  The fault was not with the acting or the staging; it was with the writing.  It was invaluable for me to see where the writing let the actors and the audience down.

Despite what I saw as the mixed success of my plays, I was invited to submit a full-length play I’ve written, for the consideration of the drama society in Armidale.  With some sixteen roles, I’ve been told it could never be considered for a commercial production, as paying that many actors would make it commercially unviable.  The Armidale group has no such concerns and welcomes opportunities to offer roles to a large group of actors.

I enjoy writing short plays for the same reason I enjoy writing short stories: they are compact and need to tell a story economically, with little opportunity to be laid-back or expansive.  They demand, as poetry does, the careful choice of words and the necessity for those words to work hard for a living.  Just like a writer has to.

© 2012 Daan Spijer

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We don’t have to save the world.  The world is big enough to look after itself.  What we have to be concerned about is whether or not the world we live in will be capable of sustaining us in it.

This is perhaps the most important idea for us to ponder.  We need to educate politicians and business leaders to ponder this also because, without this as the basis for all important deliberations leading to action, the answer to Adams’ question is probably that the earth will not be capable of sustaining us in it.

We carry on as if there is plenty of time to work it all out and as if in that time things will be discovered or invented that will make it all alright.  It is like Adams’ puddle:

… [I]magine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in – an interesting hole I find myself in – fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it?  In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’  This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise.¹

Humanity is behaving like that puddle.  We have less excuse than the puddle because we have the capability of seeing the wider world outside the hole; we can see that the puddle is shrinking and may disappear.  Yet we still behave like the mindless puddle, which means we will probably eventually ‘evaporate’ with the notion that we are surprised.

So many wise people have for a long time been pointing to our folly and to the nonsense of perpetual growth and to the disasters that will beset us and other species if we continue to create rubbish at the rate we do and keep telling ourselves that we can keep doing so.  The only thing that is true in all this is that we continue to tell ourselves that it is true and that we fail to listen to those who expose that as a lie.

We are not in the dangerous situation we find ourselves in through lack of data – we are drowning in it.  Nor is there dearth of wisdom.  The wisdom resides with the wrong people.  Actually, no, that’s not true either.  It is that those who could do something useful with the wisdom fail or refuse to use it.  They ask the question, ‘What is good for me?’ or, ‘What is good for those whose patronage I need to ensure?’  These are questions about the short-term, the immediate future.  A more important question would be, ‘What is good for my children and my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren and their great-grandchildren?’  Now, there’s a question to ponder.

Asking such a question would result in different answers, leading to different actions and different outcomes.  The relevant people will have to continue to ask such questions for generations, because the results are to be seen in the long term, perhaps only by their children’s great-grandchildren.  Those who govern our various communities need to understand that they now govern on behalf every other community, without mistaking this for the hegemony of actually governing all those communities.

Those who would govern mistake the idea that they can at some level dictate what happens on the land over which they claim sovereignty and extend that to sovereignty over the air and the oceans.  They conveniently forget that the water and air over which they claim sovereignty will soon be someone else’s water and air.  This should be clear to them, because whatever other governments allow to be discharged into the air and water will eventually come around.  There is a twisted justice about this – twisted because it affects all seven billion of us, not just the individual communities and their respective governments.

There are many people who are telling all this to the rest of us, as well as many who are merely bleating and are to be ignored, along with those who tell us that to change anything will itself be disastrous.  It’s our call.

1. Speech at Digital Biota 2, Cambridge UK, September 1998.  The transcript of the entire speech is on-line.

© 2012 Daan Spijer

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Life is full of events over which we appear to have no control and which have an impact on our activities and which may cause us to change our plans. Getting to the airport itself is a gamble – as prepared as we may be, events can get in the way of a timely arrival.  A trip that ideally takes around seventy minutes and often takes eighty, can become two hours if there has been a collision on the freeway or one of my tyres goes flat.

Similar events may get in the way of arriving on time for a concert, a play or a date.  A date may be forgiving but the concert and play don’t care whether I make it or not.  My teachers used to care if I arrived late and they made their displeasure known in clear ways – often with the aid of a cane or strap.  Even when it was not my fault – forgetting my homework and having to go back for it when I was half-way to school was, to me, an external event out of my control.  Teachers saw it differently.

In Australia, these events over which we have no control – I will call them ‘fate events’ – are usually no more than a minor annoyance, compared with fate events in many other countries.  In Palestine a fate event may mean the death of half your family and leave you maimed for life, on top of the mental-emotional trauma you have been suffering from for decades.  In Afghanistan it can be someone’s decision to blow himself up in a crowded marketplace.

Fate events include floods and fires and earthquakes, as well as bits of space junk falling from the sky.  To avoid these, one needs to just not be there when they happen.  If you are, your future will depend in large part on how you respond to what the Fates chose to hit you with.  The difference seems to be between two types of people: those who believe that Clotho determines the length of the thread of their lives and Atropos will cut it when she chooses; and those who believe that, while Clotho and Atropos may have their intentions and Lachesis may play with their lives, they themselves can choose to stretch the thread, even add to it, and gleefully entertain Lachesis.

Fate events can also lead to pleasant experiences.  On one trip I asked for and was accommodated on an earlier flight than the one I had booked.  I ended up sitting next to someone who had also not expected to be on that flight.  What I had anticipated would be just another flight became a very informative one.  Of course, had I flown as originally intended, that flight might have been interesting, for different reasons.

Maybe the ancient Greeks were right – the Fates cannot be fooled with.  Shakespeare put this idea beautifully: “There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we may.”  There are people who are frightened to leave their house for fear of being hit by a car and die in their bed when a wayward car runs in to the bedroom.  And what about the people who are hit by lightning three or four times and survive?

Do we attract experiences to us?  If so, for what purpose?  Does a person need more than one lightning strike?  Is each of us born with a set of lessons to learn and experiences to have?  If so, do some of us spend our allotted lifetime and all our energy to resist this?

Does any of this matter in the end?  Is the important thing what the actual ‘scheme’ is or what we believe it to be?  If it is the scheme, then our belief is irrelevant in how we are in life because that belief will, by definition, be part of the scheme.  If our belief is important because that belief can change outcomes, is that not also part of the scheme?  If that is true, do we really have any control over our lives?

Given the vast number of human cultures on the planet, and the even larger number of interpretations of those cultures by their respective adherents, one could argue that we are all taking part in an experiment to learn what works best – what is the best way to be here.

Many of the disparate beliefs are based largely on what made life possible for a group of people thousands of years ago.  The adherents seem to have not recognised that their environments, technology and other circumstances have changed.  Each group, and each individual in that group, believes it is the custodian of the only truth.

Douglas Adams may have been right: we are all part of a massive experiment designed to discover the truth – an experiment conducted by alien white mice.

I could sum up with Adams’ words: “I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”

© 2012 Daan Spijer

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It is heartening to see that sportsmanship does still exist, that crowds of spectators can still show their appreciation of a game well played, no matter which side scored the point.  Crowds can also be monstrous and use the opportunity of a loss by one team or the other to engage in seemingly random violence and vandalism.  There are also those who will go to a sporting event, where there will be a large crowd, in order to foment violence in the crowd.

Probably the biggest factor in the changes in the practice of sport is the commercialisation that is rife.  Sporting teams can be named after their main sponsors and sports stadiums frequently change their names according to the naming rights bought by companies.  I expect a day will come when sports stars will change their names to reflect their sponsorship – “Eugene Nike Teac today again triumphed over Thomas Adidas Shell in the 100 metre sprint.”

Many sports teams are owned by companies or wealthy individuals.  In some sports an individual can even own an entire league of teams.  Even small, local children’s sports teams may now rely on business sponsorship for their survival.

The modern Olympic Games used to include non-sports events in the spirit of the artistic pursuits included in the ancient Olympiads.  Until 1952 these included architecture, literature, music, painting and sculpting.  Their abandonment by the IOC is ironic – the reason given was that almost all ‘artists’ were professionals and sportspeople were amateurs.  How times have changed.  Can many ‘serious’ sportspeople these days be truly called non-professional and how many ‘professional’ artists make a good living from their pursuits?  Baron Pierre de Coubertin wanted the non-sports events included to make the Olympics more a balance of body and mind.  Whether this was the reason for the inclusion of the arts in the ancient games is not clear.

‘Sportsmanship’ used to be held up as a standard by which to live one’s life.  It embodied the principle of doing one’s best but not carrying the competition beyond the event or game.  Thus, one will see competitors acknowledging each other after an event, whatever position they came in the competition.  Sportsmanship can also be witnessed during a competition.  For Australians this is probably epitomised by the action of John Landy in the 1956 Australian National Championships.  In the 1500 metre final, Ron Clarke, another Australian, stumbled and fell.  Landy leaped over his friend, then doubled back to see if Clarke was alright.  Both men continued the race.  Landy caught up with the leaders in the final laps and went on to win the race.

Behaviour such as this is remembered and talked about for much longer than many outstanding competitive sports achievements.  It speaks to something in us that recognises nobility.  As a famous film character might have said, “Noble is as noble does.”

Now that sportspeople are not only ‘heroes’ and celebrities but also represent companies and brands, they may often be seen in the unedifying situation of promoting those companies and brands, clearly not believing much, or anything, of what they have been told to say.  I am prompted to ask how much many of these sportspeople would be willing to sacrifice for their sports if they weren’t financially supported.  Most of the Paralympians still do without sponsorship and they may be more passionate about their sports for it.

Many people now argue that most of the sport that is televised is simply entertainment and that the celebrity of sportspeople is akin to that of popular entertainers.  They may be right, when you consider how much television networks pay for the broadcast rights – sometimes in the billions of dollars.

In many sports, players are traded like possessions and sometimes treated that way.  As a consequence, in many team sports there are players’ unions to negotiate pay and conditions.

I know that there are still many people who participate in sports mainly for the love of it, including many young people.  Unfortunately, while young people are enjoying their weekend sports, many of their supervising parents take it much too seriously and even resort to violence against parents of other children, sports officials and children themselves.  What is it about sport that anyone can take it that seriously?

© 2012 Daan Spijer

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What does it all mean?  What are we looking for in our food labels?  Are we looking for truth?  Do we want the truth?  Is truth in labelling going to diminish our enjoyment of the food?  The National Heart Foundation in Australia sells companies the right to display their ‘heart health’ tick on foods that are ‘good for heart health’.  But the tick seems to apply only to fat content, because many of the ticked foods are very high in salt and/or sugar.

Research has shown that cocoa contains potent antioxidants and, therefore, presumably, cocoa is good for our health.  Some chocolate manufacturers have used this to advertise their milk chocolate as being good for us because it contains cocoa.  But how much cocoa is there in milk chocolate?  Companies making instant coffee similarly use research about the antioxidants in green coffee beans as the basis for claiming health benefits for their instant coffee.  Those products bear little resemblance to green coffee beans, after roasting and chemical processing.

In the shops we have a bewildering array of milk, with varying fat content, homogenised and non-homogenised, A2 and A1, organic and non-organic.  Much of the cheapest milk is also ‘watered down’ with permeate, but labels do not mention this.

In Australia we can buy bottles of “organic” water and water that boasts it is “100% fat-free”.  I don’t know what that means.  I wonder if the ‘manufacturers’ of the water have any idea what they mean.

A shop in a nearby suburb advertises: “Antique Furniture Made to Order”.  I am not averse to accepting that the meanings of words change over time, but I am not aware of the meaning of ‘antique’ changing to such an extent in common parlance.  A fruit shop in the heart of Melbourne’s suburbs boasts: “only local produce sold here”.  As the shop is at least thirty kilometres from the nearest orchard or market garden, I was intrigued.  When I asked the owner about his claim, he told me that he was assured by all his suppliers that the produce was picked only by people who live close to the orchard or market garden and, therefore, there was less travel involved; and the rest of his produce came from the ‘local’ wholesale market – where it was actually grown was not known by him.

Along with ‘organic’, many words are being used dishonestly or, at least, with no relevance to their subject: ‘green’, ‘environmental’, ‘recycled’, ‘climate-friendly’, ‘eco-friendly’, ‘natural’.  A packet of almonds in a cardboard box had the word ‘Organic’ prominently printed on it.  After I bought it, I read the box to learn that the almonds were not grown organically (i.e. without chemicals, etc.) but the plantation timber used to make the cardboard for the box was.  A notebook I bought some time ago had the word ‘Recycled’ printed boldly on the cover.  When I looked at it more closely (very closely), I was just able to decipher the tiny writing above the word ‘Recycled’: “after use, this product may be …”.

I have many times been brought close to shop-rage when, late at night, I headed for an illuminated sign promising good coffee, only to find the café closed.  I have also been in the situation of taking an item to the checkout in a store, the window of which announced: “Everything reduced – store-wide sale”, to be told that the sale only applied to ‘sale items’.  I looked around for something to hit after arguing with the shop assistant.  I thought better of it when I saw the size of the store security person and I slunk off to a café nearby, which offered “the best coffee you’ll ever drink”.  I don’t know if it was, as I was beyond caring.

Signs can also stop you in your tracks.  Arriving at a T intersection down a narrow road, I was faced with a “no right turn” sign and a “road closed” sign on the left.  What to do?  More to the point, who planned this affront to logic?  And why no sign at the start of the narrow road warning that it would lead nowhere?

In this information age, why is it so difficult to obtain accurate and timely information?  It is not only errant signs that are a problem.  Writers in medical journals and newspapers have a lot to answer for, as do their editors and sub-editors.  They frequently quote results that are not supported by the data they present or, as in a recent article in The Age, write that 627,800 is 0.1% of 282 million.  Is it laziness, fraud, lack of education or just a sign of the times?

© 2012 Daan Spijer

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There are very few people who truly believe they can do anything they set their minds to.  Such people are so rare that they become the subject of news items, even whole TV series.  They are sometimes labelled ‘heroes’ or ‘freaks’.  We are thrilled by their achievements and delight in their failures.  The thrill comes from our wishing we could do extraordinary things and the delight comes from wishing we could do extraordinary things.

Everything we do comes from a mind-set.  We have to envisage the deed before it can be manifested as action.  People who run faster, throw farther or jump higher than anyone else see themselves doing just that before they do just that.  Envisioning the thing does not guarantee the achieving of it, but the achieving is not possible without the prior vision.

We carry an image of the world and our place in it and we behave in the world according to that image.  If we see the world as limiting us, it will.  If we see it as supportive and enabling, it will support and enable us.  This is not simply about positive thinking, because that has the ring about it of being good, as opposed to negative thinking.  This is not about creating the world in a way that you are comfortable with.  This is also not about wishful thinking or hoping that if you dream of something it will magically come to pass.

Achievement requires action but, for the action to lead to the achievement, you need to have a clear image of that achievement.  This applies even in mundane, everyday things.  To go to work by train requires more than an image of doing that – you need to go to the station and do so in time to catch the train.  To eat a meal, you need more than a wish to eat and a vision of what it is you will eat – you need to cook or order take-away or go to a restaurant.

Unfortunately, many people allow instances of not achieving what they envisage as evidence that the process doesn’t work.  Envisioning an outcome is a necessary precondition for achievement, but does not guarantee it.  It is not the only condition of success; another important one is perseverance.  Many inventors, for instance, have a clear vision of the end result but need many attempts to get there.  Similarly, explorers may need to try and try again to reach a particular place.

Having an image of your goal, in whatever endeavour, is also important in order to take advantage of opportunities. We live in a sea of opportunities, but they will only show themselves as such if you can see that they can take you closer to a goal.  Circumstances will be just that but, if you are clear about something you want to achieve, something in the circumstances can be seen by you as an opportunity to move closer to your goal.

If you habitually tell yourself that you can’t do something, nothing in your surroundings or circumstances will look like something that could help you do the thing you believe you cannot do.  In fact, you are likely to be looking for evidence that you cannot do something and you will find it or, if such evidence doesn’t appear, you will interpret current events and circumstances to support your beliefs about yourself and your inability.  You are also more likely to hear people confirming that you can’t, rather than those who might encourage you if you believed you could.

Even people who achieve outstanding success will often, in some way, be limited by their beliefs.  There was a time when it seemed to be impossible to run a mile in under four minutes.  When Roger Bannister finally did achieve this in 1954, it seemed to lift a barrier and other runners soon followed – John Landy beat Bannister’s record by another 1½ seconds only 45 days later.  This change cannot be explained simply by better training, better diet, performance-enhancing drugs or a change in the weather.  The most likely explanation of the many runners achieving a mile in under four minutes is that the runners’ thoughts about what was possible had changed.

If you want to achieve something that others have done before you, it is easier to envisage the achievement and the best road to that achievement has probably been mapped out.  If your goal is something that has not been done before and there is no map, you need to keep the goal clearly in mind so that you may create your own map.  You have then created something that others, who believe they can, may achieve more easily.  Those who believe they can’t will find it no easier than when no-one had yet achieved the goal; in fact, they may find in that very achievement the reasons for their belief in their own inability.

© 2012 Daan Spijer

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Throughout history (as far as we know) there have been human pairings that were taboo or at least frowned upon: rich with poor; Christian/Jew/Muslim with non-Christian, non-Jew, non-Muslim; Capulet with Montague; Protestant with Catholic; Sunni with Shiite; orthodox Jew with non-orthodox Jew; Athenian with Spartan; eastern suburban with western suburban.  The list could be endless.  We have a taboo against sibling coupling but there have been societies where siblings mated, at least in the ruling classes.

Pairings that were out of favour or in favour were often a matter of taste, prejudice or fear, or simply a matter of ‘them’ and ‘us’.  The taboo against closely-related people marrying makes good biological sense: the consequences of inbreeding can be dire.  Yet only two generations ago in my own family there were two instances of first cousins marrying and it can still be common in some societies.

In some countries, including Australia, the debate rages about whether to allow same-gender marriage.  The Christian objection seems to be on the sidelines now, centre stage being taken by the objection that children have the right to be living with their biological mother and father.  That may be ideal but may not even be the norm anymore with heterosexual marriage.  Studies of the reality of adultery have variously concluded that between 1.4% and 20% of the children in ‘stable’ heterosexual families were not the offspring of their mother’s husband¹.  And then there are the children whose parents married ‘until death or his alcoholic violence or her gambling addiction do us part’.  After several break-ups and re-marriages of both biological parents, the children may be living with neither of them.

That in this country homosexual couples cannot marry does not stop them having or adopting children.  In some jurisdictions, lesbian couples can avail themselves of IVF programs and both lesbian and gay male couples may often adopt.  Children are also conceived through the generous donation of semen from friends or produced through surrogacy.  Adoption and surrogacy are, of course, also options used by heterosexual couples.

Children who live with both biological parents may soon be in the minority, if they aren’t already.  I have several times seen children interviewed on TV, whose ‘parents’ are same-gender and they seem to regard it as normal, as children tend to regard their parents, no matter how strange the parents may seem to outsiders.  A child with a blind parent or one in a wheelchair or one without arms would regard that as normal, for them.

Children are not blind to difference but they tend to accept it.  Black and white children will happily play together until told they shouldn’t.  If the difference of a friend’s skin colour is pointed out, the child will probably acknowledge it and add that “Marcia’s mum and dad also have a ginormous TV, and two cats and a bird in a cage.  I mean, the bird’s in the cage, not the cats, because the cats might eat the bird.”  It’s all there as part of ‘normality’.  It is only when indoctrination is applied that difference becomes an issue.

I had two great-uncles who were gay and lived together.  Actually, one was my great-uncle but we called both of them ‘uncle’ and thought nothing of it. I know a young woman who refers to her gay uncle as ‘aunty’, without any irony.  Not only do children appear to see their own family situation is normal, they accept that other children accept their situation as normal, even if it is quite different.

The introduction of civil marriage for heterosexual couples is relatively modern, marriage having been a ‘religious’ institution for most of human history, when marriage has existed at all.  The state has wrested this institution from the ‘church’ (i.e. from organised religion) and made it its own. In Australia it is not a complete separation – people can still be married by a functionary of almost any religion.  In some countries, such as the Netherlands, a couple can be married in church or synagogue or mosque, but the marriage is not recognised until there has been a civil ceremony, often in a registry office.  Also in the Netherlands, there has been gay marriage since 1^st April 1991, and that is not an April fool’s joke – the Dutch take their liberties very seriously.

1. see, for instance, www.childsupportanalysis.co.uk

© 2012 Daan Spijer

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No matter how much a person believes s/he lacks prejudice, there are very few people who would not, from time to time, find themselves surprised that a person they see or hear is able to do something unexpected.  Expecting that someone will or will not do something is a form of prejudice – a prejudging of a situation.  It may be the most benign form of prejudice, yet prejudice it is.

We expect people to be able to do certain things, or not be able to do things, based on what we see and hear.  We may expect someone who speaks with a slow drawl not to be able to hold a conversation about complex ideas and we may well be surprised if that person holds forth on the shortcomings of string theory.  Think about it – what if you had not heard of Stephen Hawking and you met him at a party and then heard him expound his theory of black holes and what they teach us about the origins of the universe?  If you saw Francesca Martinez stumbling her way onto a stage, you may well be surprised to hear her English accent as she exercises her rapier-sharp wit and deep understanding of social and political issues.  Disabled?  Who’s disabled?

There are many stereotypes that inform our beliefs and, therefore, our responses to people and situations.  Stereotypes once helped us survive: wolf = danger, possum = food, black berries = poison, red berries = food.  And there are exceptions – a wolf cub may grow up to be your companion, a possum may scratch and bite you, some black berries are fine and some red ones are not.  Large, hairy man wearing black leather festooned with a skull and angry slogans = danger; or he may be one of the many men, thus attired, who distribute toys to hospitalised children every year.  A frail-looking old lady may pull a gun on you and demand your valuables.

Stereotypes lead to prejudice.  They become destructive of self and others when they are adhered to slavishly.  Slavish adherence leads to fundamentalism.  Fundamentalism dispenses with the need to think and becomes the only reason ever needed by the fundamentalist for any action or argument.  Fundamentalism is one extreme end of a spectrum on which all our behaviour and thought exists.  We all measure every experience, every encounter and every situation against what we already know.  How we then relate to whatever or whomever we are faced with lies on a continuum which at one end has us behave almost like automatons and at the other end has us behave as if this is a novel situation in which we feel free to choose that behaviour.

Benign prejudices come from our experience – the learning we do as we live life.  They are benign because they can be easily overcome through new experiences and through the application of logic.

More dangerous are the prejudices that comes from family, peer-group, social or religious indoctrination or pressure; and similarly from other institutions.  Because these are not developed from ‘normal’ experiences of life, they are harder to overcome with the application of logic or through new experiences.  As with benign prejudice, other people can point out to us that we are subject to them.  However, unlike with the benign sort, most fundamentalists would not see their prejudices as such, because ‘that’s the way things/people are’.

Extremism, when expressed as fundamentalism, is the hardest to shift, because it is based on a deeply-held belief that the world is that way ‘and nothing you can say or do or show me can have me stop believing that’.  Fundamentalists will interpret everything they experience to fit in with their fundamentalist beliefs.  Such people cannot have a meaningful discussion with anyone, because nothing exists outside the confines of their narrow beliefs.  Other ways of seeing or describing the world are frequently dismissed as coming from conspiracies designed to undermine ‘the truth’.

In many countries the education system is used to indoctrinate young people into fundamentalist beliefs.  In other countries authorities are trying to be so careful not to indoctrinate students in any way, that they shrink from even teaching them to think logically and for themselves – to do so would have to expose them to concepts that may be regarded as too far to the left politically.

It almost seems that there is an attitude amongst many people that to think at all is a subversive activity.  It probably is if you are beholden to beliefs and attitudes that could be threatened by people who are able to think.

© 2012 Daan Spijer

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