In defense of hypocrisy

‘Lean back under a tree, put your arms behind your head, wonder at the pass we’ve come to, smile and remember that the beginnings and ends of man’s every great enterprise are untidy.’ (Sebastian de Grazia, political scientist, 1962, ‘Of Time, Work and Leisure’)

First, a thank you to those who commented and offered their congratulations on my last post. It is much appreciated.

Now to address one of my biggest, most glaring inconsistencies, one that affects many of us in some way, shape or form: the hypocrisy of berating and disparaging technology but then begrudgingly embracing it. I seem to be great at giving advice (note to fellow colleagues: 90% of the ideas I share with you I don’t even use myself) but not following my own. I’m happy to accept and the advice of others, but as far as practising what I preach? Fuhgedaboutit.

Over the past few years, I’ve kept in touch with some friends, lost touch with others. Most people these days are on Facebook, but a couple of close friends – including my literary inspiration the G-Man - aren’t. Thankfully, whenever they’ve got big news to share, they do let me know at some point.

Otherwise, it’s so easy to miss the big stuff. I’m not necessarily criticising social media and how it has transformed communication – this is more of a lament – it’s just a statement of the changing times and how we interact with our friends. And yes, I am aware that relationships change and people don’t keep in such close contact anymore. After all, time pressure dictates that we have to be oh-so-selective about whom we keep in touch with on a more personal level.

Why is everyone so damn busy?

‘People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.’ (Seneca)

As we’ve progressed – or have we? (another question for another time) – time has become more and more precious. With more things to do, and with endless possibilities for occupying our time, we feel more crunched and under more pressure. The opportunity costs of leisure and how we fill our free time leads to stress. For some, anyway – it all depends on how you handle it, and how curious and open you are about what’s going on around you.

I’m still slowly discovering things about friends through Facebook. I have to admit that I don’t use Facebook very much other than as an email tool, and so I probably miss a lot of news as and when it happens. But every now and then my old man or another friend will say something like ‘hey, did you know Esmeralda has a 2-year old kid?’ I had no idea.

I vowed that I would never do that. I fondly remember the good old days –sentimentality/nostalgia alert! – of getting phone calls from friends, both close and not-so-close with the news that they were getting married. Even in far-flung places (in Nigeria, for example) I would get a phone call announcing the news.

Now, far from lamenting this, I’ve given up and joined in with the rest of them (if you can’t beat 'em…). I’m just as bad, I suppose, for a less than personal touch with sharing my news. I got in touch directly with a few people, but not as many as I would have liked. I’d rather have shared it more personally, but time, distance and a dreadfully sore arm and neck meant that it was awfully hard. So what better way to embrace my advancing years and my rapidly increasing disgruntlement with the state of the world today than by sharing my news on this blog? I never thought it would come to this. But then again, I also never thought I’d get married.

Anyway, thanks again for the well wishes, if any of the same people are reading.

‘Life is long if you know how to use it.’ (Seneca)

A changing audience

Speaking of which, it’s interesting how dramatically my audience has changed over the years. When I started this blog’s predecessor in early 2009, I had a readership of a select few, and I only one or two of my colleagues in Kyrgyzstan knew of the blog. 90% of my audience came from the US, the UK and one or two other European countries like Latvia and Spain (a few former students and a couple of friends), plus maybe the odd reader in Germany or Denmark. Strangely, I had a fairly consistent group of readers from Thailand, and I never was sure why (posts with titles like this probably had something to do with it).

When I got to Kyiv in September 2010, my readership in Ukraine was virtually zero. I might have had a friend or two from my time in Lviv reading, but that was it. I kept this thing a secret from colleagues and I didn’t even be-friend colleagues on Facebook. I just wanted to keep my ramblings and diatribes away from work.

[Regular, loyal readers will know how I was ‘outed’ in November of that year, but I won’t re-hash that here. If you really want to know, feel free to delve back into the archives from those months.]

Fast forward a few years later. My readership has gone from 90/10 outside Ukraine/inside Ukraine to something closer to a 60/40 ratio. I won’t comment on this any further or offer up any insightful analysis other than to pithily say that it’s all quite interesting.

And it segues into this...

Colliding worlds apart

In my world, other than discussions and preparations regarding my summer nuptials, the past fortnight or so has been dominated by two big news stories: tragic events in Eastern Ukraine and Deflategate. I would say that the number of people who are following both events as closely as I am has to be close to zero, at least among readers. I’m not sure what it says about my mental state, or the state of the world that I’ve divided my attention and concern equally between the two.

There’s a better than average chance that non-Ukrainian readers aren’t totally au fait with the latest events in the East. And equally, my Ukrainian readers have probably got little to no idea about Deflategate, even in this media-saturated world. There’s also a fairly decent chance that I’ve got no idea what I’m talking about.

News fatigue is natural and so after time, stories slowly die out and become less relevant on the global stage. This time one year ago, Ukraine hardly knew what it was in for. By the end of February, people the world over were watching and anguished friends and family were emailing to see whether I was okay, some with offers to whip me out of here to a safer place. As 2014 wore on, events escalated and progressively got worse, but it never faded away. People here remained anxious and weary and never let their guard down. Never mind supposed ceasefires and more Russian sanctions, the day-to-day nervousness and tension remained at the forefront. For those outside Ukraine, you’d be forgiven for thinking the worst of it, or at least most of it, was all over and it was onto other things. And even over the holidays, there was a bit of a lull, and I for one thought that we were in for a protracted stalemate.

But then it all escalated once more in the East with more grad rocket attacks and attacks on trolleybuses and much else besides. Naturally this concerns and worries me and is never far from my thoughts.

People here are wondering why no one outside of Ukraine is paying close attention (I wrote about tunnel vision last February), but whenever I scan news websites (NYT, Guardian, FT, Reuters, Bloomberg, New Republic, Al Jazeera) there is certainly coverage. Not on the level as last February, but there is stuff there.

Small consolation.

And in other news…on the other side of the world…

 (©Grantland)

This Sunday is Super Bowl Sunday (Patriots v Seahawks), which has become a de-facto national holiday in America, with more people calling in sick on the day after than any other day of the year. Growing up in Europe, with the time difference, the Monday after the game would be a day off school so that we could stay up late and watch it. Since I was about 6, I have only missed 1 Super Bowl, and that was when I lived in Lviv and had no way of watching it. (It also turned out to be one of the most epically dull Super Bowls of all-time, so I didn’t miss much.)

In the days leading up the game, there’s an overload of coverage, with media interviews, write-ups about players, stories about childhood trauma and adversity leading to eventual glory and success…you name it, the stories are there. But one story has really dominated coverage, and that’s the story of whether the Patriots intentionally deflated their footballs before their last game. It turns out that 11 of the 12 balls had been deflated and the Patriots would appear to be responsible. To those not up-to-date on American football – and why would or should you be? – if you’re not from New England, you generally intensely, vehemently despise the Patriots. They’re like Darth Vader and the Evil Empire. People are having a field day with this, and everyone is against the Patriots on this one. There is talk of their legacy being tarnished, and a widespread culture of cheating permeating through the team. (they were busted back in 2007 for Spygate, when they illegally videotaped another team’s defensive signals during a practice).

In the insular world of American pro football, where we are days away from one team being crowned ‘world champion’, this is pretty huge. As Bob Ryan in the Boston Globe said the other day, ‘the scope of the coverage has been almost unimaginable, with Deflategate not only dominating the sports pages, but also leading the nightly network news. One day last week it was the leading Twitter trending topic globally, not merely domestically.’ Charles B Pierce from Grantland said that Americans are ‘a nation of infantilized yahoos’, implying that that was why people were paying so much attention to it.

I’m torn between both stories. What does this say about me? Priorities askew?

What a world we live in. Somebody once said something about tragedy and farce and how they’re connected but I just don’t want to look it up. Sometimes it’s better not knowing. The old-fashioned side of me would rather not know for now.

We can lament the fact we now share all of our personal, most intimate news on Facebook and how the times they are a-changing. We can lament the fact that people are more concerned with deflated footballs instead of more serious news. We can lament the fact that teachers, policeman, firefighters and nurses make so much less than actors, musicians, athletes and D-list celebrities. We can lament that things will never seem to make sense in this world today and we can lament that what constitutes news is changing ever-so-rapidly before our eyes. All this lamenting will never help us make sense of it all. It’s just the way it is.

Speaking of things which don’t make sense

And finally, the long awaited denouement of a season of football gambling and battling Olya and the cat. You will recall that last year, the cat prevailed. This year, with only one game remaining, Olya has beaten us both. Two years running, and I can’t do better than my fiancée and a cat in picking friggin’ football games. Back in the late 90s when I was betting on games regularly I was hitting on close to ¾ of my picks. These days, I’m around 50%.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.