Category Archives: thoughts

personal, ramblings, sexuality, thoughts

Keys to a Robust Relationship

I’ve been thinking, idly, as one does, for some time about what it is that makes any relationship really robust. Not just one that will last, but one that will last through almost everything and get stronger.

First of all we need to be clear about what I mean by “relationship”. In this instance I am talking of the long-term, bonded, probably sexual, live together partnership between two (or more) people — and regardless of the mix of genders of the partners.

So I’ve come up with …

5 Keys to a Robust Relationship

1. Multi-level
It seems to me, as outlined on my website, that the best relationships operate at multiple levels with the partners dropping in and out of different roles at different times. Sometimes it will be lover-lover, sometimes parent-child (for instance when one partner is ill, or in fun), sometimes there will be child-child playtime. And so on.

Many things seem to spring from this. The more levels there are present the stronger the relationship is likely to be, although not all levels may be there all the time. Occasionally a level will go missing, and that may be when things feel out of kilter. That’s fine as long as it returns after a while. And where a relationship is in trouble it is often because too many of the levels are absent for too long. Having a relationship which works only as lover-lover may be good for short-term lust but is unlikely to work long-term.

2. On-going Intimate Communication
There’s an old adage I came across in business: Communicate, communicate, communicate. I wish more people would take it to heart, in business and in personal life.

Ongoing intimate communication between partners is essential for a healthy relationship. And by intimate I don’t mean just about sex (though that is a highly important element) but communication about anything which is given in an open, honest, frank, straightforward and non-judgemental way — and is properly listened to, and considered, by the receiving partner. This builds respect and trust between the partners. Trust that the important things are being shared; trust that each partner can accept the other as they are; trust that any problem, great or small, can be discussed and worked through. Respect for the other person’s opinion and values, even if you don’t agree with them.

3. Mutual Trust and Respect
Trust and respect have to be built, preferably early on in the relationship. As we’ve seen above, communication is one key aspect of this. Openness and honesty are essential. It almost boils down to “do what you say and say what you do”. Certainly keep your commitments (unless there is really good reason you can’t in which case explain, honestly, as soon as possible beforehand why you can’t).

Respect the other person’s opinions and values, even if you yourself are unable to agree with them. We each hold our opinions and values for a reason (which we may not know) so they have an importance to us. So don’t attack them or ridicule them. Discuss them by all means, in a civilised way, but accept that you may not come to mutual agreement, just mutual understanding of each others’ views.

As that builds, early in the relationship, it should become apparent that you could trust your partner with your last shirt or your best mate. If you can’t maybe you shouldn’t be in the relationship?

4. Shared Bed
In my view sharing a bed is an equally key element of a relationship. You are going to spend 30%+ of your time in there so make sure it is a comfortable bed, which is big enough and soft (or hard) enough.

Physical intimacy is important. That doesn’t mean it has to be sexual. A lot of the time it will not be sexual. Just the proximity of your partner should be something you cherish, something comforting. However miserable or depressed you feel, or however much you are out of sorts with each other, it is hard to fall asleep together without making up.

Even after many years together what better than to fall asleep embracing, to wake in the middle of the night to stroke your (sleeping) partner’s body, to wake in the morning and cuddle into consciousness?

And if you can sleep in the nude, well it gets even better. Get a warm(-enough) duvet so you don’t need pyjamas, knickers or socks and enjoy the delight of lying skin-to-skin.

5. Shared Meals
To me shared meals are also an important factor. If you are both working they may be the only time you get to sit and talk together, or as a family. For us evening meal is sacrosanct time. Time when we eat together, at the dining table, without the TV, book or computer game. Time to enjoy food and to talk. When we were both working it was often the only hour of the day when we could guarantee we were together, not pre-occupied and awake enough to be sentient. Thus it becomes important communication time and important decision-making time — we often sit for some while after finishing eating just talking, about whatever the subject at hand is: do we need to take the cat to the vet; shall I go to that conference next month; should we buy a new freezer; shall we have another bottle of wine.

Having said that, it is important to remember that meals are primarily about food, and enjoying food. What better way than to do this together, with a bottle of wine. And we often discuss food while we eat: ideas for recipes, what do we fancy eating at the weekend, does the wine rack need restocking. Most importantly of all, being together and enjoying food.

So there we have it. Five keys to a robust relationship, which boil down to communication, trust & respect and enjoyment.

Every relationship still has to be continually worked at. And each relationship will be different; working in its own peculiar way. Nonetheless I feel these principles will be the essence of any worthwhile, long-term successful relationship.

They certainly seem to be working for us!

thoughts

The Mind of a Fruit-Loop

Yesterday I came across an interestingly odd — even loopy — article on Scientific American Blogs about the psychedelic guru Terence McKenna.

Apparently McKenna came up with the 21 December 2012 apocalypse long before anyone have delved into the intricacies of the Mayan calendar. The article is a report of an interview with him in 1999 not long before his death, and supposedly tries to uncover whether McKenna was serious in proposing the December 2012 apocalypse or whether he was just being outrageous for the fun of it.

Well you won’t find an answer to that but reading the article, which contains more than a few grains of truth, will give you an insight into the mind of a genuine fruit-loop. Or was he loopy? Maybe he was just a far-sighted shaman.

Anyway I’ll leave you to read the article but here are a few other quotes from McKenna. At first sight many seem crazy, but look deeper and they contains some surprisingly perception nuggets of wisdom and deep thought.

We have to create culture, don’t watch TV, don’t read magazines, don’t even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you’re worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you’re giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told ‘no’, we’re unimportant, we’re peripheral. ‘Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.’ And then you’re a player, you don’t want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that’s being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.”

You have to take seriously the notion that understanding the universe is your responsibility, because the only understanding of the universe that will be useful to you is your own understanding.

Culture, which we put on like an overcoat, is the collectivized consensus about what sort of neurotic behaviours are acceptable.

Television is by nature the dominator drug par excellence. Control of content, uniformity of content, repeatability of content make it inevitably a tool of coersion, brainwashing, and manipulation.

Nature is not our enemy, to be raped and conquered. Nature is ourselves, to be cherished and explored.

Nobody is smarter than you are. And what if they are? What good is their understanding doing you?

My technique is don’t believe anything. If you believe in something, you are automatically precluded from believing its opposite.

Ideology always paves the way toward atrocity.

Belief is a toxic and dangerous attitude toward reality. After all, if it’s there it doesn’t require your belief — and if it’s not there why should you believe in it?

And last, but not least …

Pay Attention.
And keep breathing.

ramblings, thoughts

On National Service

The rise of the most vociferous union power really only happened from the 1960s in Britain, seemingly from about the time of Prime Ministers Harold Wilson (1964-70 & 1974-76) and Ted Heath (1970-74).

This was at the time when National Service had been abolished, so the younger members of the workforce had neither been through the war nor had to do National Service. Military service would have attuned people to the taking of orders without question. But this generation didn’t have that. And they saw that there could be something they believed to be better.

Hence the rebellions of the unions against the “officer class” of the working world: encouraged by the Socialist Wilson and the fire fuelled by their dislike of the Conservative Heath. At much the same time the students, being thinkers, could see that the officers’ orders were not going to make progress towards the “something better” of their vision.

Are people more subdued and subservient out in society if they have had to do National Service and are acclimatised to taking orders rather than questioning them?

But, I suggest, it is this rise of union power which has been a large factor in getting the country into its current mess. Against the backdrop of the world economy (certainly also a factor) there has since the mid-60s been this continual running skirmish — and sometimes open warfare — between the workers/unions and the “officers of industry”, with the government sometimes taking one side or the other depending on its political ideology.

There is also an argument that the unions have stifled job flexibility. By (rightly in many cases) protecting their skilled members they may have compartmentalised job roles making it less easy for people to transition from one role to another, and thus reducing flexibility and mobility in the workplace.

Would Britain be in a better position if this warfare had not existed? If we still had National Service? And if everyone was much more attuned to take orders than question them?

I don’t know. What constitutes “better”?

We likely wouldn’t have the freedoms, the greater equalities, and the opportunities we currently do. But then again we might still have manufacturing industry and people trained in manual skills prepared to do lower-level jobs and thus have less need for immigration.

Would we? I don’t know. But it is an interesting speculation.

I would have hated National Service just as I would have hated going to public school or Oxbridge. I’m proud to have had some of the last of the good grammar school education and been given the opportunity to go to university; an opportunity I would not have had 10 years earlier. And I’m grateful for that education which has been a foundation stone of making me the awkward thinker I am, as are many of my contemporaries. In that sense where we are is a good thing; it allowed many of us to develop and break away from the grindstones. Which is why I consider it beholden on me to give back to society what I can by using both my brain and my skills to help others develop.

And it is gratifying that most of my friends and (former) colleagues – right across the age range – are doing the same thing, albeit in their own, very different, ways.

medical, quotes, science, thoughts

Gardening the Mind

I came across the following quote from Jill Bolte Taylor’s Stroke of Insight on the interwebs the other day. It seems a good take on personal development and personal responsibility.

I view the garden in my mind as a sacred patch of cosmic real estate that the universe has entrusted me to tend over the years of my lifetime. As an independent agent, I and I alone, in conjunction with the molecular genius of my DNA and the environmental factors I am exposed to, will decorate this space within my cranium. In the early years, I may have minimal input into what circuits grow inside my brain because I am the product of the dirt and seeds I have inherited. But to our good fortune, the genius of our DNA is not a dictator, and thanks to our neurons’ plasticity, the power of thought, and the wonders of modern medicine, very few outcomes are absolute.

Regardless of the garden I have inherited, once I consciously take over the responsibility of tending my mind, I choose to nurture those circuits that I want to grow, and consciously prune back those circuits I prefer to live without.

Although it is easier for me to nip a weed when it is just a sprouting bud, with determination and perseverance even the gnarliest of vines, when deprived of fuel, will eventually lose its strength and fall to the side.

thoughts

Lent On, or Off

OK, so it’s Lent. At least they tell me it is. Not being of a religious turn of mind I really wouldn’t know — or care.

But I keep being asked what I’ve given up.

Answer: Nothing.

I gave up giving things up years ago. Just as I don’t do New Year resolutions (see here and here).

Giving things up is a synonym for misery. For unnecessary guilt. For unnecessary mortification of the brain as well as (sometimes) the flesh. It isn’t good for you.

Doing things like giving up stuff because someone tells you to takes you a long way towards having your mind controlled for you. Change has to come from within otherwise it is pointless and destructive.

In fact thinking back, I never did do Lent. Even when I was purporting to be a Christian. The whole idea always did seem pointless and even dangerous.

As my friend Katy says (specifically of her children, but equally appropriate to anyone in my view):

I really am not sure what not eating chocolate does for a person’s soul and their general state of grace, frankly. Does their abstinence from spending every free hour glued to CBBC mean that they are a better person at the end of 40 days and nights?
No. I don’t think so.

I don’t think so either.

And in case anyone thinks I’m being specifically anti-Christian, I’m not.

I feel the same about the Islamic adherence to Ramadan, which in my view is positively dangerous medically as it specifically involves the absence of food and drink during daylight which must have a major effect on one’s ability to function safely.

And the totally a-religious New Year resolutions are no better; they mostly achieve nothing except increasing the adherent’s level of guilt when they (almost inevitably) fail.

Let’s keep things in perspective and balanced. Let’s just take things as they come, ride the storm waves and (if feeling philosophical) contemplate the meaning of life.

Surely, if you must follow a religious dogma, then some quiet contemplation of what it means, and why, and perhaps doing something practical (for someone else or the environment) to further those ends is a better way forward? Just giving up some random thing “because it says so in the book” doesn’t achieve any of that.

And if you’re not religious why are you even bothering with this religious stuff anyway?

thoughts

More Rules for Life

Following on from my earlier posts about my guiding principles and lessons for life, I’m reminded of the 11 Rules for Life often attributed to Bill Gates. Except that they ain’t by Bill Gates. They appear to have first surfaced in a 1996 piece in the San Diego Union Tribune by Charles J Sykes** and subsequently been pared down. But wherever they first appeared many people, not just youngsters! (present readers excepted, of course!) would do well to take them to heart. So, in case you missed then the first few thousand times around, here they are:

Rule 1: Life is not fair — get used to it!

Rule 2: The world doesn’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping — they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

In fact the original had another 3 rules (which I’ve only slightly edited):

Rule 12: Smoking is not cool. It makes you look moronic. Next time you’re out cruising, watch an 11-year-old with a butt in his mouth. That’s what you look like to anyone over 20. Ditto for purple hair and/or visible pierced body parts.

Rule 13: You are not immortal. If you think living fast, dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse is romantic, you obviously haven’t seen one of your peers at room temperature lately.

Rule 14: Enjoy your youth while you can. Sure parents are a pain, school’s a bother and life is depressing. But someday you’ll realize how wonderful it was to be a kid. Maybe you should start now.

Hands up anyone who can honestly say they’ve never fallen into any of these traps.

Mmmm. Yeah. Not me either.

** Sykes appears to have subsequently published the list in his book 50 Rules Kids Won’t Learn in School.

thoughts

Lessons for Life

Today is my birthday. It is a Feria. Almost nothing of note has happened on this day (except for me, of course!). About the only at all well known person I share my birthday with is former miner’s leader Arthur Scargill. But let us not be forlorn!

I thought that this year I would celebrate my birthday by sharing with you 61 Lessons for Life (one for each of my birthdays). I stole the idea (and a few of the lessons) from here. They are a sort of a logical successor to my New Year post.

61 Lessons for Life

  1. Life isn’t fair. Deal with it.
  2. When in doubt, don’t.
  3. Life is too short to waste time and energy hating others.
  4. Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
  5. Pay off your credit cards every month.
  6. You don’t have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
  7. Learn to love yourself.
  8. Don’t worry about things you cannot change.
  9. Save for retirement starting with your first pay packet.
  10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
  11. Make peace with your past so it doesn’t screw up the present.
  12. It’s OK to let others see you cry.
  13. Be open and honest in all that you do.
  14. Don’t compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
  15. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn’t be in it.
  16. Don’t be afraid to admit you were wrong. Be prepared to change your mind.
  17. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don’t save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
  18. Over-prepare, then go with the flow.
  19. Be eccentric now. Don’t wait for old age to wear purple.
  20. Listen.
  21. The most important sex organ is the brain.
  22. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.
  23. Frame every so-called disaster with these words: “In five years, will this matter?”
  24. Forgive everyone everything.
  25. What other people think of you is none of your business.
  26. Time heals almost everything. Give time a chance.
  27. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
  28. Don’t be afraid to admit you don’t know.
  29. Be curious – about everything.
  30. Be yourself, not who you think you want to be.
  31. It’s easier to get forgiveness than permission.
  32. Growing old beats the alternative – dying young.
  33. Your children get only one childhood. Make it as good as you possibly can.
  34. Think as much as possible and to the best of your ability.
  35. Don’t be afraid to tell it like it is. If other people don’t like it that’s their problem.
  36. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d grab ours back.
  37. Every decision is the best you can make at the time with the information available.
  38. Get rid of anything that isn’t useful, beautiful or joyful.
  39. Never forget that your enemy is also a human being.
  40. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
  41. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
  42. It gets better.
  43. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
  44. Masturbation is good.
  45. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.
  46. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.
  47. When you do ask, the worst they can say is “No”.
  48. You can never have all the information you want to make a decision.
  49. Every coin has two sides. So does every situation.
  50. Respect other peoples’ beliefs however much you disagree with them.
  51. Communicate, communicate, communicate.
  52. If it harm no-one, do as you will.
  53. Treat others as you would wish them to treat you.
  54. No regrets – just things you now know weren’t the best.
  55. Only one person is responsible for your orgasms – you!
  56. “No” is an acceptable answer.
  57. Be comfortable in your body.
  58. If you need a God, fine. If you don’t, that’s fine too.
  59. You are entitled to believe whatever you like. You are also entitled to express your beliefs. But we aren’t obliged to listen to them or agree with them.
  60. Embrace sex and nudity – they’re a natural and rich part of life’s pattern.
  61. Look under the bonnet of all knowledge. Remember research causes cancer in rats.

Hmmm … now how many of those do I adhere to? Hmmm …

sexuality, thoughts

Sex and Robots

A week or so before Christmas Kyle Munkittrick wrote what I consider to be an important post over on Discover Magazine blogs under the title The Future: Where Sexual Orientations Get Kind of Confusing.

It is important because it looks to the future and asks what sexual orientations should be acceptable and when.

The situation at present if reasonably clear. Heterosexual and homosexual relationships are both accepted as sexual orientations and as being acceptable. So are polyamory, queer and transgender relationships. As long as all the parties are consenting.

But paedophilia and zoophilia, while arguable sexual orientations are not acceptable. The difference is that in the latter neither a minor nor an animal can give consent.

This seems to provide a simple rule: sexual orientations/relationships are acceptable as long as the parties all give informed consent. Where there is not consent, then they are verboten.

But, Munkittrick asks, what of the future? A future where it is conceivable that humans may wish to have sexual relations with cyborgs and robots? Should human-robot sexual orientations be acceptable, and under what circumstances? Can a robot or cyborg give informed consent? If so under what circumstances and how would we know?

Thinking about this is important, not just for the future but because it helps us understand our present moral position. [For instance, how and why does incest fit the model?]

It also begs the question of whether we should be worrying about our relationship with our dildo, vibrator or blow-up doll! 🙂

Go read the full article!

science, thoughts

More on the Calendar

Following up on my post of a couple of days ago, I saw a further article in Wired about the proposed new Hanke-Henry Calendar.

What is interesting is that when I looked at this Wired article, they had a poll asking whether readers wanted to retain the existing Gregorian calendar or change to the HH version. To my surprise almost two-thirds for the almost 20,000 voting said they would prefer the new Hanke-Henry Calendar.

Hmmm … Maybe! I bet if we went there most of this support would vanish. Such, in my experience, is the way of people.

While I think the Hanke-Henry Calendar is interesting, and would probably support it, I continue to have two reservations.

Firstly, it starts the year (and therefore every week) on a Sunday which, as I mentioned before, is counter to the international standard on dates (ISO 8601) — but when did that ever matter to Americans? However this is really easily fixed by starting the year on a Monday, although that does mean the new calendar couldn’t be introduced until 2018 without moving the names of the days. I see no problem with a 2018 start date as that will give everyone time to adjust.

(Out of interest, using Henry & Hanke’s method Christmas Day would always be on a Sunday, whereas using my Monday method Christmas Day would always be on a Monday.)

Secondly, and more seriously, while Henry & Hanke do away with the annoyance of leap years and leap days, they have to introduce an alternative to ensure the calendar keeps roughly in line with solar time as the years pass. So they introduce the leap week — an extra week added at the end of the year every 5 or 6 years. That’s fine, but is it every five years, or every six? Actually it is some arcane combination; there is no good (read, easy for Joe Public) method for determining when to add the leap week.

According to the Wired article the leap week is “inserted into years starting or ending on a Gregorian-calendar Thursday” which “would almost perfectly account for Earth’s 365.2422 day-long orbit around the sun”. This is unutterable madness! Why base the leap weeks on the “old” calendar we’re replacing?

Currently there is a simple method for calculating what is a leap year. A method which Joe Public is capable of understanding. But the Hanke-Henry system would leave people with no clue as there is no simple pattern to what would be leap week years. How many people are going to keep track of the “old” calendar just to calculate leap week years? Answer: none! Within a few years people will have no clue when leap week years are (the calculation is arcane, to say the least), just as now almost no-one can calculate when Easter falls despite that it follows a simple rule.

But I reckon this too can be pretty well fixed with a simple algorithm. How about this? … In the new calendar every year is 364 days (52 seven day weeks), except when the year is divisible exactly by 5 when you add the leap week unless it is also a century or half-century year. So years 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020 and so on would be leap week years; but not 2000, 2050, 2100, 2150 etc. According to my calculation that runs about as close as this calendar can to true, being just a couple of days out after 500 years. That’s about as good as you’re going to get given that with a 7 day leap week system the variations from true solar time can be up to a week or so. This way people will know very easily what are leap week years and what aren’t. No need to perpetuate the calendar we’ve tried to replace.

(Actually after 500 years the calendar is maybe lagging solar time by slightly too much, on average, so you might want to add back the leap week in 2500. But that is maybe a refinement too far at this stage.)

Now who would like to sort out the moveable feat known as Easter? Shall we just adopt the Pagan feasts?