Election Reflection

It's that time again. No, not Christmas; I do of course mean general election time - which admittedly is about as frequent as Christmas. We've had three general elections and a referendum in the past 5 years. I think I've visited my polling station more often than some of my own relatives' houses.

The results are in from yesterday's election: 365 seats to the Conservatives; 203 to Labour. The election maps are awash with dark blue, for it's the Conservative Party's largest majority since the 1979 when Thatcher won. Whether we think such a landslide is strikingly good or strikingly bad, we cannot deny that it is striking.

Brexit

Given Boris Johnson's continued mantra that he wants to "get Brexit done" - apparently the Conservative Party's top priority - then such a large majority might seem to suggest that the people of Britain* also want to get Brexit done. However, what seems to have escaped Johnson is that 52% of voters backed parties who want a second referendum (Labour, Lib Dems, Greens and SNP) while only 47% of voters supported Brexit-backing parties (Cons and DUP).

* I'll come back to the divisions of Scotland and Northern Ireland below.

Why has there been such a large Conservative majority? Brexit has obviously been a key issue in this election, but I suspect that people (not everyone, but enough to make a difference) haven't necessarily voted for who they think will give them the result they want, but rather, they have voted based upon who is most likely to bring about some closure (of any type - remaining, leaving, anything other than limbo). If I am right, it would not bean enormous surprise, given that the Brexit referendum was 3.5 years ago, and it's barely been out of the news since. People - and indeed the news media - have often said that they're sick of hearing about Brexit.

Could it really be that being bored of Brexit has been one of the major driving forces in the Conservative victory? In "getting Brexit done" Johnson has sought to assure voters that it'll all soon be over. And that, perhaps, is what people want most of all. Just like a friend who keeps talking about their turbulent relationship, even though there are always new tumultuous developments, arguments, arrests, and altercations, it can become tiresome to hear about it day after day. After a while you wish your friend would either commit to making the relationship work, or leave the relationship, but most of all that they'd just shut up about it. And this seems to be many people's attitude towards Brexit at the moment: they're bored of it. I suspect that a sizeable number of people voted Conservative yesterday because they saw the Tories as the party most likely to get it all over and done with. I can't think of any other times in history when voters vote because they're sick of hearing about something, but I suspect this may be the case with this election.

Here's a little quote from Leonardo Dicaprio's character in The Beach  (2000) which seems reminiscent of such an attitude. (Whoever said a movie about backpacking in Thailand cannot give insights into a general election in the UK 19 years later?!)

"In a shark attack, or any other major tragedy, I guess the important thing is to get eaten and die, in which case there's a funeral [...] or get better, in which case everyone can forget about it. Get better or die. It's the hanging around in between that really pisses people off."

Of course, if and when Britain does leave the EU, then that doesn't mean it'll suddenly be out of the news. I would think Brexit will still be newsworthy for a few years yet.

Anyway...

Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales

Look at a map (rather than a bar chart) of how the UK has voted, and you'll see a marked divide along country lines. 

• England is largely dark blue (Conservative); 

• Wales is dark blue (Conservative) and green (Plaid Cymru); 

• Northern Ireland is dark green (DUP) and burgundy (Sinn Fein);

• Scotland is almost all yellow (SNP)

Map of election results. Source: BBC News

Maps can be a little misleading though - for example, the green (Plaid Cymru) which appears to cover half of Wales does not represent half of Wales's population, but actually only a small share, because the area is sparsely populated. London and other major cities are also deceptive: they're small in area, but in terms of population size and number of constituencies, they're far larger. This means that the cartogram (see diagram below, or here for more info) looks rather different from the map. Labour has done well in urban areas, which are smaller on the map, making the larger rural areas in dark blue look more plentiful than they actually are.

Cartogram of election results. Source: BBC News

As the cartogram shows, the Plaid Cymru seats are very few: Wales has largely voted Labour and Conservative.

But Scotland and Northern Ireland have definitely have not. The success of the SNP has (predictably) added fuel to the fire that is Nicola Sturgeon's burning desire (see what I did there?) for yet another Scottish independence referendum (indyref). Sturgeon is desperate to leave the UK - a position which seems a little inconsistent with her equally desperate desire to remain in the EU. Does she see value in breaking apart from a historic union of countries, or in staying together with old pals? Does she think Scotland needs to join forces with other countries to be stronger? Is she happy to have her power overshadowed by a larger superpower, from further afield? The answers vary depending on which union / power we are taking about: the UK or the EU. 

What is interesting, however, is that despite the startling yellowness of Scotland on the map (and cartogram), Sturgeon's SNP only obtained 45% of the Scottish vote (see here) and so even if all the people who voted SNP are in favour of leaving the UK, this alone would not be enough to win a referendum for it to leave the UK. I expect that Sturgeon will call another indyref, and that Scotland will again choose to remain with the UK and thus out of the EU. But I could be wrong. We'll find out.

I imagine that if EU voters were now asked to decide whether Britain should remain in the EU, they'd vote us out! After all, it's hard to play nicely with someone who says they don't want to be in the gang any more. I wonder whether the people of England (and NI and Wales) would vote to push Scotland out of the UK if they were given the choice? They might. But I don't suppose Sturgeon will ask them.

So the UK may yet see more changes in its makeup. We need not see the dissolution of the UK/EU as a terrible thing though. I've written in a previous post how we need to take Brexit (and the potential loss of Scotland) with a pinch of salt: it;s not the end of the world, but just another page in history. In spite of their lack of support for our two main parties, Northern Ireland looks set to remain as part of the UK. But who knows whether post-Brexit border chaos will change things in Ireland.

Democracy and Proportional Representation

Elections and referendums don't always give us the results we want. I've been eligible to vote for two decades, and during that time, I've seen that sometimes the party I voted for did not win (either locally or nationally). When we lose an election - just as when we lose a board game, or lose our bet on a horse race - we can gracefully accept the result, or we can throw our teddies out of the pram. If we value democracy, then we should accept the result of it, even when we dislike it. Because democracy is more valuable than the rate of inflation, whether the Pound is up against the Dollar, and waiting times in GP surgeries. Freedom to vote means we have freedom to vote in bad leaders with stupid policies, and even if we do vote in bad leaders with stupid policies, then democracy is still worthwhile.

What doesn't seem great, however, is the way in which the number of representatives in the House of Commons is calculated. Here is how I think democracy should work: everyone gets a vote, and whoever gets the most votes is the winner. But our "first-past-the-post" system, doesn't support this, because it is possible for a party to have the most votes, but to still lose the election (massively). See below for how this can happen. Just imagine this happening on a larger scale (I've chosen some neutral colours to represent three main parties in a first past the post system):

                          《--------------Votes ------------》
Constituency       Grey     Beige     Cream
 Const. 1               850        900         750
 Const. 2               850        900         750
 Const. 3               850        900         750
 Const. 4              1300         0          1200
==================================
Total votes          3000      2700       3450
 Seats won              1            3             0

The party with the most votes is the Cream party, with 3450 votes. The Beige party has the fewest votes. But in terms of constituencies won - which translates into seats in the House on Commons - the Beige party has 3 seats, the Grey party has 1, and the Cream party, which received the most votes, has no seats at all.

Democracy is valuable because it gives the people what they want (even if what they want is a silly choice), but a first-past-the-post system doesn't really give the people what they want. The people wanted the Cream party to have the most power, but in fact it has the least power. This seems very wrong.

Let's get back to reality. These results are for the whole of the UK:

                                Con     Lab    SNP   LibD
% of vote won          44        32        4       12
% of seats won         56        31        7        2
No of seats won      365      203      48      11

If we compare the percentage of seats won to the percentage of votes won, we see that the Conservatives have benefited from the first-past-the-post system: they got less than half the votes, but over half the seats. The ones who've really lost out are the Liberal Democrats, getting 12% of the votes, but just 2% of the seats. This seems really unfair for those smaller parties who don't get their views heard.

The above table showed the statistics for the whole of the UK, but let's take a look at Scotland by itself:

                                Con     Lab    SNP   LibD
% of vote won          25       19       45      10
% of seats won        10        2         81       7
No of seats won       6         1        48        4

The results here are even more remarkable: the SNP have benefited enormously from the first-past-the-post system. No wonder they are triumphant about the number of seats they've won: for 45% of the vote to translate into 81% of the seats is shocking. The Lib Dems have lost out a little, but both the Conservatives and Labour have lost out massively in Scotland because of the first-past-the-post system. As I said above, the Conservatives benefited from the system overall, but the fact that anyone is benefiting or losing out because of the first-past-the-post system is unfair. And it's almost always the smaller parties who lose out to the election winners.

If representative democracy is about the views of the people being fairly heard, then proportional representation is essential, or the views of the losing parties are not heard. For the next few years, views represented by Labour and the Lib Dems (as well as other smaller parties like the Greens) will be lost in the blue tidal wave across England, and the Yellow tsunami across Scotland. In the next election, as in previous elections, the winners and the losers may change, but the fact that the smaller parties lose out does not change. Whether the minority parties who fail to win seats have abhorrent views, or progressive views, whether they wish to legalise honour killings or to neutralise the UK's carbon footprint, if they are the views of a significant proportion of the UK people then they should be represented by in Parliament. But they're not. And that is the real tragedy of this election, and indeed every election in the UK.

Techy or tacky: why social media is just about bearable

I joined Twitter this week.

Now, given that Twitter has been around for over a decade, you might think I'm coming a little late to the party, and you'd be absolutely right. This is no accident. I've been purposely avoiding Twitter under the impression that it's a platform where people go to snipe about the contestants on Celebrity Love Island having cellulite, or to spread disinformation about the 'dangers' of vaccines, to showcase their hatred of Jews and Muslims, and to share the general minutiae of their everyday lives with the entire planet.

I haven't changed my opinion in this respect; I still think that Twitter is the place to go to discuss celebrity cellulite, to spread disinformation, hatred, and minutiae - but now I'm willing to admit that there is (a little) more to it than merely this.

It's not just Twitter of course: Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Weibo (etc) are also guilty. Social media as an institution is predicated on the fact that people love to make snarky comments from behind the safety of the screen. I've written previous posts about people encouraging a girl to kill herself on social media (which sadly, she did), and people are oh-so willing to criticise politicians, celebrities, and indeed anyone via the wonderful internet.

I must admit I'm not above this sort of attitude - after all, in this blog post I have made (albeit implicit) judgements about people who watch Celebrity Love Island, oppose vaccinations, and so on. It's a human compulsion to criticise, and social media is the ideal place to do it: people can be vicious without (much) recourse, and reading the comments is a sure-fire way to waste away your life. That's why I try to avoid it.

You might be surprised that someone writing a PhD about AI and future tech shuns social media, but there is no reason to think that all tech is a force for good. We shouldn't just accept tech with open arms merely because it is new or techy. (Indeed, my thesis will serve as a warning as well as an attempt at a solution to the perils of new tech.)

I've not always shunned social media: I spent ten years of my life on Facebook, and it was not time well spent. I knew it was drivel, yet I found myself scrolling through it several times a day, often shaking my head at the banality of its content, but reading it nonetheless! 

I probably spent an hour a day looking at the chocolate-covered faces of the nephews of old school friends, or watching people I once met on holiday pour a bucket of ice over their head, or listening to the rants of people I didnt really consider friends, but felt social pressure to friend them on Facebook because they'd sent me a request and I sort of knew them. It took the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018 to give me the push I needed to leave Facebook. 

So, I deleted my account.* The following day, there were several times when I thought to myself "I'll just check Faceb-- oh, I deleted it. Ok I'll do something else." Within a couple of days, I stopped thinking about it altogether, and didn't miss it at all. Now, it's just not a part of my life any more. It's something I wasted a lot of time on, and ditching it gave me more time to devote to other things (such as my son -- not just eBay, Pinterest and TV!)

* Social media being what it is, I understand that my profile was not really deleted, at least, not by Facebook. It'll never be obliterated, short of a planetary meltdown on the scale of the extinction of the dinosaurs.

After that watershed moment (not just leaving Facebook, but leaving Facebook and not missing it at all), I resolved to stay away from social media for good. In my humble opinion, Facebook is possibly the least toxic of the social media outlets: at least it's people I know writing about things in their actual lives. On the other hand, Instagram is probably rife with duck-pout selfies and photos of people's dinners (this is my guess; I must admit I haven't checked). Snapchat is the place to go if you wish to receive unsolicited "dick pics" (again, this is my guess, not an empirical fact). And as I wrote earlier, Twitter is primarily celebrity-bashing, banal arguments, and disinformation. Weibo I'm less sure about, but it is probably filled with posts of people wholeheartedly endorsing the amazing Chinese government. In a nutshell, it seems to me that social media platforms are the means by which humans disseminate the drivel which we would tune out if someone were saying it IRL (in real life). Or it is the written (photographic) manifestation of smalltalk which is palatable in tiny doses, but causes severe nausea and brain damage when taken as a regular part of one's diet. 

So why the turnaround?

If the above is my genuine opinion of social media (and it is) then why on earth have I just joined Twitter?

Well, I was convinced by my friend and fellow grad student Mo (I'm not mentioning their real name; I wouldn't want to be named on someone's blog without my knowledge, unless they were citing my awesome work, of course). Mo said that Twitter is a great place to find out about new research, to make connections with people writing about similar things, and to find out about conferences. At first I was unconvinced, but Mo made a compelling argument. Mo also said Twitter is a great place to self-publicise (although Mo noted that they hate soing this, as it sounds so arrogant and conceited).

I gave it a fair bit of thought, and decided that Mo was probably quite right - Twitter could be useful.

But how could I go on Twitter whilst avoiding the chatter about celebrity cosmetic surgery and the banal minutiae of strangers' lives? Further reflection gave me my answer, and I felt more than a little sheepish. Social media is an echo chamber: if my previous experiences were characterised by pointless trivialities, then I had only myself to blame. If my online friends had interests which I was/am so disdainful of, then why did I engage with it - and with them? I must have engaged with it, because it kept coming back! 

The Plan

This time around, on Twitter, my intention is this: 

1. Follow only people or organisations whose interests truly fit with my own

2. Don't engage with banality, should I happen to see it

3. Unfollow people who routinely post banality 

Will it work out? We shall see. If I don't complete my PhD because I'm too busy commenting on botched nosejobs and why a score on Strictly should have been an 8 rather than a 7, then we'll know the experiment failed.

Wish me luck.

Scholar's guilt

Today is the first day in years that I've had an entire day to myself. My son is away for the day and night with Beavers, and I had an entire day to do with as I pleased.

Obviously, I have day times when he's at school and I am at home, but this was an entire 24 hour period.

It was weird.

So what did I do with my time? Well, I did a few necessary tasks like laundry, then I decided no, I should make the most of having the day of freedom.

So, I got myself a glass of wine (it was 4pm; I never drink before my son's bedtime to this was an uncharacteristic indulgence), set up the hammock hanging between two trees in my garden, and lay back and read a book.

Sounds leisurely enough, right?

The book was an academic text which I think will be pretty crucial for my PhD (John Danaher's Robot Sex). I was highlighting and making notes too.

The incessant studying even on a day of 'freedom' is of course caused by a phenomenon that many students, professors and academics are familiar with: scholar's guilt.

Whenever I'm not writing/researching (and not parenting) I have a voice in my head which says "you should be working on your PhD". It's like a micro-managing pedant lives on my shoulder, forever checking up on what I'm doing.

That's not to say I'm always working - of course I'm not! In fact I found the time today to scroll through Pinterest while lying in the hammock - then accidentally dropping my mobile phone onto the floor and smashing the screen on it 😭 (and I was only a couple of gulps into the wine, in case you're wondering!) But I digress.

The salient point is that while I was scrolling through Pinterest- and later, Googling how much it costs to repair the screen on my phone (it costs about 75% of what I paid for for the phone 😭) - I had scholar's guilt all the while.

I suppose it's just something that people either learn to live with, or they somehow overcome it. I don't get the guilt when I'm with my son, as there is no conceivable way I could do any substantive work while he's awake... but whenever he's asleep or away from me, I feel it. The nagging feeling that I ought to be working. Even when I'm sleeping over at my mum's house, or on the few occasions when I wake up before my son, the scholar's guilt is there, telling me to get PhD-ing.

Then again, perhaps a little scholar's guilt is a good thing, or else I may spend my non-childcaring time just lazing around in a hammock and drinking wine all day long. Then I'd never complete the PhD - and it'd cost me a bloomin' fortune in smashed phones too!

Should vaccinations be compulsory?

Health Secretary Rt Hon Matt Hancock MP recently articulated his support for compulsory vaccinations. He commented that there is a 'very strong argument' for making vaccinations compulsory, and I am wholly with him on this.

Anti-vaxxers

There is a small but significant group of people - anti-vaxxers - who don't believe in vaccinations. This scepticism might take a number of forms. Anti-vaxxers might believe that: 

1. vaccinations don't really work; 
2. other methods are better at protecting from illness; 
3. it's dangerous to inject diseases into people; 
4. vaccinations carry a significant risk of disease or other condition (such as autism); 
5. we shouldn't interfere with nature; 
6. vaccinating a particular child isn't necessary, because the disease in question is uncommon - perhaps because so many other people are already vaccinated.

Some of these standpoints are based in sheer ignorance, while others are based more on hope/faith. Below I examine these claims and argue that vaccination should be compulsory for all who can be vaccinated.

Vaccines don't work

There is a massive body of evidence which shows that vaccines work, and protect against illnesses far better than other methods. Nonetheless, just as abstinence will protect one against sexually transmitted infections better than a condom can, avoiding all human contact is likely to be very effective in the fight against communicable diseases. But in most cases, it's wholly unrealistic, and not a method used by anti-vaxxers anyway.

People might suggest that other methods - such as prayer, homeopathy, voodoo magic and so on - will protect against illnesses as well as or better than vaccines can. I would love to see a clinical peer-reviewed study into this. Group A is vaccinated against measles; Group B prays; Group C uses homeopathy or something similar. Then all participants in each group are exposed to measles in the same way - say, a person with measles coughs in their face. Then, we monitor the results, and see which of the people contract measles. 

Obviously, this sort of study would never pass ethical review - and why not? Because it'd be considered too dangerous for groups B and C! This is of course because we know that the non-vaccinated people would be in critical danger of developing measles, a disease which can kill.

Vaccines cause sepsis, autism etc

Although it's possible to cherry-pick anecdotal stories which show a person who was vaccinated later getting the disease, or to give credence to discredited 'scientific' studies such as the one which linked the MMR vaccine to autism, the overwhelming body of evidence shows that vaccines work, and are not dangerous.

There are some tragic cases where children die suddenly, and it is totally understandable that parents and other relatives or friends would try to find meaning in the death, and to know why it happened. Take sepsis as an example: it arrives with commonplace symptoms such as rapid shallow breathing, low temperature, and nausea, and by the time symptoms seem serious enough to seek medical help, the patient might be beyond the stage where they can be saved. It's only natural to think back to what could have caused it, and what has happened in the few days prior to the illness or death.

If a child has a vaccination, and then a few days later develops sepsis or some other horrible illness, it is understandable that a parent would make a causal link between the two, even if that link is unjustified. But any good statistician knows that correlation doesn't prove causation. Just because a child begins exhibiting symptom Y a few days after event X does not prove that X caused Y. Science doesn't work like that; superstitions do. If a child get sepsis a few days after walking under a ladder this is not compelling evidence of a link either.

So although it's understandable why people would make the link, it's unjustified.

We shouldn't interfere with nature

I have a great sympathy for this sort of attitude, and when it comes to something really invasive like a blood transfusion or an organ transplant, I am even more sympathetic to the standpoint. I can totally understand why some people might prefer to live a more simplistic and natural life, free from medical intervention and 21st century attempts to play god with medical science. It's not a belief I share, but I can understand the motivation to pursue such a life.

Often, but not always, such a standpoint might be grounded in religious beliefs such that one decides that if it is God's will that he dies from measles or heart failure, then so be it, God has decided. To try to circumvent God's plan by using medical interventions is contrary to God's plan and it therefore wrong. I respect that thinking, and when it involves things that only affect oneself, I would never argue that we should force people to have medical procedures they don't want.

HOWEVER

Whilst lifestyle and religious beliefs should be tolerated and respected, when S's religiosity starts to have a potentially fatal effect on everyone else's lives, tolerance and respect needs to come to an end.

If it were someone's religious or personal belief that one should carry razor-sharp weapons in each hand, and swing his hands vigorously as he walked, this is fine on a deserted island, but totally unacceptable in a public place - particularly around children who would be in greater danger from such activities. It would be legitimate to say he cannot enter a public place whilst swinging his knives around.

Analogously, if someone chooses to remain unvaccinated for religious or personal beliefs in the sanctity of nature, this is fine if they are alone or around others who share that belief. But when they bring their potentially disease-ridden bodies into a public place, they are playing Russian roulette with other people's lives - particularly children who are in greater danger from many communicable illnesses. It then becomes legitimate to say he cannot enter a public place whilst he is unvaccinated.

As John Stuart Mill wrote: "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." (On Liberty 1859/1974:68). I may have mentioned elsewhere that Mill is a legal genius, well ahead of his time, and although there are some problems with his theories which future scholars have had to iron out, the principle stands as a really useful one to live by. Do as you please, but when it starts to endanger others, your right to individuality ends. Mill would have supported compulsory vaccination.

Herd immunity

When a high enough proportion of people (typically 95-100% is quoted) are immune to an illness, the remaining 0-5% are safe too - after all, the disease is really uncommon and unlikely to be spread around. If I'm unvaccinated, but all the people I come into contact with are immune to an illness, then I'll never get the illness, because they'll never get the illness.

That's the theory, at least. For some illnesses, this is absolutely true, but I think there might be some illnesses which an immune person can still carry and pass on to others (I'm not totally sure about this though - maybe I'm just remembering that scene in 28 Days Later where the immune children passed on the zombie sickness to their mother?!)

Anyway, even if no one can carry an illness they're immune to, the herd immunity argument only works when the number of people immune to the illness is very high. If only 1% of people are susceptible to measles because everyone else is vaccinated, then there's only a very slim chance of coming into contact with another unvaccinated person - and a slimmer chance still that the unvaccinated person just so happens to be contagious at that moment.

But as the number of unvaccinated people rises, the chance of catching the illness increases. Vaccination against measles among UK children now stands at around 90% - one of the worst uptake rates of any developed country. Herd immunity to measles has been lost.

Some people can't be vaccinated, because they have an autoimmune disease or something similar. And babies aren't vaccinated against every illness the moment they leave the birth canal, but rather, they receive vaccinations in their first few months of life. This means that young babies and some older children and adults are susceptible to preventable illnesses. Why should their health be risked because S decides not to vaccinate their child and instead rely on herd immunity? The herd immunity approach should be reserved for those and only those who cannot be vaccinated for health reasons. Everyone who is able to be vaccinated should be vaccinated.

Smallpox and Measles

Child with smallpox

Does anyone remember smallpox? I don't. No one I know - indeed no one in the entire world - has had smallpox during my lifetime.

In the 20th century, smallpox was responsible for 300-500 million deaths worldwide; in 1950, there were an estimated 50 million cases of smallpox each year. I'm not a mathematician, but that seems like quite a lot. Yet in the last 40 years, there have been 0 cases of smallpox in the world, and it's all thanks to a worldwide vaccination programme. Without the vaccination programme, it would be highly likely that some members of my family and yours would have died from smallpox.

Measles hasn't been eradicated, and is still out there in the world doing its thing. It isn't just getting a bit spotty and feeling under the weather for a few days: it's horrendous, and can be fatal. In 2016, an estimated 90,000 people died of measles worldwide, and plenty of others suffered terribly with the disease, and were left deaf, blind, and with profound physical disabilities or even brain damage.

Wouldn't it be nice if measles went the way of smallpox, and we could eradicate it forever? It could be done through vaccination, if enough people were on board. It certainly seems as though a small but significant group of anti-vaxxers are trying to save measles from extinction, in much the same way that we might save whales and tigers from the brink. They are going out of their way to allow the disease to spread and remain alive, and they take to the streets to campaign, to get others to join their crew.

I would never wish illness or death on anyone, and I hope that anti-vaxxers never have to suffer the heartbreaking situation where their children die from a preventable disease simply because they refused to vaccinate them.... but some of them will die. Moreover, some newborn babies and people with autoimmune disorders who cannot be vaccinated will also die, simply because the anti-vaxxers wouldn't believe the science. It's a tragedy. A preventable tragedy.

Is it OK to ask whether a woman has kids?

People have made a claim in recent years that no one should ask a woman whether she has children, whether she's planning on having (more) children, and why (not). The claim is that having children is a personal issue which can be very upsetting for some women to talk about, whether they are being asked by strangers or close family members. Below I consider whether these claims are justified: is it really so bad to ask these questions?

Do you have kids?

For many years I couldn't imagine myself as a mother – nor indeed was I sure I wanted to become one. In my 20s, particularly after I'd been in a relationship for a few years, people would ask about whether I was planning on getting married, and whether I planned on having children. Although I found the questions a little tiresome, I gave my answer (‘no’ or ‘I don’t know’) and it was usually met with acceptance. Luckily for me I was surrounded by people who didn't pressure me or try to guilt me into following the conventional path of marriage and children. If I had been subjected to frequent questioning and pressure from my family, friends or even strangers, this could have been unbearable. So I can wholly understand why it is so annoying for people who are frequently on the receiving end of pressure to produce offspring.

During my childless years, strangers also occasionally asked me whether I had kids, and I didn't really mind this, it's a reasonable question to ask of a woman in her 20s or beyond. I wasn’t berated for being unmarried and childless, but I used to have to field the questions about why I didn’t have children, and those were more frustrating, as though I had to explain and justify why I hadn’t procreated yet. After all, parenting is (in many societies, at least) a lifestyle choice and not a moral requirement. So asking someone whether they are a mother seems permissible, but continuing to question them about why they are or aren’t a mother becomes something else. (Analogously, asking someone if they’re a vegetarian is reasonable, but asking “why are you vegetarian?” is infuriating. No one should have to justify their food intake any more than their procreation status, but that’s another post for another day). What we can avoid, and indeed should avoid, are the ‘why’ questions about someone is childless. When someone says they don't have any children, the whys and wherefores of their situation are no one’s business but their own. Asking whether they have children is engaging in small talk; asking why they don't have children is prying and pressuring.

Making connections 

People make connections with others by talking. It's how friendships build up, and conversations often make the day more pleasant and less boring. Generally, small talk focuses on elements of people's lives or the news – look at the weather, what's your job, where do you live, and suchlike. Asking someone whether they have children is in this category, it seems. As a mother, I know that talking about children to someone else who has children is a great way to find common ground and build a rapport. How else could I find out that we have this in common if I weren’t to ask them if they have kids? If someone asks another person whether they have kids and the answer is yes, this will probably be followed up with questions such as how many, boys or girls, how old are they, and so on. This is how people converse and make friends, and this should not be prevented.

There are of course some questions that are out of bounds for strangers to ask one another, for example about their sex lives, or their toileting habits. These are highly personal questions which would rightly be met with shock and condemnation if they were to be asked in most situations, but whether or not a person has children is not in this league. “Do you have any kids?” is much more similar to “What’s your job?” or “Do you have any pets?” than it is to “How often do you have sex?”

But childlessness can be a touchy subject. And there are many reasons why a woman might not have children. (The same is true of a man, but I don't think childless men are questioned and judged in quite the same way as a childless woman is: after all, a woman's sole function on earth is to raise children, right? (*sarcasm)) 

So, why doesn't S have children? Perhaps she doesn't have enough money to support a child; perhaps she is single and has no partner with whom to conceive a baby; perhaps she has chosen to focus on her career rather than motherhood; perhaps she is not attracted to men; perhaps she's planning on having children, but just not right now; or perhaps she simply does not like children and doesn't want to have any! These (and many others) are perfectly legitimate reasons for someone not to have a child. And it may well be the case that if these are the reasons someone doesn't have children they may feel comfortable saying these to family members or strangers. 

But there may also be people who would really like to have a child but for some reason they don't. For example, perhaps she or her partner may have a health condition which makes it difficult or impossible to conceive; perhaps she has been pregnant but suffered miscarriage or stillbirth; perhaps she had one or more children who have now died; perhaps she has gone through a divorce and not been given custody of her children; or perhaps her children have been taken into care because she was an inadequate parent. These are not likely to be topics of conversation which someone is happy to explain to strangers, and it is understandable why someone in one of these situations would hate being asked whether they have kids, and I have every sympathy for these people.

"I just get so upset when I think about the rain"

However, anything can be a touchy subject: any question which someone asks to another person in the process of small talk could potentially be upsetting. For example, suppose I strike up a conversation with a woman about the weather, complaining that it's raining again - this may seem to be an innocuous conversation starter, but she may find the conversation upsetting for some reason. For example, perhaps her partner is a meteorologist and she is just discovered he's been cheating; perhaps her daughter slipped when it was raining and fell under a bus and was killed; perhaps she is on the way to her sister's wedding and the rain is going to ruin the day; perhaps when it rains she is reminded of the time she was raped in the pouring rain; or perhaps she was talking about the rain when her mother had a stroke and has been institutionalised ever since. Any of these could be the case, and this could mean that my chatting about the rain upsets the person I'm talking to. However, the mere possibility that someone may be upset by talking about the rain should not preclude us from talking about the rain to anyone.

If mere chit chat about the rain could upset people, then it is easy to see how asking someone about their job, or whereabouts they live, or whether they have any pets, could be even more distressing topics of conversation, after all, they may have lost their job, or maybe they're about to have their home repossessed, or maybe their dog just mauled a child to death - who knows? The same can be said for asking them whether they have children. It might upset them, but given that most people are not upset or offended by being asked whether they have kids, it is reasonable to ask the question. I cannot allow the fact that someone might be upset by talking about children prevent me from asking them whether or not they have children. (As suggested above, interrogating them about why they don't have children is something quite different indeed. The why questions are just prying, and imply judgement too.)

The verdict

This hasn't been my most eloquent or philosophically flawless argument, but I think it is intuitively correct: we need to make a judgement about the chance that someone would be offended, versus the opportunity of building a rapport. "How often do you have anal sex?" is quite likely to offend, and minimally likely to build a rapport, whereas asking about the weather is very unlikely to offend, but doesn't build much of a rapport either. "Do you have kids?" is a reasonable way to build a rapport with someone, and although it carries the possibility of upsetting a minority of people, this should not preclude us from asking it - so long as we don't interrogate others about why they do or do not have kids.

Is it wrong to pierce a baby's ears?

In many cultures, it is common for parents to pierce the ears of newborn baby girls. This practice is very ethnocentric, meaning that it is commonplace in some cultures, and unheard of nd frowned upon in others. Some people  claim it is harmless, beautiful, and kinder than piercing the ears of an older child- and others claim it is cruel, sexist, and a violation of consent.

If you'd like to read a range of anecdotes and  viewpoints, see this Quora discussion. Below I examine a range of viewpoints and ultinately conclude that although it is a bodily violation and not medically necessary, it may be culturally necessary in some cultures to avoid bullying.

Wrongness

Many things are wrong. It's wrong to accept d a gift without saying thank you without taking a gift, and it's wrong to put millions of people to death because you don't like their skin colour. Both of these are wrong, but they are not equally wrong. Wrongness is a spectrum, and the above two acts are at opposite ends of the spectrum. If baby ear piercing turns out to be wrong, I'll need to say where on the spectrum it lies - just how wrong it is.

Wrongness comes in (at least) two forms: intrinsic wrongness and instrumental wrongness. If something is instrumentally wrong, it is wrong because of its negative consequences. If something is intrinsically wrong, it is wrong in itself, because of the type of act which it is - even if no negative consequences ensue. For example, we might think that dropping litter is instrumentally wrong because it harms the environment and disgusts people. On the other hand, we might think that lying in court is wrong in principle, regardless of the consequences. Of course, some acts may be both intrinsically and instrumentally wrong. Murder is probably wrong in both ways: it is instrumentally qrong because it upsets people, and intrinsically wrong because it's simply wrong to take a life. I'll show below that altbough baby ear piercing is intrinsically wrong (by a very small degree) it may be instrumentally right in some cultures.

Arguments in favour

First, I'll consider arguments in favour of piercing babies' ears. These are:

1. Babies feel less pain
2. Babies don't mess with their earrings
3. It looks cute
4. Most girls love their earrings
5. The holes stay open for life
6. It helps tell girls apart from boys

Babies feel less pain

The first argument in favour of piercing babies' ears is that babies feel less pain, or that they quickly forget about the pain. As for the first claim, here's a little experiment you can do: lay down a newborn baby next to a child, and an adult. Now, get an object such as a pencil case or water bottle, drop it onto each of them, and see who cries. My guess is that the baby would cry, while the others would not. Indeed, if one were to try a more unpleasant (and possibly illegal) experiment of hitting the people, I think the baby would certainly cry, the child may cry, and the adult would not. So the claim that babies don't feel the pain is totally unfounded.

As for the claim that babies don't remember the pain, this is more plausible. If we had hit the newborn, the child, and the adult, it is likely that 5 minutes after the hitting, the child and the adult would both remember that they'd been hit. Would a newborn baby remember it? There's no way to know. She might not behave like she recalls the pain, but that doesn't mean that the pain has indeed been forgotten. 

If it is true that babies forget the pain whereas children and adults do not, then it would seem to be more permissible to hit a baby for fun, than to hit a child or adult for fun. This seems intuitively distasteful. But this doesn't mean it is wrong, of course. There is not a clear way to ascertain whether babies remember the pain.

Babies don't mess with their earrings

It is important to keep newly-pierced ears clean; that much is certain. Adults with newly-pierced ears are good at keeping them clean, but children (aged 2-10) are likely to mess with their earrings with germy hands, possibly causing infections. Very young babies are not able to control their limbs properly, and couldn't fiddle with their earrings even if they wanted to, so their new piercings are likely to stay cleaner than those done on an older child.

But that alone isn't reason enough to pierce their ears. Amputation of the legs is likely to heal better (and be coped with more easily) when performed on a newborn rather than an older child or adult -- but that alone is not reason enough to amputate a baby's legs! We'd need to have some other (positive) reason to pierce a baby's ears or amputate their legs in addition to babies' advanced healing abilities.

It looks cute

I can understand why people think it looks cute, but I myself do not find it cute. It's not commonplace in the UK to pierce babies' ears, and yet we still have babies and children which are very cute. 

Besides, many things might be cute - surgically grafting cat ears onto a baby's head, or tattooing little hearts onto their bodies, but this does not give us adequate reason to do it. Later on, when I discuss consent, we will see that cuteness is insignificant when weighed against body modification.

Most girls love their earrings

This is probably true. Most girls like to look girly, and the chance to wear sparkly earrings like a princess is undoubtedly attractive to many girls.

But not all girls. Some girls don't want to wear earrings, but by the time they are old enough to object to their earrings, they have already had their ears pierced.

But for girls who don't want to wear earrings, they can just take them out, and the scarring is minimal. So ear piercing on a baby isn't like tattooing a baby, where it is significantly more difficult to reverse the procedure if they don't like it.

The holes stay open for life

Oddly, this is often given as a reason in favour of baby ear piercing. People say things such as "I haven't worn earrings in 10 years, but the holes are still there so I can put earrings in if I want to". This contradicts the above argument - that one can just take out the earrings if one doesn't want them. But the fact that the holes stay there for life is surely a reason to say that baby ear piercing is a lifelong infliction - a reason against it. And yet, proponents of babies with earrings use "the holes never heal up" as an argument in favour of ear piercing in newborns. Counterintuitive, huh?

It helps tell girls apart from boys

Among cultures where baby ear piercing is commonplace (such as Spain and other Latino cultures), this argument is frequently put forward, but it is utterly flawed.

First of all, why is it essential for people to know the sex of a baby? They should act the same way towards the baby regardless of its genital configuration or whether it has small pieces of metal in its ears. Perhaps they just want to know which pronouns to use, so they can say "She's gorgeous" or "He's gorgeous" rather than "It's gorgeous". Fair enough, but there are many cultures where baby girls' ears are not routinely pierced - how do they cope with telling baby boys apart from baby girls?

The answer is this: they dress their babies in gendered clothes such as pink flowery dresses or blue dungarees. Or, if one encounters a baby dressed in unisex clothing, one asks "is it a boy or a girl?", and no one takes offence. 

So this argument - the aid to telling boys from girls - is absurd. One doesn't need to tell a baby boy from a baby girl, but even if they do, they can look at the clothes or just ask - piercings are unnecessary for this purpose.

It's tradition 

This is probably one of the weakest arguments in favour of baby ear piercing. There are many abhorrent traditions involving the ritual alteration or mutilation of people's bodies. Some examples include Chinese foot binding, head binding, female genital mutilation, circumcision, tribal tattoos, and the stretching of the neck.

A tradition is only a tradition as long as people keep practicing it. If a tradition is cruel, outdated, unwarranted, or just plain stupid, then there is no need to keep following it. There is a saying: Who is the greater fool: the fool, or the fool who follows him? It suggests that copying stupid actions is even more stupid than the person who did it in the first place. The practice of foot binding (for girls) in China had been a tradition for a long time, but thankfully, people stopped practicing it, and it is now seen as the vile and unnecessary practice it truly is.

So piercing babies' ears solely because it is a tradition is absurd. We would need a better reason than mere tradition for piercing babies' ears.

Arguments against 

Now let's consider some of the arguments against baby ear piercing. These are:

1. It's dangerous
2. It's sexist
3. It's body mutilation
4. It requires consent

It's dangerous

Earrings can be grabbed and yanked out by the baby themselves, or by other children. They can get caught when removing clothing, or when playing, hugging etc. and when this happens, it hurts. But in the UK, quite a few kids (again, mainly girls) have their ears pierced, and almost all women do. How many people have had an earring ripped out such that their earlobe was actually torn? I would say the number is minuscule. Ear piercing is not dangerous.

It's sexist

Recall the argument above in favour of piercing girls' ears because "it's cute". Why is it only cute for girls and not for boys? The answer, of course, is because we have gendered ideas about what is attractive for boys and girls.

When people pierce a baby's ears, it is always baby girls whose ears are pierced. Very occasionally, one might pierce a single ear of a baby boy, but this is much less common than piercing both ears of a baby girl.

And the reason why it's girls rather than boys who have their ears pierced is undoubtedly because women wear earrings to look beautiful, like princesses and so on. So piercing the ears of a baby girl is a symbolic act which says "I want my daughter to look beautiful". This is highly distasteful, the reinforcement of the idea that girls should look beautiful, with sparkly jewellery, whereas boys should not.

This ethos is unpleasant enough when it circulates among adults, but it becomes more and more grotesque when inflicted on young children and babies. Does a 5 year old need to look beautiful? Of course not, so a new born baby girl certainly does not.

On the other hand, gendered clothes exist for children of all ages, including newborns. If we object to ear piercing among baby girls solely on sexist grounds, we should also object to gendered clothing. It should either be abolished, or it should be acceptable to dress a baby boy in a flowery dress. But many people against ear piercing still think that gendered clothing is acceptable, so sexism alone can't explain the wrongness of ear piercing.

It's body mutilation

Forcing pieces of metal through a child's skin is a form of body mutilation, as is tattooing, circumcision, female genital mutilation, foot binding, and several other (once) common practices. If we object to ear piercing, but not another form of body mutilation, we would have to show that ear piercing is more harmful or less necessary than the one which we accept.

Let's take circumcision, since it is shockingly common. Figures show that over 80% of US males are circumcised, and over 90% of males in Muslim-majority countries. I find this abhorrent and shocking; in the UK, only 4% of males are circumcised, and I can't fathom why anyone would do it to a baby. Given that there is no good medical reason for routine circumcision on babies, I find it sickening and intrinsically wrong that someone would remove part of the genitals of a newborn baby. Of course, people often claim that it's more hygienic (which it isn't), but mostly that it's a tradition - often underpinned by religion. As shown above, tradition alone is no good reason to alter the bodies of babies.

Anyway, since the removal of part of the genitals is far more intimate, invasive, and irreversible than the piercing of the earlobes, it is impossible for anyone to seriously claim that routine circumcision is acceptable but ear piercing is wrong.

Of course, someone might claim that both are wrong, because both are mutilation. This seems true, as they both irreversibly alter the baby's body. However, it is possible to remove earrings, and the remaining ear is very similar to an unpierced ear (there may be a small pinprick still visible). Compare this to circumcision, which irreversibly alters a boy's penis - if a circumcised boy decides he doesn't want to be circumcised, tough, he cannot reverse it, whereas removing earrings will give the person an almost identical ear to an unpierced one. Moreover, when one considers that a man will use his penis for urinating, making love, and masturbating, but a girl will use her earlobes for absolutely nothing, this further shows why ear piercing is far, far less harmful and less invasive than circumcision is.

It requires consent

This is related to the above argument. The suggestion is that body modification is something which morally requires consent, and a child - much less a newborn baby - is unable to consent. Some people even suggest that any touching of the body requires consent. 

This latter claim is reasonable for adults and older children, but is absurd with regards to nonverbal babies and perhaps even all children under 10. Babies and young children need to bathed, dressed, and to have their toileting needs met, but I cannot obtain consent to change my new born baby's nappy - I just change it. The fact that she cannot talk does not seem to be an issue - few if any people claim that I am violating the bodily integrity of my new born by changing her nappy without first obtaining her consent.

Sometimes young children who can speak say they don't want to have a bath or to have their nappy changed, but their wishes should not universally be respected, or they'd be living in filth, which is not in their best interests. Sometimes children's lack of consent should be ignored for their greater good.

This argument works for nappy-changing, but not quite so much for ear piercing, unless we could show that a child's wellbeing would be severely limited as a result of failing to pierce her ears. In somewhere such as the UK, it seems evident that young girls with pierced ears have a childhood indistinct from young girls with unpierced ears. But elsewhere, things may be different.

Recall above that ear piercing is, in Spanish and Latino cultures, used as a shorthand for telling the sexes apart: girls have pierced ears, boys do not. This means that a girl with unpierced ears may be met with confusion or unkind comments, in the same way that a boy who wears dresses may be treated in the UK. This could mean that a girl with unpierced ears could be an easy target for bullies, and this would limit her wellbeing. This alone might be incentive enough to pierce a baby girl's ears.

I said above that traditions are only traditions as long as they keep being practiced, and that is true, but the first few people who break with a tradition may have to be remarkably thick-skinned. Children can be remarkably cruel, and the sphere of gender roles is somewhere that children can bully one another mercilessly. A child who doesn't conform to gender expectations can be an easy target.

A parent might think that baby ear piercing is a silly tradition and that it's unnecessary, but go through with it nonetheless to spare their daughter the burden of being different. If one lives in a Spanish or Latino culture, then failing to pierce a baby girl's ears may be setting her up for a difficult childhood.

Conclusion 

Piercing the ears of a baby girl is invasive and unnecessary. It will be painful to the baby, but she will probably forget about the pain soon after, and the piercings will heal cleanly if the ears are pierced when she is young. It is reasonably non-permanent, and girls who later decide not to wear earrings can remove them and almost no scar is left.

Generally, people should have autonomy over their own bodies, and consent should be obtained prior to invasive procedures or body modification. Ear piercing is a slightly intrusive and momentarily painful procedure, so requires consent (circumcision definitely requires consent). However, we often think it acceptable to give a baby a painful inoculation in spite of the pain or her lack of consent, because we believe it is medically necessary. 

Pierced ears are obviously not medically necessary, and since it is painful and a form of body modification, we can say that it is wrong. It is intrinsically wrong to unnecessarily modify someone's body without their consent, even if no harm ensues. But how wrong is it on the spectrum if wrongness? I believe it is at the end of the spectrum, right next to going to a birthday party without a present. Although I maintain that it is intrinsically wrong to pierce a baby girl's ears, it is only a tiny crumb of wrongness.

It is intrinsically wrong, but, I maintain, it may be instrumentally right, because although it isn't medically necessary, it may be culturally necessary. In the UK it is seen as trashy and oversexualised for a little girl to have pierced ears, so it is certainly not a cultural requirement here. But some places have girls' earrings so ingrained in their culture that having a little girl with unpierced ears is like putting a boy in a pink dress with a bow in his hair. It could be seen as cruel to treat a child in such a way, because it invites confusion and unkind comments from others. So in cultures where it is commonplace for all young girls have pierced ears, it might be best to safeguard girls from bullies by piercing their ears - and probably the best time to pierce them is in the first few months of life, when they heal cleanly.

Brexit, Boris, and the future of the UK

As I write this, it's been 3 years since the Brexit referendum, and a week since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister of the UK. It seems a reasonable time to pause and take stock of where we've been, where we're at, and where we're headed -- and how we should feel about it.

In short, as I'll detail below, where we've been is that we've been either unified and disunified at different times; where we are  now is a changeover period, and where we're headed is disunity (until another union!)

How should we feel about Brexit? Well, if you're anti-Brexit, then by all means feel a little bit annoyed or concerned; and if you're pro-Brexit, then by all means feel a little bit pleased. Any more extreme a reaction than that is an overreaction. Things rarely turn out as bad as the popular media and even the "experts" predict.

Impending doom

Remember Y2K? It was predicted that on the stroke of midnight on 1.1.2000 aeroplanes would fall from the sky, mobile phones and computers would stop working, and the world would be hurled into chaos. As it turned out, nothing much happened.

Remember when the UK declared war on Iraq and Afghanistan? The papers warned us that it could be the start of WW3, and an era of terror was upon us, but that didn't happen. Many people have died in the war, and that's terrible - but there is certainly not a world war going on. For most of us, life today is just the same as it was before the war began.

Remember the Labour landslide in the general election of 1997? I was just old enough to vote, and I recall all us youngsters went out wearing red t-shirts and singing Things can only get better, REJOICING that 18 years of Tory rule had finally ended. I felt sure that we were on the cusp of a great revolution... But as the months turned to years, I realised very little had changed.

Remember when Romania, Poland and Bulgaria joined the EU? The papers warned us that we'd suddenly be overrun with migrants from these countries... but that doesn't seem to have happened either.

Remember when they said swine flu / bird flu / MRSA / SARS / Ebola / <insert infectious illness du jour> was going to decimate the UK population in numbers similar to the Great Plague? In reality, more people in the UK died from using hair straighteners than from these illnesses*. So again, the news paranoia spread fear over something which just didn't take hold.
* I made up this claim about hair straighteners, but it's probably close to the truth.

What I'm saying is this: people - whipped up by news media - expect the worst, and reality seldom turns out to be as bad as the pessimistic forecasts would have us believe. Sometimes things do turn out bad, of course, but there are far, far more times when all-out chaos and apocalypse have been predicted, and instead, life has just ticked on as normal.

I realise our country leaving a union with other countries is wildly different from Y2K, the invasion of Iraq, etc. We might think that unity is really important for Britain - but it's worth reminding ourselves that unions have been created and dissolved throughout our history:

• 6000 BC: The island of Great Britain is cut off from continental Europe by the English channel
• 43 AD: The island of Great Britain becomes part of the Roman Empire
• 122 AD: Hadrian's wall built between England and Scotland
• 410 AD: Britain is no longer part of Roman Empire
• 927 AD: Various areas (Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia etc) unify to become the Kingdom of England
• 1284 AD: England conquers Wales and the two are unified into a single kingdom
• 1603 AD: England and Scotland join in personal union (have the same monarch)
• 1707: England and Wales form a union with Scotland to become the Kingdom of Great Britain
• 1800: Great Britain forms a union with Ireland (the whole island) to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
• 1922: Ireland (minus Northern Ireland) leaves the United Kingdom; the remaining countries become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
• 1952: France, West Germany, Italy, and Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg) form the EEC, which later becomes the EU
• 1973: The United Kingdom, as well as Ireland, join the EU
• 2014: Scotland holds a referendum for Scottish independence (but chose to remain unified within the UK)
• 2016: The UK decide, via national referendum, to leave the EU
• 2019: The UK leaves the EU?
• 202?: Scotland gains independence from the rest of the UK

The above is just a whistle-stop history of England, the UK and the EU. What it doesn't show is all the other unions which have been formed and dissolved elsewhere in the world over the past 1000 years. Even within the last century we've seen the breakup and reunion of Germany, and the unions and subsequent breakups of the USSR, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia. Plus there are many other newly-formed countries all over the world (Western Sahara, South Sudan, Kosovo, East Timor, Serbia, and Montenegro, among others). These new countries haven't arisen because new landmass has been created; they've arisen because an existing country has decided to split into two or more separate nations. The state of political union between countries is not static; it's more volatile than the tectonic plates on which the countries sit.

The pertinent question is whether these unions and breakups have been for the better or for the worse for the countries involved. I don't claim to be an expert in international relations, but from what little I do know, the answer is a resounding ... "it varies".

I know this may be hard to stomach, because it doesn't fit neatly with the polarised debates the media like to feed us. Unsurprisingly, we've seen sensationalised headlines on both sides of the debate. On the pro-Brexit side, weve seen headlines such as "The deadly cost of our open borders" (which explains how foreign criminals emigrate to Britain for crime sprees) and "Patients are at risk from EU doctors". On the anti-Brexit side we've seen "May likened to Captain of the Titanic" and headlines describing a "Brexit earthquake" - and if you do a web search for the words 'Brexit' and 'catastrophe' you'll find enough reading material to keep you going for life.

The UK public - by a painfully small majority - voted to leave the EU, and if Boris Johnson's rhetoric is anything to go by, we will be leaving within the next 4 months.

Leaving a union and going it alone does not signal automatic failure and catastrophe for a nation - but nor does it signal automatic success and prosperity. If we look at the examples of other countries who have left unions with other countries, and broken away to form their own country, as I noted above, the prognosis is a resounding "it depends". It's not fully clear what will happen to the UK.

My shocking post-Brexit prediction

Now I will excite and shock you with my prediction about what our lives will be like in the UK post-Brexit:

Things will be a bit difficult for a while, then they'll settle down and go back to normal.

Yes, you read that correctly. I think that the economy, the NHS, education, industry and almost all the other facets of our lives will experience a period of turmoil for a month or two, then dininishing difficulties for 1-3 years, then they'll get back to roughly the way things were before. Maybe not exactly the way they were before - the exchange rate might be 1.49 instead of 1.38, and the organisations might spend their money slightly differently, but essentially, for the vast majority of people, life will feel just the same as it did before.

I understand why people are concerned about Brexit, because the news keeps telling us that it's going to be bad, but I really think that within 1-3 years, things will get back to normal, and then the long term will take care of itself. You might think I'm in denial, but I think I'm taking the news with a pinch of salt.

Who is to blame?

In these uncertain times, the fear and panic which people feel can be slightly mitigated when they have someone to blame. So who should we blame? Maybe the Vote Leave campaign for their false claims about Britain sending £350m a week to the EU? Maybe we should blame the media for taking sides, exacerbating hostility towards migrants and fear of the EU? Or perhaps we should blame the British people for voting on an issue they knew little about? But there's a small group of people - and one person in particular - who seem to have escaped people's wrath, and I say they have a lot to answer for. Who am I talking about?

David Cameron, and the Conservative Party which he led. He was the one who called the referendum. He is the one who started the ball rolling. If you want to blame someone, blame him.

If Brexit is a catastrophic problem, then why on earth hold a referendum in the first place? I've heard it said that the British public voting Leave is like a turkey voting for Christmas dinner. But you know what? Turkeys are pretty dumb, and if given a vote, they might well vote to become Christmas dinner, because they don't understand what they're voting about! So if you really want to preserve the welfare of the turkey, don't give it the vote at all!

If it's true that Brexit spells disaster for the UK, and that it's painfully complex to understand, then leaving such a life-altering decision up to the ignoramuses  on the street is utterly ludicrous. So if you want to blame someone for the way things are, blame David Cameron and the Conservatives. 

It is probably true that the UK public were (and still are) woefully ill-informed about what Brexit will do to the economy, public services etc. Most people make voting decisions on tiny scraps of rhetoric and posturing, in some sort of knee-jerk fashion. Given this (possible) fact, and if Brexit really will be a never-ending nightmare, then why give the British public the chance to vote for it? David Cameron may have the answer, but I do not.

Final word

There are many wonderful times in life, and many terrible ones. The best times of your life are things like your wedding day, playing with your kids, times with loved ones, and parties with friends. The worst times of your life are things like your parents dying, getting Cancer, your child having mental health problems, suffering a disability, being attacked, or getting divorced.

Very few people will have Brexit up there on their list of best or worst things that have happened in their lives. Will you really look back on you life and see Brexit as one of the worst things that has happened to you? If not, then why worry? Get on with your lives, getting married, having kids, partying etc, and enjoy yourself. If, on the other hand, Brexit is really one of the worst moments of your life, then you have my every sympathy.

But I genuinely think that in a few years, Brexit just won't be a concern any more. As Elsa once sang:
"It's funny how some distance makes everything seem small, and the fears that once controlled me can't get to me at all [...] let it go, let it go..."

If ever we need to take the advice of a Disney princess, it's now. Brexit is but a mere tiny blip in our lives, and less still in history.

Why sacredness is not a thing, and its OK to climb Ayers Rock

Plenty of things are described as sacred: buildings, natural sites, books, objects, maybe even people. I don't profess to be an expert on sacredness. In fact, I don't think anyone can be an expert on sacredness, because sacredness is not a thing. Nothing is sacred as a matter of fact. You might think that this book or that building is sacred, and that opinion will be shared by some but not others, but nothing is, as a matter of fact, sacred. This is because sacredness, like being valuable, beautiful, or delicious, is just an opinion, not a genuine property of something. This puts me squarely in the antirealist camp when it comes to sacredness, which fits with my atheism. We are clever apes who have progressed to the point where we make books, buildings, and artefacts, we hold ceremonies and make laws and pray to (non-existent) gods.

Of course, if you are religious then you will probably want to jump ship here, because you may not like what you're about to read.

Still with me? Ok then. So, take some inanimate objects like bricks, paper, fabric and wood. Bricks can be thrown in a pile, left in a builders merchants, built into a garden wall, or built into the shape of a church. If the bricks happen to be built into the shape of a church, the bricks do not suddenly become sacred in virtue of having been arranged into the shape of a church, do they? After all, I could (were my bricklaying skills good enough) arrange bricks into the shape of a church in my garden, and then use the structure for picnics, a place to keep my bins, or whatever; arranging bricks into the shape of a church wouldn't make them sacred. We'd agree that it wasn't a sacred place wouldn't we? I don't know, maybe some people would say the bricks had become sacred in virtue of being arranged into that shape?!

The same can be said about the other substances - paper can have all kinds of words and pictures printed on it - the terms and conditions from a contract, a story about Spiderman, or religious passages. To me, no piece of paper is any more sacred than any other simply because of the words that a printer printed on it. Burning 'sacred' or 'holy' texts in private, where no one will know (omniscient gods notwithstanding) seems morally unproblematic to me. In the same vein, wood can become a chair leg, or a cross; fabric can become a mini skirt or a headscarf.

Clearly, some people do believe that some items are sacred, so my simply denying that sacredness is a thing might seem odd.

But consider the following. Suppose we take an item which everyone agrees is not sacred. For example, a child's sock. Now let's suppose that one child believes the sock is sacred. Does that make it sacred? It seems not. But what if ten or twenty people believe it's a sacred sock? Once a group of people say an item is sacred, its sacredness seems to gather some weight. We might shake our heads and think that they are silly people, but still they'd believe the sock was sacred.

And if a whole ethnic group or religious group say the sock is sacred and they reinforce that through their actions - for example, they worship the sock or make offerings to it - then we would presumably have to shrug and say ok it's sacred to them. And maybe being sacred to someone is just the same as being sacred full stop?

How many of us have heard stories or experienced this ourselves - instances of people who've gone on holiday to strange and wonderful countries, and been doing something which they thought was totally reasonable, only to discover that the locals think the object or place is sacred and the tourist's actions are offensive or blasphemous. For example, taking a photo of a painting, or sitting on a rock, or talking in a building, or taking a selfie next to a statue, or touching a book, or standing under a tree. This list really could be extensive, because people the world over believe the most unexpected items are sacred. And that's ok, this is a free world where people can hold whatever beliefs they want.

But any such beliefs about sacredness need to be held by a threshold number of people in order to count as something that people should respect. If I believe that red chairs are sacred and I tell others not to sit on red chairs, but instead to take a quiet moment of contemplation when in the presence of a red chair, I am likely to be laughed out of town. But if I start a chair religion and gather a few hundred thousand people, my beliefs about the sacredness of red chairs might be a little more respected or tolerated.

But let's face it, red chairs are not sacred, and nor are socks. The sacredness is not an inherent feature of red chairs or socks, but simply something that onlookers may believe. "But it's just a chair" or "it's just a sock", people would insist, and they'd be right. Chairs and socks are not sacred, and nor are crosses and 'holy' texts. My believing a sock is sacred does not, as a matter of fact, make it sacred. It would make it precious to me, but not sacred, because the term sacred implies some godlike presence endorsing my belief in the sacredness of socks.

Should we respect sacredness?

Disclaimer: I like the ethical freedom to flit between deontological and consequential ethics. I do this as and when I please to suit my argument at the time. It's a free world.

In the case of supposed sacredness, I think consequentialism gives us the most sensible result. Suppose that a group of people think a particular piece of wood is sacred and should not be photographed, then it seems right that when in the presence of such people, I should not photograph the piece of wood. But when no one is around (and no CCTV or the like) then it doesn't matter one way or the other whether I take a photo of the piece of wood, just as it wouldn't matter if I photographed the red chair or the sock.

As I said above, people the world over hold the most ludicrous beliefs - that this rock should not be sat on, this building should not have menstruating women in it, this painting should not be photographed, or this mountain should not be climbed. Their belief that X does not make it the case that X.

Ayers Rock

Now, there are some objects or landmarks whose supposed sacredness is what makes them famous. For example, a statue of Christ, or Mecca, or the area where Moses parted the Red Sea. Without any beliefs in religion or sacredness, these places would be unremarkable and pretty unknown. Given that it is the area's supposed sacredness which makes it famous, it wouldn't seem right to travel to a place because it is said to be sacred, and then to disrespect its alleged sacredness in view of others.

But some landmarks would be remarkable even if no one knew that some people felt it was sacred - Ayers Rock is a prime example of this. The rock is remarkable because it's in an area of total flatness, and this natural monolith sprouts from the ground. (By the by, there are a couple of other similar monoliths in the area which are almost as impressive - Mount Conner and The Olgas). The rocks are remarkable and impressive in spite of any beliefs which locals may have about sacredness; visitors to the area would want to see these rocks whether or not they were said to be sacred. This seems to mark out Ayers Rock and its sisters as being interesting independently of supposed sacredness, and I suggest that this difference is crucial. I climbed Ayers Rock back in 2002. At the time, it was known that the locals did not want people to climb up it, because they felt it was a sacred rock. But I - and a couple of hundred other people - did climb it that day, and I imagine that similar numbers have continued to do so every day over the past 20 years. But it seems that tourism has finally bowed down and will soon stop people from ascending the rock, solely because some people have said it's sacred. It continues to draw attention due to this soon-to-be-enacted ban.

Even people who believe in God and believe that a church or a Qur'an or a turban is sacred might struggle to believe that a lump of rock can be sacred, so you can imagine how difficult it is for an atheist to accept that Ayers Rock is sacred. If some people said that Mount Everest or Lake Michigan or the English Channel were sacred, would that stop people from visiting them, walking on them or sailing on them? Of course it wouldn't. And not should it.

When I walked up Ayers Rock, I noticed that some areas had worn smooth with being walked on so much, and I suppose that smoothing has continued over the past 20 years. That is a contender for a sensible reason to prevent people from walking up it, in the same way that we don't traipse all over the Sphynx. It has nothing to do with sacredness, and everything to do with preserving incredible sites of interest. But how much damage has in fact been done to Ayers Rock? A millimetre here or there is nothing to write home about, and therefore we can easily see that the seemingly sensible reason is not really that sensible at all. Every day, people traipse up and down Ayers Rock, and even if it's a centimetre rather than a millimetre which has been lost, this is still not reason enough to stop people walking on it.

Ayers Rock is geologically incredible, Christ the Redeemer in Rio is impressive, and a religious text may tell a good story; they may be culturally important, financially valuable, and historically significant, but they are not sacred, because sacredness is merely an opinion which exists in the eye of the beholder. Ayers Rock is interesting and peculiar, but it is ultimately a lump of stone with no sacredness at all within its molecules.

Golf balls, one-word exam responses, and the myths of Philosophy

Philosophy is my life, and I love it. But not everyone really knows what it is (this includes my immediate family, best friends, and seemingly everyone who isn't studying philosophy). I just hope they haven't gone online to try to find out what it is, and found these absurd myths.

Philosophy professor with life lessons 

A philosophy professor stood in front of the lecture theatre and picked up a large glass jar. Wordlessly, he proceeded to put golf balls into it, until the class agreed it was full. Then he poured in gravel; the gravel filled the spaces around the golf balls. Again, the class agreed the jar was full. Then he poured in sand, which filled the gaps around the gravel, and again the class agreed that the jar was now full. Finally, he picked up a glass of beer and poured it into the glass jar. The beer filled the remaining gaps and the class agreed that the jar was finally full. Then the professor said "The golf balls are the most important things in your life, like family. The gravel represents other things that are important to you, like your house, job, and car. The sand is all the other things in your life, like fixing the dripping tap or doing the laundry." "What about the beer?" asked a student. "Ah, the beer just goes to show that no matter how full you think your life is, there's always time for beer!"

If you have never heard this story before, I'm sorry to have put you through it. Because this is not a post about how we ought to prioritise our family (although we should), and nor is it a post about how there's always time for beer (there isn't). It's a post rant about how these ridiculous urban myths which circulate the internet and the real world are not just irritating, but offensive to philosophy as a discipline.

There is already confusion about what philosophy really is. I am recalling open days I've attended (both as a student ambassador, and as a teacher) where people have said things to me like "I'm not sure what philosophy is, but I think it sounds interesting" (I have never really figured out how something can be interesting when you don't know what it is!) or "Is philosophy like psychology, because the words sound a bit the same". I've also been asked (usually by parents rather than students) "What's your philosophy?" as though 'my philosophy' is some sort of belief I hold about life. Now it's OK that people don't know what philosophy is - the fact that metaphilosophy is a thing demonstrates that maybe even philosophers aren't really sure what it is either!

But whoever circulates these banal tales is exacerbating the confusion. I've been in the world of philosophy for 23 years, and never have I ever come across demonstrations with golf balls about the importance of beer. Nor even have I ever come across uplifting life advice about the importance of family and why we shouldn't sweat the small stuff. This is an important message, to be sure, but not really within the realms of philosophy. The latest crazes for mindfulness and meditation have further blurred the lines for the public about what philosophy is. And input 'philosophy' into any university search box and you will get dozens of results stating that the university wants the best for their students, and how students should balance work and play, - you'll have to really dig araound to find anything about the subject discipline of Philosophy.

One word exam answer gets top grade

A final philosophy exam paper asks students to define what courage is. A student responds with the single word "This." and receives the top grade.
A philosophy exam paper consists of a single one-word question: "Why?" A student responds by simply writing "Why not?" and receives the top grade.

These urban myths are simply absurd, and really make a mockery of the gruelling nature of philosophical study - and what's worse is that many people seem to believe them! I have had students who have asked whether they are true, even after a year of writing philosophy essays. One or two students have, over the years, told me that they had constructed some clever one-sentence answer for a question on solipsism, the external world, or determinism which they were sure would get them a grade A*. I of course told them that their idea was a recipe for disaster, and thankfully, to the best of my knowledge, no one ever attempted such a smart-Alec exam response. But still the myth persists (among non-philosophy students, at least) that philosophy is a subject where one can achieve a top grade with a clever one-word or one-sentence response.

There's no right or wrong answer

Philosophy has got a name for itself as a subject where there aren't any right or wrong answers, everything is just an opinion. Ethics is probably to blame for much of this problem - many children's first (and sometimes only) taste of philosophy is a discussion in English, RE or PSHE about whether abortion/euthanasia is right or wrong. People say their opinions, argue about it a bit, then the lesson ends. As an introduction to philosophy, this sort of lesson with youngsters is not too problematic, but when it still exists among second year BA students, it is more problematic.

I'm quite the antirealist when it comes to moral facts, aesthetics, and several other fields, but the notion that in philosophy "you can just argue anything - it doesn't matter what" is a tragic misconception, and far removed from antirealism. And this confusion is echoed by resrachers in other fields, who are aghast that we philosophers don't gather data.

Don't you gather data?

People in the sciences gather data, analyse their data, and draw a conclusion; the same is true of many people in the arts, humanities and social sciences. So many of them simply cannot fathom how one can conduct research without gathering data; they just can't seem to get their heads around it. I have been to numerous interdisciplinary conferences (for example, those organised by my funding body M4C, and those organised by the University of Nottingham, and the incredulity is rife.

When I have told interested people that I am studying how care robots should conceive of harm and consent, they ask me questions like "So what data are you gathering?" "Are you going to survey people to see how they think the robots should act?" or simply "What's your methodology?" Some people have been confused, and others incredulous, bemused or even horrified about the fact that philosophers don't generally gather data (xphi notwithstanding). "What, so you're just going to write about your opinions of how robots should act? Without even finding out what anyone else thinks?" they ask.

All disciplines suffer caricaturing

I suppose it's too much to ask that the general public - and perhaps even students in other disciplines - really understand how philosophy is conducted. After all, I'm perhaps woefully misguided about other disciplines. I guess any subject can be distilled into an excruciatingly dismissive soundbyte:

• Literature: you just read stories and say what you think about them
• Biology: you just look at animals and plants
• Maths: you just add up and take away
• Art: you just paint stuff
• History: you just read about the past
• Philosophy: you just say your opinion about stuff
• Sport science: you just run about and throw balls
• Business studies: you just look at how to make money
• Media studies: you just watch TV

I suppose when placed among these sorts of oversimplified and misguided bullet points, philosophy probably doesn't fare much worse than the other subjects do. I see philosophy as the essential foundation onto which all other knowledge is built (How can you study history without  understanding whether the past really exists? How can you study literature without knowing what language is?) But I suppose that many people see their discipline as the foundation of all others - psychology, language, history, sociology, physics, chemistry and biology can all make similar such claims (and probably lots of other subjects can too!) Nonetheless, it would be nice if people didn't belittle or caricature philosophy, my one true love.

PS - Stupid urban myths which belittle philosophy are infuriating, but if you'd like to see a collection of genuinely funny jokes about philosophy, check out see David Chalmers' website. But note that most of these will only be funny for someone well-versed in philosophy.