#i think there’s a real divide in the ‘community’ where some people seeking a diagnosis as adults/teens act like those of us

[getoheaven]

don’t like the vibe of this at all. i feel like this would assign me “girl autism” because i’m like a stereotypical people-pleasing pussy at birth autist except i got diagnosed as a little kid & got mistreated by medical professionals as much as any other person seeking an autism diagnosis. in fact, my having a diagnosis fundamentally did not influence the way i grew up as an autistic person lol it literally just meant i had a word i was too ashamed to use as a kid because it was like putting a target on my back for my peers, who already treated me bad because i behaved “weird”.

[cowboyjen68]

hi jen, i just followed you and this is really random but ive seen some of your posts helping younger people and it really struck a cord and i need to just let the words fall out of me.

ive been having issues with my girlfriend she cheated on me but this situation is very complicated and we're both fucked up people but i know she still loves me and i really love her. but my anxiety and our lack of communication is really bad right now and im so worried she might not love me the same anymore

ontop of this im 18 and for the past id say 5ish years my mental health and family life has been getting worse, getting diagnosis is hard especially with mentally ill and just overall bad parents that somehow dont understand or believe. i know im deppresed and have been i have anxiety, sever paranoia maybe bpd and bipolar and autism and everything is just so much. now the one person i had is something thats making everything hurt more and i just don't know where to go, im trying to get help but its so slow in this country and i feel so lost and tired i barely eat now and when i do its ether rare or unhealthy and everything is so much i want to collapse.

i hope this isn't to much to randomly send anonymously but you just seem really kind and helpful. thank u for your reply if you do

HI and please accept my apologies for the delay on answering this. I am sorry you are going through so much. My kids are adopted from foster care and I had many kids in my home for up to 5 years who eventually went back home. That is to say I have a lot of experience with mental illness, the systems that treat them, trauma and kids who came from unstable home lives.

At the ripe old age of 18 you have plenty of time to find love and contentment but right now might not be the time. I understand there might be odd circumstances that caused your girlfriend to cheat on you. If you feel betrayed and lost trust that is a feeling that is next to impossible to overcome for people with no comorbidities let alone a teen trying to figure herself out and deal with navigating the broken mental health/care system.

It is actually quite normal for young love to change and get redefined into friendship even when the circumstance are the best. Her cheating on you might very well be a sign that your relationship is in flux and not what you thought it was. A romance that has run its course is not a failure, relationships do not have to last forever to be important and real and worth having had.

It might be scary to think of not being with her, of not having your "one" person that you can count on but I do believe you can get farther working on yourself if you put time and energy into you and not dividing it up between you and her.

There is a lot of precedent set for women to set aside their romance and intimacy in order to be just friends while one or both does some work on herself. Sometimes it is necessary to stay involved for emotional support or financial support, that is just the reality of our world. Living single can be very difficult.

Please consider letting go of the relationship in its current form and putting your energy of yourself. Letting go of the stress of trying to repair what you had with her will remove so much pressure from you and from her that you will feel much more ready to tackle your mental state.

I promise. You are not a failure, she is not "the bad guy" in this story. Take all the wonderful things you shared with her keep those with you when you want a reminder that it loving her was worth your time even if it didn't end like you planned.

Seek mental health help but starting small. A therapist can help you begin to talk through things and often she can help you find additional resources like a medical Dr, public subsidies for insurance or free clinics to assist you in getting medication and mental health support. Most counties have a social services office and those employees are a wealth of information.

[meadowhilley]

what’s wrong with this picture

Part I: A Walk in the (Upside-Down) Park

I’ve always wanted people to like me. As far back as I can remember, though, I was never convinced they did.

Don’t worry, I’ll spare you the self-tortured speculation bit where I delve into the possible origins of my persistent insecurity. All I want to say now is that, however strong or self-assured or even arrogant I may have appeared to you over the years, what I most wanted, always, was for you to understand me, to accept me, to tell me that the person that I am is alright by you.

Then one day you did. It was three years ago. On October 30, 2014, actually, the eve of what could have been the scariest Halloween of my life. This invigorating shot in the arm came just hours before Chris and I would sit down with a team of medical experts who claimed to have discovered a relatively successful protocol for dealing with the zombie apocalypse. Little did any of us know at the time that you, my friends, had slipped me a powerful antidote the day before, one whose real effects would manifest and multiply over the months and years to come.

On that Halloween eve, in my shock at having been abruptly relegated to the ranks of the undead, I turned to Facebook. As one does. And there you were, my imagined community, ready to inoculate me against the looming horror. A motley group of friends that reflected better than anything else the complex composition of my character—character and friends I would need now more than ever. Looking to you, I realized, was the best way of looking at me. The converse, I understood, was equally true. Mirror, mirror, I began. A weird approach to fighting cancer, admittedly. An indication I’d spent too long in fairytale land as a kid. As wild-eyed Joyce Byers of Stranger Things has repeatedly insisted, “I know what this looks like!” By that, of course, she means BATSHIT CRAZY. Unless you happen to be the one who has found a way to talk with your missing son via Christmas lights. Or who feels you’ve discovered a “cure” for your disease in regularly confiding your deepest fears and greatest foibles in the world’s most public forum.

Self-reflection, I quickly discovered, can look an awful lot like an exercise in vanity, its mirror-image and near enemy.

Just as poison can serve as medicine.

Patriotism can resemble treason.

Standing up can involve taking a knee.

Abuse can masquerade as tough love.

And, if you should find yourself suddenly separated from everything you hold dear by the thin wall concealing an eerie dimension you never suspected could exist, then your frantic effort to break down that space-time barrier with an axe or whatever goddamn tool you happen to have on hand will likely appear to many concerned onlookers as the textbook sign of a nervous breakdown.

(Note my weapons of choice: a pen, a child’s fork, a pair of scissors, needle-nose pliers, lip gloss, and a few fake bullets.)

If any of my soul-searching exploits of the past three years ever struck you as exhibitionist—just the sort of self-absorbed, navel-gazing, attention-seeking, ego-driven kind of behavior that gives social media its bad name (well, that and the whole selling-out-to-the-Russians thing)—you are not alone. On many occasions, I myself came to question the methods I’d adopted and to ask what hidden motivations my sneaky subconscious might be cleverly concealing.

My closest friends and family shared these concerns, but whenever they voiced them I justified my Facebooking and blogging and memoir writing as so many means to achieving a noble and necessary end: healing.

Of course, even as I emphatically defended myself against charges of look-at-me narcissism, I was fully and uncomfortably aware of the fact that how we arrive at our destination is bound to change the very nature and outcome of the journey itself.

Social media can have a terrifically corrosive power. We know this. Evidence that these platforms can fracture and divide our community more than they unite us is everywhere apparent. Many social scientists have taken to the soapbox of late, screaming that our devices have made zombies of us all, preaching that the end of the world is nigh, and offering statistics to back their claims.

Showing up regularly in such a fraught virtual environment was a risky proposition, I knew, being all too aware of our susceptibility as humans to the lure of likes, the intoxicating effects of flattery, and the tendency to get greedy and hoard the sort of social capital such attention bestows. Hip to all this, I was a bit like Will Byers, understanding that, even if my initial intention was to use my insight to spy on the Shadow Monster in the hope of defeating it, I could easily end up a double agent in the employ of pure evil.

But whatever. It didn’t seem to matter how often I flipped the perspective switch during those internal debates about the advisability of “performative self-examination,” as I’d come to think of it. I always found myself coming back here, to this massive virtual theater, and awkwardly uttering “Ahem” to get your attention.

Driving my actions was something far more powerful than what the visible world was willing to reveal. Like Joyce, I felt what I felt. I knew what I knew. This was a salvage operation; at stake was not only the rebuilding of my body but the redemption of my soul. To hell with what it looked like. Just sell me the fucking Christmas lights, Donald. And yes, I mean on credit.

There’s something seriously wrong with me, I began by admitting to us all three years ago. And to the public confession that I was harboring a horrifying thing at my core, you responded with 162 likes, 146 comments, and 24 shares, which combined told me what I’d always secretly hoped to hear: that you liked me anyway, that some of you even loved me, and that you cared whether I lived or died.

It was a glorious and strange occasion, like attending my own funeral. Announcing my diagnosis helped us all dump our inhibitions in a screw it, let’s hug sort of way. Within the space of an instant I received this rare and beautiful gift: learning how you felt about me without having to die first.

Everyone should be so lucky. Seriously.

You and I wanted to have a moment, right then and there, while it was still possible. We felt compelled and instinctively driven to enact a basic human transaction at the brink, for our mutual benefit. What we had to figure out were the terms of our trade.

Conventional wisdom says cancer patients need casseroles. While my kids thank those of you who cooked to show you cared over the six-month period when I found even the taste of water overpowering and insufferable, what I most wanted for myself was something very different, and really hard to ask for: an audience.

Hard because, if asking for pretty much anything is awkward, it can be downright mortifying to walk up to the mic and announce, “May I have your attention, please? I have something very worthwhile and important to say.”

Especially for a 5’2” female who indulges in self-doubt the way that others devour a pint of ice cream (ok, I do that, too). Inviting you to read along as I muddled through some early responses to The Big Questions, I was always excruciatingly aware of the bigness of my ask. Time is precious, after all, and far greater voices than mine constantly compete for your attention. But there was so much I wanted to tell you. So much, in fact, that I was dying to tell you.

However lovely the intentions behind donated comfort food, forcing myself to enjoy it in the context of my cancer felt a lot like roasting marshmallows while my house was burning, to be perfectly honest. Every one of my instincts was fully engaged in the all-consuming survival effort, and there was a clear consensus among those deep and shrill interior voices that, if my existence was to mean anything at all to this world, I needed to express myself 1.) immediately and continuously, 2.) to the exclusion of many other worthy pursuits, 3.) within hearing range of an audience, 4.) without any hope of reward beyond simply being heard.

Here’s something you may have figured out about me by now: I am no good at playing the part of Helpless Cancer Victim. No more than I can pull off the role of Classroom Party Mom. “Don’t count on me for cupcakes,” I recently explained to my daughter’s first-grade teacher. “But hey, if you’re open to some curriculum enhancement, I’ll bake you up a big batch.”

Please understand: this is not me acting all smarty-pants, holier-than-thou, self-righteous, proud-to-a-fault, or ungrateful for your concrete aid when I was at my lowest. This is not me judging all of those compromised folks who legitimately need casseroles, or even those who are getting on just fine but would like to enjoy a steaming bowl of consolation without a side dish of complicated, thank you very much. Nor is this me looking down my nose at the phenomenal cupcake bakers of this world who brighten our kids’ days (I love you ladies for all you do—and yes, it’s almost exclusively ladies who do this very important work). It is simply a matter of me knowing me. Of me understanding that the best of what I have to offer is something far less comforting than casseroles or cupcakes, but just as important.

For the better part of my life, most folks haven’t known what to make of me. Like Carla Bruni, “je suis excessive” by nature. I was always too much for people. Too intense. Too far out there. Too eclectic. Too intimidating. Too earnest. Too touche-à-tout (all-over-the-place). Too outspoken. The proof? I just compared myself to Carla Bruni, France’s perfectly bilingual supermodel, actress, singer songwriter, and former First Lady. Who does that?

I’ll tell you who: the sort of person who has been looked at askance, questioned, criticized, and reined in all her life for expressing this brand of intolerable excess.

Someone should really take you down a peg or two, I’ve heard more than once.

You think you’re so great.

On whose authority do you make such claims?

Goody-goody!

Who do you think you are?

Can’t you just focus on one thing at a time?

Stop pointing your finger at me!

What makes you think you have something worthwhile to share?

How about you just shut up already and give someone else a chance to talk?

None of which felt good. If those voices had it right, I’d be forced to conclude there was something seriously wrong with me. The prospect of approaching life in a fundamentally different way would necessarily mean fighting the wild nature even my name told me I was meant to embody.

But still the voices persisted. Which is likely what led to my most valiant effort at shutting myself up: a 13-year relationship in which I was actively discouraged from expressing myself in almost every way imaginable.

Then the most amazing thing happened: I got cancer!

Again, an admittedly excessive thing to do. Not something I’d exactly gone and signed up for. But I’ll be damned if this illness wasn’t the perfect antidote to my lifelong alienation problem.

Suddenly, nobody begrudged me my excesses. No one wanted to be in my shoes. Nobody envied my lot in life. People pretty much stopped telling me to be more this and less that. My body was not a source of jealousy or desire. My manic antics didn’t grate on people’s nerves, or at least not the way they used to. That old, persistent claim that the deck had been stacked in my favor was abruptly dropped. And just like that, after a lifetime of curbing my natural élan so as not to make people uncomfortable, after decades carrying guilt over what I’d been given and wearing shame because my very being could often seem an unwelcome excess, I was finally free to just be me.

The jig was up. My cancer had outed me, revealed what I’d long been concealing. And the only way to spare folks discomfort was to hide the fact that I was sick… which of course could only make me sicker. Repressing, stifling, conforming to expectations—this cautious approach had clearly been unhealthy. Besides which, following all the rules had failed to keep me safe from mortal danger.

Call me crazy, what others saw as a tragedy I experienced as a liberation.

In the Upside-Down, I felt quite suddenly well-liked. Welcome. Just right. The sensation Alice must have felt when she finally stopped growing either too big or too small. Or the comfort Goldilocks found in tasting Baby Bear’s porridge, sitting in his chair, and sleeping in his bed.

The natural bravado and intensity I’d carried into many of my earlier endeavors and that had often struck observers as problematic were instantaneously recast in a heroic light. Whereas in the past I’d been accused of overreach and gaudy showmanship, now the very same gestures were perceived as acts of “incredible bravery” and “kick-ass determination.”

Thanks… I guess? I stammered, totally baffled, knowing that this “amazing courage” people spoke of was nothing more than me being me, only the context had shifted dramatically. The extreme nature of my circumstances finally seemed a good fit for my own radical character. My fearlessness finally had a proper outlet. This is going to sound weird, I know. Offensive, even. But I immediately knew that cancer was going to be easy compared to feeling unliked. That had been excruciating. This would be a walk in the park.

I’ve got this, I assured everyone.

But what I was really thinking was: Holy crap, I was made for this shit.

Ever hear the story about how Br’er Fox wanted to kill Br’er Rabbit in the worst possible way? “Hang me from the highest tree!” pleaded Br’er Rabbit. “Drown me in the deepest lake!” he implored. But please, PLEASE, p-l-e-a-s-e don’t throw me in that there briar patch!” Which is precisely what Br’er Fox proceeded to do, letting predatory spite blind him to the fact that his prey had royally played him.

Like the tricky rabbit, I was born and bred in this here briar patch, my friends. Born and bred.

(to be continued)

[euro3plast-fr]

25 of the best adverts 2017

From the politically driven to the funny, our favorite adverts of 2017 so far

We look at some of the best ads from 2017 so far. We have featured some of the most clever, moving and funny ads from the year. We also feature ads that have been thought-provoking covering some of the more controversial topics this year such as politics, immigration, and gender issues. Here are our top 25...

KFC Cauliflower Burger

When KFC's #cleaneating burger hit Facebook, the video went viral. Poking fun at healthy living influencers and the #cleaneating community, the advert features fake 'influencer', Figgy Poppleton-Rice.  Thankfully, the clean eating burger was a spoof, its real purpose to launch their new 'The Dirty Louisiana' burger.

Skittles 'Romance the Rainbow' Superbowl Ad 2017

Superbowl is one of the biggest advertising opportunities in the US, costing around 5million for a 30-second slot. Only the biggest and best brands can compete for their place. One stand out advert was Skittles, with their funny take on a romantic gesture.

Heineken ‘Worlds Apart’

Heineken released their campaign #Worldsapart earlier this year, with the question 'Can two strangers with opposing views prove that there’s more that unites than divides us?'. The film features a feminist, environmental activist and a transgender woman. They pair them with individuals who have the opposite or extreme views on the topic. Find out what happens when they are asked to dicuss their differences over a beer.

Macmillan Cancer Support 'A dad with cancer is still a dad'

Macmillan explores what ordinary life looks like when you’re living with a cancer diagnosis. An eye opening series of adverts looking at the life of a dad, lover, sister, and friend. Find all four adverts here.

Samsung 'Ostrich'

Samsung has given an ostrich the ability to fly with the power of VR. This playful Ad looks to push their product Gear VR. Trying to advertise VR previously has been hard from brands, but we think Samsung has nailed this one on the head.

Burger King 'Burning Stores'

Print advertising may be old-school but Burger King did well getting so much coverage with their latest print ads. Promoting their key selling point that all their burgers are flame grilled.

Coca-Cola 'Pool Boy'

Coca-Cola's attempts to subtly bring LGBT inclusivity into their popular advert. Featuring a story of a pool boy and a brother and sister who both lust after him, only to be upstaged by their mum.

Apple 'Earth - Shot on iPhone'

Apple used narration from Carl Sagan's book 'Pale Blue Dot', in response to Trump pulling the US out of the Paris climate accord. It calls its viewers to act and preserve the world we live on. All imagery used was shot on an iPhone.

Heinz 'Pass the Heinz'

This ad did not come from Heinz but from 'Mad Men's' creative director Don Draper. Now 50 years later the “Pass the Heinz” campaign has become a real life idea.

KFC 'The whole chicken'

A recent ad from KFC, focuses on the fact they use 100% and nothing else. But the ad left viewers outraged, particularly animal activists, Peta. KFC did not intend to upset viewers but instead, show that they have made positive steps to sourcing better produce.

IKEA 'Lion Man #WonderfulEveryday'

IKEA are great at setting the scene of a perfect home. Their latest advert promotes the importance of the living room and its relaxing qualities, using a lion as its main character. IKEA said they wanted to 'Inspire the nation to reclaim their living rooms – challenging everyone to think of it as a personal sanctuary to relax and recharge.'

Mircosoft 'Change the odds'

Mircosoft aim to encourage girls to pursue degrees and careers in STEM. Using young girls with big dreams they look to help them change the world, using the tag line 'Change the world, stay in STEM'.

Barbie 'Dads who play Barbie'

Barbie has been on a mission to break down the stereotypical walls of girls who play with barbies and take a new marketing angle. Thye released an ad earlier this year focusing on the relationship between a father and daughter. Encouraging Dads to enter into their little girl's imagery world.

Carlberg 'The Danish way'

Carlsberg seeks to position themselves as an icon of Danish lifestyle, featuring Danish actor, Mads Mikkelsen. The ad ends with the Carlsberg brewery in Copenhagen, where he is handed a pint of Export.

Pampers 'Little Fighters'

Little Fighters' created by Pampers and Saatchi & Saatchi was released to mark the launch of its Preemie nappies for premature babies. The advert looks to raise awareness of its smallest nappy yet and the struggle their parents and families face.

The New York Times 'The truth is hard'

This is New York Times first ever advert. A simple ad with a simple message, using just typography and sound to illustrate that they only publish the truth. They also released complimentry short ads on the truth behind journalism. These are hard hitting ads having teh right impact and beinging to light the hardship our world is facing today.

Hyundai 'Hybrid Song'

Taking a more creative approach to their advertising, Hyundai focus on the stereotypical buyers of hybrid cars. Addressing the thoughts and opinions people have of hrbrid drivers.

Audi's 'Daughter'

Audi's has also jumped on the political band wagon and address the issue of equal pay. A father watches his daughter in a race and talks about how he dreads the day he has to explain to her that we live in a world that values men over women. A moving and thought provoking advert.

84 Lumber 'Complete The Journey'

Originally a super bowl ad but it was deemed too controversial for broadcast. The story follows a mother and daughter’s migrant journey from Mexico to the US, but to find some workers building a wall around the border. The ad ends with the line, 'The will to succeed is always welcome here.'

Vauxhall 'PyjamaMamas'

Vauxhall has rolled out a new campaign to promote the 'Crossland X SUV'. The ad features mums who may end up wearing their pyjamas all day, but do so with 'swagger'. The ad looks to target the working mum through a humorous and creative approach.

Adobe Creative cloud 'The hovering Art Director'

Adobe takes a comical look at the relationship between art directors, designers, and marketers, in a campaign to promote its Adobe Stock software.

TV 2 'All that we share'

Danish broadcaster TV2 looks to prove we have more in common than we think, celebrating acceptance and diversity in their latest advert. The ad was released on the same day that Trump signed the order to ban those from seven Muslim-majority countries entering the US. This ad focuses on want unites us, not what divides us.

Sprint 'No need for extreme measures'

A funny and to the point advert from sprint showing the extremes people go to get out of phone contracts. Another popular ad from the Superbowl.

Vodafone 'The Chase'

Following on from their latest advert 'The wedding' featuring Martin Freeman, Vodafone has released a second advert promoting their interior coverage. Reinforcing their message that they have the best coverage in the UK.

GE’s 'What If Millie Dresselhaus, Female Scientist, Was Treated Like a Celebrity'

We are obsessed with celebrity culture from Kim Kardashian to Beyonce. GE look at what our world would look like if you treated scientists and great inventors of our time as we do celebrities. The aim of the advert is to achieve their goal of placing 20,000 women in tech roles by 2020.

We have seen a great mix of ads in 2017 and it will be interesting to see what the next 5 months bring in the advertising world. I predict we will see more politically inspired commercials, reaching out to audiences who are becoming more concerned with current events and global issues.

What has been your favorite advert of 2017 so far? Please let us know by tweeting us or comment below.

from Blog – Smart Insights http://www.smartinsights.com/traffic-building-strategy/campaign-planning/25-best-adverts-2017/

[stag28]

"the meteorologists definition reflected the relative significance of modern aviation over shipping, the public forecast definitions reflected this change in status, definitions were mutable to social status. The weather map issue is more significant in that the maps it uses today provide the public with "the answer" (there is a 52% chance of rain tomorrow, here is a rain icon that is interpreted as rain) rather than the information to make a judgement. I see this is an example of the transformation of the public sphere, where by a state institution inhibits the public's ability to think and criticise. I think this type of transformation in relation to finance as being core to the lack of faith the public have in finance and the public's inability to knowledgeably criticise finance the root of financial crises. [..] A key episode in the transformation of finance was the 1844 Bank Charter Act. [..] The currency school argued, with the support of statistics, that the easy availability of credit led to inflation and so there should be a link between the, concrete, quantity of gold and the availability of credit. The banking school argued that financial instability was a consequence of fluctuations in demand and supply and had nothing to do with the networks of banks providing credit by issuing their own notes. This argument was supported by the fact that high, not low, interest rates were associated with periods of inflation. The currency school won the argument and the Bank Charter Act prohibited English banks, other than the Bank of England, from issuing notes and required all banks to hold Bank of England notes as a capital reserve to back up their lending. Banks could still create ‘money’ in bank deposits by lending money, which would be ‘destroyed’ once the loan was repaid but were under the centralised control of the Bank of England. [..] In the distributed financial network that existed before 1844 the stability of the system rested on inter-personal relationships and trust. Quaker doctrine nurtured this trust and produced financial success. After 1844 this stability rested on the centralised decision making of the ‘lender of last resort’. [..] Dr Haldane observes that the accuracy of weather forecasts has improved dramatically since 1987 through the greater use of data and economics could similarly improve (19:53-20:10). I would start of by disputing Dr Haldane's diagnosis and argue it was not greater data (10 weather ships used in the 1970s have been replaced by 18 weather buoys) that lead to the improved forecasts but greater computational power that has allowed finer scale simulations of the differential equations that has delivered the better precision. Whether or not the improvement in forecast accuracy is down to greater data or greater computational power the underlying assumption is that the economy, like the weather, is a system that can be represented by a set of differential equations that can be used to simulate the evolution of the economy. This is a massive assumption. [..] Both Aristotle and Cicero recognised that it was feasible to predict natural phenomena, like the weather but events subject to human agency were impossible to foresee. [..] The change in attitude begins with Descartes search for certainty that involved applying the deductive reasoning presented in Euclid's Elements to non-mathematical thinking starting from the ‘common notion’ “I think therefore I am”. This resulted in Descartes seeking mechanical, logical, explanations for natural phenomenon, rather than the teleological ones of Aristotle. Because different objects had different ends, Aristotle believed there were distinctive sciences to account for different phenomenon. Descartes, in contrast, believed in a unified science and he likened his whole philosophical programme to a tree whose roots were in metaphysics while its trunk was made up of mathematics ‒ “on account of the certitude and evidence of [its] reasoning” ‒ and physics with the branches of the tree being the practical sciences, both natural and moral. [..] The alternative to Descartes has traditionally been Locke who dismissed the Cartesian belief that there are innate ideas, rather people are born with minds that are blank-sheets: tabula rasa. Locke argued that knowledge came from experience with sense organs first perceiving events in the real world and then the mind interpreting them to form ideas. The validity of an idea did not depend on how it conformed to some authority, theoretical or political, but on the origins of idea and how had it evolved: its genealogy. This meant that people needed to investigate the origins of their beliefs, reflecting a Puritan upbringing. For Locke the purpose of philosophy was to show how the tabula rasa was filled with knowledge, which is “the perception of the agreement” of two ideas. In contrast to Descartes Locke argued that human knowledge could never be certain. One might observe the Sun rising every morning of our lives and infer it will do the same tomorrow, but we cannot assume it is true and this motivates us to ask ourselves why the Sun rises. Locke finished the An Essay concerning Human Understanding by dividing knowledge into three types. The first is physica, the nature of things. The second is practica, what people should do as rational and wilful agents. The final type is semeiotika (Greek for ‘signs’), how physica and practica are attained and communicated. [..] While Descartes philosophy can be caricatured as being based on doubt, Locke’s can be characterised as focusing on trust with Locke claiming that language was important because it enabled promises to be made , which created the trust that bound a society together. Since knowledge was fallible reliable knowledge could only be based on trust, faith is only necessary in the presence of doubt, while a stable political system relied on people making and keeping promises and abiding by contracts. [..] Locke's influence was persistent. The tripartite separation of knowledge into physica, practica and semeiotika was mirrored in Kant's tripartite Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason and Critique of Judgement. Laplace’s reputation in mathematics was built on two parallel pairs of books: Mécanique Céleste (1799-1825) and Exposition du système du monde (1796) describing the mathematics of physica to a technical and general audience, while Théorie analytique des probabilités (1812) and Théorie des probabilités (1819) did the same for the mathematics of practica. Descartes view of a certain, unified science came to dominate during the nineteenth century. Descartes' ideas had been developed by Spinoza who's Deus sive natura, ‘God or nature’, indicated that there was only a single substance that, when viewed from one perspective is nature but from another is God. This solved the problem of how Descartes’ mind interacted with matter at the cost of prohibiting contingency, because if everything is connected to God, it cannot happen randomly. Spinoza argued that people believe themselves to possess free-will and have autonomy because, being only finite, they do not see the complete picture. The purpose of human rationality was to come to understand the true nature of God, the laws of nature. Spinoza believed that at the most basic level people have direct knowledge of nature through their senses. This can be improved into a scientific knowledge of the world that could identify connections between phenomena and so was able to make generalisations. The ultimate aim was to have direct knowledge of the generalisations, not mediated by ‘finite’ ideas or concepts and this ‘third type’ of knowledge delivered true freedom. Spinoza saw the purpose of the individual as to lift themselves out of a mundane perspective in order to comprehend the totality of creation. Spinoza's objective, described in his Ethics, presented in the Euclidean style, was of attaining a 'God-like' perspective was picked up by the German Romantics and resulted in the Idealists assuming a deterministic outlook across a unified science. [..] I think the distinction between a Lockean and Cartesian approach to economic policy making is fundamental to the issues the BoE is facing up to. Consider the issue of market liquidity. For most of the period since 1700 liquidity, the ability to transact at will, had been associated with a person's credit, Defoe discussed it frequently. A person's credit was based on their trustworthiness and the financial system was founded on believing 'promises to pay'. [..] Locke and Spinoza would agree that peoples' beliefs are formed by their experiences and inform their decisions. Hence, whether or not a person has a conversation with another determines the future. The economy can only be predictable if individual interactions are predictable. [..] It might be admirable to aspire to identifying the equations that represent the economy and amass the data, but in the meantime I think it would be better to focus on what is important and achievable in an uncertain world[.] [..] Most mathematicians appreciate that a proof of a theorem starts at the result and the process of working out what is required to deliver the proof. This approach to organising science was the great contribution of the ancient Greeks and was rooted in Platonic Forms, which needed to be the foundations of knowledge. This fact about Euclid was not really appreciated until Frege in the 1880s and resulted in Descartes belief in innate ideas and justified Kant's synthetic a priori truths."