Where did Spinoza live?

Spinoza's Opera Posthuma (Posthumous Works) with the Ethica,
 published in 1677 by his friends after his death. 

As regular readers of this blog will know, I am not only interested in philosophical theories, views and ideas, but I also like to visit places where philosophers have lived and worked. So, when I was in Egmond in the northwest of the Netherlands, I visited the places where Descartes had spent many years when he lived in the Netherlands. And when I was in Basel in Switzerland this summer, I made a walk along the sites where Erasmus lived in the last years of his life. In Innsbruck I looked for places that Montaigne visited during his journey from France to Rome. And already quite a while ago I had been in the room in his castle near Bordeaux, where he wrote his Essays. Later I went to Bordeaux, where Montaigne also had a house and where he has been buried. But where lived Spinoza, the most famous philosopher of the Netherlands – with Erasmus – and one of the founders of the Enlightenment? So, I took my camera and went looking for his traces.

The Waterlooplein in Amsterdam. The house where 
Spinoza was born was about where the church is.

Baruch de Spinoza – his Portuguese first name was Bento and his self-chosen Latin name was Benedictus – was born on 24 November 1632 in Amsterdam in the Jewish quarter. His parents had fled from Portugal, because Jews were forced to convert to Catholicism. The city of Amsterdam had made an island in the Amstel River available to Jewish refugees where they could settle, although they were free to live elsewhere in the city, if they preferred. Where Spinoza exactly lived in the Jewish quarter is not known. About 140 years ago the area of the Jewish quarter was reconstructed and the houses were demolished. So, the house where Spinoza was born and passed his youth doesn’t exist anymore. Now you find there a square, the Waterlooplein, and in 1986 the present Opera and Ballet House and Town Hall have been built there. In 2008 a Spinoza Monument made by Nicolaas Dings has been erected on the square.

The Spinoza Monument on the Waterlooplein in Amsterdam

When he was 23 years old, Spinoza was banned from the Jewish community. Maybe it was because his religious views strongly conflicted with the Jewish religion; maybe other reasons were involved, too. Since then Jews were no longer allowed to have contact with Spinoza. He moved to the Latin School of Franciscus van den Enden (1602-1674) on the Singel in Amsterdam. It is not known exactly where the school was located. Van den Enden taught Spinoza Latin, put him in touch with the classics, and inspired him. About then Spinoza learned how to grind lenses. Grinding lenses and making microscopes and the like became the way he made his living.

The house where Spinozahuis lived in Rijnsburg

We don’t know when and why he moved, but in 1661 we find Spinoza in Rijnsburg. Probably he moved there that same year. Spinoza lived in the house of the surgeon Herman Homan. Maybe, Spinoza moved to Rijnsburg because regularly the Collegiants met there, a group of people with religious views that conflicted with the teachings of the official Reformed Church and that were not unlike Spinoza’s views. Rijnsburg was on walking distance from Leyden with its well-known university, so it was a place that allowed Spinoza easily to stay in touch with other scholars. In Rijnsburg Spinoza started to write his Ethica (Ethics).
In 1663, Spinoza moved to Voorburg near The Hague. He lived there in the house of the painter Daniel Tydeman in Kerkstraat (Church Street). Spinoza will have met there both Constantijn Huygens Jr. (1628-1697), statesman, poet and scientist with a special interest in lenses, as well as his brother Christiaan (1629-1695), the famous mathematician, scientist, etc. Their father, the politician and poet Constantijn Huygens Sr. (1596-1687) had built a mansion in Voorburg. Spinoza kept working on the Ethica here.

The house on Paviljoensgracht in The Hague
 where Spinoza had rented a room

In 1670, Spinoza moved again, now to The Hague. He had room and board with a widow on the Stille Veerkade, but because it was too expensive for him, in May 1971 he rented a room in the house of the painter Hendrik van der Spyk on the Paviljoensgracht, just around the corner. In 1670, Spinoza published anonymously his Theologico-Political Treatise. It was forbidden by the authorities in 1674. During his years in The Hague Spinoza finished his Ethica. He died on 21 February 1677 in his room.

Interior of the Nieuwe Kerk in The Hague where Spinoza was buried

Spinoza was buried in the Nieuwe Kerk (New Church) in The Hague. There were many people present at the burial. Spinoza had been buried in a rented grave, and the grave was cleared in the 18th century. His remains were buried in the churchyard together with remains from other graves. Now you find a gravestone (from 1927) and a monument (from 1956) at the place where this may have happened. Soon after his death, his friends published Spinoza’s Ethica and other manuscripts as the Opera Posthuma (Posthumous Works). 

Gravestone and monument for Spinoza in the courtyard
of the Nieuwe Kerk in The Hague

Stone bricked in the wall of the Spinoza House in Rijnsburg

Ah, if all men were wise

And wanted good!

The earth would be a paradise.

Now she is most of a hell.

Dirk Rafaelsz. Camphuysen
(Dutch poet, 1586-1627) 

Inutilities

In his essay “Of vain subtleties” (Essays I, 54) Montaigne writes that “there are a sort of little knacks and frivolous subtleties from which men sometimes expect to derive reputation and applause: as poets, who compose whole poems with every line beginning with the same letter.” Writing such poems was fashionable among the rhetoricians of his days. They excelled in writing poems with literary tricks. For instance, the Dutch national anthem, written about 1571 by an unknown author and the oldest national anthem in the world, consists of fifteen verses and the first letters of all verses together form the name Willem van Nassou, also known as William, prince of Orange and count of Nassau, the leader of the Dutch struggle for independence. However, so Montaigne, such vanities are not only mental but also physical, for he tells us that “the cloth of state [=canopy] over our tables is not permitted but in the palaces of princes and in taverns.” What is the use of it except as a showpiece in honour of the owner?

Such “vain subtleties” were not only typical for Montaigne’s time. He found them already among the old Greeks. It’s not surprising: “Tis a strong evidence of a weak judgment when men approve of things for their being rare and new, or for their difficulty, where worth and usefulness are not conjoined to recommend them.” This human characteristic that existed already in the past still exists today. Political leaders want to display their omnipotence and glory with useless projects like highways that nobody needs or by building palaces that are by far too big for themselves, but that are full of gold and gleam. The private palace of the former Romanian dictator Ceaușescu (toppled in 1989) is a case in point, but also the present renovation of the White House in Washington, D.C., the residence of the US President, belongs to this category. But such vanities are not more than striking extravagances, if one realizes that in fact the economy of the western societies is based on such inutilities. There are shops and websites that (literally!) sell “Useless Gifts” and even such products like golden toilet paper or bricks for $ 30 each. However, these are only marginal cases, for a walk through a random city centre will show you what I mean: Look how many fashion shops you find there. Do we really need all those clothes? How often it happens that people wear the clothes they have bought there only once or twice (or never!) and then throw them away (sometimes only after years, ashamed that they bought it?). But also in supermarkets, where we buy the products we really need each day, the choice of products is so big that I wonder why. Do we really need a choice of, say, more than ten types of toilet paper? Not to mention websites like TikTok that try to sell products like fashion and makeup in the first place and to the most vulnerable groups like children in the first place; groups of people who actually don’t have the money for it and products they don’t need and often are not worth the money. As Sander Bais wrote in an article titled (translated) “Of vain subtleties” (indeed, inspired by Montaigne’s essay): “The point of things is mainly that they are sold... Advertising and media firmly show us the way to fulfilling our needs while also dictating what those needs are. Big Brother determines which creams we should put on our skin, which meatball to swallow, which films we should have seen and which books we will like very much.” Are you surprised that such a society, so a society economically founded on inutilities, vanity and superfluity, is on the way to its own ecological destruction?
Although Montaigne, then, couldn’t see yet this actual meaning of his words in this essay – so in spite of himself –, as so often he holds up a mirror to us. But we see our image and close our eyes.

Random quote
A moment’s reflection reveals the deep counterintuitiveness of lines: That in a culture with an increasing sense of impatient demand for material goods and a decreasing sense of community, the overwhelming majority of people wait politely in queues, respecting the priority of complete strangers who they are unlikely to ever see again.

David Fagundes (Emory University School of Law, Atlanta (GA), USA)

Intention and luck

Photo taken in Amersfoort, NL, on the Boogschutterplein

At the end of my last blog I raised the problem that often it is not easy to say whether a person performed an action or just did something. Of course, a part of the solution will depend on how you define “intention”, although it doesn’t guarantee a solution. In my PhD thesis I defined “intention” this way: The intention of an action is the answer to the question to what purpose or why the actor performed this action. Let me apply it to the case of Carl in my last blog:
Carl wants to kill his rich uncle because he wants to inherit his fortune. He believes that his uncle is home and drives towards his house. His desire to kill his uncle agitates him and he drives recklessly. On the way he hits and kills a pedestrian, who happens to be his uncle.
Carl killed his uncle because he drove recklessly and Carl had the intention to kill his uncle and if he could have done it this way, probably he would have done it. Moreover, that Carl drove recklessly was because he had the intention to kill his uncle. Nevertheless he did not kill his uncle then and there intentionally. Is the best answer to the problem then that what Carl did (in my sense) was killing his uncle and that this killing was not an action? Maybe, and probably a judge would judge that way, but nevertheless, in view of my definition of “intention”, a possible objection is that Carl’s intention of driving then and there was that he wanted to kill his uncle and, indeed, he did so by driving then and there, and so his intention or at least the purpose of his intention was achieved as a result of his intention. He could have chosen to stop because he was driving recklessly, but he chose not to do so. Therefore, Carl intended to kill his uncle, and he killed his uncle because of his intention. So, he executed his intention, albeit in a deviant way. Isn’t there a lot we achieve by luck and we say then that it is my achievement that I succeeded? Maybe there is no luck without an intention.
I leave it to you to analyse the other cases in my last blog (and to criticize my solution of Carl’s case), but can intentional action be a matter of degree, or a mixture of luck and intention? This is what I wondered when I read about Connie’s case: (Source; adapted)
Connie, who has never shot a bow and arrow, is offered a large cash prize for hitting the bull's-eye on a distant target that even experts normally miss. She carefully aims and shoots, hitting the target dead centre in just the (direct) way she hoped she would. Was Connie's hitting the target an intentional action? Note that Connie has no natural talent for shooting a bow and arrow: she tries equally hard to win even larger prizes for duplicating the feat, tries it many, many times again, but does not even come close. (Mele)
So, can I say to have an intention just because I try, though knowing that actually I have no chance to succeed? And if I succeed, was it intentional? Maybe, you say “yes” but what then is the difference between Connie’s case and a lottery? Okay, in case of a lottery, you don’t have any influence on the result, while when trying to hit the bull’s eye, at least you can aim in the right direction. Nevertheless, you don’t know how to handle a bow and how to hit the bull’s eye. Your intention was hitting the bull’s eye in order to win the prize, but technically you didn’t know how to hit. Your hitting the bull was not deliberative and therefore not intentional. Connie cannot say why she shot this way. Her shooting was like buying a lot in a lottery. She just did what she did.
But suppose now that Connie has become a member of an archery club. She is yet a beginner, but in the club she hits the bull's-eye 25% of the time (a). Then she has become more advanced and she hits the bull's-eye 50% of the time (b). Some time later she even hits the bull's-eye 80% of the time (c). And after some years she got the title of markswoman in her club, because she hits the bull's-eye at least 99% of the time. She knows – maybe intuitively – how to hit the mark (d). Before she gives it a try, she can say “I’ll win the prize” for in fact it is sure she will. For her it is no longer a lottery but it is like driving her car. You have to learn it, but once you know it, you simply do it. But how about case (a), the 25% case (or even less than 25%, if you like). Can we say then already that Connie hits the bull’s eye intentionally? Or in case (b), the 50% case? Etc. When can I say it was my intention to do so; I did it intentionally; I did it deliberatively? When don’t I need to say anymore that something happened to me but that I made it happen? Maybe we cannot achieve an intention without any luck.

Random quote
Whichever side a crime comes from, whether it is in the name of the throne or the state, it is equally appalling, godless and monstrous. History can never acquit the perpetrators; whatever lofty euphemisms a crime is given, whether it is called “the king’s will” or “the sovereignty of the people”, a crime remains a crime. A people has no greater right to revenge than an individual, and a crime committed by the many is no less awful than a crime committed by one person.

Michel Masson (French author and journalist; 1800-1883)

Actions and doings

AI photo by https://perchance.org/ai-text-to-image-generator and edited by me.

In my blog last week, I stated that I don’t perform an action when I kick the ball and break the window unintentionally. Of course, it is something I did and I am responsible for breaking the window, because I should have been more careful when kicking the ball; and maybe it was not the right place to play football there, because there was too great a risk that I would break the window. This example illustrates that it makes sense to make a distinction between doing (something) and performing an action. I want to speak of doing in case of an unintentional activity or if it is open whether the activity was intentional. An action is then an intentional activity. In this blog, I want to restrict the meaning of doings to unintentional activities (so leaving out the possibility that doing is a general term for every human activity). I’ll also ignore Von Wright’s distinction between “with an intention” and “intentional”: Here, an intentional activity is an activity with an intention.

I want to restrict the meaning of doing also in another way: A doing is not a mere physical movement of my body like a knee reflex. A knee reflex is not something I did, although it was my knee that moved and although it was a consequence of my physical setup. It was not someone else who lifted my knee (although someone may have touched it with a hammer). The reflex happened to me; it was a piece of behaviour.
So, a doing is an activity unintentionally performed by me but that didn’t just happen to me. How is this possible? To make this clear, I want to use Anscombe’s idea of “under a description”. (see her Intention) Take this example (which is from Davidson, 1980, pp. 4-5, though): I come home and there is a thief in my house, which I don’t know. I enter my house and turn on the light. The thief sees the light and so he knows that I have come home and flees. Afterwards, I can describe what I did in different ways. I can say that I turned on the light, but also that I alerted the thief. These are two activities I did at the same time. What I did depends on the way I describe my activity. However, there is a significant difference between these descriptions: I did one, turning on the light, with an intention, while I alerted the thief unintentionally. Or take again the kicking the ball case. Here, too, my activity can be described in two ways: “Kicking the ball” and “Breaking the window”. Also in this case, one activity was intentional and one wasn’t.
What does this mean for my distinction between doing and performing an action? Both turning on the light and kicking the ball were my actions. Breaking the window and alerting the thief were doings. However, the latter activities can only be performed if they can be described as actions as well. Say, I trip over a stone, I fall and I break a window. Can we say that I did it (in the sense of doing used in this blog)? No, for tripping over the stone happened to me. It was a piece of behaviour at most and not a doing. There is an alternative description as an action in the case that I broke the window while I was playing football, namely that I kicked the ball intentionally. However, there is no alternative description as an action in the case that I broke the window when I tripped over a stone and fell. Note that in the first case I must pay the window, while in the second case maybe the person responsible for the bad condition of the road must pay. We can analyse Davidson’s case in the same manner, for example if I alerted the thief because I tripped over the threshold and alerted him by the noise.
What this analysis has taught us is this: A doing is an unintentional activity that can be described as an action in an alternative way. An action is an activity under an intentional description. (And a body movement is a mere piece of behaviour, if it is neither an action nor a doing and if the body is not moved by someone else).
Nevertheless, matters are not that simple. I am playing football and I kick the ball many times. I know that in this way I damage the grass. However, I had no intention to do so (it would be better if it wouldn’t happen). Moreover, I was allowed to play football there. Must we say then that damaging the grass was something I did (in the sense used in this blog)? This raises the question: Was it relevant that I damaged the grass by kicking the ball? Any action has unintended consequences, but not all consequences can be ascribed to me as my doings in a sensible way. Doings cannot be seen as unintended activities without regard to their relevance.
Or take these cases, described in my blogs On philosophical puzzles and Philosophical puzzles:
- A man tries to kill someone by shooting at him. He misses his victim by a mile, but the shot stampedes a herd of wild pigs that trampled the intended victim to death. (Daniel Bennett)
- Carl wants to kill his rich uncle because he wants to inherit his fortune. He believes that his uncle is home and drives towards his house. His desire to kill his uncle agitates him and he drives recklessly. On the way he hits and kills a pedestrian, who happens to be his uncle. (Roderick Chisholm)
- A climber wants to rid himself of the weight and danger of holding another man on a rope. He knows that by loosening his hold on the rope he can rid himself of the weight and danger. This idea makes him so nervous that it causes him to loosen his hold, and the other man falls into the depths. (Davidson)
The question is then: Were these killings doings or actions? Were the victims killed intentionally by the actions performed? Can you do something intentionally? Or, can you perform an action unintentionally even if you act with an intention? Maybe killings can be doings and not actions, even when you tried and so intended to kill the victim by what you did. 

Random quote
Science is a form of arrogance control.

Carol Travis (1944-) and Elliot Aronson (1932-)

Positive and negative actions

In my blog two weeks ago, I argued that waiting – if it is not a waiting that happens to you, because, for instance, you are in a lift that suddenly stops and you need help – is an action, albeit one of a special kind. A reader of my blogs commented that we can call this waiting a negative action (or act). Actions like walking, riding, or driving away can be called then positive actions. It’s a good point. However, I prefer to speak of active and passive actions, since actions like waiting give you the feeling that you are doing nothing and so that you are passive, while “real” actions like walking etc. suggest that you are actively involved.
Negative or passive actions are certainly not exceptional. Known passive actions in philosophy are omitting and allowing. Let’s take allowing. Most philosophers see it as an action, and if it is (and I think it is), this has deep consequences for our moral responsibility. Why? The difference between doing and allowing is sometimes described by saying that doing is making things happen and allowing is letting things happen. I think that the difference is more general than only between doing and allowing and that it applies also to the distinction between active and passive actions. Generally speaking, an active action can be described as making things happen, and a passive action as letting things happen. Then, allowing is a passive action, as said. However, the distinction just defined implies that both active and passive actions are actions. When I kick the ball and break the window, I caused the window to break. It is something I did, but was it an action by me? For it is not what I wanted to do. It was an accident. And much is happening in the world around me and we often don’t know what is happening. Can we say then that we allow these things to happen? No, of course. We can only say that we allow something to happen if we know (or could know) about it and are able to intervene (see my last blog). Therefore, I want to describe an active action as intentionally making things happen, and a passive action as intentionally letting things happen. This definition makes clear why we are responsible for what we allow. It’s not because we let things happen as such but because we let them happen intentionally, which implies that we had the explicit possibility to intervene. In a way, this is also so when we are waiting, but in this case the question of responsibility seldom matters.
I want to mention yet another difference between active and passive actions. An action can succeed or fail. I think that it is clear when it succeeds: The intended result is achieved by one’s doings, no matter whether the action was active or passive: Both the action and the result are there. However, things are more complicated in case an action fails. Basically, an action fails if it is not there, or if the result is not achieved, although the action has been performed. Again, this is clear for active actions. (In fact, it’s more complicated for “practical actions” in the sense of Aristotle, but I’ll ignore this here) But how about passive actions? If we haven’t waited, or haven’t allowed, can we say then that these actions failed? Usually, we see it as a success if we didn’t need to wait, as much as when what we were waiting for happened. Also, in case we do not allow something to happen, it’s not simply that our consent is absent (in the sense that an active action failed, for example like not being able to buy a book because it was out of stock), but we have taken another decision (note that the question is discussed here from the perspective of the person who does or doesn’t give the consent; not from the perspective of the person who needs the consent). And in case what we were waiting for didn’t happen, we waited in vain, and so our waiting was without a result, indeed. Nevertheless, we waited (although the active action “buying a book” didn’t take place, in case the book was not in stock). Similarly, if we allowed something to happen, but in the end what we allowed didn’t take place, then nevertheless we did allow it.
I leave it at these sketchy remarks but much more can be said about it.

Random quote
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788) wrote about 250 years ago:
Nature’s productive capacity is so great that the quantity of this vegetal humus would continue to augment everywhere, if we didn’t despoil and impoverish the earth by our planned exploitations of it, which are always immoderate.

Is waiting an action?

Bus stop in Paris

My readers may have noticed that I have become increasingly interested in “boring” questions of daily life, such as waiting. Waiting is often boring for those who are waiting, so many who wait seek distraction using their smartphones. But is waiting also philosophically boring? We spend much time on it, so from that point of view waiting should be an important theme in philosophy!
On the face of it, waiting seems a passive affair: it happens to you. Suppose, you have an appointment with a doctor, and she is not yet there. Maybe you arrived early or she is still busy with another patient. Then you have no option but to wait. Or you arrive early at the bus stop or the bus is late. Also then you can only wait, although it is not your choice. It just happens. On the other hand, when you go to a doctor or want to take a bus, no doubt you take it into account that you must wait. In that sense it is not something that just happens to you. It is not an accident like a car that hits you while you are walking to your appointment or to the bus stop. It belongs to having an appointment or taking a bus, though, if possible, you would prefer not to wait. So, at the same time waiting is something that happens to you and it is something you do, for you don’t cancel the appointment or leave the bus stop. This raises the question: Is or isn’t waiting an action?
What actually is an action? In my PhD thesis I explained that we call what we do an action if we do it with an intention. Now I think that we cannot deny that waiting is something we do. Although you can only wait when the doctor is not yet there or when the bus has not yet arrived, nevertheless it is not something that only happens to you, as we have seen. In fact, you chose to keep waiting. In case an accident happens to you, you are there “at the wrong place at the wrong moment”. Not so when you wait. Maybe you didn’t arrive at the right moment (and that’s why you must wait), but you are there at the right place, anyway. You have chosen to be there and not to walk away, although you may not have chosen to wait as such. You actively prefer to wait because you consider it the best option in the given situation. It is not so that you are forced to wait. If the lift suddenly stops and you cannot go out, you push the alarm button, and wait for help. In this case you are forced to wait. It is not something you do, but it happens to you. Such a wait is comparable to the case that you trip over a stone and automatically try to keep your balance. But such waiting is exceptional.
So, usually you wait because you have chosen to wait, since it is the best you can do in the situation at hand. You choose to wait, because you have reason to do so, namely the thing you are waiting for (the treatment by the doctor; going to the destination where the bus will bring you). If you had nothing to wait for, there would be no reason to wait. Moreover, you have considered that the best you can do is to realize this “for” now at the place and time you have chosen. You could have preferred to come at the last moment, but then you would run the risk that the bus has already left, or that nevertheless you must wait because the doctor has already given your turn to the next patient. Therefore you prefer to come a bit early and wait. So, your waiting is intentional, actually in two respects. Firstly, you are waiting for something, and this something (like the treatment by the doctor) gives the waiting sense. It is the purpose of your waiting and with that its main intention, in the expectation that your purpose will be realized, if you wait long enough. Secondly, you have incorporated deliberately some extra time, so that you will be sure to be in time for your appointment, for the bus etc. Even if the bus is late, or the doctor is still busy with another patient at the time of your arrival, you keep waiting, expecting that it will not be in vain. In short, waiting has an intention in view of your purpose and the extra time you have incorporated and so it is done intentionally and that makes it an action.
In analytical philosophy, an action is often represented by a practical syllogism (PS), so by a scheme like this (see my PhD thesis):

(1) A intends to bring about p.
(2) A considers that he cannot bring about p unless he does a.
(3) Therefore A sets himself to do a.

In this PS A refers to the acting person or actor. In line (1) of this PS we find the purpose p of the action we want to explain. Line (2) tells us which action a the actor will do to realize the purpose. Line (3) tells us that the actor starts to act according to his or her considerations in lines (1) and (2). If a waiting is an action – and not just happens to us like when we are in a lift that suddenly stops – it must be possible to describe it with such a PS. To my mind, it is easy to do so, since the “for” of what you are waiting for refers to your intention (so the thing you want to bring about) and with that to your purpose p, and the waiting is something you must do, for if you don’t, p will not be achieved. Of course, waiting is not the only thing you must do in order to reach your purpose, but it is a necessary part of what you must do to achieve your purpose or otherwise it will not be achieved. (If you leave the doctor’s waiting room, your appointment will not happen) In other words, waiting belongs to the means to achieve your purpose.
So, for the case that John goes to a doctor because he has an appointment with her, you get a PS like this:

PS (waiting)
(1) John intends to go to the appointment with a doctor.
(2) John considers that this appointment will not happen unless
- he leaves his house no later than time x and goes to the hospital
- and waits there till the doctor calls him for his appointment (in case the doctor is still busy with another patient, when he arrives in the hospital).
(3) Therefore John leaves his house no later than time x etc.

PS (waiting) shows how waiting fits in a practical syllogism in line (2) of the PS-scheme that contains the description of the action that must be performed in order to achieve the purpose. Such a PS can be constructed for any waiting, unless it is of the type of waiting for help in case of an accident like a lift that suddenly stops.
I have now shown that waiting is an action. In line (2) of PS (waiting) we see that waiting is not the whole and only action an actor must perform to achieve a certain purpose, but it is one of them. Many actions are links in an action chain. Or, from another point of view, many actions can be divided into several smaller steps or “partial actions”. All these partial actions belong to an overall action or “umbrella action”, in this case the umbrella action “going to the appointment with a doctor”.
The upshot is that, although waiting seems like a passive, not active, if not boring manner of achieving a purpose, in fact it is something you do with an intention and this makes it an action. Waiting is something you actively do.

ONE MILLION views

My philosophical blog reached a milestone: Today my blog passed the magical limit of

ONE MILLION views.

I started writing these blogs 18 years ago with the idea of only writing for myself. But I published these thoughts since you write better if you have an audience. But apparently the readers of these thoughts appreciated them and over the years more and more people have started reading my blogs, and the number of readers of my blogs is still increasing. And so it happened that today I passed the milestone of one million views.

!!! THANK YOU ALL !!!

The folly

Anonymous author. Music by Henry Le Bailly (158?-1637)

Sung by Montserrat Figueras

Bertha von Suttner (1843-1914)

Two weeks ago, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado received the Nobel Peace Prize, although a narcissistic political leader claimed to deserve this award. Anyway, I think this is a good time to pay attention to a person who was not only the first woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, but who also had a major impact on the creation of this award: Bertha von Suttner.
Bertha von Suttner was born in Prague in 1843 as Countess Kinsky. At the time, Prague belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Bertha had Austrian nationality. Until the age of thirty, Bertha led an existence that was not unusual in her circles: studying, travelling and an active social life. Then, in 1873, when the family fortune was almost exhausted, partly due to her mother’s passion for gambling (her father had died before she was born), she became governess to the four daughters of Baron von Suttner. She gets into a relationship with the seven years younger son Arthur. This is disapproved of by the family and she is fired. In 1876, she applied for a job as a secretary to the industrialist Alfred Nobel, who lived in Paris, but decided to return after a short stay there and secretly married Arthur. The couple goes to live in the Caucasus at the invitation of a friend. They earn their living by giving lessons and by Arthur's journalistic work. During this time, Bertha began to write, first socially critical articles, later also novels. In 1885, the couple was accepted again by the von Suttner family and they returned to Austria.
Through a friend, Bertha now comes into contact with various peace organisations. In 1886 she went back to Paris for a while, where she met Alfred Nobel again. A strong, lasting friendship develops between the two. The pacifist ideas that Bertha von Suttner had developed in the meantime would have a great influence on Nobel and partly because of her he later decided to establish the peace prize, in addition to the prizes for science and literature. In 1889, Bertha von Suttner’s most famous book Die Waffen nieder! (translated into English as Lay Down Your Arms!) was published in a small edition, after it had previously been refused by various publishers. In this partly autobiographical novel, the female protagonist undergoes all the misery of the war. The story is also very realistic, because Bertha von Suttner had done thorough research into the wars of that time. The novel is a great success and from then on Bertha is a leading figure in the peace movement. She founded various peace organisations and attended international conferences. In 1892, together with the later Nobel Prize winner Alfred Hermann Fried, she took the initiative to create the peace magazine Lay Down Your Arms! She supported attempts by the Russian tsar to organise a peace conference and when it actually took place in The Hague in the Netherlands in 1899, she was the only participant who did not represent a government and she was also the only woman.
Meanwhile, Alfred Nobel died in 1896. For the peace prize awarded from 1901 onwards, he probably had Bertha von Suttner in mind as the first laureate. She did not receive it until 1905.
In the years that followed, she played an important role in the attempts to bring about reconciliation between Germany and England. She attends many congresses and conferences, including the Hague Peace Conference of 1907, and she makes many tours, including in Scandinavia and the United States. In addition, she writes many articles and also some books. In 1913, she again addresses the International Peace Congress in The Hague. She had become ill in the meantime, but in May 1914 she was yet able to help prepare for the Peace Congress in Vienna. For her, the danger of war was already very real. A month later, she died of cancer in Vienna, just before the war, the First World War, would indeed break out. Her ashes are interred in Gotha in Germany.
The significance of Bertha von Suttner lies not only in the fact that she denounced the misery of the war and in her organisational work. She also came up with concrete proposals, such as the establishment of an international court of arbitration to mediate conflicts between states, a peace union of all states to repel with common strength the attack of one state on another and the establishment of an international court to administer justice on behalf of all peoples. Some of her proposals are only now being properly implemented. Bertha von Suttner also had a visionary view. As early as 1911, she was the first to point out the possibility of nuclear war and a year later she foresaw the misery that air wars would cause, only ten years after the first flight with an airplane had taken place. (see here) In Austria today, she is considered a great national personality. Her image is therefore on an Austrian 2-euro coin and she is also depicted on commemorative euro coins. Also postage stamps commemorate her memory in several countries Moreover, streets and squares in Austria, but also in other countries, are named after her. Her book Lay Down Your Arms! is reprinted to this day.

Random quote
I want to do AI my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing, so that I can do my laundry and dishes.

Joanna Maciejewska (Polish author)

The narcissist society

Selfie

Narcissism is a characteristic of some political leaders. It’s a characteristic that brought them to the top. Narcissism is not only a characteristic of leaders. Many people have it, and that’s why, perhaps, the myth of Narcissus exists in Greek mythology, and without a doubt in other mythologies as well. In the past the number of narcissists was limited, though. It could be annoying if you met one (if you weren’t a narcissist yourself), but you could live with it. In the present world this has changed. It is no longer so that only a few persons belong to this category, but it has become the norm, it seems. Even more, narcissism has permeated all of society and it seems as if everyone has become subjected to it, including those who are actually not narcissists. Even if you don’t want to give in, you still have to, if you don’t want to place yourself outside society. Contemporary society is a society in which the ego is central.
This is what I learned from Isolde Charim’s book Die Qualen des Narzismus (“The torments of narcissism”). I’ll not give a review of the book but only pick from it what strikes me, and I’ll give my own thoughts and interpretations. We see then for instance that competition and selfishness have become very important today, especially in the way of “working on yourself” and presenting yourself. In the present neoliberal society, everything is seen in the light of money value, including sectors that were traditionally seen in their own light, like education, culture and even friendships. For instance, for a long time education was a value of its own, but now it’s an investment in yourself in order to increase your market value. Nowadays, you don’t choose a study because you like it, but because it will give you a good salary. Life in the neoliberal view has become a cost-benefit analysis. And if you can, stand out! Be different! The market of life is shaped by the competition model, and you can only win and become better if you are not like others. The market logic shows you the way to self-improvement; the improvement of your material but also your spiritual welfare.
How to know that you are successful; that you are on the way to success? How do others know that you are good? How does your boss know it? In terms of cost-benefit analysis it means that you must be the highest on the rank. And so evaluation and ranking have penetrated society, and everything and everyone is evaluated and ranked. Simply being good and that things have been done well is not enough. What is good must have an objective value. So after every purchase on the internet or when you have used a service, like going to the dentist or simply having a parcel delivered, you receive an e-mail asking for feedback and maybe to rank your purchase or service on a scale. Charim calls this objective narcissism. There is also subjective narcissism, for we are also evaluating and ranking ourselves continuously by comparing ourselves with others and by comparing what we think is our real I with our supposed ideal I.
These rankings show what your worth is, what your value is, and how unique you are, in the eyes of others and even more in your own eyes. The modern human is continuously busy with a narcissistic self-evaluation, and both types of evaluation have become a driving force and control mechanism in modern society. For example, in order to improve ourselves we give much attention to our appearances; to how we look to others (it’s why the beauty industry has become so important, for appearance counts).
What, I think, is the most striking phenomenon of modern narcissistic personality is what I want to call the selfie-cult. I have always been surprised that quite a lot of people, mainly young people (as yet?), have uploaded not only one or two, but often dozens of selfies on their social media pages. And then not so much photos that show them in a situation (at home, at a festival, somewhere abroad…) but usually outside a context, often only their faces. For an outsider these photos are hardly different, though I assume they are for those who do so. Why publish ten, if not sometimes hundred almost equal photos of yourself in one album on the internet? I can see it only as an expression of a narcissistic ego: Look who I am. Look how beautiful I am. But actually, this selfie cult is not meant to show yourself to others, to your public on the internet. The public of the selfie is actually you. It is the optimal expression of your narcissistic feeling.
Spinoza wrote in his Ethics “that we in no case desire a thing because we deem it good, but, contrariwise, we deem a thing good because we desire it … everyone, therefore, according to his particular emotions, judges or estimates what is good, what is bad, what is better, what is worse, lastly, what is best, and what is worst.” (Part III, prop. XXXIX. Note.) Thus, following Charim, good-bad corresponds to our wishes, our desires. What is good or bad is my subjective judgment. Only I am the measure and the measure is me. That’s how we think today. Isn’t it narcissism in the highest degree?

Random quote
“I have done that,” says my memory. ‘I cannot have done that,” says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually – my memory yields.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Hasty conclusions

The fallacy “Guilt by Association”, discussed in my last blog, is related to two other fallacies, which I have already treated before: argumentum ad hominem or “playing the man” and “jumping to conclusions”. An example of the latter is a fallacy called “hasty generalization” (HG). Because HG is so often found in present-day political discussions, I want to write a few words about it. Hasty Generalization – also called Overgeneralization or Faulty Generalization – is the fallacy that one or several singular cases are seen as exemplary for the group the case belongs to, without further evidence. Or, as Wikipedia tells us: HG is a conclusion drawn about all or many instances of a phenomenon on the basis of one or a few instances of that phenomenon. You could also call it “proof by example”, or better “false proof by example”, for a false proof it is.
When writing this, an example immediately comes to my mind. Recently (case one), near Amsterdam a girl was murdered by a young male asylum seeker when she cycled home at night. Many people, and especially some rightist politicians, reacted with the claim: Asylum seekers are criminals; there is no place for them in the Netherlands. However (case two), a few years ago a similar case happened in the province of Friesland in the north of the Netherlands. Just as in case one, a girl cycling home was found murdered, now not far from an asylum seekers’ centre. Many people reacted that the murderer must have been an asylum seeker, adding that there is no place for asylum seekers in the Netherlands. After some time, the murderer was caught: A local Friesian farmer, living not far from the crime scene. Should we remove then all Friesians (or at least all Friesian farmers) from the Netherlands? Nobody said so in case two (and many of those who uttered the false accusation should have to leave then themselves).
These two cases together are good examples, I think, of why without further information, a single instance cannot be seen as representative for a whole group or population. Just as one criminal Friesian farmer doesn’t “make” all Friesians (or all Friesian farmers) criminals, one young asylum seeker doesn’t “make” all asylum seekers criminals. The generalization is too hasty, namely based on insufficient evidence. In general, we can say that a Hasty Generalization happens
1) when there is a lack of knowledge of the selected example (there was no reason to make a connection between the murder and the asylum seekers’ centre in Friesland);
2) when the selected sample is not representative of the whole group (the murderer in case one is not representative of all asylum seekers, just as the farmer is not representative of all Friesians or Friesian farmers);
3) when both (1) and (2) are true. (see Michael J. Muniz, “Hasty Generalization”)
It is also striking in case one that many people saw the murderer as an asylum seeker, and not as a young man, who happened to be an asylum seeker, or as a man, in the first place. Humans are complicated beings with many characteristics, and why pick out just one characteristic?

In formal terms, the argumentation often follows the patterns:
1)         X is true for A
            There is a connection between X and A.
For instance, the crime scene is near the asylum seekers’ centre, so there is a connection between them.
Or: Asylum seeker A has committed a crime, so asylum seekers are criminal. We need much more information, before we can to draw such a conclusion.
2)         A belongs to population P
            A has characteristic X
            So the whole population P or everybody or many in population P have characteristic X.
For instance, A is a criminal, so everybody in or at least many of his group are criminals.

We see hasty generalizations committed almost every day in politics and the media. In politics, HGs are used to emphasize the extremes of a particular viewpoint. For example, case one (the murder near Amsterdam) is often cited in the present Dutch immigration discussions, however without mentioning case two (the murder in Friesland), which would refute its “conclusion”. We find HG not only in political discussions, but also in other discussions in the media, in advertising to promote particular products, etc. To avoid committing this fallacy, the arguer should take into consideration the amount of justifiable knowledge one might have on a particular subject and whether the selected sample being used in the case is justifiably representative of the group in question. (Muniz) Often this is not simple. Good arguing requires much background knowledge and much insight into the problem at hand. A first step to avoid logical mistakes is to take your time. Avoid hasty steps and jumping to your conclusions.

Random quote
The translation of our social relationships, for example friendship, into a matter of investment and benefits seems to be guided by objective market categories, but is in fact no more than an ideological representation of self-calculation.

Isolde Charim in Die Qualen des Narzissmus

Guilt by association

Photo taken at Fort Breendonk, Belgium, a former fortification,
 which  served as a Nazi prison camp during World War II

It occurs so often that actually everybody should know that it is a fallacy: Guilt by Association (GBA). Nevertheless, “this fallacy permeates society, from social groups, to political campaigns, to business relationships, to the court system”, as Leigh Kolb writes in his article about the fallacy. This is not an innocent matter, for throughout history, guilt by association has made people justify persecution, discrimination, and social ostracism. But what is guilt by association, or, as it is also called, the association fallacy?
I found a clear description in an article by Joshua M. Bentley, which I have adapted here a little bit: Guilt by association is the phenomenon that occurs when one party, person or thing is distrusted because of its connection to another party, person or thing that has done something wrong. Guilt by association is a kind of heuristic, or mental shortcut, that people use to decide which companies share their values, viewpoints, ideas, and the like. This is the negative version of the fallacy. There is also a positive version, which I’ll ignore. (You get it by replacing the word “wrong” by “good” here). I’ll also ignore GBA for things. Guilt by Association is related to the idea of identification, because people are identified with (associated with) members of the group(s) they belong to and share ideas and views with, and/or with individuals who have the same views etc. However, the problem is that the person or persons involved are not only associated with others because of the views etc. they share but because of this association they are also often ascribed the views etc. of these others that they don’t share or that they have never commented on. It’s something like: Show me your friends, and I'll show you who you are.
In formal terms, the reasoning in GBA is this from Wikipedia):

                    Premise (1):    A is in set S1
                    Premise (2):    A is in set S2
                    Premise (3):    B is also in set S2
                    Conclusion:    Therefore, B is in set S1.

But the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises, which makes Guilt by Association a fallacy.

First some simple, if not banal examples (again from Wikipedia):

- John is a con artist. John has black hair. Therefore, people with black hair are necessarily con artists.
- Lyle is a crooked salesman. Lyle proposes a monorail. Therefore, the proposed monorail is necessarily folly.
- Simon and Karl live in Nashville, and they are both petty criminals. Jill lives in Nashville; therefore, Jill is necessarily a petty criminal.

I think that you’ll immediately see from these examples how fallacious the GBA is. However, many cases of GBA are more difficult to recognise and less “banal”. Therefore, people often fall into the GBA trap, and commit them themselves. For isn’t it so that associations can also be true? But often they are not and therefore we must always check them. Nevertheless, many times people apply them without checking, because for them the associations seem obvious, though they aren’t.
Even worse are the cases that they are used by politicians in order to manipulate their followers or to attract new followers (and maybe they even believe them themselves). Let me give a few examples of possible dangerous consequences of the Guilt by Association fallacy, leading to suffering by innocent people. Maybe the best-known case of GBA is the McCarthy era in the United States: Senator Joseph McCarthy led a campaign against alleged communists in the government and other institutions. Individuals suspected of having communist sympathies were subjected to intense scrutiny, harassment, and even imprisonment. Many innocent people lost their jobs, careers, and reputations as a result of these unfounded accusations, simply because they were said to have ideas (rightly or wrongly) that were considered “communist”, despite their actual behaviour. (see Bentley) What also often happens is that individuals associated with certain religious or ethnic groups are discriminated against in the aftermath of terrorist attacks, for example after 9/11. Or, – another case – when in 2002 a populist Dutch politician was murdered by an environmentalist, not a few reacted by saying “the bullet came from the left”, as if most people with leftist ideas would support this murder and were responsible for it. This is also what we see now in rising authoritarian states. More and more people there are harassed, dismissed from their jobs, if not held responsible for a political murder, if it happens, simply because they use the democratic right to oppose “the leader” and to disagree with his ideas. But people are only guilty for what they have done and not for possible or alleged associations with perpetrators. If this happens, we have a case of Guilt by Association.

Selfie
A selfie is an ideal self-representation that derives its strength from a public relationship that everyone can establish and no longer needs a real audience, because it is outsourced to a virtual audience (for example on social networks).

Isolde Charim in DieQualen des Narzissmus 

On Books

In his essay “Of three employments” (Essays, III-3), Montaigne distinguishes between dealing with friends, with women, and with books. However, dealings with friends and women are problematical, so Montaigne, for they depend on chance and on the cooperation of others. Moreover, “one is troublesome by its rarity, the other withers with age”. And indeed, real friends are rare and difficult to find for everybody. However, to my mind, the second part of this remark represents a typical male, if not macho point of view – although, I think that Montaigne was not a macho type of man –, besides that as such I disagree with it. By saying that contacts with women withers away with age, Montaigne apparently thinks of sexual contacts that men (if not he himself) have with women, considering the paragraphs preceding this remark. Why would a pure normal friendship bet
ween a man and a woman not be possible and why would such a friendship wither away with age? Furthermore, (implicitly) Montaigne ignores here the friendships and contacts between women among each other, and also in this case there is no reason to suppose that they wither away with age. They do or don’t, just as friendships between men do or don’t, depending on the circumstances.
Anyway, Montaigne prefers contact with books, “which … is much more certain, and much more our own. It yields all other advantages to the two first, but has the constancy and facility of its service for its own share.” Especially, the latter is an advantage of books over humans, for they don’t protest when you need them and they are always there, and as he gets older, Montaigne needs them more. Contact with books, so he says, “comforts me in old age and solitude; it eases me of a troublesome weight of idleness, and delivers me at all hours from company that I dislike: it blunts the point of griefs, if they are not extreme, and have not got an entire possession of my soul. To divert myself from a troublesome fancy, ’tis but to run to my books; they presently fix me to them and drive the other out of my thoughts…”. No wonder that Montaigne never travels without books.
Nevertheless, Montaigne is not a fervent reader. No day goes by that I don’t read a book but not so for Montaigne. Montaigne wants to have books around him and enjoy the reading when he needs it for the reasons just mentioned, but “sometimes I pass over several days, and sometimes months, without looking on them.” They simply must be there so that Montaigne can use his books when he needs them. When at home he likes spending his time in his library, then taking this book, then taking that book, and “I turn over now one book, and then another, on various subjects, without method or design. One while I meditate, another I record and dictate, as I walk to and fro, such whimsies as these I present to you here.”
Books give Montaigne consolation, emotional and mental support, and they help him write his essays. For me, it is different. Like Montaigne, I cannot do without them, but books give me a window on the world. Books stimulate my imagination and give me other perspectives. They help me discover what is outside of me and what is inside me. That’s why reading is so important; not just reading letters whatever they are, like an accounting text, as some think, but reading stories or texts with narrative aspects. And that’s why reading is not only important for the elderly but also and just for young people. Because reading narrative texts stimulates your imagination and broadens your view of and on the world, it stimulates your mental and social development. Nevertheless, as Montaigne tells us: “Every good has its ill.” Also books have, since, so he says,: “[t]he soul indeed is exercised therein; but the body, the care of which I must withal never neglect, remains in the meantime without action, and grows heavy and sombre. I know no excess more prejudicial to me, nor more to be avoided in this my declining age.”
But why should I stop doing what gives me so much pleasure and which is mentally so advantageous for me, because it neglects my physical side? It’s true that reading does not train my body but I have my bike for that.

-.-.-.-.-

Here you find a reconstruction of Montaigne’s library.

Random quote
The societies wherein less disparity is permitted between masters and servants seem to me the most equitable.

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

Salami Tactics

It is an often-used practise in negotiations, for example in the business world and in politics: The so-called salami tactics, also called salami slicing, salami slicing tactics, and the like. It is a step-by-step method to get what you want to have from your opponent, the person you are negotiating with, by asking or taking it gradually, since it would be impossible to get it in one go, because your opponent would then refuse to give it or would resist in another way. I had to think of it when I thought about how contemporary autocrats or those political leaders who try to become autocrats seize power or already have seized power. The regular readers of this blog will understand that I think of people like Trump and Putin or Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary, all democratically elected political leaders who are rising or already established autocrats. But let me explain what salami tactics involve. I concentrate on the use of these tactics in politics.
It may not be a coincidence that also Orbán is on the way to autocracy, for the term “salami tactics” has been coined by the former Hungarian communist leader Mátyás Rákosi as a way to describe his technique of dividing and isolating the other political parties in his country at the end of the 1940s, when the communists had seized power: “demanding a little more each day, like cutting up a salami, thin slice after thin slice.” (source) To cut these parties off like slices of salami till nothing remains was the method used by the Hungarian communists in those days in order to eliminate them. And in the same way the method is still used in politics today (but also in business negotiations and elsewhere) as a way to get what you cannot get at once. In politics, the approach is twofold. On the one hand the opposing parties are discredited and defamed and sometimes even dehumanised, and on the other hand measures are taken that may as such be necessary, but that in addition give the leader more power. Or the leader takes a little bit more power in an illegal way and watches what then happens. If there is no protest worth the name or if (too) many people support the illegal seizure of power, the leader takes some more power in the next step. Etc. Financially eliminating the opponents is another measure of the arising – or already established – autocrat: take away state subsidies that till then were given to institutions you don’t like; forbid them receiving money from abroad. Then forbid thoughts that are allegedly foreign. And if all this works, finally you can try to control the internet as well.
This is a small selection of the possibilities available to an autocrat. Important is that the seizure of power goes on step by step. If taken all at once, at one time, it could give rise to much protest and opposition, which could make the power grab impossible. But taken one by one and one after the other, the measures are often seen as not unreasonable by a majority of people, or they are not seen as a reason for heavy protesting. Small measures with only little impact for most people are often accepted resignedly. It is difficult to organise many to stop them. And then the moment comes that it is too late to stop the autocrat and he can arrest people for the simple reason that they protest or at least he can put them on a sidetrack. That’s what we have seen in Putin’s Russia and that’s what we now see happening in Hungary, the USA and some other countries. For example, in the USA President Trump is pushing the boundaries of the law. “What will happen when I send the National Guard to a city governed by Democrats to ‘help’ the police? Is it legal? How does the city react? What happens if I ignore court orders? If nobody stops me and can stop me in this case, I can take the next step to increase my power.” That’s what the present US president seems to think, and that’s how Putin rose from a democratically elected president to the near-dictator he is now. Salam tactics: Cut up your opponents thin slice after thin slice till nothing is left of them.

Random quote
I never travel without books.

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

The psychology of waiting

Rokin Underground Station, Amsterdam

Waiting. Everybody does it and spends much time on it. Therefore, it is surprising how little attention it receives from social scientists and philosophers. I think that street photographers pay more attention to this kind of action. For an action it is. Waiting is not simply doing nothing, being inactive. Waiting has an intention. It is doing nothing in view of something else, and this having an intention makes it an action.
Waiting has philosophical, sociological and psychological aspects. The philosophical aspects concern, for instance, the meaning of waiting and its place in life. The sociological aspects concern, for instance, waiting in a group and waiting in public. The psychological aspects concern how we experience it. Although I am mainly interested in the philosophical and sociological aspects of waiting, and then especially those of waiting in public, I don’t want to ignore the psychology of waiting, also because it influences how “managers” of public spaces organise public areas, and then in the first place, of course, those places made for waiting, like bus stops or platforms in railway stations; and it is the same for managers of semi-public spaces like hospital waiting rooms, the foyers of theatres or sports stadiums. In this blog, I’ll investigate how managers of public space and semi-public spaces, use or can use these psychological aspects for the organisation of waiting spaces. My analysis is based on an article by David H. Maister about the management of waiting in restaurants.

1 – Unoccupied Time Feels Longer than Occupied Time. In semi-public waiting rooms (like a doctor’s waiting room), you often find magazines and other lecture that can be used by the waiting people. However, many waiting people are self-managers and shorten their psychological waiting time with their smartphones or by reading stuff they have taken with them. That’s why many railway stations have bookshops. Music can also reduce the psychological waiting time, for instance in sports stadiums before the match (in addition, it puts the spectators in the mood).
2 – Pre- and Post-process Waits Feel Longer than In-process Waits. Waiting feels less onerous when you are already involved in the process you are waiting for, even in case it increases the overall waiting time. So, when entering a hospital, often you are directly asked to fill in a form, which gives the feeling of being “in-process” and reduces the sense of waiting. When you sit in a moving train for half an hour time seems to go faster than when you wait half an hour on the platform, till the train arrives. Then the train suddenly stops for an unknown reason. The process of the waiting-in-progress stops then as well and a minute of waiting suddenly feels like an hour of moving, so to speak. To reduce the psychological waiting time, modern trains and buses have screens with travel information, such as speed and time to the next station. Sometimes the driver tells you what is going on when an unplanned stop happens.
3 – Anxiety Makes Waits Seem Longer. You are in vain waiting for your train. Then you are informed that an accident has happened. Even if the length of the delay is unknown, information may help. When there are roadworks on a motorway sometimes the length of the works is indicated.
4 – Uncertain Waits are Longer than Known, Finite Waits. Trains and buses are often delayed for unimportant reasons. It should be the norm that such delays always be indicated on information panels.
5 – Unexplained Waits are Longer than Explained Waits. Many motorways have information panels that inform the drivers about traffic jams or slow-moving traffic caused by accidents or roadworks. Train passengers are informed about accidents or technical problems. Or – a semi-public event – sometimes it happens that an opera singer suddenly has become ill and a substitute has not yet arrived in the theatre. So the performance will start somewhat later. Then the public is informed of the problem (also because the cast has changed).
6 – Unfair Waits are Longer than Equitable Waits. In a queue it sometimes happens that someone goes out of turn. Or you don’t know when it is your turn. For semi-public waits, there is an easy solution: Give numbered tickets to waiting people, so that they can be served in order of arrival. In public spaces, this is often difficult or impossible to realise. Lines on the ground indicating where to wait or cords guiding the queues can help, but much depends also on the discipline of the waiting people.
7 – People Will Wait Longer for More Valuable Services. Public space managers can make waiting more comfortable, for example by placing benches, or by simple covered waiting spaces that protect against the weather; or they can even place there a drinks machine and the like.
8 – Waiting Alone Feels Longer than Waiting in Groups. Public space managers cannot do much about this problem.
9 – Physically Uncomfortable Waiting Feels Longer. Waiting rooms, bus shelters, benches, good lightning at dark places in the evening, etc will help. See also point 7.
10 – Waits Seem Longer to New or Occasional Users. Public space managers can provide as much information as possible to customers, travellers, etc. and describe the process they are waiting for in detail. Think of informative websites, information panels, and oral messages via a public address system.

Waiting in public can happen everywhere. In fact, waiting is part of the stream of life and doesn’t stand out. Usually it is a routine action. Indeed, usually it is an action. Waiting implies many decisions, like where and how to wait and what to do while waiting. Waiting is often boring and stressful, as the ten psychological characteristics of waiting show. A public space manager can do something about this. If this is done well, time will fly, even if the wait is long.