Weltanschauung

The Philosopher’s Stone

zenothestoic@protonmail.ch

Tag: Change

  • London as a foreign city.

    London as a foreign city.

    Portobello Road in London W11 is a most curious mix of home and abroad.  Wandering down it today in the bright sunshine, there were shades of many foreign cities and at times I could imagine I was anywhere between Morocco and Hong Kong.

    It is the sort of road which can almost give that horrible word “multiculturalism” a positive spin.

    Part of my current regime is to try and do new things all the time. They need not be dramatically “new” or even “dramatic”.  Merely non-routine. Things which I do not often do.  Even buttering your toast on the wrong side or wearing different clothes or drinking something unusual can often work to re-set your mind, to break out of recurring and often unconstructive thought patterns.

    If microdosing on psilocybin isn’t your idea of fun, try breaking out in different ways.  It seems to have a beneficial effect.

    Second hand clothes shops, exotic food stalls, second hand music, fabulous cafes and restaurants. Jewellery stalls, junk, fruit and veg. The lot. And the people – all colours, all nationalities.   Somehow a predominantly middle eastern or perhaps Turkish feel today. But lots of “English” shops too in this curious mix of tat and hugely expensive houses.

    It was the same sort of carefree fun as Stanley market in Hong Kong, almost as much fun as Constantinople.  Aromas, smells, whiffs of spices, fruits, coffee. Lovely colours, exotic clothes, exotic bohemian people.

    Large caribbean gentlemen who may have offered me forbidden wares, shaven headed turks, scruffy, fun, cosmopolitan, relaxed.  Out of my depth, far from my comfort zone. Bohemian rhapsody and glad of it.

    And after that a wander through Kensington, back to posh and conventional. Holland Park and its grandeur, the glamour of Camden Hill and the super wealthy.

    And on to grubby Hammersmith and a quiet walk down the Thames towpath.

    Highly recommended.

     

  • Happiness and Genetic Bingo

    Happiness and Genetic Bingo

    We are born from a giant genetic lottery and there is little we can do about it.  We can not “change our mind” we can only make the best of it.

    Deep into a scarcely imaginable future, we may be able to adjust our qualia, to choose our emotions.  To elect to suffer or live in Elysium.  I believe that day will come. Kurtzweil and gang, the redoubtable David Pearce – their day will come.

    “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” as it says in Matthew 6:9-13.

    Except of course it will not.  Not unless we ourselves make it so.

    In the meantime we must fend for ourselves, struggle along as best we can with what blind fate alloted us.

    I have argued elsewhere that we can expect limited success in our endeavours to change but some change is better than none. And if we learn what drives us we may be able to tip the balance in our favour.

    On really, really “bad hair days” go and lie in a darkened room and switch the world off. Part of meditation for some of us is the ability to tune out.  Tubby old Siddhartha may not have approved of this use of the technique, but what do I care. You shouldn’t either.

    Part of my “meditation” technique is to almost physically switch off what passes for my brain. To simply refuse to function. It is a difficult discipline but works a treat when you can get it right and is probably rather better for you than ketamine or quaaludes.

    It also has the advantage of being legal. I don’t think even sharia law bans it, although I would have to check that one out; it seems to ban much else in life.

    So next time you feel like god has got you in a vice and is squeezing your extremities, give it a go. You usually wake up the next day feeling no end of improvement.

     

  • Must Try Harder

    Must Try Harder

    Unfortunately as an imperfect individual I find it necessary to question my own behaviour on a daily basis.  I wish I were perfect, saintly, good and Dalai Lama-ish. But I’m not.

    I have always wanted to meet a “saint”, not out of any religious fervour (I don’t have any) but because I would like to see whether such a person actually exists and if he does, then how he behaves.

    Does the saint ever get angry? Or even unreasonable? Does he ever harbour grudges or feel envy or jealousy? Is he or she ever less than perfectly kind, patient and loving? I would like to emulate any such person but alas I have feet of clay.

    I do not often feel envy or jealousy these days (but have been guilty in the past as, probably, we all have).  But anger – yes, anger does tend to sneak up on me and sandbag me on occasions, much as I wish it were otherwise.

    Or maybe it is more usually irritability. The “Grumpy Old Man” has become a much televised celebrity.  Shakespeare’s Enobarbus said of Cleopatra  “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety”.

    In my case age has withered me considerably and I never possessed infinite variety anyway.

    I largely gave up writing about finance and trading since I was becoming very “withered” indeed. Sick of the rubbish being peddled by an industry with nobody’s good in mind other than its own. So I turned to matters of greater interest and importance to me: behaviour, people, the (non-existent) “soul”, the big questions in life, the universe and everything.

    And yet when I read and comment on articles in the Guardian or the Independent or anywhere else I find myself battling with my own prejudice and intolerance.  When I become aware that I have been bitter, unreasonable or just plain vicious I try and remember to go back and change those offending and offensive sentiments – they were not meant, they sometimes just pop up out of ennui, tiredness, irritability.

    I guess it is human nature to have disagreements but I am always puzzled over that biblical phrase “The meek shall inherit the earth”.

    Was that Neville Chamberlain’s big mistake? Such tactics may have worked in the dissolution of the British Empire in India with Gandhi ‘s laudable non violent civil disobedience but would it have worked against Hitler? Presumably not.

    I fear I am not meek nor ever have been. Sometimes I dearly wish I was. Perhaps as an ersatz Buddhist I will have a few more lifetimes to try and get it right.

    But more seriously I do struggle on a daily basis with myself. I know I am a grumpy, puzzled and sometimes bitter old fool. Must try harder is, I suppose, all I can really say.

  • To Regret or to Reset

    To Regret or to Reset

    To regret is a useless emotion; it is a wallowing in despair and self pity.  Better by far to change, to achieve, to move forward, to put right.

    Easy perhaps for the comfortable, the well healed, the well adjusted.  Less so for the poor, the sick, the wretched.  The billions who live in squalor and wretchedness.

    It is a sad and “wicked” world in many ways but I am not entirely convinced that is anybody’s fault in particular.  We are all victims of our inheritance and our environment.

    Did Adolf Hitler have to murder 6,000,000 Jews? Well he certainly did not do it all on his own. And thus for all violence: it does not happen in isolation, it has cause and effect, it is part of us all, the responsibility of us all.  We must all regret it but equally we should all seek better.

    There is great regret in my life in an overall sense as well as a personal sense.  It is a world of great contrast: good and bad, beauty and intense ugliness, joy and despair.  I have not done my bit. I have not done enough.

    I could have done better, achieved more, made the world a happier place, seen greater fulfillment.

    Or perhaps not.  Intuitively the buddhist concept of endless re-birth strikes a chord.  Life after life we strive to get it right, live better until at last we are released from the cycle, from the giant hamster wheel that is existence.

    But regret, while you still have breath, is a wasteful extravagance, a futile and destructive luxury.  Even if you only live one lifetime it is never too late to put it right, to change, to achieve, to soar, to redeem.

    Even writing is a redemption of sorts. A catharsis. An admission of guilt and in a sense regret but an effort also to put right. To spread meaning perhaps.