Individualism versus collaborativism

04/01/14 06:23 [Saturday]
I have been thinking about politics again, that is about the degree to which I still have a preference for individual freedom and responsibility as against merging in with the body of humankind (or the body politic in the country one calls home). Yesterday and the day before I went on walks from the house where we are staying (my step-daughter's in Harworth near Doncaster) and quite long walks from my point of view (half a mile to a mile: bearing in mind that I am overweight and very unfit). Yesterday I walked with Dawn up to the main shopping street in Harworth and the day before I walked on my own to a more local shop as we had run out of bread. What I mainly have to say, in comparing the two walks, is that the walk of two days ago was more enjoyable for me and less of an effort. On that walk I could please myself where I stopped for rest - although there were a limited number of sensible stopping places - and this benefited me not so much by allowing extra rest as more efficiently spaced rest, plus a certain pleasure accruing from planning ahead where to stop and then fulfilling the plan.
If someone else is directing what I do - and, of course, walking with my wife it is not like being under the thumb in a place of employment but nonetheless there is a degree of restriction of freedom - I do not get the pleasure of deciding on plans and then fulfilling them nor (in the specific case of walking) do I get rests just where they would do most good. As an aside I will say that if people similar to the way I am are to contribute to some enterprise where they are in a hierarchy of management (and are not top-dog) - for example in employment - the way to get the best from them is to set realistic goals then leave them to achieve the goals (or try to achieve them) through procedures decided by themselves. That way their morale is boosted by deciding for themselves a structure of subtasks and subgoals leading to the required ultimate goal and pleasuring themselves in the fulfilling of the subgoals.
Part and parcel of what I am saying is that for me to communicate - eg in negotiating the resting places, or more generally the structure of subgoals - is a cost in effort for me, and this cost in effort is the basic reason I prefer to do things - if it is a case of having definite aims in mind and not just passing time and avoiding loneliness - independently rather than in concert. There are some types of people, I know, who communicate effortlessly and blend in easily with a generally agreed plan (or rather, something less rigid than a plan: say a direction of thrust or of attack) and they are people who like to do things as part of a corporation and who (I suspect, for the most part) feel that way is absolutely the right way. They are people who are naturally Socialistic.
The type of person I am is more naturally Capitalist, that is for us achievement of goals is of major significance (and they are goals often measured in money terms or - more so when the world was at a different stage in history - in military terms) and to achieve an overall goal the preferred way is for there to be a hierarchy more or less strict of subgoals with individually responsible managers receiving mostly top-down directives.
Of course it is a truth, even for people like me, that not everyone is capable of achieving goals or certainly sometimes not goals which bring in income. I know from personal experience that having an other way the mind works than what fits in with the society where we are - and plainly it is equally true if the body is infirm - leads to unemployment. I might not find it easily possible to communicate with many people but I do naturally empathise in a sort of theoretical, stand-offish way (especially with people who have the same sort of mental build as myself), so that I cannot think it right to let the feeble fall by the wayside and (ultimately) starve.
Luckily one observes that as people on average do better for themselves - the basic reason for improving living standards being economies of scale with increasing population - they are more willing to share part of what they have with others. This I think is somewhat independent of being the type of person who naturally communicates with others, or mixes in, because even if you are not that type of person you may well be one who empathises in a theoretical, stand-offish way, so that I think the range of people of the one type or the other who are willing to share money with others is very large (so long as they have enough for themselves which with improving living standards, as I say, they do).
The fact that - with present-day living standards in the West - by far the majority of people do not want the elderly or the sick who are unable to support themselves to literally starve (or indeed people who are able to work but who because of the cyclicity of the economy are between jobs): this fact is what leads to the present-day centralism of the major political parties.
Jedenfalls, I go along with this centralism: I don't think individuals can any longer (the population density being what it is) live completely independently. However I do (for reasons of personality explained above) have a natural preference for individualism and for permitting the maximum freedom which can be to individuals.

Variety and stimulation

12/10/13 05:38 [Saturday]
To put more of the full facts in proper order I shall need my Filofax. I hope I could glean from that information on the latest dog-sitting Dawn and I did, which I believe was around the beginning of September.
Our arrangements here at the bungalow have changed the past two weeks because of the arrival to stay with us, until she finds a place of her own, of Dawn's daughter, who (to mention a fact readers might not initially presume) is deaf. She has brought with her a flat-load of furnishings and as a result we have less room for swinging cats.

Prior to this we could have managed a certain amount of swinging after we got rid of our three-piece suite (which originated about five years since from my cousin), a hall-stand and a large wardrobe (the hall-stand having been bought as a semi-antique for a vast price from a place in High Wycombe circa 2007 and the wardrobe of 1960s vintage having belonged to my parents). The reason we disposed of our furniture was that we are moving home (sooner or later, I'd better say, rather than 'sometime soon') and not only did we want less to take with us but also those advising on selling houses say that if viewers see the place relatively empty they can more easily imagine their own stuff in. As I say, these good intentions have been rather undermined now.

The laptop I mainly use is no longer kept permanently in the living room, although this morning (unlike mornings over the past two weeks) I have brought it back into the living room. I had been using it in the bedroom but have finally determined that the seating I use in there is truly uncomfortable. In summary, I no longer spread myself about the bungalow, and specifically at night my pockets remain full of the impediments I carry about in the daytime, and my pockets remain in the bedroom. Hence (the upshot) I must go to the bedroom to fetch my Filofax ....

12/10 13 06:09

Saturday 24-Aug-13 my step-son (Dawn's son) and his girlfriend attended a wedding in Swindon, and drove there via Birmingham. It had been arranged that they would drive us to the part of North Nottinghamshire south of Doncaster where most of the family live, on their way home. In the event it was quite late on the Saturday when they arrived here on the northward leg so they stopped overnight and we all travelled to the final destination Sunday morning. What I'm saying is the latest bout of dog-sitting (or I should say distant dog-sitting, as we now have my step-daughter's dog here with us at our bungalow as a form of local dog-sitting) started on Sunday 25-Aug-13. That was August and it was still summer, this brought to my notice (amazement at the passage of time, which I often experience) through the fact that we have recent days needed to put our central heating on.

We were dog-sitting for my other step-daughter, the one who lives up there where I am always on about south of Doncaster. She and her family went to Wales that week (Bank Holiday week) for a camping holiday and Dawn and I held the fort at their home. The two daughters' dogs are different but each lovable in her own way. The one up north is too small to be any real trouble, and we have larked about with her several times already in the past. The deaf daughter's dog is larger and can be boisterous, and these two weeks have covered our first mutual encounter.

Telling a story of what went on the latest week of dog-sitting - late August - should be based on clear memories. Unfortunately my memories are cloudy. We took the opportunity to visit members of my in-law family, I know, as well as a friend Dawn has had from decades past. I must say I enjoy having people to meet up with, a thing we rather lack while we are living in Kingswinford. I have lost contact with the people I knew from my school days (this fact being made certain by my being so little capable of interest in things over a period of decades), and my own family have always lived at a distance. Apart from visiting, that week in August, my days were very similar to my days here: spent shopping at Asda (mainly it is Asda). The main difference is the cafés are fewer and further between in the sticks in north Nottinghamshire.

The holiday-makers returned on the Friday, and we stopped with them that weekend, coming home here on Monday 02-Sep-13. I find I have much clearer memories of that weekend than of the week leading up to it, and I can put this down to more variety and stimulation on the basis of more people in the house.

The thing is, one wants enough unpredictability and stimulation but not too much.

From Monday 26 May 2008

Another part of the cost to us in being drugged is the waste of my time now trying to work these things out, the motivation being as I say to hope to avoid, or better avoid, in future such drugging, because we derive entirely disbenefit from it. Furthermore my time is wasted more than it would be by virtue of the fact my thinking is less efficient because of mind-altering drugs still in my metabolism this morning.

I have in the past had varying hypotheses why I - in particular - have suffered such drugging. One frequently cropping up has been that it was to assess the hurt to me from previous such drugging. I find this hypothesis again rearing up this morning, but dismiss it on the basis that I have had it over so many years that it cannot have been right then (because I - and now we - would not continue to suffer year after year for that purpose) so most likely is not right now.

Another major hypothesis was that it was to produce a simulacrum schizophrenia for research purposes, and I cannot so readily dismiss this same hypothesis now. What I myself suffered from the drugging yesterday - particularly in the thinking I was doing trying to sort out why we were delayed unnecessarily (as far as I could see) from the alterations to train timings due to Sunday engineering works - was very close to a condition of paranoia, and has been so but much worse in the past.

The third major hypothesis has been that the drugs were supposed to be an assistance to me because I was supposed to be schizophrenic and they were based on antischizophrenic medication (but with extras, presumably to try to counter ‘side-effects’). This hypothesis is one I have only quite recently entertained, because it seemed so ridiculous. It seemed ridiculous to imagine that psychiatrists presumably regarded as especially competent and presumably concerting together (that is, not just one of them making his own diagnosis) could make the mistaken diagnosis, and ridiculous to imagine the debilitating effect of the drug mixtures given could be missed and the view continue to be taken that the drugs were an assistance to me.

Therefore to convey the truth about the effect of the drugging - that it had entirely disbeneficial effects, for Dawn and for myself - I need to transmit this exposition (and presume it will be correctly understood) to those arranging for the drugs to be supplied. I have to say this is difficult firstly because I cannot be certain where the drugs were supplied. I cannot know how the authorisation has been given for the drugging. Those authorising the drugging - that is those writing the prescription and those organising for the railway coffee (it may well have been) to have drugs put in it - are remiss in not advising themselves adequately of the effects of the drugging, and further in causing me the frustration of needing to work out how best to transmit expositions such as this diary entry.

When I put this diary entry on my various websites it will reach a certain audience (including some MPs) but they may not have time to get to the truth of what I say and may have no particular interest in the subject of mental health. They may not cotton on to the degree of waste in my life - waste and horror for me over the years - so may not take the question sufficiently seriously. (On the other hand I am now kicking up such a fuss that I hope someone with influence may intervene.) Apart from this ‘broadcasting’ in the hope someone with influence may assist me - and really it should be my own MP - I think it might be well to send this exposition to the management of the Premier Inn chain (on the basis that the tea and coffee we drank in the Wakefield hotel may well have contained drugs) and to the management at Doncaster railway station.

We have been drugged on railway stations before (Doncaster in particular) and in hotel rooms before, and those arranging the drugging - who almost certainly read my websites if few others do - may simply be continuing established practices with only a lackadaisical notion why they are doing so. If mechanisms are in place allowing us to be drugged in these ways, ‘the Experimenters’ - to refer to them thus - having only vague ideas (almost certainly being trained in subjects related to psychiatry) may make use of the mechanisms without over-much reflection. I have to say this is wrong - in fact a disaster - that is (this is it basically) to allow antischizophrenic drugs to be prescribed so lackadaisically.

¬¬¬

There is quite an industry of people employed nowadays to ‘help out’. Such people as Social Workers (in Western countries like Britain) depend for their employment on people - some inhabitants of the country - being in a bad way. Moreover nowadays (for reasons which I would do well to think about) the work people do - when it is assessed for purposes of remuneration, or in academic circles reputation - is measured to a large degree by quantity. Scientists - and other academics, I presume - are judged according to the number of papers they publish. It is argued that the papers are scored (by assessors from the peer group) before publication so that counting them counts only worthy publishings. Readers may be aware what I think of this system as applied to psychiatric ‘scientists’, who form what I can call only a mutual admiration society comparable to the clique of theologians in mediaeval times.

Thus it is that with the motivation of wishing for continuing employment (and extending into ‘empire building’) employees of the State - and in particular, Social Workers and similar (possibly including psychiatrists although I would think they deceive themselves more and are less cynical) - feel they need to do ‘work’ in quantity. They need to have a large case-load and they need to take action in each case. Applied to my own ‘case’ this maybe is what leads to continuing use of the mechanisms for drugging me - including perhaps access to those who supply tea and coffee (or the water used) in hotel rooms.

This is an unfortunate state of affairs, as insufficient account is taken - in measuring the ‘work’ - of success or otherwise in achieving aims. Intervention by Social Workers sometimes (I myself do not know whether the statistic is around 50% of cases or is greater) makes matters worse not better. But this is not ordinarily measured. Only the quantity (the number of cases) is ordinarily measured. In extreme cases (such as death of a child) some effort may be made to gather more information on the ‘work’ done.

I have produced ideas in past months on the explanation for the irreversible growth of State intervention - ‘big government’ - and usually I would accept that nothing is to be done, and merely regret the facts. In my own ‘case’ though, because State intervention of this species has led me to suffer so badly, I have been motivated to strive to make an alteration, which comes down lately to publishing words in places they are put in the way of people with influence.