The value of the banal

Lately, someone asked me whether I like big cities. When I said that I preferred little towns and the countryside, he replied that metropolises and big cities are interesting and multinational and that they attract many tourists, implying that little towns and the countryside are boring; even more, that they are something to look down upon. I don’t agree and I opposed that the countryside is often underestimated and that you can find there beautiful things that would certainly would deserve a place in a museum, if you wished to have it there. Although what I said is certainly true, I think that in some way I missed the point.
Before going on, I want to say that I certainly see the value and the interesting points of big cities. I have been in many big cities and national and regional cultural centres that have that function. I wrote in my last blog that recently yet I have been in Lille, France. I often come in Amsterdam and through the years I have visited the mayor metropolises and capitals of Europe, like London, Paris, Moscow, Berlin or Helsinki to mention a few, and I have been in Tokyo as well. It was nice to be there, although, it’s true, I preferred to stay there not too long. These cities have something that you don’t find in the countryside. And it is just for this, what these cities “have”, that people go there: their museums, their atmosphere, their internationality, their masses of people with many backgrounds; and so on. But does this mean that the countryside is not as valuable, and not as much worth to visit? People do go there, indeed, but even then people often go there for the special. For that special little museum, for that special splendid view from the mountains, or for the folklore, the local yearly festivities. The rest is banal, or so they think. I think, however, that little towns and the countryside are also worth to visit for the non-special; for what they are.
Now it is so that you can value the special only if you can value the banal, even if it is in a negative way. But is the banal really banal? If you think so, in fact, you misunderstand the value of normality; so the stream of life in which much is routine and continuously flowing. But by saying it this way, I make a mistake, for it seems to imply that you find the simple, “normal” life in the countryside and the exciting special life that is actually worth to live in the city. This is a false contrast, a false opposition. For it is not the city versus the countryside but the special against the normal, or the banal, if you want to call it that way, and you find as much normality or banality in the city as in the countryside. In fact, most city life is normal or banal. People wake up, go to work, school or whatever they do, and in the evening they go to bed. If they do something special, it can only be an escape from the normal, a deviation from the routine, for the normal is the base. Even for the celebrated painter, whose work hangs in a famous museum, for the member of the parliament, or for the successful businessman, most of life is routine. He or she brushes his/her teeth, parks his car, goes to a food shop and also most of their work is routine. But it is just these normal things that make life possible. Without eating, so going to a shop, for example, life is not possible. In this sense just the normal is the most special and in this way more valuable than the special.
However, this is not all. Montaigne tells us somewhere in his essay “Of Experience” (Essays Book III-13) “In my infancy, what they had most to correct in me was the refusal of things that children commonly best love, as sugar, sweetmeats, and march-panes. My tutor contended with this aversion to delicate things, as a kind of over-nicety”. In other words, Montaigne wants to say, the normal, in this way the ordinary and common food, is not only the base of life, it has also value as such. It is not vulgar, as apparently Montaigne’s tutor thought and as many people tend to think. See how Montaigne continues his text: “Indeed ’tis nothing else but a difficulty of taste, in anything it applies itself to. Whoever cures a child of an obstinate liking for brown bread, bacon, or garlic, cures him also of pampering his palate. There are some who affect temperance and plainness by wishing for beef and ham amongst the partridges; ’tis all very fine; this is the delicacy of the delicate; ’tis the taste of an effeminate fortune that disrelishes [dislikes] ordinary and accustomed things” (my italics).
Indeed, how often doesn’t it happen that people highly value a refined taste and look down upon those who don’t or who even prefer the kitschy. They make a distinction between High Culture and low culture, as if there isn’t simply only culture (or Culture, if you like). Taste is a matter of taste, but even if there is a refined taste, we can only value it if we know the normal taste. The special rests on the normal. And what is actually against appreciating the normal, for not only does it constitute life, it constitutes the special as well.

Random quote
A state is always built around an ideology that presupposes a system of values with its good and its evil, its vices and its virtues, its bastards and its heroes, its legends and its truths, its saints and its heretics.

Michel Onfray (1959-) paraphrasing George Orwell (1903-1950).

The myth of Semele

Recently I was in the opera in Lille in France for seeing (and hearing, of course) Handel’s beautiful opera Semele. I enjoyed the music a lot, and as often, when I see an opera and follow the text, it makes me think. So it was this time as well. The story of the opera is that Semele, the leading character, has fallen in love with Jupiter, the highest god in the Roman mythology and religion, and that Jupiter is in love with Semele as well. This love makes Semele very happy, but she is suffering from the fact that she is mortal, since she sees this as an insurmountable barrier between herself and Jupiter. Juno, Jupiter’s wife, comes to hear of her husband’s relationship and becomes extremely jealous. She decides to destroy Semele. Juno takes the shape of Semele’s sister Ino, and in this shape she tells Semele that she can become immortal, if she sees Jupiter in full glory. So, the next time that Semele meets Jupiter, she says that she has a request. Jupiter, who is besotted with love, swears by the Styx, the river that separates the earth from the underworld, that he’ll do everything she asks. However, when he hears Semele’s request, he is shocked, and urgently asks Semele to abandon her wish, because he knows that the consequences will be dramatic. However, Semele insists that she wants to see him in his full divine glory. Because of his oath, Jupiter can’t refuse and Semele dies “in the embrace of its incandescent rays”, as the programme of the opera tells us.
I think that we can learn several lessons from this opera, also from the parts I haven’t told here, but when watching the opera, my thoughts gradually moved to the idea: There are limits to your wishes and to what you can like to happen to you. Don’t ignore the warnings of others, for if you don’t, it can lead to your fall. Know your limits.
Handel had derived the story of the opera from one of the classics of the ancient Roman literature: the Metamorphoses, a Latin narrative poem by Ovid written in 8 AD. So, wanting to write a blog about Semele’s story, I went to the original version, as told by Ovid. As it often happens in operas, the content of the libretto is different from the original text. So it is also in this case. The main lines are the same, but in fact, Ovid tells us something else. However, also Ovid’s version of the myth of Semele is today still as relevant as Handel’s interpretation. Also Ovid tells us that Semele and Jupiter are in love with each other, but now Jupiter has made Semele pregnant. When Juno hears about it, she becomes extremely furious, and also in Ovid’s story she wants to destroy Semele. However, now Juno goes to Semele in the appearance of Beroe, a nurse from Epidaurus, who tended Semele. “Beroe” asks Semele whether she really knows that her lover is Jupiter. For how often has it happened that a man has deceived his love, lying to her that he is a god. Then Beroe/Juno says to Semele: “When Jove appears to pledge his love to you, implore him to assume his majesty and all his glory, even as he does in presence of his stately Juno”. The rest of the story goes as in the opera. Semele expresses her wish the next time she meets Jupiter. Jupiter, in love, swears that he’ll fulfil it, anyhow, but despite his effort to mitigate his overwhelming power, Semele’s “mortal form could not endure the shock and she was burned to ashes in his sight.” However, her unborn son, who would become Bacchus, the god of wine and ecstasy, was saved.
Also Ovid’s version of the story of Semele can be given several interpretations, but I think that an important lesson for us is this: Don’t believe in fake news: It can kill you.

Sources
The website of the opera in Lille: https://www.opera-lille.fr/spectacle/semele/
An English translation of Semele’s myth in Ovid’s Metamorphoses: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0028%3Abook%3D3%3Acard%3D251

Random quote
Heroes are people who defend their country, not those who attack another country.

A user of VKontakte (the “Russian Facebook”)

Being famous

Montaigne begins his essay “Not to communicate one’s glory” (Essays, Book I-41) with the words: “Of all the follies of the world, that which is most universally received is the solicitude of reputation and glory”. The last thing people want to give up, so Montaigne, is the idea of becoming famous and, following Cicero, Montaigne writes: “even those who most controvert it, would yet that the books they write about it should visit the light under their own names, and seek to derive glory from seeming to despise it.” Now, I think that there is much truth in it, although I also think that for a kind of person like me it would be a torture to be really famous, and it is something I would avoid to become. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t publish a book without my name on the cover, so that everybody knows that it is me who has written it, and I don’t want that someone uses my photos without referring to me as the photographer. And didn’t also Montaigne himself have his name printed on the cover of his Essays? Nevertheless, it is as if Montaigne will make us think that trying to be famous is mere vanity and something that must be disapproved of. I agree that striving for fame only because of the fact itself is vanity, but I think that at least being a little bit famous, or at least being known, has also positive sides: it opens doors. Often people cannot reach their goals because nobody knows them and because just for this reason they are not taken seriously. Once people know you, or rather they have heard of you, they tend to listen better to you and are more disposed to help (and maybe they even think that they can profit by helping you). This doesn’t imply, of course, that your goals are worth to be achieved for the simple reason that you are known.
However, some people like it to be famous, since they see it as an intrinsic positive value. For them being a celebrity is not an agony but a joy. Moreover, its open doors, and the more famous you are, the more doors can be opened. It gives you power. But there is a risk, for don’t we say that power corrupts? Of course, this is not always the case but it often happens. The Me-Too affaires are a case in point. Actually, it is something like the Peter Principle. The Peter Principle, developed by Peter Hull and explained in his book The Peter Principle (written together with Raymond Hull) tells us that “in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence”. As the Wikipedia explains: “Employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another.” To my mind, this principle is not only valid for employees, but the phenomenon is general: People who strive to rise socially tend to reach a level that is that high that they cannot bear the burdens of this high position any longer or that they tend to overestimate themselves. Again the Me-Too affaires are exemplary.
So, the Peter Principle is not only restricted to employees. We can also apply it to celebrities, and generally to people who have come at the top and have got power. As for the latter, I think that the Peter Principle applies especially to people with power in authoritarian structures; in closed structures, to paraphrase Karl Popper. For where authoritarianism reigns and openness or democracy is absent, criticism is absent as well; and where criticism is absent, people cannot be corrected for their mistakes. Authoritarian leaders become isolated, are cut off from criticism, tend to box up themselves in their ivory towers, and become closed off from reality. And finally they are toppled. We see it in organisations, where managers are often dismissed for that reason and we see it in politics as well. Look around: How many authoritarian political leaders reach the end of their careers in a normal way? Stalin was one of the few who “peacefully” died in his bed. Most are chased away, if not killed, by the rising men under them, or by the people.
Once being famous, people often want to become more famous, for the fact itself and because it gives power. Others just want to have power. But whatever the road to power you have taken, once you have got it, it is not unlikely that you are going to overplay your hand. We see it, for instance, in Russia, where Putin thought that, after having taken the Crimea, in the same easy way he could control Ukraine as a whole. But in his ivory tower, he hadn’t seen that Ukraine 2022 is different from Ukraine-2014. But let’s stop here, for in a Montaignian way I have already too much drifted off from my original theme, and that is that being famous can be an agony, if not for yourself, then for others, but being a little bit known usually has only positive sides. For power it’s the same. Too much power makes a hell for many, but a little bit is useful for making things run. Be open for others, and especially be moderate. Didn’t already Plato say that moderacy is one of the cardinal virtues?

Random quote
Don't forget: Whoever allows an injustice to continue for long is preparing the way for the next one.

Willy Brandt (1913-1992)

Photo taken in Lille, France

The cows and their pasture

A farmer was not satisfied with his piece of land. He wanted to have more. He thought: My neighbour has such good fertile land, he will not miss it, if I’ll take strip of it. So, on a moonless pitch-dark night, he took a spade, left his farm, walked to the border of his land, and moved the fence that separated his land and his neighbour’s a few tens of metres. In this way the farmer added a strip to his own terrain. In order to be sure that it was allowed to do so, the farmer asked the cows on his new strip of land what they thought of this change. The cows became afraid, for they saw that there was no going back, because the fence had already been moved behind their backs. Might the farmer not bring them to the butcher? And hoping that this would not happen, they said “moo” and the farmer understood that the cows agreed with the change, or so he thought.
The next morning the farmer’s neighbour woke up early in the morning and he got a shock, for he saw what had happened, and he became very angry. But what to do about it? For his neighbour the robber had not only more cows (for his neighbour had more extensive pastures and meadows), he had also more butchers. Nevertheless the farmer whose land had been stolen said: I am gong to kick that scoundrel off my land. So he went to his friends and asked them to send butchers in order to help him and to send knives as well. However, his friends said: We’ll not send you butchers, for we are afraid that they’ll be killed and that it will make your neighbour angry with us, what we don’t want to happen, but we do have very good knives. Our knives are much better than your neighbour’s knives. His knives are blunt, while ours are sharp, and also the steel of our knives is much better. So it happened that the farmer whose land had been stolen got many knives of very good quality, and his butchers began to chase his neighbour’s butchers away and to put the fence back to where it stood before, for the knives the farmer had received were much better indeed. And the cows mooed again, for they were very happy that the old situation was restored, for they loved their farmer.
The upshot is: Don’t rob your neighbour if your knives aren’t sharp.

Random quote
The first essential step on the road to total domination is to kill the juridical person in man. This [is] done, on the one hand, by putting certain categories of people outside the protection of the law and forcing at the same time, through the instrument of denationalization, the nontotalitarian world into recognition of lawlessness; it [is] done, on the other hand, by placing the concentration camp outside the normal penal system, and by selecting its inmates outside the juridical procedure in which a definite crime entails a predictable penalty.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) 

Types of noise

In my blog about “noise” last week, I did as if there is only one type of noise. Also Kahneman et al. do so in the beginning of their book Noise. In fact, there are several types of noise. It is important to know them, if you want to reduce noise, for each type requires a different approach. This blog explains these types of noise. If you want to talk about these types of noise in general terms, you can use the term system noise: variability in judgments of the same case, anyhow.
Kahneman et al. often use judicial cases, so let me start doing so as well. In court there are no objective judgments for comparable cases, for a judgment does not only depend on the objective facts of the case (like that a man with a white collar job who steals € 10,000 always is sentenced to one month in prison, or to a fine of € 5,000 euros), but a judge is supposed to consider the circumstances of the crime (did the man steal for the first time or is he a recidivist; does he really need the money, for instance, because he cannot pay the rising energy prices or does he have a big bank account; etc.). Nevertheless, some judges have the reputation for being harsher than average and others for being more lenient. Such a deviation from the average is called level noise: The judgments of several judges are scattered around the (virtual) average judgment of comparable cases (the virtual “right judgment”, as we could say). Of course, we can wonder whether there really exists a right judgment or, generally, a right decision in a case where we must decide, but there is no denying that on average some people are harsher in their judgments than others; some are always more optimistic when they must decide and others are more pessimistic; and so on. It is often unwished-for; it is something we want to avoid, since it is noise.
Even though some judges are harsher on average and other judges more lenient; even though some deciders are more optimistic on average and others more pessimistic; even then there is variation in this “harshness” or “optimism” depending on the case at hand. A certain judge may be generally harsher than average but relatively more lenient towards, for instance, white-collar criminals. A lenient judge may on average give harsher sentences to recidivists. A generally optimist sales manager may be pessimist when she must decide about future investments. In other words, whether judgments, decisions and what more are harsher, more optimistic, etc. than average is not once and for all so for a certain person: it depends also on the types of cases at hand. A harsh judge may judge some types of cases harsh, given his reputation, and other types of cases relatively lenient. There is often a kind of pattern in his harshness. Therefore, this type of noise is called pattern noise. Note that we are still talking about unwished-for deviations from virtually right judgments (decisions, or what the case may be), if many judges (deciders, etc.) would judge the case. This type of noise makes that your judgments or decisions are scattered around your decision style (harshness or leniency, for instance).
Then there is yet a quite banal kind of noise: occasion noise. All kinds of accidental and circumstantial factors may have an influence on what you judge and decide. To mention a few: fatigue; mental pressure; that the sun is shining or that it is a rainy day; that your daughter has birthday; that your favourite team has won. All such occasional factors and circumstances may influence your mood and can influence the way you judge and decide; in general the way you act. They make that your judgments or decisions are scattered around what you personally ideally (free from this kind of noise) would decide.
As we have seen, noise is not a unidimensional phenomenon. There are at least three kinds of noise. This has practical consequences, namely that there is not one method to reduce noise. So, although level noise and pattern noise may be reduced by a training that makes you aware of the problem, it will not reduce fatigue. On the other hand, sleeping well will not have an impact on the other kinds of noise. Although noise is a general problem, it requires a specific approach, not only according to type but also in agreement with the problem at hand, for deciding as a judge which judgement to pass is very different from deciding as a manager how much to invest, for instance.

Source
Daniel Kahneman, Oliver Sibony, Cass R. Sunstein, Noise. A Flaw in Human Judgment. London: William Collins, 2021; pp. 69-93.