Hey guys.
You've no doubt noticed that I haven't updated in a while.
I was trying to prevent that from happening by instituting weekly updates.
I chose Wednesdays and Thursdays because I ordinarily update least on those days.
Well... turns out there was a reason for that. So I haven't been updating. At all.
And the fact of the matter is that I'm busy getting busier, so I'm not going to be updating for a while.
I can't say this won't be a permanent thing, but there are still plenty of things I want to say.
Time will tell.
See you all soon!
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Saturday, March 19, 2011
The parable of the vinegar tasters
Another short tale, this time based on a traditional Chinese painting subject, also known as the Vinegar Tasters.
Three wise men were travelling across the country, going from town to town to teach wisdom. At one town in particular, they were welcomed warmly by the townspeople, and offered gifts of the town's produce. One of the gifts was a large pot of vinegar. The first of the wise men dipped his finger into the vinegar, tasted it, and a sour expression came across his face. "This vinegar is too sour," he said, "take it away." The second of the wise men dipped his finger into the vinegar, tasted it, and a scowl came across his face. "This vinegar tastes terrible. It is far too bitter, take it away." Then the third man dipped his finger into the vinegar, tasted it, and smiled. "Mmm!" The other two looked at him confused. "Now this tastes like vinegar!"
In the Chinese tradition, the three vinegar tasters are Confucius, Buddha and Loazi, and each one's reaction is representative of their respective religion's attitude on life. Confucius sees the vinegar as soured wine, and sees it in need of correction, just as society should be maintained through strict rules. Buddha recoils at the taste of the vinegar, and sees it as being too extreme for the body and an example of the suffering of life. Laozi, on the other hand, recognises that vinegar is what it is, and our perception of it is biased by our judgement of what it "should be".
In the same way, all indifferents, be they goods such as vinegar or money or fine arts or even medicine, or events such as celebrations or tragedies or deaths, are all as they are and nothing more, neither inherently good nor bad. Recognise them as such and you will see how your perception has been coloured, and know where you have mistakenly placed your values. Only then will you be able to accept yourself as part of the harmony of Nature, rather than willing yourself against it.
Three wise men were travelling across the country, going from town to town to teach wisdom. At one town in particular, they were welcomed warmly by the townspeople, and offered gifts of the town's produce. One of the gifts was a large pot of vinegar. The first of the wise men dipped his finger into the vinegar, tasted it, and a sour expression came across his face. "This vinegar is too sour," he said, "take it away." The second of the wise men dipped his finger into the vinegar, tasted it, and a scowl came across his face. "This vinegar tastes terrible. It is far too bitter, take it away." Then the third man dipped his finger into the vinegar, tasted it, and smiled. "Mmm!" The other two looked at him confused. "Now this tastes like vinegar!"
In the Chinese tradition, the three vinegar tasters are Confucius, Buddha and Loazi, and each one's reaction is representative of their respective religion's attitude on life. Confucius sees the vinegar as soured wine, and sees it in need of correction, just as society should be maintained through strict rules. Buddha recoils at the taste of the vinegar, and sees it as being too extreme for the body and an example of the suffering of life. Laozi, on the other hand, recognises that vinegar is what it is, and our perception of it is biased by our judgement of what it "should be".
In the same way, all indifferents, be they goods such as vinegar or money or fine arts or even medicine, or events such as celebrations or tragedies or deaths, are all as they are and nothing more, neither inherently good nor bad. Recognise them as such and you will see how your perception has been coloured, and know where you have mistakenly placed your values. Only then will you be able to accept yourself as part of the harmony of Nature, rather than willing yourself against it.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Thursday's Thought for the Week: 17 Mar 2011
I've read a few translations of Chapter 23, from which this week's WQW was taken. The original text of the Tao Te Ching was written in Ancient Chinese, which is notoriously difficult to translate, and so you can find for many of the poems inside a very wide variety of translations, some with very different and even contradictory meanings. Of the translations I read of Chapter 23, they varied from the very metaphorical to the very literal. I decided to go with one of the more literal versions as a jumping off point for this week's TTW, only because it better serves me in talking about the particular subject of this post, that being the topic of communication, although I could as well have used it to speak about a number of other topics had I decided to go with a differing interpretation.
The quote I provided yesterday seems fairly explicit. Nature is capable of making great statements (if you will) not only despite their being brief, but also because they are brief. Humans too, the reasoning goes, should endeavour to be so forceful and succinct with their words. Few people, especially in this day and age of constant interaction, would argue that point much. Email, instant messaging, Facebook, all those confounded doo-dads the older generations dismiss are a double-edged swords at times, especially now that we carry them all around in our pockets. Aloneness is almost a foreign concept, at least where such technologies are prevalent.
Consider also, if you please, another very old saying along a similar vein. It suggests that there is an inversely proportional relationship to how much you talk and how much you ought to talk. I would give you some direct quotes, but history is so replete with examples and variations on the theme, that it would give me great astonishment that someone reading this blog should never had come across it before. The point is, I imagine anyone who has come across a statement to this effect would not lodge any disagreement with it, at least not in principle, unless perhaps that person happened to be the argumentative type. They may even nod sagely in view of this great wisdom, maybe with a knowing smile in someone or other's direction, and lament the way our society has turned towards this need for constant stimulation.
This is a sad state indeed, largely because such people are heedless of this advice with astonishing flair. Now, I'm not about to whinge about people being too undisciplined to actually follow through with advice they know is worthwhile, because goodness, it's not as though I haven't made my opinion on that fact before. No, I would much rather take the simpler recourse and ask people to actually go out of their way and try to, every now and then, shut up.
Those who know me closely will likely scoff at the idea of me being a particularly quiet person, as I can be as unnecessarily boisterous as anyone, given the right conditions, but with that said when I'm with people I'm not very close with, even if they're friends, I'm much less likely to be as loud or talkative. A lot of people tell me that this is some sort of a problem, as though my reluctance to say something in such a scenario is some sort of extreme shyness or antisociability, and I should try and be more "outgoing". The fact of the matter is, however, that if I am with people I don't know, or don't know well, then if I don't have much of substance to say I'm not terribly inclined to talk. There's very little point in flapping your lips around and making noise that nobody particularly cares to listen to, don't you think?
Now, if there's something to be said, or if someone asks you a question, there's little to be accomplished in staying quiet, or being abrupt. That is just as unproductive as talking when you shouldn't. Know when to speak and when to stay silent, and I think you will find that you learn much more from listening to other people than you could from taking over conversations or perpetuating inane and pointless chatter. Live and let live, as they say - if there is business to conduct, then conduct it. If not, relax, enjoy yourself, but remember that like many other things, the more words you offer, the cheaper each word becomes.
On a related topic, and incidentally the initial thought behind this post, is the matter of essay-writing and speech-giving. If you're ever in a position to be writing essays or giving speeches, you will likely be trying to persuade someone, and it is a matter of common knowledge that a good way to persuade someone is to impress them. Following this line of thought, people can and often are tempted to pull out a thesaurus and start using the longest synonyms they can find at every opportunity, even though they may not be aware of the common usage such words may hold, or any particular connotations. This is often a bad idea because people often see such people as either being genuinely unpleasant intellectuals or insincerely unpleasant poseurs attempting to look smarter than they are, but that is not why I bring it up - this is not a blog about essay-writing techniques.
What point I would much rather push is the idea that you shouldn't go out of your way to use big words for the simple reason that it gets in the way of your communication. Now, obviously, if you're referring to a very specific concept you want to get across with some accuracy, then by all means be as technical as need be, but if you're trying to say a very mundane thing in a very round-about way, then all you are doing is wasting time, wasting breath and wasting those precious words I was talking about before. Not only that, but all people should value the truth (I hold that to be a self-evident truth for the time being). If you are using words that your audience doesn't understand, then you are obscuring your argument; you not only make it harder to understand your sentences, you make it harder to understand your arguments, your points, and to do that is to obscure the truth. The truth is, in many cases, as plain as it is simple.
Am I saying you should never lie? Maybe yes, maybe no. That is not the point of this post. Am I saying that we should always be completely upfront and honest with people, no matter how they feel? Possibly, but again, that is not the point of this post. The point of this post is not what people say, but how they choose to say it, and how free they feel to do so. Save your words for things that need to be said. Be forceful. Let yourself have meaning in your speech, not only when you address a crowd or an authority, but at all times. Do not devalue your ideas by throwing them into a sea of nonsense and triviality that serves no purpose other than to alleviate some ill-founded notion of awkwardness, or social mores.
Or perhaps I'm just rambling.
The quote I provided yesterday seems fairly explicit. Nature is capable of making great statements (if you will) not only despite their being brief, but also because they are brief. Humans too, the reasoning goes, should endeavour to be so forceful and succinct with their words. Few people, especially in this day and age of constant interaction, would argue that point much. Email, instant messaging, Facebook, all those confounded doo-dads the older generations dismiss are a double-edged swords at times, especially now that we carry them all around in our pockets. Aloneness is almost a foreign concept, at least where such technologies are prevalent.
Consider also, if you please, another very old saying along a similar vein. It suggests that there is an inversely proportional relationship to how much you talk and how much you ought to talk. I would give you some direct quotes, but history is so replete with examples and variations on the theme, that it would give me great astonishment that someone reading this blog should never had come across it before. The point is, I imagine anyone who has come across a statement to this effect would not lodge any disagreement with it, at least not in principle, unless perhaps that person happened to be the argumentative type. They may even nod sagely in view of this great wisdom, maybe with a knowing smile in someone or other's direction, and lament the way our society has turned towards this need for constant stimulation.
This is a sad state indeed, largely because such people are heedless of this advice with astonishing flair. Now, I'm not about to whinge about people being too undisciplined to actually follow through with advice they know is worthwhile, because goodness, it's not as though I haven't made my opinion on that fact before. No, I would much rather take the simpler recourse and ask people to actually go out of their way and try to, every now and then, shut up.
Those who know me closely will likely scoff at the idea of me being a particularly quiet person, as I can be as unnecessarily boisterous as anyone, given the right conditions, but with that said when I'm with people I'm not very close with, even if they're friends, I'm much less likely to be as loud or talkative. A lot of people tell me that this is some sort of a problem, as though my reluctance to say something in such a scenario is some sort of extreme shyness or antisociability, and I should try and be more "outgoing". The fact of the matter is, however, that if I am with people I don't know, or don't know well, then if I don't have much of substance to say I'm not terribly inclined to talk. There's very little point in flapping your lips around and making noise that nobody particularly cares to listen to, don't you think?
Now, if there's something to be said, or if someone asks you a question, there's little to be accomplished in staying quiet, or being abrupt. That is just as unproductive as talking when you shouldn't. Know when to speak and when to stay silent, and I think you will find that you learn much more from listening to other people than you could from taking over conversations or perpetuating inane and pointless chatter. Live and let live, as they say - if there is business to conduct, then conduct it. If not, relax, enjoy yourself, but remember that like many other things, the more words you offer, the cheaper each word becomes.
On a related topic, and incidentally the initial thought behind this post, is the matter of essay-writing and speech-giving. If you're ever in a position to be writing essays or giving speeches, you will likely be trying to persuade someone, and it is a matter of common knowledge that a good way to persuade someone is to impress them. Following this line of thought, people can and often are tempted to pull out a thesaurus and start using the longest synonyms they can find at every opportunity, even though they may not be aware of the common usage such words may hold, or any particular connotations. This is often a bad idea because people often see such people as either being genuinely unpleasant intellectuals or insincerely unpleasant poseurs attempting to look smarter than they are, but that is not why I bring it up - this is not a blog about essay-writing techniques.
What point I would much rather push is the idea that you shouldn't go out of your way to use big words for the simple reason that it gets in the way of your communication. Now, obviously, if you're referring to a very specific concept you want to get across with some accuracy, then by all means be as technical as need be, but if you're trying to say a very mundane thing in a very round-about way, then all you are doing is wasting time, wasting breath and wasting those precious words I was talking about before. Not only that, but all people should value the truth (I hold that to be a self-evident truth for the time being). If you are using words that your audience doesn't understand, then you are obscuring your argument; you not only make it harder to understand your sentences, you make it harder to understand your arguments, your points, and to do that is to obscure the truth. The truth is, in many cases, as plain as it is simple.
Am I saying you should never lie? Maybe yes, maybe no. That is not the point of this post. Am I saying that we should always be completely upfront and honest with people, no matter how they feel? Possibly, but again, that is not the point of this post. The point of this post is not what people say, but how they choose to say it, and how free they feel to do so. Save your words for things that need to be said. Be forceful. Let yourself have meaning in your speech, not only when you address a crowd or an authority, but at all times. Do not devalue your ideas by throwing them into a sea of nonsense and triviality that serves no purpose other than to alleviate some ill-founded notion of awkwardness, or social mores.
Or perhaps I'm just rambling.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Wednesday's Quote of the Week: 16 Mar 2011
I know I said that I'd try and do this every week, and I know I failed at that after one week, but in my defence I've been extremely busy the past two weeks and I don't normally think of blogging on Wednesdays and Thursdays anyway. Of course, that's why I chose those days, but knowing me, it may have been a poor decision in hindsight. Irrespective, here is your quote of the week for this week:
This quote is taken from Chapter 23 of the Ursula K. Le Guin translation of the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu [Dao De Jing by Laozi]. A follow-up post should come tomorrow.
Nature doesn't make long speeches.
A whirlwind doesn't last all morning.
A cloudburst doesn't last all day.
Who makes the wind and rain?
Heaven and earth do.
If heaven and earth don't go on and on,
certainly people don't need to.
This quote is taken from Chapter 23 of the Ursula K. Le Guin translation of the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu [Dao De Jing by Laozi]. A follow-up post should come tomorrow.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
A note on another old adage
Following on from my earlier musings on old sayings, another one which came to mind today was one I'm sure you're familiar with: every cloud has a silver lining. For those of you who haven't come across it, it basically means that every bad situation in your life has some positive aspect about it. Like the earlier example, this too is said far too often with far too little thought. In fact, it strikes me that there are a very many sayings supposed to make miserable people chipper that more often than not only serve to annoy them, but I digress.
I don't think I need to go into too much depth analysing the saying. The premise is fairly simple, and seems reasonable enough, that nothing is ever all bad (and I agree with that). Some people seem to take it to an odd extreme, however, and wander through their lives with inane grins, seeing nothing but argentian skies. They seem especially fond of telling others that every cloud has a silver lining, no matter what should have befallen them. Then there are those who trudge their way through life grim and depressed, sure that the sky is blocked out by heavy rain clouds, and any silver lining is merely lightning in the distance. I don't think I need to say that these people are equally as right as the other lot, in the sense that they are not at all.
If you ask my opinion, and since you're reading this I assume you do, then there aren't really any clouds and nor are there any silver linings. If things are looking bleak, it's probably because you're looking down at your own shadow. If things are looking overwhelmingly peachy, you may be staring up at the sun. As always, the key lies in the mean; keep your eyes level, focussed, forward and un-wandering, and you will see what is.
I don't think I need to go into too much depth analysing the saying. The premise is fairly simple, and seems reasonable enough, that nothing is ever all bad (and I agree with that). Some people seem to take it to an odd extreme, however, and wander through their lives with inane grins, seeing nothing but argentian skies. They seem especially fond of telling others that every cloud has a silver lining, no matter what should have befallen them. Then there are those who trudge their way through life grim and depressed, sure that the sky is blocked out by heavy rain clouds, and any silver lining is merely lightning in the distance. I don't think I need to say that these people are equally as right as the other lot, in the sense that they are not at all.
If you ask my opinion, and since you're reading this I assume you do, then there aren't really any clouds and nor are there any silver linings. If things are looking bleak, it's probably because you're looking down at your own shadow. If things are looking overwhelmingly peachy, you may be staring up at the sun. As always, the key lies in the mean; keep your eyes level, focussed, forward and un-wandering, and you will see what is.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Thursday's Thought for the Week: 24 Feb 2011
One of my favourite quotes of all time, and one that strikes me as being both extraordinarily deep and truthful without being particularly vague or cloudy is one of the so-called Socratic paradoxes, that no one does evil knowingly, which I believe is from The Apology by Plato. It might at first seem a strange thing to suggest, because it would seem on first inspection that people quite regularly do the wrong thing, and when they do so they are rarely in anything other than a perfectly conscious state of being with a complete awareness of their actions. To suggest therefore that the statement is obviously incorrect on these grounds is premature, however, for it manages to completely miss the point (indeed, anybody who has taken a philosophy class will see students claiming that an argument is obviously wrong and are perplexed at how anyone can disagree when they themselves are the ones to have missed the point through misinterpreting the argument, but I digress). The point is something I consider to be rather self-evident, in fact, and something few people would take umbrage with, and is that when a person does the wrong thing, they are not intending to do something wrong, because to them and by their own system of judgement it would extremely illogical to do anything "wrong".
Perhaps I should explain more. Let's say that a person is hungry and steals a loaf of bread. In the eyes of the law they have done the wrong thing and it is unlikely that the perpetrator will be ignorant of that fact, but by the same token that person would also not be ignorant of their hunger and their need for food and, having weighed their obligation to the law against their survival instincts, went with stealing the bread. Whether they did in fact weigh the situation correctly is irrelevant; to the person in question, their actions were justified and so right. Another example: take the case of a man who kills his wife in a crime of passion. There certainly couldn't be said to be much weighing up of options and consequences in this example, but rather a straight-forward, momentary acquiescence to murderous rage. Certainly the man knows that on the whole it isn't a great idea to murder his wife, but at this point he is acting on his emotions alone. Why? Because he has learned through his life that his emotions are important and he needn't restrain himself from acting on them, supposing they are strong enough to warrant it. This is not a conscious matter, but a subconscious one. The man is aware of what he is doing, but he does not act knowingly because the rational part of his brain has gone on a momentary holiday, and logical notions of right and wrong have gone with it.
Keep this idea in mind for the moment, because I'm going to take you on a slight detour. Let's put aside philosophical notions of "right", "wrong", "good" and "evil" for now and look from a strictly legal standpoint. Consider a child who commits what would be considered a crime if performed by an adult. Perhaps the child is only five, but through a series of inactions causes a person's death; it would seem bizarre to say the least to charge the child with criminal negligence. Why is this so? Because five year olds are stupid? Perhaps... but what if it were a thirteen year old? To some extent at least, a child of the age of thirteen has sufficient understanding of the law to know that, say, stealing is wrong. Regardless, in this country as in most others, a thirteen year old would not be tried as an adult for theft (if at all). Why is this so? It's not a trick question, the answer is quite simple: minors are understood to lack sufficient responsibility to be held accountable for legal indiscretions. They are too young, too inexperienced, too naive, too innocent, too ignorant to know better. It would be as wrong to charge a young child with a crime as it would be to charge a dog (and would make as much sense too).
This notion can be cautiously extended to ethics. Just as children are ignorant of the law at a young age, so too are they ignorant of right and wrong, at least to some extent. This seems an uncontroversial point on the face of it, just as I think it is uncontroversial that ethics is a hazy and not yet fully understood subject, which is the reason why it seems so hard to agree on anything. But if our collective understanding of ethics is somewhat fuzzy, and a person could be forgiven for not having all the answers (none of us do, after all), then could they not be said to be ignorant, to some degree, of what is "truly" right and wrong? The connection here to the Socratic paradox should be evident now. What is actually the fact, or even if there is such a thing when it comes to morality, is understood by very few people, and even they disagree! In the face of such uncertainty, the natural response is to do what comes naturally; the person knows no better after all.
So if we can allow that people can in varying degrees be ignorant of right and wrong (and just about all consistent ethical systems will disagree on what right and wrong are) then it does not seem unreasonable to my eyes to extend the legal/ethical analogy from children to all people, supposing their ignorance is sufficient that they not be aware of what have done wrong. This may seem peculiar at first, but only if we imagine that everybody instinctively knows right from wrong, an absurd claim made an absurd number of times. That the law should need exist at all is strong evidence to the contrary. The beauty, in fact, of this humble proposal is that it can be executed by a person of any ethical system. If someone does wrong, don't chastise them, don't look down on them with disgust, don't expect them to do better next time. Instead, recognise that they act out of ignorance, forgive them for doing wrong unknowingly, and if possible try to help them learn. Regular practice will ease the ire you feel for those who act against you, which is sure to keep you humble, for the more often you force yourself to recognise the ignorance in others, the more likely you are to see it in yourself.
Perhaps I should explain more. Let's say that a person is hungry and steals a loaf of bread. In the eyes of the law they have done the wrong thing and it is unlikely that the perpetrator will be ignorant of that fact, but by the same token that person would also not be ignorant of their hunger and their need for food and, having weighed their obligation to the law against their survival instincts, went with stealing the bread. Whether they did in fact weigh the situation correctly is irrelevant; to the person in question, their actions were justified and so right. Another example: take the case of a man who kills his wife in a crime of passion. There certainly couldn't be said to be much weighing up of options and consequences in this example, but rather a straight-forward, momentary acquiescence to murderous rage. Certainly the man knows that on the whole it isn't a great idea to murder his wife, but at this point he is acting on his emotions alone. Why? Because he has learned through his life that his emotions are important and he needn't restrain himself from acting on them, supposing they are strong enough to warrant it. This is not a conscious matter, but a subconscious one. The man is aware of what he is doing, but he does not act knowingly because the rational part of his brain has gone on a momentary holiday, and logical notions of right and wrong have gone with it.
Keep this idea in mind for the moment, because I'm going to take you on a slight detour. Let's put aside philosophical notions of "right", "wrong", "good" and "evil" for now and look from a strictly legal standpoint. Consider a child who commits what would be considered a crime if performed by an adult. Perhaps the child is only five, but through a series of inactions causes a person's death; it would seem bizarre to say the least to charge the child with criminal negligence. Why is this so? Because five year olds are stupid? Perhaps... but what if it were a thirteen year old? To some extent at least, a child of the age of thirteen has sufficient understanding of the law to know that, say, stealing is wrong. Regardless, in this country as in most others, a thirteen year old would not be tried as an adult for theft (if at all). Why is this so? It's not a trick question, the answer is quite simple: minors are understood to lack sufficient responsibility to be held accountable for legal indiscretions. They are too young, too inexperienced, too naive, too innocent, too ignorant to know better. It would be as wrong to charge a young child with a crime as it would be to charge a dog (and would make as much sense too).
This notion can be cautiously extended to ethics. Just as children are ignorant of the law at a young age, so too are they ignorant of right and wrong, at least to some extent. This seems an uncontroversial point on the face of it, just as I think it is uncontroversial that ethics is a hazy and not yet fully understood subject, which is the reason why it seems so hard to agree on anything. But if our collective understanding of ethics is somewhat fuzzy, and a person could be forgiven for not having all the answers (none of us do, after all), then could they not be said to be ignorant, to some degree, of what is "truly" right and wrong? The connection here to the Socratic paradox should be evident now. What is actually the fact, or even if there is such a thing when it comes to morality, is understood by very few people, and even they disagree! In the face of such uncertainty, the natural response is to do what comes naturally; the person knows no better after all.
So if we can allow that people can in varying degrees be ignorant of right and wrong (and just about all consistent ethical systems will disagree on what right and wrong are) then it does not seem unreasonable to my eyes to extend the legal/ethical analogy from children to all people, supposing their ignorance is sufficient that they not be aware of what have done wrong. This may seem peculiar at first, but only if we imagine that everybody instinctively knows right from wrong, an absurd claim made an absurd number of times. That the law should need exist at all is strong evidence to the contrary. The beauty, in fact, of this humble proposal is that it can be executed by a person of any ethical system. If someone does wrong, don't chastise them, don't look down on them with disgust, don't expect them to do better next time. Instead, recognise that they act out of ignorance, forgive them for doing wrong unknowingly, and if possible try to help them learn. Regular practice will ease the ire you feel for those who act against you, which is sure to keep you humble, for the more often you force yourself to recognise the ignorance in others, the more likely you are to see it in yourself.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Wednesday's Quote of the Week: 23 Feb 2011
I'm currently instating a weekly instalment on the blog where on Wednesdays I give a particular quote of interest, and then the next day I follow up with a brief discussion on a topic which may or may not be related in any way. These are just musings of a sort, and aren't intended to be too rigorous. Hopefully I'll be able to do it on a weekly basis, but if I fail to keep up, I apologise in advance.
This week's quote is from 1 Corinthians 13.11:
For those of you who are unaware, that's the First Epistle to the Corinthians (a book of the New Testament), written by St. Paul the Apostle.
See you tomorrow!
This week's quote is from 1 Corinthians 13.11:
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
For those of you who are unaware, that's the First Epistle to the Corinthians (a book of the New Testament), written by St. Paul the Apostle.
See you tomorrow!
The parable of the lost toy
Consider, if you will, this short tale adapted from/inspired by Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
A father takes his young son to the playground one fine weekend afternoon, as good fathers are wont to do. The boy has brought along with him his favourite toy to play with. After a round on the swings, the boy is let loose on the rest of the equipment while the father sits at a nearby bench to read the newspaper, making sure to glance up every couple of minutes to make sure everything is going fine, which it is, that is until he hears a gasp of horror and a terrible wailing. He looks up in a fright to see that the boy is weeping and running around the playground looking at the ground. After a frantic interrogation, he learns that the boy has lost his toy somewhere while he was running and climbing and playing as boys do.
The father helps look for the toy, but it is small, and has disappeared, much in the way that small toys do. Eventually the search is given up, though the boy is no less distressed. Does the father join him in his wailing and weeping? Does the father say, "Come here, and together we can mourn the loss."? No, he lays his arm around his son's shoulders and tells him that even though he is sad now, and that is to be expected, everything will be all right in the end. He knows this because he has lost many toys in his time, and in his age has acquired the wisdom to know that from time to time toys go missing, just as from time to time they break or are given up by their owners for whatever reason. It is one thing to provide comfort to those who need it, and another entirely to join in their passion, a passion founded as all are on an assumption you know to be untrue, that loss can be avoided and no separation is permanent.
A father takes his young son to the playground one fine weekend afternoon, as good fathers are wont to do. The boy has brought along with him his favourite toy to play with. After a round on the swings, the boy is let loose on the rest of the equipment while the father sits at a nearby bench to read the newspaper, making sure to glance up every couple of minutes to make sure everything is going fine, which it is, that is until he hears a gasp of horror and a terrible wailing. He looks up in a fright to see that the boy is weeping and running around the playground looking at the ground. After a frantic interrogation, he learns that the boy has lost his toy somewhere while he was running and climbing and playing as boys do.
The father helps look for the toy, but it is small, and has disappeared, much in the way that small toys do. Eventually the search is given up, though the boy is no less distressed. Does the father join him in his wailing and weeping? Does the father say, "Come here, and together we can mourn the loss."? No, he lays his arm around his son's shoulders and tells him that even though he is sad now, and that is to be expected, everything will be all right in the end. He knows this because he has lost many toys in his time, and in his age has acquired the wisdom to know that from time to time toys go missing, just as from time to time they break or are given up by their owners for whatever reason. It is one thing to provide comfort to those who need it, and another entirely to join in their passion, a passion founded as all are on an assumption you know to be untrue, that loss can be avoided and no separation is permanent.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Just have a think about it
Fact: people don't like thinking. Okay, that's not quite true. Lots of people, myself included, enjoy thinking a great deal. Oftentimes you'll see me staring at some uninteresting point in space, perhaps a wall or the corner of the table or somebody's knee, and I'll have this dead look on my face and my eyes will probably seem glazed over. That's me thinking. It's not infrequently more interesting than talking to other people, depending on who those people are, of course. Even so, though I may claim the contrary, I prefer not thinking to thinking. Of course, you can't stop thinking (if you think you can, you're only lying to yourself); what I mean is that it's much easier to sit and accept something you may be seeing or reading than thinking about it. If not for that fact, it would be significantly more difficult to enjoy a lot of things, such as films, to give only a single example. And hey, there's nothing wrong with sitting back and just saying, yes, I do believe it's perfectly believable to drive a car into a helicopter. If you can't do that, you're going to miss out on a lot of cool stuff.
Be careful, though. That sort of mental relaxation can only be safely enjoyed under certain circumstances, much in the way that physical relaxation can only be safely enjoyed under certain circumstances. To give an example, it would not be overly wise to put on a Hawaiian shirt and board shorts, rub in some sunscreen and sit down on your deck chair when you've only just recently stumbled into an orgy of furious bears. There's a time and a place, is what I'm getting at. The troublesome part of it is that it's much, much less obvious when we should allow ourselves to drop our guard mentally than physically, and because it's so much easier to not think than it is to think, it's tempting to simple drop our guard and leave it dropped, and if worst comes to worst, so what? We'll just deal with that later.
As you can imagine, I don't think that's a terribly bright idea. Leaving your guard dropped can make you susceptible to the machinations of vicious people, and that sort of thing can get people killed. To quote a great man, don't be so open-minded that your brain falls out. That, however, is not the primary subject of this post (perhaps I will address it at another time). What I would prefer to talk about instead is the idea of coming up with your own philosophy, and by 'philosophy' I mean a comprehensive system of belief in regards to your being. I do not recall having written about this before, although I most certainly have spoken to people about it, so if you have heard this before, I most profusely apologise, although perhaps you would like to stay and read a little anyway?
I think it takes a deal of courage to try and form your own philosophy. Of course, having (to some extent, at least) done that, I would be the sort of person to make such a claim, I know, but hear me out. If you want to come up with a philosophy of your own, that means you have to look at everything you have come to know about life and the way the world works, both through you own experience and through what people have told you, and this is harder than it sounds. Imagine reassessing everything that your friends, parents, teachers, leaders, religious figures and so on have told you and being prepared to say no, to disagree, and to try and come up with something different, with solid reasoning behind it. The hubris of it! you might think. To deny the collective wisdom of hundreds or thousands of people before you and to try and replace it with something you might even claim to be superior. To not only turn your back on this sort of societal tradition but to go against it requires serious balls.
You need more than balls though. You can selectively reject what you might previous have believed and instead substituted it with your own thoughts, carefully developed by considering all the possibilities you have considered, and still be a complete moron. Rejection for the sake of rebelliousness is not only intellectually lazy but it is the antithesis of a proper philosophy, which requires the support of logical underpinnings and fundamental principles. That's why nobody respects teenagers who walk around with more metal in their face than a Holden Kingswood and more eye shadow than a cheap hooker (I'm probably going to cop it for that one).
What you need in addition to testicular fortitude is to think, because unsurprisingly, reviewing the fundamental tenets that have guided everything you have ever thought or felt or done and all of the secondary notions that have accompanied them is tough, and that isn't even the whole of the job, because if you reach the frightening conclusion that the arguments used to justify your way of life have some pretty big holes in them that can't be reasonably filled, your going to have to come up with new conclusion to replace them, and those conclusions are going to need some airtight reasoning of their own to support them. Nobody's saying everything has to be an original idea or an original argument, of course, because the fact of the matter is that someone else might already be right about it all, and there's no point punishing yourself for that. The hard part is finding out which people you think are right and adapting their thoughts for your new philosophy.
So let's say you've done all that. It's taken a lot of effort and a hell of a long time, but you finally have a mostly complete philosophy (complete enough to use until the rest of the gaps are filled at least). Congratulations! Job's finally done, eh? Well, no. This is the hardest part of all: teaching yourself to live by your new philosophy. Now, chances are your philosophy is pretty much based on how you were already rolling, so you might not have to change much at all, but if you've done the job right you'll have found yourself needing to make some pretty significant changes somewhere along the line, like having to teach yourself to think or even feel differently than how you used to, and I don't think anybody's going to be stupid enough to tell you that's an easy feat. What it requires is denying yourself the luxury of not thinking virtually all the time until you satisfy yourself that you've changed your habits, and that's the sort of thing that can't be done in a day or month or a year.
Now, maybe you've followed me this far but think I'm just putting on a show, saying how hard it is to do all the stuff I've done and such. Nothing could be further from the truth. What I want to do is try to explain how challenging it is to develop your own philosophy, but also illustrate how fulfilling and ultimately how freeing it is. After all, what greater challenge is there than learning how to live? If you can overcome that challenge, you can certainly overcome any other challenge in your life. After all, that's what your new philosophy is for. So that's why I'd like to take a moment here with this post to urge you guys, as you see in the New Year, to have a go at developing a philosophy of your own. Take it step by step: read some philosophical material you otherwise would have no interest in and evaluate it critically. If you read something that strongly appeals to you, perhaps you could build from that. Just have a think about it.
Be careful, though. That sort of mental relaxation can only be safely enjoyed under certain circumstances, much in the way that physical relaxation can only be safely enjoyed under certain circumstances. To give an example, it would not be overly wise to put on a Hawaiian shirt and board shorts, rub in some sunscreen and sit down on your deck chair when you've only just recently stumbled into an orgy of furious bears. There's a time and a place, is what I'm getting at. The troublesome part of it is that it's much, much less obvious when we should allow ourselves to drop our guard mentally than physically, and because it's so much easier to not think than it is to think, it's tempting to simple drop our guard and leave it dropped, and if worst comes to worst, so what? We'll just deal with that later.
As you can imagine, I don't think that's a terribly bright idea. Leaving your guard dropped can make you susceptible to the machinations of vicious people, and that sort of thing can get people killed. To quote a great man, don't be so open-minded that your brain falls out. That, however, is not the primary subject of this post (perhaps I will address it at another time). What I would prefer to talk about instead is the idea of coming up with your own philosophy, and by 'philosophy' I mean a comprehensive system of belief in regards to your being. I do not recall having written about this before, although I most certainly have spoken to people about it, so if you have heard this before, I most profusely apologise, although perhaps you would like to stay and read a little anyway?
I think it takes a deal of courage to try and form your own philosophy. Of course, having (to some extent, at least) done that, I would be the sort of person to make such a claim, I know, but hear me out. If you want to come up with a philosophy of your own, that means you have to look at everything you have come to know about life and the way the world works, both through you own experience and through what people have told you, and this is harder than it sounds. Imagine reassessing everything that your friends, parents, teachers, leaders, religious figures and so on have told you and being prepared to say no, to disagree, and to try and come up with something different, with solid reasoning behind it. The hubris of it! you might think. To deny the collective wisdom of hundreds or thousands of people before you and to try and replace it with something you might even claim to be superior. To not only turn your back on this sort of societal tradition but to go against it requires serious balls.
You need more than balls though. You can selectively reject what you might previous have believed and instead substituted it with your own thoughts, carefully developed by considering all the possibilities you have considered, and still be a complete moron. Rejection for the sake of rebelliousness is not only intellectually lazy but it is the antithesis of a proper philosophy, which requires the support of logical underpinnings and fundamental principles. That's why nobody respects teenagers who walk around with more metal in their face than a Holden Kingswood and more eye shadow than a cheap hooker (I'm probably going to cop it for that one).
What you need in addition to testicular fortitude is to think, because unsurprisingly, reviewing the fundamental tenets that have guided everything you have ever thought or felt or done and all of the secondary notions that have accompanied them is tough, and that isn't even the whole of the job, because if you reach the frightening conclusion that the arguments used to justify your way of life have some pretty big holes in them that can't be reasonably filled, your going to have to come up with new conclusion to replace them, and those conclusions are going to need some airtight reasoning of their own to support them. Nobody's saying everything has to be an original idea or an original argument, of course, because the fact of the matter is that someone else might already be right about it all, and there's no point punishing yourself for that. The hard part is finding out which people you think are right and adapting their thoughts for your new philosophy.
So let's say you've done all that. It's taken a lot of effort and a hell of a long time, but you finally have a mostly complete philosophy (complete enough to use until the rest of the gaps are filled at least). Congratulations! Job's finally done, eh? Well, no. This is the hardest part of all: teaching yourself to live by your new philosophy. Now, chances are your philosophy is pretty much based on how you were already rolling, so you might not have to change much at all, but if you've done the job right you'll have found yourself needing to make some pretty significant changes somewhere along the line, like having to teach yourself to think or even feel differently than how you used to, and I don't think anybody's going to be stupid enough to tell you that's an easy feat. What it requires is denying yourself the luxury of not thinking virtually all the time until you satisfy yourself that you've changed your habits, and that's the sort of thing that can't be done in a day or month or a year.
Now, maybe you've followed me this far but think I'm just putting on a show, saying how hard it is to do all the stuff I've done and such. Nothing could be further from the truth. What I want to do is try to explain how challenging it is to develop your own philosophy, but also illustrate how fulfilling and ultimately how freeing it is. After all, what greater challenge is there than learning how to live? If you can overcome that challenge, you can certainly overcome any other challenge in your life. After all, that's what your new philosophy is for. So that's why I'd like to take a moment here with this post to urge you guys, as you see in the New Year, to have a go at developing a philosophy of your own. Take it step by step: read some philosophical material you otherwise would have no interest in and evaluate it critically. If you read something that strongly appeals to you, perhaps you could build from that. Just have a think about it.
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