As IF Times

This piece is inspired by a podcast to which I subscribe, entitled; Inner French.  The topic was the extent to which people have become unwittingly enslaved by the many electronic devices available in modern society. Specifically, this podcaster, Hugo Cotton, discusses the degree to which his daily activities became obsessively tied to the tabulations put out by his exercise watch.

While ostensibly, the watch was just an appendage to show time and distance travelled on his jogging runs, the other aspects of his life also monitored by the watch began to create a need in his mind to attain prescribed targets of things such as sleep duration and quality. In essence, he realized that this obsession with reaching targets prescribed by the watch were having adverse effects on his life and thus, he stopped wearing it except for the jogging runs.

I found this to be an interesting observation as this phenomenon has enslaved an entire world by linking their lives to electronic devices.  Of course, we’re not talking about basic smartphones per se; everyone in the world has one and that device is indelibly linked to each person’s lives and personality.  But phones are not just about basic communication as we all know.

What is more troubling is that people have fallen into the trance conveyed primarily by their phones on how to live their lives in general.

In the not too distant past, if people saw something on television or read something in a newspaper, it was deemed to be true, thus those platforms had enormous impact on people.  Clearly those who controlled those outlets would have significant leverage on any given society.  Cellphones, or more specifically, apps on smartphones have mostly taken over the role of TV and newspapers.  Instagram and Facebook are the modern equivalent of unimpeachable sources.

For some reason, there are endless tips and sage advice on how to ‘better’ one’s life or to more effectively perform some mundane task such as frying an egg or tying a shoe. Apparently we’ve been doing it wrong for centuries. There are targets given for physical competence, for cognitive ability or for raising your dogs and children.  We are given advice on the best foods to eat, at what time of the day to eat them, the subtleties of olive oil and the best things to buy at Costco.

We are measured against some mythical statistics on longevity and are given advice on how to attain such immortality by consuming the right amount of kale or by walking 8000 steps per day and drinking organic coconut water. Often this advice is given by 20 something year old ‘influencers’ with acne who’ve just graduated from high school (or not).  Not only that, but apps are always available to measure the targets of such an idealized life. As noted in Hugh Cotton’s experience, people fuss over reaching statistical targets arbitrarily set by ‘experts’.

And people believe it.  They believe the advice on how to get wealthy simply by leveraging themselves in real estate or to put it all into Crypto currencies. People become stressed when they compare the ‘progress’ in their lives versus those depicted on social media platforms. It is never good enough. Invariably, people will find famous people who will espouse sentiments favorable to their own and thus the modern phenomenon of ‘following’ people becomes the norm. Admit it or not, the phenomenon of hanging on to every word of powerful influencers is as additive as any drug.

With great irony, the proliferation of ‘information’ on so many levels creates more stress in people than the liberating health benefits that these devices purport to provide.  There are unrealistic expectations created to which people cannot achieve, thus fostering people’s natural insecurities. Think of the business model of Peloton, the stationary virtual bike machine in which you are on a leaderboard against other cyclists.   Think ab0ut Duolingo, a language learning app in which you are on a leaderboard with other learners.  While it can be argued that these are just effective tools,  in practice, people can become handcuffed to their own unrealistic expectations and perceived inadequacies and in fact may bring out obsessive behaviors.   By their own hand, people have increasingly and unknowingly chained themselves to their electronic devices.

It’s worthwhile to remember that not all ‘statistically’ derived advice is valid. Some of us will remember that in the 1960’s, 4 out of 5 doctors recommended a certain brand of cigarette. And we must not forget the famous phrase attributed to Mark Twain: “…there are lies, damned lies and statistics…”

link:  https://thepostmillennial.com/canadian-cops-advise-car-owners-to-leave-keys-at-their-front-door-so-thieves-can-steal-without-confrontation?utm_campaign=64530

Deserved or not, populations of different countries have reputations that are generally accepted as being true. Scots are dour, the French are snooty, Americans are simple and the Germans are orderly.  Canadians have historically been renowned for an admirable trait; they’re known as being tolerant and nice.

With immigration and travel, populations lose some of their traditional characteristics and stereotypes are harder to maintain.

As existing native populations are proportionally reduced and as old traditions and values get watered down, a certain homogeneity appears across all nations.

One such universal aspect of a watered down culture is crime.  No one can claim that any society is without its share of criminal activity of course, but no one can deny the growing level of crime in all western nations.  Were this not the case, budgets for policing would be falling, whereas just the opposite is true. According to statistica.com, in American cities, 65 of the 300 largest cities in America spend 40 percent of their general budgets on policing.  I won’t go into discussion of how to parse the statistics, that’s fodder for party conversations.

What is interesting is the uniquely Canadian solution to some criminal activity recently proposed by the Toronto police department.  In response to the relentless crime wave of stolen cars, many of which were stolen by taking the keys right from people’s homes, the brave constabulary have proposed placing car keys right at the front door of the house to make it easier for the thieves. He may have also advised placing some cookies at the door, but we don’t know.  Clearly, this preserves the reputation of niceness on the part of Canadians.

To be fair, the police may have borrowed the idea from the strategy used in New York city in the eighties when cars were left unlocked with a sign on the window stating “no radio”. The idea is the same: crime is going to happen anyway; why make it difficult? While some may think there’s an elegant logic to this way of thinking, it leads us down a road to an undeniable conclusion:  Why have any police at all?  As a matter of fact, if you keep pulling on that thread of logic, why have any justice apparatus including judges and especially lawyers?  If you’re in the locksmith business, you may want to learn to code.

As we have seen in major urban cities, theft, often brazen daylight theft by gangs of ‘youts’ are commonplace, especially in the US.  Employees are instructed not to impede the thieves and thus they ransack retail stores with fearless abandon. Any day can be black Friday at the Nike store or the nearest Best Buy or CVS. Actually, it’s better than Black Friday, because you don’t even have to be inconvenienced by paying.

Responses to this have varied from enclosing display cases with plastic or mesh to just closing down retail stores altogether. Flagship stores of big retail chains have completely closed down in cities such as New York, San Francisco and Chicago.

As in Canada, the logic behind the acceptance of a bit of petty crime here and there is so that the citizens can be ‘safe’.  The mayor of Britain’s London, Sadiq Khan, has stated that violent crime is just something to accept when living in a big city; but without explaining Tokyo or Shanghai.  We hear this word invoked a lot these days as a pretext of not doing anything or to follow policies so inane as to be idiotic.  As we’ve seen from the very recent Covid debacle, being safe meant policies that were enacted even if they harmed or even killed you.

The idea of a safe society has been severely perverted from its original intent. It’s not supposed to be safe for those who make others unsafe. This is almost the entire point of paying for a police force and a justice apparatus.  However, if nations such as Canada determine that they don’t want their citizens to inconvenience criminal behaviour, they should at least change the semantics.  Let’s just call them faux pas.  If by chance, these perps are caught in the act, the ‘police’ can take them aside, wag a finger and tsk tsk them.  Perhaps some will require a scolding.  In the most extreme cases, a strongly worded letter would be sent to their address.

This can free up a lot of manpower and resources for other more serious breaches of society’s rules;  such as posting rude comments on-line.