Weltanschauung

The Philosopher’s Stone

zenothestoic@protonmail.ch

Tag: Decency

  • The Crusaders

    The Crusaders

    Deus Vult

    There has to be a better way.

    Yet another humanitarian crisis as a greedy  narcissist chases money and a couple of “Christian” extremists seek Armageddon. 

    The brutal Dark Age Theocracy in Iran massacres its own people, but nobody seems too concerned.  Least of all the Zionist government in Israel, which continues the slaughter to maintain its  biblical dominion over land “god” gave the Jews.

    The only imperative is for peace and a cessation of violence. The only relevant issue is how to bring this about.

    Whose fault the current atrocities are is of little consequence beside the need to stop the killing for good. On all sides. The endless revenge and counter revenge, the tit for tat where even small children are taught to hate the perceived enemy. The truth is that we are our own enemy.

    There is no country, no society which can claim to be “good”. There are only degrees of “bad”. And the bad is not Satan, not some external imaginary monster. It is us. We are the monsters, big and small.

    Every aspect of our behaviour is competitive, itself a form of aggression. More money, land, food.  Gold, jewellery, real estate. Be better than the neighbours and if possible take what they have by commerce or it’s near relative, force.

    That is us, that is humanity and it’s time for real change. Time for each of us to reform his own personality and behaviour, to lead by example. To rein in temper and aggression, whether in our driving habits, our profession or business. To forget about the ego, self. To think of the common good instead.

    There will never be agreement on which god is best, which view is right, what is beautiful, what is ugly. And that doesn’t matter if we cease fighting about it.  10 billion people live on a planet owned and controlled by a small minority.  10 billion people are governed by a hierarchy, by an elite. True freedom and democracy doesn’t exist but at least we could improve it by ridding ourselves of hierarchy – both in terms of wealth and government.

    But those are longer term goals. What we need to do immediately is to stop the brutal slaughter and replace bombs with words. Replace ignorant hatred with understanding and compassion.

    Negotiate, even with the Theocracy. Bring them round, help them. Lift the sanctions making life so difficult for a mostly blameless people. Bring back diplomacy and reason.

    Above all, give kindness and hope. Do unto others.

  • Peace and Love

    Peace and Love

    They were right all along, the peaceniks and beatniks, the hippies and the ban the bombers. Flower Power could heal the world, given the chance. But armed forces can never make either peace, or love, for that is not their purpose.

    The tin-pot, demented dictator with the ginger wig looks set to take over Greenland and with the most powerful army on earth, no one can stop him.

    You thought you didn’t like Putin very much. Another hair brained maniac intent on empire and conflict.  And what of Benjamin Netanyahu, determined to inflict holocaust, having learnt nothing from the suffering of his own race.

    So much for international law, for NATO, for the US constitution. A geriatric thug with a bad case of narcissism and incipient dementia has pissed all over all of it and no one is stopping him.

    So much for Peace and Love.

    The trumpets of war sound in every corner. Armies are to be increased and paraded and manoeuvred and given their head once again.

    And all on the pretext of “peace” and “security”.  Such lame excuses justify the murder of untried people in fast boats on the ocean. The kidnap and imprisonment of heads of state. The invasion of neighbours and foreign lands.

    The Empires Strike Back! Russian or American, what difference, who cares.  Lebensraum.  Theft of oil and minerals.  The demonisation of the “enemy” who must be conquered, eliminated, overrun.

    If any of this sounds familiar, then it ought  to. It has happened with monotonous regularity over thousands and thousands of years.  Again, and again and again.

    Only Flower Power can stop it.

    Or at least the underlying philosophy which brought out mass demonstrations against war, brutality and greed.

    It was Vietnam in those days and it was the Russian communist bogyman who had to be defeated.  With napalm and vast fleets of bombers.

    And so on through the ages back to the dawn of humanity and on to our eventual demise; in all probability.

    For those determined not to get caught up in the feverish nonsense of humanity it looks so absurd and unnecessary. So avoidable. 

    The world is a bubbling, heaving mass of unnecessary “doing”. Whereas all we need “do” is to “be”.

    To want what we have, not what others have got. To understand ourselves, to see what mean and ugly motives generally drive us.  To spend our time improving life by looking after our people, not filling our own pockets.

    By ditching armies and war and by concentrating on science and improving our planet. By preventing the obscene injustice whereby the rich own the world and the rest lie in the dirt.

    It isn’t politics, it’s simply decency.

    So very little of what goes on in the world matters. Nothing matters really – except peace and love. What a silly phrase and yet how true.  The endless grubbing around like pigs in the dirt for more of this and that. The absurdity of economic growth and the destruction of the very base of our survival – a fragile planet.

    How little we need to live a good life and yet we endlessly seek more. Always at somebody else’s expense.

    Commerce is a zero sum game – someone is always on the take.  Trying to convince the losers he is on their side.

    How often has all this been said. How many religions have taught all this and failed.

    Lay down in front of the tanks. Even if only metaphorically. Vote for peace not war. Vote for equality not capitalism and commerce.

    Lay down flowers. Look within to better understand the view without.

    It’s never too late.

  • Nothing Matters

    Nothing Matters

    Except how you treat others.

    The natural world can take care of itself.  Even if it regularly wipes out swathes of life, you must accept tsunamis and earthquakes as unavoidable. In the same way, eventually the sun and even the universe itself will die.  Perhaps in the distant future choices will open up which are almost unimaginable at present, but for now we can forget about it.

    Humans are destroying the earth, but I suspect the planet will have the last laugh and all traces of our species will, mercifully, vanish. So again, let it be.

    So we are subject to nature and, in effect, should cease to worry about it. If we get carried away by a giant meteorite, well that’s the way it goes. It’s happened before and it will happen again.

    To that extent, the natural world does not matter. Shrug your shoulders. It’s none of your fault and you’re not god.

    That should give you an element of peace. Or at least I find it does. A worry discarded.

    Sure, if you want to be a physicist, carry on.  One day you might find an answer to it all. Or not. But there is no point fretting.  At least we have got to the point we realise natural disasters aren’t some bugger in the sky who wants to kick the shit out of us because we haven’t licked his wotsit well enough.

    So if you leave physical reality outside the worry box, what are you left to torture yourself with?

    Humanity. The human species. Self and other. Two distinct categories, if you leave out philosophical and religious speculation about the nature of the self.

    So does the ‘self’ matter? Only, it seems, if you let it. Some say that self is an illusion anyway but for those of us who wish it was, our best option is to make it disappear.

    I have been toying with disappearance for years.  It’s always two steps forward and then one back, but I seem to make progress. If “I” don’t exist then it’s difficult to imagine how I can make myself vanish, but there’s no point in making a meal of the whole thing.

    How can I go within if I’m a mere illusion? Well again, does it matter what I am? I’ll just try. I have been trying.  And it seems to make “my” subjective life a whole lot better.

    That’s going to sound self absorbed and selfish but it’s actually the very opposite. It’s only by cleaning up one’s own mess that we can give our species a chance to change. If everyone cleans his act up, voila. A better world.

    Going within, meditating, quietly thinking about life does begin to make you realise what a shitty person you have been in the past.  “I have left undone those things I ought to have done, and I have done those things I ought not to have done”. As goes the glorious Book of Common Prayer.

    Having realised this, you have a chance to change. To make peace with yourself and hence find it.

    I’m far from perfect and always will be. But understanding that and trying to change does make me feel immensely better.  Maybe it might also make those around me a little happier. I hope so.

    So at a very deep level I am coming to realise that I do not exist. Or at least that I have no importance in the scheme of things.  And that I should live quietly and decently in the recognition that nothing matters at all except how I treat others.

    So, what about “others”?

    Well what about them? There isn’t a lot you can do other than to be kind, help where you can.  So mostly you may as well bury your head in the sand and disconnect the internet.

    That certainly increases your own peace and if it means you are less liable to mistreat others, then it will increase their peace as well.

    Looking back over my rambling blog since it’s initiation in 2018, I can see that I have worried a great deal in the past about human behaviour and the sad state of our world.

    It has upset, worried and frightened me, in equal measure.

    I have ranted about violence and greed mostly. About the sad state of the untermensch. About selfishness and the sheer venality of our species.

    What I have not done is to come up with any answers, largely because I don’t think there are any. Except for one, which I will end this post with a little later on.

    Would a different political system make any difference? Should we adopt Marxism perhaps. Would a really well meaning and all powerful dictator set the world to rights?

    Or anarchy. Abandon the idea of government altogether and have a chaotic free for all

    No. None of this matters. While imperfect, democracy is about as good as we can hope for.

    There is only one cure for all our ills. For all our savagery, greed and oppression.

    Nothing matters.

    Nothing in the entire universe, seen or unseen, matters.

    Nothing in the theoretical multiverse matters, or the religious afterlife.

    Except.

    Except that if we really do want a cure, if we really do care about the apocalyptic state of our species, there is one simple thing we have to do and all will be well. And all manner of things will be well

    Treat others with all the kindness and decency we would wish for ourselves.

    That’s it. It’s that simple to create a heaven out of a dark and evil hell.

    We have made hell on earth and only we have the power to change that.

    Nothing else matters.

  • 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?

     

  • A Gospel for the 21st Century Pagan

    A Gospel for the 21st Century Pagan

    If we 21st Century pagans were to write our own book of “Good News” what would it contain?

    For a start it would do no harm to look at the etymology of the word “pagan”.  Because its origins explain much that has gone wrong with our world. It was a word of “us” over “them”. It was a word invented by a cocky cult to derogate any who did not bend to their world view and their will.  And they had their own “Good News” which would indeed have been very good, did they ever mean a word of it.

    And in today’s mostly godless world, how should we re-write those words of Mathew, Mark, Luke and John?  Well there was nothing wrong with the words really, just with our human race in general. And in our lack of application of those words.

    If we could have our Utopian dream, free of seemingly inevitable dystopian horror, what should we aim for?

    I would not consign the likes of Mugabe and Gaddafi to the gas chamber or the firing squad (much as, arguably, they might deserve it) but I would rewrite the rules of our race (genetic and otherwise) to breed out such horrors.

    I would not hunt and illegally execute bin Laden as we in the “civilized” West saw fit to do but I would aim to eradicate the conditions which lead to the atrocities of 9/11 and beyond in the first place.

    It boils down to “hearts and minds” and, in the longer term, genetic engineering. And the eradication of poverty and the spreading of health. And freedom from pain, physical and psychic.

    In the short term if the ex colonies feel aggrieved, well perhaps we should stop milking their oil and natural resources for our own benefit. And we certainly shouldn’t be selling them arms at vast profit to our rapacious manufacturers and at equally colossal detriment to their ethnically and otherwise cleansed populations.

    But it is also a question of the physician healing himself, of glass houses, of smiting beams from our own eyes.  Before smiting motes in theirs.

    These are ghastly, horrible people but they are only human. They are merely 21st Century versions of William the Conqueror who wiped out the north of England. Are they worse that horrible Ghengis?  And why is Alexander called “great”when he was merely a successful thug?

    So the gospel we might preach could be one of practical change.  For a start it might help if we ceased to glorify war and the military.  It would also help if we ceased to allow one form of prejudice to be replaced by another in the guise of “correctness”, political or otherwise.  There are some true pigs in this world and they should be named and shamed.

    We should move away from the deification of competition and materialism and realize that economic growth does not equate with universal happiness.  That “co-operation” and “sharing” might be words to replace concepts which have dominated our species since the day we were conceived in some muddy swamp or deep ocean smoker.

    No one wants to live in crumbling sub-standard social housing (let alone on the streets) , no one wants a post code dependent health system.  And no one deserves poverty, despite the outdated view, still held by many in our more brutal capitalist systems, that they deserve it because they don’t get off their arses and work.

    No Mr Trump, the world does not work like that and it never has. Too little understanding is granted to the  fortunate that their well being and the lack of it in others is often a matter of circumstance and pure random chance.

    Right place and right time. Right idea at the right time, pursued admittedly with ruthless vigor.

    I’m not looking for a socialist paradise, the very concept is oxymoronic. Well, just plain moronic really.

    But I am looking for a modern gospel of a different sort. In the long term, philosophers such as those in the transhumanist movement reckon greed and general shitty venality can be bred out of us.

    But in the meantime we should do our best to make words such as “kindness” and “decency” objects of greater veneration than “money” and “power”.

    I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth; my bum in the butter if you insist on cruder language. Without that random lottery win, I doubt I would have had the drive to climb the greasy pole; I simply lacked the ambition. I too may have crawled in the gutter.

    So yes, actually, I would like to expand and improve the welfare state and cut the salaries of its administrators. I would like to slash red tape and wasteful, stupid, computer says no bureaucracy.  I remember reading a year or so ago of a Devon county Councillor who was paid £500,000 a year.  What sort of idiocy allows that?

    And I would like to simplify the tax system so drastically and dramatically that we could dispose of three quarters of the civil “servants” who live there.

    Oh, and thanks very much but I would like to place basic utilities back in common ownership rather than let the provision of the basics of life be subject to big biznizz and highly paid sharks.

    And then I would like, above all, to encourage and fund science. The sort of science which can make us better humans, which could let us escape our animal origins by letting us choose our behavior. Better behavior for all! Now there is a slogan. We really don’t have to let evolution continue its brutal and hateful domination.

    Thus speaks the Gospel of the 21st Century Pagan.

  • How to be Human in an indifferent Universe

    How to be Human in an indifferent Universe

    How damaging we are to each other. How grim the human condition can become, and it does not take war or physical conflict to make it so.

    The most important thing any of us can do is to behave decently but how difficult that is when push comes to shove.

    Is it when we are threatened that we become vicious? Is it when our kin are threatened? Both, I suspect. How easy it is to get sucked into conflict.  War on a personal level, then elevated to nations.

    Looking back over the years, I realize there are many, many occasions where I have been “wrong”. Behaved the wrong way, drawn erroneous conclusions, been less than honest with myself or others. Or rather not less than “honest” but not wise or experienced enough to know when I have been the architect of my own distress.  When problems fell squarely within my own domain and I did not realize it. When I and only I had the power to fix things without blame or recrimination but where I chose, consciously or otherwise, to blame others or the world itself for my plight.

    Honesty is not easy. I am still puzzling over life and wondering why, when and how it went wrong.  And I know that it is I who must bear the sole responsibility.

    “Wrong” is a silly word to use really.  It has not gone “wrong” if I were being objective. But who can be subjective about their own life? Considered in the light of a world population of nearly 8 billion people, the vast majority of whom live in conditions which Hobbes would recognize only too readily, such a claim is absurd.

    Wrong only in the sense that I could have done it better, could have lived better. Still can.  Wrong in the sense that I could have lived a life in which I could have taken more and better direction. But it is never too late.

    At heart I believe the problem lies in the fact that we are born into a universe which, if not cruel, is nevertheless indifferent, not only to our individual fate but to that of our species; and to that of every species and to our planet as a whole.

    We are born with minds which may, if some are to be believed, be the most complex thing in the known universe but which are also profoundly unfit for purpose.

    Unless that purpose is mere “survival”. The pursuance of the objectives of Richard Dawkin’s “selfish gene”.

    As a tool to ascertain meaning, purpose the brain is almost useless in its current form. It is a car over-revving in neutral.  A bicycle turned upside down with its wheel spinning – no purchase on the road. Nowhere to go, no traction.

    And as to the universe itself, once you realize it has no “up” and no “down”, no “right” and no “left” you can hardly be surprised that any part of its matter “gifted” with consciousness is bound to feel a little lost.

    The universe as such has no meaning; let alone the multiverse.

    So, what are we to do? We, that tiny part of the universe, those specks of matter which have somehow evolved the awareness to contemplate our surroundings. Our predicament, if you like, is that it is difficult to accept we are accidental. That conscious awareness is an illusion. An illusion in the sense that we “matter”, that we are somehow different from the rest of the metaphorical pebbles on the beach.

    For millennia, for ever, we have told ourselves comforting but misleading stories. We are the center of the universe, we were created by a god to sit at the pinnacle and thereafter at his right hand.

    We have invented laws and morals.  We have fabricated concepts of “right” and “wrong”.  Without those we could not survive but we must not pretend that they are part of the universe.

    We have created our own reality.  Our own creed. And we need it because we have consciousness and must give ourselves a purpose even though the universe has not.

    Even though the multiverse has no “up” and no “down” we must pretend that at least it has a “right” and a “wrong” and we must live our lives accordingly.

    Not because some supernatural god or alien will punish us if we do not or reward us for good behavior if we do.

    But because we want to. Because we have created a small corner of the cosmos where we have decreed that this shall be and that shall not.

    Only the most active of us will seek to minister to the poor, to give comfort to the heathen. No one has “sent us to heal the broken-hearted”. No one has asked us to “preach the gospel to the poor”.

    And yet like Pascal we should behave as if they had. Not because (like Pascal) we have some sneaking suspicion that there is a mysterious creator. But because, in the plain knowledge that the universe is an uncaring and insentient infinity, we choose to so act.

    Because, if we count for anything at all, we should make something where there is nothing.

     

  • 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.