Two Types of People

There are many ways in which the world divides into two types of people. My most recent observation of the phenomenon is the difference between those who are aware of their surroundings and those who are not. You can find the latter type blocking two aisles simultaneously in the supermarket with a trolley whilst they search for something. Avoiding inconvenience to others is simply not on their agenda. Such a person will not register someone coming in the other direction until after they have looked at the view/tied their shoelace/finished their conversation.

One of the ways we now learn that the world does not consist of two types of people is in gender terms. We now understand the old male/female distinctions as being inadequate. There is spectrum, not a division. That said the world does divide into those who are prepared to grapple with the necessary learning and change in order to understand and try to use pronouns properly and those who stick with the old ways.

The danger, if that is the right word, is to identify all these two-nesses as right and wrong. That way lies divide and rule, the top line of the would-be dictator's play book. In this world anyone who says 'Hang on a moment, what about this minority who will suffer when you do that' is dismissed as woke. Or wokey-woke, the insult of choice now being used by the raving right round here. I felt the enemies of the loony left needed a name. And of course there are two kinds of people. Those who feel that woke is an insult and those who would gladly pick it up and wear it as a crown (that thought ⓒ West Wing Season 7 - presidential debate episode).

Our current UK Government is made up of two types of people - those who thought Brexit would be a good idea and those who didn't but were prepared to ignore that for a cabinet post. They are now discovering that more is needed from a government than to allow themselves to be used by Russia to destabilise Europe.

Me or you? Us or them? Maybe the world divides into two types of people - those who like dividing the world into two types of people and those who do not. Perhaps we should all be a bit slower to run to one side or the other.

Sacha and Simon

I hadn't realised, until reading an article in Tuesday's Education Guardian just now (yeah, yeah I'm behind again but still striving to read a newspaper every day even if it isn't that day's), that the Baren Cohens, Sacha and Simon, were related.

Now on one level we are all related and people with similar surnames are more related than others so those with identical, unusual surnames are more related even than they, but it had passed me by, as so much of life does these days.

Here's the interesting thing. Simon Baron-Cohen is Professor of Development Psychology at Cambridge. He wrote the best book I have ever read on male/female differences called The Essential Difference (buy from Amazon here). He is an expert on autism.

Sacha is better known as his characters Ali-G and Borat.

Now Simon's latest piece of work is about social awkwardness. Is there, he asks, a difference between the way autistic and non-autistic people react to socially awkward situations?

So Sacha, whose comedy gift is to place ordinary people and celebrities in socially awkward situations, is doing exactly the same work as Simon but to popular appeal rather than to scientific journal recognition. What a double act.

A Cunning Plan

I've told a lot of people this but it may as well be a matter of public record. Liz and I love trying to get to know people over food and throughout our married life have tried to invite people round for meals regularly. By and large this has involved one session of work-eating per week - say a couple of people and an agenda or reason for meeting, and one session of fun - friends for food and drinks and no agenda.

Now that Liz finds her working week in the 60-70 hour area and gets home pretty tired after a 13 hour day it is proving impossible to entertain in the way we used to. So here's the cunning plan. From now on most of our entertaining will be compressed into one Saturday evening a month, usually the second Saturday. Once a month, 25 people or so for food and drinks and chat and whatever - a combination of agenda and social.

The aim is particularly to mix up people we meet during the month from all our social/pastoral scenes plus neighbours. Last week we thanked the people who decorated our house before we moved in with a meal in the first of what we hope will be many such happy occasions.

And I get to do cooking. Which I'd do anyway but this way I can call it work. Result.