Alexei on Thatcher . . . and Personality Disorders

Damn you, Alexei Sayle! You beat me to it! - the observation that Thatcher was a classic case of  Borderline Personality Disorder.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofmFNggh8lk

This is what Alexei actually said to Jon Snow on Channel 4 News on the day that Thatcher died:

"I think of her as the first modern Personality Disorder politician. I think that's why Blair is so cut up [distressed]. They've both got similar narcissistic Borderline Personality Disorders. She was just . . . bonkers. She seemed completely nuts . . .  This woman was crazy. This woman was completely false. She had a completely messianic sense of her own rightness. She came out with strings of cliches and prejudices. It didn't mean she wasn't an effective politician . . . She just came out with prejudices strung together as policy."

Thank you Alexei!

I think he's wrong, however, about Blair, who is clearly a psychopath. Too strong? Take a look at the Wikipedia (etc) lists of criteria for diagnosis of psychopathy, and then tell me he isn't.

Women, for some reason, don't tend to be diagnosed as psychopaths. Instead, many women can be clearly seen to have Borderline Personality Disorder [Also called Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder.] It may be a wide spectrum, but here's the list of criteria for diagnosis:


* characterized by unusual variability and depth of moods. These moods may secondarily affect cognition and interpersonal relationships.

* impulsive behaviour

* intense and unstable interpersonal relationships

* unstable self-image

* feelings of abandonment and an unstable sense of self.

* often engage in idealization and devaluation of themselves and of others, alternating between high positive regard and heavy disappointment or dislike.

* feel emotions more easily, more deeply, and for longer than others do.

* people with BPD are often exceptionally idealistic, joyful, and loving. However, they can feel overwhelmed by negative emotions, experiencing intense grief instead of sadness, shame and humiliation instead of mild embarrassment, rage instead of annoyance, and panic instead of nervousness.

* especially sensitive to feelings of rejection, isolation, and perceived failure.

* often aware of the intensity of their negative emotional reactions and, since they cannot regulate them, shut them down entirely. (This can be harmful to people with BPD, as negative emotions alert people to the presence of a problematic situation and move them to address it.)

* impulsive behaviours are common, including: substance or alcohol abuse, eating disorders,  and reckless driving.

* experience chronic feelings of emptiness, inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights)

* experience transient, stress-related paranoid ideation

* marked tendency to act unexpectedly and without consideration of the consequences

* marked tendency to engage in quarrelsome behaviour and to have conflicts with others, especially when impulsive acts are thwarted or criticized

* liability to outbursts of anger or violence, with inability to control the resulting behavioural explosions

* difficulty in maintaining any course of action that offers no immediate reward; unstable and capricious (impulsive, whimsical) mood


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderline_personality_disorder


If you wanted to be flippant about it you might say that women like Thatcher behave as though they're having an ongoing triple-strength bout of PMT. The condition certainly seems related to levels of oestrogen.

People who knew Thatcher tend to speak about her intensity, her rage, her inappropriate anger, her temper, her love of combat, her deliberate picking of quarrels and fights, her desire to dominate and her inability to consider or to tolerate views that were different to or in opposition to hers.

She would, however, balance out such behaviour with a pretence of solicitousness and caring, which many in her circle took to be genuine. She was a decent enough actress, and knew how to manipulate others, as well as bully them. She abused both her personal and her political power. She was charismatic, but not in a good way.

If she saw herself as some sort of national or international supermum, then that wasn't in a good way either. She was massively over-opinionated, quite possibly because she was at heart very insecure, and therefore willing or needing to latch on to some sort of faith or ideology, such as the neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism she learnt from the likes of Hayek and Keith Joseph. Having become a disciple of these political and economic beliefs, she ran with them like a true believer. Her mission was indeed to convert the world to this ridiculous, materialistic, fanatical, 'free market' doctrine, the results of which we're all living with now.

It's possible that the dementia which set in during her time as prime minister arose from stress, from lack of sleep, from physical and emotional exhaustion, and from her BPD.

Whatever. I suppose it's a pity that nobody in her family or in her immediate circle of advisors was able to see that there was something seriously wrong with her, and therefore help her to seek professional help with her condition. Not that she'd have listened to them, or been willing to entertain the thought that she had some serious issues. That's the problem with BPD - it's a vicious cycle.

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Whilst on YouTube for Alexei, take a look at these other clips -

Margaret Thatcher Death Celebrated By Critics   -   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHlHxiZeUK0


Margaret Thatcher's death celebrated in Brixton    -  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrxy93fY3vI


MARGARET THATCHER DEAD!! Brixton Celebrates Party - Ghost Town   -  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikhRGrJReJ8


'The Witch is Dead' - Street Party - Brixton - 8th April 2013: Part II    -   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgaYos7q24o


The Late Night Street Party "Celebrations" in #Brixton following news of Margaret Thatcher's Death  -   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQE7le-ZfMs


'The Witch is Dead' - Street Party - Brixton - 8th April 2013: Part III    -   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv-MRwLp_b8


Glasgow George sq . THATCHER IS DEAD 8/4/13    -   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzXY9Lld-38


THATCHER IS DEAD!!!! IT'S TIME TO PARTY!!!!    -   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j5Jpmu67t8


Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead   -   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMFjFoq6T9M


Margaret Thatcher - DING DONG THE WICKED WITCH IS DEAD   -   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEpzzsdZT6E

Layer 408 . . . Christmas, Nordic Noir, Scandinavia, Crime Fiction, the Millenium Trilogy, Larsson, the Dragon Tattoo, Wallender, Existential Angst,The Pope and Thought For Today

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I suppose it was quite an odd thing to be doing on Christmas Eve: watching a documentary called Nordic Noir, whose subject was Scandinavian crime fiction. However, since I seem to be one of very few people who have yet to either read the book or see the film of Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, I'm aware I'm missing out on quite a worldwide phenomenon - the Millenium Trilogy. It seems Stieg Larsson is just one of several Scandinavian authors of crime fiction who are well worth reading. This documentary, narrated by Mariella Frostrup, is well worth watching. I obviously have a lot of catching up to do. I haven't been watching the Wallander series either.

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/tv/2010/12/nordic-noir-scandinavian-crime-fiction.shtml

The programme was particularly good on the novels of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö.

Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, both journalists and both politically radical, met in 1961 while working for magazines published by the same company. They married the next year and the carefully planned crime series (essentially police procedurals), 10 books in 10 years, was written in the evenings, after their children had been put to bed.

[They apparently each wrote alternate chapters of each of their books.]

According to Wahlöö, their intention was to "use the crime novel as a scalpel cutting open the belly of the ideological pauperized and morally debatable so-called welfare state of the bourgeois type."

http://www.scandinavianbooks.com/crime-book/swedish-author/sjowall-wahloo.html

The Nordic countries seem similar to Scotland in many ways - various interviewees in the documentary talked about the 'cold, bleak, and dark winters', and the 'long, dark nights', that frequently lead to depression. There was an example given of someone who went to live in Sweden (or was it Finland?), found themselves becoming horribly depressed, and yet found the angst and depression lifted immediately when they returned to London. Which is interesting - since London itself can often be cold, gloomy and depressing. Perhaps not quite as 'dark, grim and difficult' as more northern climes.

Peter Høeg is a Danish writer of fiction who wrote an acclaimed book called 'Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow'. "I feel more highly for snow than for love", says Høeg/Smilla. Interesting thought. I do admire Danish intelligence.

Karim Fossum, on the other hand, says of her (crime) books, "I'm really writing about death  - and how it affects us." We need more books about death and how it affects us.

Jo Nesbo - who comes across as quite hardboiled and sardonic , said,  "Norway was a very poor country that became a very rich country - thanks to the discovery of oil and gas. Money corrupted us, though many of us want to stay small and simply get by - by doing our own thing." Apparently his books ask questions about why so many people are nowadays so violent, and about what's happening to our increasingly affluent, corrupt and degenerate societies.

In an interview about the Wallender character the actor who plays him in the Swedish TV series draws an interesting parallel between being a 'good detective' and being a 'good professional' in other fields that are personally and emotionally demanding. He rightly makes the point that a good practitioner in any 'caring' profession works 'like an artist', using intuition and instinct.

Or at least they used to, before the era of targets, performance management, payment by results, bonuses, league tables, covering your back and looking after Number One - first and foremost. No room for that touchy-feely, self-sacrificing stuff these days. Deliver or die. I do hate that word deliver, in the context of professional practice.

The Swedish TV series of Wallander apparently explores ideas about professional self-sacrifice through episodes like the one where his daughter decides to become a police officer. Wallander is shaken because he understands just how much the job demands - and how it's almost inevitable that the side effects will be  'alcoholism and loneliness'. I know far too many good people who went at least some way down that road in their chosen profession.

When the daughter says she'll just quit if things get too rough, he replies, "Good cops don't quit! They allow themselves to be ground down! Without doing a thing to stop it . . . The job absorbs you . . . You don't even notice you're losing the people you love . . ."

How many good people do I know who've suffered relationship breakdowns, physical breakdowns or personal breakdowns . . .

"You end up with a world-weary disenchantment because of the things you witness . . . "

And so say all of us.

The tragic irony is that the superb young actress who played the role of Wallender's daughter committed suicide whilst still young. Maybe the world is too unbearable for sensitive and brilliant minds. But I wonder what happens if such people decide to set aside their own pain and angst and focus their lives on serving others and helping to make the  world a better place for others. Maybe this is what actually keeps the Wallanders of this world functioning, in a strange, lonely, alcoholic, ironic way.

World-wearyness and disenchantment might be the starting point for some careers, and not just the end point. Witness the increasing numbers of people who have given up on shit like banking in order to do something worthwhile with their lives.

Happy Christmas!

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PS The Pope

Ratso was quite a catch for the Today programme yesterday - giving us the benefit of his wisdom and spiritual insight in the Thought For Today slot.

Oh Lord.

If we have to have Popes then I personally want them to sound Italian, or at least Mediterranean.  I definitely do not want a Pope whose accent resembles the cartoonish characters we used to know and hate in the old films about World War Two. Or even Basil Fawlty doing a German accent.

I need to make myself clear - I am not anti-German, though goodness knows plenty of my extended family have, or had, good reason to be. There are many things to admire in modern Germany, and in German history, since in many ways it's been a cradle of European civilisation. It has an amazing track record in philosophy, science, engineering, technology, invention, and manufacturing. It led the reaction against corrupt Roman Catholicism - German protestant thinking insisting that we can all have a direct, personal link with the metaphysical and spiritual, without any need for priestly channeling. Its version of social democracy has been far more enlightened than ours.  It's been the key player in the European Union.

Ratzinger, on the other hand, is the opposite of a progressive, enlightened leader. He's been a key figure in the cover-up of the child abuse scandals, and the decades-long refusal to give any ground on the use of condoms. So what does he now have to say?

Not much. The Messiah was a great leader. He brought liberation to humankind. He was the saviour of people throughout the world. [Mmmmm - even non-Christians?] He was born in poverty and obscurity and opened a path that leads to fulfillment in life. [Admittedly the Buddha was born an Indian prince and not a pauper, but didn't he do something similar?] God gives us hope, and brings us life. [Not me he doesn't - I get mine elsewhere.] May God bless you all.

Amen.

Have a nice day.
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Layer 25 Cool

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Humphrey Richard Adeane Lyttelton, jazz musician, writer and broadcaster, born May 23 1921; died April 25 2008

Humphrey Lyttelton died last week. He was 86 years old and one of the coolest men on the planet. He was self-actualisation and Zen personified.

He loved art, music and laughter. He lived a life of continuous creativity on his own terms, and brought joy and laughter into the lives of anyone who knew him and anyone who watched him or listened to him perform.

“Politically, he was firmly, if surprisingly, on the left. Before joining the Grenadier Guards in 1941, he was sent to work in a south Wales steel mill to find out if he had the makings of a "captain of industry", but the experience turned him into a lifelong socialist.” (George Melly)

He taught himself to play a trumpet that he’d bought in the Charing Cross Road in 1936. After serving in WW2, with both rifle and trumpet, he went to art college. He became a musician and also a writer, broadcaster, cartoonist, composer, after-dinner speaker and critic.

“While music-making can be about bravura and bold proclamation, it is also about sharing, listening and waiting - and sympathetically responding. There is no conductor, often no score, so the latter qualities have to be even more finely tuned. These are not just pre-requisites for the making of good music, they are qualities for the making of a good life. An abundance of them is what made Humphrey Lyttelton special - and so widely loved, too.” (John Fordham, The Guardian)

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This last paragraph pretty much sums up what self-actualisation and Zen are all about. This paragraph describes a man who had fully developed spiritual, social and emotional intelligence. As well as having talent and intellect, and as well as being highly creative in several fields, Humph knew how to share, how to listen to others, and when and how to sympathetically respond. He was indeed widely loved.

He was a band leader, but he was a ‘servant-leader’. He was the epitome of Taoist ideals. The great books of Taoism, the Tao Te Ching and the I Ching, describe how leaders should fulfill their responsibilities, and Humph, being an enlightened leader, intuitively and instinctually seemed to ‘lead without leading’, as the books say. Although he never shirked ‘bravura and bold proclamation’ when those qualities were called for. He set out to work with the best people and to encourage them to give the best of themselves, and to become even better.

Jazz has always been about jamming. It’s about communication, interaction, improvisation, self-expression, group collaboration, getting the best out of yourself and out of other people who share your passion and your enthusiasm. It’s about putting yourself at the service of a group that’s trying to create something of quality, something meaningful and joyful, something worth sharing with a wider audience. It’s about playing and having fun. It’s about experimenting and trusting those around you to be original and experimental and creative, and getting further inspired by their creativity. It's about honest and direct musical expression of feelings ranging from joy to sadness, which is the blues, and jazz.

Having read a couple of obituaries I’ve picked up a list of words that describe Humph. They add up to a man who was totally cool. Everyone aspires to be cool, but most people know they will never be cool. Humph really was totally cool. He was cool when he was young, and he was still cool at the age of 86.

He was downbeat, understated, straightfaced, ironic, courteous, modest and moderate. But he had natural authority and could be intransigent and determined. He was broad-minded, charismatic, vibrant, funny, entertaining, enthusiastic and influential. “Fun was something he took very seriously”, wrote Jeremy Hardy, who also said Humph could show an austere demeanor, and that he had “disdainful and impassive lips that soon wrinkled into a lovely smile”. Hardy concludes that Humph was naturally and instinctively erudite and elegant, and that all in all “he was a beautiful man”. Blow that out your trumpet. That’s cool, man.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/apr/28/radio.bbc
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/apr/30/bbc.radio1?gusrc=rss&feed=media
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphrey_Lyttelton (also contains other Humph links)
http://www.lastingtribute.co.uk/tribute/lyttelton/2805210
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article3827144.ece

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Apparently Humph wrote 8 books, one of which I picked up a while ago in the £2 bookshop in Greenwich - “It Just Occurred To Me . . . The Reminiscences and Thoughts of Chairman Humph.(2006)” It’s been sitting near the top of my pile of books waiting to be read.

The front cover quotes Pete Townshend, who, whatever you may think about him, isn’t exactly given to mindless enthusiasm or over-generous praise: “Humph is cool. Humph is now!”

To give you a flavour of the book here’s a quote from Humph’s introduction.

“It just occurred to me that writing this book has been very similar to blowing an extended solo on the trumpet - following thoughts wherever they’ve led, through a jungle of ideas and memories, quotations and clichés, high notes, blue notes and, no doubt, a few wrong notes, for which I apologise in advance. On second thoughts, no, I don’t. You’ll get precious few right notes if you worry about hitting wrong notes.”
A bit like a blog really. Improvise, and be damned. Get blogging! Express yourself!

Gonna miss you Humph.

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Talking About Death, Talking About Life.

Friends are always shocked when I talk about death. “Well I am nearly 60, and I’ve had a very stressful life in some ways . . . ” I think it’s a big mistake not to consider the possibility of heart attacks, cancer, road accidents, whatever, and a mistake to deliberately avoid talking about funerals and wills. You need to sort these things out. It’s only fair.

I want my children to inherit my money, my house, and most of my worldly goods, such as they are. But they won’t want my precious vinyl collection, my CDs even, or most of my books. Or my diaries, notebooks and journals, though my grandchildren eventually might. A lot of my thousands of photos and videos won’t be of any great interest to them, especially the ones concerned with education. (Fortunately it’s easy to run off copies of the digital stuff for those who want them.) They won’t want my guitars, or even my cars. They won’t want my much loved and often played audio tapes. They definitely won’t want my cat, who is determined to outlive me.

Maybe I should just organise an auction for those friends and family who are interested in having any of my stuff, with the proceeds going to my children and grandchildren, or to charity. Anything not attracting bids could be just given away or thrown away. Which could well be most of it. Especially the cat. Then again, maybe auctions just favour the wealthiest, which wouldn’t be very fair.

I need to say loudly and clearly that I don’t want a funeral that’s in any way whatsoever concerned with God or Christianity. Got nothing against either of them. Just don’t want to have anything to do with them. No church, no chapel, no Bible, no priest.

Over the past couple of years I’ve needed to go to a number of funerals, all of them in churches and chapels, and all of them conducted by priests, or women who were very priestly. Every one a preacher. Every one droning out platitudes about life, death and God. Besides finding these things boring and frustrating I found them all quite disrespectful to the deceased and to the gathering.

I don’t blame the individuals - I’m sure they were sincere and were doing their best, as they saw it. But I don’t go to a funeral expecting to hear about and sing about the glory of God. I want to celebrate the life of the person I care about. I want to stay focused on the main business.

Most of the time these priests have never even met or known the surviving members of the family prior to the death, let alone the deceased. No wonder they pad it all out with waffle about God and Jesus and Heaven. They must surely get sick of doing it, the same stuff over and over, just different backdrops and different audiences of mourners for their performances.

I don't envy them. It can’t be easy going round meeting people who have just lost a loved one, asking them to give some information that can be used at the funeral. Meeting people who aren’t necessarily very able to communicate insightful thoughts at the best of times, let alone when they’re full of grief. Though there presumably are some priests somewhere who are gifted at this kind of thing, and gifted at conducting inspirational and meaningful funeral services.

I definitely DO want someone to read out something from Zen and Taoist texts. Something wise and wonderful that might bring some spiritual insights to bear on the situation, something that might be helpful or useful to at least some of those who come to see me off. Something that’s maybe transcendental and joyful and uplifting. Something that’s philosophical and wise, and nothing to do with religion.

Maybe someone should read something that’s funny and likely to make people at least smile. The funnier the better. Much better than crying. I’ve got at least a couple of friends who could MC, tell jokes and stories.

And music. Sweet soul music. Blues and boogie. Rhythm’n’rock. Especially at the party afterwards. Finally I get to play the music I like at a party. Pity I won’t be there to enjoy it. Maybe I’ll organise a pre-funeral party. Have a kind of dress rehearsal to make sure it’s going to go well. Ever the perfectionist.

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The Today programme on Radio 4 today had a feature on death and on American academic Randy Pausch: “Is the taboo about death starting to lift? Listen to Jeff Zaslow who co-authored the book of "The Last Lecture", and to Mike Jarvis, director of the Natural Death Centre.”
Read more about Randy Pausch, and why he decided to do a lecture on life and death when he knew he had only a few weeks to live, on the links below. You can also view his lecture on YouTube. Life, how to live it, and what lessons to take from it (see examples below).
This is another very cool guy. Only 46. Tragic.

"Never lose your childlike wonder. It’s what drives us.
Tell the truth and be earnest
Believe in karma.
Pursue childhood dreams and try to achieve them, but more than anything, live your life well."

http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Pausch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Meb_-wVop8I
http://it.wordpress.com/tag/randy-paush/