A mellow fellow

The cliché (and the research) has it that people mellow as they get older, but I haven’t seen much evidence of it. I can think of many older people who if anything have become more acerbic.

Politicians especially can get less mellow and double down on their entrenched opinions rather than modify them. But lots of public figures are equally hard-line, not to mention one’s own elderly relatives who often become more vituperative rather than less.

Certainly my father got less mellow rather than more. He would fume and rage for days over all sorts of things. My mother on the other hand tended to be naturally mellow and take everything in her stride.
 
I think I’ve got mellower as I’ve aged. I don’t get so worked up over global events or neighbourhood disputes or difficult individuals as I used to. I tend to shrug my shoulders and leave others to make a fuss.
 
But I’ve always been somewhat mellow. Even when I was at school I never aligned myself with the boys who enjoyed making fun of their schoolmates or taunting the masters. I always felt for the victims and stayed well out of it.

The world could certainly do with a lot more mellowness and a lot less belligerence.

Cancelled!

Good grief. Cancel culture comes to Tesco.

While Jenny was at the checkout of our local Tesco supermarket, waiting to have her shopping totted up, she overheard a woman ahead of her voicing her opinions on immigration.

The woman was being very anti-immigrant, so Jenny was prompted to voice a more pro-immigrant opinion.

At this, the cashier refused to deal with Jenny's shopping and said she would have to be attended to by another cashier - which she was.

But what are things coming to if a supermarket cashier can refuse to deal with you because she doesn't like your opinions?

I've never seen that before, and I wonder if Tesco staff are actually allowed to refuse service to a customer, or whether the cashier was acting improperly.

Jenny has emailed Tesco's chief executive, Ken Murphy, to complain. His reply will be interesting.

Update (November 8) Tesco has apologised for the cashier's behaviour and says "This member of staff has been spoken to about her actions and this kind of interaction will not happen again". Result!

But it feels right

One of the major topics these days is polarisation, the way people take up sharply opposed views and simply won't contemplate changing them.

The one big thing that drives polarisation is surely the big increase in self-righteousness, the conviction that a person's beliefs and attitudes are the only correct ones and other people's beliefs and attitudes are obviously wrong.

I see this all the time in relation to immigration, transgender, vaccinations, welfare benefits and all sorts of political and social issues.

People are shedding the customary idea that differences of opinion should be resolved through intelligent debate and fact-finding, and are taking up opinions because they "feel right" or it's what their friends think or it's what someone said on the telly.

But what can be done to restore rational debate and open-mindedness? I'm not sure anything can be done, self-righteousness is now so prevalent and common sense so often absent. Once a bandwagon starts rolling and a dubious opinion gets wide approval it's hard to stop it.

What can you do when someone is adamant that you can change sex, or immigrants are all criminals and sex-offenders, or vaccinations are killing thousands of people, or workshy layabouts are sponging off welfare benefits?

It's an uphill task to convince them otherwise.

Sailing along

As we get older we're supposed to get more and more indifferent to what others think of us and just go sailing happily along in our own little self-centred bubble.

I don't find that at all. If anything I'm more aware of what others think of me and more concerned that someone might have a negative opinion of me.

I think I was probably more indifferent to other people's view of me when I was a child. Children are notoriously oblivious to how people see them and casually blurt out anything that comes to mind. I'm sure I was just like that, causing offence and shock and disbelief everywhere I went.

Of course that's partly because children don't have much of a stake in their surroundings. They're not home owners worrying how the neighbours see them, or employees worrying how the boss sees them. They just do their thing in a state of blissful self-indulgence.

No, as I grow older I consider other people's reactions to what I say or do all the time. I certainly don't go blundering along upsetting everybody. Children may have the excuse of a tender age but an adult of 77 has no excuse whatever.

I watch all the politicians saying anything that occurs to them, however offensive or contemptuous or untrue and I wonder how they can bring themselves to be so recklessly outspoken. If only they could think before they speak, people might have a bit more respect for them.

A work in progress

It's become a cliché that people are getting angrier and less patient, blowing their top at the smallest thing that annoys them.

What I also notice is that people are getting more self-righteous, convinced that their opinions are utterly valid and that other people's opinions are not worth even listening to.

Like all those Americans who still believe the last presidential election was fraudulent and that Trump did in fact win. No matter how many times their belief is discredited, they repeat the claim of fraud.

Like the belief that vaccinations are highly dangerous and should be avoided. The overall health benefits of vaccines are steadfastly denied.

Like the belief that you can change sex and a man can become a woman, even though this is a biological and medical impossibility.

Not to mention all the trolls firing off their trumped-up accusations and condemnations of public figures, many of them libellous.

Of course we all have a streak of self-righteousness (myself included) and we all have firmly held beliefs that defy any amount of contrary evidence. But I do regard all my opinions as a work in progress, as temporary opinions until such time as they're proved to be mistaken.

The longer I live though, the more I realise that everyday reality is so complicated that any opinion I hold is quite likely to be incorrect and based on a very partial understanding of the facts.

I'm not so insecure that I find any refuting of my opinions so threatening and alarming that I have to maintain and uphold them at any cost. In fact I like to be challenged about my fondly held but maybe totally irrational opinions. A good thing too, as Jenny takes my opinions to pieces on a regular basis!

Still shy

I've been shy ever since I can remember. At the age of five I hardly said a word when my mum and I met the headmaster of my first ever school. She had to convince the head that I wasn't normally so quiet and I would open up once I attended the school (which I did, once I was used to the teachers and the other pupils).

There's a difference of opinion about shyness. Some people say it's just selfish, leaving the conversational effort to other people and not offering anything yourself. But you could equally say that chatterboxes are selfish because they hog all the conversation and deter others from speaking.

Is shyness selfish or is it an inherent personality trait that you can't overcome however hard you try? You may really want to gabble away, but you just can't manage to?

Perhaps it's partly that the outgoing types hold opinions and beliefs so passionately that they just have to explain them to other people, while my own opinions are more flimsy and provisional and I'm not confident about airing them?

Perhaps also I'm much more interested in other people's lives, which are full of surprises and fascinating revelations, while my own life seems far too humdrum and routine to appeal to anyone else? Listening to others comes more naturally than talking about myself.

Then again, I'm often rendered shy by anyone who's intimidating or overbearing and doesn't seem to respect me.

Being shy isn't the same as being introverted of course. Shyness means not having the confidence or the ingenuity to chatter away easily, while introversion means enjoying your own company more than the company of others.

So if I enjoy both, what does that make me?

Eye of the storm

Stillness. Calm. Tranquill-ity.

So desirable yet so hard to achieve in this era of constant noise, media contro-versies, social chit-chat, cold calls, "keeping busy" and random internet blurtings.

It's so soothing and restorative to be totally still for a while, mentally vacant, stripped of all this outside communication. But the compulsion to be endlessly on the move and spilling something out has infected us all and is well nigh impossible to turn off.

Luckily Jenny and I live in a largish detached house and can shut everyone else out if we wish. We can keep the world at bay in our little private sanctuary. All those people forced to flatshare or live with relatives, but craving peace and quiet, aren't so fortunate.

There seems an unspoken assumption nowadays that we must all have opinions on everything, however trite or absurd or violent, and must voice those opinions to as many people as possible via every available outlet.

The result is a daily tsunami of raucous pontificating and ranting on every conceivable subject from fluffy kittens to surly shop assistants to anti-Jewishness. A tsunami to which I'm personally contributing of course with my own feverish outpourings. Do feel free to turn me off at any time....

Now and then I climb Slieve Donard, the tallest mountain in Northern Ireland. You'd think that there at least I could enjoy perfect peace. But no. Slieve Donard is so well-known that there are always trails of hikers trudging up and down the mountainside, cheerily saying hello and commenting on the weather.

I think to get perfect peace I'd have to clamber into a rocket and be shot into outer space. That's the only way the constant buzz of humanity could be left behind.

I'm listening

It's common nowadays for people to say they just don't care what others think of them. And they say that as if it's a very wise and mature attitude.

I really don't know where they're coming from. I don't share their attitude at all. To my mind, sensitivity to what others think, and to the effect my opinions and behaviour might have on them, is part and parcel of being a human being.

That doesn't mean I'm a slave to other people's views. It doesn't mean that if someone criticises me, I immediately backpedal and apologise and rush to satisfy them. It doesn't mean that if they come up with some totally bigoted, ignorant, intolerant diatribe, I'll bury my own views and mutter something harmlessly neutral.

But it does mean that although I like to express my views as honestly as possible, I'm considerate of how others might react and I won't be deliberately provocative or taunting or dismissive merely for the sake of it.

It also means that if someone has views diametrically opposed to my own, I won't just dismiss them out of hand as ignorant nonsense, I will at least examine them carefully to see if there's any truth in what they're saying.  Because even the most prejudiced individual can have unexpected insights into something I haven't really thought about.

And it means that if I know someone's feeling vulnerable, or hurt, or distressed, I'm not going to upset them even more by saying something they wouldn't want to hear even if they were feeling more resilient.

As Ursula said, if people don't care what others think, how come they're all ears if what others are saying is in their favour - if it's flattering?

Who are they kidding?

Sadly misinformed

My father was a horribly self-righteous man. He always had to be correct, and he had to have the last word. Only he knew what he was talking about, the rest of us were sadly misinformed.

Luckily I don't take after him. When I voice my opinions, I expect other people to have different ones. I welcome argument and debate. If I hear a good enough counter-argument, I'll back down and change my opinion in a second.

My father hated it when I argued with him, when I challenged his sacred views. He hated me having opinions contrary to his own. I can't recall a single occasion when he agreed with something I said. He dismissed all my opinions as stupid, half-baked, ignorant or deliberately provocative.

I guess it was his extreme rigidity that drove me furiously in the opposite direction. From an early age I welcomed a plethora of views on every possible topic. The more varied the views the better. Only by exploring every possible line of thought could I be sure of arriving at a sensible, considered conclusion. To suppress opinions, however far-fetched or absurd, was to cripple my mind.

What annoys me isn't different opinions but people's reluctance to voice them. When people don't engage with my views at all but stay conspicuously silent, I wonder what they're thinking. Do they find my views so misconceived, so confused, there's no point in even acknowledging them? Do they simply dislike arguments? Do they dislike having to think? Whatever the reason, I feel frustrated by the lack of a good head-to-head.

But how kind I am to my critics, how lavishly easy-going. My father must be turning in his grave.

Pot shots

One of life's little mysteries is the way people condemn things out of hand. Things they don't understand and don't want to understand.

How can you decide that something is sinful or immoral or damaging purely on the basis of some knee-jerk reaction, some blind instinct totally detached from the facts?

People who slam a play without seeing it, or a book without reading it. People who condemn immigrants or refugees with no comprehension of the circumstances they find themselves in. People who sneer at alternative remedies or veganism or psychotherapy without knowing the first thing about them. People who knock teachers when they haven't set foot in a school in 40 years.

On the basis of a few tabloid headlines, or neighbourhood gossip, or a dinner-party anecdote, they casually let rip at anyone or anything they fancy, oblivious to the distress and alarm they might be causing to those on the receiving end. It never occurs to them that they might be totally misinformed, prejudiced, wrong-headed.

Personally I try not to condemn anything I know very well I'm ignorant about. If I'm not sure of the facts, I prefer to keep my mouth shut until such time as I am. I'm not going to pontificate simply to impress an audience.

If I don't understand something, I'll confess to being puzzled, or being uncertain, or being undecided, rather than feign knowledge I don't have. I'll try to find out a bit more about the subject and road-test whatever half-baked preconceptions and stereotypes are floating round my head.

But I think a lot of people actually feel embarrassed or uncomfortable at the idea that they're ignorant about something. Instead of admitting their ignorance, they parrot the latest fashionable opinion and hope nobody examines it too closely. All I can say is, I'd rather stay silent than talk out of my arse.

Judge and jury

The older I get, the more reluctant I am to judge others, and the more astonished I am that so many people feel qualified to do so. I know so little about other people - their lives, their psyches, their personal struggles, their burdens. Who am I to judge them and tell them what they should or shouldn't be doing?

I know how little others understand about me, about the complexities and subtleties of my personality. I know how often they jump to conclusions, or give me idiotic advice, or turn me into someone I'm not. If others are so bad at judging me, can I be any better when I'm doing the judging? So why not keep my thoughts to myself?

It's easy to over-simplify other people's lives, to think their problems are obvious and the solutions equally obvious. But how much do I really know about the tangle of motives and feelings and compulsions and desires that have made them what they are and make them behave the way they do? My glib views and assumptions are probably laughably ignorant and insulting.

But how often do you hear people casually passing judgment on others, as if it's a totally normal thing to do? "You really ought to lose a few pounds." Or "you could get a job if you tried a bit harder." Or "that hairstyle doesn't suit you at all." Or "you're just too self-absorbed." Why do they think they know better than the person they're dissing? As Laura Mvula puts it "Who made you the centre of the universe? Who made you judge and jury over me?"

Don't get me wrong. I'm not talking about people's opinions. Opinions are always fair game, always open to challenge and argument. I'm talking about people's identity, what they actually are. Unless they're threatening my life, that's none of my business.

So be what you want to be. Pure-hearted or wicked. Fat or thin. Hairy or silky-smooth. Lazy or industrious. I'm saying nothing.

Up for grabs

Other people's bodies seem to be fair game these days. They can't just be quietly enjoyed and apprec-iated. Everyone has to have an opinion on them, the more scathing and dismissive the better.

I know, I've done my fair share of presumptious commenting on other people's bodies, weighing in on something that's none of my business.

I've aired my opinions on their clothes, their size, their voice, their hair, or anything else that catches my attention. And what's all that got to do with me? In a word, nothing.

It's entirely a matter for them. Just as what I do with my own body is my business and not that of every opinionated Tom, Dick and Harriet who happens to see me.

Some people go even further. They presume to tell women if they can have abortions or use contraception or get sexual advice. Or keep their clitorises. And usually it's men who issue these gratuitous instructions. Who gave them the right?

There's a term for all this unwanted opinionising. A very accurate term. Body fascism. Because isn't that what it is? Or at the very least authoritarianism.

No wonder so many women dislike their own bodies and wish they had a different one. How can anyone have body-confidence if any passing stranger feels entitled to pass judgment? Just a critical glance can be disconcerting.

Random strangers and their opinions are bad enough, but once the journalists start wading in, it can be seriously destructive. Thousands of people are told that celebrity X or Y is badly dressed, too thin, has stringy hair or looks like they just crawled out of bed. Who gave these superannuated hacks the right to trash other people's bodies so freely?

It's about time we reclaimed the integrity of the human body, instead of treating it as another commodity to be shaped by public whims.

PS: Just to clarify, I don't include loved ones here. I think they're entitled to have opinions on their partner's/ friend's body. Of course those opinions may not be heeded....

Self righteous, moi?

I'm accused sometimes of being self-righteous, but I don't quite get that. Okay, I have strong opinions but I'd never say my opinions are more valid than someone else's. If I'm presented with an argument that's more convincing, more sensible, better thought-out, or better researched, I'm happy to adopt it and dump my own opinion in a second.

For example, I used to think prostitution was acceptable until I read that most prostitutes show signs of post traumatic stress disorder, which changed my mind instantly. I used to think it was healthier to be thin, but dropped that idea when I heard that slightly plump people are actually less prone to serious illnesses.

I'm also accused of being opinionated, which might or might not be true. True if opinionated simply means having strong opinions on most subjects. Not true if it also means I foist my opinions on others and expect them to agree.

I express strong opinions in my blog but I don't expect others to swallow them. On the contrary I welcome totally opposite opinions that make me think through my own views more carefully.

In my non-blog existence I usually keep my opinions to myself unless someone specifically asks me what I think about something. Of course that might just mean I don't want my dubious and half-baked opinions to be challenged by anyone else.

If I'm really self-righteous and opinionated, I've obviously missed my vocation. I should have been a politician.

Set in my ways

The popular stereotype of oldies is that they're set in their ways, resistant to change. But there's another way of looking at it - they have opinions and habits they've developed over a lifetime, thought about constantly and come to regard as thoroughly sound and sensible. So why give them up in a hurry in favour of the latest fashionable idea?

When you're young, your opinions and habits are young also. You may not have had them for long, they may not be firmly held, and if something more attractive presents itself you may easily be tempted to buy into it. Your convictions may be shallow and swept away by a strong wind.

When I was young, I changed my beliefs frequently. I hadn't thought about them very deeply, and there were always opinions that seemed wiser or more convincing or just more exciting. I was an anarchist, a socialist, a communist, a libertarian, you name it. I shifted my position every month. At one point I declared I was a radical feminist and all mainstream politics was a waste of time.

I'd be in favour of living alone, then cohabiting, then communal living. I'd be rooting for celibacy, then monogamy, then free love. I'd be passionate about renting, then owning a house, then squatting. I just wasn't able to sift the ideological wheat from the chaff, to come to a mature judgment about which beliefs stood the test of time and which were built on sand.

As I grew older, certain ideas stood out as well grounded in reality while others seemed based on delusion and wishful thinking. So yes, I've got a bit set in my ways. For many years now, I've been backing socialism, monogamy, home-ownership and sexual equality. Not forgetting of course rock music, ice cream and lacy dresses.

It's true, I'm more resistant to change than I used to be. If you want me to adopt your beliefs rather than mine, you'll need some very strong arguments. If you haven't any, then kindly stop knocking on my door.

PS: And how about entrenched habits, I hear you ask. Well, there's vegetarianism, thriftiness, politeness, neatness, asking awkward questions, looking in people's windows....

Asking the voters

I do sometimes wonder about the intelligence levels of the Great British Public, especially during an election campaign*. Asked for their opinion on the different offerings, the best they can come up with is "Well, they're all the same really, aren't they?" or "I like that Mr Clegg, he's got an honest face."

Of course if someone's jumped on in the street by a journo as they're off to the supermarket, they don't have time to think carefully about the questions they're asked. Even so, you assume they'd have some considered views about how the country's governed and how the politicians deal with such basic things as poverty and unemployment.

I'm always waiting for someone to say "Well, anyone earning under £10,000 shouldn't have to pay tax" or "If everyone worked part-time, there'd be more jobs." Or something that actually amounts to an interesting idea rather than a vacuous comment.

But no, it's like trying to get blood out of a stone. An alarming number of people give the impression their political awareness goes no farther than whether their wheelie bin's been emptied. No wonder the MPs managed to get away with such rampant expenses-fiddling for so long.

It may be that in private people are more intelligent than they seem in public. Maybe in their own houses they wax eloquent on the finer points of asylum-seeking or maternity benefits or medical treatment, but outside they keep their trenchant views to themselves.

Mind you, when so many politicians are habitually evasive and dishonest about their intentions, and seldom tell you the truth about anything, whether it's the cost of nuclear missiles or their receding hairlines, it's not surprising if people are too sickened to take more interest in politics and form mature opinions about the issues.

Sometimes I have to sympathise with those who can't switch off the party political broadcasts fast enough in favour of something more life-enhancing like a box of chocolates or a blast of Lady Gaga.

*The UK general election is on May 6. The three biggest parties are Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat. Right now they are equally popular and the result could be a hung parliament. One or two Green MPs may be elected for the first time.