Devalued lives

I can't begin to understand how a person can place no value whatever on another human being's life. How other people become mere objects to be exploited.

Obviously I'm thinking of all the political leaders who're prepared to sacrifice thousands of lives in the name of some dubious cause or other - territory, power, religion, whatever. They show absolutely no sign of hesitation or conscience or shame but just carry on sending people to their death.

Of course it happens at every level of society, not just at the top. Husbands killing adulterous wives, gangsters murdering other gangsters, fanatics on shooting sprees, racist attacks, honour killings.

The devaluation of other humans implies also a belief in the potency of violence, and the idea that violence can solve problems, which it seldom does. Isn't it obvious that it just leads to more violence, and endless terror for whoever's on the receiving end?

The normal inhibitions that stop most of us resorting to violence are absent in these murderous individuals. Their inhibitions have somehow been suppressed, either by nature or nurture, and sooner or later they cause havoc.

Public peeing

The complaints are piling up about public peeing. In other words people (mainly men) frantic for a pee, relieving themselves anywhere they fancy and sod the local residents who have to clear up the mess.

Partly it's because so many public toilets have closed due to funding cuts to local councils - half of them have gone in ten years - and partly it's because time-honoured inhibitions about public behaviour are lapsing.

If you're in a city centre, there will be shops with toilets. But if not, what are you supposed to do if you're desperate? You'll resort to any place where you don't think you're observed and let rip.

Obviously it's behaviour that most people find disgusting and anti-social, but what alternative is there when public toilets are rapidly disappearing? Are you supposed to pee in your pants? Are you supposed to knock on someone's door and ask to use the toilet? Are you supposed to stay at home?

At the same time people are less inhibited about their behaviour in public and more likely to just do as they think fit. When I was growing up peeing in public was totally taboo but that taboo has lapsed a bit in the meantime, along with taboos about audience behaviour, not cheating in exams, blatant lying and all the rest.

Westminster Council in London is trying a new deterrent - hydrophobic paint. It's water-repellent, meaning that anyone who pees against it will get splashback on their trousers and shoes. Of course people who're blind drunk probably won't even notice the splashback, but it's worth a try.

No chance at all of getting more public toilets. The British government is cutting public services to the bone, which means more toilet closures, not less.

Just do it

When I was young, self control and will power were highly valued. My parents were always telling me I should have more self control, that it would rid me of my scattiness, my impulsiveness, my over-eating, and a dozen other undesirable traits.

But self control seems to have gone out of fashion long ago. Who even talks about it? And who boasts about possessing it? Very few people.

There's a general assumption that self control is a relic of a bygone age, an age when people were so full of inhibitions they never had any fun, never "let go".

More and more, people are encouraged to just do whatever they want, whatever they feel comfortable with, go wherever the urge takes them. Get as angry as you like, as jealous as you like, as belligerent as you like. If that annoys or offends other people, too bad.

I see people doing exactly that and it's cringe-worthy. They get impossibly drunk. They shout at shop assistants. They jump queues. They chuck rubbish everywhere. They drive like maniacs. They spout outrageous opinions. They ignore all the virus restrictions.

I don't mind admitting that I have a lot of self control and will power and I see nothing wrong with that. I've acquired skills I wouldn't have acquired otherwise. I've made the most of my abilities and the opportunities I've been given. I've steered away from things that could do me harm, like dangerous drugs or binge-drinking. I don't feel like my life has been crushed in the process.

Perhaps the pendulum will finally swing back and people will conclude they've been a bit too free-and-easy, a bit too self-indulgent, and now is the time to rein it all in a bit.

Perhaps. But don't hold your breath.

Just say it

One of the big changes in my lifetime has been the loosening of the old taboos about what can be openly discussed and what can't. There are now so many things that are talked about quite freely which in my younger days weren't talked about at all, or only in private behind closed doors, and even then with huge embarrassment and trepidation.

The list of now permissible subjects is pretty long and getting longer - mental health problems, suicide and death, sexual preferences and difficulties, disabilities, domestic violence, sexual harassment, intimate parts of the body, grisly medical treatments and many others.

When I was young all these topics were considered barely mentionable for one reason or another - too morbid, too personal, too squeamish, too upsetting, too graphic, too horrifying - and lips were sealed for fear of causing visible consternation.

The result was that many people grew up totally ignorant of things that could cause serious problems in their life, and had no idea what to do about them. They would think they were the only person in the world with such problems, and would get more and more upset about them.

Now people grow up much better informed, able to air all manner of personal traumas to other people, blurting out whatever's on their mind without feeling like a freak, and with much greater self-awareness.

We can tell the world about our prostate operations or depressive episodes or erectile dysfunction or bulimia and nobody bats an eyelid. The raised eyebrows, warning looks and frosty responses are in general long gone.

Some people of course have never adapted to the new era of uninhibited frankness and are stuck in the old taboos. I think one reason I found it so hard to talk to my mum in her later years was because there were still so many things she couldn't bring herself to talk about.

Tell it like it is - why not?

Out in the open

It's the era of openness, of transparency, of people telling it like it is, of all those little personal quirks and oddities being broadcast to the world. People coming out as gay, as anorexic, as self-harming, as having mental health issues.

All those things people used to keep to themselves out of embarrassment, shame, fear of being abnormal, fear of being misunderstood, all those things a tangle of inhibitions stopped us revealing, are now being voiced more freely.

You can't open a newspaper or turn on the TV without someone being astonishingly frank about some psychological weirdness they've been struggling with for years, and all the ways in which it's drastically affected their life.

I think it's a very healthy trend. There were many things I kept quiet about as a child because I was afraid of other people's reactions. But now I try to be as open as I can and less in thrall to those unnecessary inhibitions.

On the whole I'm happy to discuss my numerous neuroses - my anxieties, my fears, my lack of confidence, my doubts about my intelligence, my social shyness, my inarticulacy, my odd sleep patterns, my peculiar dreams. There are only one or two things I'm silent about, so as not to embarrass other people.

It's an unusual trait in my family. My mum was always obsessively secretive, confining herself to small talk and steering away from anything too personal or revealing. My brother in law and sister are much the same. Happily my niece is a lot more open, probably because she's 36 and part of a generally more communicative generation.

As a kid I was taught that men should "keep a stiff upper lip", not show anyone we were upset or afraid or couldn't cope. We were supposed to bottle up our emotions and put on "a brave front". Thank goodness that absurd attitude is gradually fading away.

Keeping mum

Ramana and Chuck have both posted about secrets today, so I thought I'd join in. People have very different attitudes to secrets. Some think it's healthy to get everything out in the open and not bottle things up, others think it's more sensible to reveal the bare minimum and keep the rest to yourself.

Things have changed a lot since I was young. In those days there was no social media to broadcast your every personal quirk to. You might confide something to a family member or one or two friends and that was that. Now you can tell Facebook you're suffering from PTSD and hundreds of people know your secret instantly.

But is that a good or bad thing? The "let it all out" school of thought says that revealing everything, however perverse or trivial or hateful or idiotic, might upset a few people but there's nothing festering away inside to cause inhibitions and awkwardness.

Which is fine in theory, but in practice there are many very good reasons for keeping things secret.

Someone might have told you something in confidence. If you reveal it, others will stop confiding in you. Something might be so controversial or bizarre that you can't face all the possible negative reactions, so you prefer to keep it quiet. If you're a whistle-blower exposing some sort of malpractice, you might find yourself ostracised or even sacked.

Although personally I'd like to be entirely frank about every aspect of my life, it's for reasons like those that in reality I keep many things secret. It would simply be too damaging to lay everything on the line.

My family have always been intensely secretive, telling me what's strictly necessary and keeping everything else under wraps. I know very little about my mother and father because they told me next to nothing. My sister and brother-in-law and niece are equally reticent.

Well, total transparency sounds good but can easily turn sour.

Spilling the beans

Therapist-cum-life-coach Tori Ufondu only works with men - because they're often reluctant to open up about themselves and it's more challenging to break down their inhibitions. She finds working with women less rewarding because "sessions with women feel more like talking to my girlfriends".

Interesting that she still finds men more tight-lipped and defensive, when there's a general impression that men are getting more open and happy to talk about what's going on inside. Personally I find the men I come across just as unforthcoming as ever and not at all good at spilling the personal stuff.

Tori finds that once she's helped a guy to open up, he reveals all sorts of hang-ups he's never been fully aware of, let alone shared with other guys (or women).

Like difficulties getting on with workmates, or being a slave to other people's expectations, or fear of failure, or sexual frustration, or not recognising his partner's changing identity. Big issues that are seriously affecting his life.

Clearly men's inability to share what's troubling them is doing harm. Seventy eight per cent of all UK suicides are male. A lot of those men must have been bottling up distressing thoughts and feelings that other people could have helped with.

I'm not brilliant at pouring out the personal stuff myself. I'm much more open than when I was young but it still doesn't come naturally. I still have to drive away those masculine inhibitions about "keeping it all to yourself" that were drummed into me as a boy.

But as my regulars know, over the years I've identified all sorts of personal quirks and phobias and anxieties and prejudices I used to be oblivious of, and my self-awareness has expanded dramatically.

I'm sure some of you will promptly tell me that my self-awareness is far from complete and remind me of numerous negative traits that annoy the hell out of you and are shamefully misanthropic. But I'm getting there.

However embarrassing or agonising it may be to spill the beans, letting it all fester and coagulate inside is asking for trouble.

Loosening up

The sixties are always seen as the decade of the "sexual revolution", when all of a sudden people lost their sexual inhibitions and were jumping into bed with everyone left, right and centre.

That may have been true for some, but for me it was quite the opposite. Although I was a teenage boy and supposedly awash with testosterone and erotic yearnings, I was actually totally chaste until the sixties were virtually over.

My various girlfriends seemed to be equally chaste and made no attempt to seduce me. Clearly libidos had not yet run amok in the strait-laced London suburbs.

Though I did know one guy who was assiduously bedding every woman he came across, I had no wish to do the same. He seemed to have little time for anything else but proving his manhood. But there was certainly no shortage of eager women happy to satisfy his urges.

I suppose I never quite saw the point of the so-called sexual revolution. Of course it was a step forward that people were losing their sexual inhibitions and prudishness, but it didn't follow that you had to prove your newly liberated attitude day after day with as many partners as you could handle. Shedding inhibitions was somehow equated with promiscuity and lack of commitment.

I must say it's refreshing to hear younger people discussing sexuality with a degree of candour and directness that would have been unthinkable when I was growing up. That was the age of tortuous double entendres, coy references to "down there" or "consummation", and the elaborately evasive and euphemistic "Carry On" films. Any clearcut mention of sex was enough to traumatise the assembled company and have you frozen out of the conversation.

Certainly I wish I'd been able to talk about sex with the same frankness and in the same detail when I was an innocent and ignorant teenager. It might have saved a lot of confusion and embarrassment in later life when my sexual naivety was all too obvious. And still catches me out even now.

Exposure

I'm always astonished at those people who have no inhibitions whatever about exposing every aspect of their lives, no matter how personal or controversial, to the entire population.

They appear happily on TV shows telling their amazed audiences how often they've shoplifted or driven while drunk or taken sickies* or had sex with their bosses. Far from being embarrassed, they seem to be proud of their extravagant behaviour, as if they're living life to the full while the rest of us are timid introverts not daring to do anything out of the ordinary.

I'm not complaining. They're not doing any harm to anyone (unless their fearless honesty includes a bit of fearless putting-the-boot-in**). And it's up to them how they want to live their lives and how private or all-revealing they want to be. What's it to do with me?

In fact it can be very enjoyable, in a morbid-curiosity kind of way, listening to someone confessing to the sort of outrageous behaviour I would never indulge in unless I was seriously under the influence.

But I'm never sure if their full-on disclosures imply simply a natural personality unspoilt by the normal adult scruples, or if they're ego-trippers seeking as much attention as possible and terrified of being ignored. And does it matter anyway?

Certainly many of us have learnt to be cautious about what we say or don't say for fear of people's frosty or censorious reactions. We err on the side of discreet silence rather than blurting something out that we might regret for weeks afterwards.

Even with close friends we've known for decades, we might hesitate to reveal something too intimate or unusual, something that despite their affection and loyalty they might still find too hot to handle.

I well remember an occasion many decades ago when I got so drunk I actually lost consciousness for an hour or so. My first feeling when I came to was terror that I might have said or done something utterly scandalous without realising. Did I try to seduce someone? Did I tip wine over the host? Thankfully I was assured that I'd done nothing shameful.

The idea of flamboyantly emptying myself out to the world at large fills me with horror. I'd rather eat my own left leg.

* pretending to be too sick to work
** having it in for someone

Not rude enough

I find it hard to insult people. No matter how offhand or unhelpful or condes-cending someone is to me, I have trouble answering them in kind or showering them with abuse.

It goes against the grain to call someone fucking stupid or a mindless arsehole. Or even a useless prat. It always seems to me that upping the ante like that will be counter-productive. They'll get ruder, I'll get angrier, and nothing positive will come of it.

I tend to shrug off a disappointing response and either continue to be polite and reasonable or walk away from it. I also assume there's probably a good reason for their rudeness - they hate their work or they've got a blinding headache or they've had one too many awkward sods to deal with. Or all three. So I'm reluctant to pile on the aggravation.

Perhaps I'm too charitable by half, too sensitive to other people's feelings and too inhibited about expressing my own. On the other hand, perhaps those who're always ready to answer truculence with more of the same are too impulsive.

But people who blow their top easily soon get a reputation for being difficult to handle and best avoided wherever possible. They may get what they want in the short term, but in the long term their fiery reputation does them no good.

People who have violent spats in public just strike me as embarrassing and childish rather than assertive. "Act your age" seems more fitting than "Good for you." Of course we all secretly enjoy the spectacle of a no-holds-barred slanging match, as long as it's happening to someone else, but at the end of the day it probably doesn't gain much. In fact it's just fucking stupid.

Not enough fun

I'm not very good at self-indulgence, at enjoying myself freely and spontaneously. I always hold back, as if too much personal fun might be a bit decadent and immature.

I see other people letting themselves go - boozing, bingeing, joking, raiding the shops, cheering football teams - with so much enthusiasm I'm taken aback. I'm seldom that enthusiastic or uninhibited about even my biggest passions. A sort of quiet pleasure is the best I can manage.

I guess I come from that social background where too much obvious enjoyment was seen as "showing off" or "drawing attention to yourself". All horribly undignified and childish. Enjoyment was all very well up to a point, but not if it meant "making a spectacle of yourself". That would never do. I suppose it's all related to the stiff upper-lip tradition that used to riddle the English middle classes.

There's also a part of me that thinks too much enjoyment can only be a slippery slope to total debauchery and public humiliation. One drink too many and I'm bound to end up an alcoholic. Too much cheesecake and ice cream and naturally I'll be a 20-stone tub of lard in days. Just go a bit too far and in a trice I'll be out of control like a runaway car.

Maybe I'm influenced by past occasions when enjoyment turned sour. I can remember driving a girlfriend home when I was roaring drunk, lucky not to have killed us both. Another time, on a heavy dose of LSD, I was oblivious to traffic and almost killed myself again. I've played practical jokes and seriously upset the victims. Such memories make me wary of too much abandon.

But I do my best. When others around me are getting wilder and wilder, I tell myself to loosen up and get in the swing of it all. For pity's sake, Nick, throw away the rule book, forget all those childhood vetoes and let your natural impulses take over. And the result? Usually a bit like a lifelong virgin sampling a brothel. It's hard to change the habits of a lifetime.