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The Midlife Crisis Beard

When I left school I grew my hair. It was long and luscious and exactly the kind of thing my son will laugh at loudly when he sees the pictures. It was the 90s and everyone I knew left their schools and immediately started trying to look like they were homeless. I however did not. My first year at university was spent clean cut, with the same short style I had during my school years. This was intentional. I didn’t want people thinking I was going with the crowd, when in fact I very much wanted to go with the crowd. Toward the end of first year the excitement became too much and I started letting my hair grow out. The point was that it has always been important to me that I not fall into the trap of becoming a stereotype. Turning 39 and at the same time realising I am undergoing a midlife crisis has therefore been extremely annoying.

I know I am going through a midlife crisis, because I have started to think about growing a beard for the first time in my life. I don’t mean one of those neatly trimmed, and oiled hipster beards, but rather a kind of untamed jungle beard.  I want a shaggy monstrosity that I occasionally take a kitchen knife to and hack back like a wild vine. Or rather I don’t want one, because that is what’s expected of me at 39, shortly after a divorce, and I will be damned if I meet society’s expectations.

Knowing I am probably undergoing some kind of mid-life crisis is very enlightening however. It means I can choose the direction I want to take it in. I don’t necessarily have to grow a beard. Rather than unknowingly plunging myself into an extra-marital affair, taking up drugs or purchasing a stupidly expensive motorbike, I could be looking at this as an opportunity to position my life well for the next 39 years. Last night I made a mental note to buy more Weet-bix for the fibre. I am also considering studying something, and taking up the piano again.

On the other hand, there is always the beard. As far as I see it growing a beard now has many benefits and only one con. If I grow a Hagrid beard strangers will probably assume I am either a murderer or belong to a cult. People I don’t even know would likely fear me, or go out of their way to avoid me. It would be wonderful. Other benefits include not being able to see my face accurately in the mirror, and having an excuse for why no one wants to sleep with me. The con is of course that my toddler son may no longer recognise me, but I am sure he will understand when I tell him the “hedge who is his dad” is saving literally tens of Rands on shaving stuff each month.

By this time next year we will all know which path I took. Will I be on the path to self-fulfilment, riches and happiness, or will I have a beard. Who knows? I live in exciting times.

 

 

 

 

 

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Koping With Stupiderity

One of my biggest problems I have realised is that I expect too much from humanity. My natural inclination is to assume that anyone I meet, and people I speak to, are rational, thinking, and reasonable people. When I put it to paper – website – like this I realise how foolish such a notion seems, but I can’t seem to help myself when I am out there in the world.  In my experience the great-majority of those people (the readers of this column exempted) haven’t got the sense to scratch their balls without first consulting a Youtube video.

This is of course alright. It’s absolutely okay to be the kind of person who eats corn flakes by stabbing at them with a fork. It’s something that could have happened to anyone at birth, but I shouldn’t expect the people I meet to be anything other than that. I could save myself endless hours of frustration if I just lowered my expectations of those around me. Harnessing this great power could see me breeze through traffic, smile benignly as the old woman in front of me in the Pick n Pay queue counts her coins for the fiftieth time, and sigh serenely as I hang up on call centre salespeople. At the core of this realisation is that I am seldom irritated with animals. Dogs are stupid. They spend most of their time walking in circles in an attempt to sniff each other’s behinds. The most one can expect from a dog is that it doesn’t poo on the carpet, however because my expectations of them are limited I rarely find myself frustrated. On the other hand I tend to expect so much more from the people than that they simply do “their business” outside, and this leads to disappointment.  For starters I used a public toilet the other day, and discovered that someone had in fact done their business outside the toilet. Cue existential despair.

Probably one of my favourite examples of epic stupidity occurred when in a moment of youthful exhuberance I accidentally found myself at a Boksburg nightclub I now believe was called Masquerades. I was confronted at the bar by a large bald headed man who told me that he “headbutted concrete pillars”. I smiled and asked, “Why?”, with a look on his face bordering on condescension he said, “For fun”. To which I replied, “You have had a lot of fun this way” taking my life in my hands. Naturally he laughed, said “Ja!” before smashing his head against a concrete pillar.

Lowering one’s expectations in these situations is admittedly easier said than done, but I have at least found another angle to understanding those among us who are so simple they believe white privilege isn’t real, but white genocide is.  A 2012 study led by Richard West at James Madison University reveals the stupidity that resides in each and every one us, by indicating our numerous thinking biases and errors.  Among a series of questions he uses to reveal these biases is this one:  A bat and ball cost a dollar and ten cents. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

Naturally most people respond that the bat is a dollar, and the ball ten cents. This is incorrect. The real answer is that the ball is 5c and the bat is $1.05. It’s what West called a thinking bias, a quick route our brain has been trained to take over time, that we use because it’s simply easier than doing the actual maths. These biases affect every facet of our lives, and are there to give us quick shortcuts to save time in our day-to-day lives. One of the most powerful of these is called the “self-serving bias” in which we tend to think we are better than others.  Most people for instance believe they are above average in intelligence – even whose who think that vaccinations cause autism.

West further found that we are amazingly good at spotting when others make these errors and are terrible at recognising them in ourselves.  The reason for this is that we judge others logically and based purely on their actions, while when judging our own behaviours we factor in emotion, motivations and intentions. In each instance, we readily forgive ourselves our mistakes, but look harshly upon those of other people. And it gets worse. The study further found that the more traditionally intelligent a person is (the more “cognitively sophisticated”) the more likely they are to make these errors. Essentially: we are all dumber than we think we are, and even if we aren’t, that just means we make more mistakes.

Of course while this does explain some of the daily stupidities we are all made to endure, and  allows us to climb down off our high-horses and view the perpetrators in a kinder light leading to peace and forgiveness, I still think the guy who did a poo on the floor of the Douglasdale shell garage right by the hand-dryer is an asshole.

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Anything But Selfies

I hate social media, and the reason I hate it, is because hating things on social media seems to be the best thing about it. It’s a confusing paradox. Last night someone pissed me off cause they hated something I also hate. I hated them, because they hated the thing I hate, in a snarky and off-putting manner that wasn’t in keeping with the more dignified, and quirky way in which I hate things. At least I thought so. I hope me saying that doesn’t make you hate me.

Probably the thing that I hate the most about the internet is the “selfie”. Not anyone specific’s selfie, just the concept. When I went to Japan way back in 2001 I took a few “selfies”, because I travelled there alone and needed proof I had been. It was awkward and uncomfortable, and I felt like a bit of a loser for having no friends who could take these pictures for me. A man alone taking pictures of himself, was viewed with the same suspicion as a trenchcoat owner in a play park. That was how it should be. Why was he alone? Was he a murderer? A lunatic? A Backstreet Boys fan? Turns out he was likely none of those things, just a normal, narcissistic arsehole like the rest of us. The only thing that prevented us from taking nothing but selfies back then was apparently the stigma, and once that evaporated so did our dignity. Now every second Instagram account is just pictures of the owner’s face blocking the view.

We should have seen it coming. It’s not like we haven’t always been narcissistic. Ever since the days of nobility spending hundreds of peasant’s worth of salary on oil paintings, we have wanted nothing as much as to look at our own faces. Coke had its first sales increase in more than a decade when it introduced the idea of adding names to their cans and bottles. We as a species are so self-involved, so desperate to be recognised as special, we will actually spend extra money just so we can drink from a can that says we have a common enough name to make printing it economically viable. It’s our biggest, most easily exploitable failing. We are idiots, little more than apes. Want proof? What was the first thing a monkey with a camera ever took a photo of? Itself.

I am more than willing to bet that if that ape had access to a computer it would also be posting that it has an IQ of 172 according to the test it just took on Facebook. Taking an IQ test on Facebook should automatically qualify you to fail it. “Only the smartest will be able to spot the…” If that sentence doesn’t end with the words, “data mining capabilities of this test”, then once again, finding the solution means you don’t qualify for the descriptor.

Facebook’s entire business model is based around selling our predictability. They are only able to promise that an advertiser will get x number of likes per x amount of cash they spend, because they know exactly what we will click on and when. That’s how mundane, and predictable we each are. If you see something on the internet that claims you are special it’s probably just selling your data to sex-traffickers or worse, McDonalds, cause you aren’t. You, like me, are a number.

We aren’t special so we need to stop acting like we’re among the most intelligent and handsome, just cause an app told us we are smart, or that we look a lot like the celeb Selena Gomez. No matter how many filters you use you don’t look like Selena Gomez – you look like the selfie monkey. So stop photographing your face, and turn the camera outward. At least then you’ll likely get a better view, and I will have one fewer thing to hate.

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How To Judge A Parent

There is a new saying, that one should never judge another parent. The idea is that anyone with a small child, no matter how attentive, is likely to experience melt downs and moments of almost monumental shame for no reason while raising their young one. I say this is bullshit. Judge away. If my child is lying on the floor of a store thrashing his legs and arms, you would be only be right to judge me. If I don’t hear hear you whisper about what a bad parent I am, then at the very least I know you and I have nothing in common, cause that’s what I would be doing.

Probably the worst side-effect of being a parent is that one is forced into contact with other people’s children. My toddler and I like to go down to the park – he to run and climb, and me to be told to run and climb by him, like I am on boot camp and the drill sergeant calls me “daddy”.  Having a job done in odd hours, I often get to take him on week days when the park is silent, but when it isn’t I find we are often confronted with the worst specimens of childlike humanity. And on those days judgement comes in handy.

The other day a boy, who I was assured was five, but who looked as if his beard was coming through,  backed my son into a corner on a jungle gym to tell him a story. The tale went as follows, “And then the people died, and do you know what happened next?” he said. My kid, being 20 months old, polite, and having never heard a story of this kind before dutifully answered, “no” thereby encouraging young Shakespeare to continue.

“Blood came pouring out of their heads and they turned into bats, and do you know what happened next?” he asked, the gripping cliffhanger dangling in the air.

“No,” my son said again, not yet having learnt from his previous error. “They were made into stone, before exploding, and guts went everywhere. Do you know what happened next?” the elocutionist enquired, while I stood starring at him like shit smeared on a new rug.

At this stage the child’s mother must have finally noticed what was going on as she bustled over and told her young thought-leader that he probably shouldn’t be terrifying the baby. He drooled on his chin, screamed something nonsensical and dived head first down the slide. My son turned to me, shrugged and demanded I run to the swings.

I judged that mother that day. Her inattentiveness lead to a really awkward situation. What was I supposed to do? Remind her son he was speaking to a baby? Shout at him? Wade in and toe punt the hobbit over a swing set? Socially we are not allowed to do those things anymore, and so I judge. Giving some sense of shame to the parent is our last defence in the face of a badly behaved child, and if this bothers you, if you are worried that one day it could be you on the end of my glowering silence remember, “you will never experience a public tantrum if you just keep them locked in a cupboard at home.”