Why we shouldn't rush to get back to normal

Life has changed in 2020. That's stating the obvious, of course.

I enjoyed my life in 2019 and previous years a lot more than I've enjoyed 2020, and my heart is aching to get back to freely seeing friends and family like I used to. I'm sick of my own house. Now, with a vaccine being rolled out before Christmas in the UK, it finally seems like life might get back to normal again next year. I, like most people, can't wait for things to get back to the way they were.

But although I loved the old normal much more than I love the new normal, if we think about it rationally, we probably shouldn't rush so much to get back to the old normal. After all, the old normal provided the ideal breeding ground for covid-19, didn't it?

The Perfect Storm

What was it about the old normal that enabled covid-19 to conquer the world? Our exploitative relationship with nature allowed the virus to transmit to humans in the first place, and our relationships with each other allowed the virus to spread. Specifically:

Habitat destruction. It's pretty simple: when we destroy animals' habitats, they either move elsewhere or die. We know they're dying because of the mass extinction that's taking place, but animals are also moving further afield - into human-populated areas. When humans and wild animals live in close proximity, disease can spread from them to us more easily.

Live animal markets. I can barely begin to explain my disgust at the abhorrent live animal "wet" markets which take place throughout China and some other southeast Asian countries. Aside from the morally indefensible ways in which animals are treated in such places, such markets enable humans to mix with wild, exotic, domestic and farmed animals. This makes them perfect places for viruses to leap from one species to another.

Who would have thought that markets like this would lead to disease?
Image source: Bangkok Post

Densely populated cities. If people had lived in rural communities which kept themselves to themselves, the virus would have fizzled out very quickly. I imagine there are uncontacted Amazonian tribes who are totally unaffected by covid-19; for those of us who live in cities, it's a different story.

International travel. Without air travel, the virus that began in Wuhan would have taken a long time to reach our shores, or may not have reached us at all. But with international travel being what it is, people were freely flying in and out of Wuhan and around the world throughout January, and the virus was here in the UK within just a few days of the outbreak in Wuhan. 

Shared facilities. Humans live in large communities where we share transport, shops, places of worship, educational establishments, leisure facilities, and food outlets with one another. Shared facilities - especially those with limited cleaning and high footfall - are ideal places for viruses to spread.

Twenty-first century living is great in many, many ways... But humans' way of life has created the perfect storm: covid-19 has spread astonishingly quickly. To put it bluntly, human contact with animals enabled the virus to make the leap to our species, and our interconnected lifestyles in big cities enabled it to spread.

But covid-19 is an anomaly, right?

Well, no. You'd be forgiven for thinking that covid-19 is an anomaly: I myself have pointed out in a previous post that several other lesser pandemics (or almost-pandemics) have come and gone over the last 20 years. 

And apparently, scientists have long been "preparing" for a killer pandemic, ominously calling the hypothetical disease "Disease X". (Wowsers, if 2 million deaths and international omnishambles occur when the world is prepared, then I'd hate to see what might have happened if weren't prepared!) The scientists apparently speculated about Disease X a few years ago. I didn't know this until a few months ago. 

We are lucky that the fatality rate of covid is so low (around 1-2%); by contrast the mortality rate of Ebola and Bubonic Plague (the Black Death) is around 50%. And the worst part of it all is that scientists predict that there will be another, deadlier pandemic within the next decade. I hope they're wrong, but I fear they may be right. If the old normal was a perfect breeding ground for covid-19 --which evidently, it was -- then a return to the old normal will facilitate a new pandemic at some point in our future.

So what should we do?

Clearly, if we are to avoid future pandemics then something needs to change. But I - probably like everyone else - want to have my cake and eat it. I want to have MY old life back, but I want the rest of the world to change so as to prevent future pandemics. I imagine that everyone else feels the same. We all want our old lives back, whether our old lives consisted of going to football matches, university lectures, playing Bridge at a friend's house, or gutting live frogs in a wet market.

I am willing to make concessions such as social distancing or wearing masks in shops, but to have to avoid my family and friends for the rest of my life for fear they might die if I breathe near them,.. well, I don't want to live the rest of my life like that. 

I think the UK is over the hump of the pandemic now (though I'm sure many more deaths will occur - possibly a few million across the world, and it may get worse before it gets better for the people in countries which are slow to vaccinate). 

Image source: Stat News

But what about future pandemics? Well, I never believed that covid-19 would be a pandemic until mid-March and the deaths were skyrocketing, but now I'm (sadly) a convert: I think there will be future pandemics. if it can happen once it can happen again. and next time might have a far higher death rate or it might pick off kids instead of the sick and elderly. There's just no way to know.

Will we learn from covid-19? We might wash our hands a little more frequently, and people may continue to wear masks voluntarily after covid has gone - the way Chinese people have long since worn masks for any and every occasion. And maybe we'll keep our distance from strangers a tiny bit more than we used to. But generally, in the long term, I think we'll be very quick to forget 2020 and keen to jump straight back into our old ways of life, while the next pandemic is quietly brewing away.

Are drag queens as offensive as blackface?

Over the past year or so, some people in the media have apologised for performing in blackface. In this post I'm going to argue that drag queens are offensive in the same way - although perhaps not to the same degree - as blackface is. Consequently, drag queens should be axed from the screens and stages just as Minstrels have been.

Blackface

Blackface, for the uninitiated, is when an actor or performer applies dark make up - typically to the face, but maybe the hands or elsewhere too - in order to perform as a person from an ethnic group with a darker skintone than their own. For example, if a white person was playing the role of a black person, and applied make up to facilitate that role.

George Mitchell, creator of the Black and White Minstrel
Show, was awarded an OBE in 1975 for his work on the show

Performances of people in blackface have not been acceptable on TV for some time. But there was a time when white people wearing caricatured black make up and dancing around a stage was prime-time entertainment. The Black and White Minstrel Show ran on the BBC from 1958 to 1978, and often drew audiences in the tens of millions - it drew a record16.5 million viewers in a 1964 show. The entertainment value of people in blackface dancing around is lost on me, and it is clearly a product of its time. Minstrel shows are thankfully no longer around, but blackface has still been on prime-time TV (albeit in a slightly different format) within the last 20 years. (And shows of people dancing around still unfathomably persist, but that's another story.)

Ant and Dec 'disguised' as Jamaican women
Patty and Bernice, in Saturday Night Takeaway.

Over the past few months, there has been a flurry of celebrities keen to apologise for wearing blackface in their past performances. The list includes Ant and Dec (on Saturday Night Takeaway), David Walliams and Matt Lucas (on Little Britain), and Leigh Francis (on Bo Selecta). The Mighty Boosh and League of Gentlemen also came under scrutiny for their use of blackface, and were removed from Netflix. The celebs are only too happy to eat humble pie and make statements such as "It was wrong then, and it's wrong now". 

In short, blackface is objectionable because it presents caricatured, demeaning stereotypes of black people;* this contributes towards the dehumanisation of black people which was a defining feature of slavery. The donning of black make up -- as if blackness is a costume one can wear for fun -- is a form of morally objectionable cultural appropriation. Given the history of oppression (not to mention present-day discrimination) which black people have suffered at the hands of white people, it's no wonder people object to blackface.
* Sometimes blackface involves an performer impersonating someone of Southeast Asian origin. The prevailing opinion seems to be that this is still offensive, though it lacks the slavery-related offence dimension. 

Drag queens

If it's offensive to dress yourself up as an oppressed (or historically oppressed) group to which you do not belong, then blackface is not the only form of offensive appropriation which exists. Although there are (morally questionable) examples of able-bodied actors playing disabled characters, they generally do not present ridiculous caricatures of disabled people.

However, the same cannot be said of drag queens. 

Drag queens, in my humble opinion, are horrific caricatures of what society (or perhaps just men) judge to be the defining features of women. Huge, coiffured hairstyles, ridiculous volumes of make up, false eyelashes, enormous breasts and/or bottoms, revealing dresses, trashy jewellery.... there is literally nothing fun or pleasant about what a drag queen represents. They represent the very worst expectations of women, donned by men for the sake of trite entertainment - typically in the form of singing show tunes or reality TV.

To be clear, I am not criticising transsexual women (people born physically male but who identify as female) or transvestite men (men who choose to dress as 'normal' women). These people are a whole different ballgame, and I can see nothing morally concerning about these people dressing as or identifying as normal women.

What I am objecting to here is the donning of the caricature outfit (and make up and suchlike) that is a requirement the drag queen. They are offensive in the very same way that minstrels and blackface are offensive, and here's why:

 

1. They perpetuate dangerous and offensive stereotypes. Women are not just big hairstyles, big boobs, trowel-fuls of make up, and showy clothes. But this is the image that drag queens portray when they "dress as women". This stereotype of women as nothing more than a sexualised, glamorous appearance is offensive - after all, drag queens are not impersonating the intellects of female scientists, the bravery of female firefighters, or the compassion of female nurses. The only thing they portray is the vile oversexualised appearance of the female caricature.
2. They involve a powerful group dressing up as a less powerful group. They say that when it comes to comedy, you should 'punch up', not 'punch down'. This means that it is less offensive to make fun of those in power than it is to make fun of oppressed (or historically oppressed) groups. Sexual inequality has been rife throughout history, and still persists today in many areas of our lives. Just as it is offensive for white (privileged) people to portray caricatures of black people, the same is true of (privileged) men portraying gross caricatures of women.
3. They use appropriation as entertainment. With The Black and White Minstrel Show, cultural appropriation was central to the entertainment value of the act: the fact they were white men made up as black men was (apparently) entertaining in itself. White men dancing, or black men dancing, just wouldn't have had the same sort of appeal. Similarly, a woman (dressed normally) or a man (dressed normally) singing the show tunes of which drag queens are so fond - well, it just wouldn't be the same. I suspect that most if not all drag queens are men who have tried to make it as (normal male) singers, failed, and have turned to drag queening as an alternative route to success. Their absurd make up and outfits make them inexplicably more appealing to audiences, just as wearing blackface suddenly (absurdly) catapulted the Minstrels to success.
4. They pick out caricatured features of the target group. The Minstrels had the white eyes and the white or ruby red lips in stark contrast to the dark skin (make up). The drag queens have the enormous breasts, excessive make up, absurd hairstyles, and revealing dresses. Both pick out nonessential features of the target group, and do so in an unsympathetic way. Watching the show does not help us to feel more sympathetic towards the oppressed group, nor see them as equals; instead, it just encourages us to laugh at them. Drag queens and Minstrels add to the oppression because they dehumanise the target group, making them appear as 'other' and presenting a one-dimensional view of the target group.

If it is morally abhorrent for white people to dress up as caricatured stereotypes of black people for trite entertainment, then it is equally abhorrent for men to dress up as caricatured stereotypes of women for entertainment. Just as celebrities (and perhaps non-celebs) today are apologising for their cultural appropriation (blackface) from decades gone by, I think - and I hope - that in future we will see men apologising for the "sexual appropriation" which they engaged in when being a drag queen. 

The make up, hair, dresses, and oversexualised behaviour are inseparable from the drag queen; without these things, the drag queen would simply not be a drag queen. The Minstrels would no longer have been Minstrels without the blackface, the music, and the style of dancing, and so they could not simply tweak their act to make it more culturally sensitive: the Minstrels simply had to go. Similarly, drag queens cannot simply reinvent themselves in a more politically correct format -- without the features I am objecting to, they would simply not be drag queens. They would just be normal men with mediocre singing voices. For this reason, and the reasons outlined above, I maintain that drag queens should be consigned to history, along with The Black and White Minstrels. There cannot be racial progress when those in a position of racial privilege make fun of black people, and the same is true of women. Women cannot fight for sexual equality when they are being sexualised and made fun of by the very group of people who has the power to provide that equality: men.

But people love drag queens!

Maybe so. But people also loved The Black and White Minstrels. As I said above, the show regularly pulled in audiences in the tens of millions in the UK in the 1960s. And just ten years ago we were still laughing at the blackface characters in Little Britain, The Mighty Boosh, and the League of Gentlemen. Times change, and just because there are many ostensibly non-sexist people who like drag queens (as there were many ostensibly non-racist people who loved the Minstrels) that does not make it morally right for a privileged group to caricature a less privileged group. 

Disclaimer

I have argued elsewhere that I have not experienced a great deal of sexual inequality in my life. I stand by that. Most of the men I have met have been lovely, and have not given me the impression that they think less of me because I'm a female. The men who are drag queens are quite probably nice people on an individual level - and I imagine lots of the Minstrels were nice guys too. That said, sexual inequality does still exist in the UK and elsewhere, and it would be great if we could make more progress towards genuine equality. We are making progress with racial equality, and the move away from Minstrel shows was a step forward. Getting rid of drag queens will be a step forward for sexual equality. It will not be a panacea of course, but baby steps are nonetheless a form of progress.

The US election in Venn diagrams

Today is election day in the US. At times, it seems to dominate the news media more so than the UK election did! I thought it would be fun to do a post about the US election, told through Venn diagrams.

What happened in Texas

In Texas this week, Trump supporters ambushed a campaign bus of Democratic candidate Joe Biden, intimidating them and causing the bus to abandon their campaign events. Trump later took to Twitter to praise his supporters for intimidating the Biden campaign bus.

The central area of the Venn diagram is where such events occur: the intersection of far right leadership, an election, and guns. It's not entirely clear to me whether guns were used in the ambush, but certainly, in a country where gun crime and civil unrest go hand in hand, it is no wonder that the Biden camp were afraid of gun violence. It was in Texas too, a state well-known for its love affair with guns. 

Postal votes and fraud

Trump is concerned that postal votes are fraudulent. This is entirely independent of the fact that postal voters generally tend to favour the Democrat candidate, of course. If postal votes are included in the full count, this lowers the chance of a Trump victory. A strategy then for Trump is to try to undermine confidence in postal votes, and even going so far as to claim they should be ignored. He plans to claim victory before the postal votes are counted.

Studies have found no significant connection between postal voting and fraudulent voting - no more than in-person voting, anyway.

How I'll feel when watching the election results

The election seems to have been in the news for an eternity. Considering that the UK is not the 51st State of the USA, it's interesting to see that the media covers the US election with almost as much interest and passion as it follows our own elections. It's big and important, sure, but I would like it to be over now. But it'll be a while till it's truly over, because it takes quite a while to count all the postal votes. Why they can't employ more vote counters is anyone's guess, but apparently it can take "weeks" to count them.

Why we'll watch it

In spite of the above "is it over yet" mentality, I'm sure many of us in the UK will still check the news at frequent intervals to find out the results as they come in. Why? This Venn diagram shows why.

Any news that is unrelated to covid-19 (or Islamist terrorism in Europe) is like a breath of fresh air. A second big reason is that car crash gawping tendency we have; like watching a horror film through your fingers. I want to watch, but I daren't, for fear of what might happen. 

Public opinion

This last Venn diagram speaks for itself. The world is crossing its fingers.

Disclaimer:

These Venn diagrams are not scientific, and reflect only the sense I get from the news media. The internet is something of an echo chamber, and so it's very possible that the impression I've got from the news outlets I read is not the correct one. 

A final note on democracy

Democracy is great. When people vote, the people should get what they want. I've written elsewhere that the first past the post system is flawed. In the US 2016 election, for example, Hilary Clinton won more votes than Donald Trump, but Trump won the election. That doesn't seem right: I believe that whoever gets the most votes should win the election. Whether or not I like Trump is irrelevant; all that matters is whether the majority of American people vote for him. If they do, then it's right that he becomes President again. 

I've written elsewhere that we should respect politicians because they are, after all, only attempting to represent the views of the people. Trump has some abhorrent views, but if those are the views of the American people, then it's fair for him to win the election, because democracy is more important than getting what you want. This is particularly true for someone such as myself, who is not American; my opinion on US politics really counts for nothing.

EDIT: 4 Nov at 11.20 am GMT. So far, it's 238 electoral votes to Biden, and 215 to Trump. It's not over yet though.

EDIT: 5 Nov at 9.10 am GMT. Biden has 264 electoral votes, Trump has 214. I don't know how Trump's number of votes has gone down since yesterday, but it seems to have done so. So Biden looks almost certain to win. Trump, being a caricature of himself, is throwing his teddies out of the pram and squawking about fraud, and that he'll take it to the Supreme Court. In totally unrelated news, the Supreme Court is choc-full of Trump's buddies. 

Whatever the result of the election, civil unrest seems highly likely in th US in the coming weeks or months. Whether it comes from Trump supporters who believe fraudulent votes have been cast, or from Biden supporters who are angry that democracy isn't being respected, civil unrest seems almost inevitible. Civil unrest in a country where gun crime is already very high. Civil unrest in the country with the world's highest number of coronavirus deaths. Civil unrest in a country where the police and military are horribly heavy-handed. It ain't gonna be good.

EDIT: 6 Nov at 2.20 pm GMT. The result is still uncertain. Still 264 to Biden, 214 to Trump, according to Google. I think Trump is wrong to say that postal votes should be ignored, but he's absolutely right to be exasperated with the amount of time it takes people to count the votes. Jeez! It's simply unbelievable that the country which claims to be the pinnacle of liberty and democracy makes people queue up for 14 hours in order to cast a vote, then takes days or weeks to count the votes. I think kindergarten kids could count faster than this!

EDIT: 7 Nov at 7.35 pm GMT. Hallelujah! There is finally a result to the election! And it "only" took 4 days! What's more, it's the result I for one was hoping for. Biden has won. Not all the votes have been counted yet (wowsers, this counting sure takes a while) but Biden has won more than the magic 270 votes. It's 290, so far. Yay for democracy! Yay for sanity! That said, Trump has secured very close to half of the votes ("the popular vote") - around 48%. Even though I don't like his views, clearly a lot of Americans do, and I think it's only fair that they should have their views represented. Proportional representation is the fairest political system, and it's still fairest even when the person you meant to win is first past the post.

Will Donald Trump accept defeat graciously? If he does, I'll eat my hat.

Essential shopping and the sorites problem

This week, as part of its "firebreak" lockdown, Wales announced that supermarkets will no longer be allowed to sell non-essential products, and it got me thinking about what "essential" products really are.

Below I'll argue that no products at all -- even food -- are essential if "essential" is to be understood as necessary for the preservation of life. Secondly, I'll suggest that even though many products are not truly necessary, it is reasonable for them to continue to be sold to us in 2020.

The firebreak

First, a bit of background. Wales, like the rest of the UK and indeed much of the world, is suffering rising numbers of deaths from covid-19. First Minister Mark Drakeford announced a couple of weeks ago that Wales would a so-called "firebreak" lockdown. More commonly referred to as a "circuit breaker" lockdown in England, a firebreak is a short (2-4 weeks) but thorough national lockdown aimed at cutting the spread of the virus in order to:

A) save lives

B) decrease the strain on health services 

C) prevent a longer or more extensive lockdown being needed further down the line (a sort of "stitch in time saves nine" approach)

These are noble goals. The idea is that making people stay at home and refrain from mixing with one another should stem the spread of the virus. Under normal (or even "the new normal") circumstances, people often leave the house to buy non-essential products, so if non-essential items are not on sale, then that's a lot fewer people out spreading their germs around. It makes sense to me. But what products are actually "essential"?

Food

To know what products are essential, we need to know what "essential" means. Does it mean essential to having a nice, fun, plentiful life? Or does it mean people would literally start dying without said product? Perhaps it means something in between.

Setting the bar really low

If we define "essential" as "essential to having a nice, fun, plentiful life", then just about every product seems essential. This includes consumer electronics, all clothing, furniture and soft furnishings, toys and games, DIY products, entertainment items, books and stationery, as well as food and drink. Basically any item which is on sale might appeal to someone as a product which can give them a slightly better life, so is essential, and therefore can be on sale during the firebreak lockdown. 

"I just picked up a few essentials." 
Image source: Unsplash

Setting the "essential" bar this low would mean that all retail outlets would remain open, selling everything they always did. I don't think that's what the First Minister had in mind. 

Setting the bar really high

Perhaps the most intuitive definition of "essential" is "people will die without it". Essential does, after all, mean necessary; required; needed. Essential can mean essential to life. But it seems to me that just about all foodstuffs are non-essential.

Will I die if I don't eat my favourite brand of sausage? Nope. Will I die if I don't eat any fruit? Nope. Will I die if I don't eat any X (where X is any individual food or drink item)? Nope. Anyone who has watched the TV show Freaky Eaters will know that people can survive on remarkably limited and seemingly unhealthy diets for years or even decades.

Food is essential, but no individual food is essential. This presents us with a philosophical conundrum. Does this mean the shops should sell all foods, or no food. No one can reasonably argue that supermarkets simply must sell (e.g.) shitake mushrooms, thyme, canned salmon, mint ice cream, and digestive biscuits. We can live without these things. People might see milk, bread, eggs, and fresh fruit and veg as essential, but they are not. We would not die without these products. (The only product which I can see is essential in its own right would be baby formula for unweaned babies who aren't breast fed.)

This presents us with a sort of sorites problem: 

• If the supermarkets all stopped selling one product, we could easily survive.
• If the supermarkets all stopped selling two products, we could easily survive.
• If the supermarkets all stopped selling n products, we could easily survive.
• ... 
• Conclusion: If the supermarkets all stopped selling all products, we could easily survive.

The conclusion is obviously false, as with all sorites problems. The nature of a sorites problem is that small incremental changes to the number of items on sale (or grains of sand in a heap, hairs on a man's head) do not make any discernible difference to the conclusion that there is enough food (a heap of sand, the man is bald), but a big change does make a difference. All food isn't essential, but some food is.

There is no magic number at which we can say that the supermarkets are selling the "essential" number of foodstuffs. Moreover, even if we did discover the magic number of essential foodstuffs (say, 36 foods), that still wouldn't tell us which foodstuffs are the essential ones. Even if it were the case that, say, bread is essential, that still would not mean we needed 80 varieties of bread on sale in the supermarket.

Image source: Unsplash

But something tells me that Mark Drakeford wasn't concerned about a sorites problem when he proposed that supermarkets are only sell essential foods. 

In reality, outside of the philosophy classroom, we don't much concern ourselves with sorites problems. [Although I wrote this post about my son presenting me with a sorites problem when I asked him to eat all his peas.] We just tend to pick a point for the sake of pragmatics, and go with it (recent examples include the Rule of Six, and the limit of 15 guests at weddings).

In actuality, Wales' First Minister has deemed that all food products are essential, assuming they are for consumption off site (because cafes, pubs, and restaurants are closed). It's not true to say that they are truly essential, but deeming all food essential certainly helps to avoid unhelpful criticisms about why this food is more essential than that.

Alcohol

Don't even get me started on why the UK government and Welsh Assembly believe that alcohol is a necessary foodstuff. Off licences were one of the few "essential" businesses permitted to stay open during the first UK lockdown back in March. I know Brits are known around the world for drinking 15 pints in one session on a Friday night (and the same again on Saturday night, and maybe a few cheeky pints on Sunday too, plus a few cans after work during the week), but for the government to maintain that alcohol is essential is absurd.

I love a good bottle of red wine, but seriously, nobody needs alcohol. We might like it, love it, or even feel we need it, but we don't. In fact, a firebreak from alcohol might do more for the health of the nation than a firebreak from covid! The sheer horror of having a fortnight of sobriety is clearly too much to handle. Food is essential: booze is not.

Other products 

Even if we accept that food is necessary, just about all other products in our lives are non-essential. Health-type products such as toothpaste, soap, sanitary towels, toilet paper, and laundry detergent might seem pretty important, but are they essential? Would we die without these products? Of course not! Plenty of people around the world manage without these things for their entire lives. It wouldn't be pleasant (for Brits) to have to survive without toilet paper, but bums can be cleaned with water and cloths, as they are elsewhere in the world. 

The Great Toilet Paper Shortage of March 2020
Image source: Unsplash

During the 'Great Toilet Paper Shortage' of March 2020, I refused to panic buy, and was consequently was forced to face up to the prospect that I might have to do without loo roll as my supplies dwindled and I searched for toilet paper in 6 shops across 3 days. I cut up some old tea towels and bed sheets in preparation and desperation. Thankfully, I managed to secure 4 rolls of toilet paper at the eleventh hour from a petrol station, so the cloths were never used for that purpose - but they could have been. My point is that toilet paper is not truly essential; we could have survived without it.

Sanitary towels, too, are not a matter of life and death. Women across the world are forced to live in conditions such that they must use whatever they can during their periods. Cloths, toilet paper, menstrual cups -- all of these are alternatives to sanitary towels and tampons. Few women would want to go without sanitary products, but we could do it if necessary. Edit: It seems that some supermarkets have told shoppers that they can't buy period products! It's hard to know what to make of that. I know I'm saying they're not essential to life and limb, but they're more essential than alcohol, cakes, and many other products which remain on sale in Wales.

Concluding remarks

Image source: Unsplash

Under Wales' rules, the only shops which can stay open are food shops, convenience stores, newsagents, corner shops, bicycle shops, petrol stations, DIY/hardware stores, and off licences. This is a bizarre choice of shops if you ask me. It would seem that the First Minister believes that essential products are food, alcohol, petrol, bikes, and DIY products. Welsh shops have stopped selling stationery, cleaning products, and winter clothing. So I can buy wallpaper but I cannot buy a pen; I can buy 24 cans of Special Brew, but I cannot buy a coat. I can buy bathroom tiles, but not some disinfectant. 

I realise that as with so many things during the pandemic (and probably the rest of the time too) the government are damned if they do, and damned if they don't. Could we survive without almost all products in the supermarket? Of course we could: shops are only a recent development in the history of mankind, and people around the world survive every day without tampons, bikes, alcohol and newspapers. But should we be expected to survive without these products in 2020? Probably not. It's quite reasonable for the Welsh people to demand that winter coats, tampons and disinfectant should be on sale even during the firebreak lockdown.

Edit: several of the news stories above seem to have prompted the supermarkets / the Welsh Assembly into conceding that period products, winter clothing, cleaning products and stationery should remain on sale in supermarkets during the firebreak. 

Will people of the future tear down our statues?

Black Lives Matter protesters tear down statue of
slave owner Edward Colston

I've written elsewhere about why we shouldn't airbrush our history, and edit offensive bits out of old TV programmes. This isn't an Orwellian novel, where we edit our history to be the way we want it to be... or is it? In recent months, there's been much talk of how we deal with our history, particularly with regard to statues and street names. Several statues of historical figures have been torn down, including Edward Colston, whose statue was torn down in June during Black Lives Matter protests. Some historians have suggested that the removal of historical statues impoverishes history; other historians call such claims nonsense.

Here I'm going to defend the claim that if we think it is morally permissible to tear down the statues and rename the buildings which celebrate people whose views we oppose today, we must accept that it is also morally permissible for future generations to tear down the statues of people who we today celebrate and see as national treasures.

Imagine, if you will, a public figure of present day (ish) who is considered to be highly respected or a national treasure. Perhaps David Attenborough, Trevor McDonald, Michael Parkinson, Princess Diana, Bruce Forsyth, Captain Tom Moore, Claire Balding, or Jamie Oliver.

Let's go with Sir David Attenborough: I think he's fantastic and has done so much for conservation, and is well deserving of a plethora of awards. There is a nature reserve here in Nottingham named after him. There's a ship named after him (remember "Boaty McBoatface"?). There are even a few species named after him. I bet there are plenty of other things too - and deservedly so.  I think he's a national treasure, but if you don't agree, just insert the name of another all-round good egg in instead of him. As far as I know there are no statues of him, but let's suppose that one is erected, and it is there to celebrate all the great things he's done, and what a great man he is.

Now, suppose it's 150 years from now, in 2171, or thereabouts. The Attenborough Nature Reserve is still there, the HMS Attenborough is a museum ship, his statue is still there, and plenty of other things named after him are still around.

Let us suppose also that laws and social attitudes have moved on, and some things which are commonplace, legal, and generally considered permissible in 2021 are uncommon, illegal, and seen as morally wrong - even abhorrent - in 2171. For example, suppose the age of consent is 24, it's illegal to eat animals, and it's seen as just plain wrong to fly in an aeroplane for tourism or entertainment. I know that David Attenborough eats meat and flies by plane to different places; I'm less sure about his sexual experience, but let's say he has, as most people have, had sex with someone under the age of 24 at some point in his life.

How will future people view us? Source: Unsplash

So what would the people of 2171 have? They'd have a nature reserve named after a man who is celebrated for his "conservation" work with animals, and yet he munched down on dead animals on a daily basis. I can easily see how the people of 2171 could call this hypocrisy. There'd be a statue of a man who - wrongly and disgustingly in the eyes of the people from 2171 - had sex with "children" under the age of 24 (for example, a 22 year old). And there'd be a museum ship - itself a polluter of the seas - which was named after a man whose flights around the world contributed to the very climate change he spoke out against in his senior years. The people of 2171 are not happy: they see David Attenborough as a relic of a vile and barbarous past, and they see the man himself as a hypocrite in terms of his treatment of animals and the environment - added to which, he had sexual relations with people who were below the age of consent in 2171.

David Attenborough, so respected and revered during his lifetime, and mourned upon his death, is a figure representing beliefs and actions which are 'of his time', and the people of 2171 have no place in their hearts for someone who treated animals and the environment so badly (by eating them and polluting it, in their eyes), and in his sexual attitudes towards minors.

The fact that Attenborough has done a great deal for the environment, and that his views on meat eating and the age of consent are well-aligned with his contemporaries is lost on the people of 2171. They simply say "Eating animals, polluting the environment by air travel, and sex with minors, is wrong today, and it was wrong back then. The fact that many others in society also had the same values as Attenborough does not make it right. The fact that these things were legal does not make it any less morally objectionable." More 'active' activists tear down his statue, and demand that anything named after David Attenborough be renamed after another person with more palatable, less archaic beliefs and actions.

This is an entirely plausible future history, and is remarkably similar to the stories we see today about statues made in the image of particular historical figures, and the buildings, streets, and other things named after such people. Is eating animals and flying in an aeroplane as morally abhorrent as slavery? I don't think it is. But I do not have my beliefs in a vacuum; they are inherently linked to the time period in which I live. If I'd have lived in a different time, I am sure my views would have been coloured by the commonplace those around me. 

I don't know much about the men whose statues were torn down earlier this year. Maybe they really were monstrous villains who bought their way into the history books and did no good deeds whatsoever in their lives. Or perhaps, like all of us, they did some good deeds in the world, and others which have not stood the test of time, as the moral tides have rolled onwards. Perhaps - almost certainly - the people who we consider national treasures today will not be quite so treasured by future peoples. In all likelihood, our descendants will see us as immoral and uncivilised, the way we look upon our ancestors who supported slavery, and our descendants will be tearing the statues which we erect today.

We can shrug and say so be it: we in 2021 have a right to tear down the statues of slave owners, just as the people of 2171 have the right to tear down statues of anyone whose views or actions they see as morally wrong. But if we think that the people of 2171 would be misguided to tear down the statue of Sir David Attenborough and vandalise it, then we should probably view the protestors who tore down the Edward Colston statue in the same way. 

Human evolution. Source: Pixabay

Evolution continues, and it would be absurd and conceited to believe that we are the pinnacle - the finished product - of evolution. Similarly, our social attitudes are evolving and changing too. Slavery, sex with 12-15 year olds, and owning your wife were once legal and normal parts of life; meanwhile, homosexuality, inter-racial marriages, and sex outside of marriage were not just immoral but illegal. We might like to think that the moral codes we possess today are the right ones and the best ones, but our descendants will probably see us as backward and abhorrent as we today see our ancestors.

Lives versus livelihoods

Picture the scene... you're standing on the edge of a precipice. There's been an accident, and someone is hanging off the edge, barely able to cling on. But they're not the only thing hanging off the edge of the cliff. Nearby, someone's job is also hanging off the edge, barely able to cling on. You can save either the person or the job, but probably not both. It is not guaranteed that you'll be able to save either, but you can give it a go, though it will involve a bit of inconvenience for you to attempt to save either of them. So, which do you choose to save - the person, or the job?

It's a no-brainer, right? If we can ignore for a moment the fact that a job isn't a physical thing that can hang off the edge of a cliff, saving the person's life is still intuitively morally correct.

In case you're unconvinced that lives outrank livelihoods, here's another example.

Picture the scene... a building is on fire. Trapped inside is a person, breathing in the smoke, coughing - they will probably die if no one does anything. Also inside the building is someone's savings, or perhaps their business itself. There probably isn't time to save both the person and the business/savings. You'll have to choose. Saving either of them will be inconvenient for you, but won't place you in mortal danger.

Other things being equal, we would all surely say that human life should be prioritised over money or business. 

And yet, the "lives versus livelihoods" dichotomy which people would be so sure about if we were on the edge of a cliff or beside a burning building is apparently a lot trickier when it comes to covid-19.

A lockdown involving the closure of businesses, shops, and leisure facilities is detrimental for livelihoods, but it saves lives by slowing the spread of the virus. Contrariwise, keeping such places open allows livelihoods to thrive (or at least, to just about stay afloat) at the expense of people's lives - they die because the virus spreads so much. When places such as pubs, restaurants, cinemas and leisure centres are open, money changes hands (+ve for livelihoods and the economy) and viruses change hosts (-ve for lives and the NHS).

The difference, it seems, is whose livelihoods are at stake. Unsurprisingly, those whose livelihoods are most at risk from lockdown (small business owners) are the most vocal in criticising lockdowns. In terms of the analogies above, when S is on the edge of the precipice, and S must choose between saving her own business / savings and saving the life of an elderly stranger, S seems more inclined to save her own livelihood. Also unsurprisingly, those who have most to gain from a lockdown (say, those with elderly parents, or relatives with immune disorders) are the ones most in favour of lockdown. If S is on the cliff and forced to choose between saving his own relative, or the money of a stranger, S saves his relative. 

It seems that agent-neutrality has already fallen off the cliff, and plummeted to its death.

But when we are dispassionate and neutral - when it's a stranger's livelihood versus a stranger's life - I think (I hope!) that most of us would choose to save a person's life. That should give us the inkling that humans generally value lives over livelihoods. And for what it's worth, I think that's the morally correct stance to take.

A few weeks ago, when each covid-19 death in the UK was a news story in its own right, the media always pointed out the age of the victim (they were generally over 60), and whether they had any pre-existing medical conditions (they generally did). It was almost as if these were mitigating factors we could console ourselves with. 

"A woman has become the first coronavirus fatality in the UK"

"Ah yes, but she was in her 70s and had underlying health conditions, so was probably going to die soon anyway."

The subtext is one that suggests that people's lives are worth less (or worthless) if they are a bit old or are in poor health. I think many would agree that we should save the lives of children over the lives of the elderly, but to save jobs and money over the lives of the elderly or vulnerable is something else entirely. People who oppose lockdowns because of the threat to livelihoods are doing so in desperation; nonetheless, they really should re-examine their moral compass.

Another factor is proximity. Singer wrote a great paper (Famine, Affluence and Morality) about how we (wrongly) care more about seeing someone in danger right in front of us, than we do about knowing someone far away from us is in danger. Here's a quote from Singer:

"It makes no moral difference whether the person I can help is a neighbor's child ten yards away from me or a Bengali whose name I shall never know, ten thousand miles away. [...] From the moral point of view, the prevention of the starvation of millions of people outside our society must be considered at least as pressing as the upholding of property norms within our society." (Pp231, 237)

Singer's argument is a little different from mine as he argues that saving a life close to us matters just as much as saving a life far away from us, whereas I'm arguing for the more moderate claim that saving a life (anywhere) matters more than saving money. But if I'm right, the fact that the anti-lockdowners and the lockdown-rulebreakers don't see the deaths they have caused is at least partially what causes them to prioritise their own money over someone else's life.

If a person really was on the edge of a cliff with someone about to die if he does nothing, that situation is a lot more potent than knowing that somebody somewhere will die if he does nothing. I've written previously about people encouraging suicide online - something we don't generally do when a person is right in front of us. The same phenomenon is at play with covid 19 as it is with online suicides, and children starving in faraway countries. Business owners who defy lockdown and people who throw parties in defiance of lockdown are both "benefitting" ftom the fact that they don't see the damage they cause. They don't see the link between their actions today and people's deaths next month. They don't see people keeling over and dying in front of them, or a pile of dead bodies in their front garden. Because of that, it's very easy for them to think only of themselves and their lifestyle or livelihood.

The solution

There are no good solutions to the covid-19 pandemic: there are only bad outcomes. Thousands of people in the UK have died from the virus, and more will certainly die. Livelihoods have been and will be lost during the lockdown. So there are no 'good' solutions. All we can do is try to choose the least worst option.

Just as we would do if we stood on the edge of a cliff, or at the door to a burning building, we should save people's lives first and foremost, then worry about finances later. Money can be lost, and it can be regained. Someone who loses their business can set up another one, or take another job elsewhere. The person who loses their money will get second chances to make money and have a good life. The people who die get no second chance. So in the lockdown versus livelihoods contest, I believe lives should be prioritised.

How inductive reasoning failed me with coronavirus

In February, I began writing a blog post saying that coronavirus would turn out to be a storm in a teacup, and although a few people would die - I estimated no more than 10,000* worldwide - it would really be nothing to write home about. I was going to wait until the virus had blown over, then write a critical piece about moral panics and how the media should stop striking fear into our hearts unnecessarily. 
* 10,000 really isn't that many, when you consider that over 55 million people die each year anyway.

Swine flu symptoms
Source: Wikimedia commons

After all, over the past 20 years, swine flu, bird flu, SARS, MERS, ebola, zika virus, and other illnesses have come and gone - illnesses which the media warned could become deadly worldwide pandemics. The pandemics that we were warned about just never happened. Zika virus, for example, killed just 53 people. And so I concluded that covid-19, like these other illnesses, would be a minuscule problem which would not impact the lives of people in the developed world in any noticeable way. 

Goodness me, I was wrong. I was so, so wrong. 

Why was I so wrong?

The problem was that I used inducive reasoning:

A pandemic has never happened in my lifetime, therefore a pandemic won't happen now.

It sounds ridiculous when you say it like that, but that really was my reasoning. There have just been so many times - particularly in the last 20 years or so - that the UK media have spotted a new illness spreading in a faraway country and created a moral panic. They said that a deadly pandemic was on its way, and we should be afraid - very afraid. But then virtually nothing happened to us. 

Perhaps when I was a teenager or young adult I was more concerned by these warnings, but as these warnings kept occurring, and with little effect on my life in the leafy suburbs of England, I began to see these pandemic warnings as just more background noise from the media. Bad news is good news in the world of newspapers, and so of course they would leap on any virus and attempt to needlessly whip up the panic among us - it sells papers (or brings in clicks).

Deadly viruses are bad for the communities which suffer them, of course, and I have every sympathy for those who suffer. But so few of them touched the UK in any way that life went on pretty much as normal for us throughout the times of these other viruses, meaning that the UK media were simply scaremongering and sensationalising, as usual.

So by about 2010, any time the media warned about a pandemic, I mentally switched off. They had said that x would cause a pandemic and it didn't; now they were saying that y would cause a pandemic. Based on experience of x being a storm in a teacup, I could be reasonably sure that y wouldn't be a pandemic either.

So when a new coronavirus began spreading around Wuhan in January, and the UK papers warned of a worldwide pandemic, I thought it would be yet another pandemic-cum-damp-squib. I was sure it would fizzle out just as the others did, without any change to life in Little England. The media had 'cried wolf' so many times before with other illnesses that I just didn't believe their pandemic warnings any more.

I was wrong not to believe them. This time the 'wolf' was real, and it was about to huff and puff and blow the world down.

Now here we are, with nearly 30,000 deaths in the UK, and over 200,000 dead worldwide, and the virus is showing no signs of abating. Everything in the UK is shut, including schools, offices, shops, leisure centres, and entertainment venues, and we aren't allowed to meet friends or family. 

The failure of inductive reasoning

Inductive reasoning led me to believe there wouldn't be a pandemic, and even if there was, it wouldn't hit the UK. 

As philosophers, we know that inductive reasoning is weak. All swans are white until you see a black swan. But in life, our experience shapes our way of thinking, and helps us to extrapolate future events based on the past. If Paul has always lied in the past, it'd be silly for me to believe him now. If whenever I lend money to Bryan he doesn't repay me, it would be naive and gullible of me to keep lending him money. So we simply must learn from the past. I think it was George Santayana who said:

Those who cannot learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

I had learned that when the press warn of a pandemic, it doesn't occur. Now I've learned that sometimes, it does occur.

How bad will covid-19 be?

For the world and the UK, it's going to be horrendous. It already is horrendous, and few if any countries are over the hump yet. On a personal level, I'm just going to keep myself to myself, maintain social distancing, and self-isolate if I have symptoms. I doubt that I'll be in any real danger from the virus if I do catch it. After all...

I've never died before, therefore I won't die now. 

Panic-buying, toilet paper, and selfishness

Today is an historic day. The 26th of March 2020 is a day I shall always remember. I have, after much searching, managed to buy some toilet paper!

A couple of weeks ago, selfish people began panic-buying toilet paper, pasta, hand sanitiser, wipes, and cleaning products.

Image source: BBC 

I have seen zombie movies, disaster movies, and post-apocalyptic movies where the rule of law goes out the window. But I have never seen a movie where people go panic-buying toilet paper because there is a virus doing the rounds. I guess fact really is stranger than fiction. It's not even as if covid causes diarrhoea or something which requires excessive amounts of toilet paper. The mind boggles.

I just can't get over the abject selfishness of people who go out and buy 60-100 toilet rolls when they only need 4-6 for the week ahead. It's inexcusable.

Ok,  I might excuse elderly or very sick people who have (a) been told to shield, (b) have no one who can shop for them over the next few months, and (c) cannot shop online. No one else has any reason to buy a gazillion toilet rolls.

My plight

Over the past few days, I have been on the hunt for toilet paper as I saw our supplies dwindling. I've been to four major supermarkets (Morrissons, Tesco, Sainsbury's, Lidl) and two smaller convenience stores, and not seen a single roll of toilet paper, box of tissues, or even kitchen roll in any of them. 

I'd actually started mentally preparing my son for the fact that we may have to improvise. I cut up some old tea towels and a bed sheet when we got down to our final roll of toilet paper, and ripped some newspaper into strips. And all the while, there are people with their spare rooms full to bursting with toilet paper!

But throughout all of people's panic buying, a quote from Michelle Obama has become my mantra: 

"When they go low, we go high."

Just because other people are selfish and buying more than they need, that doesn't mean I'll sink to their level.

Today, when I went into the petrol station to buy petrol and saw several packs of 4x toilet rolls, it was unbelievably tempting to buy more than one pack, so I wouldn't have to face the same problem again in just another few days' time. But I didn't. I got just the 4 toilet rolls. 

I walked out of there feeling pretty pleased with myself. I was on cloud nine that I'd found toilet paper after what had felt like an eternity, and I would not have to subject my son (and myself) to using newspaper and cut up bed sheets after going to the toilet. Moreover, I felt really pleased that I had resisted the temptation to buy more than I needed when I did get the chance. Michelle Obama's wisdom got me through.

We all need to eat, and we all need to go to the toilet. If everyone only buys what they need, there's plenty to go around. Liking and sharing is so popular on social media, but it seems much less prevalent in real life. Please be kind, be restrained, and share the love: share the toilet paper. 

Edit: When those four rolls were running low and we needed to buy more, we found toilet paper much more easily.

Aphantasia - I never realised I think differently from everyone else

Imagine a beach. Can you see the sand and the waves? I can't.

This week I discovered that I have something known as aphantasia. This is the inability to see things in my imagination - my mind's eye is blind! Of course, I've always known that I didn't really see anything when I imagined it (why would I see it? it's only imaginary after all!), I just never knew that other people really did see what they imagined. I still find it hard to believe that other people see what they imagine.

I was writing something about robot faces as part of my PhD research and I wanted to find out the name for seeing faces in inanimate objects, like doorknobs and car headlights (it's called pareidolia, by the way) and I came upon a page about aphantasia, describing how some people don't see anything when they imagine it. This was not a revelation; it seemed to be pointing out the blatantly obvious. It's like saying that people don't look as beautiful as they wished they looked, or that people aren't as rich as they want to be. Well duh, imaginary things and reality are obviously different. Turns out, it's not so obvious after all, as most people can see what they imagine. Weird.

Baggy McBagface. Image source: The Conversation

It's really strange that I never realised that my thinking was any different to anyone else's, and yet according to several studies, this "condition" of mine affects just 2-3% of people! So I'm in a tiny minority.

So aphantasia is a minority thing; most people have normal phantasia (they see what they imagine), and another minority at the other extreme have hyperphantasia (an exceptionally vivid imagination). I was certainly surprised to discover these differences in how we imagine. I've read Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, and other philosophers who wrote about ideas and imagination, and discussed these with others at length. Yet never did I realise that others were imagining differently from me.

Which of these categories do you fall into? To find out, you can take a VVIQ test here. I scored the very lowest score on every single question: no matter how hard I try, I don't 'see' anything when I imagine it. Visualising a beach is as impossible as visualising a colour that doesn't exist; imagining a house is as impossible as imagining what the thirty-second flavour of the alphabet sounds like.

How do I know what I'm imagining?

You might wonder how I know when I'm imagining something. How do I recall what things look like? That's not particularly easy to explain, but I'll try. 

I know when I am imagining something because I'm aware of the thought in my mind. I have thoughts, such as "I'm hungry", and "I must remember to go to the post office" and "I remember putting my purse on the shelf yesterday" and "horses are yay tall" and "5 x 6 is 30". None of these thoughts have any imagery for me, but I now understand that some of them may have imagery for other people. But the imagery really doesn't seem necessary to the thought. I know that 5 x 6 is 30 without having to visualise a rectangle of five squares in six rows: I just remember the fact. It's the same with where I put my purse, or what my mother looks like. I can rattle off a 'shopping list' of features of my mother, just as I can rattle off an actual shopping list. I don't need to see a picture of my mother in my mind to know that she has short hair.

It's both fascinating and unfathomable to discover that other people's imagination really is different from mine. I had no idea. Our minds are private, and I suppose that's why people like me manage to go so long without realising our minds are different to anyone else's. I could quite easily have never found out.

Wittgenstein gave an example that helps illustrate this. He asks us to imagine that everyone has a little box, and inside their box is something which everyone calls a beetle. No one can look in anyone else's box, but each can look in his own box. Everyone says they have a beetle in their box, but I have no way of knowing whether the contents of my box (my 'beetle') are the same as the contents of yours, or indeed if some people have empty boxes. The mind is the same; I cannot leave my own mind and look inside someone else's to check if it's the same as mine.

Probably not what Wittgenstein had in mind, but it's hard to know for sure.

What is life like for me, without any visual imagination?

Well, it seems totally normal to me not to see things I imagine, but that's not helping you to understand what it's like, so I'll try to clarify. But knowing which features of me are features of aphantasia and which are just parts of my personality is tricky. There's no way for me to separate the two, but I'll do my best. But know this: life with aphantasia feels totally normal. I see things that are real, and I don't see things that are imaginary.

Inside my imagination

When I close my eyes and imagine something, all I see is some sort of brownish blotches such as this. I suppose it's the insides of my eyelids that I'm seeing, because when my hands are over my eyes, what I see is darker, and when I'm in bright sunlight, what I see is lighter. But literally whatever I'm imagining or thinking about, this is what I see (if my eyes are closed; if my eyes are open I see what's in front of me).

Some people with aphantasia say they don't have visual dreams. I do. Dreams seem just as real to me as reality does (until I wake up of course). I can recall some dreams and they seem quite vivid. Of course, when I recall them I don't see any images though.

Many people with aphantasia report having a bad memory, particularly for visual things. I would say I have a pretty good memory actually: I can learn the names of a new year group of up to 60 students in a week. I have memorised all the national flags of the world (if I see the flag, I can identify the country; I find it much harder to hear a country's name and describe the flag though), and I obviously have a mind good enough to manage a PhD. I fare very well on all aspects of IQ-type tests, including things that seem to rely on imagination, such as spatial reasoning. I can memorise lists of things, and I can recall things I've heard more easily than many people can. For example, a few years ago I did some conservation work in the Amazon rainforest, and I learned over 70 bird calls. I didn't find it easy, but I did manage it where many others failed.

But my mind isn't perfect; I'll forget appointments if I don't write them down, and I forget how to do things if I don't practice. But I think that's fairly normal. 

I don't really enjoy reading fiction. Especially fiction which is description-heavy such as Lord of the Rings; it's excruciating to have to trawl through lengthy descriptions of a landscape. The fiction that I do occasionally read is more action-based, or I could happily read a play - where there's almost no description at all. I prefer non-fiction, as it sticks to the facts. Although I can read as quickly as anyone else, my comprehension is slower than I'd like. When I used to read fiction, it wasn't uncommon for me to reach the end of the book, but struggle to recall the plot. I have to make notes on academic papers or I will very quickly forget what I've read. That's a bit of a pain, but I've always managed: I am a prolific writer and happy enough to make notes on things I read.

What must life be like for people who do have a visual imagination?

It seems very strange -- and disturbing -- that some people see what they imagine. If you are seeing things that aren't real, that aren't there, then that to me sounds like an hallucination, if not the sign of a serious mental disorder. And suppose a person is imagining their dog is sitting next to them. When they see the dog, how would they know if it's the real dog or the imaginary dog?! It must be a bit like being in a hall of mirrors. Not to mention terrifying. I have sometimes imagined scary or upsetting events - if I actually saw these things happen in front of me because I'd imagined them, I'd be a dribbling wreck, seemingly surrounded by skeletons and snakes and other monstrosities - all imaginary, of course. 

But maybe people don't imagine scary things - perhaps they only imagine nice things. I must admit, it would be nice if I could call the faces of my deceased loved ones to mind, but I can't. I cannot see them any more, and when I imagine (think of) them, I see nothing at all. Dealing with grief must be a whole lot easier when you can just 'see' your loved ones and talk to them simply by imagining it. 

And holidays.... there'd be no need to go and see the Pyramids at Giza, the Grand Canyon, and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, given that you can just 'see' them for free by imagining them. I'd save a fortune on holidays if I could just see anything I wanted to by an act of will! I'd travel the universe too.

Imaginary pancakes... or are they real? 

I've read that it's not just the sense of sight, but that most people can hear, smell and taste the things they imagine too (there doesn't seem to be the same phenomenon happening for touch though). I don't experience any of these things when I imagine them.

If others really can hear, taste, smell and feel what they imagine, then dieting must be a breeze! You could eat a tiny salad but just imagine that it was a burger and chips, or eat the same dull porridge oats for breakfast every day, but just imagine it was a breakfast fit for a king! I can only assume that it's not as simple as that, but I just can't get my head around the idea of really, actually experiencing the things you imagine.

Just a figure of speech

I'm still sceptical that others really do see (hear etc) what they imagine. Surely, no one can actually see something that's imaginary? You're having me on! It's a collective joke, for sure. Or perhaps - just like with the Emperor's new clothes - no one wants to admit that they can't see something which others claim to see. Most people don't want to feel "abnormal", to have a deficiency in place of an ability which others have.... if indeed others really do have it. So if some people say they can visualise something, others may agree even though they can't in fact visualise it. 

Or like the old me, people may think "visualising" something is just a figure of speech. I speak that way too: I say things like "ooh, I can just imagine myself lying there on the beach under the sun"... well yes, I am thinking about it, and as far as I am concerned, thinking about something and imagining it are the very same things. I always believed that people were speaking figuratively when they said they could 'see' or 'visualise' things. I knew I didn't mean it literally, so assumed they were the same.

Life goes on

It's a curious thing to go one's life (over 40 years now!) having an unusual condition and all the while, thinking it was normal. Anecdotal evidence on forums seems to suggest that people can go almost their entire lives without realising there is anything unusual about their thought processes. It's fascinating to think that a condition such as this, which has presumably been prevalent for quite some time, has hitherto gone unnoticed (or unnamed at least) until the 20th century. It does make you wonder what other mysteries people might be hiding within their minds, all of us trapped in our own little worlds, trying to interact as best we can. 

But in truth, lacking the ability to actually see what is only imaginary does not bother me at all, any more than it bothers me that I can't sense electromagnetic signals the way a shark can, or sniff out a missing person the way a dog can. These are not senses I need nor really want. I am perfectly happy to live with my mind the way it is, and be safe in the knowledge that everything I see, hear, smell, taste, and touch is real. 

Probably.