Being Epicurean: How to charm a new friend

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“I recently met up with an acquaintance for a couple of drinks. By the end of our conversation, I was pretty sure I could write his biography: he told me the ins and outs of his job, his childhood and his love life. As for me? He asked just one question in 3 hours.”

“This is a common experience, says Karen Huang at Harvard Business School, particularly when we are first getting to know someone. “In first encounters, the default behaviour seems to be to want to talk about oneself, in order to impress the other person,” she says. It is rarely as charming as these people imagine.

“In laboratory experiments, Huang and her colleagues have found that the number of questions you ask of someone during a  conversation can reliably predict how much they like you afterwards. During a speed-dating event, it also predicted how likely they were to agree to a second date (if speed-dating is really what you want to do).

The specific type of question matters. “Switch” questions, which alter the topic of conversation, are less charming than follow-ups that build on the person’s current topic. “Follow-ups signal a kind of emotional responsiveness and care for the other person,” says Huang. By increasing your understanding of the other person, follow-up questions should also ensure that your own gambits are better suited to their interests.  ( New Scientist, 20 Dec 2019)

Is this a modern disease?  I can’t count the number of times I have been talking to.someone, politely asking questions, taking an interest, and the person concerned ends up knowing nothing whatsoever about me, even my first name.  (can’t be too hard on the first name; I am useless at names myself). An unscientific survey suggests  that men are worse about this than women, who are, or were, brought up to defer to men for the sake of the latter’s egos.  Anyway, right or wrong, it is downright rude to talk about yourself endlessly, treating the other person like a silent marble statue.  Here is a hint to male Epicureans – read and inwardly digest the New Scientist extract above!

Civil marriages

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Rome

The number of civil marriage ceremonies in Italy has overtaken the number of church weddings for the first time – a major social shift in the once firmly Catholic country. As recently as 1970, only 2.3% of weddings in Italy were civil ceremonies. Last year, that proportion rose to 50.1%, according to official statistics. This is partly due to the rising proportion of marriages (currently 20%) where at least one spouse not Catholic.  (The Week ).

Italians seem to be reacting to the corruption in the Catholic Church, and the difficulty it appears to be having with restraining its priests from abusing children, plus the stumbling reaction to world outrage.  The fact is that Catholics are  leaving in droves, which would be presumably not be so were the church to abandon celibacy, a doctrine that cannot be found in the words of Jesus and has more to do with church wealth than doctrine.

But who am I to wade into church doctrine?  The formerly faithful are voting with their feet.  Don’t feel sorry for the Vatican.  Have you seen the incredible collection of artwork in the Vatican museum? Do visit, if you can.  The sale of just a handful of masterpieces would fund the church for decades. Sad!  We need someone to give us moral direction, particularly now.

Oh, dear!

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Common bottle nose Dolphins have a dominant right-hand side according to research by naturalists.  About 90% of all humans are also right- handed as are gorillas.  It appears, however, that a “right- hand” bias is stronger in dolphins than in humans.

Wow!  The ice is melting, the seas are rising, the volcanos are doing what volcanos do, poor peasants are having to abandon their land and migrate, and right-wing extremists are taking over in one country after another………..and some scientists are wondering if dolphins are right-handed.

Makes you proud to be human.*

* For serious-minded Epicureans this is meant tongue in cheek.  Just thought I should add that.

Dementia misdiagnosed

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Hundreds of thousands of older people who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s may, in fact, be suffering from a different disease.  According to groundbreaking new research, the condition, known as “Late”, affects a fifth of people over 85. Like Alzheimer’s, Late leads to memory loss, cognitive decline and mood disorders (although its progress tends to be slower).

The disease’s neurology, however, is very different: rather than deposits of sticky amyloid plaques and tau proteins, the brains of Late sufferers contain a misshapen form of a different protein, TDP-43. Researchers who work in dementia have long been puzzled by patients who have all the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, but whose brains do not contain the pathological features of the condition. We now know that these puzzling patients are probably suffering from Late.

Late’s existence could help explain why attempts to find a treatment for Alzheimer’s haven’t been more successful. Trials of drugs based on clearing out amyloid plaques have probably featured significant numbers of participants who had Late, and not Alzheimer’s – which would have skewed the results.  (The Times and The Week, 11 May2019)

Whatever the strict medical term for it memory loss is a miserable, frustrating  and frightening disease.  I have experience of its effects in my own family, too painful and upsetting an experience to discuss here in public.  But this news did make me think how I could, as a son, have been more patient, more caring, and given my mother more hope, momentary though it would have been.  None of us know whether we will be stricken with memory loss in old age.  To those younger people faced with it in their parents:  stop, draw breath, and tell yourself “ this could be me one day.  Patience.  Patience”.

A home is not a wallet: homelessness in the UK

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“Most of the ills relating to our housing start with the morally reprehensible idea that it’s OK in a time of shortage to treat dwellings as mere investments. Yet when the Labour Party in Britain reasonably suggests holiday homes should pay double council tax, affluent owners whimper. Any suggestion of stiffer capital gains gets pearls clutched. And no party has the guts to do as the Danes and forbid non-resident foreigners from owning property in cities. So Manchester and London are pimped out as cosy nest-eggs for Russian and Asian money. Houses aren’t bank vaults, flats aren’t wallets. Landlords have had the law on their side for 30 years and home-owners, too, have had ritzy a ride. It must stop.”(Libby Purves in The Times)

In London as a whole, 170,000 people – equivalent to one in 52 – have no home. Westminster had the most rough sleepers, 217, followed by Camden, with 127. In Kensington and Chelsea, the UK’s richest borough, there were over 5,000 homeless people – equivalent to one in every 29 residents

Why is this? Because London attracts dubious people with ill-gotten cash from all over the world, and , outside the E.U. this situation will now worsen.  Where my (rather  poorly off)  grandmother used to live in London six Russian oligarchs now own houses almost in sight of her old apartment.  Property owning is out of reach there for most people.  And yes, property owners there should pay more.
We should be advocating for a pleasant life for all human beings, not just for the lucky (or corrupt) ones.  This is not a political position; it’s about decency and humanity.