Cronulla and the Gould-Wilson Effect

Pictured are my Gouldian finches, John and Elizabeth Gould-Wilson (named for their European discoverer and his wife), who live and fly free in my cabin. They spend all night and most of the day on driftwood perches placed near the ceiling in my shower recess, and they shower with me each morning.

All my life I wanted free birds living with me, and only got around to doing it nearly a year ago. And all my life, whenever the subject came up, people expertly told me that it was impossible to do, and that they would crap all over the house, spread disease and chew my books (the birds, that is, not my advisers).

The fact is, I have had no problems at all. As they aren't in contact with other birds they catch no communicable diseases so they pass on none to me. They don't share my taste in literature. Gouldians weigh only 15 grams each and thus their excrement is negligible, and they do all their shitting right onto the floor near the shower drain. When I turn on the shower in the morning, most of the tiny bit of mess immediately disappears. Any stubborn bits are removed by me with a long-handled toilet brush.

This is what brings to my mind the Gould-Wilson Effect, as the scientific community calls it. Because I have an area to clean up that is about the size of my footprint, I take the brush each morning and swish it around over an area about the size of a page of writing paper -- in other words, I clean up twice as much as needed because it's as easy as cleaning up exactly the amount required. Given the motion of sweeping, the length of my arm and of the brush, it is actually easier to clean up double the dirty area than the dirty area itself.

Then, because I have the brush in my hand, I do a bit extra just for the hell of it -- a bit of a brush of the wall, a bit on the floor, a brush on the glass shower doors. It's the natural thing to do when one has a brush in one's hand and when one is already wet in the shower -- whereas it is an unnatural thing for a dry, fully clothed person ever to desire to clean a shower. Housework, after all, is for the birds.

Consequently, my shower is far cleaner than it ever was before I had the birds. In other words, the introduction of a purported detrimental effect has, in fact, produced a salutary one greater than could have been produced without the detrimental effect existing.

"When the fear of an undesired effect leads to a greater salutary effect than anticipated, and greater than could have been attained without the stimulus of the undesired effect, this is known as the Gould-Wilson Effect"

When the fear of an undesired effect leads to a greater salutary effect than anticipated, and greater than could have been attained without the stimulus of the undesired effect, this is known as the Gould-Wilson Effect. As a principle, it does not have a perfect predictive power, but ought to be taken into consideration when any new problems arise in any field, such as racial violence seen this week in Sydney.

Nothwithstanding my remarks yesterday about Australia's long history of racism and the "playing of the race card" by Australian politicians, and also notwithstanding the fact that I can't predict the future with or without reference to the Gould-Wilson Effect, I think it likely that the amount of social clean-up that will emerge from the small amount of shit in Cronulla will lead to a greater cleanliness than existed before the shit came down. Time alone will tell.

Meanwhile, please take note that a neo-Nazi group and a prominent right-wing shock-jock helped stir up the trouble at Cronulla, and that the leader of the Labor Party is in blatant racism-denial as much as John Howard. Note, too, that for some incredible reason, there was insufficient police presence on the streets of the southern beaches last night to intercept tens of carloads of trouble-makers arriving to cause further violence. The State Government should be held to account for this incredible inaction.

Tagged: australia, cronulla, racism, islam, muslims, human+rights, muslim, gouldian, finches, gouldians, finch, bird