Some responses to the Toronto Star Public Editor survey

I've been doing the Toronto Star Public Editor survey, and for a couple of questions my answers go far beyond the scope of the yes/no provided.

10. In preparation for the G20 summit in Toronto, the Star produces a series of profiles and “Portraits of Leaders.” Do you publish this photo of U.S. President Barack Obama taken in 1980 when he was a college student in Los Angeles?

The issue is not this one photo itself, the issue is the broader context of the series as a whole. All the other photos in the series are recent, if not current. They were all taken at times when the subjects either were or could reasonably predict that they might soon be leaders of countries. It's not fair to pick on only one of the subjects by publishing a picture of him being goofy 30 years ago. Either use current photos for all, or old photos for all, or at the very least old photos for a reasonable selection.

12. A judge releases graphic photos shown in open court of convicted “sadosexual serial killer” Russell Williams. Do you publish this disturbing photo on Page 1 alongside a photo of Williams in full military uniform?

If you didn't want to click on the "graphic photos" link, it's a photo of Williams wearing lingerie belonging to one of his victims.

It's very easy to reduce this question to "Is a picture of a hairy man in pink panties suitable for a family newspaper?" But that's missing the point. The point is that Williams is a murderer.

A picture of a hairy main in pink panties is shocking, memorable, and distracting. And so, our first thought when we hear the name Russell Williams is of a hairy main in pink panties. But being a hairy man in pink panties is a far lesser sin than murder (and, frankly, if he'd man up and buy his own panties it wouldn't be a sin at all!) So this results in Williams being thought of general public sentiment as something far better than he actually is.

Another factor sometimes mentioned in deciding whether to print this picture is the "Mommy, what's that?" factor. In other words, it's really awkward for parents to have to explain to their kids what that man's doing wearing pink panties. There are arguments for and against using this when deciding whether something is appropriate for a newspaper, but, regardless, we have to think not just of the kid's question but of the parent's answer. In this particular case, it would be very very easy for a parent caught off-guard to answer "He's a bad man." And he is a bad man. That's why he's in the newspaper. In fact, the picture of him wearing the pink panties is a picture of him in the process of being a bad man - not because he's wearing panties, but because he's wearing someone else's panties without her permission. Even grown adults who are unfamiliar with the circumstances under which a man might harmlessly wear panties and repulsed by the idea of a man wearing panties are also likely to come away with the impression that panty-wearing = bad man. A causal relationship rather than a single instance of correlation.

So not only does this picture give an initial, shocking, and memorable impression that Williams is a mere panty-wearer as opposed to a murderer, it also helps promote or reinforce the idea that panty-wearing is a sign, cause, or symptom of being a bad man. It makes Williams look less bad while making innocent panty-wearing men look more bad.

This story received quite a lot of column-inches (if I remember correctly, it had a full double-page inside spread on more than one day), so I wouldn't necessarily object to them printing this picture, alongside others, on an inside page. However, out of respect for the seriousness of murder, it doesn't belong on the front page above the fold catching the eye of everyone who walks past a newsstand. They need to give people a chance to think "OMG, murder!" before they get distracted by the things like whether he went to the trouble of tucking or just has a very small penis.

Things They Should Invent: political system wherein you only have to express your opinion once for it to count

This post was inspired by this development.

A lot of activism is repeating the same message over and over and over again. You have to sign petitions and write letters to the editor and attend rallies and contact your elected representatives and repeat the same thing over and over and over.

That's inefficient. We need a system where you express your opinion once to the pertinent people, and that's sufficient. And expressing your opinion more than once gains no further reward, and perhaps even annoys people and/or is detrimental to the credibility of your cause.

Case in point: I wrote a cogent and persuasive email to the appropriate elected representatives about the importance of Transit City to me personally and to our city as a whole. But now there are people convinced that I don't really care about Transit City because I didn't attend this one rally that I didn't know was a rally, or because I sent an email instead of making phone calls, or because I didn't skip work and attend some city meeting. And meanwhile I've been spending the past month thinking constantly about what I can do to convince the powers that be that Transit City is important.

Wouldn't the world be a better place if that one email was literally all I could do, and the powers that be would give it precisely my share of all due consideration no matter how much noise the other people make? Then my attendance at the rally would be redundant (maybe we wouldn't need to go to all the trouble to have rallies at all!) and I could have spent the past month putting my thoughts and energy into a wide range of other things, all of which could also be knocked off with a single well-composed email. Politicos' offices would run more smoothly, people would feel more engaged in the political process, people could inform themselves about and commit effort to a wider range of issues, and the world would be a better, more informed, less stressful place.

Things I learn from my elders

One of the elders in my life is losing her faculties, and one of the consequences is that she literally cannot learn new skills. Existing skills are still more or less present, but acquiring new skills has become basically impossible.

This struck me, because all the time I've known her she's always had the attitude that she's too old to learn anything new. And now she actually is. Food for thought for if I ever find myself falling into those thought patterns.

I keep thinking of solutions to the problems of aging that would require a computer and/or the internet. It would provide entertainment and socializing, automated reminders could be set up to compensate for lapsing memory, it would make it possible to read (by enlarging text size) as eyesight fails - some days it sounds like panacea! But we can't use them because she never became comfortable with using a computer and never learned to use the internet. And now she literally cannot learn.

I'd strongly recommend to anyone who has an elder in their life who isn't on the internet to get them there now, so they will have internalized the skills already by the time they actually need them the most.

Why are mail carriers responsible for finding and training their own replacements?

When the Canada Post carrier in one neighbourhood in Drumheller, Alta., went on vacation a week or so before Christmas, so did the mail.

That's meant for many residents there have been no bills, no cheques, no Christmas presents or even deliveries of medication for as long as three weeks.

Teresa Williams of Canada Post says it's the carrier's responsibility to find and train a replacement, but that didn't happen in this case.

WTF is the logic in that?

Everywhere I've ever worked, the employer has been ultimately responsible for replacing people who are out sick or on vacation by having an existing employee fill in. And I've never worked anywhere nearly as large as Canada Post! Why aren't they equipped to do this?

Apart from the fact that this is unfair to the employees, it's unacceptable as a public service! Canada Post is a large organization - their organization says they have 60,000 employees. Surely we, as customers and citizens, should enjoy the benefits of having our postal services provided by a large organization. And one of the benefits of a large organization is that they have a lot of people working for them, and are equipped to recruit and train more people. If one person is away, there are other trained and qualified people to fill in. If there aren't enough people, they can hire and train more. When real life affects the employees like real life does, the customers don't feel the difference. Not only are there replacements available, but they are already trained in the job and familiar with the organization's standards and requirements, rather than just being whomever the absent worker could muster up from their personal circle at the last minute.

Even the cheapest, most lowbrow companies you can think of make management or corporate responsible for recruiting and training and replacing employees who are absent. Fast food restaurants do it. Discount retailers do it. Why won't Canada Post give Canadians this most basic aspect of customer service that comes with being a large organization?

Things They Should Invent: link the gambling self-exclusion list to credit and debit cards

A Toronto Star article on how the OLG self-exclusion list isn't working includes the story of how a guy on the self-exclusion list still manages to get Visa cash advances at a casino.

Solution: when people join the self-exclusion list, they can provide their credit and debit card numbers, and the casinos can set up something so that those numbers get flagged in the system. Maybe they could even make it so the computer simply will not permit cashiers or ATMs to dispense money to those cards on casino property.

The obvious argument against this is privacy, but the exclusion list is already voluntary, so they could easily make this part voluntary too. And maybe they could even come up with a way to do it without informing the banks and credit card companies so as not to hurt people's credit scores any more than they're already being hurt by the financial fall-out of problem gambling.

Things They Should Invent: all public meetings must be justified or obsoleted

I received an email inviting me to a community meeting regarding a political issue I'm interested in. Unfortunately, it didn't say anything about why there was a community meeting. Is there new information that they can't post on the internet for some reason? Are they trying to physically carry out a specific action? They didn't say. They got my email (and, I assume, everyone else's that they copied on this) in the first place through a piece of slacktivism, so why would they think I'd put on make-up and pants and go somewhere at a set time without some hint of why this needs to be in person?

I also saw a tweet recently by someone who was attending a public meeting, and said that they wished more people could be there so they could find out all this information. But why should you have to be there to find out the information? Why can't they just post it on the internet?

It isn't always necessary for people to be in a specific place at a specific time for consultation or information dissemination or activism to happen. Often an email or a website will do the job. Instead of constantly holding public meetings, they should think critically about how much of this can be achieved online. And, conversely, if they do in fact need people to be present in person, they need to specify why.

Things They Should Invent: leave elevator doors open when parked

I'm sure you've had this happen at some point in your life: you press the elevator call button and an elevator opens right away. It was already waiting there on your floor.

So why were the doors closed?

The way elevators seem to work is they take everyone to their desired floor then either stop where they are or return to lobby level depending on the building. Then they close their doors, and you have to press the call button to open them again.

That takes up some energy, doesn't it? It takes some energy to close the elevator doors, it takes some energy to work the call button, and it takes some energy to open the elevator doors again. Not much, but some.

In the building where I work, I often see people getting out of an elevator as I approach the elevator lobby, but I can't make it there before the doors close. So I go back and press the call button, and then the same elevator opens again. Not only did it waste energy by closing, calling, and re-opening, but I had to rush past the call button in my attempt to make the elevator, then go back to the call button to make the doors open again. This is practically effortless for me, but it would be rather difficult and frustrating for people who are elderly and/or have reduced mobility, for whom crossing the elevator lobby takes a non-negligible amount of time and who might not be spry enough to make it from the call button back to the elevator doors before the doors close.

Why not make it easier for everyone and save a small amount of energy by leaving the doors open?

Did Don Cherry and the Canadian Forces put all Canadians at risk?

One of the benefits of having a military is that it makes it possible to be a civilian. The people with the uniforms and ranks and guns are the designated combatants in our society, which gives the rest of us the privilege of being designated non-combatants. In any system of prioritization or strategy, this makes us a lesser risk and threat and a less valuable target than combatants, because the enemy has no reason to believe that we as individuals will cause harm to them. Of course if they just want to kill people they're going to kill whoever's easiest to kill, but if they're thinking about efficiency or strategy they'll prioritize the people with the uniforms and weapons first, because the combatants are the ones with the training and equipment and mandate to shoot at the enemy. The rest of us are just walking around living life.

Don Cherry is a civilian. He is also 76 years old, a television personality, and a flamboyant dresser. All of these characteristics would normally mark him as a non-combatant. However, the moment he fired an actual weapon at actual people, he became a combatant. Which means that it is now completely logical for the enemy to conclude that any civilian who appears to be at least as combat-ready as Don Cherry is now a combatant.

Shawn Micallef tweeted that if Don Cherry gets to shoot a weapon, so should Anne Murray or Joni Mitchell. But it would actually be completely logical at this point for the enemy to assume that any visiting celebrities will shoot at them. Apparently it's part of the tour now! Realistically, if some of your compatriots had just been shot at by Don Cherry, why wouldn't you assume that Rick Mercer or Feist would shoot at you? And why not the other civilians on the base, like journalists and Tim Hortons employees and medical personnel? This one act of foolishness has made all civilians viable defensive targets.

On top of all this, think about how Canada got into Afghanistan in the first place. Because people who were from Afghanistan or supported by other people who were from or in Afghanistan attacked the US (i.e. one of our allies). It wasn't Afghanistan itself, it was rogue civilians affiliated or associated with or located in Afghanistan. And on this basis, our military has been occupying their country for 10 years. Our rogue civilian was clearly aided and abetted by the Government of Canada and the Canadian Forces. He was given permission to fire this weapon by military officials. The Minister of Defence was present. And, once back in Canada, he returned to his job with a Crown corporation. It really looks to me like Afghanistan, or the Taliban, or any allies thereof, could use this incident to justify any military attack on or occupation of Canada on the exact same basis that justifies our presence there.

Excellent customer service from Future Shop

I thought there was a technical problem with my video adapter (that might not have been true, but that's another blog post for after I've confirmed that my fix worked), so I took it back to Future Shop in the hope of exchanging it. I had the packaging and the receipt, but it had been opened and used. Fortunately, they allowed a quick, easy, no-fuss exchange. No interrogation, no collecting personal information, in and out in just a couple of minutes.

Second problem: when getting a replacement off the shelf, I accidentally grabbed the wrong item - I grabbed the thing next to what I needed, which looked similar but was completely useless. So I went back to the store and the same lady who'd helped me before let me swap it for the one I actually needed, again with no trouble whatsoever.

I appreciate the quick and easy exchange in the first place, but I also really appreciate them allowing the second exchange even though it was due entirely to my own stupidity. The second time I was walking around the store in the compromising position of having a packaged product in my purse with a receipt that didn't match it, and I didn't get any trouble for it whatsoever. It would have been within reasonable store policy to not take it back because it was opened and used, or to not let me swap the second one because it was entirely my own error, or to even get me in trouble for having the wrong adapter that didn't match my receipt in my purse. But instead they solved all my problems quickly and easily with no fuss. That makes me feel safe and makes me more inclined to shop there again.

Why I don't have a New Year's resolution this year

The past three years, I've come up with unconventional New Year's resolutions that have proven to be very useful and have had a lasting positive impact on my life.

I actually did come up with one for 2011: to trust my instincts. I've observed that my instincts end up being correct about things they really have no right to be, even when people who are smarter than me ended up being wrong (e.g. this whole recession thing we've got going on), so I decided my resolution would be to blindly trust my instincts in all things until they're proven wrong, with the goal of learning where exactly the boundaries of my instincts lie. I was totally prepared to take risks even in serious areas of life like money, and totally prepared to make mistakes. My reasoning was that I haven't made my share of mistakes in life yet, so I may as well make them now.

Unfortunately, before I could even get my resolution blogged, life threw a wrench in my plans. I had to make a decision that would affect other people. All available evidence told me one thing. My instincts told me another thing. If I had followed my instincts and they'd ended up being wrong, my decision would have hurt someone else long term. I couldn't risk it, so I went with the evidence. I may never know if this decision ended up being right, and if I do get a chance to find out it may take a couple of years. If it ends up being wrong I'm definitely revisiting the instinct thing, but based on what I know at the moment I can't justify going around making decisions that affect other people based solely on some possibly-foolish New Year's resolution.

I could totally write it off and say "That was 2010, this is 2011!" and go barging ahead. I could totally make an amendment. "Trust your instincts...except when it affects someone else." But that would be contrary to the spirit of the original resolution. I wouldn't be doing what I originally intended, I'd just be putting on a show to keep up my resolution tradition.

I don't have anything else I could use as a resolution. They've always been the one thing I have to do, not some random bit of virtue that I should be doing anyway like losing 20 pounds, or an arbitrary denial of one of life's simple pleasures like eating less junk food. So I'm entering my 30s resolution-less. We'll see what happens.

Refining Scott Adams' tax model

Scott Adams proposed a tax model where the rich support the poor. I've thought of a modification whereby businesses support the unemployed and underemployed.

We begin by identifying what I will define as the "corporate tax pool". The corporate tax pool is a dollar amount equal to a fair, reasonable, and comfortable living (for mathematical simplicity, we'll say $50,000) multiplied by the number of people in Canada.

In lieu of whatever the current method for calculating corporate tax is, every company's taxes owing is equal to their share of the corporate tax pool. A company's fair share of the corporate tax pool is determined by calculating their business revenues as a percentage of Canada's total business revenues. If, for example, a large corporation's revenues are equal to 1% of all of the business revenue generated in Canada, then that corporation is responsible for paying 1% of the entire corporate tax pool.

However, from this tax payable is deducted the total salary and benefits the corporation pays to its employees. So if the corporation's payroll is equal to or greater than its share of the corporate tax pool, it doesn't pay any taxes. If its payroll is less than its share of the corporate tax pool, it pays taxes. The taxes collected through the corporate tax pool pay for social assistance for people who are unemployed or underemployed.

Ultimately, all businesses collectively have to pay for all people collectively. They can do so by hiring people, paying them salary, and getting productive and/or revenue-generating work out of them, or by paying taxes that are used to fund social assistance. I know that in my current job, the revenue I generate for my employer is between two and three times my salary, so if it's a choice between paying taxes to support me or hiring me as a worker, hiring me wins by far.

Things I haven't figured out yet: Might this somehow create an incentive for employers to pay employees no more than $50,000? Conversely, if there's high unemployment but very high salaries for the jobs that do exist, could that leave the unemployed high and dry? Is it fairer to use revenue or profit to calculate each company's fair share of the corporate tax pool? (I chose revenue because my understanding is that a company can use accounting tricks to appear to have very low profit on paper, but it's possible I'm missing something.)

Edited to add: Another thing I haven't figured out is the impact of public sector, not-for-profit, and other employers that wouldn't pay taxes. I know that there are an awful lot of public sector jobs (the number half a million comes to mind but I'm not sure if that's right), but they'd be operating outside this whole system. I'm not sure how this would affect it. The easiest workaround I can think of at this precise moment is to subtract the number of employees of non-tax-paying employers from the calculation of the corporate tax pool, but there would still be other impacts I can't see.

Analogy for the current state of municipal politics?

The following is a quote from Jared Diamond's Guns, Germ, and Steel, on the subject of why and how China lost its technological advantage over Europe.

The end of China’s treasure fleets gives us a clue. Seven of those fleets sailed from China between A.D. 1405 and 1433. They were then suspended as a result of a typical aberration of local politics that could happen anywhere in the world: a power struggle between two factions at the Chinese court (the eunuchs and their opponents). The former faction had been identified with sending and captaining the fleets. Hence when the latter faction gained the upper hand in a power struggle, it stopped sending fleets, eventually dismantled the shipyards, and forbade oceangoing shipping.

[...]

That one temporary decision became irreversible, because no shipyards remained to turn out ships that would prove the folly of that temporary decision, and to serve as a focus for rebuilding other shipyards.

[...]

From time to time the Chinese court decided to halt other activities besides overseas navigation: it abandoned development of an elaborate water-driven spinning machine, stepped back from the verge of an industrial revolution in the 14th century, demolished or virtually abolished mechanical clocks after leading the world in clock construction, and retreated from mechanical devices and technology in general after the late 15th century. Those potentially harmful effects of unity have flared up again in modern China, notably during the madness of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, when a decision by one or a few leaders closed the whole country’s school systems for five years.

The first thing that came to mind as I read this was the harmful and far-reaching decision to kill Transit City. Is Toronto being collapsed?

Things They Should Invent: Thresholds Edition

"Well done!" threshold

I once read that if someone who's in jail is pregnant and goes into labour, they keep her shackled while she's in labour. Could you actually escape while in labour? That's like the rule against taking things like tweezers and nail clippers on an airplane. Could you actually hijack an airplane with nail clippers? If someone could escape from prison while in labour, or hijack an airplane with tweezers, we should just acknowledge their sheer talent and say "Well done!" There should be a threshold like this for everything. Rather than inconvenience large numbers of people in case of something remote and unlikely, we should acknowledge that if anyone can actually pull off the remote and unlikely thing, they probably deserve to win.

"Don't have to give them a chance any more" threshold

People keep saying to me of new Toronto mayor Rob Ford "You should give him a chance." As it happens, I sent him an email shortly after he was elected, as I do for everyone who's newly elected to represent me. Since he apparently has a reputation for being very good at solving individual citizens' problems, I wrote about the issue that's the biggest problem for me personally, namely a delay in funding to a specific part in Transit City. In my email, I quantified the monetary value of the lost time that this will cost me (well above what I pay in municipal taxes, BTW) and explicitly stated that any delay to this particular section will be more harmful to me than any other policy enacted by any level of government in my lifetime.

And then, on his first day of work, he came into work early to completely kill Transit City. Not just delay, not just the part that I need, the whole thing. The worst any government policy has ever hurt me, and he did it first thing on his first day, before even the start of normal office hours.

I don't think I should have to give him a chance any more.

I'd very much like that threshold clearly defined for broad applicability.

"Shut up and do it" threshold

This initially came to mind in the context of Transit City as well. My personal transit policy is rapidly becoming "Build something! Anything! Just build it now!" I was thinking about all the money that had been invested and the contracts that had been signed and the fact that they've already broken ground in at least one place, and it occurred to me that there must be some point of no return in project planning, where it simply isn't worthwhile any more to slow progress and go back to the drawing board in the hope of improving.

Then I got thinking that that would probably apply to other areas of life as well. How many couches do you have to look at before you should just buy the best of the ones you've already seen? How long should you spend trying to find the best price on something? I find that the more I research buying a condo, the less I know. I'd very much like some external indicator of when I've done enough research and can just go ahead and act.

Useless advice threshold

If a person has given you a certain critical mass of useless advice in your life, you are no longer obligated to go through the motions of listening to/respecting them any more. I want this quantified, so I can call people out.

Same old story threshold

Again, if a person tells you the same story a certain number of times, you can tell them to shut up without being considered rude. This needs to be formally quantified.

Noblesse oblige threshold

In a (not always successful, obviously) effort to be open-minded and considerate and not a total egomaniac I often find myself saying things like "Well, maybe it's different if you have a lot of money, but in my experience..."

But really, by general standards of noblesse oblige, shouldn't they be accommodating me and not vice versa?

I'm already a huge proponent of the idea that if one person has been in the other's position, it's up to the person who has been in both positions to identify with the other. In a conversation between a child and an adult, it's incumbent upon the adult to be able to figure out where the child's coming from. It's incumbent upon parents to know where their childless friends are coming from. It's incumbent upon teachers to know where their students are coming from. And I think, building on this, it's incumbent upon people who have more money to know where people with less money are coming from. It's incumbent upon car people to remember what it's like not to have a car.

There needs to be a threshold where a person is "above" you by a certain amount, you aren't required or expected to take their situation into consideration, but they do have to take yours into consideration.

How to connect a Dell XPS 15 to an external monitor that only has VGA input

On the Things I Wasn't Expecting list: my new laptop doesn't have VGA output. And my existing monitor only has VGA input. I'd been hoping to plug the laptop into my existing peripherals for everyday at-home use (Q: Why? A: Ergonomics and because I tend to eat and drink at the computer.) so this threw a wrench in my plan.

The solution: a VGA to Mini DisplayPort adapter. The Mini DisplayPort (with which I was unfamiliar going in) is another video input, and is located (as of December 2010) at the back right (as you're facing the screen) corner of the computer, just behind the XPS logo. I found them at Future Shop but not The Source, but didn't look anywhere else. Apple appears to manufacture them, so you can probably get them through the Apple Store too.

When I get older I will be stronger

For years, people have been telling me that your 30s are way better than your 20s. Here are some things I can do at 30 that I couldn't do at 25.

- Ask clients for information and ask colleagues to do work-related things without feeling drama and angst about it.
- Coach students.
- Outright correct senior translators when necessary.
- Neutrally (not over-apologetic, not over-assertive) ask to take vacation time etc. to which I'm entitled.
- Outright but nondefensively admit the failings in my social skills in a way that way usually (85% of the time) comes across as either charming or disarming*
- Entitlement, the easiest 70% of the time that I need to do it.*
- Admit the limitations resulting from my less pleasant personality traits (phobias, introversion, shyness, general neuroses) rather than pushing through them trying to be a good girl and then melting down because I can't sustain it by brute force.
- Recognize when I'm starting to melt down and take a step back to regroup.
- Remember that I can walk away from nearly anything whenever I want, so go in without feeling angst about OMG what if I don't want to do this a year from now?
- Politely redirect relatives who are about to go off on unpleasant rants (maybe 60% of the time I need to do it)*
- Neutrally (non-apologetically but non-provocatively) and matter-of-factly tell parents that I've done something they wouldn't approve of.
- Do business with businesses on the terms I prefer, not what I think they want their terms to be, i.e. walk in and ask for what I need (or don't ask and just browse idly) rather than coming with fiction that I think they expect.*
- Look someone I have a crush on in the eye and talk to them. The words that come out are still stupid, but there's eye contact and talking.*
- Express uncertainty about the aspects of my statements that I'm uncertain about while still retaining the credibility of my overall statement (and, in fact, make my expression of uncertainty give the credibility to my overall statement.*
- Talk in a large group, and somehow get people to listen to me attentively as though what I'm saying is of interest. (possibly *)

*Items with an asterisk are things for which Eddie Izzard gets at least partial credit

I'm looking forward to seeing what I'll be able to add to this list on my 35th birthday.

Horoscopes

From The Star:

IF TODAY IS YOUR BIRTHDAY: This year, dealing with two different forces or situations helps you perfect the art of juggling. Use your creativity to create a middle ground. You also can allow opposite issues to just flow, deciding you don’t need to do anything. Your view has a uniqueness that is much in demand. If you are single, separate your personal and professional lives. Don’t let one take root in the other. Everyone will be happier that way — above all, you. If you are attached, the two of you need to respect your differences. Often, if you detach, you can see the validity of your sweetie’s ideas. Encourage differences. Life as a couple could be more exciting that way. Cancer has a way of testing your limits.

The only Cancer I know (to my knowledge) is my mother.

From The G&M:

IF TODAY IS YOUR BIRTHDAY: What you say is important, but the way in which you say it will determine whether or not others take you seriously. Don’t make big claims that you may not be able to live up to. Be modest in your aims, and exceptional in your efforts.

Sounds like standard operating procedure.

***

This year's horoscopes are generally unremarkable. Last year's scared me, and I think the thing they were predicting ended up being the death of Transit City, which is going to have a strong negative impact on my daily life for decades to come.

Things They Should Study: kindness patterns

I blogged before about how I find that smaller kindnesses are bigger than bigger kindnesses. In my own life and experience, in the way my own mind and emotions work, the bigger kindnesses come more readily and with less effort, and feel like less of an imposition, whereas for the smaller kindnesses don't come readily and require more conscious effort (and, actually, use up more spoons for my introvert brain).

I'm thinking of all this because of a couple of people who have been in the news here in Toronto lately. (I know it's obvious who I'm talking about, but I'm not naming names in this post because I'm repeating hearsay and speculating on other people's thought processes. I don't want to slander people or propagate rumours or presume to know what's in their brains, but it happens that the inspiration for this idea and the best example of what I'm trying to explain is these specific individuals, so I'm compromising by making sure that this post isn't in their google results.)

The individuals in question have, with some frequency, very loudly and publicly made statements that I think we can all agree are ungenerous (in the sense of anti-generous rather than non-generous) about other people or groups of people. They are on public, often televised record calling names and yelling.

There are also many anecdotes of individual kindnesses and generosity perpetrated by these individuals. There are stories of them going far more out of their way than necessary to help someone who's having a problem. I know someone personally who has witnessed the more famous of these individuals making a specific effort to do something for a young fan despite the fact that he was going through a difficult time in his own life.

This juxtaposition is interesting. The fact that these people make ungenerous statements, yell, and call names often enough that they're known for it means that these ungenerous and rather angry thoughts are in their heads. After all, you don't utter something if the thought has never entered your head. But, at the same time, despite the ubiquity of the ungenerous thoughts in their heads, they're able to do the small kindnesses frequently enough to develop a reputation for it. I literally cannot fathom how a person's mind could possibly work that way, how both ungenerous thoughts and ease of inclination towards small kindnesses can coexist in the same brain, but it looks like it exists.

I certainly can't claim to be an objectively generous person, but I've never had thoughts as ungenerous as these individuals' public statements. I'm not saying this like it's virtuous or anything, it just doesn't occur to me. But despite the fact that my thoughts are less ungenerous, the smaller kindnesses for which these individuals are known don't come as easily to me. But, at the same time, bigger kindnesses and more macro-generous baseline behaviour (voting for the greater good, not speaking ungenerously about people in public) are default, practically second nature. I'd have to put thought and effort into not doing them. I can't say I never yell, but when I do it's more defensive. It's something like "Shut up and go away and leave me alone!" or "Why can't you just not hurt me?" rather than outright attacking someone. Again, I'm not claiming any of this as virtue, it's just how my brain works. And other people whom I like and with whom I identify seem to have brains that work this way too.

So this has me wondering: do different people have different patterns of generosity of thought vs. ease of small kindnesses vs. ease of big kindnesses? If so, does it correlate with some other factor? (Age? Gender? Wealth? Politics?)

This also has me thinking of something else I've noticed. There are some adults who consider a child polite based on the social formulas the child has been trained to use. If the kid says "Please" and "Thank you" and "Sir" and "Ma'am", they are deemed polite, without even thinking about looking at their actual behaviour. I find this odd because I, personally, don't care about the formulas at all. If a kid calls me by my first name and says "Can I have a cookie?", but they aren't a bully and don't wreck stuff or bring home a cockroach to keep as a pet, I consider them good and polite. I wonder if this correlates in any way? My gut instinct tells me that preferring children to use the correct social formulas regardless of actual behaviour would correlate with favouring small kindnesses over big kindnesses, but I have no evidence or anything.

Things they should invent words for

There are people who think that if things are good for some people, they should be made equally good for other people.

And there are people who think that if things are bad for a number of people, they have no right to complain because they aren't the only one in this situation.

We need words - neutral words that do not pass any value judgement either way - for both of these phenomena. Because we need to talk about these phenomena. I've noticed people tend to engage in one or the other without much critical thought, and it's something we need to be aware of.

Analogy for "people want subways"

In one of the newly-built condo buildings in my neighbourhood, there's this gorgeous penthouse. Massive suite, south and east exposure, lots of rooms - a dining room and a breakfast nook and a fricking library! - and priced well into the range of $2 million.

I want it.

Now let's suppose, for plot purposes, I'm engaged and pregnant. I'm very soon (and non-postponably) going to have to be able to house my growing family. So I do the sensible thing and but a down payment on a condo that's big enough for three. It's a nice, clean, safe, sensible two-bedroom. Nothing posh, but it will do the job far better than the tiny one-bedroom I'm currently living in. A two-bedroom is a bit out of my price range, but my parents give me some money to help me out. In general they don't believe in helping out adult children financially, but they do see the value of this specific investment to make sure that their future grandchild is properly housed.

So all this happens. I'm gestating away, we've scheduled a wedding date and a move-in date, I've given notice to my landlord, I've signed all my mortgage papers and figure out how I'm going to budget for it and made a written agreement with my parents for their contribution...and then one day I google upon the floor plans of the gorgeous penthouse.

And I decide I want it.

So I abandon the condo I've already put a down payment on. I abandon my moving plans. I tell my fiancé "You're either with me or against me". And I insist on staying in my apartment until I can afford to move into the penthouse.

It's very likely I'm never going to afford the penthouse, and if I can it won't be any time soon. The baby will be born and we'll be too crowded in the interim. My parents might not give me any more money after I've thrown away my sensible plan on a whim. Because I've already given my landlord notice, they might jack up the rent if I want to stay (as they normally jack up the rent between move-outs and move-ins). My fiancé may or may not stay on given the crazy way I've been acting, and if he decides to leave it will be even harder to afford the penthouse and all the problems will worsen.

Wouldn't it be far better in every respect to move into the sensible condo and take proper care of my family until such time as we can afford the penthouse? My marriage would survive, my child would have a room of her own, I would retain the trust (and potential for future funding) of my parents, and life would be better for everyone.

This is how the people of Toronto feel about subways. Yes, we want subways. Of course we do! But we can make life better for far more people far sooner and make the transit network as a whole more resilient with Transit City, which is already planned and funded and ground-broken and ready to go. It is far more important to build something already than to delay any more in pursuit of the absolutely perfect plan.

Of course, the flaw in my analogy is that if I had put a down payment on a condo, I could probably eventually sell it and recoup my investment. But there's no way to recoup the money already invested in Transit City or the penalties that will be charged for breaking massive contracts with suppliers.