Does Thatcher’s death mean the 80s are really over?

Former British PM Margaret Thatcher’s death this week has not, it seems, provoked a sense in Britain or even around the world that the deceased can do no wrong.

The ‘Iron Lady’ steered Britain away from a failed post-war course. But the cost was division, bitterness and dispossession. She polarised; and the bitterness re-emerged this week to the point where the Telegraph apparently had to shut down its twitter stream.

Thatcher was not alone. Many developed nations, one way or another, had their ‘Thatcher’ in the 1980s. Including my country, New Zealand.

It was unsurprising. Thatcher’s brand of conviction politics – certainties based not on pragmatic understanding of human nature, but theoretical dogma – was on the rise around the world. It was of its time, framed in the ideological oppositions of the late twentieth century, the moment when the new generation got hold of the tiller on various ships of state around the western world and, probably unintentionally, steered their societies unerringly into a riotous exaltation of self.

Eighties glitz and glam; a photo I took in a Wellington central city mall at the height of the yuppie boom, 1987.

On the back of it the eighties became an age of arrogance, of asserted certainties, of big hair, big shoulder pads, wedge-shaped cars, over-priced and under-sized food, greed, status, displays of power – and bad behaviour.

Was it any good for us? I was in my early twenties when New Zealand followed the Thatcher lead. There were winners, other young twenty-somethings around me who partied up large – for whom the display and assertion of power was an end in itself. The future didn’t matter. What counted was now.

And there were losers. Anybody over 40 was a has-been, unemployable – a dinosaur. Failures. Because they were old. Because they hadn’t made life exciting. Whatever.

Some of the young, selfish, upwardly mobile and badly behaved party animals in white shirts and wide ties crashed and burned in 1987. I don’t know where most of them are now. For myself, I recall it was hard to get work.

I survived; so did others who thought the same way I did. But it wasn’t easy. And every visit I made to my home province brought heartbreak; closures, derelict buildings, a sense of gloom – even as city office workers partied up amidst chromed, neon-lit bars with their revolting ‘goldfish laybacks’ (don’t ask) and Corona beer swilled straight out of the bottle.

With hindsight, I think that whole social mix of the eighties was symptomatic of its time, the antidote for the world wars that had dominated the first half of the twentieth century; a reaction to the safe, solid, protected, grey societies that followed. It made a selected few from a new generation into winners. But I cannot forget the way it also dispossessed. And the generation who had made that 1980s world possible – who had laid their lives on the line to defeat fascism and make democracy safe – were the generation who lost. A twentieth century phenomenon.

We’re well into the twenty-first now. The Cold War is long over. New technology is transforming the way we interact – and the way we can produce and earn. And yet, I have to wonder. It seems to me that the eighties, fundamentally, tapped into an aspect of the human condition. It’s always been around, one way or another, for our entire history. Sometimes society lets it out. And I wonder if that particular genie has really been put back into the bottle, even today.

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

Fashion week makes me think laterally about the obsession with skinny

A photographer’s flash went off nearby as I walked down Wellington’s Lambton Quay yesterday. I soon discovered why. It’s Fashion Week, and the streets are filled with models on outdoor photo shoots, out in the crowds.

I had no idea it was happening. Of course, you’re talking here to a Kiwi bloke. I randomly purchase clothes, then randomly pluck them from the closet. She Who Must Be Obeyed occasionally points out which shirt goes with what trousers, as opposed to conglomerations of jeans and t-shirts, or odd shoes

What’s more, my favourite model is Thunderbird 2. I am not kidding (hey, every bloke of A Certain Age knows exactly what I am talking about…)

My favourite model. I’ve had this Dinky toy of it since I was a kid. For some reason, I’ve never tossed it out…

But I digress. It got me thinking about the fashion industry with its curious images of what constitutes ‘normal’ and ‘overweight’ for women. it seems to me this tells us an awful lot about what is wrong with western society in general.

Go back half a century and look at Marilyn Monroe, who symbolised western ideals for one and maybe two generations. She was a Size 16, which I believe is known as ‘plus’ size today.

Today? Apparently Size 0 is obese and models are required to survive on cotton wool balls soaked in orange juice, protein shakes and still have to dehydrate themselves for two days in order to get ‘the look’ (hmnn… lots of protein, starvation stress response, no water…’kidney failure’…).

What’s more, both men and women are relentlessly conditioned to think this is normal for women. I still recall someone informing me, years ago, that any woman who didn’t look like the ‘supermodel de jour’ was a ‘blimp’.

The science is clear; people come in all shapes and sizes, and somebody who’s an endomorph (round), under no circumstance, is going to look thin. No matter how little they eat. No matter how much they exercise.

In a way it isn’t surprising. History is rife with examples of social trends, fashion and otherwise, that deny the human condition one way or another. And today the image is also driven at us with all the force of mass media and the power of industrial-age marketing.

Yet there is something else. For 99.99% of all human history, the human condition has involved a struggle to find food. Being fat was a sign of wealth – status. Also fertility; look at the neolithic Venus figures, for instance. Or the paintings of Pieter Paul Rubens.

Today, industrialised society – the same industrialisation that is leading us inexorably down the path of global climate change – has also solved the problem of finding enough food to eat. So what does society do? We create a social ideal for women of being unhealthily skinny, instead.

What, as a society, have we lost perspective of here? What do you figure?

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

The truth behind the Moon landing conspiracy

This week Jeff Bezos fished an F-1 motor from an Apollo mission out of the Atlantic. The biggest rocket engine ever used. That’s seriously awesome.

There is a reader of this blog whose Dad was pad safety officer for Apollo 11 – who was brought up in the middle of the whole project. Ultra cool (I am sooooo jealous!).

I still recall sitting in front of TV aged seven, while a shadowy, black-and-white Neil Armstrong descended to the lunar surface. It was an unforgettable moment. Armstrong – along with Aldrin, Collins and the other Apollo astronauts – were heroes in the truest sense.

Neil Armstrong in the LM, after the first moon walk, 20 July 1969. His face says it all. Photo: NASA

That was the real space age. Even New Zealand was seized by the dream; we had Apollo hardware kits in our cornflake packs, there were moon ice-creams. Humanity was doing what it does best -stretching the limits, pushing the unknown. Publicly, spectacularly. It was an exciting time to grow up.

Not that any of this has stopped lunatic claims that the whole lot was faked by NASA. The argument rests on a trawl for supposed consistency errors and gaffes perpetrated by the top scientific minds in the US, yet easily discoverable by enthusiasts. What’s more, the whole deception has, we are told, been kept secret for decades by tens of thousands of government and private-sector employees, officials, and others involved in the lunar programme, including international scientists such as New Zealand’s Sir William Pickering, who ran JPL at the time.

Quite. Needless to say, most of the pro-hoax arguments pivot on flat ignorance of the science involved. The claims are trivial to debunk – check out here and here.

Buzz Aldrin descends to the lunar surface, 20 July 1969.Photo: NASA, public domain.

I can show you a disproof myself. Check out Armstrong’s photo of Buzz Aldrin descending to the Moon. Notice how he’s lit on the shadowed side of the Lunar Module? That, hoax-advocates insist, is the smoking gun. Dumb old NASA had to add a second light to get around the fact that they’d lit the wrong side of the LM on their sound stage.

The reality?  The ladder was in shadow because Armstrong and Aldrin landed with the sun behind them soon after lunar dawn. No second light is needed in this photo; Aldrin is lit by reflected light from the regolith behind Armstrong, the photographer. You can see this principle for yourself. Here’s a photo I took of the Tom Parker fountain in Napier, New Zealand.

A photo I took of the Tom Parker Fountain, Napier, January 2013.

The shadow side of the fountain (facing the camera) should be as dark as the shadows under the topiary. Actually, it’s as bright as the sunlit side.  Yet the sole illumination is the sun, from top left. Sunlight reflected from the water on the side of the fountain to the right is illuminating the shadow side. The atmosphere makes little difference – it scatters the light, but not enough, evidenced by density of other shadows. Here’s how it works:

I made this myself. Oh man, I love being a geek!

What I’m showing here is the principle. Water reflects light in specular fashion, and at this angle it’s reflecting 90-95% – rendering the fountain’s shadow side over-exposed. By contrast, lunar regolith reflects about 2% light. And if you check out the moon photo, you’ll see not much light is reflected on Aldrin; Armstrong has set the camera to expose on that shadow. The regolith beyond (as bright as what’s illuminating Aldrin, from the other direction) is grossly over-exposed. That nails the point. Aldrin looks well lit. Actually, he isn’t – and that’s as you’d expect from lunar dirt reflectivity.

I have often wondered why something as stupid as the moon hoax claim could gain traction. Part of it is that we never went back – Apollo ended 40 years ago. Today it seems like a dream. But it also occurs to me that the hoax idea proxies one of the key aspects of the human condition. Humanity, it seems, likes to see patterns where none exist and attribute meaning without reference to context – or by referring to a context that isn’t the one shared by others.

The hoax traction is also, I think, derived at least partly from powerlessness - wanting to find explanations within bound of what the individual knows, as a way of asserting control over a huge and frightening world around. If we assert what we think we know, over what we don’t know, we regain a sense of control. It’s how conspiracies work – the detail of the hoax claim itself is merely symptomatic at this level.

It’s impossible to argue against such people, because what they assert is tied into their sense of self-worth.

What are your thoughts?

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

Next week: the real moon-landing hoax – Moscow style. And coming up, more how-to posts on writing, more fun stuff, and – well, you’ll see!

Kindness 2013: the power of confidence in yourself

I thought I would wrap this series up with a few thoughts about what, to me, makes kindness possible on an every day basis.

I mentioned a couple of weeks back that one of the reasons why people forget kindness is that they wrap their sense of self-identity around something – often a goal or status. When somebody else intrudes on that – achieves ‘their’ ambition, or tips one of their sacred cows – the rules of common etiquette and courtesy seem to be lifted. Kindness disappears amidst a sudden frenzy of avenging anger.

It’s a pitfall into which humanity seem to keep plunging. Is there a way around it? Sure. One answer, it seems to me, is in being quietly self-confident.

I don’t mean arrogant, or hubris-laden, or self-entitled. These are, of themselves, roads away from kindness. I mean, quietly , modestly self-confident. Feeling secure in yourself. To me, modest self-confidence means:

1. Accepting mistakes – and figuring out how to not repeat ‘em. ‘Sure, I stuffed up. But I know better for next time’.

2. Being prepared to learn.

3. Being secure in your own beliefs, meaning that you are not threatened by the beliefs of others.

4. Humility. There is a difference between arrogant self-entitlement and self-confidence. Self-confident people, in general, seldom indulge in exercises of ego and power over others. No need; they feel secure enough in their own sense of identity.

It’s not always an easy pathway. I think western society, in particular, leans against it. I think the human condition, in general, carries aspects that lean against it. But I think quiet self-confidence – based on humility, acceptance and tolerance  – also fosters kindness.

And hey – at the end of the day, it all boils down to one thing. Being nice to people isn’t hard. Often it costs nothing – a simple smile, holding a door open. Little things count as much as the big gestures. And the rewards never stop.

What do you figure?

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

Coming up later this week: more writing tips. And a new series – the funny side of real science. Starting with UFO’s. Good for a laugh? Oh yes.

Kindness 2013: revenge – it’s called epic kindness fail

In the past few weeks we have seen that kindness is a philosophy  - a  way of life that encompasses tolerance, reason, thought and compassion. And, it seems to me, all the more necessary as the planet becomes ever more crowded, ever more polluted, and as our resources diminish.

Alas, a quick glance at any news bulletin reveals inhumanities from civil wars to terrorism to horrific stories of toddlers being run over in China and left to die because strangers are too scared to intervene, lest they be held financially liable. Every day we hear stories of muggings, robberies and other deeds. And that’s without considering the ways people are unkind to each other in everyday life.

There are many causes. However, one of them, it seems to me, is the way we enwtine our sense of self-worth around an ambition, a desire or a cause. And when that is intruded upon – when our self-worth seems slighted – what happens? Why, the wrong must be avenged! And the hatred that follows is neither rational, nor reasonable.

My Airfix model of a Mk IV tank, 1917 – one of the ways the Germans were defeated in 1918.

What’s more, revenge happens on all levels. Remember World War 2? The how-and-why has been subject to relentless analysis, but it boils down to one point; Germany was sore at its defeat in 1918, particularly at the hands of France. A little Austrian corporal with shell shock managed to exploit that sense of popular injustice to get himself into power – and engineer revenge. It was made explicit in 1940. When the French capitulated, Hitler made a point of humiliating them in ways that related to 1918, even down to having them sign the armistice in the same railway carriage used to sign Germany’s capitulation in 1918.

Why do we keep doing it? Revenge initially feels good. Not only good, but – so it’s been shown via scientific analysis - more rewarding than kindness. And, as if it wasn’t enough to have that time bomb entwined into the human psyche, we’re also bombarded with the message daily. What’s the slogan? ‘Don’t get mad – get even!’ We always hear that ‘revenge is sweet’. We are even sold books and movies because we can, vicariously, feel that sense of thrill as a character wreaks revenge on those who wronged them.

It’s insidious, and what worries me is that it’s also accepted. You’ve been slighted? No problem – hunt down the miscreant and smash them over. Bwahahahahaha!

There is, of course, a catch; what those studies also found was that the people wreaking revenge not only kept the sense of injustice alive – and thus felt worse for it – but that the act of revenge itself had a psychological backfire point, afterwards.

In other words, it was a momentary sense of satisfaction only.

Kindness? Well, guess what. The feel-good sense lasts. So kindness trumps revenge in the end. A no-brainer, really. Except…well, the human condition also pushes us towards instant gratification - the path of revenge. So I fear that the philosophies of kindness that are important to us – that will make it possible for us to survive as a species, once the planet hits the tipping point and ruin is upon us – will get lost along the way.

Our world, in short, won’t blow up in a sudden armageddon. It’ll get ugly, nasty, and die horribly and slowly. Unless we make the conscious effort to have a philosophy of kindness.

What do you figure about this one?

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

Kindness 2013: beginning with small steps

I posted last week about making 2013 the year of kindness. And I have been absolutely humbled by the wonderful response. Thank you!

Along the way, someone pointed out, on Twitter, that kindness is a good idea – but human nature will prevent it working. And, alas, and alack, that’s quite true. History is littered with efforts to be kind which founder on the usual culprits – jealousies, greed, ego, assertions of ‘us’ over ‘them’. Human nature is multi-faceted, complex, and largely split between altruism and self interest, both personally and in terms of the groups we identify ourselves as belonging to.  Kindness exists, but it is inevitably counter-balanced with unkindness along the way. And often, alas, it is the unkindness that wins.

Why? Because unkindness often appears to be the easier course, and – unfortunately – also the more rewarding for some people. I’ll explain more about that later. But as a historian, science geek, anthropologist and general cynic I agree that we can’t eliminate the darker side of the human condition.

But we can, I think, make kindness the side that wins more often than not. If enough of us try. What’s more, I think that as the world gets more crowded, more intrusive, less private and faster, the onus is on us to make sure we do. Otherwise we risk ending up fighting over the wreckage. It’s happened before.

The thing is that, at the end of the day, kindness is rewarding; acts of kindness make the recipient feel good. It makes you feel good, for doing it. It’s also easy. Kindness starts in small ways. It can be as simple as holding a door for a stranger. Or helping someone cross the road. It can be as simple as a genuine smile. Being nice costs nothing, and gives so much

What do you figure? I’d love to hear from you on this one.

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

This series continues next week. Later this week: ‘So you want to be a writer?’ First of a series on the A-Z of the art. Check it out. Then: ‘ Inspirations. Dreams stay with you in a big country.’ And more.