Mindless Shopping, Relaxation, Comedy and Power, Science, ADHD

 ...In this crisis, all that "I dress for myself - I don't care what other people think" malarkey has been shown up as delusional. It turns out that when people dress for themselves they hardly bother getting dressed at all. How many colleagues only attend to their top half on Zoom and are in trackie bottoms the rest of the day?

All of which is causing a fashion crisis, or, more pertinently, a retail one. Fast fashion looks less and less sustainable with its "must haves" changing every three months. It is not that people have forgotten the pleasure of dressing up, it's just that as we hit a recession, so much "fashion" - especially for younger people - looks increasingly daft and unaffordable, even when it's cheaply knocked off.

Clothes on the Grass
Georges Seurat (1859-1891)
Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND]

Oxfam's Second Hand September is just starting, asking us to pledge to buy secondhand for 30 days. "Every week, 13m items of clothing end up in UK landfill," it notes...

I love this campaign, because it truly disrupts the madness. It says we can look great in old stuff. We don't need to endlessly renew our wardrobe and our look. Consumer logic says the opposite: that you can never have enough. If only you buy one more thing, everything will be better.

The pandemic has changed all that, but the politicians seem not to understand how much the cycle of consumption has altered. It is no use telling us to go back to sandwich chains or high-street stores out of patriotic duty when we have found local shops that suit us better. Many of us have also discovered we do not need all the things we once thought we did.

The mutation of shopping from buying necessary stuff to being a leisure activity - "retail therapy" - has been one of the most miserable cons of modern life.

..."What consumerism really is, at its worst, is getting people to buy things that don't actually improve their lives." Who said this? Some French Marxist in the early 70s? No, Jeff Bezos.

...If anything good has come out of this awful time, it is this. A reconnection with our material lives, a pause in mindless consumption. "When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping," they used to say. Well, it's no longer true, if it ever was.

(Suzanne Moore, The Guardian, 2020)

Has the pandemic changed our view of fashion? Have we just discovered that  "retail therapy" is just a load of nonsense? No it's been known by many for years.

Relaxation

Our Holiday
Charles James Lewis (1830-1892)
Photo Credit: Gallery Oldham [ CC BY-NC-ND]

...I was horrified to discover on my two-week summer break that I've forgotten how to relax. Reading novels, a usually fail-safe method, failed to stop my mind raking over the uncertainties ahead. My pledge to digitally detox collapsed after a day. My only true moments of respite were in the Cornish sea, listening to the crashing of waves and focusing on staying afloat. The strictures of mindfulness gurus, "be present", never seemed more apt.

...A true holiday appears unproductive, something that the Puritan work ethic in us resists. Instead of enjoying the view, we use time off to make to-do lists, set life goals, read improving books. My personal goal? Become a recovering workaholic. And sneak in a staycation once the kids are back at school.

(Camilla Cavendish, The i, 2020)

Why do you use the word 'we' as in "we use time off to make to-do lists, set life goals, read improving books."? I don't know anyone who does that.

Comedy and Power

Aristophanes
John Cheere (1709-1787) (after)
Photo Credit: Somerville College, University of Oxford [CC BY-NC]

...It's always power, and the abuse of power, that fuels satire, and has done since Aristophanes ridiculed the elites of ancient Athens. It wasn't pro-Labour bias that stopped comedians from giving Jeremy Corbyn a hard time, despite his ineptness. It was the fact that he didn't have a hope of getting into power. Why waste a good joke on a lame duck?

...The list of subjects deemed off-limits, even to comedians, has grown to ludicrous proportions. And it is rigorously policed, mostly by stridently illiberal liberals amplifying each other's indignation through the echo chambers of social media.

Two years ago a comedian booked for a gig at the University of London was handed a contract forbidding him to use material that contained any hint of "racism, sexism, classism, ageism, homophobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-religion or anti-atheism". Such censorial rules are now commonplace, and the consequences for transgressors can be ruinous.

...I cannot believe the BBC's guidance is any less restrictive. After all, this is an organisation that has embraced wokeness as enthusiastically as Moses embraced the tablets on Mount Sinai. Yet is this political correctness really what Davie (the new BBC director general) wants to dismantle? Is he prepared to welcome to the airwaves such blatantly un-PC comedians as Roy "Chubby" Brown and Jim Davidson?

That would make a kind of sense if he is serious about broadening the BBC's appeal. After all, Chubby is still enormously popular in the "Brexit heartlands" of northern England. However, I think Davie would quickly find that jokes that have them rolling in the aisles in Middlesbrough don't go down so well in Islington.

...To be honest, I don't know why the BBC bothers with political comedy at all. Tom Lehrer famously declared that "satire became obsolete when they awarded Henry Kissinger the Nobel peace prize". In the same spirit, we might say that the BBC doesn't need to pay people to do political comedy when we have Boris Johnson as prime minister and Dominic Cummings writing his scripts. And yes, I know that's a cheap shot, but enjoy it while you can. It's the sort of cheap shot you probably won't be hearing in future on Davie's timidly deferential BBC.

(Richard Morrison, The Times, 2020)

Science

Science
David Watson Stevenson (1842-1904)
Photo Credit: National Museums Scotland [ CC BY-NC-ND]

... The science of public health has risen to great prominence in the past nine months, so that when a scientist gives an opinion now, it is given unusual prominence. Just as in society at large, there are some scientists who think the cure is worse than the disease. Just as in society at large, there are some scientists  who think we should do all in our power to prevent a large epidemic. 

Some parts of the media have presented these contrasting views as an exasperating "row". But they are not different views of the science; they are just different proposed strategies.

There are, of course, some real scientific differences, such as the extent and role of immunity or the ability to protect more vulnerable people, but these are secondary to the bigger problem of the overall approach to be taken. This can be informed by science but not determined by it.

(Graham Medley, professor of infectious disease modelling, The Times, 2020)

*... Science is divided. The most apocalyptic, however, are getting the loudest shout. Neither on how, nor where, nor when the virus spreads most virulently is there consensus among epidemiologists, and even if that consensus existed, broadcasters and journalists would still have a duty to remind politicians and the public that combating an illness should not elbow from national attention the equally honourable goal of saving livelihoods as well as lives.

A Giant Hand Roaming Through the Dark Streets of London
Richard Tennant Cooper (1885-1957)
Wellcome Collection [Public Domain] 

... Public health and public wealth may conflict. When this happens the argument that medical goals should not always trump economic or social goals must be made honestly, openly and without fear. For this, regular media platforms should be provided. The BBC should lead the way in  providing them. It is not doing so.

... The case against controlling a pandemic by economy-wrecking lockdowns is not a bee in the bonnet of a few freaks; it meets wide if not majority sympathy, including from those scientists who argue that locking down only postpones a surge, and those scientists who believe that collective resistance to infection starts kicking in at a much lower level than the 60 per cent figure used for "the science" that our government followed...

(Matthew Parris, The Times, 2020)

Aren't the scientists informing the government and isn't the government then taking that information into account before making decisions on what to do? Advisors are advisors. They are not decision makers.  Sometimes the government will go with the science and sometimes it won't. 

We know that there is no consensus on the science of this pandemic. You only have to look at how facemasks are being used in schools. In some countries masks are being worn by children at all times within the classroom. In others they are not worn at all. Yet again some children as young as three are wearing masks going to nursery while others only start wearing masks when they attend secondary school. (See September 4th and 18th)

ADHD

... My own perception of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) was gleaned entirely from popular culture and the stereotypes it perpetuates.

Though I know now the obstacles it presents are obvious in every area of my life, nothing I saw gave me any inkling that I might have it.

The Dreamer
Annie Louisa Swynnerton (1844-1933)
Photo Credit: Manchester Art Gallery [CC BY-NC-ND]

I'm a girl, I'm a daydreamer rather than a disruptor. I did not underachieve at school and I always considered my lateness, chaos or limitations personal failures rather than caused by a neurological disorder.

I felt the impact on my self-esteem, but it was hardly something to see a shrink about. And, yes, I am talkative and have never been able to sit still. And I am very sensitive, impatient and impulsive. And I can't tell stories in order and I interrupt people and I can't focus and I can't  start tasks and I can't finish tasks and I can't go to supermarkets or restaurants or follow instructions or a recipe without feeling overwhelmed. And I can't relax - ever. But that's just my problem, isn't it?

Well, no, actually, and had any of these symptoms been explained to me, or had ADHD been displayed in functioning people on TV instead of being used as shorthand for "disorganised" or "stupid", or a lazy way to paint a character as deviant, perhaps it wouldn't have taken me until the age of 27 to seek treatment and start lifting the fog. When I did, it was YouTube vlogs that helped me learn to manage it.

(Sarah Carson, The i, 2020) 

The trouble is that plenty of people who exhibit your behaviour traits, or symptoms do not have ADHD. Like dyslexia there are many children who have reading difficulties who do not have dyslexia. (See Nov 27)

One of the difficulties with ADHD is drawing the line at where normal levels of inattention, hyperactivity and impulsive behaviour end and significant levels requiring intervention begin.