But noone’s yet explained to me exactly what’s so great, about slaving 50 years away on something that you hate

Slick’s room (Durham), Tuesday 19th January, 13:26

Salute, Amici! (Which is pretentious for hello). Slick here, spoon-feeding you the latest in red hot mixed metaphors and steamy blog action.

Sorry, I’m really not sure where I was going with that.

Today I’d like to address a subject which is increasingly important to me and my contemporaries: the necessity to settle down and become a responsible, boring fully formed adult with one of those tedious career thingies everyone these days gets so worked up about. Essentially I’m going to take a closer look at the school->university->career->death system and share my thoughts on it.

Now, I should point out straight away that there is a serious risk that my comments from now one will make me  sound like either a communist or bone-idle slacker. While the latter of these comments is probably fair enough, I’d just like to say right now that I quite like capitalism. I like our service economy, and the diversified skill set of the workforce. I believe in currency, private property etc. I appreciate that, for anything to get done, people need to get off their arse and do it. The system is far from perfect: hell, its more full of holes than the titanic- but no-one has yet convinced me that there is a better alternative. In short, I am not suggesting we all go off and live in some sort of neo-liberal hippy commune- in fact I can think of few things more nauseating.

All of that being said, I do want to challenge this assumption that, as soon as we leave full-time education, we need to put on a suit and put away our dreams (don’t get me wrong- I love suits, but I just don’t think everyone should have to wear them). I don’t know about the rest of you, but I- and I guess most people my age- feel an enormous social pressure, to conform, to pick a job and make a start on that career ladder we’ll be climbing until retirement. We are barraged with careers fairs, e-mails from postgraduate training companies, banking, accounting and investment firms- all telling us that if we sign on the dotted line now, in 5 years we can be regional vice-president of retail, living in a 4 bedroom semi with 2 kids and a land rover.  I’m sure that’s great for some people, but the problem, as I see it, is that its forced down all of our throats from an early age.

I am young enough that I still remember vividly experiencing this thought process: If I do well on my GCSE’s I can get good A-levels. If I get good A-levels I’ll get into a good university. If I get into a good university I’ll get a good job. If all of this happens, I will achieve a sort of zen state of happiness. My problem with this is that, for some people, it’s not true. Quite aside from the fact that, despite the present trend being to press as many people into university as possible, its just not right for many people- an issue which maybe needs its own blog- some people just don’t fit into this kind of mould. And on the other hand, there are niche jobs in the world which you can’t really get into through this kind of method- for example, I met a guy once who was a yacht photographer. People would literally commission him to come to their yacht-based events in the Mediterranean and take photos. Now, this is not a job which you would be recruited for at a university recruitment fair. Perhaps it’s not a job you could raise a family on and retire on- but regardless, it was the right job for him. Sometimes I worry that there are millions of people out there, sitting in their office cubicles and wishing they were doing something else, and at the same time there are other people saying to themselves “I wish there was someone to come and take photos of my yacht”- but the two will never be linked.

The root of this issue (maybe you don’t agree with my presentation of it as an actual problem) is twofold: firstly, desire for security/fear of risk, and secondly desire for material stuff. Now, I am as guilty of these things as the next man- often I will take the safe but uninteresting route: walk home the regular old way rather than go exploring to find a shortcut, or get the easy job at my mum’s old office rather than send out my cv many times and risk rejection. I like stuff- I like my laptop, and my ipod. I like having a warm bed and a roof over my head. I like to romanticise myself as someone who could do without the former, and could live happily with just a full belly and a place to rest my head, and a few friends to share a drink with, but frankly I might miss all the cool stuff. This is totally understandable. The problem, as ever, is allowing these concerns to paralyse you- to shock and awe you into “meekly shuffling down the path of mediocrity” in the words of Frank Turner (who also provides the title for this blog) and fulfilling society’s expectations of you, regardless of your own misgivings. I just think we could all benefit from taking a good hard look at the idea that the most important thing we can do with ourselves is get a good, stable career, and maybe eventually pop out a few kids (again, a subject I intend to tackle some other blog) and then die .

I’ll leave you with three (related) thoughts. Firstly, when we fill out a CV, we are always asked to “explain any gaps in our employment history” Now that, more than anything, illustrates my point precisely: why is it the case that we should be justifying any time period in which we are not working? Surely any so called “gaps” are more like signs that we have an interesting life? The fact that society basically expects us to work our whole lifetime through, or looks down on us as “dole scum” is reprehensible to me. Secondly, I’ve decided to take a gap year after university: as you may have gathered form this blog, I’m really not sure what course my future will take. I was discussing my plans with a friend, and they said to me “but you’ll be back in the summer right? So you can find a job or get on a course for next year?” An innocent enough comment, but it betrays how deeply the whole uni->work mindset is ingrained into us students. Thirdly, the person I’ve personally met who I am most jealous of is a guy who I met in Germany once. He was a professional online gambler. He made enough money through online poker for food, clothes, rent, and regular holidays, and still had masses of free time. You might say “slacker”, but I say “visionary”.

University- its like being on the dole, only your parents are proud of you.

Slick

Honesty is my only excuse

Slick’s lounge, Harrogate, Sunday the 3rd of January, 20:25

Greetings, from the far off year of 2010! Has anyone else noticed that, at some point, we’ve arrived at the future without realising it? Scary times. Hope you’re all enjoying what I at least intend to refer to as “the tentacles” (http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-2010s-should-be-Nicknamed-The-Tentacles/162428959944?v=wall)

So, today I’d like to tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Unfortunately, I’m not sure I am capable of doing so. Because in my blog this evening I’d like to discuss the nature of honesty, and also it’s relationship with happiness and morality: is honesty really the best policy? Can something we don’t know hurt us? Can we be honest with other people if we are not honest with ourselves? And all those juicy questions.

I will start, in typical fashion, with an admission of my own faults. Generally speaking, I like to consider myself and honest person- as a rule, I tell the truth, try not to engage in deception, and generally present myself in as forthright a manner as possible. However, before you all start a rousing chorus of “for he’s a jolly good fellow” in my honour, I will admit that I occasionally lie, or tell half-truths, or conceal my thoughts and intentions. Often, I do so for what I perceive to be other people’s benefit- if, for example, a friend asked me what I thought of their new haircut, and I thought it sucked, I would be unlikely to say so (unless it was a very close friend and/or someone who I knew would be able to take the criticism). In this sense, I seem to ascribe, sometimes, to a kind of utilitarian “what you don’t know can’t hurt you” policy. I must admit though, that I also lie or conceal for my own personal benefit- because I am ashamed of my true thoughts/intentions, or to achieve an outcome I personally desire- I might, to give a fairly trivial example, do the dishes very badly so that a friend/parent/housemate says “you are useless at that! I will do it for you!”, thus saving me a task (you’ll notice, in fact, that in choosing this particular example I am not exactly being forthright- I could say something a lot more damning about my own deceptions, but choose not to because of a sense of self-preservation). SO, not only do I sometimes put other people’s happiness above honesty, I also occasionally put my own happiness above honesty. I feel fairly comfortable admitting this however, as I’m confident that the vast majority of people are the same in this respect- some are more or less honest than others, but generally I feel that the fact that I strive for honesty, even if I don’t always achieve it, gives me some measure of peace of mind.

So, personal feelings aside; should we always tell the truth? Well, some people believe that we should- Kant, for example. Mostly they argue that lies or deception are in breach of some sort of moral code- or, more pragmatically, that if everyone lied all the time, then we’d never be able to trust anyone, and we’d never achieve anything. Fair enough, I say, but there are obvious counter-examples of occasions when one should lie: if, for example, a crazed axe murderer comes looking for your friend, who is hiding in your house, and they ask you if your friend is in the house, it seems fair to lie to the axe murderer. (Incidentally, Kant himself was presented with this exact example, but he stuck to his guns on the whole “No lying” thing.) This seems to fit well with the whole “lying for the good of others” thing, which is promising, but again we run into problems: how far should the lies be allowed to go? At what point, if any, does the dishonesty outweigh the benefits? To give a great example, take the notion of heaven. Now, personally I’m pretty convinced that heaven doesn’t exist, but I will admit that it is a nice thought- perhaps such a nice thought that people like me, who realise the truth of its non-existence, should suppress our knowledge for the greater good? Well, frankly, in this case I think that honesty is preferable to false happiness- but I’d struggle to explain exactly why.

The issue of putting one’s own good before honesty is again an interesting one- whilst most people’s moral instincts would say that it is wrong to lie for personal gain, there are some seeming exceptions. For example, it is considered pretty standard practice to exaggerate- if not outright lie- in job interviews. I once accepted a job which claimed it needed “excellent mathematical skills”, despite my mathematical ability being adequate at best. I did well at the job, and I doubt many people would have acted differently in my place- and yet the benefit was solely mine: I effectively deceived the company about my abilities for personal gain. In the end, no harm was done, but it serves as an interesting example to show that some forms of lying are deemed acceptable, even if you personally are the only one that benefits.

Finally. I’d like to consider two more points. Firstly, further to my blog about personal identity (I’m talking about the man in the Mirror) there is a question over whether true honesty is really possible- if we are not sure of/about ourselves, can we really give honest answers and opinions to others? If someone asks me if I am an honest person, given everything I have already said, how could I answer them? I suppose I could say “honest compared to what?”, or maybe link them to this blog, but it seems like I’d struggle to answer honestly. And secondly, is leaving things out the same as being dishonest? Imagine, for example, you are on a first date with someone- if you’re like me, you will hide all of your negative traits and emphasize all of your positive ones*- is that being dishonest? or is that simply being human?

Yours sincerely,

Slick

P.S, I might have pointed this out before, but does anyone else find it a little… incongruous… that when I write a blog decrying the entire edifice of Christianity, around which billions of people centre their lives, I am applauded, but when I innocently suggest ways to make a girl who was formerly not interested in you look twice, I am shouted down?

*Or, if you’re really clever, you deliberately reveal some of your negative qualities in an up front fashion, thus disarming your objet d’amour. I’ve been known, for example, to tell girls all about my huge… ego… without any prompting, and it’s often worked quite well.