John Steinbeck published his novel the The Grapes of Wrath in 1939, shortly after the great depression. It’s set in the time of the dust bowl, where much of the top soil of the great plains, from Texas all the way up to Canada, was blown away after years of unsustainable farming methods combined with a decade long drought. Because of this, many of the subsistence farmers who had lived on the plains since the great westward migration were forced off their land, either because they could no longer grow enough to support themselves, or because the land they rented was repossessed by the banks and turned into giant fields which could turn a profit when worked by tractors. In all about a million ‘Okies’, as they were know because they predominantly came from Oklahoma, made the journey from the plains to California. Steinbeck documents the gruelling trip west of the Joad family and the injustices they faced when they arrived in California. He presents a simple, yet moral and compassionate family, who are at the mercy of forces they cannot understand.

Steinbeck was greatly criticised upon the release of the book, it was even banned in some states. The main accusations were that he was a leftist or communist and that he had romanticised the Okies, demonised the big businessmen and exaggerated the conditions the Okies lived in when they arrived in California. From my perspective, I think it is a brilliant work of left-leaning, worker supporting literature, and I find it ironic that it is now a standard issue high school book throughout much of the USA, the citadel of capitalism. His anger at the exploitation of the worker at the hands of the bourgeoisie and establishment comes through powerfully in the character of Tom Joad (made famous thanks to Springsteen):

Then I’ll be all around in the dark - I’ll be ever’where—wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there… I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’—I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folk eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build—why, I’ll be there.

Tom Joad is the pivotal character of the book, he is the first person we come into contact with and he represents the opression, anger and helplessness of the average Okie. He is morally complex however, as the book opens we meet him returning home from jail having served time for murder; Steinbeck shows us that despite his flaws his heart is in the right place and uses his thoughts and actions to provide a reflection of the reader. I found Tom Joad acting in the way I would like to act and making manifest the passion and anger I felt as I followed his journey.

Steinbeck’s own views come out in the narrator chapters scattered throughout the story. This clear, poetic, detached viewpoint juxtaposes beautifully with the harsh vernacular tongue of the rest of the book; it provides respite and allows him to convey a more rounded and far reaching point of view. The following quotes are two of my favourites:

…every one a drum major leading a parade of hurts, marching with our bitterness. And some day—the armies of bitterness will all be going the same way. And they’ll all walk together, and there’ll be a dead terror from it.

Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the failure hangs over the State like a great sorrow. …and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

Steinbeck taps into the rage of the impoverished, but more importantly he captures their will to survive, you rarely find the family despairing at the terrible situation they are in, rather the book is a tale of drive after drive in pursuit of a dream which is ultimately a fantasy. I ended up pitying them because all their work was in vain, but admiring them for their unstoppable will to survive and their simple yet profound sense of morality.

I think it is fantastic that seventy years on Steinbeck is still important, and his books are so widespread. People need to read such things, they need to feel the anger and compassion, and they need to channel that energy into trying to help solve these problems for the exploited and downtrodden of our day. In Grapes of Wrath he has written an epic, moving and powerful yet gentle and compassionate book, and thankfully his achievement has not been overlooked.

An effect of reading a book which has devoted attention to noticing such faint yet vital tremors is that once we’ve put the volume down and resumed our own life, we may attend to precisely the things the author would have responded to had he or she been in our company. Our mind will be like a radar newly attuned to pick up certain objects floating through consciousness; the effect will be like bringing a radio into a room that we had thought silent, and realizing that the silence only existed at a particular frequency and that all along we in fact shared the room with waves of sound coming in from a Ukrainian station or the nighttime chatter of a minicab firm. Our attention will be drawn to the shades of the sky, to the changeability of a face, to the hypocrisy of a friend or to a submerged sadness about a situation which we had previously not even known we could feel sad about. The book will have sensitised us, stimulated our dormant antennae by evidence of its own developed sensitivity.

I’ve not read anything by Proust, but this sums up exactly how I feel about Virginia Woolf. Proust faced criticism because he spent thirty pages describing himself getting out of bed in the morning, he was still writing his book In Search of Lost Time when he died, at which point it was seven volumes, each of around 500 pages, so you can understand the frustration of a reader who thought he dwelled too long on trivial matters. Rather than moving too slowly and taking in every little detail, I find that Woolf packs her books so densely that every page takes an age to read because there is so much between the lines, so much depth in every sentence. She concentrates exclusively on those ‘faint yet vital tremors’ and skims over surface appearances. It’s more like reading poetry than reading a novel, and in books like The Waves she almost jettisons the plot altogether in favour of a series of vaguely chronological moments which almost totally lack context or setting; she is interested only in these important events, not in the trivialities in between.

When I finish one of her books, or a book by one of the few other authors that moves me in the way Button describes, I feel impassioned, as if the world around me has taken on an extra dimension. Woolf  does this by drawing out so much of what is going on behind the scenes of our senses, our desires, our relationships. Of course, the new dimension and level of understanding she provides fades with time and sadly my dreams of having Woolf-like conversations and experiences disappear quite quickly. I think that the great author often has to sacrifice a certain amount of the ‘normal’ wavelength in order to tune into these new deeper levels of experience, as is demonstrated by the frequently difficult lives such authors lead. Both Woolf and Proust had extremely tragic lives, Woolf ended up drowning herself, and Proust was constantly sick, neither seemed able to live out the rich existences they managed to create for their fictional characters.

I see education as a similar tool for opening up new dimensions to my experience. I try to learn the names of trees and flowers and animals so that I can enhance my perception of the world around me. By learning new subjects it helps me to notice things I had previously overlooked. For example, in the past when looking at a forest I would have just seen a green mass of trees, at most being able to separate the pines form the broad leaved trees, but now I have learnt the names and characteristics of just a few species I have opened up a whole new level of pleasure in perception as I walk through the woods. Not only do I see all the species, but I see them changing, I see the Horsechestnuts dying everywhere, and it makes me realise that these trees are growing and dying, whole species are growing and dying. Away from nature in a cityscape I can learn about media and advertising, about typography and methods of communication, about architecture and history; this turns previously background advertisements into interesting subjects for some primitive form of pop-psychoanalysis. I can think ‘why are they advertising that in that way?’, ‘does it work?’ or ‘why do i find this advert seductive?’. It all adds an extra dimension to the world around me.

The real skill of authors like Woolf is that they go beyond this intellectual enhancement and they tap into the deeper realms of thoughts and perceptions. Education tends to enhance the world outside of myself, but Woolf can enhance the world inside of me, teaching me more about myself which I can then in turn use to better understand the people and environments outside. As Button says, it sensitises us, not only to the world around us, but more importantly to the world within ourselves.

I started it for two reasons, firstly because I wanted to have a place where I can easily share links to things I am interested in, and that I hope others may be interested in, and secondly to give myself an improved and more coherent record of where I have been on the internet and the most valuable ideas I have come into contact with. Having things linked chronologically all in one place enables me to skim back over things I have previously visited so I can better cement my ideas and hopefully better amalgamate them into myself and my writing.

The tumblr is much more political than this site, I’ve deliberately stayed away from too political subjects here. The tumblr is meant to provide an accompaniment to this site, rather than an extension; adding an extra dimension to my personal datawake. The majority my internet browsing relates to news, media and environmental and social justice issues, so that is most of what will be appearing there, along with a few snippets of other things. Hopefully you can find something interesting and maybe discover some new sources for ideas.

In 1894 Gustav Klimt was commissioned to do three paintings for the University of Vienna entitled Philosophy, Medicine and Jurisprudence.

This is the picture he presented for Philosophy:

The philosophy professors were outraged when they saw this and refused to accept his paintings. They wanted an image showing “The triumph of light over darkness” and instead Klimt had given them this opaque ‘deliquescent triangle’ of bodies drifting about and into each other surrounded by a void. I see this as a wonderful summary of how I see philosophy and knowledge, it’s beautiful, captivating and mysterious and I feel like I am growing in some way as I explore it, but on the other hand it’s a mess, no matter how long I examine it I am not going to be able to pick up any clear and distinct forms; not only that, but the ideas and shapes I see now will change over time as I myself grow and change.

The original painting was destroyed by the retreating Nazis in the second world war, the above is a photograph (hence the black and white). This seems a pretty fitting end for the painting. Not only is knowledge this vague phenomenon, but it’s not immortal. Just as the classics were lost in the dark ages, if the Nazis had succeeded a great deal of knowledge would have been forgotten or discarded. We know of a significant number of books by Greek thinkers that have been lost, considering the impact Plato and Aristotle have had on our modern thinking, who knows how the direction of our learning would have been affected if these books had survived? In the same way it’s likely, if not inevitable, that at some point in the future a great deal of our current knowledge will be lost, and in a few billion years time it’s almost certain that all trace of humanity will be gone and all our ideas will just be floating around in Klimt’s void.

When we have a clear understanding of something, is this called wisdom? So the wise person is the person who sees things clearly? Perhaps. In think wisdom is more intuitive and wide ranging than the clarity I have been writing about, although I may be over estimating the role of education and knowledge in obtaining clarity. Maybe a better approach to gaining clarity would be to remove layers of knowledge and experience until a core ’simple truth’ is reached that throws a new light on everything. But can I even be sure that such a simple truth exists under myself and my relationships? My normal line of enquiry would be to go and learn about it and see what other people have to say, but in doing this I’m gathering more knowledge - catch 22.
Maybe clarity forms a subsection of wisdom; the wise person has clarity in their perception and uses this knowledge to make the right decisions and lead a life of wisdom.

When I was younger, as for most children, everything was much clearer. I was brought up with Christianity and that was able to answer most of the questions I had, but at the same time I used to read a great deal of science. As I grew older the influence of scientific thinking on me increased and by the time I reached my mid teens and discovered philosophy and Philip K Dick my Christianity crumbled under the weight of all the new ideas I was coming into contact with. This was a great turning point in my life and I certainly don’t regret moving away from Christianity, but because of it a great number of questions that I used to have answers to now seem to be bottomless pits of questions leading to more questions. These aren’t just big metaphysical issues like ‘is there a God?’, but also smaller things like how to manage relationships and what knowledge I should be acquiring. It means I am generally lost in a sea of questions and misunderstandings, however I’d rather be drowning here than commit to an authority just for the sake of providing answers and security for myself.

I first realised that I was seeking a form of life-wide clarity when I was last trying to work out my political opinions. I have read a fair bit of political and economic theory, as well as history and social commentary, but I still have no firm political stance or opinions on how society should be organised, I only have moral responses to things I see going on around me. If anything, as I find that as I learn more about social science, my views become increasingly cloudy and I find myself flipping between opinions as I read convincing (or unconvincing) arguments from different sides.

I think part of the reason I like mathematics and the hard sciences is that they tend to provide coherent and generally-accepted answers to questions, and the unknown questions are unknown for everyone until some sort of breakthrough occurs. This new knowledge then tends to be accepted fairly rapidly as it is scrutinised by other scientists (unless controversy is involved) and becomes part of the established scientific canon. Of course, there are revolutions in science, however in any given paradigm most people tend to be on the same page. In the social sciences, on the other hand, there can be multiple answers to questions and seemingly intelligent and convincing arguments to believe many of them. Even if I spent the rest of my life studying social science, my answers to questions and problems would be changing from year to year as I gained clarity in my knowledge and understanding. In the hard sciences there is a continuous process of clarification too, but there is often a distinct level of clarity required to understand an answer and once this is gained the answer is concrete, even if the full intricacies and repercussion of the solution are not apparent.

Why do I pursue this clarity? Well, that’s still mostly unclear to me (ha!). I think that I desire a solid foundation to work from. If I have a set political or social ideal to work towards and I know the path to realise that ideal then I can get cracking and work on it. As it stands, I have no idea what direction I should be heading in. I know what I want from a moral perspective, peace, love, tolerance etc, but I can’t begin to imagine what a society with those values would look like, how to work to create one or whether such a utopia is even possible. I’m reduced to acting on relatively small scale issues such as ‘I know it’s good to support amnesty international because they have clear moral aims’, I leave the logistics of achieving those aims for them to worry about.

I’m unlikely to ever gain the clarity I seek, and even if I do that probably wouldn’t be a good thing. Unless I have some sort of epiphany and join a religion or line up behind some towering intellectual figure I’m just going to have to make do with piecemeal, narrow and shallow knowledge I do have and try and live more by my moral convictions rather than my ever-shifting opinions.

I wasn’t really sure how emotional this was going to be, since I had been seeing the pigs almost daily for months, watching them grow from little piglets to full grown porkers. The abattoir we used didn’t slaughter them on arrival, as many do, but bedded them down overnight and killed them the next day, in theory making the process less stressful for the pigs but also meaning we didn’t actually get to see the kill ourselves. When we came to pick up the carcasses the next day it was certainly a strange experience; to think these now skinned lifeless halves of pig were running around in their pen just a few days before. The abattoir had left the heads attached which made the transition much more acute, once the heads are off they look much more like giant joints of meat than dead pigs. From an emotional perspective, I didn’t really feel much. I didn’t feel guilt at having killed these animals, I always knew that they were there for meat, and I knew that they had lived a full and comfortable, if short, life. It is strange now to look at their pen now as it becomes overgrown, but soon there will be new piglets, and so goes the circle of life.

The butchery was a much more practical and physical activity, I would never have imagined there was so much hard work involved in cutting up a pig. It was interesting to learn all the cuts and processes involved, I certainly gained a better understanding of the way in which different parts of the animal are used and the ingenious ways to preserve the meat long term - absolutely vital for the smallholder using the hog to feed his family. Compared to most of my skills which relate to academic knowledge and technology, it’s good to get a chance to try something much more ancient and close to nature, butchery must be one of the oldest skills developed by humans.

We also killed a group of the cockerels as we had some new hens arriving and wanted to cut down on any potential fighting in the run. Unlike with the pigs, the whole process was done ourselves, there was no abattoir to handle the dirty work. We have a special device for breaking their necks which is blunt, and so breaks the spine without cutting through the flesh. The first thing I learnt was that breaking a neck is a fair bit harder than expected. These were full grown birds, maybe six months old, as opposed to standard shop birds which are killed at 10-12 weeks old. This means they were pretty strong, and it took our whole weight on the lever to break the neck. When a chicken dies, it flaps around for a good minute or two (like a headless chicken) as all the muscles in the body spasm. This was a new and somewhat alarming experience for me, I had never killed anything bigger than a spider and to have an animal that is technically dead writhing around in your hand is certainly bizarre. Once these death throws had finished however, I found it quite easy to view the chicken as a carcass, a future meal, rather than a now dead bird. The change felt less profound with the chicken, as opposed to the pig, since a chicken is a pretty simple creature, whilst a pig is more like a dog or a horse, they are surprising intelligent. Of course, there is still the utterly fundamental transition between life and death in each case.

After the chickens had been killed, we had to pluck and gut them - something else which was done by the abattoir for the pigs. This was also quite bizarre, ripping the feathers from the skin, thinking about how these hard feathery things had grown from flesh/tissue which in turn had grown from little grey pellets and bits of corn. Growth is such a remarkable thing. After the plucking came the gutting, which was certainly the most unpleasant part of the process. Food in the supermarket is so clean and sterile, I think it’s important to see that an animal is a being with hearts, lungs, kidneys, just like us, even if it means getting your hands dirty.

I’m glad I had the opportunity to learn these new skills. I’ve been reading a great deal about food production processes recently and it’s fantastic to gain some real first hand knowledge and experience, not to mention some meat that tastes fantastic from well looked after animals.

Autumn is here.

Stadiums are amongst the largest, most open and community-centred buildings of our time. A stadium is one of the few buildings where tens of thousands of people can come together for a single purpose, or to view a single event.

Barack Obama’s recent address at the DNC presents a good allegory through which we can explore the religious aspects of the stadium. Here we have thousands of people coming together in ‘worship’ of a captivating figure; by observing some of the members of the audience and their emotional response to his speech, we see that this was certainly a borderline religious event in and of itself. The choice of a Hellenic themed stage and twilight timing only served to strengthen the ethereal nature of the experience. In our allegory we have Obama acting as both the God figure and the head of the church (the papal authority perhaps). That is, people have come to see him, but they have also come to receive a message, a political/ideological message that they can apply to their own selves and actions and also spread to others. We can see the vote as a parallel of belief, and the grass roots campaigner represents the evangelical nature of the lay christian, at least from a short term perspective. Just to round out the metaphor, the media and campaign team can act as the clergy, although there are of course key differences relating to vested interests and their structure is far from hierarchical.

Such a speech is a rare event, seldom does politics draw the masses in quite the way Obama has done. More generally, stadiums form the stage for sporting events. Club football stadiums especially, seem to be tightly analogous to cathedrals; a building where the local community can come together to worship, in a sense.

I came up with a few explanations for why people are drawn to stadiums to watch sport. Most obviously, people attend in pursuit of a feeling of unity, to be a part of an immense mutual desire to see a team win. Not only does this support the team and the team brand, but it provides a sense of warmth and belonging to the individual supporter. We can see this sense of unity not only through the almost militaristic use of team colours, slogans etc, but through the way a supporter tends to align themselves with one particular club whilst directing animosity towards all overs. This is seen more clearly from a national perspective, and represents a (usually) violence free manifestation of a more general national pride. In the past we would have had a war to relieve some of this national fervour, but now we can express it through international sporting events. The sense of unity in a stadium of people united together is tangible. There’s nothing quite like being with thousands of other people all cheering for the same thing to ignite passion and loyalty (as religious and political organisations well know).

We see a similar idea in churches and cathedrals, a community united towards a common goal of spreading the gospel and glorifying God; here again both the individual and the church (team) benefits and animosity is often directed towards unbelievers. The brand of the team is perhaps the most important ideological figure in the stadium; the team members come and go, but the idea of a club remains. This runs parallel to the gospel message, although ’the team’ is much more vague and fails to promise any sort of divine reward or effect the more general thoughts and actions of the supporter. Interestingly, many churchgoers I know seem to be primarily interested in the benefits of being part of the church community, rather than religion itself. Perhaps in our present day current-life rewards and concerns are often worth more than the eternal ones, even within Christianity.

Stadiums can also compete with the spiritual-architectural power of a cathedral. Take, for example, the Chinese bird’s nest stadium for the Olympics. Not only is it an immense physical construction, but it is positively soaking in ideological significance. A united China, a powerful competent nation, a celebration of sport and unity, a political statement; all these are valid depending on your point of view. Club stadiums flaunt the wealth and prestige of the team, the bigger the stadium the greater the club, the stronger the community (or, more cynically, the richer the chairman). Cathedrals were made magnificent with the clear aim of bringing glory to God, stadiums on the other hand are much more diverse in their ideological aims.

Stadiums provide a location for communal celebration, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that sport fans already outnumber religious people worldwide. Hence the stadium seems to be where at least a portion of our new religious pursuits lie.

I love abandoned places like this. The park was opened in 1909 or thereabouts, and there are plaques commemorating the monarch coming to visit, but now it’s almost totally closed down, slowly rotting at the top of this mountain. The atmosphere is tangible, the boarded up rides and stalls hinting at the thriving tourist destination the place once was. There’s even a barely-running hotel still there, although it didn’t look like it would be around for too much longer.

Visiting the park felt like a peek behind the scenes, a little window into a past era, just a glimpse, before the place is bulldozed and replaced with some new contemporary tourist centre, as it undoubtedly will be due to its prime location. It’s like looking round a derelict 19th century factory in the east end of London. It’s an opportunity to glimpse a place where so many people spent their lives, such a weight of memories, before it’s all flattened and redeveloped. I find the sense of history and departed life so powerful in these places.

I’ve been to places before where theme parks have been left abandoned because they are falling into the sea; it’s strange to see a place falling into the past, falling victim to erosion from the progression of time. The whole rest of the town is a bustling tourist centre, but this place at the top of the hill seems to have been forgotten, to have fallen off the map. I imagine that redevelopment plans are already well on their way…

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.“

This idea follows from the specialisation vs wide-knowledge debate that I have briefly written about in the past. I’ve gradually decided over the past few years that I want to move in the wide-knowledge direction. It means I pass up the possibility of going far in academia, but I never had a great desire to follow that path anyway and I think the wide-knowledge direction will be ultimately more wholesome and beneficial. University was largely a time of specialisation in intellectual activities, particularly mathematics. In contrast, over the past few months I have really been trying to get some new practical experiences with the aim of obtaining knowledge, and more importantly, experience in a range of new areas. I see university as the ’solve equations’, ‘analyze a new problem’ and ‘plan an invasion’ part of Heinlein’s description, but that leaves an awful lot of things left to learn. The smallholding has taught me how to ‘butcher a hog’ and ‘pitch manure’ and a whole host of other physical things.

I think my list would have many more things than Heinlein’s (I’m sure he didn’t mean it to be complete), ‘bring up a child’ and ‘be content in himself’ are the two that most readily some to mind. I don’t think I could ever produce any sort of exhaustive list, and of course that is part of the point. The Competent Man needs to move as he himself changes and as the world around him changes, it could be argued that the most important train of the Competent Man is that he is always growing, always moving forward. That’s my plan.

The Mall (Shopping Centres)

If the religion of our time is ‘Consumerism’, then would that not make shopping centres our new cathedrals? They certainly seem to be the most widespread buildings where people come together to “worship” (or at least support the prevailing ideology). Products have replaced the holy spirit and cooperations form the new clergy. I see socioeconomic status as the ‘presence of God’ or ‘Heaven’, the big difference being that all the fruits of Consumerism are instant and here in this life, whilst heaven is a future reward.

The Christian clergy, for much of it’s instituationalised reign, controlled the Truth by being literate in a world of general illiteracy. This allowed it to get across it’s own message without having to worry too much about the common parishoner questioning what it was saying. Consumerism has had to take a different approach, preaching a much more abstract and subconscious message that is open to widespread criticism, but which has still managed to be stunningly successful. What constitutes authentic Consumerism is shaped and controlled through commercial power, capital and education to a certain extent (marketing men are educated in the manipulation of markets and individuals).

Art, often in the form of stained glass windows, is common in cathedrals and helped the illiterate surf to learn and understand bible stories, enabling them to advance in the religion or obtain guidance on how to live via the Poor Man’s Bible. With Consumerism, the stories have spread from the cathedral and now permeate all media, but their purpose remains broadly the same. The key emotional incentive drawing people to the cathedral has changed from one of fear (of hell) to one of potential rewards (a better life), but the other sides of the coin (Heaven and, for example, fear of crime) are still important. Advertisements have become the parables of our age, and PR departments are the new disciples.

It’s unfortunate that even with the vast wealth that Consumerism commands, it has been unable to build anything even remotely as majestic as a middle-age cathedral. Ultimately the mall is a building designed for utility; a blank canvas for where individual companies can display their own short term architecture and art. It’s difficult to imagine people travelling to look at our shopping centres in hundreds of years time. If they do it will likely be from a ‘look at this stunning squandering of the Earth’s resources’ viewpoint.

Who are we worshipping here? Ourselves? That’s what the individualistic nature of Consumerism would suggest. But perhaps that’s really an illusion, perhaps we are worshiping the characters in the stories, the people in the adverts. Or are we worshipping fate and fortune? The act of purchasing could represent a prayer to Fortune, as if to say ‘I’ve bought this, now bring me what I want like you promised - to be happy and successful (or whatever) like the people in the adverts’. If this is true, then Consumerism seems to revolve around the same core idea of Christianity and many other religions: action (or worship) yields rewards.

So how does the shopping centre fare as the new cathedral? It certainly has the physical presence, but its message and purpose is obscure when compared to the direct concrete ideology of Christianity, even if it has been arguably more successful. I’ll look at some more potential candidates over the coming weeks.

I find I notice clouds much more in photographs than I do in real life…

This dabble in the world of construction made me marvel at the immense constructs mankind has managed to create. If we had trouble getting the angles right on a few bits of wood, it’s unbelievable that people are able to make skyscrapers almost a kilometre high. Even looking at classical architecture, roman buildings for example, is amazing. They didn’t have computers, electronic tools or even much mathematics to help them but they managed to construct giant magnificent buildings that are still standing now.

From a different perspective, I was conscious of the environmental impact of our construction. We were only using a few planks of pine, but working with the materials and understanding their carpentry-related properties made me appreciate that we were actually using living matter taken from the environment around us. When you are in a house, or a bigger building, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the construction materials have at some point been harvested or dug out of the earth. When thinking about environmental impact we focus so much on energy use that sometimes we lose sight of this most fundamental of relationships between ourselves and the land around us. I guess they all tie together though, since fossil fuels are extracted from the earth, and they were once animals and plants…

Having completed the run, christened ‘chickenopolis’, it’s fantastic to be able to look out of the window and see the physical outcome of my labour, it certrainly makes a satisfying change from intellectual work.

It’s partly liberating, to not really be thinking about anything, but also frustrating. I’ve got into the habit of feeling like I am wasting time if I am not doing something intellectually productive, whether that’s reading, writing, meditating, thinking or whatever. I feel as though I am being unproductive when my brain is vegetating. I’m trying to get out of this mindset and get a bit more space in my head, but I’m also hoping that leaving my thoughts to their own devices for a while will help my brain organise itself and that when I get back to ‘thinking properly’ my head will be clearer than it was before. I also get frustrated with the erratic mess of all these half-thoughts whirling round in my head, It makes me wish I could meditate properly and obtain some peace and tranquility to balance out the chaos.

Regardless, it’s a interesting new experience, and I’m enjoying learning some physical skills. It’s fantastic to feel the effects of working in my muscles and bones.

Plenty has happened in my life this year, so I thought i would outline some key things to provide some sort of background to my writing. I have finished university and now have a math degree, which brought to a close my three years of university and, for now at least, my formal education. I didn’t really want to jump straight into work, so over the summer I have been trying to think about where I want to go in life and trying to find some new sources of inspiration. I’ve been helping a friend out on his smallholding, we have pigs, chickens, goats… which has made a fantastic change from the intellectual life I’ve had for the last few years. I’ve also been spending time with friends before they go off on new adventures in the autumn.

Having had the background goal of obtaining my degree for most of my life up to this point, I am now in a transition phase. I have no idea where I want to go next, and I’m not really comfortable where I am, so I’m hoping that by writing some more here I’ll be able to get some thoughts and ideas into shape and hopefully carve out a new direction.

Thanks for sticking with me over my long hibernation, I don’t know how often I’ll be posting now, but I’m planning on establishing some sort of regular rhythm.

When it was proclaimed that the Library contained all books, the first impression was one of extravagant happiness. All men felt themselves to be the masters of an intact and secret treasure. There was no personal or world problem whose eloquent solution did not exist in some hexagon [shelf]. The universe was justified, the universe suddenly usurped the unlimited dimensions of hope. At that time a great deal was said about the Vindications: books of apology and prophecy which vindicated for all time the acts of every man in the universe and retained prodigious arcana for his future.

A place which differs somewhat from my university library.

Still, as I sit there daydreaming I’m thinking of how many of the great thinkers whom I have taken ideas from would have spent years surrounded by similar bookshelves hacking away at the questions of the universe. Being surrounded by such vast amounts of knowledge and history instills ideals of intellectual mastery and progression in me,  but also makes me realise that even if I was to devote my life purely to learning from this day forth I’d barely even get through a shelf or two.

It humbles me as an individual; were I to write a book it would be but a drop in ocean amongst the billions of words contained on the sprawling shelves. Here in the library is the most important history of the human race, the ideas of mankind put to print and presented in their insurmountable glory; so much material yet infinitely lacking when compared with what has never been documented. Our efforts to record and explain the cosmos, the human experience, so neatly contained within a building. There’s a long way to go.

I don’t handle the cold well, my frame isn’t designed for extremes. In fact, both my flesh and my mind are always less resilient than I imagine. I need peace and quiet and calm to write, hence the lack of updates; more than that I need vast amounts of time to think and organise my thoughts, something I’ve not had for months now. But that’s ok. I’m finding it exciting to be constantly unsure of where I am and where I’m going; I’m finding value in places I hadn’t expected, I’m skating on the waters where I used to swim. Maybe I’ll have a chance to organise my intentions when I’m home for Christmas; hedonism takes many forms, as I am discovering…

So much for structure, if anything I’ve gone the other way.

More words soon. 

For example I used to fear drowning, or death-by-flames, and I am obviously still not exactly joyful about the idea of dying in these ways, not least because of the physical pain involved. However I no longer fear the isolation and ‘inhumanity’ of this type of death. My previous ‘death of choice’ would be the jump from a cliff or the envelopment in a fireworks factory explosion.

Clarification: When I talk about control over the event I am meaning mental control more than physical control (although this can play a part). To be able to stand there and think ‘I am ready to die, I accept death’, that is the good death. To have a constant awareness that death is real, death will come, and death is likely the second most important event in your life.

However it happens, don’t fear the reaper; ‘Fear is the mind killer’ as F. Herbert would say.

From Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, a (brilliant and witty) story about a man who turns into a woman, this bit is set around 1750:

Vain trifles as they seem, clothes have, they say, more important offices than merely to keep us warm. They change our view of the world and the world’s view of us. For example, when Captain Bartolus saw Orlando’s skirt, he had an awning stretched for her immediately, pressed her to take another slice of beef, and invited her to go ashore with him in the long–boat. These compliments would certainly not have been paid her had her skirts, instead of flowing, been cut tight to her legs in the fashion of breeches. And when we are paid compliments, it behoves us to make some return. Orlando curtseyed; she complied; she flattered the good man’s humours as she would not have done had his neat breeches been a woman’s skirts, and his braided coat a woman’s satin bodice. Thus, there is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us and not we them; we may make them take the mould of arm or breast, but they mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking. So, having now worn skirts for a considerable time, a certain change was visible in Orlando, which is to be found, even in her face. If we compare the picture of Orlando as a man with that of Orlando as a woman we shall see that though both are undoubtedly one and the same person, there are certain changes. The man has his hand free to seize his sword, the woman must use hers to keep the satins from slipping from her shoulders. The man looks the world full in the face, as if it were made for his uses and fashioned to his liking. The woman takes a sidelong glance at it, full of subtlety, even of suspicion. Had they both worn the same clothes, it is possible that their outlook might have been the same.

In our image-centred society, clothes are a big deal. A good percentage of the high street seems to be clothes shops, or at least shops whose core product is clothing. Why do we spend so much money on clothing? What makes us buy the particular style of clothes we choose to wear?

I’ve always gone for the fairly straight edge bland clothing look, mainly because I don’t have the guts (or funds) to walk around in a pinstripe suit with slacks, a bowler hat and a cane, which is my ultimate aim, but also just out of laziness and my dislike of shopping-centre shopping. I do think clothing choice says a lot about the wearer, but I’m far more concerned about the post-image stages of human interaction than immediate appearances, so I try not over-emphasise clothing and presentation. I think one of my future ‘projects’ will be to experiment with some different clothing ideas to see how they affect social intercourse.

Although it is a sweeping generalization, I find that within social groups (most obviously when we are young) people want to dress like others, they want to be “in fashion” (in the loosest sense of the phrase), but at the same time nobody wants to be caught wearing exactly the same clothes as somebody else (with a few exceptions). Clothing is a fairly unique product in this sense, that a person wants to look the same and fit in with everyone else, but also wants to be individual and stand out at the same time. Clothes differ from other products, such as an iPod, because everyone has (more or less) exactly the same iPod, and that’s what counts - pure single product ownership. This is why we end up with lots of clothes shops, selling pretty much the same thing, with slight but important differences.

Clothing choice enables us to have a sense of belonging, but also a sense of individuality and uniqueness at the same time; security and freedom; acquiescence, apathy and (in some cases) a platform for communication. All of which are rather fundamental aspects of our lives - aspects which can be expressed and cultivated through our purchases.

[Picture from qube. Check out Rachael King's post on the same subject.]

My life is a constant cycle of procrastination, there are so many opportunities all around me for growth and progression, yet I still manage to spend most of my day doing very little. Part of me is ashamed at my lack of energy and application; part of me, to a certain extent at least, believes indolence is necessary and helpful, that the time spent doing ‘nothing’ gives me the space I need to process and subconsciously take hold of the thoughts, feelings and ideas conceived when I am doing ’something’. For example, I probably sleep too much, time that could be spent acquiring knowledge, but sleep helps me sort out the knowledge I have gained during the day meaning I don’t end up getting swamped in an ever deepening pool of information.

In the past I have always reasoned that I need this space, but now I am feeling that this is more an excuse for inactivity than a healthy viewpoint, I start to abuse the balance and become less active as a result. I’ve found that one of the best ways to regain the balance is to have structure; over the summer I often haven’t had commitments during the day which has enabled me to sleep in late, and nap in the afternoon - I justify this by reasoning that I will stay up late and get things done - but then I just head to bed at the normal time. Without structure I fall into a rhythm of lethargy and inaction, it takes far more discipline to get things done when you have no time constraints or set points in your day. I’m hoping now that I am back at university I’ll be able to establish a rhythm of action through the increased structure of the week.

I’ve been reading some ‘life pointers’ from different websites and organisation recently, and many of them seem to contain this recurring idea of structure, control and action, especially that of structuring your day around reflection and introspection, often they just provide a kick up the backside for people to start doing something with their day other than sitting in front of the TV. For example, meditation CDs present a form of structure, to meditate for half an hour a day is a set time of intense introspection and hence intense progress, a time out to think about who you are and what you are doing, a process from which often comes action. Christians grow when they spend alot of time reading scriptures and in spiritual meditation, which is often acheived through structured study. Children have set daily routines to grow and learn discipline; even material-secularism gives us structure though the prevalent ideas of customisation and products to fill every need, the ideal advertisement-presented life involves gym, television, friday night socialisng, ipod on the tube, picking the kids up from school, yearly summer holidays…

As usual, it’s about balance: structure and space.

I’m seeing geometry where I previously saw just buildings, I’m seeing photography where I previously saw just streetlamps to light my way home, I’m seeing waves and oceans in the approaching rainclouds… In some ways this growth has made me more distanced from ‘reality’, I can feel further from the faces that walk past me, more detached from the cultural and political forces pressing upon me, distant from the motives I once had; but in other ways I am closer and more enveloped in what is going on around me than I have ever been, I feel close, involved in a near timeless sense with the omnipresent movement and flow constantly giving birth to life, beauty and death. It’s not as if I’ve found god, or found Gaia, it’s a change within myself rather than a change to the world around me, maybe even the cleansing of another set of doors of perception.

I don’t know whether the artist intended to write ‘looser’ or ‘loser’, but I like to imagine he or she spelt it that way on purpose, rather than it just being poor spelling (although this is entirely possible, the graffiti is from Lisbon, Portugal).

I have started dropping it into conversation now and then, if you say it fast enough people don’t catch the last word and it’s interesting to see the different responses you get, whether they interpret it as loser or looser; perhaps when it is ambiguous people are likely to hear the phrase which fits with the philosophy they believe, the christian hears loser, the ardent agnostic hears looser.

At different times in my life, or even from day to day, you could place me into either interpretation. Mostly I believe that you can be more ‘free’ without inflexible dogma, but I also believe in ‘cosmic-objective’ moral truth (as in good and evil are more than bio-evolutionary products); I believe in truth, but my idea of the nature of truth is flexible and constantly being knocked down and rebuilt. A good way to look at it could be “Without a truth you are the loser”, even if that truth is “there is no truth”; the place not to be is that of not caring or not thinking about truth.

As time goes on I find myself less attached to truths I once held dear, especially those of a political or philosophical nature; as I learn more I realise just how limited my knowledge is, I am infinitely ignorant. I have become less eager to subscribe to any ideology or movement or to place myself on the political compass because I don’t want to commit without enough information, but I will never possess enough information. This give me more freedom to criticise and to move between ideas, but also means that I have less constructive ideals of my own to share.

Many of the things I have pursued over the past few years have given me a lot; I’ve progressed far, learnt much, discovered new things. I don’t want to abandon ideas like philosophy and ethics that I have been passionately investigating, maybe just place these things on the back burner for a while as I pursue something new. It could be that what I find is a renewed passion for these same ideas, most likely I’ll never have a concrete new direction, I’ll just look back in a years time and say ‘Ah, that’s where you were headed then’.

On the other hand, I learnt about some amazing things that can be done. For example, we can manufacture passable man made ears, and before too long eyes as well. A scientist called Miguel Nicolelis has done some amazing experiments where a monkey was trained to move a robotic arm using thoughts alone. This involves implanting electrodes right into the brain, which obviously is going to be tricky and expensive to apply in humans; but there are also more limited examples of ‘thought control’ using non-invasive EEG (pads on the head) methods. This has obvious medical applications, such as re-routing thought impulses in paralysed people so they can regain control of their muscles, which is potentially fantastic; but on the other hand the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency have apparently already started looking into such brain-machine interfaces to make killing people even faster.

It all presents interesting ethical questions. Stem cells. Mind control. Mind-altering drugs. Military technology. When science and morality clash, who’s more powerful? Can the two be combined harmoniously? If we wanted to could we ever stop the juggernaut of scientific progression? After revealing so much knowledge and power, could science ultimately be the death of us?

What if all our goals are simulacra? Does this present any problem? Or even hold any relevance at all?

I think it’s important, especially for the agnostic, to be aware that everything around herself is in flux, isn’t constant, is (perhaps) simulacra. Things are slightly different for the theist, as they have god, a constant non-simulacrum (subjectively at least); she has an eternal, unchanging aim in life; not even just on a whole-life timescale, every action of the theist is directed towards god. Even if the manifestations of god can be interpreted as simulacra, there exists an eternal god figure transcendent of his “actions” who is a copy of nothing else (as the theist perceives him).

The agnostic might be able to obtain a similar eternal cosmic non-simulacrum goal as well. For example “The Good” as described by Plato in the metaphor of the sun, which is briefly outlined as follows.

The sun … not only furnishes to visibles the power of visibility but it also provides for their generation and growth and nurture though it is not itself generation. … In like manner, then … the objects of knowledge not only receive from the presence of the good their being known, but their very existence and essence is derived to them from it, though the good itself is not essence but still transcends essence in dignity and surpassing power. (509b)

Learn more about it here.

What he is getting at is that there is an eternal constant (The Good) divorced from sense perception that “shines” on objects of knowledge to give them existence, such that everything around us comes from the Good. So the good would not be a simulacrum, although it’s so abstract it’s pretty much in the “god sphere” of belief anyway.

As for the strict atheist naturalist, perhaps they could argue that everything is simulacra of everything, meaning that together all objects make up a unique whole…

Regardless, does it matter? Should we care if our lives have no eternal goal? No solid foundation? I’m comfortable in constant flux, comfortable with a non-eternal lifetime if that’s the way things turn out to be, I’m comfortable not knowing. I think it is entirely subjective. Some people need a firm goal, some people don’t; some people “naturally” have one (the “natural” theist), some people don’t.

A fantastic example of simulacra.

Perhaps the most powerful and obvious example of simulacra in our lives is that of “make-up”, in the widest possible sense of the word. To change your body and appearance to look like someone else who in turn is a copy, and a distorted copy at that, of someone else. It’s difficult to break down the motives for such self-manipulation; does the “right look” represent natural sexual attraction? Is it a indicator of wealth (much like an expensive car, the act of looking the part)? Perhaps it is for self-esteem, although that is undoubtedly woven into the other reasons, we can end up going in circles. An evolutionary reflex? A defense from criticism?

It seems as though everyone is pursuing some ideal or another, cosmetic change or purchasing choices are just two examples of the infinite number of decisions we can make to move ourselves in a certain direction, everyone is changing themselves to be more like someone or something else, towards an amalgamation of goals. Jesus and celebrities are two obvious “goals” that spring to mind, but there must be countless other far more subtle ideals, most, if not all of them simulacra in some sense. Consider the two examples above, Jesus is a simulacra through the bible, a copy of speech from an image of god; celebrities are simulacra in the cosmetic sense mentioned above and also through media representation which is a distorted image of a person who is presenting themselves in a certain way to begin with, as we all are.

What if my ideal is love, or wisdom, or some other abstract virtue? Again surely these are simulacra, perhaps even simulacra with no original form; what is love? what is wisdom? If we only know these things through their manifestations then they are ultimate simulacra.

What if my aim is to be like my father or mother? Then still that image isn’t unadulterated, my idea of father and mother is filtered through everything else I have seen and know about family relationships, my father becomes a simulacra of some cosmic father figure.

A perfect relationship? Copied from others, or constructed out of the errors of others.

The pioneering genius? Creating a pale reflection of the universe.

If everything we can become are simulacra, what does that make us now? Just a reflection of everything that has already come into contact with us?

Fantasy, fiction, fame. Progress. Simulacra.

It's something I've written briefly about before, but after being away and having lots of photos of my travels to look through it's a thought that has come back to me. I'm talking about photos in the snapshot sense, or perhaps in the  "holiday photos" sense, rather than the pictures you would find in a gallery. I know a lot of people really love photos, love having them about; they stick them up around their room, have photos of their friends as their PC wallpaper and use photos as a sorce of comfort and familiarity.

I can't do this. I find photographs immensely powerful, they either make me feel alienated from a situation in the past, or make me feel isolated in that past time whilst everyone else is in the present, it's like being alone on a separate but identical planet Earth stuck in that single moment. That makes it sound worse than it is, I don't think these feelings are really a bad thing, if nothing else they are powerful and refreshing, when I feel like I want an emotional "hit" so to speak I whip out the photo album (or open the photos folder on the PC) and have a browse through. I don't take many pictures myself but when I do it makes these feelings even stronger. It's not just pictures of people that make me feel this way, often landscapes can be even more powerful, especially if they are of a deserted mountain vista, or most magnificently of all if they are looking out over some expanse of water.

On the other hand a really great photo as a piece of art is one that really draws me in, that can give me the same depth of feeling (though not necessarily the same feelings) as a photo with the added weight of a personal memory attached to it. The wonderful thing about a photograph by somebody else is that can give me that powerful feeling but it's not tied to one particular time, one particular event, I can take it wherever I want, place myself into it in whatever way I wish. I personally find photography one of the most powerful art forms because of this, indeed a good chunk of my time on the Internet is spent browsing for brilliant pictures, brilliant wallpapers to fit my mood and my view on the things around me at any particular time.

What are photos? For me, either powerful relics of the past, or (good photos at least) a form of artistic expression on a par with music.

I've been reading some fiction lately, something I haven't done in a fair while, and it made me realise (again) how valuable fiction and the "non-knowledge-creating" arts are; this is probably part of the cause of this sensitive state of mind. I feel that sometimes I get so obsessed with learning and knowledge that I start to lose hold of the reason knowledge is valuable: as something to be used and applied in "living". I try and keep these things in balance; experience and contemplation, fact and fiction, thought and silence, listening and talking. All of them are useless without the other.

It was fantastic seeing some new and different cultures, looking at how different groups and nations organised things in different ways and comparing them to what I am used to. One particularly interesting comparison was how different countries treated the environment. For example in Germany they have recycling bins everywhere and lots of wind power plants, whilst in Austria there are a lot of solar panels on house roofs. It was also good to see how much people had in common, despite the barriers of language and history. People tended to speak English, but even when they didn't it was easier than I had expected to communicate.

I went to places of great history, like Rome and Paris, but I never really felt "in touch" with the past there. Perhaps it was the other tourists, perhaps the commercialisation, but standing in the Colosseum or walking round the Forum didn't instill in me much sense of what life would have been like for the ancient Roman in these places. I was expecting to learn lots about the history of the cities I visited, and perhaps I would have done if I had spent longer in each place, taken more time in the museums; but I found that the cities were more useful in placing and visualising history I had already learnt from books, rather than creating new knowledge.

One of the strongest desires I gained from the trip was to become fluent in another language. Currently I know a bit of German, and that's it; I really want to be able to think in another language to see what that feels like. Perhaps only knowing English puts a limit on what I am able to think, or at least what I am able to articulate. I'm pretty poor at learning languages, but hopefully over the next few years I'll be able to learn more and get some idea of how language effects thought.

I never felt as isolated as I expected to feel, on the long train journeys you are in carriages filled with other people, and the cities are (understandably) crammed with tourists. I think for my next journey I'll try and go out of season in order to better get an idea of the real nature of the places I visit. The trip helped me secure a sense of "home"; I don't think I could spend a long time travelling, one of the best things about being away is the feeling that at the end of the journey you will come back home to comfort and security.

I've not been on a trip like this before, so I'm both excited and anxious about what is ahead. It will undoubtedly bring a plethora of new sights and experiences; some good, some bad, but hopefully all beneficial. I'll let you know how I get on.

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness." ~ Mark Twain

 "When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego,
and when we escape like squirrels from turning in the cages of our personality
and get into the forest again,
we shall shiver with cold and fright
but things will happen to us
so that we don't know ourselves.

Cool, unlying life will rush in,…" ~ D.H. Lawrence

 "Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going. Travel is glamorous only in retrospect." ~ Paul Theroux

Silence,
Sound,
Serenity.

From abstract to emotion,
An idea in motion.

An image, a form,
An ocean, a storm.

A fire, a call,
A moment, a fall.

Lonely people, lonely time,
My memories which are not mine. 

The voice of god whispering in the darkness.

The power of life streaming through the body.

A time of love, a time of loss,
Now reborn; silent reform.

New memories sealed, forever frozen,
The new direction, constantly chosen.

The end,
Silence,
But the rhythm lingers on,
Rejoins the eternal one.

A few weeks ago I found some short video interviews with the physicist Richard Feynman on the BBC website. Feynman was a genius physicist, one of the most important of the twentieth century, but during the interview he is talking about how he always avoided the humanities at college, and throughout his life he had never really looked into other more humanity based subjects, preferring to focus purely on physics. He chose to dedicate himself to one specific task, broadening humanity's knowledge of science, at the expense of other knowledge. 

Is there anything wrong with focusing your life in one direction in this way?
Perhaps; although there is a magnificent romanticism about such dedication and obsession, besides no one is ever going to experience everything, we are all infinitely impoverished by what we can never know, so maybe it doesn't hurt to narrow down the scope a bit and really achieve something no human has ever achieved before in one particular field. For myself, the sacrifice is too great. Even if all I manage to think and feel throughout my life is a drop in the ocean I still want to see as much of it as I can, to dedicate myself to one thing now and then, but to always return to the surface to try and pull things back together. Can greatness be achieved either way? Maybe the greatest of humans are those who have the guts to sacrifice everything else to pursue the single ideal.

One of the first things that hit me was my lack of empathy, or perhaps more accurately the realisation of just how difficult it is to empathise with people. The all-consuming stress and workload of this time of year is something that always seems to take me by surprise, and now just a few days after my final exam I am already finding it difficult to evaluate how I felt just a week or two ago. When someone mentions to me that they have exams it's not a big deal, I forget the immense effort that revising entails, practically shutting down your life for a few weeks; if I can barely empathise with myself a week on, what chance do I have of understanding what someone else is going through?

This is just a specific example; I have realised that the difficulty of empathising applies to most everything. I can't really understand someones pain unless I am experiencing the same pain myself, I can't re-conjure any of the most intense feelings I have had in my own life, let alone understand what it must be like for someone else feeling them. There's a glimpse there, for sure, I understand what someone means when they say they are happy or sad, or in any other state of mind, but there is such a gulf between knowing and feeling, to understanding on an intellectual or even emotional level and placing yourself into the situation of the other person, to feel what they feel.

Can empathy be cultivated? I think so. I think the more time and effort you place into manufacturing a particular perspective in your own mind, the closer you are going to get to someone you are trying to communicate with who is in that situation. Having past experience is a massive help too, the closest you are going to get to real understanding is if you are going through the same thing at the same time; but even with the greatest possible effort, there's always going to be a gulf between any two people; the gulf of individuality, of personal perspective.

Perhaps not being able to empathise fully isn't such a bad thing, if we could understand what everyone else feels we would never need to venture outside our own mind, never have the satisfaction of really communicating and understanding someone else.

Back to normal next week.

Ask Philosophers
They have a "Question of the day" which is normally pretty interesting; there's a lot of good stuff in the archives too.

New Scientist - Last Word
A similar thing, but more science based; interesting questions about trivial things.

Allegory of the cave 

Imagine prisoners, who have been chained since birth deep inside a cave: not only are their limbs immobilized by the chains; their heads are chained as well, so that their gaze is fixed on a wall.

Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway, along which statues of various animals, plants, and other things are carried by people. The statues cast shadows on the wall, and the prisoners watch these shadows. When one of the statue-carriers speaks, an echo against the wall causes the prisoners to believe that the words come from the shadows.

The prisoners engage in what appears to us to be a game: naming the shapes as they come by. This, however, is the only reality that they know, even though they are seeing merely shadows of images. They are thus conditioned to judge the quality of one another by their skill in quickly naming the shapes and dislike those who begin to play poorly.

Suppose a prisoner is released and compelled to stand up and turn around. At that moment his eyes will be blinded by the firelight, and the shapes passing will appear less real than their shadows.

Similarly, if he is dragged up out of the cave into the sunlight, his eyes will be so blinded that he will not be able to see anything. At first, he will be able to see darker shapes such as shadows and, only later, brighter and brighter objects.

The last object he would be able to see is the sun, which, in time, he would learn to see as that object which provides the seasons and the courses of the year, presides over all things in the visible region, and is in some way the cause of all these things that he has seen.

Once enlightened, so to speak, the freed prisoner would not want to return to the cave to free "his fellow bondsmen," but would be compelled to do so. Another problem lies in the other prisoners not wanting to be freed: descending back into the cave would require that the freed prisoner's eyes adjust again, and for a time, he would be one of the ones identifying shapes on the wall. His eyes would be swamped by the darkness, and would take time to become acclimated. Therefore, he would not be able to identify shapes on the wall as well as the other prisoners, making it seem as if his being taken to the surface completely ruined his eyesight. (The Republic bk. VII, 516b-c; trans. Paul Shorey).

He then goes on to explain how this enlightened individual would be thought of as crazy, as he has such a different viewpoint now he has seen the bigger picture; but it is his responsibility to stay there in the darkness and lead the people in the cave to the truth, explaining how the philosopher should take this role in his Republic.

I think the freed man represents so many people, or at least many people believe they are the freed man. From religious people sharing their eternal truths, to politicians building societies from their enlightened ideals; academics publishing their discoveries to parents raising their children; philosophers (as in Plato's case) building ideas to editors writing papers. All these people have other motives as well, some of them probably more significant, but all of them share at least a spark of Plato's idea.

Everyone can gain some sort of enlightenment, maybe not to be a leader, maybe not to find the truth, but to have something to share no-one else has, an individual's unique perspective.

"Better to be the poor servant of a poor master, and to endure anything, rather than think as they do and live after their manner"

This is one of my favourites:

and

"In a rare public appearance, photographer Gregory Colbert talks about the creation of his exhibit "Ashes and Snow." Colbert's work, which he calls "a 21st-century bestiary," captures the poetic beauty in our relationship to the animal kingdom. Colbert shows an 8-minute film, from the exhibit, of his epic swim with whales off the coast of the Azores."

You really need to experience these in motion to see why they are so special.

 

I'm going to be posting shorter updates until the end of May as I have a whole load of exams coming up. I'll mostly be sharing links to some of the sites and things I've found recently, just like this.

In The Trap he looks into ideas of social control, such as game theory, and how they have been applied by elites over the past thirty years or so; examining their practical implementation and subsequent economic and sociological effects. Game theory is a mathmatical model of decision making that was first applied on the political stage during the cold war to try and balance the superpowers to create an environment of safety in the west through rationality and fear; it is based on the idea that humans are ultimately self seeking individuals, out purely for their own good. He claims that this mistaken assumption has led to practical applications of the theory having dire consequences, citing examples from the 80s through to the present day.

He also explores the idea that there are two different types of freedom, as pioneered by Isaiah Berlin, these are defined through concepts of positive and negative liberty. The gist of it is that negative liberty is the freedom to be able to do what you want, to not be coerced against your will; whilst positive freedom allows the individual to "fulfill their potential". For example, positive freedom is often demonstrated through revolutions, like the Russian revolution, in which an individual or a group overthrows the establishment to make a new Utopian society through implementing a new social ideal; throughout history this process has often ended in disaster, primarily due to the corruption of the leaders once they get into power. Negative liberty is what we exercise today in the west, a concept of liberty that grew out of the "clash of ideals" during the cold war. Curtis looks into these two types of freedom and explains how he sees them implemented over the past few decades. Fantastic stuff.

Once when I was particularly ill with a fever I almost lost complete control over my mind, something like an hallucination. It didn't get to the point where I didn't know what was going on around me, but I couldn't command or focus on any thoughts, my mind was all over the place for a few hours until the fever passed. I just lay there waiting for it to stop, worried that I felt so ill, but never really doubting that after a certain amount of time my body would bring me back to normal. A fantastic, if not altogether pleasant experience.

When I think about it, It should be terrifying that my body, my state of mind, perhaps everything in my life can be taken away so easily, so quickly. Everything, based on such delicate foundations. Maybe that is part of what makes life so precious?

Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility or the meaning of such a comparison. - Einstein

I have been reading a lot of Physics recently; learning about relativity, quantum theory, time, matter and everything else that is tied in with them. It's really opened up my eyes to a whole new world of knowledge; I've always had a healthy interest in science, but once you get deep into the workings of modern physics there are theories and ideas that just seem crazy from an undeveloped common sense point of view. This has really consumed my thinking over the past few weeks, I'm developing this whole new level of ideas of an almost mystic quality, which is fantastic.

I've always been anti-scientism, in the sense that I think a lot of existence will never be understood through scientific means, and that I believe the essence of our being is outside the material "sense world". I don't really have any logical reason to think this, and that's kind of the point, it's not logical, it's not scientific. Perhaps it's just my romantic view of god/the universe that causes me to want to feel a connection to something eternal, timeless and infinite. It's probably best explained in that feeling of awe you get when you look at a picture of a supernova, or a galaxy, or just a picture of space; the immensity and depth of it makes my mind run wild with the potential and possibility of the unknown.

This doesn't mean I deny the claims of science, not at all, It's fantastic to find out about everything science has discovered, a feeling which is enhanced by the fantastic theories of modern physics. I just like to keep in mind the fact that all we know is a tiny glimpse of reality, a magnificent achievement for humanity but near-nothing compared to what we don't understand, and that mystery of the unknown is the most magnificent thing of all (even if, like Einstein, you believe everything has an underlying structure).

I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence — as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature. - Einstein (again)

This is the time of the year when I feel closest to nature, there is so much around me that I can sympathise and empathise with. From the young plants who have sprouted too early (due to the warm winter), and paid the price, to the magnificent old trees, having passed through another year on their long, slow, journey. The young animals are preparing to have their first taste of life, with so much promise and so much possibility, while many adults are beginning the risky and fragile parenting process. The is so much to juxtapose, so much change, so much life.

I'm excited at the prospect of summer, by this time in the winter, even though it has been incredibly mild this year, I'm just waiting for the summer around the corner; I always have a romantic view of the seasons, but far more so when I am in the opposite season and I can take an unrealistic idealised view of what lies ahead. It's times like this when I get the urge to buy a camera…

It centres around Antoine Roquentin who is writing a book about some 18th century historical character, he seems to have enough income to not need to get a proper job so he just hangs around in cafés and goes to the library every day to write his book. You get the impression he hasn't really spoken to anyone in months, if not years; he says himself:

When you live alone you no longer know what it is to tell a story: the plausible disappears at the same time as the friends. You let events flow by too: you suddenly see people appear who speak and then go away; you plunge into stories of which you can't make head or tail: you'd make a terrible witness.

The book orbits around him, as a recluse, coming to a revelation about his life and existence, giving a "real-life" outworking of Sartre's own existential philosophy. The weight of his experience, described in magnificent detail, just blew me away; Sartre really gets into Antoine's head and brings out a whole load of things I had never properly thought about. I can't say I followed his feelings all the way through, I found myself getting more distant from him as the book went on, but I definitely caught a glimpse of what might possibly be going on in the back of my head behind my thoughts.

Here's an example of one of his descriptions, as Antoine is sitting in a café listening to the music:

For the moment, the jazz is playing; there is no melody, just notes, a myriad tiny tremors. The notes know no rest, an inflexible order gives birth to them then destroys them, without ever leaving them the chance to recuperate and exist for themselves…. I would like to hold them back, but I know that, if I succeeded in stopping one, there would only remain in may hand a corrupt and languishing sound. I must accept their death; I must even want that death: I know of few more bitter or intense impressions.

With people of only moderate ability modesty is mere honesty; but with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy. - Arthur Schopenhauer

Modesty is the lowest of the virtues, and is a confession of the deficiency it indicates. He who undervalues himself is justly overvalued by others. - William Hazlitt

I will not be modest. Humble, as much as you like, but not modest. Modesty is the virtue of the lukewarm. - Jean-Paul Sartre

And for a bit of balance:

Modesty is the gentle art of enhancing your charm by pretending not to be aware of it. - Oliver Herford

Modesty: The art of encouraging people to find out for themselves how wonderful you are. - Unknown

First I want to define modesty in order to make it clear what I am talking about. I am taking about modesty as the act of deliberately hiding some talent, knowledge or ability; the act of pretending you know less than you do, or are not as good at something as you are. 

I've always felt modesty, in most contexts, was a false virtue, although I've been quite worried that this makes me an elitist git. The the more I think about it, however, the more it makes sense; modesty is simply a form of dishonesty.

Take for example the last quote above. Avoiding an argument over the value of people regarding you as "wonderful", how is anyone ever going to find out you are wonderful if you are constantly modest? If I am modest in everything I do then surely I can only be great when no-one is watching, so the only way anyone is ever going to discover a particular talent I have is if I let my modesty slip in public. Herford's claim isn't really modesty at all, it is calculated pride. Even if he pretends not to realise his charm, he is nonetheless demonstrating it deliberately which is immodest in itself.

Schopenhauer has missed the point, anyone with at least a single talent can still be modest and in the process be dishonest. Sartre has his finger on the pulse here; I can see how humility has great worth, the idea of pure honesty about one's talents and failures, the middle way between arrogance and modesty.