The Directions of Fate (Crossroads and Fate)

Yet again, I find myself at a crossroads. The Italian poet Dante opened his Divine Comedy with the lines:

 

IN the midway of this our mortal life,
I found me in a gloomy wood, astray
Gone from the path direct: and e’en to tell
It were no easy task, how savage wild
That forest, how robust and rough its growth,
Which to remember only, my dismay
Renews, in bitterness not far from death.
Yet to discourse of what there good befell,
All else will I relate discover’d there.
How first I enter’d it I scarce can say,
Such sleepy dullness in that instant weigh’d
My senses down, when the true path I left,
But when a mountain’s foot I reach’d, where clos’d
The valley, that had pierc’d my heart with dread,
I look’d aloft, and saw his shoulders broad
Already vested with that planet’s beam,
Who leads all wanderers safe through every way.

 

As the preface to which is a pleasant little walk through Hell, Purgatory before entering into Heaven. Unfortunately, unlike Dante, the crossroads I find myself at are not a precursor to a delightful little stroll, getting to chat to some interesting folk along the way, ending up in the realms of bliss

(All at once, my will and desire

Were being moved like a wheel,

All at one speed,

By the Love which moves

The Sun and other stars)

rather they could go on to shape the next stages of my life. The question that must be asked at this juncture is the rather predictable, does it matter? These decisions, whilst important to me, are not life and death decisions- it may be possible to correct them, and maybe, what to me is a wrong step, may be the right step in the great scheme of things which we cannot see, i.e. my life, and, actually of possible consequence- existence pre and post historical.

 

One thing which we often hear is that ‘everything happens for a reason’. I, personally, disagree with this and state that nothing has an inherent reason but reason can be found in all that happens (if you want to find it). But, let’s think about this logically. If the next step I take is fated then that would be swell, if it is not fated then, well, what difference would it make? Whether or not we are the play things of the gods is completely and utterly irrelevant (unless of course the gods actively try to shape our lives ala mythology) when it comes to our lives. As we cannot see the great arch of Time (before and after Time itself) we cannot know whether what we do will echo through history and shape who we are, our defining moment (in all fairness our most ‘defining moment’ (to use my crude phrase) happened billions of years before were born, maybe even before the Big Bang without which I  would not be sat here thinking this, nor you reading it).

 

Not only can we not know the future’s significance we also cannot see the significance of Now, let alone the Past. Is what I am doing now of any great significance? Is the past? Sorry to disappoint psychologists everywhere but we cannot attribute great powers of clarity to ourselves, let alone to our perception of the past, present or future. The great Marcel Proust stated that the only paradise is a paradise which has been lost, acknowledging that the past often didn’t happen as we remember it. But how does this help me with my predicament? Well, for one thing is dissuades the illusion that there are only two paths that I can take, there are in fact more than I can comprehend, after all we have no idea if life and death are even binary states or the beginning or ending of anything! The great Dr Seuss wrote:

 

‘You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go…’

(-you know the author…)

So, yes, although some paths we want to take may be closed off, some valleys to dark to cross, ultimately it is me who decides what path to take, not always in terms of the road but in terms of my thoughts* so one should go boldly on, regardless of fate or not, but keep in mind the words of another wise man,

 

‘It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.’     

So, there’s nothing more to do than to bid you adieu for another week, safe in the knowledge that you and I will meet again although I know neither when or where!

 

‘till next time

——————————-

*a slight caveat for a wider context- how do we know our thoughts and emotions are ours and not shaped by society? Regardless, whether they are fundamentally our own or shaped, we still have control over them

 

p.s. as I was writing this, I remembered the story, The ‘Appointment in Samarra’ by John O’Hara, of a man (to tell my own version of the story) to whom it was foretold that he would die that day. As he went about the day, he kept his eye open for Death. As he turned a corner, he saw Death and Death looked surprised. The man thought ‘ah, I know where Death is so I can cheat him!’ and so fled to another town. That evening he felt a tap on his shoulder and there was Death. When the man asked him why he had seemed so surprised earlier, Death replied, ‘I knew I had a date with you here tonight, so I was surprised to see you in the other city’

 

If You Assume…

 

The other day I went into a meeting about myself. After 10 seconds it became clear that the person who was talking to me about myself knew absolutely nothing about me, rather had just assumed that they did. I tried to correct some points (all of the ones made) but the person seemed to be put out that I was correcting them on my life, something on which they assumed that they were an expert.

One thing which permeates all cultures is the notion of the ‘assumption’. One assumes to know best and as one assumes it one assumes that what they say is the truth. An obvious example is the ‘debate’ whether or not there is a God. It is something we cannot know and to say that you know definitively is to assume that one has godlike powers and thusly must be God, thusly proving that you don’t exist by proving your existence.

Many of the world’s problems come from assumptions, the ‘fake it until you make it’ strategy. Some savants, such as Michael Burry, are genuinely expert at stock markets then not only could predict the 2008 crash, but also worked out how, even better, avoid it! However, the majority are people who are attracted to the profession by the lifestyle and, oh, yes, the money. Working on Wall Street is a good way to get rich quickly and have the opportunity to act like a douche. Michael Burry understood that if value goes down then value goes down, when it didn’t, he asked why and very quickly found the reason- the housing market was a bubble and would soon burst. The others looked at the value and wondered how they could make more money- with rating agencies dependent on Wall Street for business, no one would devalue the banks and thusly, millions became homeless, the effects of which are still permeating throughout the world. The problem is not just in finance, it is also in politics- everyone assumes that politicians are idiots and that everyone can do the job. Contrary to this, politicians (the real ones) are experts at what they do- they understand economics, sociology, humanity, geo-politics and, possibly the most important, how to work with people they don’t like. The Democrats attacked Joe Biden (probably their best chance of winning in 2020) for saying he once worked with people he hated as that was his job in the Congress, to work with people. Trump shows a complete lack of understanding of global economics and his pointless trade war is costing millions home and abroad. Yes, action needed to be taken against China and yes maybe Bush Jnr, Obama et al did not do enough to try to solve the problem but the actions which Trump took were against all expert advice.

 

And, this, is the nub of the issue. Experts. An expert does not make assumptions, unless they are grounded heavily in something. Let’s say, for the purpose of this, that I am an expert in gravity. On my desk there is a pen. With my expert knowledge of gravity can say that due to the spinning of the planet etc. if I pick up my pen and drop it it will, due to gravity, fall to my desk, as it just did thus proving my hypothesis. Secondly, I can say that, although I cannot perform the experiment, that if I were to do the same in outer space (not in a ship) it will not fall down, rather it will ‘float’ due to an absence of a gravitational field strong enough to act upon it . These are assumptions based on expert advice. However, many people make assumptions, not based on expert advice, and thusly there is a less than 50/50 chance of it being a right assumption. Yet, people make the assumption that they are an expert and thusly refuse to listen to those who say, ‘based on your experiment, based on your assumption, the results are not what you assumed’.

 

If this was just some kid trying to disprove gravity, then fine, but this is done by the people who hold sway over our lives, and I think I have the right to assume that this will not always be to the betterment of the world.

 

‘till next time

Culture and Change

 

Recently guns have been a big topic of conversation and rightly so. With mass shootings happening on an almost weekly basis at the moment one cannot help but be sickened by the needless loss of life. The simple answer is that the Republican Party in the US will not stand up to the NRA (National Rifle Association) as they are, in the words of the President, Trump, ‘scared’ as the NRA fund a lot of political campaigns. And Mr Trump has a point, he is 100% correct about the power that the NRA has over some of the Republican party, but do you know who has more power over Republicans? The electorate.  A friend of mine, who lives in the US, is a big fan of guns. He can wax lyrically about them and has many- antique and other. Indeed, he has always lived around guns, they are part of his world. Does he need them? Maybe, maybe not, but living out in the ‘sticks’ where there are many poisonous snakes etc. one would be foolish not to have a means of defence. As with everyone, my friend has his prejudices- as do I, as does, as I just wrote, everyone, but he won’t go on a killing spree any more than I will, with my general antigun ways.

One reason why, as I have just shown, that he likes guns is that it is culturally part of his life. Arguments about the constitution of the US do not wash given how other aspects, e.g. separation of church and state, are often violated with impunity but what one cannot deny is that it is part of the lives of some law-abiding Americans and where is the harm? A person may have 1000 guns and not harm a fly, or even own bullets, or one may have one and kill 50 innocent children. The easiest solution is to ban all guns. Easy, right? Of course not. We are not dealing with reason or sense here we are dealing with something deeper than that (and much more stupid), we are dealing with culture.

 

Before we get too hot under the collar and say, ‘yeah but one nut job on a spree is bad enough’ (which I agree is) two of the world’s worse killers, every one of which harms a person every time they are used, i.e. they cannot be used safely, are alcohol and tobacco. Millions of pounds are spent on problems caused by these on a daily basis (you know what I mean), addiction destroys the lives of those effected and those around, there are too many victims and no heroes. Addiction, I am informed, is a medical issue and should be treated thusly. Surely the easiest and most logical thing to do would be to remove the said items, no? To ban alcohol and tobacco, even if many sports, politics etc. are part funded by these industries. When I say easy, you know it is not. Why not? Because it is part of culture. A gun may harm someone, a cigarette will harm someone. It is that simple. Yet, as it is MY CULTURE nothing can be done as you are violating my rights! Sound familiar?

 

Many cultures in history are built around death, be it actual or spiritual or apathy, ‘killing time’. Millions of guns can be used safely yet not a single cigarette can.  Maybe there is a lesson in this that we can learn before we burn at the stake the millions who live their lives according to their cultures and do no harm.

 

Maybe.

 

‘till next time

Religion in the Modern Age

 

Once upon a time, a friend of mine from the East was having a conversation with myself about theology. Having visited the West, she had briefly become a Christian before returning to her country and giving it up due to her friends and family not believing in Christ. She asked me what the main teachings in Christianity were and I said, simply, ‘be nice’. ‘Is that it?’ She asked, ‘yup’, I replied.

 

When people are ‘nice’ it is generally considered a ‘nice’ thing, for lack of a better word. However, being ‘nice’ isn’t an action or a way of life, it is a way of being. Often, when people are nice, it is due to some self-serving principle (conscious or otherwise), wanting acknowledgement from without, looking to others to bestow the grand title of ‘nice’ upon one’s self. If one is nice to you, although it might seem nice, one must accept it graciously and with good poise (I should take my own advice…) however, one must ask, why was this act done? Often an angle can be found, such as the aforementioned, however, there are times when a reason, good or bad, cannot be found, in other words, there seems to be no logical reason behind the actions- they don’t gain (be is positively or negatively) substantially, rather it just seems to be as natural to them as breathing. And this, I think, gets to the nub of religion. Religion is not an action or a way of life, nor is it even a belief (never discount that by serving others in alignment to a ‘belief’ is still-serving) rather it is an inherent faith, a faith in something beyond what one can even know to be a belief.

Regular readers (thank you) will be aware of how I have attempted to illustrate that we cannot know anything due to a) our entire lives being subjective and b) meaning not coming from context, as many fools (me! me!) claim, rather it comes from conceptualisation. Following on this thought, it seems clear that belief cannot be something which is genuine, given how it is a) subjective and b) concerning concepts beyond our ability to conceptualise, rather it must be something more, something that for the purposes of this piece I will call ‘faith’. Although I cannot define what I mean by ‘faith’, given reasons a & b, I will define it as something which is so deeply inherent within us (maybe the soul? Maybe a connection to some ‘Truth’?) and this faith is beyond anything merely human and those who act in accordance to something which they cannot even know maybe exhibiting a true religion, regardless of their ‘beliefs’.

 

The politics in theology and society centre around who has the right beliefs and gender and sexuality and positions etc. all things which are completely superfluous in regards to ‘faith’ (being). A true religion would be something beyond gender and sexuality and money etc. it would be about something which is so far beyond out ability to conceptualise that if we were to see it manifested, we might not understand it (correction- would not) and would label it ‘nice’, or something of that ilk.

 

We are inherently ego driven beings who value ourselves above all others- our thoughts, actions, beliefs etc. are all true and all others, who do not share our beliefs, are wrong, and often actions which are truly ‘good’ may be seen as being ‘bad’ by us, given our inability to think beyond the confines of our ‘selves’. As all things which become rigid, we cease to grow and thus can never see beyond ourselves to the person who is railing against the ‘norm’ not because they are a rebel, not for some ideals, but because their actions stem from a true ‘faith’ and their actions, no matter how disruptive to our hegemony are genuinely ‘nice’.

 

‘till next time

Why So Serious?

 

‘I love to speak with Leonard

He’s a sportsman and a shepherd

He’s a lazy bastard

Living in a suit’

 

-Leonard Cohen

 

One thing which over the years has never ceased to amaze and irritate me (I know, the fact I haven’t gotten over it reflects poorly on me), something which comes around on an almost daily basis, is how incredibly seriously people take themselves. I’m not going to sit here and say that people take themselves so seriously to compensate for their insecurities because that could be seen as being unfair, and, yes, unto everything there is a season, including taking one’s self seriously however, the things which people seem to take the most serious are things which are really not important. For example, despite years of evidence of the ways that smoking and tobacco destroy lives, people will still indulge, sometimes just to ‘fit in’ to an arbitrary social group (if you find yourself in that situation, kids, always remember the wise words ‘those who mind don’t matter, those who matter don’t mind’), regardless of whether they want to or if it is ‘good for them’.

 

‘He will speak these words of wisdom

Like a sage, a man of vision

Though he knows he’s really nothing

But the brief elaboration of a tube’

 

-Leonard Cohen

 

If one looks at the professions in which people take themselves the most serious, professions such as, well why stumble to tell you when the American Beat poet Allen Ginsberg can far more elegantly, and, amusingly,

 

I’m obsessed by Time Magazine.

I read it every week.

Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.   

I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.

It’s always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody’s serious but me. 

 

things which really do not matter. The stock market, business, films etc. are all things which really do not matter, however, given those who are involved in such things (I don’t want to say most are overcompensating for a low sense of self worth because, as everyone knows, it is wrong to generalise) they take on an arbitrary value and the things which really do matter- ecology, human life etc. are left by the wayside.

 

Have you ever noticed, some kid gets shot and instead of saying this is a terrible destruction of human life people have to show how serious they are by defining their opinions by their political, religious, social etc. allegiances. In the recent Democratic Party debates, all of the people with delusions that they are finally the embodiment of Plato’s philosopher kings, tried to show how serious they are by trying to paint themselves as being slightly more caring when it comes to the gouging of human life (for the record, when people in the US say ‘socialism’ they are not talking about real ‘socialism’, rather they are talking about slightly left of centre politics, please stop calling people ‘socialist’ until you have read some books, as Ginsberg said, libraries are there for a reason!).

 

The counter point to this seriousness is to play, something I don’ have time to go into this week, so check back and you can read about that. One cannot deny that there are many, many things in the world to be serious about, and there are many, many things in our lives for us to be serious about, however, how people perceive us, which by extension can shape how we see ourselves, is not one of them. To care about such social posturing is downright silly and no truly serious person should or does. If you disagree please feel free to contact me (thegreaterfoolblog@hotmail.com) and call me a socialist, tell me to stop taking everything so seriously, or whatever insult you deem fit. However, next time you feel your brow furrowing please ask yourself the following two questions 1) is this response (emotion/thought/etc) my own response or is it part of how society has conditioned me, and, 2) does this really matter in the grand scheme of things?

 

 

‘till next time