The compelling and cruel nature of Aintree was quickly evidenced yesterday

The compelling and cruel nature of Aintree was quickly evidenced yesterday. As the old joke about how many therapists it takes to change a light bulb reminds us, it only takes one But the light bulb has gotta really, really want to change.. Otherwise we will be stuck forever with the bleedin’ obvious.I guess it’s up to us. I pray to God we are more exciting than the experts give us credit for. They would like our behaviour to be as predictable as their banal conclusions. Their understanding of how people work bears little relation to my experience of how we make up our minds, change our minds, lose our minds or are perfectly able to think two opposing things at once. Is that the way to run a country?Opinion polls, focus groups, psychologists, graphologists, experts on voting patterns are all bearing down heavily upon us.

All the mad kow-towing to focus groups tells you little about what is really going on apart from the fact that if you sit a lot of people in a room together they will tend to agree with each other, that some kind of bland consensus will emerge. They are the only people in the world who believe absolutely what other folks tell them. Yes, we know we should not smack our children, eat too much, worship David Cassidy, loathe Tony Blair, feel so bloody apathetic, but we are not entirely in control of ourselves.Experts live in a universe where control is possible, where knowledge can be handed down from on high and we are supposed to be grateful. This is why opinion polls get things wrong, why psychologists can’t see the wood for the trees and why, at a time of supposed excitement, everything feels a bit flat.What all these experts studiously ignore, deny the existence of, or maybe feel is far too vague to take into consideration, is the unconscious. Thank God then that we do not do as we are told and that we do not tell experts the truth. The one subliminal message that is being conveyed by all these signs is: “Do as you are told”.

You can’t cross the road when you want to, have a drink in a bar till you are 21 or visit a urinal without encountering dozens of messages telling you to just say no to drugs.All of this is doubtless the work of experts who however expert appear to have almost zero insight into human motivation. You cannot move for signs and symbols telling you not to do things. Having just returned from the holy land of consumerism, America, I was struck, as always, by what is, despite the mythology, an essentially prohibitive culture. The bombardment of expert advice contributes to an increasingly regulatory culture in which those in power impart information to individuals who then ignore it.This abdication of responsibility has a euphemism – “increased consumer choice”. Middle-class mice tend to do better than deprived ones.What is all this information for? Does anyone actually act on it? We are told not to smoke, eat badly or exceed our alcohol units but we take little notice.

We know this because some psychologists from Northampton have investigated the effects of teen idols on 163 men and women.Oh, and just in case you wondered whether there are better ways of controlling children than smacking them: children benefit from rules that are “consistent, understandable and predictable”.If this wasn’t enough we have been further entranced this week by research that suggests that mice given more space, more toys, more food develop better than mice kept in “poor” homes. Can you believe it?People whose teenage obsessions with film or pop stars continue well into adult life may be at risk psychologically. They also think there is more conflict in their families than their counterparts in India experience.” Their increased stress levels come from possible cultural conflict. This is the stunning result of research by the University of New South Wales in Australia.Our own Birkbeck College tells us: “Second generation British Asian adolescents are suffering more stress than their white counterparts.

This is especially true if they see their weight loss goal as hard to reach”. Amongst this week’s astonishing findings are: “Adolescent girls on diets get increasingly miserable as the weeks pass. They impart information which we are supposed to take as seriously as they take themselves.The British Psychological Society, which meets this week in Edinburgh, regularly offers up insights which make you seriously wonder about the psychological health of its members. Gurus, management consultants, human resource agencies, psychologists, image makers, PR people now operate as a whole substratum of public life. Experts provide evidence, even if that evidence amounts to little more than 60 people and a dog filling out a questionnaire in Bradford.Basil Fawlty used to yell at Sybil that, if she ever went on Mastermind, her specialist subject would be “the bleedin’ obvious” yet the bleedin’ obvious is now big business. We use them as a substitute for common sense.It is no longer enough to know or believe or even feel certain things to be true, for now we have a fanatical reverence for the quasi-science of statistics. We, the media, live in a symbiotic relationship with experts of all species We use them to pad out or confirm our prejudices We use them to fill up space.