There are no stupid questions. Or stupid ideas.

Defining moment: political awakening

Elena — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:24:25 +0000

One of my few accomplishments while I was in France was to pass a GCSE in modern history. This in no way prepared me for the discovery a few months after we’d moved back to England, aged 16, that not only had scientists NOT decided to dismantle the atomic bomb and never to mention it again after trying it out on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they’d actually continued making them, and we were now engaged in some kind of senseless “arms race” with Russia. Everyone else I met seemed to have known this for years. Also that Russia was still the “Soviet Union.” I hadn’t realised just how up to the minute my “1918 to present day” history GCSE had been. Anyway, I was outraged, and to make my feelings known I joined the CND. I say “join” but although I went on a couple of marches and always wore a badge with a peace sign on my denim jacket, I never got around to actually paying any sort of membership or subscription fee, having developed a pathological aversion to forms, dating from my school-days in France (see previous post). Ironically, in spite of my aversions to forms, facts and the atom bomb, I not only made it to adulthood, but I now provide consulting services to one of the biggest producers of nuclear weapons in the world. How did I get here?

Defining moment: first day of school

Elena — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:11:26 +0000

When I was 11 the green and rolling Sussex hills our house looked out onto were sold to housing developers. My dad was so annoyed that we moved to France. The sense of displacement and alienation I experienced on my first day at the posh international school I would attend for the next 5 years was to remain with me throughout. On my first day I was given a map of the school, a schedule, and was required to fill in what looked like an immigration form for each class I’d attend, which asked, among many other things, what religion I was. I wasn’t sure, it being a Monday morning, and my first day at a new school in a foreign country, so “Catholic”, “Protestant”, “atheist” and “agnostic” all got ticks. I mean, I could barely remember my new address. The last straw was my accidentally signing up for German classes, which turned out to be taught in French, another language I didn’t know. My dad, who’d just started teaching there, found me weeping in the school halls at lunchtime wondering how I was ever going to make it to the end of the day.

Ideas for my bestseller

Elena — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:37:52 +0000

would you read this?

Are we talking a series?

Join the Happy Club

Elena — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:05:26 +0000

Since publishing the previous post about authentic happiness and the annoying positive psychology website, I have been asked things like “Did you actually take those personality tests?” and “Why don’t you like that website? You should try harder to join.” (This, from my boyfriend.) Also, “That cartoon shows a lot of self-awareness.”

So the answer to the first question is “no, I didn’t do the questionnaires.” Also, in case this is not absolutely clear, you don’t actually have to “pass” these tests to join the International Positive Psychology Association, although I’m sure they’d encourage you to take them for self-awareness/development purposes.

I dislike personality, psychological and aptitude tests, as I have a long history of “failing” them. For my statistics class at University, we did a lot of these tests to generate data to analyse. I was always an outlier – at the “thick” or “uh-oh, mental!” end of the normal distribution.

There’s a horrible personality test called the Big 5, which evaluates you along 5 dimensions: Openness (a.k.a. “Intellect”), Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. What I learned about myself from this test was that I was “surprisingly naïve”, “lazy and undependable”, an “introvert” (which apparently means: “more likely to turn out to be a serial killer”), a “potentially high-maintenance pain in the neck” and “emotionally unstable”, i.e. most likely to end up an unemployable spinster.

For a long time after my statistics course, I adopted a strategy of minimizing self-awareness, of refusing to recognise the nature that had been revealed to me in these tests. This worked quite well, and I managed to earn a living and have relationships by convincing potential employers, boyfriends and sometimes myself that I was outgoing, easygoing and completely committed to whatever it was they were proposing. However, this was exhausting, and I just couldn’t keep it up over time, my true nature eventually always asserting itself.

I was helped to come to terms with my true nature by the “Myers-Briggs Type Inventory,” which like the Big 5 test evaluates you along a series of dimensions, but unlike the Big 5 has positive opposite ends of the dimensions: rather than going from good to bad, it goes from good to differently good. Thanks to this test, I was able to reframe my “unemployable spinster” nature as “independent woman who is better suited to self-employment.”

What is authentic happiness?

Elena — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 22:13:49 +0000

It’s a website promoting “positive psychology” that really annoys me. NB: the names of the tests, surveys and inventories are REAL.

membership denied

What do I have strong opinions about?

Elena — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:40:36 +0000

In the last few days I’ve been wondering what I have strong opinions about. I’ve decided that if I want to avoid spending my old age sleeping under a bridge I am going to have to write a best-seller. I’m told that I need to write about what I know and what I feel strongly about. If having opinions is the same as feeling strongly about things then I have opinions about lots of things. However, it’s difficult to express opinions when you are not very knowledgeable, and I am not. I’m in my 40’s, I have a degree and an MBA, but I’ve just never been very interested in facts.

I used to be very intimidated by you people who know stuff and can rattle off facts and figures on any topic. My preferred debating tactic used to be to flounce off shouting, “Well – you’re just a wanker!” at whoever I was in passionate disagreement with. Now I’m older and get paid by you people, I fix a listening expression to my face, and turn my attention inward to the more mundane tasks on my mental to-do list.

I was struck by one of the final episodes of Boston Legal, in which a woman sues for wrongful dismissal, believing that she has been fired for her political beliefs. It turns out she had been an ardent supporter of Hillary Clinton and switched her vote to Republican when Clinton failed to become the Democratic presidential candidate and Sarah Palin became the candidate for the Republican vice president. Her employer, who also voted Republican, sacked her for “being dumb enough to vote for Sarah Palin”. Unusually for this series, the defendant loses: she is deemed by law too stupid to work for this employer, who relies on the reputation of his employees for the success of his business.

What are the lessons from this episode for me? Having strong feelings about something without being able to support your opinion with logic and reasoned argument can get you sacked. However, Sarah Palin was never renowned for her ability to conjure up sustainable facts and arguments in the face of opposition, but she did pretty well for herself.

In conclusion: my worldview that being knowledgeable isn’t a requirement to do well in this life remains intact and unchallenged. Yay.