You know, all that hoarding of toilet paper that went on in the early stages of the COVID crisis was bizarre and reflected badly on our fellow human beings – but it’s not the most important thing about toilet paper. And no, I’m not referring to its most obvious usage, but rather what it exemplifies in the realm of human relationships.

As it happens, toilet paper is probably the best exemplar of a series of phenomena that threatens to rend the human species in twain. Maybe there’s a word for these phenomena – which I will attempt to describe shortly – but I haven’t found it. So I call them Validistic Equivalencies – VEs for short.

You may think you have no idea what these are, but you do. We all do. They occur around the world in homes, offices and places of leisure. They are trivial on the surface, but have the power to cause deep and irrevocable chasms in the harmony we all strive to achieve in society.

I’m referring, of course, to how some people put the toilet paper roll in the holder so that it hangs down the back, close to the wall, while others – and I am firmly in this camp – place it the other way round, so that the paper unfurls over the front of the roll and falls further away from the wall.

My way, I would hazard, is the right way. If you agree with me, skip this paragraph as you know all this already. This way is the right way because:

1. The paper rotates over the top of the roll as if a great waterfall, such that it is in harmony with the deep, immutable principles of nature
2. The paper causes the roll to rotate in a clockwise manner, and everyone knows that clockwise is right-wise, the direction of progress, growth, and evolution itself
3. As stated, the paper hangs further from the wall, which is not only more convenient, but possibly more hygienic, suspended in the clean air rather than in contact with the germ- (and virus-) encrusted wall.

But if you are a devotee of the other way – the anti-clockwise, anti-life, anti-logical way – you don’t see it like this at all. Your way is logical to you. Not fully understanding it, I can’t go into why it may appear right for you – the important thing is that my irrefutable logic above has no power over you, and you persist with your way in the conviction that it’s the only way.

And hence the term Validistic Equivalency – your view is as valid as mine and I can’t convince you otherwise. The only way of resolving these is to return to the tried and tested methodology we have evolved over the centuries – the scientific method. We need empirical evidence. 

Take another common VE – the stacking of the dishwasher. To me, it’s a clear and logical principle that the cutlery in the basket should go handle-down. This way, the water, laden with soapy chemicals, stain digesters, rinse aid and the like, will ultimately obey the force of gravity and run down over the handles, leaving the blades free of any last residue. Like mountains drained by brooks, like trees’ leaves shedding rain, all cannot but obey this simple principle. Of course, you can buy one of those dishwashers with a cutlery tray at the top of the washer, where the cutlery is laid out in a horizontal – and therefore neutral – way, but this is to miss the point. It dodges the fundamental issue – that water will always run downhill, and all must be stacked accordingly.

Anyway, there are those among us who have pursued empirical evidence for this principle, dedicating precious time and resources to furthering our understanding of what would otherwise happen behind a latched door, in the dark. They have put a Go Pro in a dishwasher – and compelling watching it makes, too. 

Note the knives are placed in the basket blades-up, people. 

There are those from the world of cycling – MAMLs, those who obsess about appearances would have it – who know a particularly intransigent and ingrained VE which is stringently invoked to decide whether an individual is in the tribe, or just not quite there. It has generated pages of online debate, riven old friendships to the core, and cast sensitive souls out of the peloton for all time. I refer, of course, to the age-old, intractable matter of sunglasses arms outside helmet straps vs sunglasses arms inside the helmet straps.

It’s been a while since I rode with the skinny blokes on the road, so I can’t recall how this arrangement fell out for me. I think it may have been arms-in, but don’t hold me to that. I can’t afford the penalty of being wrong. Wiggo, below, goes for arms-out, which is pretty compelling precedent – but as students of logic know, it’s a syllogistic fallacy to appeal to an authority instead of arguing your case. All I’m saying is, if you start thinking about this while hanging at 60kph with the skinny guys a few mm from your wheel, you are going to crash.

By the very nature of the VE, there are few conclusions to be drawn here. We believe what we believe – and no amount of internet debate will change that. I could go on about how difference is all we have in common etc. etc. and recognising differences is what we need to do to get along . . . it’s a perfectly valid conclusion, but it won’t corroborate how I’m right about the toilet roll thing. Neither will writing this – but I’m convinced. 

Wiggo photo by Simon Connellon on Unsplash