Feel Free to Talk Back

I am very happy to have people comment on these entries and you don't need to write an essay, happy to get "liked it" or "don't agree with this one" although if you hate it some hint as to why would be helpful.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

My Kingdom for a horse

So driver behaviour featured in a recent post on being inconsiderate and I am begining to feel that I might have it in for vehicles or more specifically the way some people drive (not me of course like everyone I know "we" are good drivers)

To move on from the idea that people are just generally incondsiderate in cars and assume for a moment that most people are decent human beings then the question arises why do people behave the way they do in cars.

Brain power strikes me as a key determinant, no I am not insinuating that people are thick it is just a couple of things we have inherited presumably make driving more difficult.

Firstly speed of decision making which manifests in hesitant driving potentiall especially around intersections and the like.
So people have evolved to travel around at say a maximum speed of about 35km (which is Olympic sprinter speed) and mostly at about 5km (lesiurly walking speed) Therefore dealing with things coming at you at 50 - 100km must present a challange.
On the other hand we see tennis players and cricketers etc facing balls traveling at over 100km and they are able to deal with it? But they do it by reaction rather than analysis. The part of our brain that deals with reaction is the amigdala and is buried deep in our brains and the "oldest" part of the brain. This is also our watchdog the bit of the brain that makes you flinch at an unexpected noise or close your eyelid in time to protect your eye from an incoming partical. It is the "act first ask questions second" part of our brain. You know from your own experiance that the thinking part is much much slower.
For example if you have ever been to a scary movie and flinched at a sudden sight or sound that is our friend amigdala in action the fact that you relax again and don't run out of the theatre is our slower but smarter thinking brain taking over.

So the point is we all make decisions relatively slowly, admittedly some people are faster than others but what a car does travelling at higher than walking speeds is make this slower process visable. While some of the time we rely on learned responses such as changing gear a lot of what happens on the road is constantly changing so we have to think it through not merely react.

Next time we see someone being indecisive on the roads lets assume that they are getting to it as fast as they can its just that sometimes good decisions take time.

Next post, why some people drive in a very sequential manner, but this one is long enough for one day.

Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink

So the UN is trying to make water and sanitation a human right. It was described as a non binding aspirational goal. Which presumably is what the rest of the human rights are also based on a cursory examination of the others.

Here is a link to The Universal Declaration of Human Rights http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr

As you can see there are 30 of them. What strikes me reading through the list is how few of them NZ has acheived at the moment without adding further rights on top.

1 "...human beings are... endowed with reason...." clearly whomever wrote this was living on a different planet from me. I meet humans on a daily basis who have virtually nil ability to reason.

8 "right to effective remedy for any acts violating the rights granted to him by law" nope not here, we all know that justice via our court system is excedingly expensive and in a number of instances government departments (the ones most likely to violate your rights) are exempt from prosocution

9 "no one shall be subject to abitrary arrest or detintion" except it seems if it suits the state, we all know that people can be detained on the suspicion of terrorisim so strike that one too.

11 "everyone is presumed inocent until proven guilty" except for tax cases in NZ where you have to prove innocence

12 "everyone is entitled to privacy" nope again we allow law enforcement agencies to routinely snoop on people (who are innocent until proven guilty remember)

13 "everyone has the right to leave the country" well as long as it is ok with the government having paid all your fines, obtained a passport and gotten another country to agree that you can go there.

15 "everyone has the right to a nationality" unless you are adopted from a foriegn country in which case you have no nationality until the government decides to give you one.

17 "no one shall be abitrarily deprived of their property" unless of course we need it for tax or perhaps we might want to build a road on it or perhaps we consider your house historic etc.

19 "everyone has the right to expression" unless of course we think that it is hate speech or you want to wear a gang patch or we otherwise disagree with your expression.

23 This one is all about employment and is completely indefensible as a "human right" since when has the "right" to form a trade union been an inalienable part of being a human being. I am confident that many generations of people could live and die without the need of a trade union. This article also assumes that work is some how a societal good which unless you are living in a comunist country it is not.

24 "the right to paid holidays" I can't rationalise the idea that holidays are a human right at all, presumably as a hunter gatherer if you sat on your bum too long you starved to death so when did holidays become a human right. Does this mean unemployed people are entitled to holidays? Why don't stay at home mums get holidays

And now they want to add water to the list, given that this is a necessity of life then this feels as least as reasonable as some of the other nonsense that is included in the declaration now, but how is this to be manifest? Is the first 2 litres a day for each citizen of water provided to be free and then the normal charging regime of direct charging or via rates cuts in and who by the way pays for the first 2 litres? If I am out in the country side etc does that mean I can trample peoples property rights (article 17) in order to asert my right to access to water.

In the debate a case was sighted of a community in Bolivia where a commercial company after putting a water scheme in place wished to deprive the locals of the right to collect rain water. OK I think I can accept that access to rain (or the weather more generally) is potentially a human right, however after that it gets a bit murky.

With all the brain power devoted to the UN shouldn't they be a bit smarter about what they are trying to acheive. "design a system for idiots and only idiots will use it'

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

You can't always get what you want

Recently I have been told that "In a democracy people get the government they deserve" which is a quote from Alexis de Tocqueville and is an often used quote to explain why democratic governments are as bad as they are. Clearly the quote could be used to explain good government but firstly people seldom think that their government is any good and secondly if they do they will tend to point to the leader or the party philosophy as the reason for the "good governance" rather than the system that created the government.

I first must admit to not being an expert on de Tocqueville and nor have I read any of his books, however a quick internet search reveals that he lived in France from 1805 to 1859 and the quote above comes from his books on America where he was observing the birth of a new form of government practiced in a way that was completely different from the land of his birth.
As he seemed to admire the way America was unfolding I suspect the quote was phrased in the positive i.e. that finally the people will get a government that they deserve rather than the tyrany of Europe where politics and government were dominated by an aristocratic elite.

It is ironic that the period in which this man lived and the emerging democracy of America were really a period of power dominated by the elite (including America) and his comments now being used to justify a system of mediocre government dominated by the masses.

Democracy as currently practised seems to me to be mostly about the tyranny of the majority with some checks and balances to make sure this doesn't go to far. It is odd that for government we believe that "might is right" i.e. no matter how stupid your ideas or policies are if you can persuade enough people to your point of view then you are justified in implimenting this policy. This would be the only area of society where we think this is a good rule. In the playground we call it bullying, in the workplace we have laws to regulate the might of employers etc.

A small example would be the dog chipping law which requires all dogs to be microchipped. This was in response as we remember to a young girl being savagely mauled by a dog (or possibly two I can't recall). It was universally approved of by "the majority" however any short period of reflection will demonstrate that this measure will do absolutely nothing to prevent dogs bitting people and as there has been other incidents since this is clear. Yet "the majority" agreed this was a sensible idea. "The minority" eg dog owners lost out and had a silly law inflicted on them.

As we all end up in various minorities depending on the issue I am not sure we "get the government we deserve" but rather the government other people thrust upon us. Do I deserve to be ruled by a generally uneducated boorish majority or... well the or that is another question entirely.

Friday, July 23, 2010

Just this once.....

So are you considerate? I am...., well most of the time I mean come on sometimes I am in a hurry aren't you, I mean well just this once it won't hurt anyone if.....

Today I was trying to pull out of a driveway from a parking area onto a busy road and along comes another driver who wanted to pull into the same driveway. So thier solution was to stop in the middle of the road with their indicator on holding up all the traffic behind them, clearly getting in the way I had wanted to travel and glaring at me as if I was being very inconsiderate for being where they wanted to go. This forced me to turn in the opposite direction to allow them to get out of everyone elses road. I guess I could have sat there and glared back but hey I would probably still be there, breath in and let the small things go.

A short distance down the road in the wrong direction (from my point of view) I encounted another vehicle that was crawling along as the driver was looking for a park again eyes fixed (well swivilling I guess) on their needs and oblivious to those behind them such as myself and about four other vehicles.

Another breath and sigh... let it go.... however I did start mumbling to myself about why people behave this way. Of course the social scientists will tell you that it is because you are not in their (the people causing you the problem) tribe. i.e. they don't know you, therefore they don't care.
Apparantly we can only maintain about 50 - 70 close (ish) relationships before the time and effort overwhelms us. We can have many more people that we know but even then there is a limit measured in a few hundred for most of us before we just don't care. It simply isn't possible for you to truley care about everyone.

This is not the same as being able to empathise we can do that for anyone once their plight is presented to us, but we don't feel sad about all the people who will be murdered in the next 24 hours as we just don't know them. When someone we know turns up in the statistic we have an entirely different reaction.

But I don't think that is entirely it, I think sometimes we know damn well we are being inconsiderate but in that moment we think "well most of the time I am good" a little bad for just a couple of minutes won't really hurt. "Hey I really need to park my car and I am in a hurry" Trouble is if everyone does this even just now and again our odds of striking someone in any given day go up a lot.

So the next time you are tempted to take up two parks because getting it right is hard, or leaving your supermarket trolley in the middle of the isle while you scoot back for the soup you forgot etc, just remeber that we all reap what we sow in the world of consideration. Life's short but not that short and the time you save today may be wasted tomorrow when someone else forgets about you.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Health or Lack of it

So my grandmother is 92 (or maybe 93 I forget to be honest) and I have been fortunate to have her as part of my life.
Unfortunately she has gall stones something I know about as I have had them too.

For those who do not know about them the salient points are that it is very very painful when they "attack" you and the treatment is relatively straight forward in that it is day surgery to have your gall blader removed, something that you can live happily without.

And there is the problem for my gran, "day surgery" which no matter how routine etc is still surgery and involves a general anestethic. It is unlikely that this would go well for my gran and so unlike me she is having to live with this issue.

Your gall bladder comes into play when you eat, specifically fats and so if you don't eat you don't get the very painful attacks, or more usefully if you don't eat fat you don't get it. This was the way I managed the condition until my surgery I would only eat things that had 2% or less fat content which by trial and error I had discovered was a level my system could tolerate with out anoying my gall bladder.

A variation on this has likewise become my grans solution unfortunately this means she isn't eating very much and losing weight which in the end could potentiall kill her.

The reason for this discussion is a thought I had about the short term benefits of being healthy as we routinely ignore this on the basis that any health issues associated with our current bad behaviour will manifest in the future.

The thought is this, what if you are not healthy enough to stand the treatment and therefore you die of a cureable condition, wouldn't you feel at the minimum a bit dumb. So are you healthy enough to survive getting healthy?