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.