Success versus Survival – some end of year musings

The first essay I ever wrote at PSU was for a Psychology class, and compared the personality profiles of people who survived in concentration camps and as prisoner of war of the Khmer Rouge.  To my great surprise, the profiles were very similar.  A dozen years later I came across Bernie Siegel’s books on cancer survivors, and again the individuals who survived longest had the same characteristics.  It took me a long time to realise that these characteristics tend to make it difficult to achieve success!

Survivors tend to be highly individualistic, with their own ideas and ways of doing things.  They rarely do anything just because they are told to, and usually come up with unique ways of doing something else instead.  This is not considered an endearing trait by the mass of humanity!  Perhaps most importantly, they have a large variety of interests and engage in numerous unconnected activities.  They are more likely to have a succession of different jobs in unrelated fields, rather than stick to one career in one organisation or industry.  As a result they tend to be Jack-of-all-trades and expert of none.

Survivors are grit in any machine and prevent the smooth operation of any process or organisation.  They tend to be tolerated rather than appreciated, except in a crisis when everyone else has run out of solutions and is prepared to clutch at straws.  In such a crisis they may for a while rise to the top and call the shots, but as soon as the crisis is over they are sidelined and the usual company wo/men will come out from under their rocks and take up the reigns again.  Winston Churchill is an example, as are the East German dissidents who facilitated the fall of the Berlin Wall.  Soon after the war was over / the wall had fallen these people were dismissed with an insincere thank-you and perhaps a medal and/or small pension and sent back to their accustomed dunce’s corner.

To be successful, on the other hand, one’s ideas and actions need to blend in with society.  The occasional original thought will be applauded, especially if it leads to an increase in productivity.  People like things to continue as they always have, and feel threatened by new ideas, except for entertainment purposes which are outside of normal life and don’t count.  Therefore the company wo/man whose thoughts and actions chime in with everyone else’s will prosper and rise to the top (however defined).

To be successful in the way outlined above it is necessary to (a) suppress / twist one’s character and individuality, and (b) focus on the task on hand.  To illustrate my point, let us consider a woman who wishes to become the chairperson of a bank.  To achieve this lofty aim, she has to study the right subject (not the one she is truly interested in), hang out with the right people (not the ones she really likes), dress the part (not wear the comfortable rags she prefers), have the right hobbies (none that have no bearing on the goal), disown embarrassing friends and relatives (a la Hyacinth Bucket), acquire the right spouse (intelligent, svelte, shallow, social climbing), buy the right house in the right area (never mind the snooty neighbours), brown-nose the right individuals (without a gas mask!), ditch inconvenient morals and principles (in an inconspicuous way).  And so on and so forth.

The characteristics which make the Survivor such an unlikely candidate for the chairpersonship of a bank constitute the very elements of surviving.  While the successful person focuses all energy on one goal, the Survivor has lots of goals!  He wants to do a job well, have a good relationship with his soul-mate spouse, raise happy children, have a comfortable house with nice neighbours, spend the weekends re-decorating, dig a pond in the garden, learn a new language, knit sweaters, fix motorbikes, bake cakes, be a member of a rambling club, paint icons, write the odd poem, attend exhibitions, agitate at demonstrations, be a volunteer at a charity shop, read magazines and books on any number of subjects, etc etc – the list is endless.  No wonder the Survivor isn’t a brilliant success at doing any one thing, there are just too many things he does!

Scene 1 – Job Loss.  The Survivor feels terrible and awful, obviously.  But he has an understanding spouse, loving children, loads of friends ready to badmouth the idiot employer who fired him, and plenty of hobbies to take his mind of things, so he will not suffer too much emotionally.  Because of his varied interests and abilities he can quickly move from one industry to another, so chances are he will not be unemployed for long, even though his jobs may not be great.

The successful person, having a highly specialised job at a level at which there are few positions and therefore job opportunities, will not easily find a new job.  Her spouse, having been picked for being an arm-candy banker’s spouse, is furious with her for having lost a job which defines not only her but also his position in society.  The children will resent having to leave their private schools and no more expensive overseas holidays.  Her friends will be at first supportive but very soon make themselves scarce – they are not the sort who want to be associated with a loser!  As for hobbies to take her mind off things, well she has none.

Scene 2.  Retirement.  As per above, the Survivor has so many other interests that he is busier than ever.  As for missing colleagues, he has friends to fall back on and some of the colleagues have turned into friends anyway.  Since he has had so many different jobs and hobbies, and so many run-ins with authority, he has great stories to tell, so chances are he will be popular, especially with the young.  He usually sees no reason to change in his old age, so continues to take an active interest in anything and everyone.  And luckily for him, society tends to forgive eccentricity in old age and becomes much more tolerant of his rants and foibles.

The successful person on the other hand has a hard time of it and not infrequently either dies quickly after retirement or takes up any number of non-executive directorships to fill the emptiness in her life.  She has lived for her career and the social standing that goes with it, so losing it rips the heart right out of her life.  This might be a time for soul searching and attempts to mend fences with spouse and children – often too late!  When she talks she brags about her past achievements and the important people she knew, which quickly becomes boring.  Moreover, fame is short-lived in this hectic world, and her grandchildren are unlikely to be impressed by – or have even heard of – Director X or Chairman Y or even Princess Epsilon.

Scene 3.  Heart Attack.  When it comes to the crunch we find out who our friends are.  And life doesn’t get much crunchier than when we experience serious health problems.  This is when false friends melt away and spouses and children show their affection and loyalty – or lack of it!  I do not claim that love is always returned for love, nor that money has not occasionally bought it.  But generally speaking people reap what they sow.  Perhaps the number of hospital visits are a better indication of a life well lived than the size of the house one leaves in one’s will?  And what is more likely to foster a swift recovery and renew one’s zest for life, loving relatives and faithful friends or children eager to inherit and friends who never visit?

So far I have focussed on the Survivor and the successful person, par excellence.  The essence of the survivor is that s/he has so many different interests, abilities, and internal resources that s/he always manages to somehow get by; not always brilliantly, but survival is assured.  The essence of the successful person, on the other hand, is the focussing of one’s entire energy on success - however defined - to the detriment of all other aspects of life, which leads to a life which is successful in one area but empty in all others.

It might seem to those who strive after success that the price for it as outlined above is worth paying – which leads me to the real tragedy of seeking success, viz that most of those who strive for success don’t actually obtain it.  Most of those who sacrifice everything for that one goal do not in fact achieve it, and are left in the end not with their dearly bought success but with nothing at all, having morally, emotionally, and physically bankrupted themselves.

Christmas Season – Disillusion is the last illusion

This is the day when I tend to clean up the Christmas mess and re-enter the real world.  ‘The Real World!’  When I worked at the Bank, whenever I returned from a holiday, colleagues would say, ‘Welcome back to the real world!’  I always thought, ‘actually, this isn’t the real world.  What I experience when I am away from my desk, that is the real world!’  All the recent insanity in the banking world and indeed the economic world more general does not really surprise me – I always thought they were mad.  Quite often I sat in a meeting earnestly participating in some inane discussion, when suddenly I would flip into a different frame of mind and realise quite how ridiculous and comical the situation was.  A very unfortunate habit, because as soon as one adopts a mind-set different from those of the other participants of any human activity one becomes an outsider, with all the dangers that entails.  And yet, also a very healthy habit – by becoming an outsider one can often see more clearly and avoid becoming entangled in the illusions and inanities which accompany most human activity.

A very common illusion is that people who are higher in the pecking order are better at making important decisions that those lower down – after all, they are more intelligent and informed, which is why they hold their exalted position.  We assume that the chairman of a bank is more likely to be right about the economy than the clerk who we meet at the counter.  What we forget is that luck, connections, health, and sheer dogged determination are just as important as ability to get to the top.  More importantly, we forget that few people are able to view an issue objectively.  The more personally involved they are, the greater their personal investment is, the less objective they tend to be.  So the chairman of a bank will be more likely to think that his huge bonus is crucial to the success of his bank than the clerk behind the counter, not because he is more intelligent or better informed, but because he personally benefits from his belief. 

Every situation requires a certain mindset; if the mindset of a participant does not harmonise with the situation, he experiences dissonance which has to be resolved; very few people are able to live indefinitely with the dissonance.  Sticking with our example, a chairman who starts out believing that he got his job by luck and connections will have to deal with the dissonance that he earns one hundred times more than the clerks who work for the same bank even though he is has no greater ability and works no harder than they do.  He can simply shrug his shoulders and think, ‘Tough luck on them!’ and leave it at that.  But most people have been raised in a culture that claims that we live in a meritocracy – some people are better paid and have greater privileges because they deserve them, because they have greater abilities than the rest of humanity.  So what is our chairman to do?  If he admits he just got lucky people will insist that he gets paid less, because rewarding chance is not as popular as rewarding ability.  So usually he abandons his belief that he just got lucky.  He has a job which only very clever and intelligent people have, ergo he is clever and intelligent.  Dissonance resolved! 

One of the problems with this is that this average chairman now believes he is really clever.  While he believed that he was just average he listened to other people’s opinions and took advice.  But now that he believes that he is the smartest person in his institutions he listens to no one but himself.  And because everyone around him subscribes to the same belief he is allowed to make more and more stupid decisions until the bank is in serious difficulties.

Why do the people around him believe that he has his job on the basis of his exceptional ability?  To reduce their own dissonance.  To believe that some people are massively overpaid just because they got lucky fosters anger and frustration and a sense of grievance which often leads to revolutions.  Since most people don’t like revolutions but just want to lead their life in peace and quiet they, too, adopt the belief that the chairman got his job because of his exceptional abilities.  And those that don’t believe it and can’t hide this belief tend to get fired – another reason to accept the company myth.  Nobody likes dissonance.

I don’t, incidentally, believe that any idiot can be a good chairman of a bank or other institution, even though looking at the current economic situation it is tempting to believe that a humble honest idiot would do better than our current batch of leaders, and be much cheaper, too.  I am simply trying to illustrate with this nice easy example how illusions come into being and damage the common good. 

These sorts of illusions are rife in all human interactions.  We believe that the doctor knows what is wrong with us because she is a doctor, and disregard what we know about our body from our own experience.  Instead of observing ourselves carefully and taking responsibility, using the doctor as an independent expert, we hand our health over to her and consider it her problem, conveniently forgetting that if she gets it wrong we are the ones who will suffer.  It is a form of laziness, of trying to avoid thinking thoughts and experiencing emotions we feel uncomfortable with.  That’s why these illusions are so widespread.

So what does all this have to do with Christmas?  Well, Christmas is full of illusions, both pro and con.  When the candles are lit and the fire burns brightly illuminating the colourfully wrapped presents, when the stomach is full of good food and wine, when there are carols in the background and the air is full of orange and cinnamon and pine scent, it is easy to believe that there is peace on earth and a God in Heaven.  But when encountering the same scene in cold daylight the following morning, when confronted with a cold hearth and heaps of wrapping paper and an insignificant tree losing its needles and perhaps nursing a small hangover while listening to the news, one’s belief may be quite different!  Yet which is right?  Did I experience an illusion on Christmas Eve, or on the following morning?  For surely, one must be an illusion, seeing as the feelings are so different on the two occasions?

Personally, I believe that they both are and are not illusions.  All experience is filtered through the abilities and limitations of the senses, and the needs and inclinations of the mind.  And all entities and situations are multi-faceted.  Human beings are capable of great love and peace, as well as unbelievable cruelty and constant strife.  Christmas Eve I was most aware of the former, Christmas Day of the latter.  I was both right and wrong on both occasions, because I focussed on only some aspects of humankind to the exclusion of all others.

Surely if one wants to understand the world as it really is, without any illusions whatsoever, one needs to consider it in its entirety, neglecting none of its aspects?  Exactly.  This is not possible for human beings, I suspect even God can’t do it.  The world is simply too complicated for this.  The best we can do is employ and juggle our illusions, choosing them carefully and always keeping in mind that we might be wrong.  More than anything, we must remember that the greatest illusion is the belief that we can make do without illusions!

I might add that personally I try to pick my illusions on a strictly utilitarian basis.  Believing in love, kindness, generosity, and the possibility of a happy ending makes me happy and is good for my soul – and somehow I think God shares the same illusions, so I am in good company.

Christmas Season – Christmas Eve, Part 2

Christmas by candle-light!



Christmas Season – Christmas Eve

It was a good one!  The 24^th is always a day of hectic preparation.  First I clean the house.  Usually my house-proud tendencies exhaust themselves in tidiness, when it comes to dust and slut-wool I favour the low-watt-lightbulb approach – if the lighting is bad you can’t see the dirt.  But Christmas is different, so I hoover and dust and wipe and scrub until the house is half way decent.

Then I bring in the tree and take the ornaments down from the attic.  I have a little tree in a pot.  For most of the year he lives in the garden and does not answer to the name of Theodor Gruenbaum, and every Christmas he comes inside for three days to celebrate with me.  I have lots of ornaments, every year I add to my collection.  I like little wooden ones made in east Germany, and painted lead ones from Bawaria.  There are also lots of straw stars and garlands, gilded pine cones, miscellaneous bulbs, etc etc.  And of course, real beeswax candles!  All these are laden onto my two feet high tree, and the rest overspill onto mantelpiece, chandelier, and just about every surface in the Parlour.  I never decorate any other room – one must not overdo these things!

Normally I have my bird Christmas after I finish the tree, but this year the birds looked awfully hungry so I decided to do their Christmas first.  I hung up all sorts of feeders full of seeds and dried mealworms and maggots and insect pellets, hung up numerous fatballs, heaped seeds, especially black sunflower seeds, wherever I found a surface, and halved a dozen pears and apples and deposited them around the garden.  A small plate of grated cheddar for the robins completed the Feast.  Finally I sang a few carols while scrubbing and refilling the birdbaths, and retreated tactfully.  Then I sat on my stove from where I can overlook the whole garden – all 300 square feet of it – and watched my guests arrive and help themselves.  I even let the wood pigeons and magpies partake, seeing as it is Christmas – normally I chase them away, my garden is too small for such huge creatures.

Satisfied at last that everyone has been provided for, I check the fire in the Parlour.  I laid it in mid-morning, it takes quite a while to get it going nicely and achieve a steady golden glow of the coals.  But it looks like I am there, so now I can attend to dinner.

Christmas Eve I always have a simple dinner of potato salad and Viennese style sausages, easy to make and not too filling.  I also start to make my Old English Tea punch, gleaned from an old German recipe book about baking cookies.  As a last touch I put some orange and cinnamon oil into my atomiser.  The whole house smells deliciously of orange, cinnamon, pine, and punch.  I am now ready to change into a nice dress and begin Christmas proper.

Dinner is a seven thirty and ‘Bescherung’ at eight.  The latter means that I go into the Parlour and light all the candles.  I go outside and close the door.  I ring a bell as a sign that Christmas is about to start.  Then I open the door and pretend I have not seen the room decorated before, and fairly swoon with pleasure at the sight before me!

I sit in an armchair and watch the tree and all the beautiful decorations, with all the glitter and shimmer, and feel truly blessed.  My life is very wonderful.  Then I take some photos – see below – and open all my presents.  They are particularly lovely this year, especially the ones I bought myself.  I start to buy presents in the January sales and then throughout the year, wrap them immediately in Christmas paper and put them on top of the wardrobe.  By the time Christmas comes around I have usually forgotten what I had bought, so have a nice surprise when I open my presents.

There seem to be any number of people out there who think being alone at Christmas is an awful experience, best gotten over as soon as possible and with as little fuss as manageable.  Quite a ridiculous attitude, in my opinion.  If for whatever reason one has to spend Christmas on one’s own, one should make the best of it and enjoy all the benefits it brings.  No arguments, no clash of different Christmas traditions, and one can eat all the best bits of the roast.  And if I listen to the recording of King George V Christmas Address to the nation I can do that, too, without snide comments and/or aspersions cast upon my sanity.

Now I am off to digest my enormous roast duck followed by Christmas pudding dinner while reading The Willows at Christmas by William Horwood, a Christmas adventure of the characters of The Wind in the Willows, next to my fire in the Parlour, illuminated by all the candles in the room.  Life is good.  God bless us everyone!

Before the Great Ornament Orgy

After the Great Ornament Orgy

For photos taken without flash see next blogpost!

Christmas Season – To Absent Friends

Today is Christmas Eve, so obviously I am way too busy to do a proper blog post.  Perhaps tomorrow.  In the meantime, I wish a very merry Christmas to lost and absent friends – you know who you are!  Take care of yourself and remember you are loved.

As Always

Your DB

Christmas Season – Christmas Markets in Oxford

Today I had a wander around the Christmas Markets in Oxford.  I counted three, but there are probably more.  They are dotted around the town centre, each is quite small, just ten or twenty stalls.  In the main they sell crafts and foreign foods – especially Glühwein (german spiced and heated red wine) which is becoming increasingly popular.

I started my excursion at the castle mound market.  It was cold, but no snow.  One of the first stalls I saw was this one, selling really beautiful hand made tiles.  I like them a lot, but never buy any since I have no idea of what to do with them – re-model the whole kitchen so I can fit some tiles into the splashback for my sink?

So I moved on to the German sausage stall to buy currywurst.  There was a long queue, and since I hate standing in line I decided to come back later and have my lunch backwards – first the sweet, then the savoury!  I had spied a waffle stall, and was wondering whether to try one with chestnut purée, when a family with any number of rugrats pushed in front of me and loudly debated what orders to place.  Back I went to the sausage stall, but the queue had grown even bigger.  So I had some caramelised nuts instead.  Not terribly healthy, but neither is standing around in the cold queuing for currywurst!

The market is scattered all about the castle ground, half a dozen here, three over there.  On a wall outside the castle I found this little bird, which probably looks better illuminated when it is dark but I wasn’t going to stick around that long.

 Having had my fill of no currywurst and nada waffles, I decided to go home via the central but station, intending to check some timetables along the way.  And what do I find there?  Another Christmas market!  This one is entirely French, a dozen stalls selling saussicon, baked goods, olives, cheese, dried fruit, and, weirdly, a huge stall selling woven baskets?!?!?!?  Oh well, why not.  I buy some saussicons – I always buy sausages of some sort at these markets – and leave before I get sucked into some unnecessary purchases.

 But I had not escaped yet!  There was another Christmas market in Broad Street!  This one sells mainly crafts, and I almost bought an amazing planter in the shape of a head (see last photo).  Unfortunately the cash machine I tried to extract some cash from proved uncooperative, and by the time I had found another one I had come to my senses and decided that I did not have space for the head after all.

Anyway, I need my money for tomorrow, when I am going to the London Christmas markets!

Christmas Season – Christmas Market in Bremen, Part 2

And here is the tallest ever candle-driven pyramid!

And to finish off my little report, here one of those homely heart-warming little stalls one finds all over German Christmas Markets.

Now I am looking forward to the London and Oxford markets!

PS  Seeing as I have started another blogpost, and can upload o few more photos, I am herewith adding a few Bonus Pics!

Christmas Season – Christmas Market in Bremen

I spent a few days in Bremen last week, and stuck to my resolution to haunt as many Christmas Markets as possible this year.  There was neither snow nor frost, which diminished the Christmassy feel, but I nevertheless enjoyed it immensely.

The main difference between German Christmas Markets and all other, lesser, markets, is that the German ones sell not only food and the sort of thing one can just as easily buy in the usual shops, but also all sorts of things one can only buy once a year – at the Christmas Market.

My favourites are the ornaments by Käthe Wohlfahrt, like the one below.  It is possible to go to one of the shops that sell them all year round, but these are few and far between, and the best way to buy these ornaments remains the Christmas Market.

The trouble with most Christmas Markets is that they are totally overrun with people, and it is impossible to take a decent picture of the market overall.  I usually get at least 50% heads!  So I settled again for using photos of individual attractions, rather than those that show a larger part of the market.  Just use the photos below to imagine the rest!

This jolly snowman is in front of the Cathedral – the Bremen market nests in its shadow.  I took some photos, but they are impossible leaning so I had to forget about using them.

I especially like the street lighting in Bremen.  This one depicts the Bremer Stadtmusikanten of Fairytale fame.  Incidentally, there is also a B –League, consisting of a pig, a chicken, a fish, and a butterfly!

Here is the Bremen take on Santa’s Grotto!  Loads of little children queuing to get in, of course. 

Another feature of many German Christmas Markets is the oversized decorations, like the snowman and here, the nutcracker….

Darn it, out of photo memory again!  To be continued!