Oh lord, please don't let me be misunderstood

When I was a kid I always thought this was a silly song - my logic went somewhere along the lines of, "well, if they don't understand you, then just explain it again and if they still don't get it, then they're not worth bothering with." But just recently I've come to see what the Nina Simone and Elvis Costello (the version I remember hearing in the car) were on about.

I have always laboured under the belief that actions count for much more than words. As a consequence I have always held contempt for pious people who extol their virtues and talk at great length about their noble beliefs. I have always wanted to shove these people into some dire personal circumstance and see how their high moral values stand up when they're running for their lives in some hellish natural disaster or terrorist attack. My (rather childish) reaction to this has usually been to be derisory about tragic events or environmental disasters, knowing (rather conceitedly) that if I was in a position to help with such events I'd be straight in there with no flannel or debate and at least if I didn't I could comfort myself with the knowledge that I'd never eulogised about how I would get stuck in there*. I could see how this could be misunderstood as an uncaring attitude by outsiders, but I always assumed people close to me would instinctively know my secret hidden agenda to be the unlikely saviour of humanity and take my aspersions with a pinch of salt.

So when I was accused of being heartless about some recent news event by someone I thought should have known better it was a real shock and actually really upset me. I was reduced to citing instances where that blatantly wasn't the case, and exclaiming things like "I thought actions counted for more than words!"

It happened again to lesser extent, when I organised for a few old chums from school to meet up after years of not all seeing each other. As far as I could tell we all had a pretty good time as we quickly overcame the fear of the spatial and temporal gulf and realised none of us had really changed. Though, maybe I was being over-sensitive, I was caught slightly off-guard by a comment as we preparing to go our separate ways: "So was it a success then?" What's that supposed to mean? So you're saying I organised this to gain some personal kudos, rather than just wanting to see a few of my old friends in the same place. Maybe I was guilty of wanting to recreate a bygone time of teenhood and in that case it was a failure - jobs, relationships and inebriants were rarely a feature of the good old days - but to suggest I'd organised it to be like one of those self-satisfied idiots you see on American high school reunion movies was not what I intended at all.

So I've come to see what old Bennie Benjamin was on about when he wrote it - when someone misunderstands what you believe to be part of your core self, it's not that easy just to quietly explain it to them. Or perhaps I'm just confirming my Yesmam status and being an over-sensitive fool.

* although now I have, so I'm kinda making a rod for own back by writing this - bugger.

It ain't what you say it's the way that you say it (Friday)

So the anniversary of the 7/7 attacks were today and the news was flooded with tributes and the tabloids with jingoistic "we will not be moved" sentiments. Amongst all this guff I happened to hear some Christian religious leader talking about the lovelessness of the act. I thought this was a refreshing term to use. I have an amateur interest in NPL or Neuro Lingustic Programming and one of its key observations is that ideas or beliefs can be rephrased to make them less of a problem and more of a challenge - 'cos no-one likes a problem but people like to rise to a challenge. It's where all this political correctness nonsense came from and now I have a grasp of the theory I can see it being used in many other areas.

The basic premise is that the sub-conscious human mind cannot deal with negatives - you may say "that's ridiculous I know black and I know white," but I'm talking about "not" statements. If I say, "Don't think of a purple turtle," your sub-conscious mind first has to assimilate the idea of a purple turtle in order for the conscious mind to know not to think of it, hence you cannot not think of a purple turtle.

Motivational speakers, politicians and spin doctors have siezed upon these ideas and have flooded us with new terms and phrases for our tired old problems: We're no longer short, we're vertically challenged; not ignorant but factually unencumbered; and the elderly are now senior citizens. The list is endless, but the idea is that by repackaging the problem semantically, in a form our sub-conscious can positively deal with, turns it from a problem to a challenge or even a boon.

But just as with any theory, it can also be used to create problems where previously there were none: insults become emotional rape and being pregnant becomes being parasitically oppressed.

The most interesting thing about NLP is that the media have an in-depth knowledge of these tricks and once you know this, intriguing things start to emerge*. This brings me back to how I started this entry: the description of the 7/7 attacks as an act of lovelessness. To assimilate this phrase you have to know the meaning of love to then make the leap to a state of lovelessness, therefore it gives hope that the situation is redeemable and by bringing a little more love, tolerance and understanding into our lives.

As I listened, I thought to myself, “Ah, this guy obviously knows how to use his power for good,” only to hear him conclude with something like how we must condemn this unspeaklable act of evil, thus negating the sentiments he’d just expressed. Evil is an absolute, from which there is no coming back, no possibility of understanding or reconcilliation. And so the reports went on: evil; unspeakable; hatred - no room for asking why four men were so dissatisfied with the state of the world that they would want to take their own and so many other lives in such an horrific manner. I guess it’s just too difficult a question to ask and so much easier just to throw them in a box marked evil and be done with it.

*A friend pointed out that the phrase “not all Muslims are terrorists” is banded about frequently in the media. In fact if you type the exact phrase with quotation marks into google you will find no less than 46,800 pages containing that exact phrase. If you exchange Muslims for fundamentists or Christians or even certain world leaders’ names you will struggle to get 100 hits. Interesting to think how the sub-conscious deals with that barrage.