Under Their Influence

In a recent post I talked at length about the idea that I have had an impact on other peoples' lives without stopping to think whether that was positive or negative in the moment. When I finally reached the bottom of the rabbit hole that thought process lead me down, as I turned and contemplated the climb back to sanity, I thought about the question in reverse - namely, who has had an influence on my life that I haven't stopped to unpack, or that I have been ignorant to all this time?

I have PTSD because of a lot of fucked up things that happened to me when I was young, the guy that did it to me springs to mind first and foremost as he has undoubtedly had the biggest impact on my life, but he doesn't fit the remit of the question - whose influence have I been ignorant to, and with him at least I have spent the better part of 30 years trying to unpack and mitigate the effects of what he did.

Pandemics and Polls

When it comes to political polling here in the UK I generally don't trust it, primarily because I joined a prominent polling organisation several years ago and left less than a week later having seen the bias in its methodology first-hand. From survey questions with no option to disagree, viable alternatives removed, questions framed to lead you to an answer, to questions that were nothing more than propaganda often with wrong or misleading "facts" included, it was clear this organisation was set up to influence opinion rather than measure it.

There is a trend of polls deviating significantly from election results for most of the non-campaign periods, only for those polls to narrow during the campaign period until the final few polls close to the day of the election present realistic results. To be clear I don't think this is a case of voting intention suddenly changing within the space of a few weeks, I think most people have already made up their mind who they want to vote for long before that period; no what I think is actually happening is that polling organisations serve less biased questions closer to the election day to get a result that's actually accurate in order to safeguard their reputations.

I did something stupid

They say if you look back on your past and you don't cringe then you haven't grown. I've been thinking about this a lot lately and the nature of intelligence. I mentioned in a previous post that there's a difference between intelligence in the sense of intellect and intelligence in an emotional sense. In either domain intelligence isn't defined by what you know or don't know, that defines knowledge. Intelligence isn't defined by your experience either, that combines knowledge with practice and subsequently leads to wisdom which combines yet more knowledge with that experience.

Intelligence is defined instead by our approach to solving problems and making sense of situations. Our intelligence is most evident when we apply it to novel situations where prior knowledge doesn't help. So if that's how you define intelligence, how would you define stupidity? If it is the opposite of intelligence and therefore is not a lack of knowledge, a lack of wisdom, or a lack of experience, then what is it? If intelligence is the way we think about things then stupidity in its truest form would be defined as acting without thinking at all which leads us to the conclusion that there's a fine line between impulse and stupidity, if there is a line at all.

A Key Change

The latest series of Doctor Who continues to air on BBC with new episodes landing every Saturday here in the UK and with each new episode the discourse surrounding this season grows tiresome. Whilst there has been a lot of love for the direction the show is taking, and that love is in the majority, there is a vocal minority that is trying to perpetuate the idea that the show is in decline or that the quality of the writing has reached an all time low. What I find sad about these comments is not whether there's any validity to them but the reality that they are made by people who are in denial.

Doctor Who is a TV show and like all TV shows it is written with its audience in mind. As a writer you consider first and foremost what demographic you want to appeal to and in the case of light entertainment and shows of this nature, that demographic is predominantly defined by age.

Unrealistic Expectations

If you are human then ignore this post.