Anthropomorphism

It is human to see human responses around us, and we have the ability for abstraction. So we apply human patterns to animals and objects. “An evil wind blows..”

Computers are “thinking”, when that little spinny beachball or hourglass pops up. I assure you, computers do not think, they compute. And crash. And they do not have malicious thoughts by themselves, try to trip you up or attempts to confuse you originating from any inherited intelligence. It may seem that way at times though; “it is doing it again” is a classic line often heard on computer support. It insinuates that the machinery have a mind of its own, and therefore the user does not have any influence, responsibility or impact. This is what supportpeople call pebkac. Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair.

Most people would not see human traits in a cockroach, say, a frog or a shark. But we all do it, particularly to big-eyed, furry mammals. Large heads, big eyes and mammarian glands seems to be a prerequisite. Of course, primates tops the list. It seems we have to see our abilities in them to have empathy. It has been argued for many years that for example fish does not feel. A preposterous argument based on no evidence whatsoever. Just a convenient conclusion.

Sometimes the interpretation can be correct, but do not take it for granted. Sometimes it is wishful thinking. Let snoozing lion lie.

People read expressions in animals and get very very surprised when the animal does not react accordingly or do not understand that we are “the good guys”. There have been incidents where seemingly happy and domesticated animals have killed or mauled their owners. To much surprise, “Buster was such a happy, caring tiger”. Right.

This is the – at times – very misguided idea that animals understands us, and we them. The obvious examples would of course be people like TImothy Treadwell that lived with grizzly bears, played with their cubs, and argued that he “communicated” with them and protected them. Until they ate him. A Darwin Award for eco-warrior Mr. Treadwell. And various people who have kept wild animals, believe to have them under control, and then being killed by them. It is not because the cat is malicious. It is because we interpret the behavioural patterns as similar to ours.

Dressing up animals in human clothes we remove their species identity and apply our own. It is fun in myths and stories, and can work as metaphors, but it is not doing us or their species any favours.

Cats and dogs, in particular, of course, as they have been domesticated for many many years are usually victims of this. We “know” each other. And we give them  toys in multiple colours looking like human-baby toys. Many animals have poor colour vision, so this is not for their benefit, but for ours. It is cute. Funnily, animals often are in that respect like human children: often they prefer to play with the box the gift came in, an old sock, a post-it or a twig. Any old rubbish lying around, and the expensive “pet furniture” stands untouched.

I am not opposed to pet toys or brightly coloured things. But I am opposed to humans  applying our wishes and preferences on animals. Such as giving a cat a nightlight. I mean, really. Cats are predators, they hunt at night, their night vision and sense of smell and hearing leaves us in the dust. In fact, studies shows that cats see better at night than in daylight. Which means, that for the cats sake, turn the light off.

For thousands of years, we kept cats to get rid of vermin. They had a job, to catch mice. Still there are famous mousers in the distilleries in Scotland that do a very important job. I love whisky, and I do not want any mouse poo in my barley, thankyou. I do not think those cats are cuddled much. I do not think they lie in front of a fire or on a lap (I have met a couple). Yet I do believe they are taken good care of (good mousers being hard to find), and I believe they have fine lives. A cat does not, from some mythical primordial state, natively belong in a human lap.

Now, cats are pets, and the catching of mice is a nuisance. Our expectations of cats have changed. Over time, the cats with less ability to drag headless rodents home and dump them on the carpet might be the ones that win out. Certainly, cats that get along with humans, fulfil our expectations and wishes, will have better lives and better chances of survival and possibly reproduction. There is no such thing as the primeval original, when there is constant adaptation. A good life for a cat does not mean spoonfeeding or a loopy lady calling herself “mammy”, nattering on with babytalk. Just because they have soft fur, does not mean they appreciate or need being petted all day long.

Our expectations of animals determine their quality of life and chances of survival. As these expectations change over time, so the animals will try to adapt as well as they can. Humans should not underestimate species other than our own, nor try to make them more like us. After all. A lot of us are not really all that nice.

I worked briefly at the National Archives as an apprentice bookbinder yonder, and I remember the genealogists that came trundling up the path from the metro every day, carrying heavy bags of notes. They would request church registres, dusty tomes, old newspapers and microfilm from the six floors below ground. A systematic, gargantuan, taxonomic task. I always thought I would never bother with it, because: back then you needed serious discipline and a keen sense of priority. You would only have a few sources of information available at one time, and flitting to and fro by fancy was not a good idea. Enter scene: the internet!

I started out with the names of my great grandmother, for the simple reason that they are unusual, and therefore easy to follow. The first name, Schjoldager, goes to Trondheim, and I find a small street there named after my great-great-great-grandfather or so. I thought that was rather swell, actually. He was a chimney- and chimney sweeper-inspector. Trondheim burned several times, so I guess this was a reasonably important job. At least not one they would give to the town drunk. Then Schjoldager morphs into Wolner/Wølner, and goes to about 1590, to Jacob Wølner who came to Norway from Freiberg, Germany to work as Overstiger at Kongsberg Silver Mines. Schjoldager stops there – or at least, I have not tried to find the rest of the Wølmers of Freiberg.

So, back to great grand-mamas second name, Figenschou. It goes to northern Norway, then to Bergen. There, a fellow by the name Elias Fiigenschow (b. ab. 1599, in Copenhagen), was apparently one of the best portrait painters in the country. His grandfather, Mathias Fugenshuh (1540) was a royal saddlemaker from Hindelang, Germany, and he had a coat of arms. I was chuffed. Hurrah, I thought. A proper, swirly family crest complete with animals, acantus and shields.

Elias married a Bloch, and to make a long story short, she hails from the old Norwegian noble families. Apart from having hilarious names such as Benkestokk, Smør (Butter), Smørhatt (Butterhat), Krukow, Bratt til Tomb, Ku til Tomb, Stangjarfylja, the crowning beauty is a governor on Iceland, Tore Bjørnsson Tinghatt (Tinghatt = thing (as in assembly) & hat). The source considers that the name Þinghottr may be because he “came to a thing (assembly) wearing a peculiar hat“. This strikes me as wild speculation, but hey – I love the thought, so I am sticking with the story:

Some time in the early 1200, one of my ancestors came to the assembly meeting wearing something amusing on his head. 

From another path of the Figenschou line, I find the unassuming name Hage. The line goes to Danefær, to not-so-unassuming Holstein, to von Reventlow, to Rantzau, Buchwald, Breide, and further to the positively pompous von Ahlefeldt, Limbek, Gyllenstierne, von Rugen. This may not say very much, but they are all nobility, knights, members of Council of the Realm. Wherever that may be. I was at this point swimming in more crests and coat of arms than I cared to, and it was clearly steering towards Scandinavian royalty. And if you get mixed into that, there is no way out. To cut a very very long story very short, I end up at various kings and queens of Sweden, Denmark; princesses from England, Poland, Italy and Russia. Some saints too. This is around year 1000, and if things are a little shady after the black death, it certainly gets foggy around 1000.

Of course, genealogy is not an exact science, and I am no professional. I am good at digging around on the internet though. Of course I may have gotten something wrong, but I would be in good company, among those hobby genealogists that came to the National Archives. I have tried to find at least two sources and confirmation of the lines, particularly the high royalty. They often had multiple wives, husbands, children out of wedlock left right and centre. The men might die early in war, the women in childbirth. I am learning much about “NN”, and the politics of marrying off your daughters for political reasons. And after all, we are all related, more or less. At least in Scandinavia it was not uncommon to send a child to a neighbouring lord or a relative to be brought up there. This was to ensure connections and peace, but it might also leave the origin of the child uncertain. At some point in history, the idea of “parent” may be biological, or may be whoever raised the child. See the confusion?

From Figenschou, I find three distinct lines that I have not followed through. One point to the old kings of Norway, and the two others both point to Charlemagne. I mean, what do you do then? Behind him is the Byzantine empire.

Once you have hitched your family tree to a royal line, there is little point in following it through: others have done that. The royal connections are amusing, but I do not feel any relation to them. My initial interest was to find amusing anecdotes such as the guy with the peculiar headgear, and the guy that “in a fit of anger did away with himself with a rope” (Johan Reinertsen Wormhuus, 1686, Bergen).

I have three more family lines to look at. They will not be so easy, but they might have good stories. And yes, I made a family tree. A work in progress.

After the second world war, the law was changed for the legal purges in Norway, so as to execute Quislings, the Nazi sympathisers. Technically, Norway had the death penalty for high treason until 1979, but the last execution was in 1948.

Obviously, there will be no death penalty for Behring Breivik, and because of a police computer-system cock-up, he cannot be sentenced to 31 years, the upcoming limit for “acts of terrorism”. So the maximum ordinary sentence he can receive is 21 years, a “life” sentence. Norway do not do that weird thing of multiple life sentences. But he can be sentenced to a complicated melange based on his mental health/capacity, that might keep him locked up for as long as he lives. They then have to prove he is just the right amount of bonkers.

Today, as I write this, he is present at the first public hearing in court, and he introduced himself as a knight and a military commander of the Norwegian resistance. He sees himself as a freedom fighter that had to do terrible things for the common good. So in his mind, he is related to those who was interned at Grini during the war. He fights for freedom against Goliath-odds.

He questioned the judges ability to give him a fair trial, as they are “representatives of multiculturalism”. The guy is obviously deluded, but he is not mad. We should not give him the benefit of the mad lable.

Norway’s justice system, unlike some other countries, are based on the premise that people can change, they can learn, they can repay. Repent and be free. Statistically, this works, as the percentage of re-convictions are low compared to other European countries. So this case is a large problem for the justice system, and for the prevailing sense of justice. Fact is, there are few people in this country that would not like to see him boil and burn.

A friend set up this scenario; if you are out driving, and accidentally hit someone with your car, and then discovered it was Behring Breivik, would your reaction pattern be different? I would say yes. I would think a lot of people would, if not directly celebrate, then at least take their time in calling an ambulance; a sense of guilt greatly diminished. Some people would get back in the car and back up over him again.

We are uncomfortable with these feelings. Other people do terrible things too, and victims of other crimes may suffer just as much, but the sheer scale of this guys actions makes it a very public problem. He has committed atrocities, we want him to suffer. That is the point of prison, that is the point of punishment. We have the justice system so that the punishments do not get out of proportions. We want criminals to see what we see, and we want them to suffer in new-found understanding, then we want them to become clear-eyed, honest, upstanding pillars of society.

But deep down, I do not think we want this for Behring Breivik. Norway will uphold the justice system. And we will all quietly hate it for this one man.

EDIT.

As His Loopyness is unfolding – should I say unravelling – it becomes more clear he has a severe mental illness. Paranoid schizophrenic, they say. Quite possibly. But here is the curious thing: people seem to be outraged by that. Why? They want him punished. They want him in prison, even though a mental hospital would take away more of his freedoms and rights, would control and monitor him closer, would even possibly medicate and cure him, would keep him locked up for longer. Then maybe he will see what we see. If so, who could live with that? How could prison be more punishment?

We have all seen a gorgeous film, A Beautiful Mind. This is the Terrible Mind.

If he is sick, he can be medicated, he can be cured, more or less. That would probably be the greatest punishment of all.

The quality drink their champagne and mockingly toasts the great unwashed people below. Do you not know what a large group of ticked off people can do? You do not even have to read history. You do not even have to leave the timespan of this week. The snowball does not care about what is fair, correct or who is or was responsible. I believe you call it critical mass.

I heard an “expert” say that the protest would never achieve anything, because it is too vague, there is no clear message, they are not united under a common banner. The expert went on to say that the protesters could not achieve anything, because it is like the messy anti-war protest in the sixties.

Come again?! ..and what happened in the sixties, children? Yes, the anti-war protests and the hippies were not exactly homogenous. But things changed.

BBC radio 4 friday night comedy; one of my favourite podcasts. Last fridays NewsQuiz edition was brilliant. Sandi Toksvig, Jeremy Hardy, Andy Hamilton and Fred MacAulay are my best friends on fridays. Pointing out that usually when there is a protest, experts say “this is a few, extremists people”. Except that this time that is not the case. Jeremy Hardy quotes various media having nothing else to say that these are “well educated reasonable people”. How to you deal with that? Funny man.

One of my favourite pictures from Wall St. is one of librarians. Yes, you know things are messed up when librarians starts marching  (I will add the image here later, if the photographer gives me permission). There are guerilla libraries. How can you not love that?

The world is off its trolley, undoubtedly. Winter is coming though, and New York gets cold. Who will continue, and who does not have a choice anymore?

Many of them say they are proud to be Americans. They should not be. They should rant, rave and create change. And then be proud.

These are well behaved people. Maybe they shouldn’t be.

edit:

I will let someone more eloquent than me sketch out some very valid points. Smile or die, from Barbara Ehrenreich, courtesy of th RSA.

I do have a fondness for the museum of natural history though. It is one of the lesser decorated buildings. Maybe it is just because I have worked there, and seen the ramshackle insides. Endearing, chaotic, confusing, frustrating.

(I said bones. I didn’t lie.)

The lists in the elevators are rarely right. they may be right in one wing, and wrong in the other. They may be wrong in one lift, and right in the one two meters away. The anthropology department is worthy of anthropology studies itself. It is a maze of crates, drawers, boxes and shelves. You could very easily get lost here, and I suspect there could be cases of people that got lost and haven’t left the building for 24 years. The notes in the elevators are wondrously obscure. There are regular talks on various subjects, and sometimes I cannot understand a single word, never mind having the faintest idea of what the talk is about. It means I can make it up in my head, and create pictures of mad scientists doing wild field work. It is all natural history though. I am sure about that.

Downstairs is a zoo. Downstairs is the exhibitions. I dislike it more and more, and avoid it if I can. Turns out, you can probably live and work in this building for decades, without actually mingling with the drooling public or go near the exhibits. Some of them are definitely worth seeing though, so early morning is the only real option.

A friend of mine here, R, was attempted robbed of her mobile phone in the metro, the interesting tin-foil-hat-reaction of said friend was to run like the wind and catch the culprit. Basically thinking “my data! my information! my life!” rather than “my phone!” (I love her for that reaction, though it may not be wise to hunt feral kids) The culprit was duly caught, arrested and all, a tiny girl of 16. Kids sometimes roams the city centre in feral packs.

I took the metro home this evening, and walked home through the little town outside DC where I currently live. I passed two parked cars with their windows open. The town has a intellectual-hippy-feel, community-minded, responsible,  friendly and are delightfully slow-moving. This country has the best and the worst, and sometimes both on the same day.

DC photos

Old iron posts of various types have imprints. They are either mirrored or the right way around, but something in the style tells me this is old. How old, I have not the faintest idea. I imagine old posters used ink that somehow etched itself into the paintwork. Apart from the gorgeous textures and a whiff of history, I would like to know what was announced, when and how. In the two pics above, I can spot a street name “dalsbergstien”, a map and a skate. It should – in theory – be possible to find out when these posts were last painted.

The posts are seriously worn, and I suspect might be removed soon.

“våpen” (weapons)

Paulus plass (paulus’ square, a square on the other side of town, across the river)

This smiley – and font – seems rather old-fashioned.

Then, the second mystery; I did not realise it was one until I got home:

A sticker, announcing a company called “AS Hjalmar Bjørge”… first: what thought was that, to announce offshore charter, sales & purchases on lampposts around town?! Subliminal advertising?! Thing is: the phone number and postal code tells me this sticker is from before 1992, when Oslo changed the phone numbers from six to eight digits. The telex is a nice touch.

A fascinating thing about this, is that I cannot find any real nor historical information on this company. And the logo is just epic.

Any suggestions as to the origins of these little strangeness’es would be welcome, and any similar things from other places would be fun. I hope the posts stays. I love Oslo for this quirkiness.

melbourne, australia