Who are "We"?

Quick question. So much of the anguished commentary about climate change declares that "We" must do something about it.

All of us acting in agreement with each other? Like-minded people acting in agreement? Readers of commentary about climate change acting together?

The intended "We" is probably some abstract noun - society should do something about it, maybe - but we so much choose what to read in accordance with what we believe - confirmation bias, etc. - that I guess "We" are the commentary writers and readers.

In which case, the unintended meaning of the "something" we must do about it is: "We" must write and read about it.

We believe something must be done, and what we're actually doing is writing and reading about it.

If we act on our beliefs, then obviously what we mean when we say something must is done is - something must be written and read.

Which may explain why targets are not being met.

Unless ... the word "We" here is being used to mean "They", in the sense of governments, polluters, large companies; "They" must do something.

While we sit at home writing and reading.

Which may also explain why targets are not being met.

But at least it's not "Our" fault.

Watched TV. Interview between a BBC person and a "political strategist" for one of the US presidential candidates.

The BBC person wanted a comment on the averaged-out result of all the polls.

The political strategist wanted to focus on one poll. Had she seen it?

She'd seen all of them.

But she was proposing to ignore this particular one, was she? Aha!

Let me ask you about the result of all the polls...

You're going to ignore this particular poll! I want to talk about it but you're censoring me!

Taking all the polls into account...

This is an outrage! My right to free speech! You're just a propagandist for the other side!

Struck me afterwards that all debate sounds like this nowadays. Never mind the subject matter - we're cross about it.

Either this is who we really are, because constant media interaction has enabled us to drill down to our core selves and their defences - or nothing matters half as much as our fight/flight response makes us think it does.

Oh and a cheerful think-piece was shared onto my timeline the other day, which suggested that the Black Death was a good thing because it enabled civilisation to advance.

That's all right then.

My constructive suggestion, for what it's worth, would be to look at all the claims we've made for today's technology, and work out how many of them could be made real.

We've talked up 3D printing, which is a tool for manufacturing at a distance. We've talked up robotics, which is a tool for getting the burgers flipped without exposing arts graduates to the risk of turning up for work. We've all got madly excited about AI, which is a method of winning chess games without hiring grand-masters.

​So much of today's technology is designed to do things we already do, but without the people. It's perfect for a pandemic. The UK has a prediminantly service-based economy as well, and if that doesn't mean we can inter-act productively via screens, at a distance from each other, well, I don't know what it does mean.

And where's the organised use of the internet for education? If Kier Starmer can stand at a podium and give a party-conference speech to an empty corridor, surely teachers and lecturers can do what internet-marketing gurus do, and record ten-part downloadable modules for their students?

Do we really need the children in classrooms, however distanced? Students in halls of residence? Really?

We can make an economy happen, but as the small print says, past performance is no guide to the future.

Watching the two of them in the Commons at lunchtime yesterday, I thought: Kier is Boris's kryptonite.

Watching the broadcast last night, I thought: the virus will still be there waiting for us when we come out after another six months.

Whether or not we comply with this current set of restrictions - whether the small minority are cowed by the threat of a big, bad fine - I came away thinking: this sounds remarkably like government by kicking the can down the road.

Yes, yes, I know what happens when the R number goes above one. Could you talk to me instead about how easy, or not, it is to develop a vaccine? What is government going to be doing during the next six months? Say something positive about how you'll be innovating, working with scientists, rethinking The Economy for a world in which we live apart.

Won't technology solve all our problems this time? Can't we harness the power of the newly unemployed towards some kind of New Deal investment in finding a cure - or even just testing for infection?

Is Covid-19 here to stay?

If so, we need new thinking on how to live.

These days, the story is told simultaneously. Nurses care for Covid patients, and they're written up as heroes before their shift ends.

Which is fair enough, given that they get clapped rather than paid a New Normal/New Economy wage.

But then some large brain-dead organisation puts the story ahead of the facts. We've got billions of tests happening every hour, the government tells us as we queue at the test centre.

Or click away helplessly, trying to book a test.

The Covid story is that it goes away. We defend ourselves mightily against the threat of a second wave, using all the "world-beating" blah-blah that the prime minister was waving his arms about, and - wait for it - the war will be over by Christmas.

The virus, I mean. Not the war. It's a staple of any war story that everybody thinks it'll be over by Christmas and it never is. But this is different. This is the virus and, er, it'll be over by Christmas.

Which is lucky, if you think about it. Nothing's actually happened to the virus. Nobody's shot it with a tranquilliser dart, or told it "Shoo!" It's the same old virus that was killing us back in March. Mutated a bit, maybe, easier to catch - but recognisably the same.

We're lucky that we can just tell the story of how it will go away by Christmas - and it will go away.

I mean - imagine if we had to do something to make it go away. Imagine that all the targets and the media briefings and the prime-ministerial blathering weren't enough.

What then?

Every time we think we've reached an understanding of how the world works, sooner or later we're proved wrong. And yet every time, we act as though we're right.

Do we learn more easily (if at all) from past experience, or from new information?

Past experience is always: you thought you were right, but you were wrong.

New information is always: this fits the facts as we (think we) know them.

I think we're F-worded. I'd put that more clearly, but as a friend once told me and I remembered, I'm "ridiculously squeamish about odd things".

There's a glacier, apparently, that's melting faster than we were all confidently predicting.

The other evening, I turned on the radio to hear a man's voice say that he had learned never to reject anything out of hand. They were discussing astrology, and he went on to suggest that maybe the movements of the planets and our destinies are both influenced by some third factor as yet unknown.

He wasn't defending astrology, but leaving open a possibility. I like that attitude.

Let me get this straight.

The rate of infections is rising. More people are catching the virus. Lockdowns are coming back.

But the death rate isn't rising.

Either the virus is becoming more survivable, or people with more effective immune systems are catching it.

If younger people are catching it, at universities or illegal raves or demonstrations or wherever, and surviving it because that's what they do, then this second wave will soon be followed by a third wave.

Young people go home for Christmas, don't they? Share cosy present-opening sessions with their elderly relatives. Get hugged a lot. Kissed goodnight, even.

...and a Happy New Year.

Letter from the bank, printed letter, to explain that they would soon be applying an upgrade to their online-banking systems and that therefore their online-banking systems would soon become unavailable.

Temporarily. They did say "temporarily". But an inconvenient line-break made the letter almost perfect. In old-fashioned newspaper language, the word "temporarily" was below the fold.

Regulars here will know that I have been applying an upgrade to my habit of posting every Friday. In the sense that I no longer post every Friday. I've been otherwise engaged - but more of that later.

We see what we want to see, and I saw everything except the word "temporarily" in that letter from the bank. I'm not sure whether the technical term is "confirmation bias", but I got a real buzz from the surreal but realistic (sic) admission in advance that the upgrade would be a disaster.
 
As they so often are, right? I don't think that's exactly what the bank was trying to get across, but I wonder whether I'm the only customer who read the letter and headed straight to the ATM.