Weltanschauung

The Philosopher’s Stone

zenothestoic@protonmail.ch

Category: The Human Zoo

  • Beautiful Place, Beautiful People?

    Beautiful Place, Beautiful People?

    No, it didn’t quite work out like that, it never does.

    However Arcadian the setting, we humans will wreck it and fill it with the same petty miseries you find the world over.  My biggest problem living up in the mountains for 8 years was probably Mr Mc Fukka.  I was trying to help out a friend with her divorce since her husband (Dell Boy of the Alps) was trying to swindle her. Dell Boy had shagged Thai tarts for years and god knows what or who else. His wife even had an uncomfortable suspicion that he may have had it off with Gay Helmut, a terminally depressed local doctor.

    Anyway Mc Fukka banged on my door one night and started shouting at me. I was to stop causing trouble and on no account was I to encourage the wife to continue her hunt for her husband’s “black money”.  This beautiful spot is in a land notorius for black money, black everything. World capital of money laundering and skulduggery. Everyone is on the take and those who don’t do “black” are deemed deviant.

    Anyway, Mc Fukka had had property dealings with Dell Boy and our Dell, when he sold a property, would take a big slug under the table to avoid the local tax collectors. Mc Fukka had bought from Dell and it was generally reckoned Mc Fukka had probably pushed the customary slab of used notes at Dell Boy under the table. Therefore he didn’t want anybody helping Dell Boy’s wife tracking the illicit slush.

    I never really spoke to Mc Fukka after that and the local lawyers hired by Mrs Dell did a lousy job. Probably deliberately. Its a male dominated society which only recently and reluctantly gave women the vote.

    Mrs Dell was a right laugh and my source of all the local gossip. We were having dinner one night in a cafe up in town and she looked at me darkly as the owner approached to take our order: “Did you know his wife hung herself upstairs?”.  Well I didn’t actually and suffice to say it rather spoilt my appetite.  I never went there again.

    And so it went on. The local plumber and his wife were sex maniacs. Apparently one only had to go into the plumbing shop looking for a bath plug and Mrs Plumber would have her hands all over you. I managed to rush out undamaged after buying a non slip bath mat following a knee operation at the local hospital. Mr Plumber would similarly offer all sorts of plumbing and non plumbing services to all and sundry in the village.

    Other than Mrs Dell, my greatest buddy was a dear old American who had taught maths for many years to undeserving children in Stuttgart and retired up to the mountains.  His wife had recently died and he and I would walk all summer and ski all winter. God knows how many miles we covered or how many restaurants we ate at.

    I’m back there now, visiting the dear old chap (he is 83) and Mrs Dell. My schoolteacher chum is one of those all too rare people who is just “good”. No other way to describe him. Never says a horrid word about anyone. But he is probably in a very small minority in this particular town.  Or indeed any town.

    Ten years on since I lived here and the locals haven’t changed one iota. A farmer friend’s lovely wife has left him and the mountains now their children have grown up.  Farmer boy has apparently spent much of his adult life knobbing anything and everything he can get his hands on.  Seems to be the thing to do up in the mountains. Many of them order take-away’s from Thailand and ditch their wives for a new model. Dell Boy did this before ditching his wife.  He lavishes money on Ting Tong Thai Bride after swindling his wife, and has built Miss Tong three houses in Thailand apparently, where he now spends much of his life.  Mrs Dell says Ting Tong was originally a prostitute, but she would say that I suppose.

    Actually there is a very nice ex-prostitute at the cash till at the local supermarket. She says being the catalog bride of a local rogue is better than selling her body back home. Good luck to her I say. But doubtless behind it lies yet another broken marriage.

    So you see you can’t escape human nature even in the remotest spots. We humans will shag and swindle (and worse) wherever we go. It will doubtless always be thus.

  • Between the Cracks

    Between the Cracks

    I am frightened of homeless people.  They remind me how all too easy it is in this world to fall between the cracks.

    In a prosperous town in the South of England, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, a woman sat this afternoon in filthy clothing and a sleeping bag in an alcove outside a derelict shop.  I had heard that the best thing you can do for the homeless is to talk to them. Make them feel that they are not an outcast, a leper. Find out what their problems are and why they find themselves on the street on a freezing winter’s day.

    Its not something I have done very often – speak to such a person. Give them the common courtesy of acknowledging their normality, their humanity. And it is not because I do not care. It is because I am terrified of ending up in the same condition and I look the other way. Irrational, foolish, selfish. What do words cost? Why not look at life as it is, face up to the horrors suffered by all too many?

    I walked by her. I carried on up the street towards chocolate, diet pepsi, a cup of hot tea.  A beautiful little cottage with heating, a lovely garden and dinner out in a seaside pub. But god knows how, I made myself turn. I wanted to know her story, I wanted to see whether I could add anything. I wanted her to feel like a normal person, not an outcast.

    “Nowhere to go?” was my inane and tactless opening line. She was lucid, intelligent. She was not a wino; nor was she a drug addict. Her story was simple and sad. Her husband had died and she had been evicted from her accommodation (presumably for not paying the rent).  She suffered from epilepsy but it appears she managed to control this illness since in better days she had worked, with enjoyment and pride, at several nursing homes. She felt she would be welcomed back there as she had a good work record but could not approach them in a filthy state. If she was going to work at a care home she needed to bath every day and feed herself.

    And this is where it became truly scary. She had literally fallen between the cracks. She had no bank account and no formal identity and so the Benefits Office would not pay her what was due to her. She was being helped, thank god, by a charity called Torchlight and a doctor had offered her a letter of identity once she had been on his roster for two months. She still has a month and a half to go. Then, hopefully, the damn fools at the benefits office will pay her what she is due and she can get accommodation and food.

    Shame on those Benefits people. Shame on the whole damn stupid system. Shame on me, shame on the whole damn human race for leaving people starving on the streets in the middle of winter. Here was a woman who, god knows, needed and deserved help. And yet the damn fools would not give it her because apparently she had no “identity”. Is not a body identity enough? Is not a starving mouth and a freezing cold woman an “identity”?  Does a piece of paper from a bank, or a doctor, or some hateful government agency somehow make an “identity” whereas real  flesh and blood does not?

    Thank god some kind local had taken her in at nights and hopefully this will last until she gets her “identity” and her benefits. And, I hope, her job at the care home. In the meantime she has to sit huddled in the streets during the day, begging for her food.

    There but for the grace of god go I. It could happen to any of us. It does happen to many.

    We must stop this; we must act. Not just here in this privileged island, but everywhere. These people are not animals.  The homeless, the starving and the destitute – they are you, they are me.

    Surely to god we can do better than this?

     

  • Me and My Vulva

    Me and My Vulva

    Well not mine actually – its just that I liked the headline. The Guardian’s article Me and My Vulva gave me pause for thought. And for the first time in a while encouraged me to put pen to paper.

    Photographer Laura Dodsworth, in a book and accompanying film for Channel 4, tells the stories of 100 women and gender non-conforming people through portraits of their vulvas. How you can be “gender non-conforming” while in possession of a vulva is left unexplained. Perhaps because it is un-explainable?

    Anyway it’s all very jolly and lest you are unclear exactly what a vulva is, fear not – many of the 100 vulvas so expertly photographed by Ms Dodsworth are displayed for all to see in the article.  Bunched together, the group portrait looks rather like a Persian rug – all very geometric.  And I shall resist the temptation to make the obvious jokes about rugs.

    One of the motivations for the study appears to be that vulvas are not easy to look at. In the words of Ms Dodsworth “Let’s be honest, it’s tricky to witness our vulvas for ourselves, legs awkwardly astride pocket mirrors, bums shuffled up close to full-length mirrors, or taking a selfie with the unflattering lens of a smartphone.”

    Much the same could be said of one’s bottom. Presumably she will be making a gender non-conforming follow up: “Me and My Rectum”? And perhaps a gender non-conforming male could make something similar?  Although if he (it?) is gender non-conforming perhaps he could not be said to be male? How confusing! But just imagine the fun – you could have a quiz show and get prizes for guessing which rectum photos came from a non gender-conforming male and which from a non-gender conforming female.

    Better still, Ms Dodsworth has collected “vulva stories” to accompany the photographs, some of which are reproduced in the Guardian.

    I am shocked by none of this. Certainly not! Perhaps mildly amused best describes how I feel about this latest contribution to 21st century culture.  Good old Guardian eh? Its not all communism and Cold War these days.

     Womanhood: The Bare Reality is published by Pinter & Martin on 21 February; 100 Vaginas will air on Channel 4 on 19 February.

     

  • Quackery and Useless Twaddle

    Quackery and Useless Twaddle

    Why is so much of the internet “told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”?

    OK, so I admit I got out of bed the wrong side this morning. My wife has the intensely irritating habit of leaving her smartphone on all night, with the volume turned up full in case our son or one of her numerous relatives calls in the middle of the night. Sound asleep, I will suddenly be shaken awake at ungodly hours expecting the worst, only to discover that one of her relatives from Australia has sent a picture of intense disinterest to me at 4 o clock in the morning.. And to make matters worse, having got a new phone, a simple “ping” does not suffice. Each message, however inconsequential, is accompanied by a different cacophony of sound.

    Having got that off my chest, I am sitting reading news and views from the blogosphere.  I am beset by problems and minor illnesses; grumpiness and angst being among the foremost of my ailments. The world is beset by problems, some more serious than mine.  What I need, what the world needs is solutions to those problems.

    My attention was drawn this morning to an interview on a website called Closer to Truth on the subject of “transcendence”.  There are some exceptionally able speakers featured on the website, including some eminent and interesting philosophers specializing in consciousness – perhaps the most important un-solved mystery we have.  But the article I was directed to was inconsequential and vague drivel.

    I have no problem with the concept of transcendence. My favorite author Ian Banks called it sublimation.  The escape to another realm from the dull and often dangerous physical reality in which we find ourselves trapped. Like flies in aspic or the Tar Baby of Uncle Remus. But what the world needs is a road-map of how to get there not some half baked diatribe on synchronicity, an insane dialogue with a non -existent deity or vapid, limp New Age bollux.

    I am not saying there is no room for imagination, poetic license, and metaphor.  These can and do soothe and pacify.  But such have existed for countless millennia and have never been known to bring world peace, freedom from anxiety or an escape from the dreadful condition we humans find ourselves in.

    What we need is hard science. If an alternate reality exists, if we are living on a plane just next door to some forbidden utopia our senses can’t quite grasp, well then lets go find it. Let’s not wallow in useless woo woo and crappy non existent chakras.  I can accept that there is “stuff” out there which our limited senses can not contact. Most frequencies along the light spectrum for instance.

    But if there is some “heaven” awaiting us we are not going to discover it by sitting on our collective rear ends talking piously about finding ourselves through faith healing, touch massage, poetry or  religion. We invented the wheel, penicillin, crop rotation and all manner of useful things. We may be on the cusp of trans-humanism – science fiction today, maybe science fact tomorrow.  So it if exists, lets go and find transcendence now so we can all enjoy it!

    We want cures and we want them now. If you think magic mushrooms will cure depression well, try it out. Don’t expect some Druid nutcase to wave his wand over you and make it better.  As I have so often repeated our twin saviors will be philosophy and science as they always have been. Philosophers to come up with the ideas, scientists to test them out and put it into practice.  Often they are one and the same person.

    There is “stuff” out there which actually works so let us concentrate on finding more of that and ditch the wishful thinking crap so many engage in.

  • Conscious Nonsense

    Conscious Nonsense

    I am deeply disturbed to discover what a search on the word “consciousness” produces when you sift through WordPress websites.

    Over 90% of the entries reveal websites which can only be described as embarrassing, superstitious and pathetically inadequate.  You would have thought that in the 21st Century most of us in the civilized and educated West would have ditched charlatanism in favour of reason and science. And, yes, philosophy. Which of course has had to change much over the centuries as old superstitions were revealed to be humbug and utter hogwash.

    Surely to god we are grown up enough to ditch faith healing nutters, snakeoil salesmen and gurus? Even the Buddhists (god bless their yellow robed non-existent atman) are embracing modern science and co-operating with neurosurgeons to establish the neural correlates of the meditative state.

    And yet here are some of the headlines and articles to be found on WordPress:

    “You are inherently and innately programmed to thrive on all levels of your being” – yeah right, man. Flower power, airy fairy crap. Give me a pill any day. Tell me how qualia work in precise physical terms and how I can move from one end of the pleasure pain axis to the other.

    “There is always a counter to the negative. Call them spiritually and technologically advanced ETs, Angels, Ascended Masters etc. “. Yep, well there are fairies at the bottom of my garden and I’m not talking about LGBT+++ neighbors. I mean grow up you lunatic.

    “There is a different path of healing, a path, that keeps the balance, a path, that enhances intuition, re ignites love, my answer to this is touch massage….” Great well I’ll just check that out with my GP. Hey, I’m all for meditation and yoga. I’m all for anything, even magic mushrooms, if it works. But I’d like to skip the semi religious twaddle thanks. Metaphor is fine but if I’m feeling like a dead wet hamster in a washing machine I’d like something a little more efficacious than “touch massage” to make me feel better.

    Ooh – hang on a minute! I wonder what she is offering? Nah, I’m way too old for all that stuff.

    Oh dear. As usual this is turning into polemic so I must stop myself right away.

    I have no doubt most (but certainly not all) of these internet messiah’s honestly believe they have found “The Way”.  And I love metaphor and poetry and music and art and…..blah blah.  And yes sometimes it improves my mood.

    But if I want to read about consciousness I want to read Dennet, Chalmers, Tononi. I want to hear it from the neuro-scientists. The Blue Brain Project. Sure even my sagacious GP, if he feels he has anything to say.  I do not wish to hear from a bunch of deluded nutcases who can not see from one end of their  “chakra” to their waste pipe.

    The answer is simple of course: ignore them and move on to wiser counsel without causing offense and upset.

     

     

  • Gillette Advertisement Controversy

    Gillette Advertisement Controversy

    Good on Gillette: it would be hard to deny that male aggression has played a vast and malignant role in our history.

    With a few notable exceptions, women are absent from the long list of torturers and tyrants who have blighted our society through the ages.

    Consider whether the following list sounds likely:

    Polly Pot

    Adolfe Hitler

    Karen Khan

    The Noreen Conquest.

    Fine, so we have had the occasional Lizzie Borden. And there were some pretty unattractive female guards in the Nazi concentration camps. But by and large violence and aggression is a male characteristic and it isn’t his fault. It’s in his genes. It’s called “evolution” and anyone with even a passing interest in the biological origins of animal behavior, should watch all the way through the superb lectures of Robert Sapolsky, Stanford Professor of Neurology and of Neurosurgery.

    I consider the Gillette Advertisement meet and right because unless we acknowledge and recognize the problem we can not deal with it.  Once we accept that this sort of behavior has been foisted on us by nature, the next task is to agree, as a society, and as individuals, that it is wrong. It is not just about bullying women (although that of course, as well as the question of female equality, needs addressing rapidly).

    The problem is far more basic. We need to acknowledge that aggression is wrong, whoever the victim is. Animal, vegetable or mineral. Or female. Once we (both men and women) universally condemn violence the next stage is to combat it. Laws are all well and good but psychological acceptance is equally if not more important. As individuals we must first accept such behavior as wrong and then stop it, in ourselves and in others.

    In the distant future it seems highly likely that we will be able to edit violence out of our genes. And in my opinion we should. If we accept we want to get rid of it we should start now.  At present its always going to be touch and go. Not everyone will accept that violence is wrong. But as violence becomes socially outlawed by education and other means such as the Gillette initiative, like smoking it should gradually die out. And should we ever be able to alter our genes, well then, perhaps we will all agree that we should.

    In general I am deeply skeptical of the capitalist economic model, even though I have no ideas as to how or with what we can replace it.  I do not like nine tenths of the planet being owned by Jeff Bezos but while it is, I applaud this effort by Gillette to reach towards a better world.  Being cynical I suppose they just want our dollars, but if so, then in my book they are at least asking for them in the right way.

    Bravo Gillette!

     

     

  • The Internet Ain’t All Bad

    The Internet Ain’t All Bad

    While there are indeed vast swathes of Kardashians, footballers wives and people who live in Chigwell you should avoid like the plague on the internet,  I would argue that the technology has immeasurably enriched our lives rather than debased it.

    I am sitting on a wintry Saturday afternoon in London. And I have been “surfing the net” – if that is the correct phrase. I have avoided Kim Kardashian’s website (much as I’m sure I would enjoy it). I have not been shopping for useless baubles. Nor have I frequented chat lines (lewd or otherwise) or Facebook.

    I have been reading poetry, not Keats or John Donne for a change but real live poets. and I have rather enjoyed it.

    They say that if you want to write seriously these days you must engage with your potential audience and what better way to do that but via the internet. The reach you have is truly staggering.  I have been reading “stuff” from all over the world. Some of it has been mind numbingly awful but there have been some wonderful surprises, such as a beautiful piece written by a prisoner incarcerated in some hell hole in the US.

    The net has given that young woman wings. And I am glad for her; she deserves to be heard whatever it is she has done.

    There are things I want to say and there are things I want to hear. There is no finer place to say them and to listen than the net. Did you know that there is research into how depression might be cured by microbes in the soil for instance? Well that certainly explains why I have always been a fan of Voltaire’s Candide: no wonder he returned to cultivate his garden.

    There is real purpose, real use here if you use and don’t abuse it.

    It is a power for the good. At least if we use it as such. It is an instrument of much needed revolution (peaceful, I hasten to add).

    If you want to change the world, where better to start than here?

    In many senses I have often felt my life’s work to be in vain. I would like to have done something bigger, better and above all more useful and fulfilling.  Whilst I have never had the desire to become Mother Teresa (even though in this transgender age I’m sure that would be eminently possible) there are things I would like to say about making the world a better place.  There are people’s lives I would like to cheer up. There are thoughts I would like to spread, even though those thoughts may be too eccentric for many tastes.

    The pen is mightier than the sword, especially now the quill pen has been supercharged and become a computer keyboard. Imagine what David could have achieved if he had a laptop and the net!  He could have taken on every tyrant in the ancient world after he had  done for Goliath.

    And that is what we should be doing. Tackling tyranny and abuse. Shaming the aggressors. Giving the meek a helping hand on their way to inheriting the world. And by the way I am a big fan of that Gillette ad. Good on ’em.

    Verbally speaking you can now kick the shit out of the school bully and Donald Trump. You can rail against the horrid abuses you see all around you. You can name and shame. You can topple regimes – pity the Arab spring was such a farce.

    Of course sometimes you will need anonymity but with skill, this too is available. Seek and ye shall find.

    So, mock it if you will but we don’t have to use the internet for porn or Instagram.

    We can and should use it as an instrument of reform and change.

  • Davos 2019

    Davos 2019


    I lived in Davos-Kosters for years and loved the WEF.

    For weeks before hand I savored that much loved ten days as I watched the well oiled preparations being made. Hundreds of riot police arrived, barbed wire gates and fences appeared. I was stopped every time I went near the entrance to the town by police asking me my business and demanding to see my papers, while waving a sub machine gun ominously in my direction.

    The locals love it! They make the very great majority of their income during the conference, as they gleefully raise their prices tenfold. And frankly, if you turn up at Samedan in a private jet what do you expect? A bargain break with breakfast thrown in?

    Audi used to convert a field near the lake on the outskirts of the town into an ice rink and people with more money than sense raced around the track in vast, powerful black limmos. Presumably it was worth Audi’s while?

    And did I attend all those fascinating “Key Note” addresses? Did I give one myself perhaps? Was I busy in conferences with the great and the good, the pompous and the windbags?

    Was I wringing my hands with beautiful actresses over the state of the world poor or the global ecosystem? Or whatever the latest cause espoused by the Luvvies happened to be?

    Did I ponder matters of deep finance with the Masters of the Universe, the hugely important bankers and finance ministers, the great economic gurus?

    Did I gasp with wonder and love at our National Treasures like David Attenborough?

    Wow! World leaders in my home town! The grandeur of it! The importance! The prestige!

    Did I marvel at “Strategic Oultlooks”? The prescience of these people! The Duke of Cambridge! Wo! That genius and media star.

    Did I attend Power Breakfasts and engage in Cocktail Networking?

    Odd to relate, no, I did none of these things. My sole interest was in the fact I had over 200 km of ski piste all to myself.

    The Great and the Good are, by and large, neither. I have no interest at all in what any of them have to say.

    But the skiing while they were busy pontificating (there was no room for ordinary tourists). Well that was pure heaven.

  • The Snob

    The Snob

    How hilarious, the asinine snob,

    Mr. Collins, the pompous and obsequious clergyman from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Hyacinth Bucket of the BBC comedy series Keeping Up Appearances.

    According to Wikipedia, “snob” is a pejorative term for a person who believes there is a correlation between social status and human worth . Or indeed, we might add, financial status.

    You have to laugh at the stupidity of it all. We all emerged from a bunch of savages, five or six hundred of them apparently, who left Africa a few hundred thousand years ago to colonize the world as we know it. The “Out of Africa” hypothesis.

    We share most if not all of our DNA with mice, elephants and numerous other species. And of course we share all of our DNA with less privileged people who live in remote parts and have not yet caught up with baths, democracy, the English language and political correctness.

    Long before the jolly exodus from Africa, all life on earth from the jellyfish, to the human, to the toad had a singe common ancestor.

    How’s that? Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Hyacinth Bouquet are descended from primordial gloop? Yes, I fear so!

    And yet Mr Collins insists on sucking up to Lady Catherine because she has a big house and quite a few bob in her bank account. Mr Collins insists on believing that Lady Catherine is worth sucking up to.

    Who gives a tinker’s fart? I mean, really.

    Its not just the nobs we suck up to, although a vapid couple were recently heard to announce grandly that they had just come from “Highclere”. It’s politicians also, and grubby, tarnished Biznizz people. Chevening is dropped into the conversation, or Chequers. Anyone will do. Anyone with piles of filthy lucre and/or a media presence. Yes, royalty (minor or otherwise), the filthy rich, the vulgar, the famous.

    Grub, grub, up the greasy pole we climb.

    I wonder if snobs suck up to the Kardashians? I’m not too familiar with American snobbery but I assume they must have at least some sense of perspective? Perhaps they only suck up to wealthy Wasps and descendants of the Mayflower pilgrims?

    Does an American snob suck up to Trump? God forbid, but snobs are such fools you never know and after all, he is rich and famous whatever else he may be.

    So beware, be on guard lest you find yourself name dropping. Be on guard lest you find yourself “brown-nosing”. The trick has to be the exercise of constant vigilance. Stand always with a hat pin ready to hand, ready to deflate the preposterous pomposity and stupidity of all around you.

    And if you catch yourself dropping a name, god forbid, stick that pin right up your own bottom. It’s the only way.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • The Pig

    The Pig

    The Pig is really a most unfortunate combination of every absurdity known to modern man.

    For a start he is ill educated and stupid but does not appear to realize it. The Pig seems to get through life by the twin weapons of bullying and dogged persistence.

    No sooner have you got his horrible, greedy snout removed from your front door than you discover he has gone round the back for a another attempt to swindle and bamboozle you with his ridiculous, pompous, self serving bullshit.

    The mailed fist is the only way to deal with the Pig. Metaphorically speaking of course. Because the Pig is unable to understand rational argument. Or if he has a glimmer that what you are saying might have the merest seed of truth, he will choose to ignore that truth.

    The Pig is a conman, a liar, a cheat. In a small, mean and chiseling way. He will engage in petty swindles wherever and whenever he can. He is “Dell Boy Trotter” without the charm.

    The Pig is also a terminal and petty snob. He bolsters his ego by mixing only with those he considers the great and the good.

    He is also an arse licker of the first order, with a nose so brown you know exactly where it has been.

    In more charitable moments one is tempted to ignore the Pig. As long as your paths don’t cross that is an eminently possible and sensible solution. Trouble is when you are forced to confront the Pig, he brings out the worst in you and makes meaningless your very best intentions.

    The New Testament tells us that the meek shall inherit the earth. We are told to turn the other cheek. When faced with the Pig we are ashamed to say all our good intentions fly out of the window. We are tempted to say “bollocks to the New Testament”. Oh dear, we really wish we didn’t have to admit that.

    I wish I could behave myself better. I wish that I need not yield to the temptation of anger. Should I give in then? Should I let the Pig trample all over people? Victimize them with his petty swindles and larcenous ways? Well, probably I should. But I am only human, alas.

    The only way to deal with the Pig is to wipe him out of your life as you would remove excrement from your shoe. If only it were that easy.