On the Importance of Factual Vigilance

Social platforms, as do their number of users, perpetually proliferate. As a result, people find more people with shared opinions and more people without. What I notice is that the former exceeds the latter. In both cases, the causes and yielded consequences are equally interesting. However, my focus is specifically on group activity and digital conditioning. Hopefully I can then quickly emphasise the importance of separating fact from feeling.

When people find likeminded individuals they form an associative relation. This boils down to an inherent homophily in terms of viewpoints i.e. the tendency of us liking those who agree with us. The accumulation in these relations leads to the formation of a group. With the formation of a group, there exists the possibility of negative group-related phenomena. On the internet this possibility is amplified to such an extent that it becomes a near certainty. This will be explored sporadically. In any case, there are three main reasons that cause us to disregard the truth.

1. We usually accept authority too quickly

Strength of feeling has proved to be much more important than facts and figures. People take cues from each other, and through the distortions of personal bias, uninformed opinion, misinterpretation and artificial interest, a cumulative error is born.

Accepting authority is as risky as it is easy. One can accept authority blindly, or through prejudices, or through mistaken judgements, or through other propensities. Cynicism is a quality imbued on a privileged few. Critical thinking, source analysis and other forms of verification are integral these days. Yet many people lack the capacity or prudence to fact check. Many people lap up what they are fed, and then regurgitate their basic levels of awareness onto the same palette from which they drew their ideas, leading to an endless cycle of tip-of-the-iceberg thinking. This negligent pretentiousness is obviously not universal, but remains consistent and palpable.

2. We are conditioned to bite-sized information

Pictures, videos, comments and updates do not form a representative view of anything. In fact, they are wholly unrepresentative due to their singular nature. But it just so happens that they are the most accessible and most understandable forms of media. Nobody wants to read a credited analysis of the Chilcot report: a CNN infographic will do. Nobody wants to research the nature of gun violence and race relations with an objective consideration of multiple factors and comparisons: 140 characters about injustice will do. What we are exposed to is a morsel of the truth, or often, a lie. Yet such fragments are what form our evidence. They are what back our opinions. They are the counterfeit ammunition we use to load our weapons of argument.

3. We are majoritarian         

                                                                                   

I would not use a majoritarian definition in its strictest sense. It is only what appears to us as the majority that seems correct. If you were on social media leading up to the Brexit vote, it seemed like Britain would vote Remain by a distinct majority. Yet this was a fake majority. There was no true representation of British sentiment. An entire demographic was ignored simply because they had little presence in media. We are constantly swept up in a torrent of external information. In such situations, phenomena like groupthink begin to take over. Instead of navigating the ocean, we let the current decide our destination.

All of this group activity, coupled with confrontation by unbowed dissenters, heightens a sense of belonging and cause. This can have a continuous effect of depreciation on validity and credibility. Effort and rationality is the only blade that can cut through a dense forest of malarkey.

Instead of reconciling differences, group activity has engendered more barriers now than ever seen before. The internet continues to usher in online activism and group feeling. We must remain self-reflective, self-critical and self-motivated. Everyone knows the internet is not gospel, but like many other instances in which we know something, the knowledge is not acted upon. Ignorance may be a virtue, but nowadays when ignorance results in division and death, it should not be a trait that we condone.

Perceiving Perfection

“The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.”

― Eden Phillpotts

We all know everything relies on perception, is subjective, is relative… and so on. It’s been drilled into us that things change depending on viewpoint. We’re told we shouldn’t feel insecure just because we weren’t born to be the Einsteins or the Gandhis or the Jenners of our generation. That fifteen year old girl is told she shouldn’t regard Victoria’s Secret models as ‘perfect’ and that she should love herself. That forty-six year old businessman is told he doesn’t need to get on Forbes list or to be a CEO of a Fortune 500 company to confirm his value in the world.

Everywhere, we've been creating a system of belief to shun all ideas of idealistic perfection and success. The focus has been to look at what we have, and to be content. What this system has created is a league of critics ready to look down upon all instances of near-perfection. They’ll point out airbrushed photos of models, enhanced photos of landscapes and any other perceived inconsistencies which catch their eye. It is now common to say that for anything and everything there doesn’t exist a ne plus ultra. This line of thought needs to come to an end. We have established that everything relies on perception, is subjective, is relative and so on. What we need to realise is that perfection does exist… the only discrepancy across our opinions is what our version of perfection is.

Consider these two photographs. They are of The Rhine (German: Rhein) – the second-longest river in Central and Western Europe.

River Rhine (Source: wikimedia /Gouwenaar)

Rhein II - Andreas Gursky

            The photos look markedly different, but what really separates them? Well, technically, around 4.3 million US dollars separates them. The second photograph, Rhein II, is the second most expensive photograph in the world, made by German visual artist Andreas Gursky in 1999. The first is a tourist’s.

            The photograph of The Rhine was digitally altered by Gursky, removing objects and people until it was completely minimalistic. Gursky explained: "It says a lot using the most minimal means … for me it is an allegorical picture about the meaning of life and how things are." You may read that as complete BS – it’s just a nice looking photograph that got some attention. Christie’s New York, a multinational arts business and auction house, describes it "a dramatic and profound reflection on human existence and our relationship to nature on the cusp of the 21st century.” Once again – BS? You decide.

            The importance of you deciding shouldn’t go unnoticed. The worth of art (as with anything around us) depends on the value we imbue upon it. In my opinion, no work of art is supremely useless. Of course, there are pieces which are ineffective (in this context, I use ‘ineffective’ to mean the work of art does not elicit any profound emotion or response in anyone at all), and these are less valuable. Modern art has been a popular target for being ‘useless’ with its absurdly simple concepts and techniques. Seeing a modern piece of art you usually think “Oh, I could have done that”. However, it’s important to try to respond to your own self, “But I didn’t. So someone’s provided something new to the world and I guess that’s valuable in its own right.”

Artists reflect themselves in anything they create, whether it is conscious or unconscious. If that reflection elicits strong emotion in others, it is valuable. If that reflection is of a key figure, it is valuable. (Take Picasso’s handwritten notes of trivial messages like “I’m in the restaurant” as an example, each garnering an estimated price of around 1500 US dollars.)

            Coming back to Rhein II, Gursky said "Paradoxically, this view of the Rhine cannot be obtained in situ, a fictitious construction was required to provide an accurate image of a modern river." What is interesting here is that his view is that an accurate image of a modern river needs to be formed through unnatural alteration. There is one important thing to focus on here. The image is Gursky’s idea of accuracy, not anyone else’s. Gursky reflects his views in his work. Whether you agree with it or not – it is there. He has created his own version of perfection, and he finds beauty in it, as does (presumably) the man who paid 4.3 million dollars for it.

            What am I getting at here? The first photo is authentic, unaltered and realistic. The second photo is unnatural, altered and idealistic. The second photo, arguably, looks better. Now imagine if it was not two photos of a river I used, but two photos of a model. One altered through Photoshop and one unaltered. Our noble minds would automatically defend the moralistic view that the unaltered model is more real, more beautiful and more representative. But when we focus like this, on what is real, then we aren’t appreciating the versions of perfection we as humans have created.

Of course, the media has done an effective job in brainwashing people into believing they need to look a certain way, which has led to a dreadful era of body image issues amongst practically every single person… but this has happened because people have believed they need to be perfect. No one needs to be perfect. We all need to appreciate versions of perfection.

The Rhein II may be fake but it is visually appealing. It is someone’s version of perfection. I admire it. I will not look for images like the Rhein II in real life nor will I be desensitised to natural wonder because of it. It exists, and I am no person to determine its actual worth.

Perfection is beautiful because it sounds so absolute but is so variable. My version of perfection is not yours. Your version of perfection is not mine. Let’s stop belittling everything which isn’t ‘real’ – it’s a mindless pursuit. We need to see the value in things a little bit more, whether it’s an altered photograph, a Photoshopped model or anything else as such.

Everything reflects something, and when everything reflects something there comes a point at which a reflection will reflect something meaningful, and when something has a meaning it has worth… for once, let’s actually begin to appreciate that worth.

Imagine You Died Whilst Reading This

“Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.”

― Haruki Murakami

Let’s say some sort of immediate disease struck you into a fatally feverous state within the next five seconds.

I don’t know what you’re doing right now. You might be sitting down at a desk trying to get some work done, lying down in your bed relaxing, in transit between two places or in any other situation which the irrational human mind could conjure. What if, at the end of these five seconds, your heart collapsed into itself, your eyes went cold and every supporting muscle in your body submitted its reigns to gravity. You would fall onto whatever is supporting you like a sloppy pile of meat… but what next?

There are two possibilities of what happens next – one more likely than the other. The likely one is that you’re within distance of another human being, who’ll soon enough rush to your aid and attempt to resuscitate your sagging corpse. Someone will also telephone robotically for an ambulance. There would be a kaleidoscopic mixture of emotions in the air. You’d probably be brought to the hospital to fulfil formalities and your lifeless body would be lobbed into a frosty morgue to rest. Maybe an autopsy would be performed on you. That’s the most plausible line of action – the discovery of your body and appropriate measures to deal with your death formally.

We are almost always surrounded by people, but what if we weren’t? This is the second, more thrilling possibility. Say, nobody sees or discovers your body once you’ve waned into a crumpled pile of humid skin and bone. For purposes of imagery, let’s confine this idea to you in one room, sitting at a desk by your lonesome.

The five seconds are up. Your head smacks the desk with a dull noise.

1.      Mortis, Mortis, Mortis...

What happens first is that your blood pools into portions of your body under the influence of gravity. This stagnation of the blood causes a bruise-like discoloration – livor mortis. Around four hours later your body’s muscular tissues become bizarrely firm from the collected blood. This is called rigor mortis. Your body is constantly losing heat to the atmosphere and the temperature of your carcass drops. This is known as algor mortis.

2.     Self-cannibalism

Your intestines will teem of living microorganisms, living even after your death, slowly breaking down dead intestine cells. Simultaneously, chemicals and enzymes will be released by a decrease in chemical changes and pH, causing your cells to lose their structural integrity and to collapse, resulting in your body self-digesting itself – known medically as autolysis.

3.     Oxygen depletion

Any oxygen remaining in your body is exhausted by aerobic microbes and cellular metabolism. The depletion of oxygen results in prime conditions for anaerobic organism proliferation. These organisms multiply and consume the ammonia, hydrogen sulphide and carbohydrates present in your body.

4.     Bloat

Anaerobic metabolism results in the decomposition of tissues. This releases gas and green substances and discolours your naturally supple skin tone to a blistered blue. The accumulation of these gases in your body’s cavity causes abdominal distention, making your torso swell and your tongue loll out. The pressure from the gases may even cause seams in your body to split. Tepid fluid discharges from your nostrils and mouth, filling clefts and seeping out in a stream of liquid stickiness across your pasty skin, blessing your complexion with a repulsive sheen of ashen sweat.

5.     Breeding ground

There probably aren’t enough insects in your room for this to happen, but if there were enough, maggots would hatch and sup on the tissues of your body. Hair would detach from skin. Ruptures in the body carved out by maggots would fill with a stream of fluids to escape to the outside environment. These ruptures would be a two-way street, allowing oxygen into the body to create a favourable environment for aerobic microorganisms and fly larvae.

6.     Private pool

Ever dreamed about quick weight loss? The next stage would allow your dead body to lose its mass exponentially, with cloying decomposition fluid leaking out into the environment, filling the gaps between your computer’s keyboard keys like a tiny Venetian waterway. The fluids surrounding your body would accumulate, resulting in a Cadaver Decomposition Island (CDI). Your clothes would become saturated with bodily fluid, which would slowly evaporate into the air, creating a sultry stench.

7.      Drying off

Your body has diminished quickly, and in the advanced decay stage, decomposition slows down as there is barely any material left. Finally, all that is left is just dry skin, bones and cartilage. If your desk is exposed to sunlight then the remaining bodily elements will become bleached and dry. Your body will eventually skeletonise into a shoddy structure of weakened sinew and bone.

This would all happen quite swiftly if you’re in the tropics. Your room (assume the door and windows are shut) would soon become a festering site, the air layered with the smell of hydrogen sulphide (odours resembling rotten eggs) and some traces of thiols (odours resembling garlic). Any living human would gag on the thick aroma of putrid decay.

*

It’s all very exciting to think about this, and you can call me curious or sadistic, but the complexity of our bodies is stupendous. The tiniest microbes and cells and enzymes conspire together to corrode your cadaver down to its rudiments. Isn’t it incredible? We’re so lucky to be the drivers of these vessels, the possessors of such intricacy, and the sharers of ourselves with countless other organisms. To think, we’re so bound by our outward propensities, we fail to recognise our inward complexities. The world around us bogs us down to a state of unilateral weariness, and it isn’t that we should think we are so unique or special, but it’s important to realise there’s more to life than what we do and what happens to us.

There may be more to life than we think, but there is definitely more to death than we think. The denouement of our masterful lives ends and recedes with the help of those tiny organisms we share our body with. Our deaths are so inspiring. We end with timed care and craft, and it may not even matter how our bodies lose their animation, what matters is everything leading up to that point.

Now, we know those feverous five seconds preluding your demise didn’t actually happen… but what if they did?

In that bare moment of cognition before your expiry, would you be content?

The Art of Arrogance

“Arrogance is in everything I do. It is in my gestures, the harshness of my voice, in the glow of my gaze, in my sinewy, tormented face.”

- Coco Chanel

A few years ago I was constantly enmeshed by a dark blanket of self-doubt. It was a lax net on my limbs, coolly preventing me from any sort of positive spurt in any direction. Completely disbarred from any notion of ambition, I practised the same activity every day. This activity was living… living in its slowest, purest form. I did things without reason – eating, drinking, reading and watching. It was like walking a well-worn path which never seemed to end. It was one path, separated by two dichotomous ends.

The linear ignorance I led my life with was pressed tightly between the security of familiarity and an ever pervading gulf of uncertainty. I never bothered to cross fully into either territory. I stayed bound to what I knew, to what made me feel at ease and to what was predictable. What I didn’t realise then, was that I was only half right about the gulf of uncertainty. It was of course, uncertain, but retrospectively I see there was nothing so epic about its proportions that could render it a gulf. Never was I autonomous, and never did I believe I could achieve anything initially considered insurmountable. The environment around me had warmed me into a soft ball of plasticine. Easily affected and easily corrupted.

When I eventually found the determination to gain resoluteness about myself, my objectives, my aspirations… I met a new trait I had never come across before. This was, of course, arrogance. Just reading the word feels so negative, does it not? Who comes into your mind when you read the word arrogant? Do you dislike this person? Do not confuse arrogance with vanity, with conceit, or with pride, for arrogance is not any of those, yet they are inexorably linked. The fantastic aspect of arrogance (one which I particularly admire) is that it is more to do with revealing one’s vanity, conceit or pride. When you realise you have control over your image, you are now your environment. You are now the warmth that shapes you. Arrogance has been a tool I have used for a long time, whether I used it to cut through that gulf of uncertainty, or to sculpt an image of myself – the uses I found for it were not limited.

Humility is so morally celebrated it is illogical to think that anyone could respect arrogance, let alone support it. To me arrogance has never been negative or disillusioned. Every trait about someone tells you something about their character. Do not take arrogance to be one trait in itself. It is more like a subcategory for the other traits someone has. If we think of water flowing through a pipe as all the specific traits connected to arrogance, then the valve that controls this flow is arrogance, or even, modesty. For some people the valve is open completely, for some it is shut, and for some it stays at a point constant between the two. The trick is to keep your hand on that valve at all times, ready to twist, alter and control.

Those that are supremely modest must be aware of its leeching existence. Modesty is suitable in certain circumstances (meeting new people, making good impressions, etcetera), but the more you try and be modest the higher the risks are of you eventually sinking into an abyss of self-doubt. Psychology has shown us if we are conditioned to one thing enough times we begin to truly believe it, and when you tell yourself you are ‘just alright’ or that you ‘aren’t that special’, you are continually detracting from the true self-worth you possess. Of course, one can argue if you use arrogance all the time, you can trick yourself into believing you are better than you actually are, and that may be considered even worse. The secret to not falling into either one of these traps is balance and control. (Remember that metaphorical valve I was writing about?) Once you are able to balance modesty and arrogance you can keep your mind in healthy fluctuation between what you are and what you want to be. Control is vital because you need to realise that you are inevitably in control of yourself. Never forget that you are your environment, and if the world is going to enjoy any of your merits and talents you need to control your mind into believing you are, in fact, capable of getting to where you want to be.

So, who is to say arrogance is negative? ‘Meaning’ is a self-constructed deduction influenced by numerous factors. To me, many meanings are mercurial, and are too often shaped by the majority. If someone is a bit too certain about themselves: what does that tell you about them? Any common person would say that they are simply arrogant (as if it’s just one fact in itself), but is that because those who are arrogant are in fact arrogant? Or is that because those who aren’t arrogant are weak, making the ‘arrogant’ seem arrogant? Or is arrogance a form of insecurity – making arrogance a form of weakness? Or do people like to call arrogance insecurity because it makes them feel more secure about their weaknesses?

History has proved to us, people like to shun the qualities they cannot find in themselves, and we also know that when the majority forms an opinion on something, it often stays steadfast. Disregard what your friends think, what your family thinks and what perhaps you originally thought. If you have realised thinking is a process of development, then you are already one step closer to control and perfect impartiality.

It is ironic I write of impartiality but aim to convey a one-sided message on the positivity of arrogance. However, when you realise how much the environment around you has instilled in you the negativity of arrogance, this piece of writing is just one rogue soldier fighting against an entire army built on convention.

I have called this “The Art of Arrogance” because arrogance is a form of art. You need to have a vision, you need to have control, and you can only get better at it with practice. Hopefully you have started to question some of the things I’ve written about, and more importantly, have started to question other things too. The main reason I write this is to encourage thought, and if you have agreed or disagreed with, scoffed at, or even slandered what I have wrote, then my job is done. You have thought about what I have written, and you have become aware of your own thoughts too. When you know you are being arrogant and when you know you are being modest, you realise you have the power to depict yourself in any way you please. Try to consider every typically negative trait with a broader perspective - it is so easy to ascribe a constant definition to something without further consideration of ulterior meanings and values.

I'll admit, in this tumultuous sea of our realm everything is a game… and I do believe to stay afloat we must all learn to play it.