The hardest part about writing these blogs is ambition. It’s essentially impossible to pick a topic with the whole world at your fingertips. Now I know why Stephen Hawking writes books about the whole universe, or the whole of time. Coward.
Anyway, if you can’t discover something new, at least you can describe things well. To stick with the scientist theme: Newton and Einstein were famous for the ways that they classified the universe, not the things they invented. Ok, ok, excuses out the way.
This blog is all about how we see things. Whether the world orbits you, or you orbit the world, it doesn’t matter; it’s all about where you’re standing.
There was a guy at university who had this Venn diagram t-shirt:
I absolutely love Venn diagrams (who doesn’t?). Although, looking back, this one actually isn’t correct (you can’t have ‘Music I used to like’ inside the circle ‘Music I like’). I was pretty impressed by it nevertheless. That t-shirt would definitely go on my list: ‘Things I used to like’.
Although the logic was flawed, the approach was sound. When you think about it, it’s possible to plot everything on a scale of popularity:
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So far so boring. BUT, where it gets interesting is when you add in a second axis, based on your own personal tastes.
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This is where it gets spicy. Now you can plot where you go along with the herd, and where you go against the stream, salmon-style (or Salmond-style if you’re a Scotch politics aficionado). You can also nuance your own likes – there’s room for strong or moderate dislike, and degrees of (un)popularity.
I had a crack at filling in my own diagram:
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So what do we learn? The main conclusion is that IHEL is by far the easiest bit to fill in. I guess that makes sense: stuff everyone likes is always in the media, and you notice it more if you hate it. ILEL is also pretty easy to do, but probably the most boring. No one cares that you like things that everyone else likes – you’re supposed to!
On the hatred side of things (or at least less popular, if hate is too strong a word for it), IHEH is pretty hard to do, at least without being super obvious and putting in stuff like ‘prejudice’ or ‘racism’.
But the real test of character is the ILEH quadrant. That’s what makes you you. All the great people of history are defined by the ILEH section. Martin Luther King Jr. would have had ‘Civil Rights’ in that section; Gandhi and George Washington would have had ‘independence’ (boo!). It’s rare people get famous for beliefs outside of that section. Similarly, if you think about your friends and family, they’re usually definable by what’s in that section too. So I guess that section is the most interesting. Which is pretty bleak when you think about what I put in there. Oh well.
The only thing the diagram doesn’t show is apathy. I am (ironically) a MASSIVE fan of apathy. I did figure out a way to make apathy an axis, but it involves building a 3-D structure. If there’s enough of a clamour, I’ll put some IKEA-style instructions online. I’m not holding my breath. Any more axes than that and we’re going to need 4 dimensions. Which, I suppose, brings us back to Stephen Hawking.
Apparently it’s good form to end these blogs with a ‘call to action’ (according to Ms. M. Space herself). So, in the comments, tell me one thing from one of the four segments on YOUR diagram. The more surprising, the better. There’ll be a prize for the best answer. It’ll be a turkey hat or something. I can promise anything I want – I’m only doing this once. Hahahahaha!
So long suckers!
Andy
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