Rewiring human bias

November 2, 2021December 19, 2021 ~ Bagriella ~ Leave a comment

In view of Cop 26 – Reflecting on another existential challenge to humanity

Diversity is the ‘what’; inclusion is the ‘how‘

It seems important, in any analysis of or attempts at inclusion, to understand this distinction. Diversity alone is not inclusion. You can have quotas that tick all the diversity boxes, but without a culture of inclusion, everyone stays in their respective box, as it gravitates towards similar boxes…

We had nothing in common

She wasn’t the right fit

Like-minded

All the above are common phrases and signal our need (in the English-speaking world at least) to belong, our need for both community and commonality, and this need has driven and still drives almost every human (and mammalian) endeavour.

In order to become more inclusive, we need to acknowledge that inclusivity is the most fundamental, and most needed shift in human behaviour, ever. It’s as big as climate change – in fact, it’s probably the answer to climate change.

Humans have built their world on the proviso of exclusivity – behind the castle walls, sharing food and safety, or outside, trying to get in. And so, we have fought, since time immemorial, to the death, for fear of letting down the drawbridge to the unknown, the wild, the outsider.

This primal, now digitalized human trait is holding us back – the urge to be one of a tribe of similar people – the need to get in and ‘fit in’. For inclusion to truly happen, it’s essential to venture out as well as to welcome in – to explore uncommon as well as common ground without expecting or driving to similarity or even solidarity.

We all have to try to go against that gravitational pull of the similar, not only in accepting difference but in actively seeking it out and striving to maintain it. The difference is not the problem, it’s our primal fear of it that is. If we can’t face our fear, then we will either become a homogenized glob of humanity on an otherwise devasted earth or, we’ll break into more and more granular groups and anarchy will reign. And what about the middle ground? Let’s hope it exists..

How far do we have left to go?

We are only just beginning to understand the nature of the problem, let alone the solution.

Inclusion is still a brand differentiator. That’s surely not right. Inclusion should be brand hygiene….

The ad industry, to name but one, has a chance to act as an inclusion crucible, to make inclusion an irreversible reaction in society

Now, even as late in the game as 2021, brands are still trying on ‘diversity’ for size, whether it be gender, ethnicity, sexuality, physicality, neurology – and it shows – we think, ‘Ah, they are trying that out, beating the diversity drum’. But inclusion is the ‘how” behind true diversity, the culture that should sit behind it, and it too often stops at quotas and billboards.

How do we get there?

This will take time, it’s entirely unnatural and unprecedented. It helps to have equal opportunities, bias training, accessible options, etc, but the shift needs to grow through society in both directions, everyone making the change, at their own level, in every aspect of their interaction with others, not the leaders and money-makers “investing” in it, dishing it out to boost pay per clicks.

Step 1. Agree to disagree

Here’s my suggestion – take inclusion to mean difference, the ultimate antidote to homogeneity/tribalism/group-think. And not only difference, but dissent, and using dissent as a constructive force. If people are included without having to slot into a pre-prescribed culture/side – then innovation, change, progress, evolution can happen…

This will involve a departure from both the primal urge and the digitalized pressures to conform and conflate our personal identity with that of the group.

And so, for example, on the humble scale of the marketeer, trying to leave a cultural wake – he/she must acknowledge his/her ability to contribute to the problem as well as the cure. An agency should be made up of a diverse group of people who feel that they are paid to be themselves, rather than a diverse group of people chiselled to the same lines.

Step 2. Rewire the primal need for self-preservation, before it’s too late

The next decade, however successful COP 26 might be, will be beset by catastrophe, scale TBC. Building resilience – and by that I mean, empathy networks, wherever and whenever possible, is as urgent a need as the shift from carbon. Without this empathetic resilience, these ‘empathy networks’, when the going gets tough, the necessary partnerships between peoples, classes, countries, will disintegrate, and in turn disrupt our climate protection efforts.

Derrick Bell, in his science fiction novel ‘Space Traders’, hypothesizes about what a post-civil rights, equal, America would do when aliens asked, in return for restoring Earth back to American control, if they could have all the Black Americans. Guess what?

Without hesitation, all the Black Americans found themselves marshalled into an alien mothership. Again.

It’s always tempting, as with climate change, to see inclusion as a decision, something that happens in one direction, at one moment in time – managers to staff, leaders to subjects, corporations to customers, preachers to congregations, with a clear hierarchy of responsibility – but ultimately, anything that ultimately affects everyone needs to involve everyone, and keep involving everyone.

Step 3. Irreversible reaction

We need to get to a place where life and work are so inclusive in their nature, that the reaction cannot be reversed, under any conditions.

Has this happened before? No. This is not something humans have ever done before, this is beyond equal rights arguments, this is at a more fundamental, cognitive level, and maybe the biggest leap in the evolution of the global human brain we’ve yet seen. Yes, we’ve evolved to collaborate and trade with outsiders, but this has always, at least in the dominant cultures, been on the premise of trade and ownership, and hierarchy – ‘this is ours’ and ‘that is yours’ ‘our people’ and ‘your people’. That worked, to secure human dominance, up to a point, but now it is degrading our lives and spilling over to the planet.

Communism, religion, capitalism, even, promised to eradicate such damaging intra-human barriers but found that new ones superseded them, despite or because of our inherent gravitation towards hierarchy, tribalism, or whatever you choose to name this urge we have to come in from the cold – when we know the warmth is finite.

Towards inclusive actions and reactions

· Make more of an effort to accommodate and explore disagreement

· Go beyond caring about how diverse something looks

· Focus on how included everyone feels i.e

Spend as much time thinking about empathy as we do about bias…

Hoping to write more on empathy vs bias soon…

The other side of Florence

August 6, 2019August 6, 2019 ~ Bagriella ~ Leave a comment

As a student in Bologna I made a few trips to this capital of renaissance opulence, bobbing up for air in cool basilicas before plunging into palazzo after palazzo, packed closely with more art than I could chew in a lifetime, let alone a day, before sinking into a bowl of something starchy somewhere shady, off the deeply beaten tourist track that circles Brunelleschi’s egg-topped duomo.

Now in my 33rd July, I’m pleased to be back in Florence with a little more time. I recommend you give Florence at least 3 days – enough to let it introduce itself to you in its own time. I’m not one for these prescribed “36 hours in” tours, which tie you to your map and your intention on getting there, missing the joys of happenstance. Cities like Florence, with so much to see and eat everywhere, are designed to be eaten whole, from seed to peel.

My favourite quarter is on the other side if the river, L’Oltrano, across the river from the Uffizi and duomo , near the miles of box hedges in the Boboli gardens. Here, on the other side, is space and peace broken only by mouthwatering artisanal markets and brilliant buskers . Also, in seeming homage to the statue of Abundance (L’Abbondanza) that surveys this quarter from the top of the Boboli estate , there’s not a street or piazza without a place to feast on beef and udon-like ‘pici’, gnocchi, bean stew, wild boar and all manner of Tuscan treats, finished off with a basket of edifying almond-packed Cantuccini biscuits steeped in soul-affirming Vin Santo.

Where was I? Ah si si, the other side of Florence’s river Arno, bridged by the ancient, tourist-heavy jewellery arcade that is the Ponte Vecchio, joint equal with Venice’s Rialto, the most touristed bridge in Europe and possibly the world. As if by magic the tourist flow dissipates once you cross over, with the duomo behind you, as the Oltrarno’s network of clear streets welcomes you into its confidence.

Here you’ll find a couple of palazzos now turned into public museums and art collections, time capsules created by the 18th and 19th century aristocratic ‘grand’ tourists and later “cognoscenti”. Here you’ll also find the piazzas of Santas Spirito and Croce. The former is perhaps my favourite square in Florence. Its beauty is not it’s ornate medieval-renaissance architecture, that forms merely the stage – it’s the players: Florentines, students, immigrants, all milling about, lining the long steps outside the Basilica of Santo Spirito, letting the stirring of the busking dancers and musicians fan their ‘discorsi’ in the gently simmering dusk.

There’s a 15th century convent on this square that the Catholic church have obligingly allowed to become a lovely hotel, each room blessed with its own character and heavenly views over the city. There’s one with a bathroom that looks like there’s a romantic painting of the cathedral on the wall, until you realise it’s actually a window with the best view in Florence. I’ll never forget having a shower, looking out into this with the evening sun and breeze flowing through the window, mingling with the smell of gorgeously cheesy opera music wafting up from the Piazza below.

Hopelessly sentimental I know, but Italy does this to you, it’s very hard not to be lost in ‘sentimentalità’ here. I have a friend who is one of the rare breed of non-Italians who have managed to penetrate the impenetrable ancient world of the Florentine artisan. What I wouldn’t give to have a little garret in Piazza Santo Spirito and have a pastry and espresso under the trees before making my way to my cave-like workshop in a dusty side-street to work diligently and thoughtfully on an altar piece or a memorial stone of pietra dura, carving different stones into animals and crests and flowers before stopping for a beautifully simple lunch somewhere delicious and affordable

But back to reality and London frenzy we Londoners must go, thanking Italy for yet another beautiful city of art, love and of course, food. Here are some of the places I love in Florence. If you spot them, bene, if you don’t, bene, you will no doubt find your own treasures. The only thing I would recommend above all, is to stay in the converted covent in Piazza Santo Spirito, formerly known as Convent of the Sorelle Bandini (Bandini Sisters), now Hotel Palazzo Guadagni.

Review of Dunkirk

July 24, 2017 ~ Bagriella ~ Leave a comment

On leaving the cinema, I felt moved and a little seasick after 2 hours in Nolan’s stylishly be-washed version of the Dunkirk evacuation. Looking back, however, I do think he missed quite a few tricks. More sea and sky than man and action. And the dialogue? Sparse, garbled and inaudible. Tom Hardy’s aviator goggles will probably get the Oscar for looking up…Then down…Then up… Perplexed yet calm.

Branagh and Rylance get their teeth stuck in, no question, but the screenplay doesn’t give them so much as a tin of spam to chew on. Lank grey scenes lap the repetitive sinking-ship action, as each new batch of grey extras topple off the decks. One or two figures form a bond and are distinguished from the crowd with a few close ups, but we’re given little to latch on to.

The rich tapestry of Dunkirk stories that could have populated the shores of both France and Britain, are not here – The tales within and behind the queues for boats, the tales of heroism from the civilian seamen from other side, are carried solely in Mark Rylance’s father-son skiff team, splashes of colour in desperate need of background.

The scale of the recovery feat, termed ‘The Miracle of Dunkirk’, the sheer number of men and the relatively small number of tiny boats that ferried them all back, (over 300,000 men in only 700 brave boats, back and forth, in just over a week) did not come across, visually or mentally.

It would be interesting to ask the veteran rescuers if they think Nolan did the scale of their efforts justice. Perhaps they weren’t the focus he was after. But, of all the lenses he could have put over Dunkirk, it seems to me he chose a very obvious one and lost the chance to distinguish Dunkirk from other war films.

What was unique about Dunkirk and why it is now known as ‘The Miracle of Dunkirk’ was that it demonstrated human capacity for hope and fearless altruism, en masse, collectively. Not the old story, tired and tested in every war film – man saves men. This one could have been different – hundreds of ordinary people of various ages and both sexes, getting up and going, against all odds, for the greater good, at the last minute, together. Rylance’s civilian voice was good but it could never be broad enough to hold all that water. Nolan needed to scale up the message. It would have been a timely one.

Further reading

That said – Nolan’s Dunkirk has done a good job in whetting my appetite for Dunkirk, or at least what ended up in the editing room floor.

‘Dunkirk, the History behind the motion picture’

‘The Little Ships of Dunkirk’

‘The Little Ships’ (tale for your little ones not lucky enough to be able to sit on great-grand-parents’ knees, told from a girl’s perspective)

Thoughts on Health and Artificial Intelligence

May 22, 2017June 23, 2017 ~ Bagriella ~ Leave a comment

If it hadn’t been for a trip to the optician, I’d be, as my cockney gran and the Good Funeral Guide used to say, ‘pushing up daisies’. My sight had started to go, and it turned out that a tumour was eating into my optic nerves…

My life-saving optician pointed out:

‘Your eyes aren’t just the mirrors to your soul, they tell you how healthy the rest of your body is and, when you get ill, they do too.’

The only thing worse than going blind (I lost 70% of my vision before I had corrective surgery, and that was bad enough!) is going blind and knowing that it could have been avoided:

Eighty percent of blindness worldwide is preventable if detected and treated early (WHO).

Most people see blindness as one of life’s unavoidable poker hands, not realizing that regular screening can safeguard two of our most precious tools and that, if you’ve got a condition that affects your hormones, like diabetes (world’s top cause of blindness) you need to be extra vigilant..

The good news is that, with the help of a little Artificial Intelligence, we can now see previously undetectable/easy to miss pathologies in the eyes of say, diabetes sufferers or undiagnosed glaucoma patients. IBM Watson AI, famous for chess and Jeopardy triumphs, has begun to use its loaf to solve some of the most complex diabetes and glaucoma screening conundrums.

I was lucky enough to participate on winning team at the latest IBM & Ogilvy Hackathon. Our project involved the diagnosis of pre-diabetes. I hadn’t heard of pre-diabetes, let alone realised that one in three of us are at risk.

I hadn’t realised that, if that one in three of us carry on with an unhealthy lifestyle, stress levels and being that wee bit overweight, we’re more likely to get diabetes, but that we can actually avoid it, quite easily, by making a few habit and mind-set changes..

It now occurs to me that whatever we can do to avoid diabetes, is also helping us protect our vision. All the more incentive for us all to look away from that Krispy crème for 2 mins and take the Know Your Risk survey

Read more

IBM & Ogilvy Hackathon site and Twitter

IBM Watson and spotting diabetes and glaucoma

WHO blindness data

Ads without borders

April 25, 2017April 25, 2017 ~ Bagriella ~ Leave a comment

For 5 days last month, #MarchForGiants reminded at least 25,000 of us about the plight of elephants.

A 2,500 strong digital herd, created by brands and people, marched across billboards around the world, from Hong Kong to London and New York via Birmingham and Manchester.

It linked outdoor ads globally. No campaign has ever done this before. It’s the start of the outdoor web, the web jumping into our periphery vision, connecting us when we are out and about, above and beyond our pocketed phones..

During their digital trek, adult elephants wore corporate sponsors’ logos, while their babies sported the name and chosen colour of people who’d donated a £5/$6. Brands and people shared ‘their’ elephants on websites or social networks.

You might say that the elephants were just 2,500 corporate/personal brand vehicles, that impact weighed against need was minimal. But let’s not be cynical. It’s a win win. Brands and, increasingly, people, like free/cheap exposure, elephants like marching.

I hope this new form of connected, user-generated outdoor ad, will see the ethical slant as part and parcel of it’s success. With all the water, food and fuel ‘elephants in the room’ just about to blow their trumps, this kind of a borderless approach to communication and action is what’s called for, urgently.

More about the march.

See how and why we should make More Space for Giants .

One a side note, I was inspired to draw some elephants and sell the prints to support the their cause.

Love toucan

February 15, 2017February 21, 2017 ~ Bagriella ~ Leave a comment

14_wolfgang-tillmans-tukan-2010

Taking a closer look at this picture – I was surprised to find that there is no colour in the dazzlingly tropical toucan that isn’t also shared with it’s decidedly non-tropical, ephemeral surroundings.

The blue of the toucan’s eye socket makes the blue in the rim of the garden water pools more vivid. The orange glow of the toucan’s ‘eye shadow’ and beak somehow give the stale crusts in the tray below a tropical zest. The unimaginably white softness of the toucan’s neck and the warm sandy yellow round its lapels light up the cheap beige repetition of the tiled patio.

Turner Prize-winning artist Wolfgang Tillmans’ exhibition at the Tate Modern opens today. With this toucan and other shots, Tillmans demonstrates his principle of creating an image and not just a photo.

Each ‘image’ is not simply a capturing of a fleeting moment for our attention. It combines both passive observation and choreography. The photographer, in the taking and the developing, has made a set of choices that we could not make with the naked eye. Wolfgang has cited colour as one of the elements which the photographer uses to steer our view.

And so it’s not just a portrait of a toucan, but also it’s an exercise in colour appreciation. Through it we realise that our appreciation of colour is subject to context.

This has the unexpected subconscious side-effect of cheering up my dreary afternoon loo-trip – the ‘CAUTION CLEANING IN PROGRESS!’ flip board sign outside the Ladies is somehow less exasperating, I’m actually rather uplifted by it’s harmony of yellow and red, like the cheeky curved smile of a toucan’s bill. Subject for the next Turner Prize 😉 ?

More Tillmans and toucans

See the Toucan in real life at the Tate

Watch the artist himself discuss his approach to photography

Tentacular intelligence

February 8, 2017February 8, 2017 ~ Bagriella ~ Leave a comment

The more we look at octopuses, the more we question our concepts of what consciousness really is and what the boundaries of cellular behaviour really are…

Two-thirds of an octopus’ neurons reside in its arms, allowing it to mix senses, smelling and tasting via touch. They can also divide this intelligence 8 ways, solving how to open a shellfish while another arm is ‘occupied’ doing something else, e.g. exploring a cave for more treats/texting their other halves ;)…

These intelligent arms react after they’ve been completely severed. In one experiment, severed arms jerked away in pain when researchers pinched them.

Not only is octopus intelligence distributed throughout their bodies, it’s also divided, into components that can act with autonomy:

“When an octopus is in an unfamiliar tank with food in the middle, some arms seem to crowd into the corner seeking safety while others seem to pull the animal toward the food.” (Prof. Peter Godfrey-Smith)

This consciousness is quite different from the layers and levels we see in our own consciousness and that of the most intelligent mammals. It makes us realise that our own brand of mammalian individual and cohesive consciousness is not necessarily nature’s default mode for advanced species.

A further layer is added by mimetic ability. An octopus can imitate both color and texture, e.g. look and feel like a stone, to hurl itself, undetected, over a victim or fool a predatory seal. If this ability is somehow orchestrated at a cognitive level, it suggests that the octopus has the ability to act both as one unit and to divide off into multiple personae…

“Octopuses let us ask which features of our minds can we expect to be universal whenever intelligence arises in the universe, and which are unique to us,” Godfrey-Smith said. “They really are an isolated outpost among invertebrates. … From the point of view of the philosophy of the mind, they are a big deal.” (Professor Godfrey-Smith’s pioneering research)

As Valentine’s Day approaches – see how octopuses show tentacular affection.

A note on plurals:

‘Octopus’ comes from the Greek meaning ‘eight foot’. The word’s Greek roots mean it’s pluralised as a Greek word, which means adding -es and not ‘i’ or ‘ies’.

Endless Poetry is endlessly poetic

February 1, 2017February 3, 2017 ~ Bagriella ~ 1 Comment

Last Sunday was grey and empty until I found myself in the cinema, in the strange comfort of octogenarian Chilean directing legend Alejandro Jodorowsky’s latest film, Endless Poetry.

I had bought my ticket on a whim – All I knew was that it was in Spanish, in Chile and might be a little weird and poetic, as the title suggested. What I got was the most eye-opening, jaw-dropping two hours and 8 minutes of 2017 so far, unless Jodorowsky’s sequel comes out this year…

And I’m so pleased, in these unsavoury times, that there are 4 more delicious courses I’ve yet to eat, that Endless Poetry is the second in a 5 part film cycle, that there’s The Dance of Reality and soon the other 4 will be ready…

Meantime, instead of giving away the menu of his surreal feast of a film, I’m going to list the thoughts that have fed me (not without a little indigestion) ever since…

…It doesn’t matter if it’s written on a wall or floorboard and no one but the poet will ever read it, everything disappears eventually; prayers are like poems, they are never seen but always needed by the prayer…

…Everything is beautiful, even and especially the mutations of normality…

…Anyone can walk in a straight line to anywhere they want to go; obstacles are illusions we can erase…

…Also, alongside linear there is cyclical, since maths is inexplicable; life is a cycle, returning to where it came from and filled with returns all along a direct way…

…Meantime Death is always there; suicide is blindness…

…Through misguided fear, we hide and make ourselves up like clowns.

… In reality, reality is up for grabs, and so we have nothing to hide and nothing to show…

…The naked soul and body are uplifting and captivating and no less so for being marked and scarred by the passage through life…

…We are all puppeteers and our puppets dance together. When we are holding our puppet-selves, our own identity is unclear and maybe this is because…

…We are connected to each other…

…That we are each exclusively in charge of ourselves is an illusion…

…In reality we are all in the same puppet show together and share manipulation mutually, all our limbs are up for grabs to the nearest puppeteer…

…And with this power, love is not in the keeping, it’s in the letting go, the negation of the urge to manipulate, the diffusion of our fixed idea, it’s acceptance – no interference, no orchestration; just the acknowledgement of a God in the other person, the godliness that is beyond perfection….

…The job of poetry is not to have to say it all like this, in a clumsy list, in so many words, but to say it in fewer and to trigger a response that lasts forever in the consciousness, which is universal, and endless.

The job of this film is to demonstrate poetry, in action, and indeed it accomplishes this almost impossible task, sometimes effortlessly, perhaps endlessly.

Muchas Gracias Mr Jodorowsky!

Wiki links worth looking up:

‘Endless Poetry‘

‘The Dance of reality‘

World’s best comic, written by the Alejandro Jodorowsky

The Holy Mountain, funded by John Lennon

Psychomagic psychotherapy, pioneered by Alejandro Jodorowsky

Interview with Alejandro Jodorowsky about where he thinks things are heading

Interview with the FT and general overview of Alejandro Jodorowsky

King Lear: Glenda V Anthony

December 15, 2016December 15, 2016 ~ Bagriella ~ Leave a comment

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And so out they come and stand in the spotlights to two rounds of standing ovations. I stand up to put my coat on and leave, no one will miss my feeble claps amid the din of whoop whoops.

What have I missed? Why does Glenda and her stellar crew leave me numb? There was nothing in this production that was any better, to me, than any of the productions I’ve ever seen. There was much that was was unnecessary at best; at worst, a smutty distraction from the glory of the text.

But this audience and no doubt the packed house watching tonight, lapped up every drop of mostly dreary, conveyor-belt delivery, washed down with large glasses of “shocking” nudity, loud “atmospheric” music and stark lighting that, from a purely practical perspective, made long tracks of the best scenes, however loudly throttled out, almost inaudible, let alone moving.

The best thing about it was the digital display overhanging the stage, telling us what act and scene we were on. I found myself looking at it more and more with that sinking feeling you get when the next bus isn’t for another 25 minutes, finding myself hoping there’d been a tech hitch and the final scene was already “due”.

In contrast, the Barbican’s Anthony Sher-led production was the triumph that critics should hail as one of the best since John Hurt and Timothy West,and, I’d say, better. But for Anthony and co, there was no standing ovation.

learbarbican

Why? Because it was a great tragedy. We should all be highly suspicious of any tragic play that leaves you with enough energy to get up afterwards, let alone smile, clap and chat to your neighbor about how good it all was, not least Glenda.

Sher and his troop, through 5 acts and almost 3 hours , truly suspended my disbelief. Not for a half line did I look up to see if the scene’s ticking was digitally indicated overhead. Not for a second did I think I am here watching a load of celeb actors reciting Shakespeare like it needed their help, another language peppered with the odd ‘top ten catchphrases of all time”.

No, unlike Deborah Warner’s Old Vic production, Gregory Doran’s Barbican show was life, on stage, and we were on it too, with the actors, just as Shakespeare intended. Every line had its own intrinsic timeless resonance, which was then expanded, sometimes creating new and unusual contexts, sometimes merely amplifying well-known interpretations, always keeping us hooked.

The bad characters were not all bad, the good characters were not all good, there was nuance. All parts had their nuances and got subtle treatment, whereas it seemed at the Old Vic that all the characters dangled off Glenda’s Lear like annoyingly obnoxious puppets she had grown bored of or lost the skill to move. To Warner’s credit, perhaps that was the point?

The props and scenery at the Barbican worked to evoke a sense of the play’s contexts, amplifying subtly, never clumsily varnished on for ‘effect’, always using and trusting the weight of voice and text. I won’t say how or carry on with any comparisons. Anyone who sees it should come at it fresh. You’ll leave utterly drained yet uplifted.

The Barbican’s production was the best I’ve ever seen, the Old Vic’s one of the worst. But that’s just me and most may disagree, I’d just say, ignore the media hype around Glenda and take advantage of the fact Sher’s reigns on at the Barbican until 23rd December

Taking my mind off to La Gomera

November 16, 2016November 21, 2016 ~ Bagriella ~ Leave a comment

mynah-2

After a week spent in the Canaries, at La Finca eco-retreat on the verdent island of La Gomera, I find I’m relaxed, happy and well nourished. The only images I have been exposed to have been 100% natural, organic, no added flavours or colourings.

My eyes have been feeding on a natural diet of flora, fauna, sea, sky and the odd statue, here and there. I have drawn some pictures – a Whale, a tree, two Buddhas, some leaves, a frog playing a violin, some pond fish, a dolphin.

I have not been force-fed 200 marketing messages every hour, not mentally farting away my afternoons, as glossy mags,news, tweets, posts, ferment in my bloated brain.

On La Gomera I was free of this uninvited eye food, free to walk lighly without the constant call to eat or save or recycle or compost what I’d seen. I wonder if app developers have already come up with a mind-watchers programme, like weight watchers, complete with its own fit-bit that tracks how many visual calories you’ve consumed, giving tips for cutting down and making what’s seen and read less fattening and flatulence inducing…

a-horse-wearing-blinkers

Back in London, this app, in analogue, would simply be a pair of human blinkers that would filter ads on the escalator and other periphery visual onslaughts we unknowingly consume while on the go.

These human blinkers would probably have a company behind them: ‘BlinkedIn’. People could sign on to connect with like-minded BlinkedIners or BlinkInIdiots and share lots of images of what blank things you haven’t blinked@ that day 😉 #BlinkBlank

No doubt you’re already aware of the mushrooming ecosystem of ‘switch it off’ apps and new ‘old skool’ devices designed to cut down on sensory overload. But this is not just a tech problem. It cannot be switched off through an app or a device.

Its branches reach offline. It’s billboards, it’s newspapers, it’s endless supplements within supplements in the Sunday and Saturday news. It’s magazines, its more box sets and more telly and more sport everywhere, in the corners and centres and sides of our eyes, all the time.

In one 45-minute journey, the average London commuter is exposed to more than 130 adverts, featuring more than 80 different products. Only half of that information makes any impact, while unprompted we can remember none of the blur of adverts. In an entire day, we’re likely to see 3,500 marketing messages (Source: Guardian)

I’m not saying that we don’t need and like and even love some and/ all of these things, even some ads. I’m just repeating the ancient Greek maxim that still seems to stand the test of time ‘meden agan’ (μηδὲν ἄγαν) – ‘Anything in excess is too much’. We must be more aware. We must pay more attention to things, one at a time. Our brains, under the strain of sensory overload, start to shut down to conserve battery power, in self-defence, as any sensible computer would. This shutting down amounts to a growing inertia, disconnection from ourselves and what really makes us tick, both physically and mentally.

After just a week of so called ‘disconnection’ i.e. no wifi, no city, no TV, No news, pure visual detox, I felt completely rebooted and ready to start smaller, healthy doses of meaningful visual connection. Now I’ve been back ‘in the world’ a week, I’m visually farting already, but my gut is stronger and digestion is, I think, more efficient. My visual blood-sugar is more stable, better able to cope with any force feeding/self-indulgent binging I might do to sweeten up tonight’s commute.

I’d thoroughly recommend a week on La Gomera, one of the quieter, most verdant of the Canaries. And while I’m on the subject of Islands and birds I’d recommend devoting some precious attention to ‘The Island‘ by Aldous Huxley, if you need a healthy complement to watching the flora, fauna sea and sky….

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