Weltanschaung

The Philosopher’s Stone

zenothestoic@protonmail.ch

Tag: Love

  • 1 Corinthians 13.

    1 Corinthians 13.

    Dream on Paul of Tarsus. Who are you kidding?

    As I sat in a church in Barnes this afternoon, I listened in my usual distracted fashion to the sermon given at a wedding.  I pondered sadly, or perhaps soberly, on the chances of survival of a marriage, any marriage. It ain’t easy; that at least the preacher man admitted.

    I had been invited to sing at the service as part of a small choir and had accepted the chance with much enthusiasm. After mugging up on the divine music for a few days, while down on the rugged cliffs of north Devon, today was the big day. Works by Finzi and the glorious 15th Century composer Juan de Anchieta were sung, side by side with Handel and Welsh hymns.

    As is not uncustomary, the young couple were exhorted to take to heart the wise words of St Paul and to live by those words in their marriage.

    Love.

    Love is all. The couple should be kind to each other, they should not envy.  They should not be rude, selfish; they should think no evil.  Hold no grudges, no fear.

    Behave, in other words, in a way no human has ever done either before or after these words were written.

    And to give him his due, the pastor reckoned such behavior was most unlikely. And then of course the crunch line. J.C. did behave like this; he was a great and good guy and came down to earth to save us all. He behaved perfectly and then pushed off for a couple of thousand years, hoping we would all be lead by his exemplary behavior.

    Right. I’ll do the jokes.

    Oddly enough, the sermon drew me back to my musings on Buddhism, which in general I find more to my taste than the sickly, sweet sugar of Acts.

    My strong suspicion is that reincarnation and enlightenment are about as likely as  leprechauns and the parousia, but at least re-incarnation would give us a chance to get it right next time round. And a bit better the time after that. Provided of course we had not been so naughty we were turned into a worm or a dog.

    You see despite the fact our Jewish chum Paul appears to have wasted his time, he was nonetheless cruising along the right lines.

    Even though none of us manage to behave well the whole time, that should not stop us trying. And it should not stop the Juju men from trying to keep us on the right track.

    So yes, on occasion I am inclined to sigh with exasperation at the naivety of the religious, and yet without them there would be few to advance the ideal as something we should strive for.

    1 Corinthians 13 is a magnificent piece of writing and a noble goal. I applaud that ancient Jew.  My belief however is that until we re-engineer the human genome, such piety will remain pie in the sky. Until we can release ourselves from the shackles of our evolutionary inheritance, St Paul can whistle in the wind.

    1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love I am only a resounding gong or clanging cymbal resounding in the wind.

    2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and can understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have faith, that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

    3 And though I give all I possess to the poor, and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

    4 Love is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up;

    5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;

    6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth;

    7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

    8 Love has no fear; it does not worry; love keeps no records of wrongs; never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away.

    9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part.

    10 But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.

    11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

    12 For now we see in a mirror, darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.

    13 And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

  • Love is……

    Love is……

    While many may disagree, my own belief is that love is a primary and immutable moral imperative and is not subjective or relative to any particular age or society.  We are only just beginning to discover its true nature.

    But what is “love” and can it exist in a universe without sentience?

    First of all, what love is not.

    I do not care to define love in a washy washy sentimental fashion such as you might find in a Charles Schultz Snoopy cartoon or on the back of some ghastly greetings card.

    Nor, despite my constant reference to Bishop Michael Curry, would I wish it defined in a conventional religious sense.

    What is sentience and can love exist without it?

    We do not know what consciousness is nor do we know its prevalence in the universe. Personally, I favor the pan-psychic flavor – that consciousness exists very broadly and in different degrees throughout the universe.  That consciousness is a matter of sufficient complexity in matter. Perhaps rocks have it but almost certainly individual “strings” as in String Theory do not. Nor, presumably, atoms or sub atomic particles. You need more complexity than such basic arrangements of matter provide. See Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory.

    Assuming my supposition is correct I would then define “love” as the abolition of suffering among sentient beings.  And the active promotion of a high hedonic set point.

    And yes, I do believe that this moral goal is imperative. And absolute. And existing with or without humanity. People speak of the difficulties involved and indeed these are great. How to you treat aggression? Should you abort a fetus which will lead, if seen to full term, to a being suffering agonies? Such questions go on, endlessly. But with science we will conquer and cure. Improve and amend.

    Has the Christian interpretation of love always been a good one? What of the tough love meted out over centuries of abuse and bestiality?

    Ignorance, self interest, a failure to appreciate the true meaning. No, the Christian interpretation has not always been a good one, in some hands at least. But that does not mean it is wrong. Merely wrongly applied.

    Sentience comes with its burden as well as its benefits. Its burden is to grow up. Its burden is the responsibility to abandon narrow self interest and work towards the abolition of suffering. For all sentient beings, animal, mineral or vegetable.

    Perhaps there is a universal consciousness. Perhaps Carl Jung was right and that his mysticism is a window on ultimate reality. If so, then that is perhaps where the absolute moral standard of “love ” originates.

    My personal best in the realm of philosophy is Davis Pearce and The Abolitionist Project.

    There is my moral imperative. And if it is not already yours, you should make it so.

     

     

     

  • Father and Son

    Father and Son

    There comes a time in your life when, if you are lucky enough to have a son, you recognize he has become a man. And of course to you, a very special one.

    It isn’t easy being a father, and it is no easier being a son during those long and often difficult years of childhood. Altercations and quarrels are a right of passage and the father is as often at fault as the son. The pressures of providing and paying the bills take a toll on the father, and the endless drudgery of preparation for that task on the son.

    And then suddenly he is 25 and on very special days you may be lucky enough to get him on his own for a while so that you can do “stuff” together.

    “Stuff” is often enough a long walk and lunch out. It was all a bit more exotic when he was a youth and in those days it was likely enough a day in the mountains, walking or skiing, with lunch in some remote hut.

    But all seasons have their gentle pleasures, autumn and winter among them. And nowadays it’s a quiet walk along a wintry beach, listening to the gulls and watching the waves.

    And yesterday was a glorious five mile plod along golden sands, at low tide, between Dickensian Broadstairs and plebeian Margate. Chalk cliffs laced with fine layers of flint, coves and bays and arches of chalk. Smugglers caves and deep chasms up which farmers used to cart seaweed on donkeys to spread on their fields.

    And Margate – who could resist it? The cold has banished the seaside postcards, candy floss and knotted handkerchiefs on reddened scalps. The wind howls and the waves crash against the harbour walls. Antony Gormleys’s stark statue stands tall on the rocks in front of the turner Gallery.

    Who is he, that metal man? A latter day Canute perhaps? Or simply Everyman, you and I facing the vicissitudes of a seemingly barren universe. The cold North Sea and biting wind he faces are certainly that: austere in the extreme. At least in December.

    And lunch in a seafront cafe, what of that? More gentle banter and a day well spent. There are some days in my life that have stood out so far above the common run of things I have never forgotten them. I suspect that yesterday will be one of them.

  • Carpe Diem

    Carpe Diem

    There is nothing quite like a funeral to concentrate the mind; “carpe diem” seems such an apt phrase at such a time.

    Translated as “seize the day”, the Latin original was taken from book 1 of the Roman poet Horace‘s work Odes.

    Such meaning in three words.

    And how similar we are to those ancients, despite two thousand years difference in time and an eternity in technology.

    I am no believer in the wisdom of the ancients, let alone the apocryphal “noble savage” and yet in many deeply meaningful ways, we humans have been so consistent over time in both our strengths and our weaknesses.

    Our weaknesses are all too evident and yet perhaps our strengths can be all too easily overlooked.

    What would you call such a phrase?  More grandly perhaps you would say it is philosophy; at the very least the adjective “philosophical” seems to fit. For those who can only take philosophy seriously when it is written in the tortuous phrases and incomprehensible jargon of a Wittgenstein, then perhaps the phrase is mere folk wisdom, common sense.

    But it is a phrase you should not pass over lightly. It expresses a sentiment which should be lived and breathed – while you do still live and breathe.

    So, what should we do? How exactly should we “seize the day”?

    Oh dear I’m afraid I’m going to go back to the simple message of Bishop Michael Curry again, so beautifully and perhaps more elegantly argued by the glamorous young female clergyman in today’s service.  Love – trying to treat people decently anyway.

    I really don’t like the word “love” – it always makes me feel sheepish and embarrassed. Such an over-used word with such cloying (Uriah Heep!) overtones but one which in some contexts is nonetheless helpful.

    Perhaps I am more comfortable with the word “awareness” and I suspect my friend who was buried today would have felt much the same.

    To seize the day for me is to be fully alive to what happens each moment of each day. Not to be worrying about the future or regretting the past.

    It is about seeing people and talking to them, helping when you can. About empathy and engagement. Not in any religious sense but in a very down to earth, basic practical sense.

    My wife, my child – it is about being “with” them against that day when I will no longer be able to. And others of course but I am not a sociable individual; a few close friends and relatives makes up my world.

    And art, beauty, knowledge, nature. All these things too must be seized. To read Horace’s Odes perhaps, to potter in a summer garden, to drink in a Rembrandt or even a cup of coffee. But to notice it, to be aware. To smell the coffee, to take it all very, very slowly. Not to hurry through it to get to tomorrow or next year.

    These are the topics I would discuss with my friend. Our world views were quite similar but then I suppose we tend to be friends with those who think in similar ways.

    But there must surely be a universality of feeling in the phrase “carpe diem”; it is hard to believe that quiet reflection does not lead most of us down similar paths.   Eventually.

    Do not mourn the dead but be happy you knew them.

  • Bishop Michael Curry – the Royal Wedding

    Bishop Michael Curry – the Royal Wedding

    Bishop Michael Curry preached a fine sermon at the wedding today of Prince Harry and beautiful actress Meghan Markle.

    We must discover love – the redemptive power of love. And when we do that, we will make of this old world, a new world.

    It is all too rare that I listen to a sermon but when I hear a good one, delivered with passion and energy and providing an uncluttered message of hope it cheers my soul. Even though (as a devout atheist and christian apostate) I don’t have one.

    I keep thinking of Utopia. I can not help but hope that secular redemption is possible.  That indeed as the good Bishop preaches “we will make of this old world, a new world.”

    What beautiful sentiments and however you like to define love, I think we know what he means.  Even though when used in public “love” always somehow sounds a little overstated.

    I started wondering whether he needed to fill out his manifesto a bit. If like most good clergyman he seeks to make the earth into a kingdom of his god, then does he have any agenda? Any concrete proposals?

    You see I have been thinking of how to give weight to some of the platitudes I promote. A better world? Sure but what specifically does that mean? Does it require legislation? Higher taxes? Better education? Social awareness? How do we create our Utopia slowly but surely so that it does not degenerate into yet another disastrous killing field like Soviet Russia?

    And then I thought about Bishop Curry’s sermon once again. No, it does not contain any specific recommendations. It is not a political manifesto. It does not venture pedestrian practical steps to ensure the enslaved are freed and the hungry fed.

    I realised that it actually does more than all of that.  “Love thy neighbour as thyself” is actually all you need to do and suddenly his vision becomes realised truth.

    You don’t have to be a believer to realise the truth of this faintly embarrassing phrase.  And yet how difficult it will be to live up to that ideal. It is difficult enough to “love” ourselves yet alone our irritating neighbours playing headbanging music all night.

    But he is right; in the great simplicity of his message he is right. If we were all able to change our nature, to change human nature, to eradicate greed, envy, lust and anger and to treat others as we would wish to be treated ourselves, we would have no need for manifestos and grand political aims. It would all happen.  Food would be shared, shelter and treatment given, violence ended.

    A simple and beautiful message but one none of are likely to put into practice any time soon. Sadly.