End of year mutters

The end approaches; another year, another memory. A year of memories. It was most certainly an event filled year. Let’s recap. It started in Goa, where we celebrated in true style. We partied hard and solidly. We tore up the town, slept little and generally misbehaved. I first went to as many parties as I could and then ended up organizing the buggers. I spent months living on the beach, wondering where the hell I was trying to take my life. I spent a great deal of time thinking about whether I could be happy – what I had to do to have the feeling I was at least a little close to fulfilling my destiny.

Then I came to Europe, after a seven year leave of absence; got myself into a relationship; tried to get used to life on the old continent (what a fitting name). Ended up working in a café as manager for all of the summer. Found out that even I could end up hating beautiful days, for after all – a beautiful day meant a hard day of work. I learned more than I thought I needed to. Trained my memory, drank copious amounts of alcohol. Thought about whether I could be happy – how much I would have to do before I felt that I was living up to at least part of my potential.

Worked at getting my ass into university. Somehow did exactly that, despite setback after setback. They were always the sneaky kind of setbacks that you didn’t see coming. I guess that’s the way of the game. If you knew what was coming, well then obviously you’d be better prepared for it. A lot of people helped me and somehow I got through, got accepted and got started.

At university I learned to think about whether any of us could ever really be happy. Whether any of us actually had any destiny. Of course, I’d spent a huge amount of time thinking about it before, but now I was asked to think about it using the scientific method. Can we discover, by way of experiment, whether we are innately screwed? What does evolutionary theory have to say about our innate character and what that that means for our future? Do we all have the same potential? What does it mean if we don’t?

I learned to accept that our happiness was – as far as we can tell – pretty much fixed. You will be as happy as you are and you were as happy as you will be. Happiness is a chemical formula, a compound that just happens to trigger a feeling of wellbeing. It makes no sense for us always to be happy. From an evolutionary perspective a baseline of slight unhappiness was far more advantageous for our survival. I wondered if we could beat the rap and ever really be happy.

And then the semester ended and I was given two weeks off. Two weeks to dwell once again on the spirit and the mind. I decided to return to my roots and party like a mad man.

I finally realised that the more time you spend thinking about happiness, the less happy you’ll tend to be. And will I take that lesson into next year? Hardly! Realising that to be happy you have to spend as little time thinking about it as possible is a great deal easier to say than to implement.

Some of us are trained to think. I imagine that means some of us are trained not to be happy.

In between

On Friday night I called up a friend and she told me she was going to Antwerp for a night on the town. I said that was a nice idea. She asked if I wanted to come. I told her I thought that was a nice idea as well. An hour later I there were five of us and a bottle of vodka speeding along the railroad tracks.

We went bar hopping, clubbing, and ever so slightly crazy. We danced the night away took /got our pictures/ taken (again and again and again. They are their own paparazzi) and ended up getting very friendly with some of the locals. Had racist slurs thrown at us (That really amazed me. Apparently Asian people constantly get abused in both the Netherlands and Belgium) and got ourselves quite properly lost.

In other words, we had ourselves a great time until about seven in the morning, when we crashed out on our first train back to Amsterdam. I would, of course, suffer for it later. These things always come back to bite you in the ass. It bit me about seven hours later, for then I had to start being nice to people and making coffee for the very last time. Of course, after a full night of behaving badly the four hours of sleep I did manage to get only really served to sleep of the alcohol; the real sleeping still had to be done.

I fought my way through it. Quite well, I might say. Customers were happy, satisfied and tipped well. I still managed to not make any mistakes. I think that really, only in my head, it was the work day from hell. That is, if hell has great coffee and apple pie.

Afterwards a whole bunch of people that I had worked with came into the café and tried to build a small party. They gave me gifts and farewell speeches. It was quite moving. Of course, I was still completely drained of good will and energy. We sat around and chatted for a while, but truth be told it didn’t get anywhere near lively. I guess everybody had had more than enough of these kinds of nights in recent memory.

I was touched by their efforts, though. The gifts were a little silly and kooky, but it was definitely the thought that counted. I had only worked there for a little more than six months, which many people before me had done as well. Not many of them got gifts, or a real farewell party for that matter. It made me feel like I had made a difference in their lives.

I will miss the place. It was always a good escape from my studies. There I could do something with my hands; something that was quick, exact and had a clear and obvious goal – the well-being of my guests. My new job will be nothing like that. It will require me working towards goals far into the future, with delayed gratification and no real opportunity to do something else (I will probably have trouble figuring out where my job ends and my degree starts!).

On the other hand, I will like the fact with my new job that I can actually make a difference. My work will stay out there for people to see. What I do will not be largely forgotten the next day. I’m moving away from feelings to facts. That is the problem with F&B, your never sure if you are actually making a difference; if you are actually making the world a better place. With Academia it is a little easier to fool yourself into believing that. We’ve all got to have a purpose.

Another mark

Yesterday I got into the first fight of my life. I won. Now that all the suspension has been drained of the situation let me give you a short account to the circumstances that led up to this life marking confrontation.

It all started at 7 am in the morning, when I picked up my mate from singers at the airport and we had our first beer. Things pretty much went down hill (sideways?) from there. After a bit of light grocery shopping to allow that merry Christmas feeling (and the fact that the shops were supposed to be closed) we wandered into, drinking, smoking and enjoying the occasional cup of phenomenal coffees. We proceeded through the day, touring the city and enjoying it from the insides to the outsides. As you might well imagine things went slightly pear shaped, though in a good, positive and above all happy manner.

You can only get a few friends in your life that you can spend literally hours rambling on about nothing in any way important and still think that your time is being terrifically spent. After a while it blurred together a bit, into a rich tapestry of colours, sounds and feelings of contentment.

Others got to (and seemed to) share in our enjoyment. Good moods are contagious and we had numerous little interactions with bar people, tourists and locals. All very positive, but they were what set me in the mood for intervening in a matter I had nothing to do with at about four in the morning (yes, we had almost gone full circle).

What happened was that this bloke started harassing these two young girls at the bus stand while we were on our way home. He tried chatting one up, she told him she was lesbian. Then he tried to force her to kiss her friend. My gregarious mood had me up and saying that that was enough before I was fully aware of it.

He said I shouldn’t touch him. I told him that was great and that if he wouldn’t touch the girls I would have no need to touch him.

He walked away, turned around and spat a huge gob on me.

I was – to put it mildly – enraged. I don’t know what he was expecting but when I went for him he certainly wasn’t expecting that. His friends actually laughed as pummelled him and brought him to the ground, where others had to pull me off him.

I guess he thought his friends would help. They didn’t. I guess he thought his image as a member of a troubled minority would protect him. It didn’t.

I’m not sure why I stepped up, but I don’t regret it. Hopefully he will think twice before he does it again. I imagine if people – all together – stood up to this kind of nonsense more often, it wouldn’t be half as common.

So I can cross ‘fight for the right reasons’ off of my ‘to do’ list. What’s next?

Misbehavin'

For the next two weeks I’m going to behave badly. This I have decided. For eight months now I’ve been behaving like a good little boy, doing my homework, always going to work on time, attending all classes and keeping myself rigidly under control, but as of yesterday I’ve finished this year’s classes and feel that I can now behave badly for a few days.

I’ve stocked up on good cheer and craziness. I’ve allayed all feelings of guilt. The only two things I still need to suppress are my social conscience (that really does get in the way with behaving badly) and my concern about how others see me. I was planning to use copious amounts of alcohol to achieve those last two aims.

Yes, of course there are still things to do. There are still obligations to meet. But I’m sure I can still do those last few little things – even while misbehaving. It seems to be within the power of so many others, maybe for two weeks it can be within my power as well!

There are my last two days of work, today and next week Saturday. But I believe they can be a great moment of enjoyment as well as requirement. For those of you in the Amsterdam area next week Saturday, by the way, I will be having my farewell drinks at Villa Zeezicht in the Torensteeg that night. The boss has agreed. It is official. You’re all invited. Even the people I don’t know.

Then there are articles to write for the school magazine. I set the deadline for everybody else to meet, so it would be damned irresponsible of me not to meet those deadlines myself. In between tequilas, that’s my motto. Salt, shoot, wield pen while chewing on lemon rind.

In a few days time a friend from Singers is arriving in the city of sin. He came and met me (along with other company) last year in Goa. We misbehaved then as well. I’m going to assume that he’s expecting a similar type of occasion on this trip out. Who am I to disappoint him?

An Ode to the Orphans:

Yea of little faith, lift your glasses high.
Drink to the morrow’s sun
Cheer to the brightening sky.
Another year has come and gone
It ‘twas within a blink of an eye

Hear yea, hear yea, cries the new years day
I am well within reach
If they be asking you to start new things cry ‘nay’
For those are things for the new year to teach

Now it be time for merry and cheer
At the bottom of yet another glass
Drink yea gin, champagne, wine or beer
Don’t let this end of year quietly pass!

Side tracked

My assignment is finally getting somewhere where I’m not too embarrassed about it (Still a little embarrassed, but it’s getting there). It has, so far, taken me a solid five days of sitting on the couch, leafing back and forth between different articles, writing, editing, drinking coffee and listening to weird ass music on a set of head phones.

Is it good? Good is relative. Is it good enough? Compared to what? I’d like to get a nine for it. That’s the approximate equivalent of a solid A in the states. Maybe even an A+ (they don’t give 10s in Holland. It’s odd, they do have them in the grading system, but they are a true rarity).

I’m not sure if a nine is really within reach. I really like the professor who will be doing the grading, but unfortunately I can’t quite understand what she wants from me. Assignments that I imagine are fantastically don’t even qualify for an eight, while those that I rattle off with a headache end up getting nines.

I’ve invested a huge amount of effort into this paper, but unfortunately that doesn’t mean terribly much. Grading in psychology is ultimately rather arbitrary. Research isn’t, of course (that’s where the science part enters the psychology), but it is ultimately a matter of liking and not liking.

Most of university seems to be.

Actually most of life seems to be. It’s the human curse. We claim objectivity, while missing it by a mile. When we first meet a new person within seconds we’ve decided whether we like them or not and then spend the rest of the encounter trying to justify our initial impression.

And we might only dislike somebody because their faces remind us of our first teacher, who made us cry.

I’m sorry, but you aren’t the person we’re looking for, you just don’t fit in our company. Good luck with your job hunt, though!

I feel sorry for those people that believe that objectivity will get them there, in the end. I mean, don’t get me wrong, good work is important. If the inside is empty eventually people will notice. But if you don’t wrap it in a nice box, with a bow tie and pretty paper, you’re not going to get terribly far.

Research has shown that if you put ice cream in a round container rather than a square one, people will think it tastes better.

Can happiness be genuine when the source of the happiness isn’t genuine?

The first thing that jumped to mind when I was confronted with the above question was, ‘and what is genuine?’ (Well, it was really the second question, but the first question wasn’t really related to the above question and instead was more in the domain of chocolate cookies and wondering if any were still left. There weren’t). More specifically, what is a genuine source of happiness and what is genuine happiness? What is the difference between non-genuine happiness and genuine happiness? How do we tell the difference?

Does genuine happiness come from inside and non-genuine happiness from beyond the flesh? That can’t be right. People are at their happiest when with family and loved ones and who would argue that that isn’t genuine? Is genuine happiness natural and non-genuine happiness chemical? Well, then a great meal is obviously not genuine happiness, or the happiness induced by a phenomenal bottle of wine.

And what is fake happiness? Is that the kind of happiness that we know isn’t real? Like he happiness induced by watching a great movie or reading a great book? Since those sources are make-belief would you argue that the happiness isn’t genuine? Isn’t as good as the happiness brought on reaching climax? Sometimes it’s a real toss up whether I would rather cuddle a good book or a good body (though admittedly it has to be a really good book).

But let’s leave that aside for the moment, let’s talk about a happiness that most would agree as fake, namely drugs. How does the happiness induced by drug use compare to the happiness of time well spent, a project completed well, or company enjoyed? Is there a difference? Most would argue drugs are a short cut; that they aren’t the real deal, but rather happiness imposed from outside. A decree from above, ‘thou shalt be happy’. They might well be.

And is there then a qualitative difference between the happiness you’re experiencing? Well, not according to your brain. The right drugs will trigger the right chemicals and will deliver the right result. Anti-depressants give the depressed normality back. It gives them the opportunity to feel happiness again. Admittedly many depressed people argue that the drugs cut out not just their dales, but also their peaks. I wouldn’t know about that. I find my depressions an important facet of my existence and would rather keep them; stay who I am.

Happiness is essentially your subconscious telling the rest of you, ‘things are going well’ and ‘we’re ahead of schedule’. Happiness is a motivator. That’s why it feels great (how many people do things because they want to be happy? Well, there you go – nothing more motivational than happiness). Happiness gives you purpose.

And I think that’s what the above question is really asking, is there such a thing as happiness without having achieved your purpose, even if only for a moment? Isn’t that cheating the system?

Well yes, no doubt it is. But then the system cheats you (phobias, allergic reactions, cancer, schizophrenia, decrepitude and Alzheimer’s to name a few) and who ever said you had to fight fair? Isn’t modern society all about throwing sand in nature’s eyes?

Personally I prefer genuine happiness, brought on by real achievement; but then that’s just me. I feel I’d rather leave something for others to enjoy, instead of just enjoying myself. That’s because I’m arrogant enough to believe I can.

But then I just have to ask back, does the fact that your asking the question not imply that you aren’t genuinely happy?

Trip

A few hours on a train later and I’m in Frankfurt, Germany, at my parents house. It’s been a bit less than eight months since I’ve last been here and it was about bloody time that I came by for a visit.

Away from my tiny little room cluttered with furniture, clothes and scientific articles. Away from the life I’ve been (trying) to build for myself. It’s a shot break from the to and fro of what constitutes my existence.

Not, of course, that my university work has stopped. There are still assignments to hand in, articles to read and things to learn, but it is somehow different. Your environment seems to influence how you think (I have no evidence for that, just a theory).

This is a good thing, because I have a great deal of thinking to do in the next few days. Tonight – before twelve o’clock – I have to hand in one assignment which really only should take a few more hours and then I start in on a research proposal, which I mentioned earlier.

My research proposal is going to investigate the idea that when we feel included in a group we become less conscious of ourselves – while when we’re excluded we become more self-aware. Many of you will probably now be doing the regular social psychology reply by non-social psychologists, which I call the ‘but of course’ response.

But is it so of course? Research by Roy Baumeister and associates (1998) has demonstrated that when we are excluded from a group our higher reasoning functions actually decrease. He believes this is because of ego depletion, something that more commonly is referred to as ‘willpower’. Baumeister et al. suggested that we have a limited resource, a kind of mental fuel that is used up when ever we apply our conscious will. Since ostracism is actually emotionally and even physically painful we have to use part of our will to suppress this pain, leaving us less for other things.

This might well be true (it sounds plausible) but is self-awareness part of this construct? That is what my research will be examining in a roundabout way (a very roundabout way, I might add).

So let’s see if physical space leads to mental brilliance. I’ll keep you all posted.

Theft

Yesterday my bag was stolen out of my gym locker with in it my phone, my keys, my clothes and my wallet. They simply broke open the lock and took out everything, in plain sight; yet nobody saw anything and nothing was caught on camera.

I was left standing at the gym, without my street clothes, without money for the tram home, without a tram card, without a way to contact anybody to get them to help me, without keys to get into my house once I got there and without very much of an idea how to continue from there.

For a while there I felt really pretty down and desperate. The people at the gym were kind enough to lend me some money to get my ass home with public transport. I jumped on in the good hope that somebody was hope and started thinking on the tram. I thought for a while and then realised that I wasn’t quite as unlucky as I had thought.

You see a bad thing had happened to me, but it couldn’t have happened at a better time. Yes, there are inconveniences, but it could have been so much more inconvenient. Let me explain, the morning before my bag was stolen I just got around to handing in a receipt for 50 euros that had been in my wallet for weeks. That money will now be wired to my account. A few days earlier I got paid at my work. It was a huge wad of cold hard cash. I’ve been known to just carry that around in my wallet and slowly (well, not so slowly I have to admit) spend it. This time around I took it out and left it at home.

I sometimes take my laptop to school and leave it in my gym locker (something that I will obviously never do again), but this time I didn’t. I had almost no cash in my wallet for them to rejoice over. I didn’t even take my book in the morning, something I normally always do but decided against for some odd reason on this day. What was more, I had just bought a new jacket a few days ago and for some reason they left that. I think it was too big for them to take. That was the most expensive item in that locker. They took my worthless shoes, but left the jacket.

What was more, when I got home my housemate was still there. Even luckier, she had been planning to leave but had been held up. Both she and my other house mate were planning to be out till late at night, which would have left me stuck without cover from the cold and without money to hide inside somewhere. Again, luck was on my side.

So, all in all I was incredibly fortunate in my misfortune. Yes they got my bag and yes it’s going to cost me money to get my bank card back, a new phone, a new driver’s licence and those kinds of things, but things could have been so much worse. Plus I get the satisfaction that for all the risk they went through they got about 10 euros, which really does make my day a bit better.

The only thing I really regret is that the phone wasn’t mine. It belonged to a friend who had a lot of text messages she wanted to keep on there. I haven’t told her yet (I don’t have her number), but I’m not looking forward to that.

Age

Last Friday I went to a party at the Paradiso here in Amsterdam on the invitation of the son of the boss. I arrived there appropriately inebriated (okay, too inebriated, have it your way) and after a full cavity search (every crevice of my wallet was fully examined) I was allowed into the club.

The thing that struck me very quickly was the following fact, the average age in the place was somewhere between a half and a whole decade below my own. I felt, for lack of a better word, old.

I ended up dancing a bit, talking a bit and eventually getting accused by one of the friends of the son of the boss (who had a dog, who had a former owner, whose baby sister’s husband was related to the Grim Reaper) that I was talking way too much about our age difference. I think she was on the prowl and my talking up of our age difference sent her the obvious signal that I felt there might be a problem there (she would have been nine when I finished high school), but it set me a thinking.

Have I been complaining about my age a lot? Have I been remarking that I’m old? And the truth of the matter is, yes I have. The fact that I’m nearly thirty has indeed cropped up in conversation after conversation (especially after beer after beer). Apparently I am starting to feel like an old bastard.

And that’s absolutely ridiculous, of course. I’m not even thirty yet (less than half a year to go, but still) and they always say that the thirties are the besties (okay, they don’t, I just made it up and it doesn’t sound very good, but I’m just typing this off the cuff). I think the problem is more that I feel like I’m in a place of my life where I should have been at a much younger age. Most people do get their masters degree before they hit the third decade. Heck, there is a girl (woman?) in my class who’s already busy with her second masters and she’s still got another half decade before she hits her third decade (okay, she’s 25, that was rather roundabout I admit.)

So I’m not old (even though I feel I am) I’m just in a life situation where everybody else is a great deal younger. So maybe I shouldn’t accuse myself of being old, maybe I should tell everybody they’d better hurry up and catch up.

Have an official decree written up that I’m slowing down my aging, in order to reduce my advantage.

The advantage being, of course, that; sorry, what? Yes, yes, of course. Sorry guys, I’ve got to go.

Social Psychology

When I first started studying social psychology I was actually massively disappointed. I think it was well summed up by something a student of neuroscience told me, ‘Every time you social psychologists talk about something ‘new’ all I can think of is something ‘knew’.’ And it seemed that she was right, so many of the ideas that social psychology had discovered were intuitively predictable. The social psychologist says ‘look, I found this effect!’ and the layperson says ‘of course’.

But now that I’ve been doing it for a while I actually find this to be one of social psychology’s strengths. You see, social psychology doesn’t make any assumptions about human interactions, feelings and internal workings. Sure, social psychologists have their predictions and their expectations – they are human, after all – but the whole point is that they then test these assumptions.

The reason they do this is because all social psychologists know that those assumptions, pre-conceptions and hunches come from them being human and are therefore automatically biased. To pull that big word out of the cupboard once again, all of our pre-conceptions have an element of anthromorphism in them. Every one of these beliefs about people was originally conceived of by people. And as every social psychologist also knows, people are wrong a lot more often than they care to realise.

We all believe we’re objective. In fact we all believe we’re far more objective than the rest of the people around us. Of course it can’t be true, it’s another one of those paradoxes (like we all think we’re smarter than average, we can’t all be more objective than average). This belief is called ‘naïve realism’ and most of us aren’t even aware of it occurring. It’s another one of those things that colours our perspective of the world and makes our hunches, assumptions and pre-conceptions a little harder to just accept at face-value. Forget about us being able to strip our thoughts of our own humanity (something that is essential if you’re trying to study humanity), we can’t even strip our thoughts of ourselves!

So social psychology tests, tries and experiments even the stuff that seems obvious. And yes, that means that often we find out that our assumptions are correct; but at least they then aren’t assumptions anymore. The result is that we slowly build up a scientific foundation, rather than building castles in the clouds. And you'd be surprised how many of those basic assumptions end up being inaccurate, or just plain wrong.

This year and next

I just offered my resignation at Villa Zee Zicht. I will not be going into the new year with them. This is not through any fault of theirs, of course, but because I was offered a position today for two days a week at the university. Yes, I will not just be a student, but also an employee of the university.

It won’t be fun to leave the cafe behind. I’ve spent pretty much the whole of my first half year in the Netherlands there. During the summer I was working there regularly 50 hours a week, which might not sound like much for those of you in other industries but it’s a crazy amount to be working in F&B. Lately, of course, the amount of work I’ve been doing there has dropped steadily; from five days to three and then from three to two. Now, of course, it will go down to zero. One more month of café work.

So what will I be doing at the university? Well, one of my days will be dedicated to helping a team of researchers develop applications for emotion recognition software. Software has already partially been developed to allow a computer to use a webcam to identify the emotional state of a user. Now two PhD students will be exploring the application of this further and they apparently need a social psychologist. So what that means for me is that I’ll be spending a whole lot of time investigating emotions, especially as displayed on the face (there’s a whole group of researchers in Social Psychology busy with exactly that).

The other day I’ll be working as a managerial assistant. In that task my experience as a writer will again become important, as I’ll be assisting the head of the social science department specifically in the task of editing, reviewing, writing and summarizing. She just doesn’t have the time to do all the work that’s in her lap, so hey, presto! There’s me.

One of the coolest things I will get to do is write a chapter for a book about emotions in the media. Of course afterwards she’ll have to proof read it, edit it and eventually put her name on it (I’m writing it in her name), but hey, it’s a little more prestigious than making people coffee! (in that case I’m talking about making people black coffee, cappuccinos are another matter entirely.)

But first there is this month to survive. I’ve got an exam on the ninth (for which I will have to re-read approximately 15 articles), I’ve got a research article due on the 12th (for which I will need to read approximately 15 articles and which is between 2.5k and 3k words) and on the 17th I’ve got a research proposal due (for which I will have to read another 15 articles and which is between 2k and 4k words). That means I’ll be reading about three articles a day and writing a grand total of somewhere between 4.5k and 7k words.

I hadn’t looked at it that way yet. Uh, I’ll talk to you later.

The Dimensions Above

We can’t see the fourth dimension. Or rather, we can only ever see really thin cross sections of it, as if some evil genius has dissected time and is showing us one little bit after the next. It’s a bit like a picture show (aka a movie) in which the pictures themselves aren’t really changing, but we perceive change because what is changing is which picture we see. If we could see all of time, we would realise that everything is completely static.

But wait, let me explain by way of an analogy. Imagine that we live in a two dimensional world. There is width and there is depth, but there’s no (real) height. It’s the world of a piece of paper. Just like our three dimensional world things can exist there. We can have squares, circles and even triangles (yey).

But now imagine a stack of papers and we cut a cone shape out of the middle of them. For those of you who can’t quite remember what a cone looks like, it’s like a tube with a point at one end, which slowly expands to a wide base at the other. So, we’ve got our pile of papers with a three dimensional shape cut into it. Now let’s imagine that the point starts at the top of the pile and the base of the cone is at the bottom. Then imagine that you start to pull a sheet at a time away. As you pull each sheet away the circle will appear to grow. Of course the circle isn’t growing, you’re just moving through the pile of sheets.

The fourth dimension is pretty much exactly the same, except (of course) that there happens to be another dimension below. If you could actually see it, things might be slightly odd. You wouldn’t just see your current self, but you’d also see your future and past self. I think Rob Bryanton said it best when he said,

“If you could see yourself in the fourth dimension you'd be like a long undulating snake, with your embryonic self on one end and your deceased self at the other”

The problem, of course, is that suddenly reality would become static again. You see, we’d be stuck on a line, with nowhere to go. Time, in and of it self, is linear. That’s quite understandable, really, just as width is one dimension, so time is only one dimensional. That means that you can’t go left, or right, up or down. You can only go forward (and possibly not even backwards, but that’s part of another story). What is ahead of you on that road will remain in front of you on the road.

Except, of course, if there’s a fifth dimension. Call it time squared, if you will, or time². Suddenly there is again space for movement left and right. Situations can be avoided and, what is more, there is suddenly a way to avoid those frustrating paradoxes that always confound time travel discussions. ‘What if you go back and kill your father’. Well, then you’re just moving the time line that you’re in off to the left a bit and you end up moving in a different direction.

Another great thing, of course, is that with the fifth dimension those that could see the fourth dimension in its entirety would not be seeing stasis. After all, the fifth dimension could then introduce the change required.

The question then becomes, of course, but what if you can fully see the fifth dimension?