The Mass Psychosis of Modern Life.

Singapore is a mad place...according to a leading academic. However, it is not just Singapore, for he would consider many places in the world, utterly bonkers.

In 1985, Dr. Burkhardt wrote a paper (the original of which I have yet to find), in which he observed that modern life is possessed of a "mass psychosis" that requires "uniformity and sameness from everyone". He said that this went against the basic human right (as he termed it) of allowing all people to be "unique individuals".

Basically, Dr. Burkhardt is convinced that modern societies are completely mad - particularly those that go in for uniformity.

Now, I happen to be living in a society that goes in for uniformity and sameness in a big way. I can't say that I find myself disagreeing with Dr. Burkhardt's assessment. In fact, his words rang true the moment I read them. It IS mad to insist on uniformity and sameness from everyone. It is completely insane to build a society on conformity. People are unique, by nature...so they should be allowed to be unique in society. Any society that does not allow individuals to blossom and be individuals is, according to Dr. Burkhardt, utterly insane.

It is certain that Dr. Burkhardt would identify Singapore as one of his "mass psychotic" societies, were he to consider it. What, however, can we do about it, as individuals? Unfortunately, I fear that nothing can be done by any particular individual - given the strength of the insistence on sameness around here - apart from what a lot of people do, in fact, do: they emigrate to places more given to allowing individuals to be individual.

It would be interesting to learn what Singapore's leaders would think of learning that, by the standards of a respected academic, their society is mad. Would they take efforts to change the emphasis on uniformity if they knew? Or would they reject the thesis (as one, of course, being uniform in their response and nature), thinking that uniformity and sameness are the ideal by which their society should live by?

I would welcome comments, from around the world, about the extent to which your own society allows you to be an individual, allows you to be whatever and however you want to be. Or, conversely, perhaps you might like to comment about the extent to which your society wants you to be the same as everyone else.

Thanks.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

The triviality of modern medicine.

So much about modern life is trivial - even, it seems, at times, medicine.

I will explain. There is a glaucoma drug called Lumigan which had an unusual side effect (well, more than one unusual effect, but I will get to that). Commonly, users of Lumigan noticed that their eyelashes grew longer and thicker than before. So, being alert to any opportunity to make money, the pharmaceutical company behind Lumigan has remarketed Lumigan, the glaucoma drug, as Latisse, the eyelash-lengthening-plastic-surgery-in-a-pill-drug.

On hearing this news, I found myself quietly astonished. Now, there is a drug to lengthen eyelashes...and people actually want it. Journalists in the news piece I saw, interviewed women who said that they would "take the drug for the rest of their lives". The estimated cost of the drug, by one doctor, was over 100 US dollars per month, for the privilege of elongated eyelashes.

What kind of world do we live in, in which companies would actually develop drugs to lengthen eyelashes - and people would actually buy them? To my, perhaps old-fashioned way of looking at things, this preoccupation with minor details of appearance seems appallingly trivial. I cannot imagine anyone or anything more superficial than the lifelong consumption of a medical drug purely to lengthen one's eyelashes.

Interestingly, this drug, Latisse, has another side effect that its consumers might not be so keen on. Users of Lumigan, for glaucoma, also noticed that their irises tended to darken over time: light blue eyes, would darken and become brown, for instance. This is a permanent change in iris colour that cessation of the drug does not reverse. However, progression of the darkening stops once the drug is no longer consumed.

I wonder how many people are going to start consuming this drug? If it becomes popular, long eyelashes might become universal - and everyone would have dark eyes: blue eyes would become something only young children have, before they lose them to Latisse.

I would like to think that it is just my own sensibilities becoming more demanding, as I get older, but, it seems to me, that the world we live in, is becoming one of the most trivial Ages there has ever been. People are preoccupied with matters of such triviality (and superficiality) that not one thought should be devoted to them - yet they are major matters of attention, for so many. People devote their lives to pointless activities; people spend money on useless commodities - and people actually take drugs to change the length of their eyelashes. It is all mind-bogglingly stupid.

As for medicine...you know, the Ancients may not have known much, but I rather think they were trying to address serious issues, and did not overly concern themselves with the length of eyelashes.

Which would you rather have? A cure for a major illness...or long eyelashes? The same research and development funds that are committed to nonsense like "eyelash extending drugs" could have been committed to matters of greater import. When the trivial is allowed a voice, it tends to crowd out matters of more substance. No drug company should be devoting funds to trivial projects, when there are so many untreatable, or inadequately treatable, illnesses in this world that need attention.

Once, medicine was a serious calling and drug manufacturers were serious businesses engaged in matters of great importance to us all. Not anymore, however: now we can look forward to a plethora of drugs for every trivial issue that ever concerned the most trivial of people. However, I bet you one thing: the serious diseases will still be incurable - and enough attention will fail to be devoted to them.

Perhaps it comes down to one thing: more people have eyelashes than have cancer - so why not treat "short eyelashes" and make money, rather than "treat cancer" and save lives (and make money, too)? It seems that triviality is an infectious disease and the pharmaceutical/medical establishment has caught a serious case of it. Perhaps it will be fatal. Let's hope so. Perhaps the doctors and pharmacologists who replace them will be a serious bunch, instead.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

What makes a favourite teacher

Everyone has a favourite teacher. Even if someone disliked all of their teachers, one would be the least disliked and this one, therefore, would be the "favourite".

I once asked a class of foreign students, whom I had taught for only a couple of weeks who their favourite teacher in life had been and why. I didn't expect any of them to point to me, in answer, given our short acquaintance - though the odd one did, in fact, do so.

That, however, was not what surprised or interested me. The peculiar answer of one Chinese mainland student did.

She named her favourite teacher as being an English teacher she had once had, long ago. He had been a Caucasian - but that wasn't why she had liked him. I was curious about her reasoning and so enquired further.

"Why is he your favourite?"

"Because he wore different coloured socks everyday.", she declared, seeming to be pleased to remember him and his strange habit.

I must have looked appropriately puzzled, for she fell silent, not knowing quite what to say next.

"Why did that make him your favourite teacher?", I prompted.

"Because he was fashionable.", she explained, as if it were the most obvious, and the most important reason in all the world.

I couldn't stop myself, but found my tongue echoing her reason to the whole class, just so that they could hear her softly spoken reply.

I left it at that. I didn't want to embarrass her. Yet, I confess I was flabbergasted that an inconsequential matter like the colour of one's socks, can make one the most memorable and appreciated teacher in a person's life.

This, of course, leads one to ask the necessary question: how is it possible to teach students who don't know how to measure the quality of what is being imparted? How is it possible to teach students whose values are so distorted that the colour of socks is held up as the measure of a teacher?

I wonder, now, how common such shallow views, as this young woman, ostensibly in her twenties, held, are in modern China? Is it a nation of superficial people unable to identify what is important in life?

I hope not. For soon the birthplace of this remarkable, sock worshipping, young woman, will be a financial superpower.

Of course, if it turns out that young women like her are common in modern China, you know how to cope with it: just wear differently coloured socks everyday. That is sure to impress them.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.)

Reality and fiction in the modern world.

You may recall the post I wrote a while back about Britons not knowing Winston Churchill was a real historical figure. That post came to mind on viewing the search terms people used to get to my site, in recent days.

Believe it or not, many people, primarily based in America, have arrived on my site with the terms: "August Rush, true story". That stilled me. It is an exact parallel to the UK situation of tv viewers not being able to distinguish fact from fiction. Clearly, the phenomenon is not restricted to the UK but is, at the very least, echoed in the United States, as well.

It is sobering to realize that there are people who cannot spot a fictional story when they see or hear of one. August Rush is fictional in the most obvious of manners: it is a cliche ridden, coincidence filled, compilation of other people's films and books. The plot is so unlikely that I doubt whether even the author was able to suspend disbelief while writing it. Yet, despite this, almost all of the searches that used the term "August Rush" also used "True story", to get to my page on the film.

So, Britons can now relax. No longer need they feel embarrassed at being unable to distinguish fiction from reality: for Americans can't do it, either.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and one month, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and seven months, and Tiarnan, two years exactly, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

Does anyone think anymore?

We live in a time when more people have more access to more information than ever before...but does that mean more people are reading and thinking?

I have evidence that suggests otherwise. All I need to do is look at the searches that people have made to arrive on my site. One particular search was surprising the first time I saw it some weeks ago - but what really surprised me is the fourth time I saw it. This is a search that several people, in different parts of the world have made...people who all share something in common: a lack of the ability to think for themselves.

Each of these searchers used a variation on: "A sentence with child prodigy in it." I found that unnerving in its implication for the searcher's level of creative ability. Clearly, they were unable to write a sentence, for themselves, that used those two words meaningfully - and so searched the net for such a usage, which they could then copy.

It is likely that they are students, or other people, who have been assigned a writing task regarding child prodigy - but who are unable even to construct a single sentence that uses the terms.

It is all rather worrying. Are people forgetting how to think for themselves?

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and ten months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and three months, and Tiarnan, twenty months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

Can Britain survive trash culture?

I am constantly amazed at the way expat British people, recently moved to Singapore, speak of the country I grew up in. It is not what it was, by a long way.


It is saddening to be told that all those forces that were just beginning to take hold when I was in school, have now triumphed, and become the dominant culture. A nation once known for breeding sophisticated "gentlemen", is now best known for the abundance of its yobs, or "Chavs" as they are now known.

Let me explain. The Chav represents all that was once regarded as base in the human. They revel in stupidity, actively hate all who are intellectual, have no respect for the law, for education, for employment (they often live on benefits and petty crime), or for anything that once was remotely considered a social value. Yet, this moronic creed is now the dominant culture in Britain: it is the nature of the "masses".

I left Britain almost eight years ago. It is now clear that, though I have often wanted to, I can never return. That is, the place that once I knew, is no more. Britain of today, does not resemble the Britain of only a few years ago.

The problem is only just beginning. The next generation of British kids are showing shocking signs of being subnormal, compared to the kids of only fifteen years before. There is a twenty-five per cent drop in intellectual function of the average British child compared to 1990 (according to a study of 10,000 children by Michael Shayler of King's College London). That means that, in a few short years, these rather intellectually impaired children (by recent historical standards) are going to become adults. They will add to the dumbing down of British culture. They in turn will become parents, and so the problem will grow, over time. Unless something effective - and rather major - is done, Britain promises to be a country without a future.

An insight into the minds of the people of each nation can be garnered from the kinds of comments they leave on my site. This morning, I found a handful of posts from the same person, from Lambeth, London. None of the posts were publishable. Some of them lacked capitalization and punctuation. None could be classified as sentences. But that wasn't what struck me. What struck me was their coarseness. Two comments consisted of nothing but expletives. That was the sum total of their ability to contribute to the debate of ideas that the internet - and blogging - should be about.

On reading them, and recalling what my colleagues recently arrived from the UK had told me, I was moved to write of the declining situation, in the UK - and to do a little research.

I found something, in my search that should appal all who have ever been a parent. I found the story of one "chav" who had won 9.7 million pounds in the lottery. He set about living "large", in a rather grotesque manner (for instance he appears to have bought 30 vehicles, so that they could be smashed to pieces in a demolition derby in his spacious garden). That, though crass, wasn't what worried me. My concern was his proud boast about his two year old daughter: "Her first words were f*** and s***." He thought it was great.

England was once a nation of refined and cultivated gentlemen, renowned throughout the world for their manners, wit and "breeding". Now, they have become a moronic breed who delight that their babies' first words (and therefore, implicitly, the words they had heard most frequently) should be two expletives. What hope is there of such a child growing up to be an adult of wit, manners and "breeding"?

How long can Britain hold its position in the world, when the quality of its people - in a very real sense - is in such decline?

Britain is a nation that once possessed a rich intellectual tradition. It produced world-class thinkers by the bundle. Its universities were among the best in the world. But now, it is a nation that loathes all that is intellectual. Thinking has become socially unacceptable. To sit in a pub, and speak intelligently, is to court a jeer at best, or a beer glass (broken), at worst. Only stupidity and vacuity are now socially permissible. The intellectual is on the run - and lives in perpetual hiding, marginalized in society, daring not to raise a voice, lest they be denounced and set upon.

Once a society has marginalized its thinkers, it cannot be long before such a civilization collapses. Britain has taken that step of marginalizing its best people. Not even mediocrities have taken their place. It is the idiots who have taken the reigns - it is they whose voice shouts loudly. Britain, is now a land of the lout.

I don't believe that anyone in a society should be marginalized - but if any class of people had to be marginalized - it should be the louts, not the thinkers.

Britain needs to step back from this particular abyss. It needs to discourage loutishness, to subdue the creed of the moron, encourage intellectual activity, reward brilliance, foster thinking. It needs, in short, to be what it used to be: a great nation, brimming with great people who dedicated their lives to serious endeavour (or at least, enough of them did so, to make it the leading nation it once was). It is time to shrug off this attack of idiocy - and return to the values and sophistication of yesteryear.

It won't be easy. It won't take place overnight. But if Britain is to survive as a nation worthy of the term, it must fight the decline of its people. It must urge them to better themselves, as people, and not just as economic units. If nothing is done, many of us will live to see the "decline and fall" of a once great nation.

The land that produced William Shakespeare, also produced the barbaric poster of expletives on my site. Would it not be a better nation, if it fostered more geniuses and less loutishness?

I hope, one day, to see, comments of wit, and brilliance, from the British Isles, as once might have been written. We will see just how long I have to wait.

(If you would like to read of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and eight months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and one month, or Tiarnan, eighteen months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

Conversation from the classroom: creativity at risk

I heard something today which is enough to alarm anyone who values creativity. It was nothing more than a fragment of a real conversation that took place, but the implication of it, is quite unsettling.

Teacher to student: "I would like you to write a dialogue on buying something in a shop."

Student from mainland China: "But I don't want to buy anything."

Teacher: "Imagine, then."

Student: "Imagine?" He sounded as if nothing more impossible could have been asked of him. "I can't imagine."

End of conversation.

The student in question did not believe it was possible for him to imagine buying something, without actually having the desire to buy something. That was one imaginary leap too far.

It worries me that creativity of even the most basic kind is so difficult for so many young people today. They live in "what is"...and cannot change their thinking, in any way, to create "what is not."

I don't know about you, but it is one of my greater concerns, to see this inability at work, all around me. I will write more on this in future. I just found that conversation sobering enough to have to report.