Even though people like to pigeonhole us into nice little groups once we step outside the physical characteristics that can be used to define us we suddenly become unwieldy and more difficult to catalogue.
Sure, we still do that cataloguing but it leads to fuzzy edges with many of us rejecting the classification and creating sub groups of our own. What exactly is the dividing line between a Marxist and a Socialist? You may class yourself as a Tory but look at their policies. What exactly is the difference between the Tory and Labour parties nowadays? Besides Labour being from Scotland of course.
It’s all down to my favourite subject. What I call my sliding scale theory which I will introduce here. You see, depending on your beliefs, the way you have been brought up, your education and your life experiences you have different views on most things even those you would normally classify yourself in close agreement with.
Quite simply everything you can think of and take a stance on someone will have similar general views and yet may come up with a different stance depending on their views on that specific topic. This makes for some very interesting debates. As well, of course, for some very frustrating times as most of these views are deeply embedded in anyone involved in the discussion.
Looking at the very same thing and yet coming to different conclusions. No wonder our political situation is in so much of a mess. Cup half empty or half full. Bunch of good kids or feral youth gang. Many will fall on either decision point.
As a rather more sliding scale example. You are relocating a significant distance away and looking for a new place to lay your hat. On your journey around you come across somewhere you like. Close to work and amenities seem OK. On your journey you notice X French people/Polish people/Muslims/gays/blacks/feminists/gay Muslims/gay French people/French Polish people/Polish Muslims/. Now would that make a difference to you if X was zero? Of course not you would be more than happy there. Now how about if you noticed one? Probably not. Could be a visitor anyway. Unlikely you would meet them again. How slide the scale along a bit two .. three .. four .. five .. How about now? Let’s slide it all the way .. a hundred .. a hundred and one .. a hundred and two .. In fact all of them. What about now? Probably would make a difference to anyone but not everyone. Some wouldn’t be bothered at all but most of us like to stick to people like ourselves. After all if I was a gay Polish Muslim I would want to stick with other gay Polish Muslims. Makes me feel wanted and understood just for starters. For every decision point at least one person will make that decision. In this case some will be gone if they spotted just one while some will be gone at each number all the way up to maximum.
Now to really screw up the decision making process by adding more decision points. Who would you like to marry/live with long term? Who is the most beautiful person on the planet? Who would you sell your soul to have one night with? OK most will put down people from the movies because they generally have a higher percentage of hotties, some will put down public figures whilst many people I would rather top myself than be seen with will be selected for various reasons. After all, some will even pick Labour politicians and have. Everyone would make that choice on so many different criteria that it would be almost impossible to predict for someone else.
Or what about your own decision points. Is that girl too fat for you? Well I like my women with a bit of meat on them. Doesn’t mean I’d kick out Amy Acker but I’d prefer a Charisma Carpenter and wouldn’t kick out Dawn French either. But no way would I look at a female Jabba the Hutt. My sliding scale jammed way before then and before you start thinking (oops too late) that I am a sexist pig women have their own sliding scales as well. Too bald, too hairy, not tall enough, too tall, not rich enough, willie too small, crap car. Each of us applies sliding scales all the time to every decision and come to our own unique decisions on everything under the sun.
Just to complicate it. We often override our sliding scales when another sliding scale comes to its decision point. Look at that guy. ‘I wouldn’t go out with him for a million pounds’ ‘Well he is a millionaire actually’ *click* as scale adjusts. ‘Oh! OK then introduce me’. We all do it.
So we all have sliding scales as to what is acceptable and not to each of us and the legality of it only makes a difference if you are asked about it with unknowns or plod. ‘Why did you not get help for Gordon Brown as he and his minders were strung up from lampposts right in front of you?’ ‘Err… I was too scared to move and forgot about my phone.’ You reply laughing inside. And if you are stupid while talking with strangers about extreme topics then it’ll only be a matter of time before the same things are asked in a court or at Gitmo. After all who in their right minds would volunteer ‘I was on the phone’ or ‘I was seeing how fast it would go in reverse’ in a discussion about a car crash outside your very close friends. ‘I was blinded by the sun’, ‘A kid/dog ran out’, ‘A big boy/Aliens did it and ran away’ are a lot more acceptable even when people know you are lying. Of course sliding scale theory means that some people, more than likely Labour supporters, would say the truth. (Honesty is not recommended in this country today though)
One final point on sliding scales. Unless you have talked and asked someone specifically about a subject don’t be at all confident you know their view on that subject just because of their general leanings in a related subject. I believe in harsh punishments for crime, a subject which will come up later, with no mitigating situations (unless it’s me) but I don’t believe in the death penalty.
This is why cataloguing just doesn’t work at the extremes. At the very area where you actually need them to work to ensure the categories are correct. Sure you can catalogue people on what they say they do and what you actually have recorded them doing You get it right 99% of the time but in a society of 60M people that still leaves 600,000 classified wrong. Enough to field an army bigger that the one we have. That doesn’t count the ones that are lying about what they do and you have no way of checking either. Then we have those that are actually telling the truth yet something or someone at some point changes a sliding scale and they change their views taking them into a different category. But not on the system.
So to give a useful example of why this is important. I’m sure I’ve been catalogued in the ‘Watch this guy’ slot. Probably among 30 million others who blog and browse the internet and comment on current affairs. I suspect I’ve been put in the ‘Check up on this guy’ slot because of things in my background. So they checked up on me and now I suspect I’ve been sub categorised into the ‘Not likely to do anything because he is a wimp’ slot because I just can’t see myself taking another life nor am I linked to any bad guys. Sorry. Now as time goes on and Gordo starts to overtake Zimbabwe in the going down the toilet economic stakes then events will make my sliding scales start to shift. I can’t ever see myself killing innocent civilians, they are just like me after all, but let’s imagine one of my kids dies because of a NHS cost cutting decision by government. Could that be enough to change me and make me dangerous? I don’t know and I never hope to find out but people have changed for much less.
So the government will fill their database with their collected data. The programs will crunch the data and come to their conclusions and for those on the edges it will be wrong as all computer geeks will tell you ‘Garbage In, Garbage Out’. So people will be watched and questioned when bad guys are ignored. Sure, it will tell you down the penny how much to fine the poor sod based on his income, it will tell you who his friends are so you can pull them in for interrogation questioning as well. It’ll tell you where he has been and flag up a journey that is out of the ordinary so you can get your KGB police to monitor who he sees and when the time comes to convict try him in a court without any jury all the hearsay and ‘facts’ will be available to convict him. Hurray for British justice the British system. Which btw to all intents and purposes no longer exists.
But it won’t tell you who is the inside man who is risking his life volunteering to help kill our glorious leader or who is supplying information to the enemy to be used against him or who actually is smuggling guns or helping organised terrorists take explosives onto a plane. Only after the even will the database be of use when we arrest everyone they know. So they can make things tighter and close more stable doors. Our bad guys will already have moved on. Many amateurs have been caught and there will always be new ones along to keep our courts and jails full and our media explaining why we need to sacrifice more but the true professionals havelearnt from every arrest about what questions to avoid, places to avoid and how to hide. Hell even an amateur like me with 20 people willing to give their lives, contacts for weapons and lots of dosh could bring this country to its knees in six months. Might even beat Gordo to it if I started now. Only I’m short of the 20 people, the contacts and the dosh. Bummer.
So do your bit. Where you can get away with it lie on the forms and to polls. No point lying about your physical details, age, sex, salary etc but you make love every night, you give 5% of your salary to charity even now, you think those people living five doors away are suspicious, you never feel depressed or down at all (special database for these people), you are a Labour supporter and think Gordo is doing just fine running the country. Do your bit to screw up the databases. After all it is for your benefit. You don’t want to be put in certain catagories nowadays.
Ethics. Another word being lost to us?
Here is talk about this new Polypill which helps with Heart disease and strokes in the over 55′s. Read here.
The part I found interesting is the statements ‘experts still question the ethics of a pill for lifestyle issues’ and ‘Critics say the problems of high blood pressure and cholesterol should be tackled with diet and exercise rather than by popping a pill.’ Why? What difference should it make to anyone what method another person chooses to manage their lives?
We already do this sort of thing every day. None of us hunts or grows food any more. We buy it in in easy convienient packages and because of things like this our lifsestyles are different already.
Ethics is starting to get abused the same as many other words in our language like liberal and democratic. I’m sure you can think of a few more.
To me ethics should only get involved if you are impacting any other person on the planet. Other than that it should not be on the discussion table.
Where were ethics when we invaded Iraq, when we chose to not to allow people to top up treatments on the NHS? Not even mentioned. I’m sure a few doctors talked about it but were ignore by those ‘NICE’ people looking after our governments account balances. Well the accounts that are spent on the plebs anyway.
I would imagine from this that ethics will soon be another key buzzword used by the Green crowd in their attempt to make a world that conforms to their views and by our politicians as another way to screw us. It will never be applied to their dealings. They will ensure that ethics will follow morals into oblivion and only used by the dark side.