Have you solved the problem*?

 I smell you're not completely convinced about Dulaism. The beast should decide to devour you, regardless whether it is its brain or mind making the decision.

One of the joys of philosophy is the quale of problem solving. Well known to Thomas Aquinas**, the joy is also accessible to minor philosophers. Let us ee if I can get you to share in it by helping you solve a certain crucial philosophical problem with this simple situation and straightforward alternative. It’s either-or. Or it’s a muddle like that in which most of contemporary philosophy is immersed up to its upper gray cells.


When I’m writing this post; when I’m trying to figure out how to put my long-winded thoughts into slightly shorter sentences; when I think up possible punch lines (and then decide to give up); when I choose between a number of openings (I’ve changed the beginning a few times, in the end deciding on a theme supplied by a young guy sitting next to me who's just announced: ‘Problem Solved’) –

– do I make a specific decision and write a specific thing because a moment earlier something physical or chemical happened in my brain? Or something physical or chemical happens in my brain because a moment earlier I came up with a specific idea?

In short: is it who writes the post? or is it: what writes the post?


 

*or let me rephrase if you're a naturalist or materialist (and believe in emergentism fairies - who bring your consciousness in the dead of the night when you're fast asleep dreaming of eternity -  and naturalism - **** it! - tales): have your synapses done an enlightening job here?

**This simple story – and I’m one of the believers: I have a gut feeling it did happen – always puts a smile on my face as bright as his explanations and sends a wave of another precious quale in my mind, the kind you get when you encounter a good punch(line): Doctor Angelicus was having a meal with King Louis IX and was dead silent. At some point, I can’t remember whether the anecdote specifies during which course, the Philosopher# banged his fist on the table, raised the King off his seat and shouted: ‘I’ve got it!’ Then, replying to the King’s curious (they were friends and the monarch probably took no – or little – offence) look, added: ‘The answer to the Manicheans.’


#Thomas, not Aristotle. I just use a capital ‘P’, because one should when referring to him, shouldn’t one?

The Rite of Naturalism

I listened to The Rite of Spring yesterday*. A little earlier [also on BBC Radio 3#] a choreographer talked about a long and intensive preparation for a performance of the piece and how during the dress rehearsal he and the dancers finally understood that ‘its meaning was that it had no meaning’. ‘What a misunderstanding!’ I thought and recalled that the music (I've never seen the ballet part of it) struck me as pagan right from the beginning, the ten or twenty (or was it thirty? who cares...) years ago when I first heard it.

It doesn’t take a philosopher to grasp the meaning of the piece – it is pressed, at times painfully, into your ears, skin and heart. Whatever your intellect chooses to call it, its gist is aggressively and heartlessly shoved against you. And the gist of the piece is Naturalism. Stravinsky’s vision is one of soulless, heartless nature - a nature that is going to trod over you after it overwhelms you. It may amaze you at some point, but don’t fool yourself: you’re not going to amaze her**. If you’re still alive, you can join her procession (not that anyone cares); if you start to stumble, she’ll push you to the ground, overgrow you and leave there to be eaten by minor, equally insignificant participants of the mindless march to nowhere to reach nothing; then – at that stage you won’t care by what or whom  – what's left of you will be trodden deep into the late March or early April mud and never heard of again, neither during the next nor any other – should God decide they may come after all this naturalist blasphemy – Godless Rites of Sweet Spring…

*100^th anniversary

** sic - sounds better here.

Emotional subsistence … Fabulous Beast's Rite of Spring. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

[original Guardian caption]

PS After I wrote this I looked up a number of sources [Wikipedia] on the piece. I knew something about the first infamous performance at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in 1913, but not about what Stravinsky had said or thought about it. What I found beat my expectations ('dance herself to death' - so beautiful, so true; in a naturalistic way, that is):

[...] in his 1936 autobiography he described the origin of the work thus: "One day [in 1910], when I was finishing the last pages of L'Oiseau de Feu in St Petersburg, I had a fleeting vision ... I saw in my imagination a solemn pagan rite: sage elders, seated in a circle, watching a young girl dance herself to death. They were sacrificing her to propitiate the god of Spring. Such was the theme of the Sacre du Printemps".


#Intriguingly - or tellingly - there didn’t seem to have been a lot on the radio concerning the philosophical aspect of the work aired by the British state broadcaster. Why are people afraid of philosophy? Of big questions? Of God?  (well, I know why. If you want to know too, stay tuned).

Peaceful (or I'll burst)

Honestly, I need to chill out.

Democracy: What do you think? (If you do)

Read and vote yourself:

Guest: "We asked how voters would rate an MP if he or she rebelled 10 per cent of the times against their party's discipline in Parliament and the respondents approved of them; when we asked for an opinion about MPs who voted 90 per cent in line with their party’s discipline, people highly disapproved.”

Anchor: “The parties are going to find it difficult to implement those findings.”

(There came no further comment on the idiocy of (at least some) voters; the idiocy of the system; or the idiocy of the journalists themselves.)

I just can't take any more of democracy.

Political news insults me and drags me down. Thinking, discussing or commenting on the system offends my intellect. One more news item about same old same old , one more  imbecilic interview, one more idiotic policy and I’ll burst.

PS More soon.

A Stalk 'er! (A Lover)

I overheard two young men talk. One of them was nodding, the other was saying something about noticing her, thinking something, liking her very much, not being sure, maybe waiting a little for… I interrupted him (in my mind): “You semi-lover of minor balls! If you fancy her, don’t procrastinate - stalk her!”

PS Obviously, true loving is maniacal stalking. Isn’t it?

Illustration 

Die Deutsche Grüne Idioten

I hate to tell you that, but told you so.

PS The rule of the (sun scortched) thumb seems to be: idiots will pay. I can confidently say so - I've paid a lot.

Go, Vikings, Go!

Re: Stockholm events

I haven't looked the situation up yet, but if it's the Vikings waking up, I'll just say: go on! take that lefty, totalitarian prison down, you were born to be free!! Go, Vikings, Go!! (not necessarily to these shores, though...)

A booty-taking script

Re: the successful (so far; touch wood) Cannes jewellery heist.

There must be a Palme d'Or-winning, booty-awarded script somewhere in here.

PS I'm certains someone has realised this yet, and someone (else?) has said it too. But not me. And one of the numerous mottoes of this blog is: Perhaps everything has already been said; but not by every blog.

The Sword

For a couple of weeks or so I’ve been turning in my head a few images and sentences that started during a Night Journey of a certain false prophet and ended somewhere in Córdoba. I wanted to write things down and mention deserts, minarets, beautiful explicit stories and beautiful veiled women, mysterious markets, intelligent physicians, honourable knights, sophisticated mystics, intricate laws, and orange groves in Andalucía – out of which a sword would emerge.

But now, I’ll leave it for a while.




PS And maybe refer you to that great lecture.

Stupid Stubborn Lethal Conceit

A friend of mine (by Jove! he's so quick-witted and funny; it would be a loss if he ended up in Hell...) tells me he's not interested in religion or God. I ask him if he's interested in himself.

(He proceeded to explain to me that God, "if there were God*", wouldn't need all those complex and complicated way to make Himself known to us. I asked him how, by Jove, would he - i.e. my friend -know.)

PS Oh, how it frustrates me when people decide to write themselves out of existence through sheer stupid, sulking stubbornness.

*Sorry God for this offensive, oxymoronic sentence - I'm just relating what the fool said; but then, what do I know about his heart? Maybe he's just a hurt, lonely, stubborn boy - like that man in Ludgate Hill at Lady Thatcher's funeral?


music: I don't know the woman or why she's there, but that's the only decent version of the song I've found; by Jove! how Dylan or his label guard their stuff! (I know I've played that song and made that comment before; if you recall them, just ingore the comment and listen to the song - but the whole of it this time, please)

Love (Sorted)

Romantic Love - I think I've sorted it , philosophically. (To be continued)

Democracy (Sorted)

 Need we look any further?

 

When asked (today on Today, BBC Radio 4; but he'd said that before) about his earlier comment on the  UKIP as full of "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists", the Prime Minister of one of the world's oldest and most prestigous - some would even go as far as to say representative - democracy replied : "It’s no point insulting a party who won the vote of a large number of people".

So this his how democratic logic works: stupid, unless supported by enough voters.

 

It's been ages...

 

 

(I didn’t switch radio stations fast enough the other day, and a scrap of sports news* managed to reach me.)

When I was born, sometime in the late 60s*, I looked back and thought: “Surely, not much can happen, history-wise, in my lifetime. Everything has already happened.”

But then man landed on the Moon, Halley's Comet returned, a Pole became Pope, Communism collapsed and Sir Alex Ferguson retired.***

*human interest in sports news is a strong hint that we are meant for immortality; otherwise, who on earth would waste precious time to hear about yesterday’s football results??

**of the 20^th, not 19^th centrury.

***a while ago scientists managed to revive an Egyptian mummy. One of its firsts questions was: Does Sir Alex still manage Manchester United, as he did when my grandfather reigned?

Yes, Tum Ho.

I’ve looked up ‘Tum Ho’. And as an apt coincidence for a blog that obsesses about Him Who Is it turns out to mean ‘You are’. (Tum ho paas mer, saath mere - in Hindi; You are near me, with me - in the local lingo).

PS I will never stop being shaken by the waves of the thrill caused by witnessing how what Aristotle wrote merged in a great intellectual climax, accompanied by a grand display of mind fireworks, with what Moses recounted; how Aristotle’s Prime Mover, the Pure Ultimate Being, converged with the Bible’s “I Am That I Am” and exploded in front of Aquinas, myself and a bunch of others blowing our minds away as the unfathomable but intellectually coherent God that there is, and whom we know.

Swivel-eyed??

As a fully paid-up* member of the Polish Friends** of the Conservative Party Club I strongly object to two things: describing grassroots party activists as 'swivel-eyed' and, more importantly (at least until I l look it up), the party's top ranks using words I don't know.



*in the intellectual currency
**characterised by an on/off loyalty (more 'off'' these days)


PS I agree with Archbishop Cranmer (illustration) that one of the real swivel-eyed (whatever that means) loons is Geoffrey Howe.

Someone has to pay

You misunderstood? Someone has to pay!

Soon after I woke up this morning, I picked up yesterday's thread of misunderstanding (but first of all – and perhaps too late – I tried to nip in the bud a misunderstanding whose seed I left in the very post dealing with the problem) and I remembered my brief but invigorating argument with an admirable – in most respects - Welsh Catholic, with whom I had clashed over Margaret Thatcher's legacy outside the Cathedral.

To a large degree, I am sure, we must have misunderstood each other; additionally, I regretted that I allowed this to happen on a Sunday, which I’d been trying for a while now to make a shopping-  and politics-free day in my life. I wondered who was more to blame for the tense exchange. On the one hand it was the tiny badge (of a workers’ organisation) in the lapel of his suit that provoked my question. On the other, I didn't really have to follow his answer up with my hard-hitting query - I should have left the sleeping mines lie. 

So for a minute or two I had been turning Welsh miners, British policemen, Arthur Scargill, Keith Joseph, popes John Paul II and Francis in my head and recalling which of us (the Welsh syndicalist and the Polish libertarian) said what, when suddenly our tiny feud* paled into insignificance: I realised that I'm standing before one of the most cruel  misunderstandings that I may ever witness in my life: a patriot widely hated for her patriotism; an honourable, honest, conscientious, self-sacrificing woman who devoted her whole life to the country she loved, who – through perseverance in face of fierce opposition and daunting obstacles – rescued that country from economic collapse... and was misunderstood and condemned by a large part of her fellow-countrymen. If there has ever been a semi-tragic** personal story of a nearly absurd  political misunderstanding of truly shocking proportions, this is the one. This time round – I did cry, just like I did at her funeral.

And then I got overwhelmed by all those cross-purposes, wrong ends of the stick, confusions, misconceptions, delusions, misstatements, accusations, illusions, misinterpretations and damned lies***. In a sinister flash of memory, I went back to the times when, driven by a misunderstanding and suspicious mind, I assaulted unsuspecting, unscheming others cogitatione, verbo, opere et omissione.

It all crushed on me like a ton of suffocating calumnies. I felt that we'v produced simply too much misunderstanding and mistrust for this bloody world to go on –  it either must blow up, or someone must die.

And having seen how our misguided minds work, I just imagined how - in the greatest misunderstanding this Universe will ever know - a completely innocent Jew could one day hang for our misconceptions.

*in which I declared a lot of the social teaching of John Paul II, and the Catholic Church as a whole, as mistaken (I am of the opinion that my Church misunderstands, in many respects, the way societies and markets work).

**a lot of her compatriots did understand her after all; when she was still holding office, or finally.

*** I'll leave statistics out of this for some reason; I haven't made up my mind about it.


Photo: http://paulsjourneytolife.blogspot.com

Everything

On my way to the Holy Mass (late, again... I’m going to rot in Hell one day if I continue at that speed!) I cut through a dull shopping mall, situated more or less in the middle of the city.

It’s a massive, nondescript structure full of stuff and people.

“Fools!!”, I whispered, “instead of putting in the very centre a Cathedral to the Lord of Everything*, you just put here everything**."

*and worship Him

**and worship it

PS The Cathedral is not far off. Dwarfed by the cancerous monster, it humbly stands adjacent to it. As an additional offence, they share the name. But then, nearly everything in Cardiff is St David's in name, even if not in spirit.

MisU.

No, you don't understand, it's not a mistake: only love can un-misunderstand us;

but not the way they understood it.

After half-a-day-ful* of all sorts of painful - and very tiring - misunderstandings with all sorts of people on all sorts of fronts of my contentious (& generally misunderstood) life, I heard of Richard Wagner** asking a Jewish conductor, son of a Rabbi, to lead some of the last performances of Parsifal at Bayreuth, not long before the end of Wagner's (largely misunderstood) life. I was so depressed that I nearly cried***. I went to the window to let more air and light in (true to the day’s form, I misunderstood the evening sun and gained next to nothing in enlightenment). On the other side, sitting at the bottom of the niche, was a pigeon. It looked at me with mindlessness in its eyes, which I took for sympathy and smiled at it. It flew away, scared – by my smile, I bet.    

PS For a moment I nearly started doubting if one of the four persons that I believe understand me at the moment, really does. And even if the Father, the Holy Spirit and Jesus still do – as they do – it may well turn out at some point, that exactly today I completely misunderstood myself.

PS2 I've just looked up the Wagner/Parsifal/Levi story and there seems to be some kind of misunderstanding.

*sorry, I just can't stop myslef. But it' my blog and laissez-moi-faire! ... for once! (sorry, I feel like I need a proper rant; but fear not - it's not going to be at you; unless, that is... - or later, later)

**200 on Wednesday
***at the fact that W. may have been mistunderstood, not that he - as it seemed, but now it seem it was not what it seemed - asked a Jew to conduct Parsifal. Wow! - if I was misunderstood here, it could be bloody dangerous: I guess you're just rounded up and executed summarily if you're anti-semitic# these days.

#simply misspelt: no anti-Semitism implied, right?

PS 3. If this is not an apt dessert, I misunderstand what is: 

[from Wikipedia]

At Bayreuth performances audiences do not applaud at the end of the first act. This tradition is the result of a misunderstanding arising from Wagner's desire at the premiere to maintain the serious mood of the opera. After much applause following the first and second acts, Wagner spoke to the audience and said that the cast would take no curtain calls until the end of the performance. This confused the audience, who remained silent at the end of the opera until Wagner addressed them again, saying that he did not mean that they could not applaud. After the performance Wagner complained "Now I don't know. Did the audience like it or not?"^[22] At following performances some believed that Wagner had wanted no applause until the very end, and there was silence after the first two acts. Eventually it became a Bayreuth tradition that no applause would be heard after the first act, but this was certainly not Wagner's idea. In fact during the first Bayreuth performances Wagner himself cried "Bravo!" as the Flower-maidens made their exit in the second act, only to be hissed by other members of the audience.^[22]

Arrêtez! Je t’aime

 

The other jour I bought a little booklet* for my daughter, a rather slow learner of French (v. good marks at school, which is some kind of comfort: local foreign language teaching seems to be as merde** as it is back in the native country). She's not going to get that booklet for a while though, due to its approach to dating ("The Dating Game") and one unforgivable omission: the section (“Romance”) talks about , meeting her at the hotel, going out for a drink, sexual preferences, hugging and leaving her alone, but never asks the basic question: “Do you come here often?”

 

(Instead I found this endearing  romantic litany:

Puis-je vous enlancer/embrasser?

Oui.

Non.

Arrêtez!

Je t’aime.)

 

*French Phrase Book & Dictionary, Berliz, 2012 (Eleventh printing)

**oui, I know it’s a noun, but it’s my blog and the motto is laissez-moi-faire.

pic: http://pics6.this-pic.com; not by me, so no suing, s'il vous plaît.

Truth pee told...

I stepped into the shower thinking  about something connected with the issue of taxation, which led me to the subjects of property and free will. Then, via the problem of coercion as as an aspect of politics, I arrived to the core of the state. From there I went on, I can’t remember exactly why, to contemplate the question of truth and recalled that profound adage offered by some ancient thinker: “There are two types of men: damned liars and those who pee in the shower.*”

*not that I would do it.

PS I've just remembered: it wasn't an ancient thinker, but a local stand-up comedian.

pictures: top - stylehive.com; bottom: etsy.com

Osborn v. Lab

You know, some criticize George Osborn and his budget. Think then what would be going on with Labour in charge

Leave those poor guys alone!

National governments have thrown on their heads two tons of regulations; the E.U. has added another three. The regulations change every two or three months, so those brave men have to employ hordes of no-value-adding accountants and lawyers whose only job is to (try to) work out what various chaotic parliaments and dysfunctional departments come up with - as if out of spite or mere boredom, it often seems. For each employee, those hard-working men have to fill in whole books, calculate and pay all sorts of contributions, fees and taxes.

So what do Google, Amazon, Starbucks and a host of other intrepid crews do? Do they throw in the towel and apply for pen-pushing, Guardian-advertised, no-brainer jobs at the local council or other overblown, overpaid and underperforming public body? No.

They persevere and keep providing jobs to some citizens and services to others. And surprise, surprise - they're making a big buck in the process. But this is what they do: they're business people, entrepreneurs, capitalists, in case Ms Hodge hasn't noticed. They provide many good things to many good people (plus a few perverts, in the case of Google) at acceptable prices.

If Ms Hodge manages to make them pay more tax, they'll manage to make us pay higher prices*. Simples. And crucially - this all is taking place in an economy that is being taxed, charged and regulated to within inches of strangulation: big companies barely move, small businesses barely breathe, families barely pay the bills.

And amid all this Ms Hodge, MP, summons them – taking them away from work (probably further struggle with another stupid rule cooked up the other day by Ms Hodge’s colleagues) and tell them- and the country - good news that the tax code has been simplified, rates lowered and regulations de-cretinized, so that they can focus on growh and citizens on life, rather than tax dodging, tax avoidance or simply survival? Oh, no. She tells them that those businessmen on whose determination, hard work and skills so many of us - income-wise - depend are "devious, calculated and unethical". More - that they simply “do evil”.

Taking all this into account, you can deduce that Ms Hodge is either devious, calculated, unethical, evil - or simply an idiot.

Whatever the conclusion regarding her person, there is something else - for Pete’s sake, leave those poor guys alone!!

 

*this is what happens, much, much more often than not. I won't go into how it happens.. or actually why not: if Google have a dominant position in the market, they'll put up the prices because they can. If they don't have a dominant position in the market, the prices are already as low as they can be, because of competition. (And if all the players take advantage of the tax arrangements used by Google, they'll either all have to put up prices - and lose some customers, which in turn means redundancies and less income in taxes for the state; or they'll all keep the prices down and lose some of their income, which will end up in some players dropping out, which in turn means redundancies and less income for the state. What could be the plus side of all this tiresome and unproductive hassle? More work for Ms Hodge & co, which is probably exactly what motivates all this angry, mindless hyper-activity...) 

PS What a simple, effective put down on the part of Lin Homer, HMRC chief executive and permanent secretary. (A little settling of scores after one of the previous sessions, on which I also commented here, by the way)

For Life

"A Bag For Life" - what a silly name. What happens if it bursts?

 

PS Above you see the original version, mine. But - as you may have realised yet, and I just have - the graphomaniac in me just won't be written off easily. And I've decided to keep his version after all - as a warning.

“A Bag For Life”. What does it mean? I have two drawers full of bags for life and I don’t know what to do or think*. Is is about the bag's life or mine? The 'life' in question can't really be the bag's as the sentence would be a tautology; besides, bags don't live. So it must be about my life. Am I supposed to keep them till I die? Some of them are ugly, so that's an unpleasant thought. Pehaps the fact that I have so many of them suggests more intensive life? Or more versatile life? More unfocused, all over the place kind of, life (yes, must be this)? Or, and this is a thrilling** idea!, maybe the bugs sum up and I'm going to live to be 4700 or thereabouts (at the last quick count)? But all these questions pale into metaphysical insignificance if you think of this scenario:

Imagine someone, say Jonathan. He is 35, middle-class, fit & jogging, supersticious (important) type of person, who takes these things seriously, you know –  all those government warnings, E.U. guidelines, producer instructions, quango recommendations, BBC appeals, UN resolutions, five-fruit-a-day, no-more-than-four-units-per-day kind of things. He believes in man-made 'global warming' too, rather than man-invented global-warming (but this is just a teaser of the next post, so don't be put off***). When Jon sees: “ A Bag For Life” and he reads: “A Bag For Life” and he understands "A Bag For Life". So he keeps it, he washes it, irons it and makes sure - unlike me - that he uses the bag more than once.

Then, one evening, Jon's best pal rings and asks if it's OK to swing by to watch a soccer match together (not that they're an item, it's just that the pal's TV is playing up - no sound). So Jon - still in his track suit -grabs his Bag For Life and pops out to the local grocers. He buys the stuff he needs, including some high quality vitamins, minerals and herbal supplements (Jon looks after his system), packs everything into the bag (the shop assistant notices what the bag claims and jokes that, judging by its perfect condition, our hero is going to live to be 150 or better ... ha, ha!) and leaves.

Or is about to leave.

Just before he does, he notices a Hobgoblin on one of the shelves teasing him: "What's the matter lagerboy? Afraid you may taste something?" Jon smiles.The fact is he is a lager man, but just because he prefers lager, not that he's afraid of anything. However, on the spur of the moment, just to prove the goblin wrong, he turns back and buys one bottle of the Wychwood ale. He chucks it in the Bag For Life, leaves the shop properly and starts his brisk home-ward walk. He smiles at the shopkeeper's joke (prophetic?), and feels good anticipating a pleasant evening, weekend and, generally, life. Then, some twenty steps away from the shop the bag bursts.

ASDA (a.k.a. Walmart, for the information of my American visitors)

*I mean: about this issue; not, like, in life or stuff (but then again...)
**unless the last 4600 of those years I’d have to spend bed-ridden, serviced by an ugly, leftist, talkative, state-provided nurse (and a male one, to boot).
***I mean be - if you must - put off the next post, but not this one.

"Dualism sucks"?

*

I’ve decided to look up ‘Tum Ho’. I should have done it before nailing it above the entrance to my blog - it could mean anything: “Taxes can’t be lowered and the government needs to grow” or “Dualism sucks!” (oh dear! – a cold shiver has just gone down my spine...) or "Stupid Blog - Avoid."

Really, I shoud have known better. I can recall a quite recent situation, which should have made me doubly aware of potential lexical dangers. I was taking part in a sing&dance session during which, as a warm-up, our instructor wanted us to sing a simple and quite melodic African folk song. The words were easy to learn, which we did, and we were just about to start, when I had a brain wave. “Hang on. What are the lyrics about?” I demanded. “I don’t know”, the man admitted. I could see a potential problem: “What if the song goes: ‘Down with the white man!’?" The instructor didn’t know what to say, but assured me that he’d seen a translation at some point and it was all nice and innocent PC stuff. I didn’t believe him, but because we were on the safe outskirts of Europe, a good few decades after the African branch of the British Empire was taken down and because there was only one black person in our group, I joined in with the rest.

PS I know that ‘Tum Ho’ makes a short and innocent first impression, but it’s so easy to be misled. In some European languages we have some pretty tricky cases, too. There is a word, e.g., that means: “depressing, suicidal, biased in favour of nothingness and meaninglessness”, but all you hear is a neat “materialist” or its synonym, equally nasty in implicatios, but even more confusing “naturalist”.

The moral is that one always, always should look things up. Preferably in this blog.



*not that Celts have anything to do with any of the examples (apart from being, linguistically, Indo-European as I have a hunch 'Tum Ho' will turn out to be too); which is not to say that they don't have their share of nasty, subtle buggers - I bet that the local 'naturalist' in doing its subvertive job somewhere in the valleys of Glamorgan.

Nearly an issue

I'm not sure if I'd go that far, but it begins auspiciously.

(Don't lead yourself into stupid temptation)

I was passing a young man in Charles Street, Cardiff, Wales. He was loading bundles of colourful magazines into a small van. I had a brain wave, so I stopped and turned to him.

“Any chance you could sell me one directly?” 

He smiled.

“C’mon, let's cut out the middleman!” I pressed.

He kept smiling. “No, I’m afraid I can’t do that.” Unfortunately it took him a split second too long to reject my proposition and I thought I saw a glint of hesitation in his eyes. What’s worse, on the cover of the magazines - which he was about to take to the sellers - I noticed one of my greatest heroes and, for a split second too long, I considered repeating my proposition.

It made sense: he’d sell me a few copies – with the John Lennon feature I’d buy a few rather than just one, to give to friends and to keep for posterity; If I saved, say, a quid on the normal price, he’d make a fiver or so for himself. Nice and easy, cash in hand. We exchanged one more glance. Then, just before I was to say something - I don't even want to know what - I quickly turned and walked away... scared at how dangerously close it suddenly got.

(10.00 a.m., April 15, outside The Big Issue HQ in Cardiff)

illustration: www.anonymousartofrevolution.com

Defeatism v. Beauty (2:0)

To discuss a woman’s breasts feels awkward, even to me. I have no issue with discussing the woman’s breasts as such, as a serious philosophical question, or even challenge, but I’m not used to focusing on specific breasts - unless behind closed doors. In this case I’ll make an exception, though. Firstly, because these specific breasts have already been brought into the open by their former mistress; and secondly, because for better or for worse this pair has long been a concern of all men of good will. (In fact I believe that all female breasts are our concern, but due to their sensitive nature, it’s not something I would normally discuss openly; again - unless philosophically).

Once we have established the subject is legitimate, it is only appropriate to start by expressing sympathy for Angelina Jolie. How hard, painful and at times devastating – or nearly devastating - the ordeal must have been – I just cannot imagine. That she has kept, or regained, her composure commands highest respect.

However, my immediate thought on hearing the terrible news was: “What defeatism!” The issue I have with the path Mrs Pitt took – and it is an issue of principle – is that she decided to remove her breasts as a preventative measure and I view the thinking behind it a fallacy.The correct philosophical mantra, in my opinion, should go: always give life a chance, always take risks, always expect the good, even if not the best, and - change tack not when a storm is possible, but when it’s coming. We know that death, illness, general deterioration of health are all imminent and we also know that all of them work in surprising ways. Odds can, and often are, beaten. Living by statistics can be not only inhumane, but also inhuman.

Secondly: in this case the tension was between quantity and quality, between the statistically predicted – but merely predicted – length of life and the beauty of life. And, in the long run, it is beauty that seems to be a safer and more rational bet. We know that our present life will let us down, and if any of us have any aspiration of continued existence, it is exactly through beauty that we hope to achieve it. True, it is on the moral beauty, i.e. the beauty of one's character, that our bet is usually placed, not the corporeal kind. But is it not sometimes hard - for a man at least - to distinguish one from the other?

And finally: shouldn't this sombre story of a tragic alternative and a loss of beauty reinforce in all of us a desire of and a belief in a new world and new creation, where Angelina Jolie will be forever beautiful, forever physically attractive (as she still is; but much less now - there's no escaping this truth) and forever boasting two magnificent breasts? And if there are those who lack this desire and this belief, shouldn't we pray that Angelina's physical loss may turn into their spiritual gain - and make them desire to gain that belief*?

 

The game is not only about raiding tombs, but also getting out of them.

*as a precondition of a new, even better body#; new, even better boobs - and new, better everything. (Amen.)

#hard to imagine in Mrs Pitt's case; until now.

PS And if you tell me that you've put up with your (upcoming) loss of beauty, health and life, I'll tell you - humbug!



Edouard Manet Blonde with Bare Breasts. c.1878. Oil on canvas. Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France

What if he doesn't?

(Segovia starts playing at about 20"; all goes black at 40'' - it's part of the idea;

don't worry if you can't see it.) 

A pair of beautiful dark-brown eyes passed me in the street. The rest of the slender woman* was wrapped in black, which – egged on by bracing Westerly wind – clung sensually to her forbidden body. But it was her face I wanted to focus on – and couldn’t. All she wanted to show me, and the world, was a horizontal strip starting just below her ravishing black hair** and finishing, cruelly, an inch or so lower.

"Oh, how Arabic***!", I thought, "How romantic!" There is only one man that can take that veil in his hands - and remove it; there is only one man that can put his head close to that hair - and smell it; there is only one man that can slowly run his index along those lips – and kiss them; there is only one man in the whole Allah-given Universe that can look at that face – and appreciate it.

Then I stopped in my tracks.

“What if he doesn’t?”

*(informed) guesswork
**(innocent) fantasy
***not necessarily

photo: spanish-steps.tumblr.com

It's Dualism, stupid!

Exactly*

A piece of some new research shows that the last vestige of Naturalists/Emergentalists'** hope of being able to carry on messing up kids' minds has been put out of scientists' heads, I've just learnt.***

A part of the human brain which, they hoped, owing to its size could help them perpetuate their claim to be able one day to pin down (ha, ha!) Thought  - and go on spinning their lethal materialist yarn**** - has been, well, cut to size: contrary to some expectations, it's not much bigger than its counterpart in primates.*****

But who cares? Definitely no philosopher worthy of his title. The size of the brain, or even its existence does not matter a jot! Our differentia specifica is not in our brain, but in our mind.

It's Dualism, stupid!

Exactly!

*or actually - probably not.
** I've failed to unearth a relevant link from under a ton or so of new stuff that has been thrown onto the Internet heap since yesterday. I heard it on Radito 4's Today programme. But, really, who cares? I can't afford to clutter my brain with such un-philosophical trivia - it's simply not big enough.
***mine: those who believe in fairies, dwarfs (fairy-tale guys, not unfortunate people), Santa and Emergentism.
****yes, I can see the problem: I cannot perpetuate those sentences indefinitely. I'll start working on this soon (but they are so interesting, aren't they?, that you'll continue to devour them, won't you?#), although I can't make a definte committment, as - as you probably can appreciate - some old habits die rather hard owing to a well-documented phenomenon of ... - (OK, not funny; but I keep trying. Appreciated?)
*****form the jungle, not the holy Roman-Catholic church

#please...

Cleveland Police - Avoid

Cleveland Police: Putting People Behind Bars First, Investigating Later?

"Cleveland police admitted arresting a man despite having absolutely no grounds…", a shred of a news bulletin reached me – and a shiver went down my spine (I've been thinking for a while now about going to the States to visit my cousins, who - fortunately - live quite far from Cleveland).

I wondered: is that the same Cleveland Police who doggedly ignored tip-offs form the public concerning three abducted women they’d been ‘looking for’ for a decade? The same police who released the two brothers of the kidnapper of the above-mentioned women (whom they never found) because, it seems, they didn’t live in the same room as their perverted mental brother – just in the same house, so they couldn’t have possibly known anything? “If I ever go to the states”, I decided on the spur of the news, “I’ll make sure Cleveland is not on my itinerary! (And if for some reason it is, I’ll refuse to have anything to do with the local police; unless they arrest me, that is.)”

I simply don’t want to end up in a cell and be able to overhear things like this: 

[21.00 Eastern Time, Cleveland Police Department.]

The sound of a ringing phone reaches my cell (no. 7), in which I've spent the last five days of my American dream holiday. I wake up. Someone answers the phone and I recognise the voice of the officer that interrupted my lunch at a local 'Big Fat Burger Joint'  five days ago to arrest me, assuring me he would be able to tell me at some point what for

“… What do you mean, sir?... what did we do with the other man? We let him go, of course... He lived in the room next door and didn’t know anything about that drug wholesale business going on in the appartment - ... What? … the machine guns, ton of cocaine and two bodies in the shared kitchen? Well, he told us he felt it would have been improper to ask... of course we believed him - why shouldn't we?... Sir... let me stop you: that's all irrelevant now, we have a major investigation on our hands… sure I’ll tell you – I was just about to phone you actually: we arrested a man…. What do you mean ‘what for?’ – it was just an idea."

Who will top up my soul?

The Chinese Took a Piece Me Away

I was walking up* Oxford Street. When I reached New Bond St, I remembered a pub I had long wanted to pop into, but - how foolishly, it was to turn out - I kept delaying the visit. I couldn't recall where exactly it was, but the building was so characteristic there was no chance I would miss it.

But I did.

When I arrived at the corner of Oxford St and South Molton St I recognised the place but not its content. Where the pub should - and I mean "should" in all possible senses of the word, including the moral one - be I saw now a shop with a Japanese/Chinese** sounding name and some boring rags on display.

I refused to believe it. I felt like crying (probably I did; I was so shaken I can't remember clearly the following few minutes), or shouting (see the previous bracketed comment) or kicking myself (see the previous bracketed comment; or - to speed things up - see the comment two brackets backwards), or running right away to the City Hall, the Queen's Walk, SE1, demanding to speak to Boris and kicking up a fuss (see ..  I'm sure you get the hang of it now).  

When I recovered after... well, I'm not sure after what exactly (you know what to see)... no - actually I haven't recovered: someone took a piece of me away - more!  it was as if a careless (but let's say: very, very sexy - just to brighten up a little this sad story) barmaid spilt a little of my soul.  

Now, let's move on to metaphysics (you knew it was coming, didn't you?):  who will give the piece of me back? Who will top up my soul?  

Don’t delay it: have that pint now!

*literally "up". Only a little earlier this year did I notice how deep that valley in the middle of Oxford Street was. One day we’ll be kicking ourselves for having allowed shop windows to take away so much of our lives!
** I've done some investigation and found out that it was Chinese. I realise that there are quite a few of them (the Chinese), but my investigation will go on, and - this side of the bar of life (that's is such a 'cheap lager' metaphor, I admit) or the other, I will learn who exactly stood behind that spillage of a little of the British soul.


Picture: Stewart Marshall (flickr); I hope it' OK (but I feel bad about it. I really do.)

OUT (Don't piss off voters with that silly 'IN')

It must be the 'IN' that upsets some people...

The (outstanding) idea of a (long-overdue) British "In/Out" Referendum (re: the E.U.) is causing a pan-European stir and a lot of local controversy .

How about  a much less controversial, hopefully, version then: forget about the upsetting 'IN' and have a simple "OUT" one.

Tides, Tactics, Delays & Daddy (and Nigella...) - ah! & the Knight - a little review of local politics

Just a few notes on some recent developments in local politics.

As a Catholic, I'm a such a sucker for beautiful Jewish women...

POWER TO THE LORDS! At first, Lord Lawson (of Nigella fame) managed to put a genuine smile on my naive mug, then a sarcastic one: it's taken him a while to spit that declaration out! However, the main conclusion that his compromisingly belated but brave and hugely beneficial act should lead to is a postulate to give more power to the Lords. Only when freed from daily pressures of party politics and relieved from the obligation to win elections, are politicians likely to tell it like it is.

Even if it takes them a couple of decades to muster the courage.

"Yes, maybe I said it only yesterday... but I always knew it."

WHAT HAPPENED THE DAY BEFORE YESTERDAY? Have I missed something? Did something dramatic crop up at the end of last week on the U.K - E.U.line to make TWO cabinet ministers come out? Or, simply and miraculously, they just suddenly saw the truth that had been sitting in front of them for ages? I have a hunch it could be  to do with the changing mood of voters, the need to win elections and flowing with the tide... Well, what would you expect?  (Democracy)

But at the moment, as far as I'm concerned, he's the daddy

COURAGE: After all, congratulations to Lord Lawson: not only did he got on the Truth Bandwagon after all (at the last moment; the E.U.'s collapsing), but also managed to encourage others to do the same.


THE KNIGHT: First and foremost the visors should be raised and swords banged against shields (if this is what knights do) for the Main Man, Sir* Nigel Farage (pronounced correctly; no silly jokes, right?) - the Knight who, assisted by some noble Lords and clued-up Commoners, took on the Establishment, and is winning.

Yes - now swallow them!

*from what I know, the procedure involves the Prime Minister, which makes the nomination unlikely. However, I'm writing to the Queen to by-pass Mr Cameron. Join me!