Weltanschauung

The Philosopher’s Stone

zenothestoic@protonmail.ch

Tag: Change

  • Moving On

    Moving On

    Change, never welcome, always necessary.

    When it comes, frightening, unsettling. Breaking chains of unnoticed habit forged over a long life of doubt.

    Time, it seems, to bid farewell to the dry pastures of financial markets. Can life flourish in fields where self promotion and deception rule. Where success seems inextricably bound to falsehood and brash salesmanship.

    Two decades of writing algorithms and trading them. Twenty long years of battling chaos in a universe where prediction is impossible and where flow is the only rule worth following.

    What now I wonder.

    Why would a seeker have wandered the canyons of Wall Street and the crooked allies of a then almost Dickensian London. In those far off days, Marley and Scrooge still had their brass knocker bolted to some ancient oaken door, in a tarnished corner close to the river.

    Apparent security must have been the answer. To say nothing of foolish naivete – stability was nowhere to be found, least of all in the carnivorous banking halls at the heart of the city of mammon.

    Were they all bad? The scurrying minions and rainmaking bosses. By no means but they offered scant companionship to someone who preferred the marbled pillars of St Paul’s to the polished floors of the counting houses.

    A kind lady from Kangaroo Island was good enough to read my words today. “Call It As it Is” she says. Once the Island of the Dead, where better to contemplate life, death and all stations in between.

    As far removed from the brash and the modern as you would need to go, how often have I thought of a life of solitude in just such a place.

    But peace is an effort of will not some physical realm. As easy or as difficult to achieve in a heaving metropolis as a desert island, if only you know the trick.

    And now? To write more, perhaps. Or better. There is a thought, but to what end. To no end, of course. There are no ends, just as there are no beginnings.

    There is flow, just flow. And the need to go with it.

    There perhaps is the lesson I never learned in those early days. The folly of battling one’s own nature instead of working with it. The futility of forcing a quiet and contemplative mind to enter the fray alongside the swagger and the talk of those better built for combat.

    What now I wonder.

    A one man closed order, I remain in a walled garden. No teaching, nothing to impart. No grand gospel, no treatise on all that is.

    To talk of peace may be to spread it. One soul flowing quietly with the stream may encourage a few others.

  • Age or Change

    Age or Change

    My mind drifted this morning, far from the algorithm I was working on. Was I old I wondered or had I simply changed.

    The truth lies probably somewhere in between. I have both aged and changed, but I suspect the latter was the prime influence on my mood this morning. I was sitting in my ivory tower in London, but my heart lay elsewhere. In a garden perhaps.

    If the brain has plasticity then perhaps mine has melted altogether. I certainly find myself a very different person than I was even some short while ago.

    I enjoy algorithms, derive great pleasure from the little project I am working on together with three pleasant American physicists, but I find I wax ever more lyrical. I find increasingly that different voices call and I drift into quiet reverie ever more often.

    I was dragged grumpily from my laptop and driven to the suburban outpost of Barnes, some short distance along the river from Fulham, where I have lived off and on for over 30 years. More off than on, since I was always drawn to faraway places and for some years the Alps beckoned.

    The Covid Queen (as I call my wife) had called for a visit to her venerable and now ancient parents, and I found myself chatting to my much loved father in law. Leaving my wife to conduct a somewhat circular conversation with my also much loved mother in law. Circular, since sadly age has indeed withered her; my mother in law that is.

    But the old boy remains needle sharp and I have only to prod him in the right direction and away he goes; I drift in and out of focus and intervene here and there, where and when necessary, to keep the show on the road.

    It was raining and we sat under an awning in the garden, talking through the french doors of their drawing room. Covid Queen has decreed that we must remain outside for their safety, and today soft rain trickled down if not our necks, then somewhere perilously close.

    We talked of terns and how 85% of chicks apparently have micro plastic in their stomachs. I thought of Blake and those dark Satanic mills he hated. What would he have made of the ecological disaster we have become.

    “The time has come,” the Walrus said,
       “To talk of many things:
    Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
       Of cabbages—and kings—
    And why the sea is boiling hot—
       And whether pigs have wings.”

    And so we did, for that is what I have always done with my father in law. By the time we returned to our own fashionable suburb, I found a deep calm had come over me. I determined to leave the algorithm a while longer and write a bit. Muse. And seek nature in a lovely 40 acre garden right around the corner.

  • Doing it Differently

    Doing it Differently

    Breaking up my routine seems to add enormously to my well-being. While I might not persuade my wife to let me go trekking in the Empty Quarter, even mild change can be very beneficial.

    Many clergymen tend to be sniffy about Cathedrals; they are elitist it seems. Let them sniff – they are wonderful places to while away an hour or so on a cold March afternoon.

    Too shamefaced to blag my way in free on some vacuous pretext, I decided to become a Friend of Canterbury Cathedral – at £40 per annum for a husband and wife team.

    Worth every penny and probably right to help prop up that precious edifice.

    But what I chose to do today is not the point; that what I did was different and that I visit Canterbury infrequently is what makes the difference.

    I suppose in some senses what I did today was much the same, mentally, to what I do every day. Meditate, ponder, question.

    But perhaps I brought a different and satisfactory slant to it by sitting in the Choir stalls in a beautiful and ancient church and emptying my mind for a while. And chatting to the organist who seemed a civilized and pleasant fellow. Such simple, satisfying pleasures.

    Yes, of course I “know” Canterbury but somehow wandering down the streets and just letting it all wash over me was the experience I was looking for. Everything was just slightly, minutely different and it worked for me. Spotty, merry students. Earnest old dears spending their last days as guides. Slightly different smells, noises, vistas.

    I think I have spoken before about the feeling that experience is now what counts for me. Today was just such an experience.

    Experience in terms of phenomenal, psychological events. Qualia. Experience in terms of the senses rather than the intellect.

    I wonder whether I have had enough of intellect? Certainly the knowledge I seek these days is that which can only be found within. I have had a lifetime of book learning and it can only take you so far. I have had a lifetime of worrying about the world, or perhaps more accurately my place in it. Or even more accurately, lack of place.

    So there you have it. I was letting go in Canterbury. Not exactly wild, daring or outrageous. But satisfying nonetheless and I feel better for a slightly “different” afternoon.

  • Travel Broadens the Mind

    Travel Broadens the Mind

    A day in Rye in East Sussex does not sound every-man’s idea of excitement but it is change which is important to the psyche, not distance traveled.

    Sameness can be a deadening influence in life, even if your days and the place you live happen to be pleasing.

    Its always a tough call these days to get up and go, even if the destination is only an hour or so away. But the very making of the effort is in itself a novelty and thus beneficial. New roads, new vistas. New pubs and churches and coffee shops.

    Not for me now, day long hikes in the mountains; or not very often anyway. But pleasure can just as easily be found on your own door step, without having to brave sniffer dogs and gender neutral concentration camp guards at what pass as airports.

    As my son would say “CBA”. For those unfamiliar with the language of modern English youth, the acronym translates as “Can’t Be Arsed”. CBA to travel that is.

    A chum invited me to go to the Caribbean recently, to the island of Bequia. Nice as it looked, the prospect became less inviting when I realized the length of the flight to Bermuda. Even less enticing was the additional short leg to Bequia. Probably much like travel in China 30 years ago, where your companions tended to be chickens and other livestock. I wonder if it is still like that on the short hop up to Canton? Or whatever they call the place these days.

    In any event, real travel is just too utterly uncivilized for me, now that I have become a grumpy old man, broadening though I am sure it still is.

    So I have become less adventurous and Rye seemed enough of a slog this cold and sunny winter’s day.

    The effort was worth it though. The fine English church was just that – fine and English, with stained glass by Burne-Jones and Benson. A good organist to boot it seems, though I could find no opinion on the choir.

    In the right mood these glorious old streets can soothe, elevate. What is it about the past that is so attractive to the imagination?

    Certainty I suspect. I would disagree with LP Hartly – it is the future not the past which is a foreign country. It is in the future where people do things differently; in those old cobbled streets they have done their bit and so far as we know, the past is immutable.

    Perhaps a comfort in antiquity is all part of the human quest for permanence in a universe where the only constant is change. The certainty is illusory of course, but part of the solace of visiting the ancient, is the pretense that it is not. The mental sleight of mind which allows us to deceive ourselves that all was and is right in this ancient town and that here safety is to be found. Refuge from the buzzing world of real people and all their fierce and urgent emotions.

    I try these days to let go. Let go of annoyance, anger, ambition even. And the trip was interesting in that respect also. The journey was, to be frank, frightful. As is usual with GPS, we were taken on an eccentric and curious route. Down narrow country lanes fit for donkeys but where, nonetheless, The Man in the White Porsche still presumes to strut his stuff. The Man in the White Van also. And the Travelling Salesman and the Mother in a Hurry.

    What I noticed, by and large, was anger, arrogance, impatience and aggression. All of which I let pass.

    It’s odd when you decide to let the world pass you by. Curiously therapeutic but hard to believe that that was once you. The impatient and mindless younger man, convinced that the road was his and everything that therein is.

    Is it part of enlightenment perhaps? The once important becomes absurdly irrelevant to you once you see through the veil of the blinkered lives that we have condemned ourselves to live.

    Hence all the greater my joy in meeting the Contented Craftsman – who by his own admission has only just realized that Queen Victoria is no longer on the throne.

  • Original thinking or garbled trope?

    Original thinking or garbled trope?

    I am interested in expressing my own thoughts and reading the original thoughts of others. But too often writers feel obliged to offer up a digest or synthesis of what they have read rather than contributing anything new or original.

    I am well aware that my own thoughts have been deeply informed by others. I am often unconscious of that fact when expressing myself. Yet I try to voice feelings and opinions which are genuinely my own.

    What use if I merely quote Liebnitz or any of my other favorites? Better that than Trump or any of the other boorish ignoramuses of our time, but less of a contribution to society than something fresh.

    It is far from easy to dig deep into one’s psyche and to offer anything new. Indeed, if you were to believe Ecclesiastes, you would come to the conclusion that there is nothing new.

    And yet there assuredly is and from time to time a philosophy or view will pop out which is genuinely and alarmingly fresh.

    Often as not the new will usher in something every bit as dystopian as the new of old, but just occasionally something genuinely useful and peaceful but also revolutionary may emerge.

    Or that is my hope. I was reading through blogs on counter culture this morning. Whatever that expression means. I often consider anarchy, socialism, religious thought and even occasionally conventional centrist politics.  Without much satisfaction.

    There must be some good to be had somewhere. This morning I was reading an article from Sue Stevenson at Discombobula.

    Whether she was joking or not, she suggested that politicians in Australia be served magic mushrooms on toast.

    Researchers announced a few years ago that the psilocybin in magic mushrooms has the ability to foster “sustained changes in outlook and political perspective” for people suffering depression. Even better, those changes are “in the direction of increased nature relatedness and decreased authoritarianism.”

    Now there is an original thought, although I imagine a few of the Flower Power mob back in the 60’s felt much the same way. Which, according to lore, was why psychedelics were banned back in the day. Some say because the newly awakened young were refusing to enlist for the Vietnam war following their psychedelic enlightenment.

    But wait. Do not pass go, do not shut me down in fury and derision. For our Sue has a serious point whether she meant it or not.

    Let me explain. We are the slaves of our Darwinian origins, our evolution. Even the mildest of us will fight tooth and nail for our own survival, when push comes to shove.  We will trample over people on our way to the lifeboats on the Titanic, we will kill and maim and abuse any who stand in our way.

    I am unable to suppress often felt irritation over all manner of things. Which is all very well when I am locked away in my hermetic recreation of Skellig Michael. Faced more closely with my fellow man, I am prone to behave less charitably than I would like. And I am no Ghengis Khan, no Donald Trump. I have no desire to dominate or conquer. I just want to be left alone, as Garbo is reputed to have said.

    My point is that we need to recreate ourselves.  We need to escape from our origins or no amount of good thought or deed will make for a better or kinder world.

    We have had good religious thought for as long as man has existed and when you strip away the claptrap of belief, much of it has something useful to say about how to live in peace with each other.

    But we can not. We did not evolve to live in peace with each other or our planet. We were bred, like the rest of the animal kingdom, for survival – ours – at the expense of everybody else’s.

    And so back to Sue.

    The out of the box, the unusual, the un-thought of.  That is what interests me. Re-engineering our genome, altering our emotions for the better. Increasing our good qualia and reducing our bad.

    Good on you Sue. I agree with you.

     

  • The Limited Use of Self Awareness

    The Limited Use of Self Awareness

    “The unexamined life is not worth living” said Socrates and few would doubt the wisdom of his belief. But is self awareness enough?

    What good is self awareness without change? And can we change? Does the brain have true plasticity and if so do we have the free will necessary to change who we are and how we behave?

    Well I can not answer these deep questions and nor it seems can our brightest scientists or philosophers. They have beliefs, that is true, but they have no “proof”. No way of experimenting on themselves – or at least no way of proving that such change which may occur has done so by virtue of free will rather than the dead hand of determinism.

    Why am I perplexed and troubled by this question this evening? Partly because I am always troubled by my own motives, behavior, actions and thoughts and partly because I was reading some philosopher’s view that morals are relative and not absolute. I don’t care what the professor says or believes. I believe that morals are absolute and that we are grasping our way towards a better society. Hard as that may be to believe sometimes.

    But it all comes back to the personal eventually. And indeed what is society if not a collection of persons?  And if those persons are not self aware we have one problem: they will undoubtedly pursue one or more (perhaps all) of the seven deadly sins and not realize they are being naughty boys.  They may not realize that morals are most assuredly not relativistic and that their behavior therefor sucks and they should change it.

    Ah, but therein the rub. Can we change even if we realize and accept that we ought to?  I can only speak personally and subjectively – and I suspect that is all any of us can do.

    And I can come to no firm conclusion. I know what I ought to be. I know how I ought to behave. I know what I ought to do. And in general I make the attempt to follow the conclusions of my self analysis and my view on morality.

    But I am not at all sure I have ever managed to wreak real or lasting change. I am irritable. I do not wish anyone any real harm but I tend towards petty loathings ( see Pig, Salesmen) which I can’t seem to shake. Some people may indeed be loathsome but why not just let them get on with it and walk the other way? And there are many other things I would like to change about my behavior and my life.

    Oh well – at least I am self aware!  Perhaps that is better than nothing. Tries hard said the headmaster.

     

  • There Comes a Time

    There Comes a Time

    Retirement means different things to different people.  The hermit has always been retired – or at least hidden away.  Retired in the sense of withdrawn from the world. The mendicant has withdrawn from conventional life and travels the land begging for his sustenance in return for preaching or serving the poor.

    Such simplicity sounds so attractive.  Dispense with the internet, mobile telephones and offices.  Tell your boss exactly where to put his job and Jeff Bezos where to stuff Amazon. Give materialism a swerve and hit the open road like Thelma and Louise.

    In a sense that is the very essence of Buddhism. I was contemplating meditation at  the Wat Buddhapadipa in London and revisiting the basics of Buddhism this morning, something I can’t have done for 20 odd years.  I was once more overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of the teachings and wondered why I had not put them into practice.

    The Christian equivalent is “treat others like yourself and live like a lillie in the field”.

    And why take ye thought for raiment?  Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow;  they toil not, neither do they spin.

    Long my favorite verse in the New Testament.

    Buddhism goes further and is more satisfying to the inquiring mind. It is about piercing the veil of reality and seeing ourselves for what we really are.  The self is an illusion. Everything is impermanent and we have no soul; from dust we arose and to dust we shall return.

    It sounds negative but it is not. To achieve release from suffering we must see through the illusion and accept impermanence.  Our consciousness is temporary, transient. We must not cling to life, to the material – to do so will only end in distress.

    It doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy life – just that we should see it for what it is.  It is so closely allied to other strains of Eastern thought – Taoism in particular. The Flow, the realization that the “ten thousand things” do not require our attention.

    I don’t think it means you have to don a funny robe, shave your head and spend the day shaking a tambourine.  And I’m not sure you have to use organic lavatories, wear Jesus sandals or dress as a hippie. I think it does require effort and insight though. I think it requires adopting a mental attitude and trying to live your life very, very differently.

    There is always a danger of quietism. Death, in a sense. Of becoming so withdrawn you could no longer be said to be alive.

    I think you have to use the philosophy not to abandon life, but on the contrary to embrace it. Albeit in a different form.

    I won’t be found sitting on Putney Bridge with a begging bowl anytime soon.  But I will be trying to dissolve my ego and to embrace change.

     

  • Could Adolf have chosen to behave differently?

    Could Adolf have chosen to behave differently?

    We assess animal behavior better than we do that of humans. We are more realistic where we can analyse with objectivity.  Our own behavior remains largely a mystery to us.

    As does the question of changing that behavior. On an individual or species wide basis.

    Pavlov’s dog aside we do not expect, largely, to change the nature or behavior of an animal. Why should we expect to change our own?

    Animals have basic needs. They are coded to survive, they have evolved to compete. They seek food and they seek mates. Perhaps they have a desire (conscious or not) to welcome pleasure and to avoid pain. Perhaps some are more sociable than others, some more conscious, some less, depending on the complexity of their brains.

    But you would not expect much mercy from a hungry wolf, you would certainly not expect it to feel any guilt or shame when it rips your throat out.  Not today and not tomorrow.  The Big Bad Wolf is not going to change.

    Change, if it does occur takes place over many thousands of years. Or longer. Sometimes no change occurs even  through millions of years – take the cockroach as an example, or the shark.

    As a counter example take the wolf’s distant offspring – the dog. Trained  by humans over thousands of years dogs have become (by and large!) a little less violent, a little more friendly.  Over thousands of years!

    Yes, yes I am aware of experiments where rats are encouraged by trick or treat tactics to press one button or another, but I am interested as ever in the possibility of human change. Redemption even.

    Do we have the power to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps in our own lifetime? As an individual or a species?

    No, I would venture most definitely not. Nurture and nature yes, spout the phrase all you will. But my strong (and yes, subjective) suspicion is that our behavior is largely endogenous.  Built in.

    Mother Teresa’s are born not fashioned. Adolf was born a murderer and tyrant, albeit his behavior may have been accentuated by his time in the trenches and his failure as an artist.  That he got where he did was a matter, largely, of chance.  Had his luck been less blatant he may have remained a small time nutter in some lowly Austrian town.

    In many thousands of years’ time we may have trained ourselves to behave better because we want to.  Or we may crack our own code and achieve improvement sooner.

    But this week, this decade, my firm belief is that we are stuck with who we are. Collectively and individually.

  • On Age

    On Age

    Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
    Her infinite variety: other women cloy
    The appetites they feed; but she makes hungry
    Where most she satisfies: for vilest things
    Become themselves in her; that the holy priests
    Bless her when she is riggish.

    Act II, Scene 2 Antony and Cleopatra

    William Shakespeare

    Cleopatra was fortunate indeed, the rest of us may age less well.  But we should embrace age, not resent or fear it.

    Physical and mental decline, beyond what is acceptable to each individual, should be dealt with as each of us sees fit.  I have no fear whatsoever of age, even less so of death. But incapacity is a different  matter. I hope for a more enlightened age, where we will be helped to exercise our right to choose the moment and manner of our end.

    I have no intention of letting the laws of my country decide for me when I may exit and how.  Nembutal is readily available on the darknet and various books provide viable and painless alternatives.

    It is very distressing to see someone in fear of death. My father was what I can only describe as a medieval christian.  In his last few years, I spent many hours trying to comfort him.  He was by nature a fearful man and christian mythology did him no favours. He had a fixation about “limbo” and worse.

    His mind was full of Dante Alighieri‘s 14th-century epic poem Divine Comedy.  Unfortunately he tended to concentrate on “inferno” and  “purgatorio”.  For no good reason, “paradiso” seemed something he wondered whether he was fit for.

    As an atheist I find such nonsense laughable and damaging and I pay no heed to Pascal’s Wager.  My father’s outdated belief system was more of a hindrance than a help.

    I have taken age into my own hands. People are dying around me – it happens to us all. I may mourn their passing, but I will not let it destroy my own life. Rather, I will let it fill me with an ever greater determination to rejoice in its beauty and goodness while I still have the opportunity.  Carpe diem. Seize the day.

    I will try and be less of a grumpy old misery. I will determine to be a better father and husband.  I will do my utmost to see the best in everybody and everything. I will change my mind.

    I am 62 and recognize that I can not change the world.  Who can? I am deeply upset by the plight of most of my fellow humans and would wave a wand if I could; but I can’t.

    So I will bury my head in the sand. I will refuse to read the newspapers or watch television. I will refuse to listen to doom-mongers and trouble makers. I will keep out of mischief and try to do no harm. I will refuse to listen to gossips and the vain. I will avoid the negative and embrace only the positive.

    I will expand my mind, change it. I will leave the ruts and well worn channels of my thoughts.

    And when my end comes, I will hope to accept it with good grace and in peace

    .

  • The Unknowing Fool

    The Unknowing Fool

    The unknowing fool counts himself as wise since he knows no better.  The fool so beloved of Shakespeare was a different order of man, and clever.  The unknowing fool is the one who does not know that he does not know.

    How should you treat the unknowing fool? Derision, or cruelty and mocking are clearly wrong, however easy it may be to fall into such ways.

    The problem is that there are degrees of foolishness; and types of fool. If the fool is “simply simple” he may be a delight to bump into. The harmless village idiot tending the graveyard. A friendly and child like figure, who deserves a smile and a few minutes of happy conversation.

    This fool will be a knowing fool; he will know that he is simple and you will readily accept him for that.  He is easy to “suffer”.  It is a pleasure to do so.

    The bumptious fool is far more difficult to deal with. The bumptious and arrogant fool, several degrees worse.

    Snobbery of any sort is wrong, morally wrong. The sign of an un-enlightened individual.  It is very easy to give up ridiculous class snobbery or money snobbery.  Such forms of snobbery are so patently shallow and absurd.

    Intellectual snobbery is rather harder to abandon.  It is very difficult indeed to suffer an unknowing fool, and even more difficult to suffer a fool who combines ignorance with bumptiousness and arrogance.

    And yet suffer him we must, if we are to obey those two most important of  dicta: “turn the other cheek”, “treat your neighbour as you would have them treat you”.

    I am not a man who suffers unknowing fools gladly and when they are also bumptious and arrogant, my tolerance is stretched to its very limits.

    And yet suffer him I must if I want to be true to my ideals. I must back off and show kindness and understanding, not intolerance and exasperation. I must not trample him or cow him with word or thought. Or deed.

    St Augustine famously said “Lord make me good, but not just yet”.

    I have had enough of being difficult and curmudgeonly.  I would very much like to be “good now”, but it is far easier said than done.