Simply Complex

 

I was recently reading a book about the 2008 market crash. In the book, the author said that people assumed that technology would make life simpler. However, what followed was one of the worst crashes in memory.

 

I wanted to find out more, so I thought I’d go to my local council offices. I checked online to see their opening hours so that I wouldn’t get there to find that they are closed and got ready to set out. As you may know, council offices usually have a lot of red tape to cut through to find out anything. After the American Civil War (strange concept, Civil War) soldiers had to return to their home town so that the council offices could go through all of the records to see if they deserved pay and pension. The paper documents, which had to be transported from across the country, were bound in, yup, red string. No wonder red tape has such a bad reputation!

 

So, anyway, before going out I checked the weather on the internet (no looking out of windows for me) and then quickly went to the bathroom and prepared a bottle of water- don’t worry, I didn’t have to go down the street or carry out my own waste, nor did I have to go to the well, I only had to press two buttons and my waste was disposed of an I had crystal clear water to drink on my journey.

 

As for the journey, I had too many choices, should I walk, ride a bike, ride a motorbike, take a car, take a taxi or take a plane? On the journey I got hungry and went into a shop to buy some food. I didn’t have to check the season as, due to technology, farmers no longer have to wait for the flooding of the Nile, nor play Russian roulette with the seasons, they could plant things at the right time, whenever they wanted and, instead of having to wait, I could buy whatever I wanted there and then, no need to go hunting or plant crops myself! I have stomach problems so have many dietary restrictions, again, no problem, there are whole sections to cater to me and at the press of a few buttons my prescription will be sent from the doctor’s office to the chemist for me to pick up at my convenience.

 

On my journey I thought of a book I had read as a child, which I can’t remember the name of, so I popped into my local, free, library to ask. They did a google search but came up empty. The book is the story of an animal (a sheep, I think) who has grown tired of eating the same white snow every day. One day he looks up and sees at sunset, on the horizon, pink snow. The animal sets out to find this beautiful snow and after a long journey finds that the snow isn’t always pinker on the other side, so after a long hard journey the animal finds that all he wanted was there, simply, in front of him.

 

On the way home I checked my phone to see if anyone had tried to contact me. The psychiatrist Anthony Storr wrote that the fixation on social positioning (in his context in relationship status- hello Facebook) is a new concept which has emerged after we could easily move from country to country, town to town in pursuit of love, work and happiness (three elusive things) as before one’s energy would be on growing the crops and any relationship would come from the surrounding area, when the work is done, of course (who needs an algorithm?)

 

The German philosopher Freddie Nietzsche once wrote ‘the surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently’ and the modern obsession with 24/7 work and the esteem social world are things taught from an early age. Maybe if we encouraged our children to read books about snow (if anyone knows the title, please drop me a line) then they would realise how lucky we are and how simplistic our modern world really is. Tolstoy showed in War and Peace that we humans struggle in times of peace more than in war, (maybe due to Sartre’s notion of freedom being freedom from responsibility, something he himself found living under the German occupation of Paris), so this must be taken into account, so clear, no doubt, however, if you want something that is really complex to think about, Niels Bohr, one of the fathers of quantum theory, wrote ‘everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real’ but, as for me, I am going to go and turn the tap on a few times and try to comprehend the sure genius and simplicity of clean water coming out of taps.

 

‘till next time

 

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Ten Essential Books

 

A few people have contacted me on thegreaterfoolblog@hotmail.com to ask for me for book recommendations so here are my ten essential books and a couple for younger readers, with ISBNs

 

1. Martin Buber- I-Thou (ISBN-10:0684717255)
2. Benedict De Spinoza- Ethics (ISBN-10:0140435719)
3. Albert Einstein- The Essential Einstein: His Greatest Works (ISBN-10:0141034629)
4. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky- The Idiot (ISBN-10:0140440542)
5. Edgar Allan Poe- The Collected Tales And Poems Of Edgar Allan Poe (ISBN-10:9780679600077)
6. Friedrich Nietzsche- Human, All Too Human I / A Book For Free Spirits (ISBN-10:0804741719)
7. Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe- Selected Works: Sorrows of Young Werther: WITH Elective Affinities, Faust and Italian Journey (ISBN-10:1857152468) (the definitive translation of his poetry only being Goethe: Selected Verse (ISBN-10: 1857152468))
8. Leonard Cohen- Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs (ISBN-10:0224038605)
9. Bob Dylan- The Lyrics: Since 1962 (ISBN-10:1471137090)
10. Marcel Proust- In Search of Lost Time (Proust Complete – 6 Volume Box Set) (ISBN-10:0812969642)

 

 

And for the younger readers:

 

• Colin Dann- Fox Cub Bold (in the Animals of Farthing Wood series) ISBN-10:0099375206
• Nina Bawden- The Finding (ISBN-10:0575036184)

It’s All About Me (Don’t Take It Personally)

 

One thing I have noticed over my many years spinning aimlessly through space, situated on a piece of rock, which by the mercy of its mass and motion I’m not thrown off, is many people’s almost infinite capacity to make the entirety of existence about them, or in other words, it’s all about me.

 

Seemingly unaware of Copernicus’ and Galileo’s pronouncement that the earth goes around the sun and not vice versa (ha! Take that Aristotle) people have the almost awe-inspiring ability to believe that the earth, and indeed the whole of creation, revolves around them. This brilliant insight, on their part, is most illuminating (maybe they are the sun after all?) helps to explain a large facet of human behaviour, i.e. the misspelling of HUMAN RACE as HUMEN RACE (there is no I but if you look carefully you can see ‘me’). Whether it stems from ignorance or insecurity is not a matter for today, however, the seeming belief that the universe (and in some cases the stars themselves) have it in, or out, or even shake it all about, for your average person serves two purposes 1) it builds the illusion of self-importance 2) it abdicates personal responsibility (as do, in fairness, most systems).

 

When something happens in my life and someone speaks to me and either says ‘don’t take it personally’ or ‘the other person took it personally, so you should indulge their ego’ (I am paraphrasing) I like to reply by staying quiet and smiling (mostly an attempt to hide how bored I am). On occasions I reply to the question ‘do you take this personally?’ by saying that the answer to that question depends wholly upon one’s perception of God. At this point I usually realise that I have gone too far and return to my former stoic boredom but as you are here, dear reader, I shall assume that you have the  vaguest interest.

 

Two popular models of God are put forward by the following- the personal or impersonal God. The personal God, as put forth by theological models such as Judaism and Christianity and the impersonal put forth by the philosopher Spinoza, who helped to shape Einstein’s world view (a third would be Buddhism etc.).

 

The personal God is one who takes an interest in our day to day living and with whom we can communicate via prayer, even if Kierkegaard said that prayer changes the one praying and not God. The impersonal God i.e. Spinoza’s is one who put everything in motion- created the heavens and the earth, and then left it to its own devices from which we formed the modern theology science (note modern means from the Ancient Greeks onwards as theology is as old as human life itself). The third being the Buddhist model where the lines get murky as there are divine beings who help people yet not on a day-to-day basis and where personal responsibility is paramount.

 

So, why did I just tell you all of this? Simply it is to show that if one believes in the notion of a personal God then, yes, one can see the universe taking a personal interest in us, giving our bleating memoirs of our time as the opera singers of our own lives entitled ‘Me Me Meeeeeeee’ some validity but if we go for the impersonal concept of God then, although we might say that God created everything for us to enjoy, we cannot possibly say that day in day out the world revolves for us.

 

And where do I stand on the notion of a personal God? If I ever work it out, you’ll be the first to know, after all, here is all about ‘you’…or not.

 

 

‘till next time

 

 

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A visit to the archive- this piece was written last year but never was published.

 

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It Ain’t Me, Babe

 

 

 

 

Picture this (or I’d rather you didn’t), I was sat in the bathroom trying to read Goethe (I told you not to) but I could not concentrate on Goethe because the girl outside of the bathroom in the corridor had not yet mastered the fact that if you speak on a telephone people can hear you through the phone over great distances and there is no need to shout.

 

The girl was telling her friend about how she had been ‘living in sin for a year’ after ‘being led by her sin into darkness’ and wanted to get ‘back with God’. It seems that she had been doing some pretty horrible things to her friends, including her friend and housemate’s boyfriend (sorry) and now she was worried about her consciousness being ‘clean’ and getting back to God and not about her friend.

 

Whilst she was speaking I had the urge (although I was somewhat engaged) to go to her and tell her of the wonders of Judaism. On Yom Kippur it is inscribed in the book of life who will live and who will die that year, liturgy wonderfully made into song by Leonard Cohen with his own version of the prayer called ‘Who By Fire’. One can, on Yom Kippur, go to God and ask for forgiveness but on the day before, Erev Yom Kippur, one must first go to those whom one has sinned against and ask for forgiveness.

 

The notion of forgiveness is an interesting one for, to be forgiven truly, one must first wholly acknowledge one’s own sin.  The Code of Alcoholics Anonymous lays this out perfectly

 

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. We’re entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

In which they are saying that our actions have been wrong and we need help to correct them so we will take personal steps to correct our own behaviour and then seek forgiveness, not for ourselves but for those whom we have wronged. The code is, essentially, I was wrong, I will do something about it, turning to others for help if needed, and then, once I have done this I will apologise for the harm I have carried out and then if they can forgive me then that is between them and their self.

 

The road to forgiveness out of darkness, the path to goodness is narrow and hard, however, it can be done but first not by just saying ‘I am to blame’ but rather knowing in your heart that it is you, not sin, not others, but you alone who has entered the darkness.

 

Then again, I only heard a short part of the conversation, maybe she was really quoting Dylan

 

‘It ain’t me, babe

No, no, it ain’t me’

 

‘till next time

The Phoney War

 

The other day, the actor Liam Neeson gave an interview. In the interview, Mr Neeson, interviewed for a role he has played in a film where he is a person looking for revenge for a personal tragedy, gave the true account of a friend of his being raped.

 

‘Neeson said it made him want to take violent action.

He said: “I had never felt this feeling before which was a primal urge to lash out, and I asked her, ‘Did you know the person, was it a man?’ No. ‘Race?’ She said it was a black man.”

The actor said he “went out deliberately into black areas in the city looking to be set upon so that I could unleash physical violence”.

He added: “I did it maybe four or five times.”

The Taken star claimed he would have acted in the same way if his friend’s assailant had been white.

He told ABC: “If she had said an Irish or a Scot or a Brit or a Lithuanian it would – I know it would – have had the same effect.

“I was trying to show honour, to stand up for my dear friend in this terribly medieval fashion.” (BBC)

 

Since his comments were made, Mr Neeson has become the centre of a storm. The white journalists have turned to famous black people to ask if they are outraged. Some are, most aren’t. The reason why they aren’t is quite simple. Mr Neeson, as he said in his own words, wasn’t acting out of a racist motive. His friend was raped and not knowing who her assailant as said what he looked like. Mr Neeson then went out into the streets looking for someone to attack him so that he could ‘kill’ them. There is so much in here which seems to have been missed. A) if the lady had said he was Asian or white Mr Neeson would have done the same B) just because he wanted to ‘kill’ someone does not mean that he wanted to actually kill someone. Surely, if he was hell bent (pun intended) on murder he would have fabricated some phoney excuse (‘Are you looking at me, I don’t see anyone else here’) to get into an altercation.  Essentially, Mr Neeson said that he went for a walk a few times with the vague phantasy. Of course, as he used the ‘B’ word, there is a moral outcry. And, yes, there should be, but not for the reasons given.

 

It seems very possible that there was a race related issue to this story. A black man raped a white woman. The question should be, why did he choose her? Was it based on her skin colour? This we do not know but if it was the case then we cannot say ‘black man in racist attack on white woman’ as blacks, Asians etc. cannot be racists, right? Whites, in the West, have that monopoly on racism, right? The same way you can have ‘black experts’ talking on ‘black issues’ or ‘black culture’ or ‘black music’ or ‘black directors making films about black issues’ and yet you can’t have ‘white experts’ talking on ‘white issues’ or ‘white culture’ as those would be deemed to be racist.

 

The whole notion of race, identity and ethnicity has been lost in the bleating of the wilfully ignorant who don’t want to try to understand an issue, rather, as with starlings, rapidly change direction to stick with the flock. There is a problem, yes there is, but it is not to do with skin colour, it is to do with behaviour. The phoney war that goes on in the media about race only adds fuel to the fire and means that the topic isn’t considered in a reasoned and productive manner. The desire for the media to be ‘liked’ (pun intended) has shown, as recently with Facebook, that there is a moral bankruptcy in which ratings have more value than Truth, nuance is the enemy in this click-bait orgy of ignorance in which people want to find issues to attack in an orgasmic frenzy just to satisfy themselves without caring about Truth. These are the very reason why the media and society, as a whole, often fails in its duty of care, in its moral responsibility.

 

But, yes, something seems to have been missed in all of this phoney outrage over an actor (a what?) giving an interview to a newspaper. But what? O, right. A woman was raped and had no support and the person who raped her never faced justice, something which happens on a daily basis. But, let’s not dwell on that, not when it gets in the way of a good story ‘CELEBRITY LIKED TO TAKE WALKS’.

 

‘till next time

Thinking Down

 

One thing that civilisation has taught us is to Think Up. Whilst this once meant looking to the heavens for meaning and answers, it now means Think Up in a more concrete sense, think of that new car you want (although there is nothing wrong with yours) think of that new house you want (even though yours already has  too many rooms filled with junk), think of that step up the ladder to become The Boss! (‘By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.’– Robert Frost), all stemming, not from curiosity but rather from perception of self.

 

The key, it seems, is to look up, look up and who cares about those below you in the ladder? Every job I have had, and in building I have lived with, I have always gotten on very well with the cleaners. Firstly, the appeal is that they are without the ‘ladder’ therefore you can have an actual conversation without having to trip over yourself so as not to offend ridiculous sensibilities and, then due to this, you can start to learn about the person beneath the cleaner’s uniform. Shockingly, it turns out, those beneath the lowly cleaner’s costume are people just like you and me! Who would believe it? And each person had the same hopes and dreams, or Thinking Up approach for, as Dylan sang in Po’ Boy, ‘The game is the same—it’s just on a different level’, the level here, in my context, being in appearance and not in actuality i.e. a person is just a person.

 

In the 1980s President Regan pushed forward the notion of trickle-down economics whereas the wealth from the highest levels would reach those with the least, thus maintaining the status quo but ensuring that all had what they needed (even if it wasn’t what they wanted). However, as Leonard Cohen wrote:

 

‘Everybody knows the fight was fixed

The poor stay poor, the rich get rich

That’s how it goes

Everybody knows’

 

 

But why is this? The psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman (building upon the work of the economist Richard Thaler) looked at the economic models and said ‘ok, great, but how are they used?’. And thus, behavioural economics was born. We can blame capitalism for changing the way that we think, for never letting us even think to Think Down, however, this is mere scapegoating as the system is an abstract construct and it is only through its usage that it can, for lack of a better word, live, we are the blood in its veins. The aforementioned asked the question How? as in How is the system used? What I would like to do is ask Why is the system used as it is? To find these answers we must travel back in time (o, so exciting!) a couple of thousand years to when people were exactly the same as they are now. In the King James Bible it is written ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these’ (Mark 12:31) and herein lies the rub. Regular readers will know of the admiration I hold for the Jewish Philosopher Martin Buber and his theory I-Thou. The counter to I-Thou is I-It. I-Thou is when one sees the world as being complete in itself and I-It is when one sees the world as an extension of their self. What Jesus is saying in the bible is that one should think as Buber later says and see the world as one sees one’s own self (I-Thou) and treat it as one would treat one’s own self, in the context of this essay, see people on different arbitrary levels and instead of only Thinking Up (how can I get what I want?) also Think Down, who is this person, who but for the Grace of God go I, who has arbitrarily been placed below me, what do they want, how can I help them, if indeed I can? After all, systems don’t fail, as Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman showed us all, all systems depend wholly upon the behaviour of those using them.

 

‘till next time