Hall Boys

I've finally stumbled on a "reality show" that I like. I don't wish to cast any aspersions on the genre's fans, it just doesn't appeal to me. It's not snobbery of any sort. I don't understand the appeal of abstract art, opera or caviar either, but there's nay shortage of people that are smarter than I that do. Incidentally, when I become king I'm going to order that henceforth aspersions will cast at, not on, not even upon, someone or something. But that has nothing to do with the reality show I recently stumbled upon so I'm not going to get into it. Did you know that upon and on can be used interchangeably without having to worry about the jack booted thugs of the grammar police kicking in your door at 3 AM? I...

[Cough, cough. Marie-Louise, my muse, can exactly duplicate the dry, fake cough of Sister Mary Eunice made when she would appear out of nowhere when my fellow unworthy sinners and I were pitching pennies or discussing the definitions of bad words.]

Sorry. Oh, before I forget, I mentioned last week that the subject of this week's column would be demonization. Due to technical difficulties...etc, it's been moved to next week. Anyway, the reality show in question is called, "Manor House," and ran back in 2002. It would seem I'm running a bit behind. Amazon, or rather one of its algorithms, recommended it to me after I recently binge watched "Downton Abbey." I told you I was running a bit behind.

The premise of the show is that it's a depiction of what life would have been like for a bunch of folks living in a huge manor house, in Scotland, at the turn of the last century. The lives of the (newly rich) masters, a family of five, and their (newly minted) slaves servants (14 of them) are offered up for our entertainment via a typical unreality show format. You may have noticed, or at least heard, that alleged reality shows are somewhat different from, and strive to be much more entertaining than, actual reality. This particular show is no exception.

When I'm king (I'm feeling rather monarchical this week), I'm going to order that all high school students, grade year to be determined, will be required to participate in a series of ungraded seminars. For lack of a better term (I've just come up with this idea so I'm little light on details) let's call them the Reality Check Series. The point/purpose is to give the students a realistic grounding in how life actually works/worked to prevent snowflake syndrome going forward, coupled with an appreciation of how crappy life actually was for almost everyone nay very long ago.

The reason Manor House got me to thinking about this is because although it contains all the required unreality elements of reality shows, it still offers much in the way of useful reality checks.

What I mean by the elements of unreality are simply all the stories/rumours/innuendo/etc. surrounding any given reality show. Poke the bear production tricks that have leaked and/or are leaked and designed to manipulate the participants/masses.

Manipulate the participants into providing entertainment for the masses and manipulate the masses for the enrichment of the industry behind the cameras. A new millennial version of Depression-era dance marathons.

As to useful reality checks, an example if you please. Downton Abbey includes "hall boys," but just barely and the term is never defined. Manor House, on the other hand, features a hall boy that literally lives in the hall. Nay, really. In the Scottish manor house where Manor House takes place, the hall boy literally lives in a hall. There's a tiny Murphy bed that folds out of one of the halls walls, and that's where he sleeps. His room is a Murphy bed in a room that's not a room. Yikes!

There's nay a lot of information available about hall boys, even using my usual method for conducting in-depth research -- google a word or phrase and see what happens. The life of a DAT (dilettante about town) requires vigilant prioritising and a ruthless devotion to moving on.

[Manor House is full of Scottish accents, which is why I've become mildly, and hopefully only temporarily, obsessed with using nay, instead of no or not. I'm resisting rolling my r's, so far, but only because I'm nay vera gooud very good at it.]

However, I did manage to ferret out a few facts beyond the appalling one mentioned above. Hall boys, along with their female counterparts, scullery maids, occupied the lowest positions in a rigid hierarchy that began with the master of the house and ended with them.

One of their many duties was to serve as servants to servants that were further up the food chain than they were, and often they were literally boys. They got up first, went to bed last, often worked 16 hour days and couldn't count on a day off. Two words: chamber pots.

This was all considered perfectly normal for centuries and didn't start changing till about a hundred years ago. While a century may seem like a long time to some of you, particularly to those fortunate enough to be slightly younger than I (62.75 chronologically, 39 spiritually), consider the fact that my father was born in 1911, and it was only a couple of years ago that I was being terrorised by Sister Mary Eunice.

Back to reality checks. What have we learned Dorothies? While nay one should have to live/have lived like this, more did than didn't, and nay that long ago. Many still do. I refer not only to the lives of slaves/servants. Till roughly 1800, when The Great Enrichment took off (the subject of this column the week after next), almost everyone on the planet lived short, drudgery-filled lives, and always had.

Manor House is worth a watch for one other reason in my semi-humble opinion. I made reference to the clearly defined and rigidly enforced hierarchy of the household, which mirrored the English class system that had begun to crumble but was still very much in place.

The people of the current era that were assembled for this elaborate game of pretend start going native in the very first episode. It's fascinating to watch how easily they assume the mores of their forebears, mostly I suspect, without being aware of it.

Have an OK day.

©Mark Mehlmauer 2016

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Pain

Pain's inevitable, it's the nature of our reality.

I've come to this conclusion via 62.75 years of experience in the subject as well as well as by studying the thoughts, opinions, and conclusions of others. Particularly the thoughts, opinions, and conclusions of a gentle-man by the name of Thaddeus Golas who wrote a book entitled, "Love and Pain." He may be known to some of your for being the sorta/kinda famous author of a sorta/kinda famous book that was published in 1971. It's called, "The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment."

I don't recommend either book for most people, particularly those of you that are comfortable believers or non-believers, that are content with what you believe (or don't). Most members of both groups will find them to be "out there" and dismiss some of their wilder premises early on, probably regretting have spent the money and/or time to obtain a copy.

Also, the latter book contradicts the former. Or rather, corrects it. And, if you liked the first one you might find Love and Pain to be rather depressing.

However, since Mr. G's conclusions about pain happen to coincide with (and clarified) my own, and since he expresses them so elegantly, I have to acknowledge him. As it happens...

[For the love of a higher power that can be defined any which way you like, for whom am I to judge? (my imaginary gentle reader, or IGR, has been trending politically correct as of late) would you please get on with it! Marie-Louise gives him a dirty look while simultaneously gently smacking me on the back of my head. This significance of this is that though she may agree with him her first instinct is to defend me. She's a very good muse.]

Fine then. First, I must declare a personal (respectful and low-key) rejection of the notion that we're all being punished for an original sin of some sort. A sin that was committed by persons known or unknown that's resulted in everyone born since, that is, everyone, arriving here having been tried, convicted and sentenced -- before they existed. If this works for you, well, you might as well stop reading here. Have an OK day.

Next, to get it out of the way, I'll readily stipulate that pain serves as a very effective survival mechanism. "My hand seems to have caught on fire, that really, really hurts. I should put that out as quickly as possible."

[Oh, before I forget, as to "respectful and low-key," while I'm not a believer, at least in a traditional, conservative way, I'm very much a live and let live sort of dude. It's a cage match! Believers v. non-believers v. non-traditional believers -- or my personal favorite -- traditional v. different traditional. If everyone was to make a conscious effort to redirect the time and energy we use up demonizing (pun intended) each other we could all get our laundry caught up. (Another gentle smack from Marie-Louise.) Suffice it to say that the subject of next week's column is demonization.]

Now, the specific point that Mr. Golas brings up that I'd never thought of before, at least in quite the same way, is that pain is survival. Pleasure, in more than very limited doses, is disintegration and death.

No, I'm not saying that we should resurrect the philosophy and lifestyle of ancient Sparta. Yes, I acknowledge that all work, and no play, not only produces dull dudes/dudettes, it sucks sweaty socks.

BIG BUT.

If I get drunk every day after work, and/or while at work, and if I get and stay drunk the entire weekend, because I really, really like to get drunk, I will begin to disintegrate, I will eventually die. The best I can hope for till the fun turns to cirrhosis of the liver, is that I don't trash/damage/kill anyone else along the way. Please feel free to substitute the pleasure inducing substance/activity of your choice. Don't forget sugar, sugar.

[Stuff and nonsense! Sez my IGR. You're talking about abusing substances/activities that if used in moderation...]

...No, what I'm talking about is that the nature of life on Earth, assuming, as I suspect most folks do if they wish to survive for more than a minute, is that pleasure must be limited and controlled.

[Well sure, everyone knows that moderation in all things...]

That's only true if you define moderation as doing really fun stuff in severely limited and controlled doses. If moderation is the answer why do we spend so much of our time working, be it for a living or the 1,001 other dreary things that must get done to get through the day?

Moderation? My idea of moderation would be a world in which I spend as much time having fun as I do working. That lifestyle is only available to an infinitesimal percentage of people, and for a limited time. Pain finds everyone. Even love hurts.

I hear two questions begging.

If you had the wherewithal to design reality from scratch, or could reboot it any which way you want to, wouldn't you set it up so it was possible to exist in a state of bliss 24 x 7? I'm not even remotely as forgiving as God is supposed to be and that's what I'd do.

On a more practical note, if you concede the inevitability of pain, and don't want to pleasure yourself to death (GRIN, sorry, I can't help myself sometimes) how should you structure your life and personal philosophy?

Have an OK day.

©Mark Mehlmauer 2016

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The Dizzinformation Age

Dizzinformation. Perfect. It seems so obvious in retrospect. Like one of those commercials for a product someone thought up that instantly provokes a now why didn't I think of that? response.

See, I've been in search of this word for a while now, and I was stuck on disinformation, which just doesn't do it. We're told, and I agree, that this is the Information Age and that this is an RBFD (real big, um, freakin' deal). It's on par with the industrial revolution, the invention of the printing press, agriculture, that sort of thing. World-changing stuff.

As I've written before, the Information Age has a huge, honking downside -- information overload. So, for a couple of weeks now I've been trying to think of a word, or if necessary invent one, that captures that no matter how hard I try to swim to shore I never seem to be able to get out of the Information Ocean feeling.

Wouldn't it be nice to lay on the beach for awhile? Better yet, stretch out on a lounge chair of some sort, with a cupholder, sipping from a tall glass of certainty/purpose/direction.

Dizzinformation. See, disinformation doesn't work because to me at least, it means incorrect information, sometimes, no, often, deliberately incorrect and designed to deliberately confuse/manipulate/deceive. Also, information that was thought to be correct but turns out not to be, such as the fact that we will not necessarily die next week if we eat some eggs this week. Well, at least not until the results of a major/minor study by a reputable this, that, or the other sneaks up and taps us on the shoulder while we're multitasking our butts off.

I define dizzinformation syndrome as, simply, dizzy from too much information -- correct, incorrect, or, worst of all, contradictory. It's not primarily because there's so much of it, there's always been a lot of it. It's because it's so easily accessible, and because installing effective filters is hard.

Information (and entertainment) access is well on it's way to becoming ubiquitous. It's only taken about 30 years or so to go from access and environmentally controlled computer rooms, staffed with people in white jackets, to the smartphone in your pocket that can access more information than you could ever possibly consume in multiple lifetimes. And the Dizzinformation Age is still in its infancy.

There are two sorts of information filters, self-installed ones and those installed by someone else.

[Aside: As to those installed by someone else, I'm not talking the security of allegedly/hopefully secure networks that are under constant attack by black hat geeklings whose motivations range from ideological to pathological. The only thing I have to say about that subject is that I believe property rights are fundamental if you prefer living in a modern, prosperous, civilized society. Without them, there wouldn't be any computer networks to attack while sitting in a comfortable chair.

Without property rights, the black hat geeklings -- the idealists, terrorists, or something inbetweenists -- would have to get out of their chairs and go break into a given facility and either steal as many scrolls as they could carry or set the place on fire. Is there a torchesandpitchforks.com? Regardless, here's hoping they don't come after me.]

Now, self-installed filters, if you believe in personal liberty, are clearly to be preferred over those installed by others. But there are, often difficult, choices to be made. If you're not a believer in personal liberty, or a bully, or a bully's victim (willingly/passively/genuinely, e.g., Putin's Russia), your choices range from limited to non-existent.

Personally, I think the latter scenario sucks sweaty socks, but it does simplify things.

On the other hand, life for those of us who prefer, and/or are fortunate enough to enjoy, personal liberty, choosing a personal filter is made all the more complicated by the diminished power of the external ones installed by someone else.

I refer here to the externally installed filters of consensus and convention, many of which our culture has discarded, or at least dramatically weakened. In the about me box on the homepage of my website, I make reference to the Great Fragmentation. I've never directly defined the term or written a specific column about the subject but it's a theme easily discernible throughout my work. We have become, obviously and remarkably quickly, a culture of people that have split into wildly different, and often hostile, factions.

[Wait a minute! (my designated gentlereader interrupts) this is America, we disagree about everything! It's the nature of the beast.]

Yup. But a minute ago we were all, at the very least pretending to agree, that a child born out of wedlock, fornication, porn, sex workers, anything LGBTIQ, abortion, masturbation, profanity, smoking weed, atheism, agnosticism -- deep breath -- and no shortage of other things were generally unacceptable. And, that callowyutes should be instructed accordingly. And, that to spank your child, when appropriate, was to do them a favor. And...

[Wait a minute!...]

Shush. I'm not positing approval/disapproval, I'm merely pointing out that we no longer have such a consensus, and that we've not replaced it with a new one.

TI + CR + (BS x PC) = ?

The too much information age +

A communications revolution (Is that a cell phone in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?) +

(A hyperventilating, ratings and profit-hungry, us v. them, news/media/infotainment business x PC)

= (Welcome to) the Dizzinformation Age.

Have an OK day.
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©2017 Mark Mehlmauer   (The Flyoverland Crank)