'And your date of death is ...'

@wwaycorrigan

[Listen to an audio version of this blog entry here.]

In a recent interactive video, the English comedian Ricky Gervais was asked which of the following he'd prefer: to be told his death date and live longer or not to be told it but live a shorter life?

Death becomes us all. But would you like to know exactly when?

The person who posted the question didn't specify how much shorter of a life it would be so Gervais, whilst debating the merits of each possibility, suggested five years. I would have doubled that, to make it more impactful.

A grim choice

As unrealistic as the question is — although it does bring to mind the old joke about a doctor giving a man more time to live because he can't pay his bill — it, nonetheless, presents an interesting choice, if one imagines a choice was compulsory.

Gervais said it was an impossible question. Basically, choosing not to know, he would take (five) years off his life, something he might be aware of on his deathbed — if he got such a luxury when breathing his last that is. But electing to know would, he said, give him no comfort at all.

In contrast, I've often thought it would be nice to know when I'm going to die. In fact, the choice above makes it somewhat of a no-brainer for me.

By knowing when I'm going to die and in selecting that option I get more life years, well for one I can budget and plan better. If I were to discover that I've fewer years left than I'd thought, well then I could be less frugal than I am currently.  

In these pandemic times and all that has come with them — restricted movement, more uncertainty than normal, the feeling that we're going through dangerous societal changes — finding out that I'm going to be around less than I thought, well I'd actually take that as a positive right now.

'Rather than the quite impractical live-each-day-as-if-it's-your-last approach, it's better to try to add a sense of urgency to what you do.'

I'm all on for a long life as long as I'm active and fully with it — as with it as I've ever been that is — right up to my last days. The idea of spending years bed bound, suffering from dementia or the like doesn't appeal at this remove.

An urge to live

Flipping the consequences in the above choice, however, makes it far trickier for me. That is, if being told my death date resulted in a shorter life, say by ten years.

For example, imagine I had to make the choice today, aged 36. In my head, whenever I do think about this, I figure that I haven't even reached the halfway stage of my life, barring a fatal accident.

So, if by choosing to know when I'm going to die reduced my time on this planet by ten years and I got an answer of, say 40, I'd be in a state of shock, to say the least.

For one, it would mean that I was "originally" only going to live to 50, far fewer years than I'd envisaged. Secondly, and even worse, by opting to know, my life has been cut by 20 per cent and I've just been left with four years to live.

That is, I certainly hope, a most unlikely example. Of course, one never knows, though. And most of us have plenty of sad reminders of this.

In a more general sense, that we don't know when the Grim Reaper will come a-knocking, that it could be much sooner than we think, lends itself to the saying, 'Live each day as if it's your last.'

That's fine in theory. In practice, it's rather more difficult.

Altering such an approach slightly so as to make it less dramatic — and less damaging, as it potentially could be if and when you discover it's actually not your last day — is to look to add a sense of urgency to your life (as our "friend" Jordan Peterson explained in a recent podcast interview).

This should help one focus on more immediate issues, to work towards attainable goals and worry less about things that are a long way off, never mind reflecting too much on past mistakes or regrets. It's an outlook I'm trying to adopt, with some difficulty, in any case.  

Live in the moment (as best one can — the powers-that-be are making that more difficult these days) with a glance to the future whilst never losing sight of past lessons learnt. As simple as that, eh?
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'Cleanliness next to godliness? Ask the empleada.'

@wwaycorrigan

'Clean up your own room.' It's a sound, longstanding piece of advice, although one that some people these days associate more so with celebrity clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson (he's slowly coming back to the public domain after an annus horribilis) rather than their parents or guardians.

Employing a cleaner for shared areas can keep conflict at bay. It can also make people lazy.

While I'm sure Peterson would like us to actually clean our own rooms, what he's getting at in broader terms is, if you can't take control of the rather simple things — well, one hopes you view such a task as simple — in your everyday life then don't expect to start changing the world any time soon.

A clean break

It makes sense in many ways. There's nothing groundbreaking in it, either. The majority of us who go to bed at night with our own room and/or house in disorder, struggling with our own existence, are unlikely to wake up in the morning with immediate solutions to the world's problems.

What's more, tidying up your own crib can be a humbling yet rewarding task for both body and mind. Get a bit of exercise in (do scrub hard, now) and take pride in your immediate surrounds.

However, there are those who don't clean their own place and it's not always because they're hugely successful and/or exceptionally busy with other "more pressing" matters.

From a Colombian perspective, the hiring of a cleaner, 'la empleada' (a female employee, it's rare, if ever, that it'll be 'el empleado') to do such chores is commonplace for many middle- to upper-class households.

Considering the relative cheapness of having one on the books, some have calculated, with reason, that they'd be practically losing money if they didn't avail of such services as time wasted on housework could be spent far more profitably doing other professional activities.

This is understandable. Nonetheless, I've never been comfortable with the idea of somebody coming into my place of residence to clean up after me. Even when I was in full-time employment, working long hours with less free time to tidy up at home, I preferred to do my own cleaning.

For the most part, this is how it's been in my house-shares during my almost nine years calling Bogotá home. Clean up after yourself. Of course, this has led to conflicts in that perennial theatre of war, the kitchen.

'Having a cleaner tends to make people lazier and more inconsiderate.'

Once I got out from under the care of my mother and a houseful of sisters — one, in particular, took what we could call a Nazi-esque line when it came to cleanliness — and began living my independent existence, my mantra has been, 'If you're going to cook, make sure you have the time to clean up immediately afterwards.' Few of my housemates down the years have shared this viewpoint.

Dirty business

So, you might ask, wouldn't it be good to have a cleaner in such circumstances? Well, as I'm now in an apartment where a cleaner comes at least every second day, my answer is no.

From what I can see, it just makes people lazier and more inconsiderate. 'The cleaner's coming tomorrow so it doesn't matter that I don't wash up after myself.'

Thus, you get an accumulation of dirty dishes in the sink and elsewhere, something that irks me.

The other thing is, in these semi-lockdown days where those who can stay home more are encouraged to do just that, I find it unsettling having somebody going around cleaning when I'm trying to work.

First of all, I can't help but think I can do it myself. Secondly, I feel I could do it better and feel better for doing it.

Once a week is more than enough for the cleaner, in between we can manage our own affairs. However, the main lessee is content to have her come as frequently as she does so I've no real say in the matter, even if I am paying for it indirectly in my rent.

Now, it must be pointed out, the cleaner doesn't have access to my bedroom — women, in general, haven't been entering my quarters for months. So I can happily report that I do look after my own immediate surrounds — and clean my own dishes — and have been for years.

So that's that box ticked, Jordan. Now to take over the world.
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Wake up to Pinker's wonderful world

"The world has never been better and very few of us know it." That was the hook for a talk given by the 'celebrity' cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker in Bogotá recently. It's also the thrust of his latest book, Enlightenment Now.

No one can really argue with the various statistics that he rhymes off as to why the human race has never had it so good. 

We're living longer, peace rather than war is the norm, global poverty levels have dramatically fallen while the world's calorie intake has increased. What's more, it's not that it's just that oft-vilified top one per cent reaping the benefits. Everyone is.

Steven Pinker in Bogotá: 'Never mind the future, things are bright now.'

So, compared to the not-too-distant past, current challenges notwithstanding and acknowledged (climate change, populism and suchlike), it's all positive, it's progress.

Malignant media

To be honest, it surprises me somewhat that very few people, according to Pinker anyway, know this. These health & safety and material advancements are obvious, aren't they?

Of course, from a news media perspective, one could be forgiven for thinking the opposite was true. Pinker, with good reason, does lay an amount of the blame at the media's door for all the negativity swirling around the planet.

"That we are statistically on Easy Street these days matters little at the individual level."

Indeed, I recall my late sister and her husband taking a decision a few years back not to read, watch or listen to the news because it just depressed them. We can easily lose sight of the good when we're consuming a large, unhealthy dose of the bad.

So we're agreed, at a macro level, there's never been a better time to be alive.

Yet, that's the crux of it for me — the macro level. From the individual viewpoint, this zoomed-out approach very often doesn't hit home, quite literally. While we're more connected than ever and can converse and share experiences with people on the other side of the planet in an instant, virtually albeit, we still have to live out our lives, tackle the trials and tribulations that we personally face, on a daily basis.

The fact that we are statistically on Easy Street compared to our ancestors matters little in the here and now. It's all relative.

What's it all about?

As that other celebrity Canadian speaker and psychologist, Jordan Peterson, puts it, "Life is suffering."

For the majority of our species born just 100 years ago or so — or even more recently — the initial challenge was simply to stay alive. If they dodged an infant death, managed to find some sort of income or whatever was needed to get sufficient food and shelter, the next goal was to reproduce. After that, exiting stage left was usually the least-worst option. In such a scenario, it was all purely about survival.

These days, for those of us lucky enough to beat the exceptionally long odds of actually being born, the chances of us then living to an age of 60 plus are very high, as the statistically astute Pinker is well aware. Therefore, basic life and death issues don't tend to constantly come into play.

"In the secular world, finding meaning becomes our 'cross to bear'."

For many, these are replaced by questions of "What's it all about?" and the like. Deeper concerns about meaning, or what some might term spirituality, are what fill this space.

Added to this is the fact that we're now smarter. Not only have global literacy levels increased but so have our IQs, as highlighted by Pinker.

Thus, it can be argued, in our search for more concrete truths about existence as a greater number of us leave behind old 'comforting' beliefs in this secular liberal democratic world to which both Pinker and I espouse, the meaning of life becomes our 'cross to bear' so to put it. We're here, going through the motions, 'working for the system' or what have you, for what?

You would be right in thinking that I'm writing this from the point of view of a single, childless man who isn't exactly 'loving' his principal job right now. I'm not alone. And it would appear we're on the rise, thanks in no small part to a lack of wars to check our numbers.

It's not just men who are at risk from this, although we are more likely to end things prematurely compared to women. 

Listening to Pinker in relation to technological advancements and artificial intelligence, I couldn't help but think of an episode of The Simpsons where Homer gets a new well-paid job and moves with the family to an ultra-modern house, replete with all sorts of gadgets to do the housework. With very little to do, wife Marge takes to the wine. There's always alcohol to fill the void, isn't there?

Believe in better

Of course, this isn't to say that technology and the accompanied 'softer living' are killing us, um, softly (although, in some spheres, this might very well be the case). That same human ingenuity that has made our lives easier can also come good to ensure we remain strong and feel fulfilled.

That being said, that our lives in this world have never been better could be put into the 'lies, damned lies and statistics' category. 

One way to view it is like a football team that has had the lion's share of possession, the most shots on target, the most corners, etc. and goes on to win the game as expected. However, for the players, it seems like a defeat. It should have been much better. They think more about what they did poorly rather than what they did well.

That's human nature really. It's what keeps us striving for better and it is where we can find meaning. This is where Pinker and I agree, the ability of mankind (can I use that word in these politically correct days?), collectively, to keep on improving. The problem is that some don't feel part of the game at all. Or at least they feel like they only have a very minor, insignificant part in it.

So yes, the world has never been better for the masses when we crunch all the numbers. Yet, we can't experience the lives of those in the past to appreciate just how good we have it now. 

Also, the stats usually count for very little. Pinker can publish all the graphs he wants to show how such a wonderful world it currently is. It's how we perceive things to be going, though, this is what generally matters most.
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Facebook: Wrong Way Corrigan – The Blog & IQuiz “The Bogotá Pub Quiz”.
Listen to The Colombia Cast podcast here.