Cajo Snudehygel

Are you capable of murder? Perhaps not premeditated murder, but what about manslaughter? Picture a chance disagreement with a stranger that turns a little heated, more heated, everyone growing more agitated, slight pushing, then a scuffle, then blows exchanged. You pick up a metal bar to defend yourself and at some point you hit your opponent who dies. It is hard to imagine that things could go that far without some form of self-restraint kicking in. Some people can quickly lose control, but many, most can hold back their anger. Now imagine that in the argument just described, your opponent threatens your family, your children or partner, who happen to be nearby, with physical harm. Not verbally, but by making a “run” at them, perhaps hitting your child. You fully believe that they are going to injure or kill them, and the situation has escalated to the point where you cannot see how to back off, or calm the person down. Would you hit them in self-defense?

It is possible to lose control; our minds are programmed with those instincts. Most of us have some degree of control over our actions. Being threatened directly, as above, may place us in a situation where we have no alternative, but most of the time we can still make rational choices, even when agitated.

Almost the same kind of instinct leads to mob behaviour, but I find it more difficult to imagine myself in this scenario. this is why a story from Pakistan, or more precisely, the accompanying photo, disturbed me. It is reported in Asian news outlets (here and here, for example; both show the photo), but I can’t find the story in American or European newspapers. In essence, a prominent Pakistani lawyer (one-time president of some national lawyer’s union) employed a 12-year girl as a maid. She died — was murdered it appears — and he has been charged. A lawyers’ association has been harassing the girl’s family and the media, not verbally, but physically. The photo shows a mob composed of lawyers in their formal attire. According to some sources, they threatened to “burn alive” anyone who tries to prosecute the accused. Some sources say that the girl was tortured and possibly sexually assaulted. According to others, she suffered from a medical condition and that the lawyer was helping her to get to the right treatment. The lawyers claim that the accused is being victimized. The mob lawyers and the accused are Muslim, the girl and her family Christian.

These facts may or may not be true. What bothers me is that lawyers — who we expect to be somewhat rational people — can form a mob like this. That the mob can turn violent (this is beyond dispute; at the very least they appear to have damaged camera equipment). That they can threaten more violence, possibly illegal acts. It seems to go against the very picture of what a lawyer should do.

I don’t think their behaviour can be ascribed to the fact that they are lawyers! Nor to their religion, although perceived or actual persecution might escalate tensions in a situation like this. I suspect that the strongest contributing factors are (1) that Pakistan has a culture of…tempestuousness, and (2) that there are factions involved (rival bar associations, or different levels of the judiciary, or perhaps Muslim and Christian factions). Factions are “survival coalitions”. We have a natural tendency to form small, cohesive, insider/outsider, us-and-them groups, and when our group is threatened, mob behaviour is more likely to kick in.

And naturally this makes me wonder whether the same can happen to me? Or even to you, gentle reader? I find the prospect a little scary. But perhaps it is good to remember that “civilization” is just a word for a pattern of behaviour. It is not a tangible thing, or even a collection of tangible things that we can store somewhere in a museum. The products of civilization are very different from the thing itself. What scares me most about a mob is that the individual loses control and that makes him/her vulnerable. We like to be in control. On the other hand, mob behaviour is also a survival instinct. Perhaps it can even do some good?

(This is much too long for this forum. I promise to try to curtail my thoughts. Or at least to be a little briefer when expressing them.)

Things might just be looking a tiny little bit different.  I contemplated a major overhaul. Most importantly, I wanted to increase the font size. It’s not that my eyesight is bad or much worse than before. I just like things to be large and clear. Perhaps it doesn’t appear any different from where you are reading it. But I have particular trouble focusing on tiny text and this is my excuse for any and all mistakes in these posts. But then I decided just to return to the default WP theme.

And now for something completely different. This afternoon I visited my sister for her birthday. We (the whole family) were talking about kids and education, and remembered two of my favourite books:How Children Learn, and How Children Fail. Someone dismissed my advice because I have not had years of experience, but of course I have! We humans encode our experience in books. And though many books contain a lot of nonsense, these two were written by an honest and insightful educator. Of course there are many other books that I am sure are just as good (or better), but I happened to read these two long, long ago. For better or for worse I believe that children should be treated as mini-adults. This communicates the proper expectations we have of them and avoids (or at least tries to avoid) infantilism.

We also happened to talk about genetics a little and this reminded me of what I read in Matt Riddley’s “Genome” last night: that most of the brain is developed by expressing the mother’s genes. Only parts of the limbic system are constructed by the father’s genes.  As he puts it: we have our mothers’ thoughts and our fathers’ moods.

(The post title may or may not ring a bell. Perhaps you should google “Hallo, mein Schatz, ich liebe Dich!”.)

I rushed past an advertisement at the shopping mall this afternoon: it looked like a airport shuttle service using the name “League of Gentlemen”. There was also a car parked next to it (they love parking cars in the shopping mall, for some reason). So perhaps it was really an ad to sell the car? Not sure how the shuttle service plays into it.  Be that as it may, it seems strange to reference the TV show in such a context. Either the advertisers have never seen it, or they are marketing to a select audience.

This made me think of more creative advertising uses for the show’s title.  Try these out:

• The Atheneum’s vegetable show: The Leek of Gentlemen
• In a men’s bathroom: The Leak of Gentlemen
• Typography for connoisseurs: The Lig of Gentlemen
• Highbrow male brothel: The Lick of Gentlemen
• Belgian tourism targeted at bachelors: The Liège of Gentlemen (OK, that’s just visual; I could have used The Liek of Gentlemen, but how many people know the province of Luik that well? And Leke’s  pronunciation doesn’t fit.)

Any others I have missed? (Just to make sure that I have not neglected 134 other towns in Europe, I did a little checking. Of course there are others, and some probably qualify for the slogan, but the most interesting come from France.  I love the distinguishing features Wikipedia reports for the two towns Legé and Lège.)

This afternoon I attended a welcoming session for new postgraduate students, organized by the department of Mathematical Sciences of which Computer Science is a part. I found it very stimulating. There was some advice on the technicalities and practicalities, but also a lot of emphasis on the social aspects of postgraduate studies in mathematics. There are many sides to the supervisor / student relationship. Students are not just “research fodder”, but nor are they simply academics’ equals. The relationship is not symmetric. There is the duty to teach, but, now that I think about it, this duty extends to everyone, whether or not they are students. “Every man I meet is my superior in some way, and in that I learn from him.” And however noble it is to attempt to treat students as adults, this is not a strategy without risk. In some cases, it does not work out well for either party. Never mind the social work aspects, I found this afternoon very stimulating and it has made me think again about my own attitude to students. Sometimes a wider perspective helps. Not always, but sometimes.

I’m slowly readapting myself to having internet at home. The essential radio shows have slowly returned to my playing list, and today I added the Swiss radio news broadcast and the Finnish television news broadcast. I probably won’t be listening to them every single day — the other radio shows are once a week affairs and I’m not sure that my internet quota would sustain a daily indulgence of news. But perhaps a couple of times of week would be OK. One thing I like about these news shows is that they focus on more local news and avoid the American slant of other news outlets. That may also be true for South African media, but local news is simply too depressing. There may not be as much as crime as one would think, but there is definitely a lot of crime reporting. I sometimes feel as if I’m living in a prison.

I like living here, but the Finnish news show definitely brought back some strong memories and made me homesick for Finland and Tampere in particular. There are undeniably many downsides to living..anywhere. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. But I miss the cadence of Finnish, the incomprehensible, mellifluous,staccatoed incantations. Well, I could listen to that on the internet I guess, but it is not the same. And now my iTunes is playing “Los” by Patent Ochsner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_Ochsner), and I’m thinking that I wouldn’t mind spending some time in Zürich either. Although I suppose they come from Bern.

Sigh. It’s not that I want to clone myself. I also want to be psychically connected to me clones. I hope that is coming. I heard a rumour that one of the Steve Jobs clones will announce it soon.

I spent the weekend in Kleinmond and today the weather was cool enough for my parents and me to drive out to Malmesbury where my mother’s maternal grandparents are buried. They have been “holding me up”, since I could not find any further information on them. When we found the cemetery, we detected the smell of a forest fire. After walking around for a while, we realized that the cemetery was on fire! Or at least, had recently been on fire. In one part — almost one half, we later realized — the ground was blackened and in some places still smoldering. It wasn’t threatening but definitely shocking and sad. The place is enormous and we really had no idea where to look for the graves. We split up and searched around for about 20 minutes, until my father found it. (If you want to have a look by the way, it is at  33°28′4.68″S  18°43′2.13″E.)

The grave was covered with a little moss, but not too much. All in all, the gravestone was in a good condition, especially compared to some others. There were lots of other gravestones with the same surname (must be relatives) but the names and dates on this was were perfect. Now I know that my great grandfather was a Smit (1892-1973) and my great grandmother was a Kotze (1894-1965). Unfortunately, the internet yields no more information than it did before, but with the exact birthdates I can go back to the Genealogical institute and search for their baptismal records. That should tell me the names of their parents. Smit and Kotze are common names and there are several books about these families. I hope that it won’t be long before I can connect them to already worked out family trees.

One of my secret agenda for today was to encourage my father to take more pictures with his digital camera. Foolishly, I left my own at home. And unfortunately the camera wouldn’t switch on. (We fixed it later once we were back home.) At least we snapped a picture on my father’s mobile phone; I’ll post it once it has been “uploaded”, which means sent to my brother and then emailed back to us. My own phone was also at home and, anyways, it doesn’t have a camera.

The rest of the trip was so-so and the only noteworthy event was that we saw some zebra’s on a farm just outside Malmesbury. I should have brought me camera after all! Silly me. Next time.

Update: I got the picture:

I was having a pleasant evening until a couple of minutes ago. From somewhere — who knows where — a fly has invaded my space. He (or she) is buzzing around making a lot noise and a general nuisance of itself. I am not going t make the same mistake twice: no poison tonight. I’m only poisoning myself. Once I have that can in my hand, I go crazy and spray pesticide everywhere. I am now trying to chase it down, but our combined frustration/excitement/stupidity is making it difficult for either of us to find peace.

I wonder if flies have adrenalin?  Does it evening know that I am chasing it, and that it is under threat, or am I just a gigantic cow-like obstacle to be avoided? Of course, it is too much to expect the fly to understand my intentions, my deeply held feelings. It is violating my living space and, by extension, the innermost sanctum of my soul. I want it to “leave”, if that word has any meaning in fly-dom. Perhaps there is not such concept in fly-speak.

…

I killed it. It is lying legs-in-the-air like a playful little puppy next to the study lamp. As soon as I finish this paragraph I shall take the corpse — no, the body downstairs and either give it a decent little funeral or chuck it out into the yard. It seems cruel and unusual to die by pizza flyer, but from my perspective it was him or me. I shot first, and now I’m not asking any questions. My peace of mind has returned. I’ll enjoy the rest of the evening.