Well-being

By Mae Wright

A while back I took six months out of paid work to focus on my well-being. Or, as I saw it then, to stop feeling rotten all the time.

Life had been overwhelming, family needs had been complex, work had been deflating, my house was cluttered and unclean, projects sat neglected. I had been unrelentingly busy. And my health, left on the back burner, gradually but inexorably boiled over. A not uncommon story.

I hoped my well-being might return with a complete rest. For some weeks, I did plenty of sitting around; I sat and I read. Just read. Luxurious. Then, for something completely different, I went on a snorkelling holiday. Amazing.

When I returned, I started on the mess of overdue tasks and chores and neglected projects nagging at me from every surface in my house. I wrote a long list and gradually started to tick things off. My house became more pleasant as the layers of dust disappeared. Satisfying.

I wasn't pushing myself; I slept in, often staying in my PJs till midday. I covered the basics: diet, sleep and exercise. I got back into Pilates. I reconnected with friends. I relished wearing my comfortable draw-string white linen pants and loose t-shirts around the house, the image of well-being.

But nearly three months into my break, I felt edgy, maybe less exhausted, but definitely nothing I like my idea of 'well-being'. And I felt like a failure: I had the luxury of not having to work for a period without worrying about money, something that many could not, but I still just felt bad.

It seemed I was just no good at 'balance'. Being 'in the now' had never happened. When I thought about my lack of zest, I felt anxious. And not once had I wanted to spring into the air on a beach with the sun as back-lighting. 

TATKOP 108

There Are Two Kinds Of People: those who rank people from 'superior' to 'inferior' and those not near the top ranks.
(See all the posts in the TATKOP Series by Fred Shivvin here.)

Spurious

By Fred Shivvin

My love for graphs has a most unfortunate side-effect. I end up shouting and swearing at most news reports with line graphs, bar graphs or pie charts. Regularly. In fact, most days.

What I see are spurious graphs, and they make me angry. 

Spurious means:

1: of illegitimate birth; bastard 2: outwardly similar or corresponding to something without having its genuine qualities; false 3a: of falsified or erroneously attributed origin; forged b: of a deceitful nature or quality

Bastard, false, deceitful! Yep, they are some of the words I shout at the TV.

A spurious graph is manipulated to make illegitimate claims with false authority and objectivity. The figures are from real data, right? The plots and lines are mathematics, so how can you argue with them? They have a seductive power to mislead and deceive - their apparent objectivity gives viewers a sense of trust. 

Spurious graphs are a boon for marketing and PR. They turn up in advertising for dubious health products, plausible but disingenuous political claims, and shoddy science interpretation. (Think The Coalition's 2019 misleading claim that Australia's carbon emissions were actually going down.) 

Graphs provide authority for the claims made in research and news reports. They are also easy to view and interpret quickly, so they fit into our fast paced news cycle.

TATKOP 107

There Are Two Kinds Of People: those who think taking full responsibility for themselves is a prison and those who think it is a liberation.
(View all the posts in the TATKOP Series by Fred Shivvin here.)

Green

By Mae Wright

Green is such a versatile colour. It's my second favourite colour (after purple); it symbolises nature and the natural world. Green also represents tranquillity, good luck, health, and jealousy. It's an easy colour to live with.

Green is also a versatile adjective. Merriam-Webster provides ten different definitions just for the adjectival form of green. It can mean the colour between yellow and blue on the light spectrum, covered in foliage, pleasant, youthful, unripe, envious, sickly, naive, unprocessed and related to environmentalism. 

I want to talk about that tenth definition:

10a: often capitalized: relating to or being an environmentalist political movement b: concerned with or supporting environmentalism  c: tending to preserve environmental quality (as by being recyclable, biodegradable, or non-polluting)

Being green and supporting green ideas is becoming more mainstream. It used to be a fringe ideology, adopted by hippies and drop-outs. As green ideas have entered the mainstream, a new phenomenon known as greenwash has emerged: adopting only the veneer of being green or supporting green ideas.

How can we tell the real thing from a thin wash of 'green' over otherwise unchanged ideas and products?

TATKOP 106

There Are Two Kinds Of People: those who can interpret a Venn diagram and those who put words in circles.
(View all the posts in the TATKOP Series by Fred Shivvin here)

Cheap

By Mike Lundy

Here's a versatile adjective: cheap. Depending on its context, it can be positive or negative. 

In its positive meaning, it can be a compelling adjective: 'Buy this now! It's too cheap not to!' In our western retail stores, the signs screaming 'SALE' are so ubiquitous we hardly see the word, but once '50% OFF' is added, now that's definitely a bargain! 'Those t-shirts are so cheap; I think I'll get three!'

But in its negative meaning, cheap is a dismissive adjective: 'Let's get something else, that fabric looks a bit cheap'. It can also be a critical adjective: 'He's so cheap, he never pays his share', or 'Talk is cheap; I want to see action'.

Interesting. What does the dictionary have to say about the adjective cheap?

1. charging or obtainable at a low price; b: purchasable below the going price or the real value;
2. a. of inferior quality or worth; b: stingy; c: contemptible because of lack of any fine, lofty, or redeeming qualities
3. gained or done with little effort

So, when it's about the price we have to pay for something, cheap seems positive. Yet when cheap refers to the quality of a product or a person's behaviour, it's not good at all. The negative implication of cheap is that something important is missing, something that we expect to be present: quality, generosity or effort.

Why do we have a different connotation altogether when cheap refers to the amount of money we have to pay? If we look a bit closer, we will see that someone important is missing then too.

TATKOP 105

There Are Two Kinds Of People: those who think we 'have' gender and those who think we 'do' gender.
(View all the posts in the TATKOP Series by Fred Shivvin here)