My point of view

One of the benefits of half-listening to something, such as one does when the radio's on while you're getting up, or in any meeting that lasts more than 15 minutes, is that the speaker has to say something really quite good - and in a way that's tonally ear-pricking - in order for one to bother listening properly.

Perhaps it's laziness, or perhaps we're just not built to concentrate for that long, or perhaps it's just that the majority of stuff that's spoken is utterly bland and inconsequential. Whatever it is, I love it when a thought breaks cover and you're drawn back into the moment and forced to listen.

Such was the case on Start the Week this Monday when philosopher Raymond Tallis was talking about why pointing the finger is considered rude.

It's one of those 'why?' questions we pose when kids: 'Mummy, why is it rude? Why do I have to go to bed? Why does grandma smell funny?' - and the usual reply is less than satisfactory, along the lines of 'because I say so'.

And so we grow up just accepting much of this. Until we realise that sleep is necessary and that grandma had regressed in the hygiene stakes.

So it was an ear-pricker indeed when it was suggested that the reason that pointing is rude may well be that 'it reduces you to an object. You're skewered, left pinned and wriggling. You are merely that meaty object at this moment, now, and all your back history and your vision and opinions don't count.'

How luxuriantly metaphysical. What a delicious way of explaining why waggling a bit of bone and flesh in someone's direction is to ignore their fundamental 'themness'. I think I might even agree with this.

And by chance today, while trying to work out how to include this thought in a blog post, I ended up watching a brief film of Richard Feynman explaining how light works.

I should explain that I arrived at said video via various discussions about how so many marketers make life unnecessarily complex by using long and fancy words that get in the way of communicating an idea.

(And in the light of that sentiment, I avoided using the word obfuscate for fear of having the finger pointed at me.)

Feynman is, as most people seem to agree, bloody brilliant: an entertaining and understandable scientist; and one, unlike Adam-Bloody-Hart-Davis, who doesn't tell you that tax is simple. Which is bloody isn't.

In this video he actually helped me understand how light waves work, and even through his simple language and metaphor, made me realise how complex the functions are that help us distinguish our relative positions in the world.

And in the face of this complexity, I was left wondering whether that's not another reason why we don't like having the finger pointed at us: it's not just that we're reduced to an object, but that we're reduced to a single object: one who is marked out. Whilst some of us are happy to stand out from the crowd, the majority like to cling to each other in fear of being picked on as a special example.

Moreover, if you realise you're being pointed at, you the pointee are probably facing the pointer head on, so you're only having one aspect of yourself appreciated - and probably a differentiating one at that.

So the reasons for its rudeness are complex, and I now see why parents don't normally bother with the explanation.

The casualties of improvement

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Nothing that contentious about Newton's phrase, you wouldn't have thought, excepting the fact that all too many brands seem to find this impossible to acknowledge. More on this in a moment.

There often seems to be a sense of denial that anything that precedes an improvement - especially if this is an improvement over a brand / corporation / industry's own current offering - is inferior.

Take a look at this article on blood pressure (BP) management. The final paragraph is a masterstroke in undermining the advancement that's just been crowed about: 'Current practice is not wrong'. Yet the article has just talked about how current practice can lead to greater instance of stroke because fluctuations in BP are considered ok.

How can that be desirable? And how can both situations possibly be right? Either the current practice is, in fact, sub-optimal, or the new one is unproven. But to say that it is 'not wrong' fills me with worry.

To bring to bear another current gripe of mine, that of the bastard HMRC wanting to charge me for merely breathing it seems, perhaps I should state that my tax return for the last financial year was 'not wrong'. See whether the binary-minded crones from Maidstone, who have initials rather than real names, can struggle with that kind of language.

And now for that brand example: we do a lot of marketing for medical device manufacturers and they constantly - and understandably - strive to make better products. But the sheer amount of brain-ache caused by thinking of ways in which to say that a new product is better - but not that the old product is in any way worse - is beginning to rile me.

Yet what is so wrong in acknowledging advancement? Surely the inexorable march of technological and scientific progress is to be lauded?

I, for one, would find little solace in taking a drug via a device according to a treatment protocol that were all deemed 'not wrong'.

But: oh no. It would be 'damaging to the brand' to say that the new device in question is, in fact, 'simpler than our last model'. But then the brand (mis)managers in this case are also too chicken-shit to say that they're 'simpler than the competition's'.

So exactly WHOSE product are they simpler than? Or are they just 'simpler' than trying to insert the drug into your vein using a wooden spoon or a kango drill?

Thank [insert god here] for the common sense of Apple. The Mac Pro described on this page unashamedly says that it's 'nearly two times faster than the previous generation'.

Good. I like better. And faster. And I'm happy to dispense with the worse. Otherwise life gets too grey and cluttered with stuff in the not right/not wrong middle ground.