Weltanschauung

The Philosopher’s Stone

zenothestoic@protonmail.ch

Category: The Human Zoo

  • Sitting in the Rain

    Sitting in the Rain

    Gene Kelly may have danced; I just sat but with equal pleasure no doubt.

    The place has gone Covid mad but the Club of my youth was always one to chain its members with a bewildering set of rules.

    Man was born free, said Rouseau, but everywhere he is in chains.

    Never were his words more appropriate and I find myself sitting under a canopy in the pouring rain wondering just where it all went wrong.

    We forge our own chains, we make our own prison. In our minds and in our damaged world.

    I am privileged in truth to sit in this beautiful, if rule bound, haven in Central London but I long, increasingly, for all manner of freedoms.

    Perhaps freedom can be found in the depths of our mind but I feel, ever more urgently, a need for a different place. And to some extent I have found it. Yet always hanker for more.

    Greater distance from my fellow man. An absence of noise. The deep peace of profound and remote nature.

    Musing has become my life, meditation my default state, so easily do I slip into a very different frame of mind. Different indeed than that required to survive on this foolishly busy planet.

    Today there is no one here. Today the flight paths are blighting some other part of the capital, and no Leviathan thunders overhead. Today the noises of suburban London and its multitudes are muffled by mist and incessant, healing rain. Perhaps dinosaurs walk up Ludgate hill, as Dickens once mused.

    How differently have I come to think of late, how content with small things and silent meandering.

    What quiet and deep pleasure I found in the company of my decent and kindly old father in law today. How much I enjoy quiet chats to random strangers who cross my path. A man from Burma, who had a decade on me, told me the other day of his birth in an Indian refugee camp in the 1940s and his long route to England.

    People are decent, generally speaking, but crowded together like rats in a cage and forced to compete for scarce resources, this brings out a different and less gentle behaviour in us all.

    Where does the answer lie? With quiet old men who dream of a better world or with people who build and do and strive and conquer.

    Damned if I know, damned if I don’t but there has to be some better model where people can have what they need and leave the rest of us in peace.

    What would this old dreamer have? Quiet, beauty, peace, thought and freedom from physical necessity.

    For all. Such a dream ought to be possible in a universe as vast as ours. Room for the wearisome Musks and the Elons. The tedious Trumps and the Neronian Putins.

    Or do such people need to own and dominate like the hungry ghosts of Buddhist philosophy. Perhaps they do, but they must leave the rest of us out of it.

    As Greta Garbo once said “I want to be let alone”.

  • A World Without Money

    A World Without Money

    Imagine a resource based economy, where we revere nature and make our planet a shared possession rather than one dominated by crooked politicians and greedy capitalists.

    Colin Turner of the Free World Charter advocates such a world, as did Jacque Fresco of the Venus Project.

    Imagine a utopia where there are no starving millions living on less that a dollar a day, no poverty, no curable disease left uncured. Where the miracle of technology is used to heal and nurture the planet and its ecology, rather than destroy it.

    Where people live to co-operate and care for each other, rather than compete and destroy. Where capitalism is replaced by sharing and kindness. Where love of the world and everything in it becomes our dominant motive. Where the ego is relinquished in favor of reality and we stop working for our own destructive self interest.

    Does a dream of such beauty always have to turn into dystopian nightmare and should we let that fear stop us from pursuing a better society?

    Does the attempt to turn our lives into something dreamt of by Jesus of Nazareth and countless other visionaries have to be abandoned, just because in the past it has lead to the tyranny of the monolithic medieval Catholic Church or the horrors of the Gulag?

    Should we give up our longing for a better world just because we have failed to achieve it in the past? Or should we aim to reform ourselves and try and try again until we achieve the heaven on earth we all at heart long for?

    Gerard Manly Hopkins expressed the eternal human desire for a better place as follows:

    I have desired to go
    Where springs not fail,
    To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail,
    And a few lilies blow.

    And I have asked to be
    Where no storms come,
    Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
    And out of the swing of the sea.

    If we stop dreaming beautiful dreams we waste the gift of consciousness.

  • So, ecumenism is bad for society?

    So, ecumenism is bad for society?

    I was sad to come across a post on the internet entitled “The Ecumenical Slope” whose author is both anti ecumenism and pacifism and who appears to believe that such doctrines destroy “character”.

    The author states that ecumenism is “evil”.

    I find such attitudes deeply disturbing since in my own book, any movement which tends towards peace on earth is a good thing. Peace is beneficial, which is why, mercifully we no longer worship Thor or consider battle as glorious. Well, most of us anyway.
    Not, apparently, the author of that blog.

    When I make my case for ecumenism, both secular and sacred, as can be well imagined, the author turns to insult to re-enforce his position. Thus in effect making my point for me – the human tendency towards violence is something which we should urgently address. Futile as that cause may seem.

    I would not have bothered to think about the matter but my mind turned towards it when I heard this afternoon of the continuing strife at the Hurlingham Club – a posh venue for the spoilt upper middle classes in London, to which my family and I belong.

    I won’t go into the details but the sorry saga at the club has taught me a thing or two about human nature. In particular, that humans are born to fight. And furthermore, that in order to bring about a better society we must resist conflict at all costs.

    Ecumenism is an attempt to foster better understanding of each other and closer, less harmful relationships. It can refer to religious groups or simply to people in general. It says a lot about our world and human nature that there can exist people who argue against ecumenism and pacifism. Who argue, in effect, in favour of conflict and dissension.

    I confess that I am constantly irritated by individuals and by society in general. That I am disappointed and disturbed by human nature. I am constantly having to remind myself that my views and my own wishes are not something that I should foist on others and often have to think carefully and back off on any particular initiative I might have which looks like it will lead to conflict.

    A typical example is a recent initiative I lead to introduce choral music to our decrepit and decaying local church. And to obtain a key so that I could open the church for private contemplation. I was met by resistance and refusal and was faced with two choices: walk away, or take the matter up with higher authority against the wishes of the local church wardens. I decided to walk away. Parties become entrenched in power and entrenched in their ways, believing that they represent the community; perhaps they do but one suspects that they represent only that section of the community with which they find themselves in agreement. Such is our nature.

    I chose to walk away. And so with the author of that curious blog. When he offered insult in return for my well meant and peacefully phrased comment, I recognized it was time to walk away and leave him to his views, however much I disagreed with them.

    I can honestly say that I have no idea how to deal with aggression. I am very unclear what could or should have been done in 1939.

    But I am ever more clear that wherever and whenever possible, I will walk away.

  • Preparing for the Apocalypse

    Preparing for the Apocalypse

    I’m pretty relaxed about the whole thing and since I have socially self isolated now for nigh on 30 years, I’m not too bothered about keeping myself to myself. And if the writing is on the wall, so be it.

    My wife is scurrying around in London looking after elderly parents and I have been ordered to stay put down here in sunny East Kent. I have been forbidden to go to evensong at Canterbury Cathedral and told I’m not allowed to have coffee “down Deal” as I am accustomed to do.

    But as long as I can walk the fields and beaches and hedgerows, I’m perfectly content. I very much hope we do not get a state of emergency here, with police and the army forcing you to stay indoors at gun point. That would be grim indeed.

    Of course there is a serious side to all this and I feel wholeheartedly for those who have lost or will lose their lives in the months to come. I feel equally concerned by the number of businesses which will go bust and suggested a young nephew of mine considers calling force majeure on the lease of his pub. How can businesses big or small honor their obligations when their customer base has disappeared?

    Panic reigns at all the local supermarkets down here. As elsewhere I gather. Herd mentality is so undignified and pointless. I suppose you can live on very little food intake and as long as you have water, all will be well. I had better plant some vegetables in the garden.

    It is a total mystery to me why people would panic buy lavatory paper or alcohol. If push comes to shove you would have thought they could do without.

    In the interim, I decided to go very old school and buy a large bag of grain. Not being the agricultural type I didn’t realize grain bought other than off a supermarket shelf came with chaff, husks, hulls. Cooking it did not prove a huge success so I started looking up what to do about it.

    I spent my afternoon sorting the wheat from the chaff and it was one of the most satisfying hours or so I have ever spent. Basic, natural, ancient skills and ones I have never before needed to practice.

    I think I’m getting a message here of sorts, somewhere along the line. Like my old chum Candide said, you need to cultivate your garden.

    Oops, got to dash the doorbell has just rung. I can see four odd blokes outside on horse back, dressed in strange biblical garb. One of the rude fellows has just painted three sixes on my front door in bright yellow paint.

  • I am not Gay

    I am not Gay

    Nor multicultural, nor multi gender, nor am I trans….and, odd to relate nor am I a bigot or a racist.

    What I am is thoroughly sick of having all that thrust down my throat wherever I go and whatever I do.

    I was wandering around WordPress today and was conned into thinking their collection of posts under the heading “Identity” might be about “consciousness” but instead was  bored to find they are pushing the same old stuff as almost everyone else on the internet.

    Just because I am what has traditionally been labelled white and (so far as I am aware, heterosexual – but who knows?) does NOT mean that I loathe anybody or everybody who was not born as I was.

    I just don’t want to see rainbows everywhere I go, whether in the windows of Peter Jones in Sloane Square, at my local bank, or in the pages of the Guardian.

    Why can’t these people just keep a slightly more muted profile like the rest of us manage to do?

    Look, I am pretty minority myself. I had a grandfather who was Yiddish if ever I saw a Yid. How much more minority can you get than that? His distant kith and kin were doubtless showered with Xyclon B and shoved in gas ovens all over Europe.

    But I really don’t need to shove that down your throats.

    My old man was diagnosed as schizophrenic and or bi-polar. How minority is that? But again I don’t want to bang on about it and bore you to tears.

    As it happens, I have every sympathy with people who feel they are hard done by but despite a cracking education and (at one stage) lots of money, my life has been pretty damn minority too.  And not in a good way – I have spent 63 years as a glum misery. I think that counts me in as a minority and I feel pretty persecuted by it I can tell you.

    Perhaps it would have been better if I had been born a member of the 22nd gender or been gifted with multiple reproductive organs from 8 to 10 of the apparent choices out there.

    I don’t care what anyone does with their sexual organs, I don’t care what their skin colour is, I don’t care who or what they worship. I don’t care what they wear, what they snort, what they eat or drink, or think or say. They have every right to do an be all of that provided they do no harm to others.

    Let me be quite clear: I wish none of you any offence. But why can’t you just get on with your lives quietly like the rest of us?  What is the big fuss?

  • The Misnomer of Public “Service”

    The Misnomer of Public “Service”

    All too often public “servants” come to serve nothing but their own interests. When entrusted with the property of the community, they ususally come to regard such wealth as their own, rather than something they hold on trust for the public at large. Or some segment of the public.

    Members or Parliament, government ministers, local government officials and so on right down to the humble parish council all fall prey to the same damaging illusion.

    It is all part of the Darwinian struggle for survival and dominance. The promotion of one’s worthless genes. Grab what you can and repel all boarders. Dominate, rule, govern, subdue the ignorant lumpen proletariat.

    I read a little of Marx and Engels recently and was most impressed. They hit the nail on the head. While the profit motive forms the heart of our economic model, we are doomed to be governed by greed and self interest.

    The trouble is of course that Communists proved to be all too human. Seizing control by violent revolution, they took the art of appropriating public property to new heights and murdered countless millions in the process.

    What is that phrase about power corrupting? It is all too true at every level, and none of us are immune to the temptation of getting our own way and pursuing ruthless smash and grab.

    Should I have succeeded in promoting choral music and the Book of Common Prayer at the dying church of St Martins, Great Mongeham, would I have banned the awful happy clappies and their dreadful music? And their equally trite prayers. I hope not but we can all fall to temptation, and only constant discipline and extreme self awareness can save us from error and tyranny.

    Take another example and google Bernie Boverill. You will see the amusing struggle of an anonymous group of individuals, determinined to stamp out cronyism and the abuse of power at the posh Hurlingham Club, frequented by privileged scions of the House of Windsor.

    The awful ruling committee had become self selected by dint of ruthless persecution of any who opposed them. Anyone who refused to bow to their will was expelled from the Club.

    Mercifully, Boverill and the Reform Hurlingham group forced the oligarchy out of power but as Mr Boverill said it will doubtless prove to be a question of “New Bulls, Same old Shit”. Human nature is just what it is.

    In extreme cases such as Soviet Russia (and it is still Soviet under Comrade Putin) public service entails rape of the public purse and wholesale execution of the oposition.

    In lesser cases, government entails being courted by slimy salesmen from the truly dreadful corporate world, who make party donations in return for access and influence. And doubtless lucrative contracts. And lavish entertainment is also a valued tool of the louche Uriah Heaps who populate the corporate muck heaps.

    At the lowest level of government, absolute power is still exerted, even if the financial rewards are limited to inflated salaries and free meals.

    What is to be done? Well in my own case absolutely nothing. I view the world with detached amusement and let it trundle on its tiresome, weary way.

    If I could, I would vote with my feet and go off grid in Patagonia or Alaska.  Or better still, relocate to a part of the universe run by The Culture. As it is, my deeply suburban wife is likely to insist I remain stuck in middle class Fulham.

  • The Internet of Fools

    The Internet of Fools

    The internet is colonized by those who do not know that they do not know.  Fools to put it less politely. Why?

    I do not suffer fools gladly, though I wish them no harm. I just wish they would keep their ignorance to themselves.

    Blogs are one area where pure horse (or if you prefer bull) shit prevails. New age quackery seems a favorite for the blogger fool, touting chakras  and useless remedies for all our ills, physical or otherwise.

    Forums are much worse – there the passengers on the ship of fools can inter-react with each other and compete in sheer misinformation and stupidity.

    For many years I have studied algorithmic trading. And indeed traded algorithms. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. I went into it starry eyed close to 20 years ago, believing I could potentially walk on water after a decade of very lucky trading.

    Trading and betting forums are where some of the worst fools collect; and the worst rogues. The rogues sell crappy trading systems because they can not trade profitably themselves. The fools pretend they can trade profitably and want to talk about it. And talk, and talk and talk.

    But there are many other areas of the internet where fools like to hold forth. I am not clear as to their motives and am almost certain that the fools are even less clear.  Whether it is mental health, horticulture or religion, some fool will be talking out of an orifice which very obviously is not his mouth.  It is clear as day that many such people “talk” because they can not “do”. Talk about how they grow huge bright red tomatoes because they have failed so to do. Talk about curing their depression through tantric sex because they have tried and failed. Talk about making “millions in up and down markets” because they like to engage in wishful thinking.

    Why do those who should remain quiet become ever louder?  I suppose the fool was always there but now he has a platform for his foolishness. While it is true that no one has to read the fool, it is difficult not to be affected by his asininity because whatever you Google, you can be sure a great number of a-holes will be caught in the net. And you will have to sift through and discard the mad, the bad and the ugly to get to where you want to go.

    I suppose in a sense the internet gives the fool validation, a sense of importance he is unable to find in the “real” world. No one will listen to him or value his opinion at his job or perhaps his home, so he (or she) must take up his electronic pen and find validation elsewhere. He will blog and vlog. He will pretend he has all the answers to whatever you want to know. He will have succeeded as a day trader where all others fail. He has discovered the Matrix, God. He is happy and wealthy and beautiful; in his dreams.

    Perhaps that is the answer – dreams. Perhaps the attraction is that it gives people (in their imagination) the validation and apparent success they lack in their lives. Perhaps they have better sex on the internet, perhaps on the web they are the successful traders and entrepreneurs they would so like to be.  On the internet they can grow that big red tomato that fails to grow in their suburban greenhouse.

    But there are gems to be discovered, even if they are buried in a great rotting heap of dung. Perhaps 2% of those banging away on the internet have something of value to say. It’s just a pity you have to spend endless hours wading through shyte to find the diamonds.

  • The Man in the White Porsche

    The Man in the White Porsche

    There is nothing quite so funny as an elderly, fat, aggressive man driving a white Porsche.

    The “whiteness” and the “Porsche-ness” say it all. “I am important”.  My “whiteness” and my “Porsche-ness” are what define me.  I am Porsche, I am big and successful and the road belongs to me. The world belongs to me.

    I had been walking a gale swept beach on a private estate on the East Kent Coast and there was no one around. The Sandwich Bay estate must once have been rather special but it now seems to specialize in brand new houses with expensive cars parked outside – to be seen. Vulgar, I suppose, is the word I am looking for.

    I had walked for two or three hours in desolation, pondering apocalypse.  I was happily soaked to the skin and poddling along at 20 miles an hour in a clapped out SUV with the heating full on. All was right with the world. I had been told (during  four hours of humiliation otherwise known as a “speed awareness course”) that it was all right to drive at less than the speed limit. Indeed that it was often quite sensible so to do and so I found myself ambling at 20 in a 30 mile an hour zone. It seemed meet and right.

    Sneer as I might at the awful speed awareness course I find (much to my surprise) that I obtained much of benefit from it. The importance of exercising more patience perhaps.  The benefits of slowness – call it mindfulness, or awareness.  In any event, weeks after the event I find myself more peaceful on the road, less inclined to get irritated.  On the road so in my life. Slow, deliberate, sloth like. And aware – above all aware; attempting to notice every blade of grass, every cloud and ray of sun.

    Carpe Diem as they say.

    And so, much to my amusement, I saw this solid elderly man hurtling towards me in the middle of the road, doing perhaps sixty miles an hour. I was clearly expected to pull over and let this superior being pass in his great haste and importance. He had a bad tempered expression – or did I mistake it for mere self importance? I am not sure but in any event he had a hard stare set in a solid face, bewhiskered, and a balding head. And of course a white Porsche.

    I wonder if we are supposed to be humbled by very expensive cars? Or humiliated perhaps? Or made to feel knee high? Or are we simply beneath the notice of the vastly important people who drive such superb carriages?

    Boudica herself, the warrior queen, could not have made it more obvious that I was to cede, give way.  Doff my cap; grovel.

    Well I didn’t of course. There wasn’t really time. I went on the defensive and almost came to a stop.  I don’t know how the fellow squeezed by at such speed but he did.

    Are we talking here of the Mote and the Beam? Judge not, that ye be not judged?  We might have been once upon a time in my brasher and more arrogant days. When I too might have driven a silly car.

    No, I’m not judging the fellow. Just observing him; noticing. I don’t mind what he does. I don’t mind how he behaves or what he drives.

    I just felt glad that on the whole I am able to remain outside looking in. I don’t feel superior or gleeful or cross. Just pleased that I do not find it necessary to dominate, or impress.

     

     

     

  • Picture from the Post Apocalypse

    Picture from the Post Apocalypse

    Imagine yourself, if you will, in a world post the apocalypse to come.

    The Christians of the far right would be fine of course – they would have been raptured.  Quite why their selfish god wouldn’t choose to swoop up a few decent Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims is a question way above my pay grade, but there you go.

    Most of us would have met a grisly end – say 7.5 billion of us, leaving a mere few hundred thousand  scrabbling for survival under pre-historic conditions.

    Walking along a wind swept beach pounded by fierce waves you might come across remnants of man’s short lived supremacy on earth. The last rusting vestiges of our finest hours – a buoy, ripped from its bedding, its days of guiding maritime transport long gone. 20 feet high and rolling in the breakers; it’s lights gone out for good.

    And so for much of the world, presumably. Vines and weeds cracking the concrete of motorways and airports, ivy and rot slowly eating the tower blocks and even the most glamorous of human habitation. Animals taking back the wild; fierce dogs, rodents, the vast insect population – now unfettered by the species which had dominated the earth for a short few hundred years before it met its comeuppance.

    Without the rule of law, savagery would prevail.  The prisoners from the secure wings becoming the new warders of the sparse few left, free to inflict unbelievable barbarity and cruelty, as might became truly right.

    There never was a Noble Savage, just a savage, and now his time has come again – in the glory days of Western Capitalism, the beast devoted himself to destroying his brethren by commerce.  Freed of commerce, a more traditional violence returns. The smash and grab of late stage capitalism becomes more literal, as scarce resources are hunted down and horded by bully boy gangs, led by those who were former drug kings and modern warlords.

    In a play world of the imagination, a nihilist or nature lover might romanticize a landscape stripped of CCTV cameras, police sirens and politics.

    Imagine roaming a land free of all that, a vast vista returned to raw nature. Endless beauty, endless plants, animals and natural wonder.

    Realism would soon strike. Even in the absence of vicious human gangs, hyenas, wolves and predators would soon be back and it would simply be a continuation of survival of the “fittest”.

    So yes, an emptier world would be very attractive for all sorts of reasons. An end to overcrowding, plenty for all, no robbery of the earth’s resources.

    But whether of not we get the apocalypse we deserve, we need to move towards a better world, a fairer one. A better human race. Less greed, anger. Less Darwinism.

    Sometimes I almost think I can see the light. An American pen friend wrote some thoughts I found beautiful today.

    I can’t quite put my finger on it but what he wrote sounded so right. So familiar in some odd way. It made my hair stand on end, my skin gently ripple with a mild electric current. A sort of excitement filled me.

    That sort of inner evolution seems so tantalizingly possible. Easy to say from the peace of my quiet cottage by the sea. Less easy when we are faced with the pressures of daily life.

    Competition, aggression, greed – all of these things seem so far removed tonight. But outside the gates, the barbarians wait.  What kind of vast upheaval must we bring about to create an Eden? Is it even possible?

     

  • Economic Growth Sucks

    Economic Growth Sucks

    I found myself ranting on LinkedOut about the absurd World Economic Conference at Davos.

    Do we need economic growth? I find myself answering “no”.

    What we need is a fairer distribution of what we have already got. We should achieve this not by taking away from the rich and giving to the poor but by cutting population radically so that we can make do with what we have rather than  consuming ever more.  Although there is no doubt that we have no need of fat cats and robber barons. The planet would be a far nicer pace without such psychopaths.

    Who needs 7 billion mostly greedy, nasty humans on this otherwise beautiful rock in the middle of nowhere?

    Not the rest of the rapidly diminishing flora and fauna, that’s for sure.  In days gone by a good plague would sort it out. War and ethnic cleansing also played its part. The Norman conquest wiped out much of the population in Northern Britain.  The Black Death reduced the world population from around 475m to 350m. And look what a well aimed meteor did to the dinosaurs.

    Why do we need “growth”? What is the purpose in economic growth? What we need instead is a rapid and massive population decrease instead and a return to nature and beauty.

    What we need is food, medicine and shelter. What we do not need  is an ever expanding population of motor cars. Or airplanes, oil tankers and tower blocks.

    Get rid of 90% of the world’s population and return 90% of the planet to nature. Plow up the roads and the airports.  Knock down the tower blocks and the petrol stations. Plant forests…everywhere. Plant flowers and encourage birds and beasts to roam where once they did.

    My waffle on cynicism proved a great step forward in firming up my worldview. Yes, Diogenes and his ancient mates got it right. The rest of us got it wrong.

    We don’t need Davos and the Kardashians. We certainly don’t need Trump Towers or the Trump Casino. What we do need is a return to nature, a move away from vanity and the pursuit of the material. Dust to dust is a phrase we should have on the tip of our tongues every day.

    I’m not wanting to become a Noble Savage. They never existed. Lives were and remain nasty brutish and short.  Well, nasty and brutish anyway.

    I’m all for science, all for medicine and improvements in our health, mental and physical. And don’t tell me economic growth is necessary for its continuance. It is not. Activity is necessary, yes. And work. But work should not be slavery, should not entail drudgery in the dark satanic mills we have become imprisoned in.

    We need a whole new paradigm. Work as fun, work as satisfaction. Work as beneficial rather than a rip off ponzi scheme. Work as trees and plants and flowers and beauty.

    Not work as desecration of beauty but as the creation of beauty. Create beautiful homes but fewer of them for a smaller population. Concentrate on what makes humans happy, not rich and bloated.

    My hero Vermin Supreme promises voters a pony for every family. I must find a suitable sized Wellington Boot, place it on my head, and run for high office.  I will campaign for Utopia and a forest for every family.