Eavesdropping and Gossip

John L Locke, a linguistics professor in New York, has written a book to demonstrate the social value (purpose) of eavesdropping. Locke argues that it represents “the quest of all humans to know what is going on in the private lives of others.” Careless talk may cost lives (as the wartime slogan suggested), but is also enriches them, as Sukhdev Sandhu's review indicates.



Sharon Jayson, Cellphones, social networks make eavesdropping OK? (USA Today, 14 September 2010)

Gary T Marx, 'Cough a Little upon Entering': Some Reflections on the History of Surreptitious Spectatorship (Surveillance and Society, vol. 9, no. 1/2, 2011, pp. 248-256)


Sukhdev Sandhu, Eavesdropping by John L Locke: review (The Telegraph, 17 October 2011)

Sex and Death

Evolutionary psychologists have found another link between sex and death. Apparently death makes men more interested in sex.

Researchers at the University of Kansas told men to think about their own deaths, and found that men responded more vigorously to sexual pictures and had increased heart rates when viewing them, compared to when they thought about dental pain. Apparently this proves that men with low life expectancy are likely to shag anything that moves, in the hope of passing on their genes. Oh, for intercourse sake!

The researchers believe that contemplating one's death mimics conditions of 'low survivability'. It obviously hasn't occurred to them (a) that the contemplation of one's own death is a standard meditative practice, and that (b) contemplating dental pain is probably a lot more realistic and unpleasant than contemplating one's death.



(Contemplating one's own death may actually result in a longer and happier life, and we might imagine that women would prefer to get pregnant by men with better life chances. We might also imagine that the total quantity of sexual activity is influenced by female psychology as well as male psychology, but that's probably too complicated for Omri Gillath and his colleagues to work out.)

Bad Economy Means More Sex For Men (Science 2.0, October 2011)

See also Wynne Parry, Why thoughts of death may be good for you (LiveScience, 4 May 2012)

Death as POSIWID 4

In the flurry of articles and blogposts following the sad but inevitable death of Steve Jobs, many journalists and bloggers have found apposite quotes from his 2005 commencement speech at Stanford. I'm about to quote something from it myself, which continues a discussion we've been having here about the purpose of death.

"Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new."

[Stanford University, June 2005]

Steve Jobs is here following the Buddhist way of thinking.

"Death, far from being a subject to be shunned and avoided, is the key that unlocks the seeming mystery of life. It is by understanding death that we understand life; for death is part of the process of life in the larger sense. In another sense, life and death are two ends of the same process and if you understand one end of the process, you also understand the other end. Hence, by understanding the purpose of death we also understand the purpose of life." V.F. Gunaratna, Buddhist Reflections on Death

"As long as there is fear of death, life itself is not being lived at its best. So one of the very fundamental reasons for contemplating death, for making this reality fully conscious, is that of overcoming fear. The contemplation of death is not for making us depressed or morbid, it is rather for the purpose of helping to free us from fear." Ajahn Jagaro, Death and Dying

"By understanding the purpose of death we also understand the purpose of life."

Now please go and watch Steve Jobs' whole speech. [Stanford University, June 2005]