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Planet Earth is one big Cliche!


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Hey guys: good Christmas and New Year? Yeah me neither...

actually nope, its all good in truth, but I've just got a bit of a cold and I'm allowing it to get me down a bit. And I failed an interview in London last Wednesda, one that I really needed to get in order to get my mortgage sorted out, so my career plans are being rewritten again from scratch; which gives me a lot more options and suchlike so really, its all good; doors closing in one place inevitably open a few more somewhere else. Now if only I could get some kind of floor plan...

 

- But on with today's rant -

 

Has it ever struck you how there are only a limited number of people in the world? I mean the actual total number of people is obviously appreciable & quantifiable and thats kind of a `limit`, even though its somewhere around the 6 billion mark and growing every day (and the actual limit is probably around about 12 billion people, after reaching which the effects of nature will probably kill off as many people as are born each day, or at least each year: I have the sneaky feeling that there's a point of equilibrium in regards to the global population expansion and its gonna involve the combined efforts of natural disaster, war, disease and famine to really get their heads together to wipe out people on a really efficient scale wink.gif seeing as we'll all be standing so close together by that point an' everything...) but I speak of personalities, in fact, rather than people. There are only about, maybe, 30-40 really different people out there, haven't you noticed? I'm hardly the first person to mention this of course -

 

- Scientologists (yeah, those whackjobs biggrin.gif ) for example; now I'm pretty sure they believe that there are only like 600 or so people in the world, and that they've been split up into the billions of people that seem to walking around, inconveniently existing (as far as L. Ron Hubbard's demented legacy is concerned anyway.) in the face of all that convincing mythology. Like there's an alien overlord called Xeno who's better than God and Allah multiplied by Buddha minus Michael Jackson and Jerry Springer, or something equally ridiculous.

 

- A lot of good fantasy & comedy authors have observed that people from totally different places are often so strikingly similar that they probably share the same personality on the basis of some kind of rota, available to either person in shifts, or something. T. Pratchett once again springs to mind (well its bloody difficut for him not to, I've reall all 30 books (and another half-dozen not strictly in the main series) at least three times, and some of them twice that) with his variations on a theme of `Dibbler` (Cut-me-own-throat Dibbler; Disembowel-meself-honourably Dibhala-San; May-I-Fall-In-My-Own-Icehole Dibooki; Fair Go Dibbler; Cut-Me-Own-Hand-Off Dblah; Swallow-Me-Own-Blowdart Dhlang Dhlang; etc. etc.).

 

- Pretty much all corporate sales training (well, most of the well-thought-out training, anyway) contains (or should contain) an appreciation of personality types (of which there are a dozen or so) and how best to expoit, err I mean negotiate, with them. These categories are generally quite broad in terms of the people what populates dem, like, but by definition are really actually very narrow, and very narrow-minded, in the most literal sense of the phrase.

 

 

Which isn't to say its not largely and broadly accurate, of course. There are cliches absolutely everywhere you look; almost all phrases used today that spring easily to mind are cliches. The phrase `spring to mind` is a cliche. The words `good morning` are a cliche and one of the most commonly abused, too.

In fact, almost anything that is too easy to think, and that `springs to mind` without any thought of how to assemble each individual piece, is a cliche.

And that includes how you behave as well as what you say.

 

-

 

A cliche is, by definition, something for display; something to share with other people (or possibly even yourself, if written in, say, a private diary). It is something that is intended to be publicly exhibited, most of the time, and therefor it cannot extend to the way you bruch your teeth, or the routine for when you make breakfast, if you have the same thing for breakfast every day.

It does however include any behaviour that you do when you are aware of being observed, if you do that thing without any real thought behind it. The way I process a credit-card order at work is definitely cliched,I've done it so many times I could have a good crack at doing it blinfolded, and I definitely have no problem with making the same damn jokes and flourishes and encouraging remarks to the customer; unless I know them already its the same with every damn customer......

but it works.

 

But its a waste of those few seconds of my life every single time, if I've done it before so many times, right? I mean there is a great little theory about why your life flies by faster every year, I may have shared it with you before but here it is anyway:

 

As you get older, the world seems to pass by more quickly every year, and time flies past faster and faster as you get older. This is experienced by almost everyone. You wanna know why? Well its actually really damn obvious, and is linked intrinsically with the applicability of cliches-

Whenever you do the same phsyical exercise eg: a bench press: you build the memory of how to do that exercise into your muscles (or rather, you mind gets so used to controlling those muscles that exact way in that identical situation that it becomes incredbly easy as both your muscles are very, very good at doing the exercise, and your mind is very, very good at making your muscles do it, but I digress - lets just call it `muscle memory` because thats the explanation that does well enough for most poeple wink.gif ) and much like muscle memory your mind develops `cliche memory` as you perform the same mental routines in your head again and again and again, and this covers so many things its almost impossible to control: how much thought do you put into making a cup of tea or coffe? Or processing an invoice or standard piece of paperwork in the office? Or giving someone in a nightclub the same response you always do if they ask you for a cigarette? (whether you smoke or not, its usually either yeah mate *fumble* *produce open packet* *offer lighter* or "nah sorry mate I dont smoke") Or when you think of your upcoming holiday which, after a few tries at picturing it, becomes another easy-to-remember cliche of mental activity? Or when you look back on a striking holiday/moment of disaster/life-changing experience/sexual encounter/embarrassing moment/few seconds of glory?

All these little physical and mental routines are cliches because we hardly have to think about them at all to fully realise the process and achieve the same damn outcome each time.

Which all adds up to mean -

 

There is less thought and therefore less actual life experience that you, well, experience or undergo each and every time you perform one of these cliches. Which is less actual life you are living; and you do these things thousands of times a day...

 

Of course it mainly seems that time has already passed more quickly, not that it is passing more quickly, because in the moment you can't look back on the whole of your life so far, but when your are doing such a thing the years all slide by faster and faster as you remember less activity and thought going on each month or week or year. Which in truth is what has happened... but you percieve it as less life.

 

-

 

So basically, cliches are bad news tongue.gif But it is impossible to function without them. In fact, the phrase `impossible to function without` is a cliche itself. So what? I just killed a tiny bit of my life by using it, once again.

But at least I was thinking about not thinking about it tongue.gif Which must count for some visceral experience somewhere along the line.

 

-

 

The moral of the story though? - Don't do the same things again and again and again and again; break the pattern and try new things, because without that, your life is nothing but one big cliche smile.gif

 

 

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