Hot War-on-War action

There's a lot of war about these days. I know that's sadly usually the case globally, but I meant in daily life here in cushy western society. And I don't mean this in the most literal sense. I'm not regularly experiencing mortar fire every time I go to Morrison's to buy some bin bags. I meant the word 'War' is, as far as I can see, popping up seemingly everywhere. And words are funny things, aren't they?

Actually, forget that, most of the time they're not. Words can be quite bland. Slate, Grey, tepid, felt, step, moored, these are just some words which provoke little or no reaction in your average person, they just exist to fulfil a function. Like windowsills. They're useful and we'd miss them if they were gone, but I doubt anybody has ever said 'I do love those windowsills'. If I'm wrong about this and you know someone who does say that, then fair enough. But I'd give that person a wide berth if I were you.

But undeniably, some words can trigger intrinsic emotional responses. This is actually used in clinical assessment in a few ways, one of which is a version of the stroop test. To briefly describe it, subjects/patients are asked to say the colour of each word in a list of words, not to read it. Of course, people tend to be unable to stop themselves reading words, even if it's made more difficult, it's an automatic process much of the time. The emotional stroop test, as it's known, gets participants to give the colour of a list of words, some of which have strong emotional connotations. For example, if the test is intended to assess whether someone is depressed or not, a lot of the words will have strong, 'bleak' connotations (murder, suicide, cancer etc.). In theory, a depressed person will divert more attention to these loaded words than they will to more neutral, generic ones (leaf, wheelbarrow, melon etc.). Depression tends to be a self-perpetuating condition due to the psychological preoccupation and emphasis on the negatives, and this test arguably reveals indications of this.

So words can and do have intrinsically powerful meanings, is what the overall point is.

This has been brought up a lot recently, with the controversy over Workfare in the UK, the government scheme to get the unemployed back in work but without all that pesky payment to sort out. Whatever you think of it as a concept, it's definitely caused a lot of controversy, and there are plenty of other, better informed blogs/articles out there if you want to delve into that.

What struck me was the fact that many people are comparing it to slavery. Some were doing it for satire, which is fine. But many people objected to those objecting to workfare by comparing it to slavery. No doubt a fair bit of the latter is intellectual posturing, people wanting to show that they're even more 'right on' than the 'right on' bandwagon, but there's obviously some relevance to the complaints. I don't think that being compelled to work for several hours a day in order to justify benefits, however unpleasant and unfair it may be, can be seen as directly analogous to being kidnapped, beaten, sold as property and forcibly made to toil all day every day for the rest of your (undoubtedly short) life. Obviously, a lot of people feel strongly about the casual use of such a loaded word as slavery, one with such terrible historic implications.

Some words are too loaded, apparently, unless used with 100% contextual accuracy. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is largely subjective and depends on your views on free speech, censorship etc. I've mentioned before how the previously used term 'depression' may be too generic, meaning sufferers might get short shrift as a result. And the casual use of the term 'rape' is not something that usually ends well, as I may have discussed.

What confuses me, though, is why the same consideration and gravitas isn't applied to the term 'War'. I don't think there are many rational people who actually think war is a good thing. Those who are 'pro war' are almost exclusively people who are very unlikely to actually experience it directly. I may be wrong about this, but I'll go out on a limb and say that people who genuinely think war is a good thing are unlikely to be the sort of people who would object to using a specific term in an incorrect context. They're clearly an 'ends justify the means' type.

But of those who do object to the casual use of meaningful, loaded terms, I've not yet seen anyone object to the causal use of the word war. I'm just wondering why this is?

War is, at best, viewed as a necessary evil. And when the most positive spin you can give to something includes the word 'evil', that's not a good sign. The very existence of war has often been used as a shortcut in sci-fi to show that humans = evil (check out The Fifth Element, or any series of Star Trek). War is bloody. War is destructive. War involves armed conflict and invariably a high death toll. War kills people, usually in their thousands, often indiscriminately. Cultures, societies, populations, environments, there are many examples of each that have been utterly devastated by war. Historically, that's what war does.

In a historical context, War has killed countless millions over thousands of years, and with the invention of nuclear weapons it has become something that could wipe out the human race altogether, and relatively easily. We still have remembrance day and many other occasions across the world to honour those who went to war (and never came back) so we don't have to now. So, historically, war clearly has the same resonance and connotations of words such as slavery, or genocide, or holocaust.

Now, imagine if there was a TV advert for a bleach or toilet cleaner with the slogan 'It's like a bacteria holocaust!' It would be pulled from the air in seconds and those who made it would be pilloried mercilessly (and rightly so, I hasten to add). However, if the slogan was 'go to war on bacteria', that would be fine, people probably wouldn't even register it as anything unusual. Because it wouldn't be.

Just through the use of google autocomplete, here are some wars that are apparently going on at the moment.

War on Women

War on Waste

War on Want

Welfare state

War on Free Speech

War on Christmas

War on Drugs

War on Terror

War on Binge Drinking

War on Teenagers

War on Poverty

War on the working classes

War on Piracy

War on Censorship

War on Islam

War on Christianity

War on Religion

War on atheism

War on science

War on Democracy

War on Unions

Price War

Bidding War

That's a lot of war to be getting on with, and I've not even mentioned the actual armed conflicts (which are these days, contrastingly, being described as 'police actions', 'insurrections' and so on, not 'wars').

The term war is clearly thrown around so casually that I worry it's become largely devalued. Vince Cable declared that he'd 'declared war on [Rupert] Murdoch'. As much as I like the idea of Vince Cable recruiting an army and forcibly storming the offices of the Sun at Wapping, I don't think that's what he meant. I'm pretty sure for something to actually be a war, both sides involved have to actually be aware that it's happening.

War on women, war on waste, war on want, war on working classes, war of words, I now move we declare 'War on words that begin with W purely to take advantage of the phonetic similarity'.

The war on Christmas has been going on for many years now. I guess that's inevitable, as it's one of the only wars where you can't say 'it'll all be over by Christmas'. It's the opposite, if anything.

The War on Poverty was declared in the 60's, apparently. I'm going to assume it didn't involve carpet-bombing impoverished areas with shell casings filled with banknotes and jewels. If anything, the war has stepped up in recent years, with the 'Make Poverty History' campaign calling for all-out eradication of poverty. A poverty-genocide, if you will.

If you believe what you read these days, most of the major religions (and also atheists) are having war waged against them, although none claim to have initiated hostilities nor to be actively taking part in said war. Indeed many are engaging in some bizarre form of pre-emptive retaliation, which doesn't seem logical when you think about it

A lot of these 'wars' are shorthand ways of describing a seemingly orchestrated campaign by a particular organisation or powerful body to limit the powers/rights of another group, or to undermine a process or principle which they see as a threat. I'm not saying these are good things or that they aren't happening, but I just question the appropriateness of describing them as 'wars'. And I'm aware of the irony of me questioning whether or not 'War on Freedom of Speech' is an acceptable term.

It would be easy to blame George W. Bush and co for starting all this, with their 'War on Terror', an official armed conflict against an abstract concept. But there's plenty of examples before this. The Cold war, which had the threat of war but no actual conflict. The Cod war, which was purely about fishing territories, but at least was an official disagreement between 2 countries, which is one of the aspects that normally defines a war. But these days it seems that someone can declare a war against something/someone at the drop of a hat, and nobody even registers it. People even use the phrase 'been in the wars' to describe someone who's had a run of bad luck. Not even one war, several!  

You could argue that the term is being used correctly, as war can be described as 'active hostility, contention, conflict'. Indeed, not arguing that; hostility and conflict can easily occur without actual violence or weaponry or death. But then a slave can be defined as 'a person entirely under the domination of some influence or person'. People on workfare could be said to meet this description, as they are under the domination of the government/social services who will remove their life sustaining benefits if they don't work for free, but this is argued to be an inappropriate term because of the historical context around slavery. Fair enough. This is the case for slavery. Not for war, though. Granted there are still people experiencing slavery today, the fallout from it is still very real and it's undeniably a very real problem that ruins lives. But this is also very much the case for war.

I just can't help but wonder why this casual use of the term war has come about unremarked upon. I can't imagine someone who has written a successful book talking about it being subject to a studio 'bidding war', to a WWII veteran with one leg. Odds are it could happen and neither party would think anything of it. It just strikes me as odd.

Maybe people are more comfortable with using the term war as it is taken to mean 'conflict', and it's very hard to avoid conflict in normal everyday life, whereas most people can easily go their whole lives without enslaving anyone or committing genocide.

I don't have an answer or any real alternative for this situation, other than to highlight a supposed double standard that nobody else seems to have picked up on. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I could suggest that this was an orchestrated attempt by those in power to rob the term War of its gravitas, so that when the next full-on military war is declared (let's say against, oh, I don't know, Iran, to pick a country entirely at random), people are more likely to just tut and sigh, rather than stage massive protests. Another war? Just add it to the pile.

I guess we need a new word to describe initiating a conflict without a violent military component. I propose 'Bilgefest' or 'Lubeathon'. It would be hard for politicians or powerful individuals to declare a 'Bilgefest' and retain any credibility, so they might not bother?

Twitter: @garwboy

Society, Socialising and Salamanders

Right, I've been asked why a lot of my posts recently have focussed specifically on Axolotls. This is a fair point, and as is my want, I will answer it in a long rambling fashion.

I've been to a lot of conferences recently, and throughout my adult life. I've also joined numerous societies and groups which, invariably at some point, involves being put in a room with a large number of strangers and instructed to 'meet people', or 'mingle'. Normally, if booze is available (particularly if it's free), this happens of it's own accord, as long as people are patient.

At first, groups of people who know each other stick together rigidly, usually in a circle so as to present no weak point to a potential interloper. Some of the looser knots are just people who met earlier that day, or on the way in to the room, or even if some brief eye contact has been made and now all parties feel obligated to mingle. But two or three drinks in, guards will drop, one group member will spot a friend in another group and a connection will be made, potentially causing both groups to merge. Someone will pick up someone else's drink and a laugh will be shared, and friendships will form. Two groups will meet randomly and realise that together they have a chance of taking and maintaining the best seats, or the table with the crisps, or just keeping even more interlopers from joining. But this keeps happening until the gathering is one seething, chaotic mass with no structure or leader.

It's basically the whole of human social development, occurring over a few hours, accelerated by alcohol. I believe this is why alcohol is often described as a 'social lubricant', although nobody yet seems to be picking up my habit of calling alcohol 'conversational KY jelly'. Give it time.

However, if the gathering is big enough, or the organisers want to speed up proceedings further than simply by supplying alcohol alone, there will be some sort of enforced-mingling game (EMG). Enforcing is actually never really used, but it feels forced, so...

A recent conference of Science Communicators included the EMG of swapping tables between courses, although this only works during a sit down meal. This was fun for all concerned, apart from the waiting staff, who got progressively more confused until one ran out screaming obscenities and trying to dispense plates of an admittedly standard chicken based dish to passers by in the street. Still, this provided more fodder for mingling conversation, and how we laughed as the police tackled him to the ground.

My most memorable EMG was several years ago, where I joined a University society doing student radio. I wasn't there long, never going back after this particular social. That's one drawback of these things, you end up talking to people you would never have talked to otherwise, and sometimes these things serve to show you exactly why that is. I would never normally choose to socialise with these ascending-autoposteriosphinctoral* media wannabes, why start now?

The EMG used in this instance was a more simple one; on arrival, each person was given a name badge with one half of a 'famous couple' (corresponding to the gender of the individual) on it. You were instructed to seek out the other half of this famous couple and when you did, you had to, quote, "do what that couple would do". Asking for clarification from the organisers, this (quite obviously, going by their patronising tones) meant 'talk to each other'.

I know many couples. I'm even in one. As far as I'm aware, 'talking to each other' is below the absolute minimum level of interaction required in order to be classified as 'a couple'. At this point, I was getting alarmed as to exactly what sort of 'social event' I'd attended.

I was assigned 'Kenickie' [sic?], which thanks to my younger sisters constant watching of the bastard film growing up, I knew to be the second lead male in 'Grease'. I guessed I had to find 'Rizzo'. The place was already pretty full, and quite dark, so this was hard. But I did notice a lot of other halves of famous couples.

I saw 'Fred Flintstone' talking on a mobile phone (to Barney I assume), 'Mr Darcy' on the dance floor looking like a gyrating tit, 'Cleopatra' (18 stone at least), 'Romeo' (squeezing the arse of a woman who definitely wasn't Juliet), 'Victoria Beckham' (blatant Pikey, so at least she was accurate, HA HA HAAAA). But you get the gist. These were the ones I recognised, most I didn't really get, so couldn't say if they were ironic opposites or not.
But after a while, I got the impression that whoever had organised this game hadn't really put much thought into it. I saw three girls representing the Corrs sisters. A 'coupling' I'd never thought about before apart from pretty much constantly during my teens and probably for the next few days now that I've brought it up again. I also saw a Linda McCartney and a Heather Mills, and even a Loretta Bobbtit.
Then I saw someone which made me realise that whoever had been given the task of making these badges had resented it greatly, that's the only explanation. On the way to the toilet, I passed a woman looking pretty pissed off. I couldn't blame her, on her badge was written 'Maxine Carr'.

Remember the instruction, 'Do what that couple would do'.

Poor girl, not only did she have to wear that badge, she was going to be alone all night. Seriously, any normal bloke arriving at a party and being told 'You've got to wear a badge saying that you're Ian Huntley', he would probably turn and go straight home. And if he doesn't that's worse, he'll be avoided by everyone there, especially by any young woman who'd been labelled Maxine Carr.
You can see why I didn't go back.

Anyway, Axolotls? I'm getting to that.
We had a psychology conference last week (PsyPAG 2009, for those interested, look it up). Good times. During the wine reception for 150 people, there was an EMG I'd not encountered before; People Bingo.
Good idea really, says the guy who is pretty sure the people who organised it will read this. You go round the assembled crowd and get people to sign boxes on a scorecard, in each box is a general description of a person. "Has an unusual Tattoo", "Enjoys Teaching", "Has a child", and so on. You find a person that fits a description, get them to sign it, fill your scorecard, get a prize. Fair enough.

At one point, some asked me if I’d ever broken a bone. There was a box that said ‘someone who has broken a bone’. I said I hadn’t.

She said ‘But it’s the only one I haven’t filled’. The implication being, I think, that if I was any sort of half-way decent human being, I would voluntarily and manually break one of my bones there and then, in order to provide a slight convenience for a total stranger. I thought about it, but still had to walk home, so chose not to. What a selfish prick I am!

Anyway, I kept getting asked to fill in the box “someone who had had an unusual pet”. I myself had an Axolotl for a brief period, which everyone agreed was quite unusual. Actually, that’s a lie. Pretty much everyone refused to believe they exist. They still had me sign their card, but assumed I’d made the whole thing up.

Here’s the thing. Axolotls are salamanders, originating in Mexico (hence the vaguely Aztec name). They are very fascinating creatures, being neonates they can spend their entire lives in a larval state, only maturing into land-based salamanders if exposed to sufficient iodine. They are also cool in appearance, and amusing to look at, and make good pets if you don’t mind feeding them strips of raw liver with a pair of tongs on account of them being meat-eaters with crap eyesight. They have many other cool properties.

The part that bugged me wasn’t that so many people, all future doctors if they weren’t already, genuinely didn’t know of the axolotl. No, the worst part is that so many people actually believed that I would invent an exotic salamander in order to get the attention of strangers. They genuinely laughed when I said I had one as a pet. (Where did I keep it? In a pond in my secret garden, next to the Unicorn Barn?). Admittedly, this is the sort of thing a 5 year old would say in order to give credibility to some bullshit story. Thing is, I’m not 5, I’m 27, and I thought I was more credible than that.

So, in order to rectify this gross injustice to both myself and Alan (my Axolotl, I didn't name him) and the Axolotl species in general, please join my facebook group and further the cause

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=112688824437&ref=search

And spread the word!

There you go, from social development of human culture to Axolotls in one seamless rant.

No I'm not bored.

* = The technical term I invented for someone who is 'up their own arse'. They never know what you're saying, so use it freely.