Shouldn’t We Stack the Dishes Properly?

“I have no special talent, I am only passionately curious”

Albert Einstein

Now, I know what you’re thinking….

“Jeez Creasy, we don’t hear from you for like, a whole pandemic, and then you post twice in a few days. What the hell is going on?”

I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe I have all these pent up feelings that have been building up over the past few months; I have been a little emotional lately. Maybe I just need to vent a little. Maybe I just needed to talk to someone. Maybe, just maybe, I don’t understand why perfectly intelligent people can’t achieve something as simple as stacking a bloody dish. Yeah, maybe that’s it. Maybe that is exactly it!

I have this amazing daughter who I am increasingly convinced will solve Fusion and then go on, quite separately, to invent a fully functioning warp drive. Either that, or she will write the next series of best-selling great epic novels about short tubby people with big hairy feet and magic rings who, counter intuitively, battle tall, muscle-bound and horrid monsters successfully, but with tiny swords. Or, she could become the next Greta Garbo. All, totally within her grasp.

Then there is my incredible artist son who produces these beautiful light paintings using wands and silk and light, with digital cameras set to all kinds of funny digital settings that are really quite tricky and technical, and he does it flawlessly. He spends pretty much all his time ruining my lawn as he swirls and twirls like a bloody Ninja in front of his sodding camera. Totally expecting a call from the Vatican any day now for him to pop over and redo the Sistine Chapel.

@TiernanArt

J, joo are so locky

Last but certainly not least, I have this beautiful gem of a Best Friend / Life Traveller / Spiritual Guide who you could only describe as the ultimate multi-tasker, juggling a high powered career in Finance whilst being the ultimate Mum and role model to our kids and boss beautiful Wife to me. She should wear a cape with a big S on it. I am expecting her to come home one day and explain a new business idea that will revolutionise the world of Threading and make us rich as Sheiks. This time next year I will be writing my blog from the aft deck of our her Super Yacht whilst slurping down a frozen Daquiri. Totally going to happen , I know it.

“Creasy, you are truly blessed to be surrounded by so much intelligence, beauty and talent and to be so good looking, smart and charming yourself.”

Yes I am. That is totally true. I am blessed, and I fall to my knees and thank something, somewhere everyday for the enormous chunk of good luck that made me so very very blessed.

You can understand my problem though, right? Being so blessed and being surrounded, as I am, by all this intelligence, wit, talent and beauty, I think my expectation that these same geniuses be able to scrape their plates, stack plates with plates and bowls with bowls and to place their dirty knives and forks in the dish I have provided for just that purpose, should be considered entirely reasonable. It is reasonable isn’t it?

“Well, it’s not unreasonable Creasy”

See, that’s what I think too. I think it’s a reasonable expectation. So why won’t they? Why won’t they stack the plates with plates and the bowls with bowls? How can they be capable of all these world changing things and yet not stack a single dish. Are they doing it on purpose? Are they just doing it to mess with me or are they doing it to piss me off?

“I’m a goddamn marvel of modern science”

OMG! Are they trying to make me insane so that they can have me sectioned like that Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest? Is this how they avoid the cost of a good nursing home in a couple of years when I need to eat dinner through a straw? Is Nurse Ratched, and a big silent Native American who rips big sinks out of the floor all I have to look forward to?

Is that it?

Is that it?

IS THAT IT?

“Sheeit Creasy, calm down sunshine! Woosa……Wooooooooosaaaaaaa….How the hell are we supposed to know? Maybe they are just being a bit careless”

D’you think so? I suppose so. I mean I suppose it could be that, but really? Who is careless about stacking dishes properly? That’s not normal, and it’s a funny word that “Careless” isn’t it? Care Less. Couldn’t Care Less. Don’t Care. Don’t give a monkey’s. If I cared less it would be a crime.

It is a crime!

“Well, it’s not actually a crime Creasy”

It’s not?

I’m innocent y’onour

Well, it ought to be a real crime. I ought to be able to call someone and have them arrested and taken away and put in prison. Instead, one day I am going to lose my shit and go batshit crazy (maybe break some stuff), and someone is going to come and wrap me in a coat I can cuddle myself in, and take me away to the psyche ward where Nurse Ratched will be waiting for me with medical instruments she can probe me with.

“I think you’re being a tad paranoid Creasy. A smidge”

Am I? Am I though?

Ok look, let’s take a breath. Maybe you’re right Creasy fans. Maybe I am taking all of this a bit too seriously. All I’m saying is that normal people should be capable of this simple domestic procedure after each meal and in our house they’re not, so either they are not normal people or they are trying to make me crazy and I don’t know why.

People who love one another don’t try to make them, crazy do they? Of course they love me, who wouldn’t? So maybe I need to think again; not be so paranoid. What if it’s something else altogether that is preventing them from performing this simple task well?

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth”

Sherlock Holmes

So maybe it’s my fault. Maybe I haven’t provided the leadership around this whole thing. Is the process too complicated to follow? Lets take a look.

No, no, that’s not it. The instructions couldn’t be more clear and the logic and options within the sequence are clearly defined. It’s taped up over the sink so that you can check each step as you go. And of course there’s the recorded tutorial that anyone can initiate with a simple spoken instruction

“Hey Google, how do I stack dishes?”

What problem are we trying to solve here people?

We did the whole 2 day internal training workshop thing last year, and a refresher course during the pandemic because the situation was just going from bad to worse. Then there was the sternly worded memo, which included another copy of the process, admonishing them to try harder so that Team Creasy would be the talk of the dish stacking Fraternity, but none of this has worked. It’s as if all my concerns have fallen on deaf ears.

We love what you’ve done here Creasy

I even wrote a song about it using Simon & Garfunkle’s Sound of Silence music so they could sing along as they stacked (Click here to hear a great version of that original song by Disturbed). After our “Learn the Lyrics” workshop, I can tell you that everyone knows the words and fully appreciated the sentiment. C’mon, you know the tune, sing along and perhaps you can improve your dish stacking skills as well…

dinga donga dinga donga ding

Hello Dishes my old friends
I've come to stack you once again
Because I love Creasy so com-pletely
And these dishes will be stacked neatly
And the forks that are dropped in the special dish
They smell like fish
before they have been cleaned

In restless dreams I walked alone
No dishes scraped something's gone wrong
I didn't do it after my dinner
I think that makes me such a huge sinner
And now they are smelling really strong
They really pong
I think I'll lose my dinner

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand dishes maybe more
Lined up all along the work surface
Did my kids do this on purpose?
It will take all day just to stack them properly
And all for free
I think I'll go and pee

Fool say I you do not know
Fungus like mushrooms will grow
Hear my words that I might teach you
Would you like to see these plates like new?
But my words like silent raindrops fell
That's a shocking smell 
It really smells like poo

And the people stacked and scraped
With the scraper Creasy made
And the sign flashed out its warning
And the words that it was forming
And the sign said the food on the plates is stuck now for ever more
Are you sure?
They'll need a soak 'til 4:00
 
dinga donga dinga donga ding

And, riddle me this.

Too hard for me Creasy!

The recycling bin has been conveniently placed just inside the kitchen door so that as you walk into the kitchen with that empty tin, or when you have just emptied the cardboard cereal box, you can simply drop it in. Voila! Done! Why then is it that the work surface next to the sink is regularly piled high with recyclable detritus, when that work surface is precisely 18 inches away from the recycling bin. What’s that all about? Explain that to me. You can’t! There is no explanation.

Is this what housewives have been dealing with for, well the entire history of housewifery? Piles of unorganised, unstacked dirty dishes lying all over their kitchen like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie? No wonder they all wanted to go to work and do all that suffragetting! I mean, it’s not having that effect on me, but I can see how it would.

It’s like there’s a rat inside my skull scratching away trying to get out “eek-eek-eek, scratch-scratch-scratch, eek-eek-eek”. No single thing in and of itself sufficient to lose your shit over, but collectively adding up to an internal scream that lasts a week. I find myself sitting in corners facing the wall, giggling and babbling to myself incoherently….

“and that dirty fork was just sittin’ on the window sill, no plate just a dirty fork on its own…on a window sill…nowhere near the sink or dishwasher or anything. Hehehehehehehehhheeeeeeee”

or I will wake up in the middle of the night and find myself standing naked in the kitchen, in the dark, not knowing how I got there but stroking a whimpering and shivering Bobby’s head like Lenny from Of Mice and Men “George? Can I pet the rabbit? Can I George? Can I?”. The lines of unstacked dishes glinting eerily from from the black marble work surface…

“1,2,3,4 un-scraped bowls…haha, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 forks…why so many…hehehe, 1,2,3,4,5,6 pans and 8 lids hehe, 1,2,3 collanders…we didn’t have anything that needed straining though…HAAHHAHHAHAHAAAAHAA”

But that’s ok, I ain’t mad. Naw, I’m fine. No really, I am. Ain’t no thang. I’ll be a’ight. It’s all in my mind. Every day in every way I’m getting better and better. Better and better. Yes.

So each morning, I spend my entire life side-stacking the dishes properly; plates with plates, bowls with bowls, glasses and cups together, utensils in the special dish, before then stacking the dishwasher properly. Utensils first at the top, then glasses, cups and bowls in the centre and finally plates, pots and pans at the bottom. And when it is all done and the dishwasher is busily murmuring away, I feel comforted and relaxed and I think…

“Anything different is good”

“Maybe tomorrow will be different, and when dinner is finished I will look at the side-stack and it will all be perfect and neat and food free”

…but it never is. It’s like fecking Groundhog day.

“Ok Creasy, this is where you hit us with the punchline and the philosophy stuff and the genius life changing ideas that we all come here for because otherwise that would be twenty minutes of our lives we’ll never see again, right?”

Nope

Shouldn’t We Sell Our Houses?

Through countless births in the cycle of existence
I have run, not finding although seeking the builder of this house;
and again and again, I faced the suffering of new birth.
Oh housebuilder! Now you are seen.

You shall not build a house again for me.
All your beams are broken, the ridgepole is shattered.
The mind has become freed from conditioning:
the end of craving has been reached.

Siddhārtha Gautama

Do you remember when you first took on the responsibility of owning a house? Do you remember how it felt when you signed those mortgage papers and someone handed you the keys and it was all yours? Not yet a home; somehow an empty walled echoey shell of a place, lacking furniture and warmth and connection, but great acoustics if you like to sing. So full of not-yet realised potential, so naked of everything else.

I remember feeling both exhilarated that I had reached such a “grown-up” milestone in my life, and at the same time horrified by the commitment and “end-of-youth” implications of settling down in this place. It wasn’t even a house. It was a third-floor, 3 three-bedroom flat in Hampstead, London. No garden, a kitchen you could just about swing a cat in (and I would have if one of those cold-hearted buggers had ever made it into the kitchen), and a living room with pitched ceilings and a wooden beam that managed to give the place a little touch of character.

“You oughta be an estate agent Creasy wiv all dem fancy descriptions of rooves and beams and whatnot!”

From that moment on, for most of us, the trajectory of our lives can be pretty accurately mapped.

“Bloody Hell Creasy, that’s a bit bleak and cynical isn’t it?”

Is it?

Is it though?

I don’t think so. Not really. Maybe a bit. I may be working out some personal issues here, but the reality is that every adult in the western world spends their days churning away at the same old shit like a lab rat on an exercise wheel, and why?

Another day another dollar….

“You want the truth?”

“I think I’m entitled to the truth!”

“You can’t handle the truth! Son we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be paid for by people with jobs. Whose gonna do it, you? You, eight-year-old life-sucking kid? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for me having to work all the time and you curse the crappy presents you get at Christmas. You have the luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know, that my job while tragic, probably pays the mortgage; and my existence while grotesque, and incomprehensible, to you, pays the mortgage. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wheel, you need me on that wheel! We use words like hard work, long hours, absent parent. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent paying the mortgage, you use them as a punchline. I have neither the time, nor the inclination to explain myself, to a child who rises and sleeps, under the blanket of the very house that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it! I’d rather you just said ‘thank you’, and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you get a job and help pay the mortgage. Either way, I don’t give a damn, what you think you are entitled to!”

A Few Good Men

“And that’s the truth, man! That’s the truth. Can you handle it? It’s just a question between friends, you know? Oh, and when they call you ‘shrimp,’ I’m the one who defends you!”

Jerry Maguire
Oh yeah baby!

Where was I? Oh yeah, houses. The greatest symbol of “success and security” there is barring a Sunseeker 131 or a G550 (look ’em up). Also, the best investment you’ll ever make over a 25 year period. The downside? You’ll be almost dead before you can realise and enjoy the fruits of your investment, but at least you can leave it to your kids so they can unwittingly take over your wheel by getting on the housing ladder.

“But it’s always been like that hasn’t it Creasy? Ever since Humans have been around?”

No, it hasn’t always been like that and in some places, it still isn’t. I was having a busy day watching YouTube the other day and came across a video on a channel called Fearless & Far called “Asking Hunter-Gatherers Life’s Toughest Questions”.

I fuckin’ hate Baboons…

In this video, the commentator introduces a Tribe of hunter-gatherers called the Hadzabe in Tanzania. There are only 1500 Hadzabe people left and their numbers are declining. Their way of life may only survive a few more generations. When asked what the most important thing in life was, this wizened badass of a Hadzabe called Sokolo, thought for about three seconds and said, “Meat, Honey, Corn Porridge” and then he added “hunting Baboons, Antelopes and Zebra”. Personally, I thought this was a bit redundant given the whole Meat is the most important thing, but I’m probably nitpicking. At this point, one bright young chap interjected that Water was pretty important too. “Quite right” replied the badass (or words to that effect). I might have added shelter to that list but I think Sokolo was a bit of a foodie who really didn’t get on with Baboons.

Now whilst I can neither Hunt nor Gather or spear a Baboon to literally save my life, there was something compelling about Sokolo’s simple assessment of what is truly important in life. I also found myself reflecting on the fact that over the years I had often found myself trying to figure out what mattered, but unlike Sokolo, whose worldview is ultimately positive despite the carnage he wreaks in the Baboon community, I have always considered what matters in the context of worst-case scenarios. A series of “What-ifs” if you will, that ultimately end up with me being homeless and destitute. What would I do? How would I survive? Where would I live?

I’m quite fond of the idea of living under a bridge. It strikes me as the sort of place that homeless people might live under. Natural shelter from the elements but not so great in an earthquake. Not much going on. Easy to build a cozy cardboard shelter against one of the concrete stanchions and very convenient if for any reason I wanted to get to the other side of whatever it was the bridge was bridging. I think I would try to find a bridge in a sunny place.

“Don’t Trolls live under bridges Creasy?”

Only the one’s where Billy Goats called Gruff cross.

As to what I would do?

“You really thinking about quittin’?”

“The Life?

“Yeah”

“Mos’ definitely”

“Ah fuck. Wachu gonna do then”

“Well, That’s what I’ve been sitting here contemplating. First, I’m gonna deliver this case to Marsellus. Then, basically, I’m gonna walk the earth.”

“Whachu you mean, walk the earth?”

“You know, like Caine in “KUNG FU.” Just walk from town to town, meet people, get in adventures.”

Pulp Fiction
Here, fishy fishy…

There’s nothing written that says I have to stay under the same bridge. When I live under a city bridge, I’d wander about looking for coins on the floor, or lie on the ground looking for coins under vending machines. Apparently, this strategy fed my son throughout his University days. If anyone came in he would exclaim “I just dropped a quid under here” to hide his shame. If I moved to a bridge that was more suburban or rural, I might try my hand at a bit of hunting and fishing in the fields and rivers (I have watched as much Bear Grylls as the next man).

When you take all this into account, I calculate that I could probably survive on £1 a day. £1 will buy you a loaf of bread and water is free (there are loads of places you can get fresh water for free if you think about it). This is reassuring. Not because I am worried that I might suddenly be skint and homeless, but because if I wanted to be skint and homeless, I know I don’t need all of the things that I have been conditioned to “need” to survive. More interesting, was my emotional response to the idea of living that way. It made me feel happy with a big dash of precognitive relief. Why relief though? Where does that come from? It’s in the letting go. Just the process of thinking about this simpler “being” creates a sense of being in that state already. Stress falls away like chainmail after the siege. The need to compete and win and show that I have won, a need no more.

“That’s just nutso Creasy! Who would want to be skint and homeless and living under a bridge?”

It depends on how you define “skint” and how you define “homeless”.

I fuckin’ hate Sokolo…

I suspect the Hadzabe, by our standards are proper skint, but money has no purpose or meaning in their society. Now dead Baboons? Well, it goes without saying that a man with 10 dead Baboons is way wealthier than a man with say, 9 dead Baboons? All joking aside (although Sokolo doesn’t strike me as a man who jokes about Baboons), their currency would be skillsets, which when used in co-operation enable a very simple, uncomplicated, unfettered and sustainable way of life within a small and very related community. If you can hunt, great! If you can collect berries, fantastic! If you can tell stories, well who doesn’t love a good story? An individual’s worth would be less than the collective’s but a function of how many berries you could gather, how many songs you could sing and how many Baboons you could hit with a brick.

As for being homeless, how many times have you heard the phrase “Home is where the heart is”. How do you find a home in such an anonymous and heartless society? Our homeless people are not homeless because they don’t have a house, but because they can’t find their individual worth in the kind of society we have built and because kin are far away.

“Creasy, surely you can see the good in our society too though? what about the homeless shelters or the soup kitchens or the many charities that help people in need?”

When did you last go and work in a soup kitchen? When did you last offer one of your spare rooms to a homeless person or refugee? When did I? Do you know anyone who has? Sure, we’ve all dropped a dime in a charity bucket or make a donation every month to our “favourite” charity, but when did you actually directly do something for someone who is not actually related to you?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticising. Really I’m not. After all, rB > C, right?

“Wassat? Say what now? Hmm?”

C’mon, you know rB > C, right? Hamilton’s equation for the evolutionary development of an altruism gene, right?

Well, there you are then. No need to explain. It’s all there in rB > C.

“No, I like totally get it Creasy, but maybe you need to clarify a bit for the others?”

Ok fine. Here is a useful wee article by Jonah Lehrer that will get everyone up to speed.

By way of summarising the article, it wasn’t really Hamilton it was this bloke called Charles Darwin. Darwin had a problem. He had described Natural Selection, or Evolution, as a cruel mistress who ruthlessly removed the weakest links in an evolutionary chain. His whole theory depended on the notion that one specimen of a species will selfishly seek to propagate its genetic code to the detriment of all others. How could altruism, therefore, exist; a selfless act of generosity from one specimen to another? The fact of the matter was that altruism was observable everywhere in the natural world across a broad swathe of species. Didn’t that stick a dagger into the heart of Darwin’s theory?

To a lesser man, maybe. Darwin simply tagged this as a paradox and moved on. Evolutionary scientists spent the next century or so trying to figure out this paradox until a pissed up chap called J. B. S. Haldane (a biologist), who when asked in a pub how far he would go to save the life of another, replied

“I would jump into a river to save two brothers, but not one, or to save eight cousins but not seven”

William D Hamilton

Later, and because Haldane never tried to develop the proof of his drunken theory, another chap called William Hamilton, a young graduate student of UCL, spent years doing the mathematics and in 1964 came up with rB > C . Lehrer explains:

“In other words, genes for altruism could evolve if the benefit (B) of an action exceeded the cost (C) to the individual once relatedness (r) was taken into account. The equation confirmed the truth of Haldane’s joke: once kinship was part of the calculation, altruism could be easily explained in genetic terms.

This basically says that if you are related to me by blood, the action I will take to save your life will be directly proportional to the amount of my genetic material you have. The closer the genetic tie, the more action you can expect. Indeed, by not acting to protect you, I would be working against my most primal need to propagate my genetic code to the next generation.

Raise your hands for the Museum trip

This proof has been widely accepted in the Evolutionary Science community (now that’s a club I want to join!), as the origin of altruism, not only in humans but in other species too. It’s not kindliness or generosity, it’s simply survival of the fittest in its purest form.

No wonder then that in small tribal communities typified by the Hadzabe, we see high levels of altruism within the tribe where many families are related by blood. Collective hunting and farming and gathering make complete sense in this context. Equally, no wonder that we did nothing to arrest the genocide in Rwanda. Biologically, we didn’t and don’t give a shit, especially as there were no economic benefits for us intervening. Put another way, my Dad didn’t fight in WWII to save the Jews from the holocaust, but to prevent Gerry from marching up Whitehall and threatening the life of uncle Bernie.

I’m a symbol of success now?

The more distant the genetic relationship, the less we care. It’s our nature. It doesn’t make us bad people. It’s biology. In our globalised society where families disperse to achieve economic improvement, we have built societal structures that provide no reason to be altruistic to one another, and every reason to not give a shit about, or even talk to, our next floor neighbour in London. Altruism in this context is basically Virtue Signalling. It’s the act or pretence of showing generosity, typically through the banking system, in order to promote our social standing. A social standing that is further enhanced by increasingly extravagant shows of wealth; houses, dogs, cars, boats and planes. A social standing intended to attract a mate rather than protect the tribe. A Peacock society.

Industrialisation destroyed our rural way of life and led to urbanisation. Urbanisation dismantled the village where altruism thrived in the extended family and replaced it with the nuclear family unit and very low levels of altruism. Personal wealth and competition have replaced community sustainability and cooperation. Philanthropy pretends to be altruism, but is the domain of the super-rich and therefore a platform upon which to display wealth no matter how good the underlying intention. Globalisation, is this societal shift to the 10th power.

Conclusion?

It cannot sustain. It cannot survive. Not because I say so, but because evolutionary science is not simply saying that it’s a surprise that the altruism gene exists, but that without the action the altruism gene enables toward closely related specimens, the mechanics of evolution will not work at all, and we all become the weakest link in the chain.

Oh, and if you are wondering why you can’t stop yourself from buying that pre-wrapped-in-plastic bunch of bananas to help save the world, it’s because biologically you, like me, don’t give a shit about either the bananas or the environment and it seems biology often wins out over intellectual reason. I too buy the wrapped bananas because the supermarket app I use as I shop can’t handle unwrapped produce. I could handle it when I go to checkout, but then I would be wasting three minutes of my time that I don’t use for anything else whatsoever, weighing and bagging my unwrapped produce. So whilst intellectually I understand that the plastic will either end up in a landfill for the next 1000 years or the ocean, where it will strangle a baby seal, biologically I don’t give a shit. If I thought for one second that the plastic bag would suffocate someone in my family (including Bob), I would stop. No matter how much I try to rationally link the macro effect on the environment back to my local micro context, my biology and my societal conditioning won’t let me and so every now and again, when I’m not using the app, I buy the loose bananas and the rest of the time I don’t.

Martin Luther King, Jr. | Biography, Speeches, Facts, & Assassination |  Britannica

“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness”

Martin Luther King Jr

Martin is of course spot on. Every man, woman and child must choose, and every day we do. Every day we choose the darkness of destructive selfishness. It’s not that we are all bad people, it’s that we are too many people. We’d like to think that we are more than the sum of our biology but the evidence says differently. When you create distance between members of a broad but genetically close family unit, altruism (acting for the benefit of others) is diluted and the inverse (acting for the benefit of oneself ) gains sway.

When there were only a couple of million of us wandering around hunting and gathering, our lack of give-a-shittedness didn’t matter because a) our way of life worked in harmony with our environment b) we were naturally culled by nature via climate, disease or predation and so c) there were too few of us to make a material difference on a global scale.

Other species don’t give a shit either, but they have not industrialised, urbanised or globalised. Where they are too many it’s because we have bred them to eat, and where they are too few it’s because we have destroyed their habitats. All species, in a natural setting will display altruism to protect their genetic progression. We don’t, because too many of us aren’t in our natural setting. Humans are tribal. The vast majority of our history on this planet (about 5 milliion years or 200,000 years of “modern” man) was spent living and working in small tribes. For the past 200 hundred years we have simply dispensed with that way of life in favour of a way of life that is purportedly better but which is evidently not. We have tried to mimick the concept of tribe in companies, markets, and societal structures and have failed miserably. We have encouraged individual security over tribal or genetic security and in so doing sacrificed all that is at the core of who we are.

And that’s why if we don’t let go of the way we have chosen to live, sell our houses, go live under a bridge and hunt Baboons, we are all going to die!

Je vous remercie!