Weltanschaung

The Philosopher’s Stone

zenothestoic@protonmail.ch

Tag: Writing

  • We are looking for the following qualities….

    We are looking for the following qualities….

    Such words are prone to make me lift my laptop and smash it to the ground.  I don’t care what qualities you are looking for. I don’t know what your views are and I’m unlikely to find out.

    I still get these aberrant moods when I think I might like to write another book. Or publish a few more irreverent articles in worthy trading magazines. Or write a column or two for the Financial Times.

    I still get these deviant days when I believe that “society” and “people” and “engagement” are where it is at.

    Yesterday was one such day. I cursorily looked up a few editors at dull periodicals and almost convinced myself to send them one of my usual off beat and ranting diatribes.

    For that is what I have become. A “ranter”.  A dealer in diatribe.  A voice of vociferation. Harold Harangue, me.  Tommy Tirade, Ronald Rhetoric.

    Which is why I will stick to my silly little blog. It may be that no one reads the outpourings of an outraged soul but at least they are mine.

    You see, the time has come for me to give up. To admit that this is a world into which I do not fit, nor ever have.

    I wish the world well, and all its peoples. May they prosper and survive. May their happiness increase.

    Lest these words sound the outpourings of a deluded and depressed mind, let me say urgently that they are not.

    I am disillusioned not delusional.  And while it is true that the Noonday Demon never truly lets me rest in peace, accedie has not been too much in evidence for some years.

    Nothing I have to say would be of any interest to the Financial Times, since I am no longer a believer in the economic model to which they still subscribe.  I believe in Gross National Happiness and don’t give a stuff about Gross National Product.

    The Investors Chronicle (for whom I wrote the occasional article) and their readers are believers in the fundamental analysis of financial markets. They give credit even to charting and technical analytical hogwash. Not so me, I fear. And no one wants to be told they are peddling nonsense.

    There is always the possibility that I am just plain wrong of course. That I, not them, am the madman. That they are the keeper; the arbiter of truth and financial goodness.  And I, the inmate.

    But I think not.

    I am sitting in absolute silence, bar the cooing of a pigeon on a bright and dry and achingly beautiful summer’s morning. I am looking out on Tudor gables and fruit trees, grass and wild flowers.

    I am going Down Deal for coffee and a haircut.  And then to lie on the beach at Sandwich and imagine the generations of merchants coming and going down the long gone Wantsum Channel.

    I have become a dreamer; a seeker of truth perhaps.  A soul who yearns to fly above mere mortality to some more pleasant land. To Narnia perhaps; or Middle Earth. To see nyads and dryads and the spirits of streams; to parley with wizards and goblins, elves and pixies.

    Well, perhaps I exaggerate but not by very much.  The world is too beautiful for the Financial Times. The universe has more to offer.

    So back to where we began. My prospective publishers can seek whatever qualities they choose. I am seeking rather different ones and so I think, alas, our paths are unlikely to cross.

  • Do I mean what I write, do I write what I mean?

    Do I mean what I write, do I write what I mean?

    Rather presumptuously mis-categorised under “Psychology”, I was wondering whether I really mean what I write? Or to turn it round another way, do I write what I mean?

    Am I using my blog as a carnival mask? If so why? What would I hope to achieve by that? Why would I need to make myself out to be other than as I am?

    Personality, the human psyche is a complex, multi-faceted phenomena.  We are an emergent product of the laws of the nature but we do not know who are what we are, even after several hundred years of the Enlightenment.  Or rather we do not understand “consciousness”.

    To mis-quote Heraclitus “we never inhabit the same body twice”.  It is (apparently) scientific fact that every atom in our body changes over seven years cycles, so is it even possible to know ourselves if we are always changing?

    My belief is that our blueprint does not change much.  As our body is renewed and changes it atoms, the blueprint it uses remains much the same.

    As I have argued elsewhere, it seems to me that the bedrock of our personality stays with us, even if it is shaped and moulded by the experiences of our life.  We were born with it. It is our genetic inheritance.

    So I ought to be able to answer the question: “do I mean what I write?” since I have had over 60 years to come to know myself and to analyse my behaviour.

    My answer is “yes I do”. And yes, I write what I mean. I do not wear a dissembling mask, I am not trying to disguise myself, fool my readers.

    In general then, I do not try to hide too much, although I may sometimes be more polite than I feel. Basically, I want to be left alone.

    I don’t want some fool politician shoving “multiculturalism” and “gender awareness” down my throat (equally I have no problem, let alone hatred for other races and cultures).

    I don’t like the human species all that much, and have a particular distaste for business,  “businessmen” and salesmen all of which and whom I find grubby and venal.

    And yes, I do detest poverty, violence and greed and wish the world were a better place. Sadly I have never done anything to make it so. Maybe my blog is a very small step in that direction.

     

     

  • Catharsis in Writing

    Catharsis in Writing

    The act of self expression in writing seems to provide relief from strong or long repressed emotions – a catharsis.  Whether anybody reads what you have written or not, to formalise in writing your innermost thoughts, your worldview, your grievances, your joys and your sadness brings an incredible freedom, a sense of deep release.

    It seems perhaps that an internal mental expression is not sufficient; a silent inner realisation, however profound, does not provide the same strong cathartic effect as the crafting of the written word, the sentence, the paragraph.

    Perhaps it is because we have to take so much care with the written word; do we really mean this or that? Is that really how we feel? Perhaps it is because the use of language is the only thing which makes thought possible above the banal levels we need for bodily survival.  Language forms an integral part of true consciousness it seems: qualia can no doubt be felt without language but how much more poignant and meaningful to be able to define, express, codify and categorise in actual words what it feels like to be sad or joyful, to experience the deep red glow of a sunset.

    So I think perhaps language is essential for depth in feelings and written language seems to solidify, to realise the internal emotion.

    Does it matter who you are writing for? Perhaps not. Does it matter whether you are read? Perhaps not. It would be unwise indeed to put truly dark thoughts onto paper and into the public domain – but happily I do not have any. Therefore I feel free to write what I choose and to express myself as I see fit.

    In an afternoon well spent yesterday with a cerebral and cultured friend, we discussed the ideal life and wondered what we should have done with our lives while we sat in the late spring sunshine, on deck chairs, in a beautiful and quiet garden.

    Could we have avoided the hustle and ghastliness of our respective careers in law and finance? The grim, difficult and determined people we had to suffer to earn our daily bread.

    He said that to write would have been the way out.  But how few are those blessed with the good fortune of being paid for the endeavour!

    Happily later in life you can benefit from the catharsis of writing without having to count on film rights and tea shirt sales.  I may not have the imagination to write of demons but expressing my own seems good enough.  I don’t need the success of Harry Potter to achieve catharsis nor do I desire the riches of Midas.

  • Why Write a Blog

    Why Write a Blog

    I write because I enjoy writing and to educate myself.  It helps my own understanding of my cranky pet subjects as I try to convey my enthusiasms to my non-existent audience.

    It is highly probable that I will never make a cent out of it but then I find commerce, salesmen and “busy-ness” so indescribably sordid I’m not sure I care. Especially at my age.  Sure, it would be nice to generate some revenue – nothing wrong with that. But advertising and aggressively pushing product is somehow so utterly vulgar and distasteful.

    So I have taken a different course.  If there are books or films I have read and enjoyed I feel no guilt or embarrassment about adding a link to Amazon.com but I certainly don’t want to promote any old tat or to cover my blog with vulgar and thoroughly irritating commerce.

    Equally I feel pretty ambivalent on choosing content for an “audience”:  I will write exactly what I want to write, no more no less. If anybody wants to read it, fine. If they do not – well that’s equally fine. I do not imagine there are hordes of the faithful wishing to hear my cranky and often rather obscure or bad tempered thoughts.

    Self education and self awareness are an important part of it for me. I have been searching for answers to difficult questions my entire life and those answers will come, if at all, by a relentless and dedicated search for truths.

    I am aware that I very often get carried away by what I can only describe as mysticism.  I get carried away by a feeling of awe when I finally understand harmony, or meditate on a mountain or in a lonely Norman Church.

    But my awe is not a religious one. Yes, in a broad sense it is certainly spiritual but not in the sense of some religious nutter or new age fanatic. I would indeed love to hear the voice of god but my god is a very different one. Awe and wonder are to be found in excess in the natural physical world and I believe the universe is strange and wonderful enough without the need to imagine forces any more mysterious than we can discover by rational scientific enquiry.

    Those forces are numinous enough and it is my strongly held conviction that conscious beings will eventually achieve powers and knowledge which would make them godlike anyway.

    So yes, I am writing about subjects which interest me and its largely “scientific” enquiry by an ignorant laymen into the wonders of the universe.  If that sounds arrogant and intolerant – well it probably is. At heart I’m a grumpy old hermit who has lost any desire to “fit in” with what most people would call “normality”.