WillWybrow.com

As many of you will be aware, it’s “two thousand and nine,” now. And whilst I expect that a lot of you see the futility in making “new year’s resolutions,” what you don’t understand is you are guilty of a similar mistake, one which is far more common and far less often noted as fallacious.

Somehow, despite getting out of the habit of deliberately creating new goals and targets that begin on the First of January, we are all still in the mindset that the new year is somehow a “fresh start.” We say things like “here’s to 2009,” or “I hope this year is better than 2008.”

Newsflash: the parts of your life that were shitty at 11:59pm on December 31st, 2008 will be just as shitty at 12:00am on January 1st, 2009. Nothing is magically changed in the ticking of that transitional second. Hoping or expecting 2009 to be a “better year” than 2008 is just as bad as setting resolutions. These are just arbitrarily chosen days; they do not mark that any of your problems are coming to an end, and they do not give you any reason to hope that something in your life is going to change.

All the end of the year does is give you regular markers against which you can evaluate and record your happiness. But why wait until the end of the year to do all that? If you want to see how well you’re doing, always be looking back over what’s happened. Surely a month-by-month reflection is going to help steer you away from your mistakes sooner?

And what if you’ve had a really terrible “year,” up until, say, mid-October? Then even if things start to go really well, most of your year has been spent having a terrible time, and you say it was a “bad year,” – that’s just not accurate enough. It focuses too much on things which you might have dealt with and left in your past, and it just drags you back down like an emotional deadweight.

Nothing stops. And nothing starts. Not without you making the same effort you’d have to at any other time, so why wait to do it? Let every day feel like January the First if you have to, just quit pinning all your hopes on just one of three hundred and sixty-five opportunities.

What always bugged me, even when I was young, was when people comment on the unlikelihood of events happening in films. You know, when Jason Bourne makes an impossible jump, or John McClane runs through a storm of bullets without being hit.

Of course, saying “it’s just fiction, it doesn’t matter,” isn’t really a satisfying dismissal of those people. They nag and complain that the film is unrealistic and that makes it unenjoyable for them and unenjoyable for you.

But I had this idea when I was little that maybe all those unlikely things had to happen. That any story where they didn’t happen wouldn’t be very worth telling. There would somewhere be a version of the ‘Die Hard’ storyline where Alan Rickman kills Bruce Willis in the first ten minutes. But nobody wants to see a film like that. In a theoretical universe where every possible story is told, ones with hugely unlikely possibilities will eventually come into existence and they are the ones we read about in books and watch about in films.

Of course, these days I don’t care very much about all of that. Every now and then I’ll be aware that I’m watching something that others might be thinking is unrealistic. In which case I might wait until something relatively probable (but still a bit unlikely) happens and remark on how “this film is so unrealistic,” in a sort of terrible humour attempt.

But also nowadays, years from my initial feelings of ire at the bothersome critical appraisal of my immature peers, I realise that I’d basically applied the anthropic principle to storytelling. Woo! Young me was secretly clever!

Having a comfortable bed is the single biggest mistake you can ever make.

I used to think that having a comfortable bed would make a night’s sleep more relaxing, better for you. Better than waking up in the middle of the night with springs digging into your back in painful places (what I get in my dad’s house), at any rate.

Now I know that this is bullshit. A comfy bed only makes me want to stay in bed for longer. I am much more lazy and sleepy than I have ever been before, and it’s just detrimental to getting things done.

So, in the hope of motivating myself to actually get the fuck out of bed in the mornings, I am going to buy another duvet, lay one on the floor and one over the top of me and kip on my floor for every weeknight next week.

I will let you know how that goes, if you like.

For some reason that is beyond my understanding, I had the weirdest dream last night.

My family and I were in a house, we might have been moving in. But it was new to us whilst having been lived in before by others. We were exploring the house and coming across signs of the previous occupants’ lives.

Now, my dreams always tend to play out as though I were watching a film. This includes things like camera panning and tracking shots, which is strange enough in itself, I suppose, but last night there was this really cool flashback effect where the camera would move around a point in the house while the scene transformed into the same shot of the house back when its previous occupants were living in it.

The story unfolded like this: there was a couple and their children living there. They had a teenage daughter who got pregnant and gave birth to a son. But through her negligence, her baby ended up being crushed. Her family shunned her for what they perceived as murder, and she became reclusive, hiding away in the basement with the remains of her child as she slowly slipped into madness. Her family kept her down there when she eventually tried to escape, and she became a prisoner.

Back in the present, my sister and I found a boarded up trapdoor which we broke into, and we descended into the basement. One final flashback scene showed the girl cradling her broken child to her, sobbing “fragile little skeleton” to herself over and over again. Then as we entered the old basement, we saw the crunched up baby inside a mouldy old shoebox.

I am calling it a ‘nightmare,’ because it was a distinctly unhappy dream, and descending into an old house’s basement and finding a sad story of death and madness has an odd Japanese horror kind of feel to it.

I can’t think what caused it. The only thing that really differed yesterday from my day-to-day routine was polishing off a bit of wine in the evening. For lack of a better explanation, the wine shall therefore be the cause.

Have you ever really thought about exactly how far you can be pushed before you completely break down this socially acceptable person that you are and go utterly insane? Like, what if you were told (and convinced beyond reasonable doubt) you had a few weeks to live? Some of you wouldn’t be fazed by that, and maybe would spend some quality time with family and friends, but I’d wager there are those of us who would put social acceptability into a grave ahead of time and completely break free of these community-established bonds.

Bonds like solving your problems with words. Like ignoring rude people instead of punishing them. Like observing common courtesies, like not drawing attention to yourself or being an inconvenience. Not stealing, not vandalising, not killing…

But maybe it won’t be a terminal illness that will push you over the edge. Maybe you come home one day to find your family has been raped and murdered… Maybe you have been alone for so long, you can’t see the point anymore.

All I’m saying is, be careful. You never know what’s going to be around the corner, and that might trigger some long dormant, freebird spirit within you that won’t stand for the restrictions you live your life bounded by.

I came to accept the Warwick Atheists Society as a home, a group of friendly people who shared some key life outlooks with me. I came to this conclusion quickly, and maybe it’s time to rethink a little of what people are assuming are the reasons that I am here.

Now, I don’t mean to criticise anybody for their way of thinking - I’m sure it serves their purposes just fine. But there are some things that just don’t cut it for me. There’s nothing worse than self-doubt. Self analysis is fine, particularly in a retrospective sense, for how else can you evaluate and learn from your past? But this constant self-doubt and self-questioning that seems to be apparent in the more prominent society members makes me believe that they may have come to atheism from the wrong direction.

I’d like to first point out a few discrepancies in the way we think. I’m sure many of you know my position on free will; I’m a strong believer in the ability to make a choice. This conflicts with what these presumably wiser (and I say presumably because it can be presumed that wisdom increases with age - we know this is not true in all cases, which leaves a nice ambiguous statement for people to interpret how they wish) people are preaching: we can’t possibly make a difference to anything (a bleak paraphrasing, I know).

Next blow dealt: someone tells me that it’s impossible for human beings to be rational. Ever. This is a straightforward lie. It’s his belief that there are too many external factors that make people unable to abstract a situation down to simple logical and rational components. Frankly, this was insulting more than anything else, because I feel that it is perfectly possible, and in some cases common, to be able to take a situation, isolate it and convert it into a set of rational steps, considering the effects of the outputs on you as a person (and this is where we can find irrationality - some effects may be pleasing, others not, but they are taken as given effects because they are outside the scope of the rationalising system) and making a decision based on those known effects. Saying that a human being can’t be rational is like saying they can’t be logical. It’s simply wrong.

I know where these maligned views have come from. They’ve come from that heinous demon self-doubt. That’s the process that is best undergone in strict moderation. The key thing we have to remember here is that when you start to doubt even the things your senses are telling you, you’re starting on the slippery slope to madness. What’s the point in questioning the reliability of your senses to interpret the world around you? There is no other way for you to realise anything, so if you doubt your self, you doubt your self-doubt. That means: you may as well go along with things the way you’re built to - taking inputs from sense receptors and processing the data with your uniquely complicated mind.

We all feel like we have free will and can be rational. So why do people question themselves? Is there a correlation between this and questioning the presence of a god? If these people arrive at the conclusion of “there is no free will” because there’s no evidence of free will, despite them clearly feeling the ability to decide, what’s to say that they’re not all secretly feeling like there is a god, and they’re denying their own feelings due to this awful habit of doubting everything?

And this is why I think they’re all at atheism from the wrong direction. They don’t feel like there’s no higher power out there, they just doubt every singe thing that happens unless someone has theorised it and put an equation to it.

Doubting when people tell you things is a very good approach to life. By all means be sceptical of everything people tell you if they’re delivering it as fact and it can be checked. Verbal conversations are the ones you need to watch out for here, because people will never cite sources. At least if it’s written down you have a record that can be checked. But when you apply the same scepticism to everything your senses are telling you is right, there’s really no point to your life anymore. If you can’t accept that what you sense is right, you’re doubting the validity of everything you think, say and do, and I don’t see how you can possibly enjoy life.

Non-secretive people sometimes really piss me off. I literally feel the blood beating in my arteries, and it hurts. I had the misfortune of hearing some sissy poetic jackoff talking to some cheap bit of skirt while I was walking today, and one of the snippets of conversation that I caught went a little like this: “…and do you know where I learnt that? I was watching Bill Bailey and he did a song about it…”

Your source of knowledge is a comedian’s musical piece? Firstly, there’s absolutely no credibility gained from that. Secondly, even if it can be crossreferenced as fact, why are you stating this source as your original? You sound like a complete idiot! Not only should you keep your sources to yourself, but you should especially keep your sources to yourself when they are this stupid! What is wrong with you?

People throw around sources of knowledge all the time. While this is useful in sorting out the lies people tell you from the bullshit, in everyday conversation, nobody is trying to learn stuff from you. If you were in a debate and you were citing references, sure. But a casual chat? Come on, just cut the crap and say what you think without trying to justify yourself endlessly. You’ll ruin the conversation if you try and link in when someone else has thought the same as you every time you want to make a point. It doesn’t move things along, it branches. And you’ll just have to backtrack along the branch to carry on with the main stem of conversation, which takes time and patience. Maybe you’re not that enjoyable to listen to - did you ever consider that? I thought not.

What’s more, disclosing all your sources of information is just going to make people check them. Then what? Chances are this isn’t the only opinion you’ve plagiarised. Then everyone will know the game is up. Those clever and witty sayings that you picked up from that website or that DVD won’t seem so clever any more, will they? You may as well stop speaking, because now everyone’s dipped their toes in your neck of the woods*, your individuality will evaporate. And people will also scrutinise everything you quote for discrepancies. If you mis-quote, boy you’re in for one hell of a time.

Now, you might (if you are a careful reader) be thinking “this is all very interesting, Mr. C, but why does this make him a ’sissy’?” The answer is: he went on to say “…it’s a very beautiful metaphor.”

What? Who died and made you a poet? Or are you just a literary genius? Chances are, neither are true. You’re just some dumb guy with too much air in your lungs. Cool it, Shakespeare, just quit giving me your vomit-inducing interpretations of things. I don’t want to hear it, and neither does that bitch you’re talking to. That’s why she mumbled an agreement and let you carry on, her eyes slowly becoming unfocused and glazing over as autopilot takes over her basic motor functions and her consciousness is lost in the more interesting realms of her own dull imagination. And how do I know she has a dull imagination? Just trust me, you can spot these bland types from a mile off.

What a waste of time and air. Both of you.

*I threw in a mixed figure of speech like that to keep the people who don’t speak English as their first language on their toes a little bit. Not because I’m a racist and I hate them, mind you.

I was reading up about the Rorschach test - I’m not sure if I remember how I got onto it, it might have been one of those long Wikipedia treks. But it took my attention and grabbed my interest, so I read on, careful not to look at any of the ink blot images in case I spoiled the test for myself in the future, in case I get a chance to take one.

How can interpreting things from blots of ink really tell whether you are insane or not, and what your personality is like? I’m not sure it can, so I am still a skeptic on such things.

In order to indulge this curiosity of mine, however, I did take a look at Tickle for their “PhD certified” inkblot test. And I took it. And this is why you can’t trust any of those stupid tests that you find online (be they personality tests, IQ tests or anything else). This will give you a laugh:

You have a deep desire to be kind and fair to others. You are preoccupied with finding kindness in the world around you, far more than you may realise on a conscious level. This makes you unusually empathetic and very sensitive to other people’s feelings. Your kind nature makes you an optimist at heart and allows you to see the best in the people around you.
Because you’re not judgmental, others seek you out when they need a friend. Your psyche is very rich; the more you learn about it, the more you will understand who you really are…

I don’t want to start a whole “debate” on this issue, because I feel I’ve received some good arguments against what I have to say, and know there are probably many more to come. But I think that’s best left for another day.

Free will: a questionable attribute that we, as a self-aware species, can feel that we have. And it is my belief that everyone initially comes to the conclusion that what we feel when we are making a choice, actually makes a difference to the world around us, and could have been different yet again had the choice been an alternative.

Free will skeptic and physicist Ben told me:

I mean, I make choices and think about choice and stuff, but I don’t think for a second I actually HAVE a choice.
I believe in the illusion of free will, but not in actual free will.
The fact I feel like I can make choices is enough for me.

This last sentence is the one that especially gets me thinking.

In a world where we are pretty much convinced of our own ability to perceive things - that is, apart from a minority who have been taught counterproductive ways of thinking, we’re happy to believe that we exist, and so do the things that we sense about the world and ourselves. We are happy to make observations and build up pattern profiles for when these observations repeat themselves, to define some sort of consistency to our world. And so, I would like to ask the question: if it feels like we have free will, why is that not enough?

There are plenty of things that I believe we do not have a choice in - which music we like, who we’re attracted to, who we fall in love with, et cetera. But making a choice is not one of those things. I believe that most people, even if they disagree with the principle of free will, like Ben, still appreciate that it does indeed feel like we’re making a choice and making a difference. Why, when it is so clear that we can feel like we have no control over something, do we feel like that, when similar sensations of the decision being uncontrollable are equally possible in our minds?

Gut Instinct versus Second Thought

In my view, there are two ways of categorising people if we’re going to do it by the way they think about decisions. There are, more often than you think, right answers to decisions. Whether this is a literal thing, and you’re picking the correct answer to a question that has one, or whether it’s a case of decision-making, where one decision will lead you to a better experience than the other, makes no difference. There’s usually a choice that will work out better overall.

So, knowing that, why is it that people don’t always pick the right choices? Well, it’s purely because they don’t know. If we take a simple look at a choice between two things, equally possible and likely, but one better than the other. There are two ways a person could go about making the choice.

The Gut Instinct

If this hypothetical person is making the choice that first bursts into their head, a sort of impulse choice, then they are going with the gut instinct branch of thinking. If they are having a successful life, that probably shows that they’ve got sharp intuition and an excellent ability to analyse people and situations almost instantly. They can think quickly and respond quickly, and if they can align their common sense with their reactivity, they will usually do very well at conversation or interviews or insults.

The Second Thought

Alternatively, the impulse might be denied. It might be held onto and analysed for any imperfections. And when this person changes their mind, it will be because of their use of the second thought branch. If a person who thinks like this is successful, it shows that their instincts aren’t always as sharp, but at least they can tell. It might take a second-thinker longer to reach the same conclusion that a gut-instinctive person would process by good feelings, but they’ll get there in the end, and these sorts of people are far less likely to be put off by mood changes or outside influences, since these things only affect the reactivity of a person, and not their logical thought patterns.

The Edge of the Coin

Sometimes, I do both of these. I will have a good feeling about something, and then I’ll pick it, or move to. But then the second thought will kick in with self-doubt hard on its heels. “Heads or tails?” I might be asked. I might think “heads!” instantly. If I say it instantly, I’ll be right, for sure. If, however, I thought one thing to begin with, and changed my mind afterwards, the changed view will always be wrong.

“Well, Chronicler,” you might be thinking. “Why not second think your second thoughts?”

The answer is, because it doesn’t work like that. The trouble with the second thought is that, to question it, you have to second-think the second thought, and that will only lead around to another bad conclusion. And thinking whether or not it is a bad conclusion will be second thinking that thought, and so we discover a circular problem.

The only way to break the cycle is to try and remember the impulse’s scream when you were first asked. But if that’s not an option, there’s no point in trying to think it through again and again - it will always turn out wrong. Just pick any of them, you’re doomed anyway.