Devote yourself to the Absolute Emptiness;
Contemplate earnestly in Quiescence.
All things are together in Action,
But I look into their Non-action,
For things are continuously moving, restless,
Yet each is proceeding back to its origin.
Proceeding back to the origin means Quiescence.
To be in Quiescence is to see “Being-for-itself.”
- Lao tzu
Monday, 22 May 2006
Wednesday, 17 May 2006
Perspective
However deep your knowledge of the scriptures,
It is no more than a strand of hair
In the vastness of space;
However important seeming your worldly experience,
It is but a drop of water in a deep ravine.
- Tokusan
It is no more than a strand of hair
In the vastness of space;
However important seeming your worldly experience,
It is but a drop of water in a deep ravine.
- Tokusan
Monday, 15 May 2006
Behold the blasphemy that is faith!
I have come without a heart, without a soul;
Look at my color, read the lines on my face, O my boy!
No, I am wrong, I have not come at all, you came to me;
You came with me, hidden in my existence, O my boy!
Simile in the face of fire like a piece of gold;
And good fortune will smile at you. O my boy!
In the tavern of my heart there are thoughts
Fighting each other like drunks, O my boy!
Bear [with me] and listen to the clamor of the intoxicated;
Ah, the door broke! the doorman run away! O my boy!
I have come, and I have brought you a mirror;
Look at yourself, do not turn your face, O my boy!
My blasphemy is a mirror for your faith;
Behold the blasphemy that is faith! O my boy!
I cry out in silence;
I have come to be a silent speaker, O my boy!
(Divan 1098:1-8)
Rumi
Look at my color, read the lines on my face, O my boy!
No, I am wrong, I have not come at all, you came to me;
You came with me, hidden in my existence, O my boy!
Simile in the face of fire like a piece of gold;
And good fortune will smile at you. O my boy!
In the tavern of my heart there are thoughts
Fighting each other like drunks, O my boy!
Bear [with me] and listen to the clamor of the intoxicated;
Ah, the door broke! the doorman run away! O my boy!
I have come, and I have brought you a mirror;
Look at yourself, do not turn your face, O my boy!
My blasphemy is a mirror for your faith;
Behold the blasphemy that is faith! O my boy!
I cry out in silence;
I have come to be a silent speaker, O my boy!
(Divan 1098:1-8)
Rumi
The future but a way to death
"It is a time when one's spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why; when the past seems a storm-swept desolation, life a vanity and a burden, and the future but a way to death."
- Mark Twain
- Mark Twain
The world of our sad humanity
"There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our sad humanity must assume the aspect of Hell"
- Edgar Allan Poe
- Edgar Allan Poe
Sadness flies away on the wings of time
"Sadness flies away on the wings of time."
- Jean de La Fontaine
- Jean de La Fontaine
Tears, idle tears
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean.
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
- Alfred Lord Tennyson
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
- Alfred Lord Tennyson
Thursday, 4 May 2006
Sequential Time
On the 4th of May, 2006 at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 o'clock in the morning,
the time and date can be represented as:
01:02:03:04:05:06
A reasonable one off event.
the time and date can be represented as:
01:02:03:04:05:06
A reasonable one off event.
Monday, 20 March 2006
Work
Work.
Now there's a concept.
There is so much to say about this subject.
What you say is correct.
What I say is (also) correct.
And what many others have said is also correct.
This is an area of discourse which each side (of which there are many) could go on about, swapping "serves", almost forever (and there are plenty enough commentators).
Since there are some that, quite cogently, argue that work constitutes a great portion of our time and our self-image and mental well-being, then it would be right to consider the issues of work in depth, and from many angles, in order to understand and then apply one's knowledge, for a better life for oneself, if for no other (more glorified) reason.
I just got this little interesting piece of information about work sent to me:
"They make up for than half of the work force. They work longer hours than everyone else in the company. From their ranks come most of the top managers. They're the midcareer employees, the solid citizens between the ages of 35 and 55 whom companies bank on for their loyalty and commitment. And they're not happy. In fact, they're burned out, bored and bottlenecked, new research reveals. Only 33% of the 7,700 workers the authors surveyed feel energized by their work; 36% say they're in dead end jobs. One in three is not satisfied with his or her job. One in five is looking for another. Companies are ill prepared to manage this group because it is so pervasive, largely invisible, and culturally uncharted. That neglect is bad for business: Many companies risk losing some of their best people or - even worse - ending up with an army of disaffected people who stay."
from
"Managing Middlescence"
Robert Morison, Tamara Erickson, Ken Dychtwald.
Harvard Business Review Boston:Mar 2006. Vol. 84, Iss. 3, p. 78-86
The implication of this abstract is that work is important, and that it is not being treated with enough respect within organisations - particularly for a whole range of disaffected workers. Luckily for you, you currently just miss out on the age range they mention. Unluckily for me, I do not.
Your comments about your work strike me as much about doing something which one considers worthwhile, as it does about "work" in a slightly narrower definition (of turning up to an office to do something to earn some money). It is the concept of alienation from work (for the proletariat - a la Marx) - in both its positive and negative aspects.
There is the wider definition of work. It can have a definite spiritual dimension. Gurdjieff was a relatively recent mystic who emphasised that one "works" (in the classic sense of working and earning a living) and that this "work", if done in the correct manner (there were a whole range of other things which accompanied this), then that would lead to spiritual development (and ultimately enlightenment). The founding Protestants (especially the Methodists and Calvinists) were very strong on the concept of work. Dr Martin Luther King said: "All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence."
The wider definition can have work being anything which one works at and which therefore can easily be something which provides pleasure and enhancement and many other elements.
And if this is what work is for one, then so much the better, since there is a great alignment between what one is doing and what one wants to do and one finds fulfilment in. These are the lucky people in the world.
One of the things to consider though is that not everyone may be so lucky - either from the start or somewhere through the process. These people that are "alienated" from their work must still work in order to earn money, and sometimes must engage in the most soul destroying of work in order to survive. Obviously, there are extremes here, since, due to the sheer number of people involved in this "condition", the sliding scales are minutely graduated - one example for every possible variation on the "theme" could no doubt be found somewhere in the world, and most likely in any country (although some countries would have the scale skewed one way or another more than other countries - thus the well-to-do first world countries would have more people earning good money and living an easy life yet still suffering an existenstial alienation from their work (and life, indeed) - more so than those living in poor third-world countries, who may be alienated from their work (think, factory line workers in sweat shops) but still lead a life of deprivation and, maybe, despair (maybe not).).
A careful reading of literature etc relating to this alienation would shed some light on this condition, and what it might mean to the society that these people live in, and provide a small amount of insight into the motivations behind certain acts. The more extreme forms of alienation, both work wise, but more generally from the society as a whole (even the global social concept currently in vogue), can lead to extreme forms of reaction - anger, violence, even terrorism (so-called, although it is now, unfortunately, become a catch-phrase to describe a bevy of issues and circumstances and acts that are generally undifferentiated and undiscerning).
Actually experiencing an element of the same alienation can, at times, assist in understanding what people are going through, and what drives certain behaviours (as opposed to others, which, we as "rational" individuals with a certain world-view, would consider sub-optimal or detrimental).
There is an element of actually experiencing this alienation that I am talking about when I talk about work and what it means, to me, at the moment.
Mind you, sometimes, having had an experience of this sort of alienation does not necessarily assist in making one's behaviour or reactions when dealing with certain types of situation any better - sometimes, one simply repeats (falls back on) previous learned responses. More so the pity for oneself, for one's organisation and for society.
Aristotle said: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."
Partially, this is what work is about. It is about doing things to be excellent, so that one is excellent all the time.
I surmise that there is an element of this in what you have said - that it gives you great pleasure to be the best that you can be, and the best that others expect you to be, through your work. The quote by Theodore I. Rubin probably sums up some of the attitude: "Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best."
Or to put it another way, in another quote:
"When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another." - Helen Keller
Aristotle also said "Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work" and backed it up with "All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind".
I could not agree more with the latter comment. Back we go to the concept of alienation from work, due to the nature of it having to be paid work. If your work does not need to encompass any concept of needing to be paid for (in that you are either independently wealthy, or, psychologically, do not have a notion that you have to work in order to be paid, or do not need to be paid, whether for work or not), then, according to Aristotle, there can be no question of alienation from work - and working into ever increasing pleasure will result in rewarded perfection, or, alternately and as effectively, increased perfection in work will be rewarded with pleasure.
But, see, I was also talking about a range of other things, possibly well expressed by Krishnamurti when he said: "You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life."
I am very much interested in the fact that a complete or whole life has many constitutes, of which work is only one. How to integrate all these elements into a fulfilling whole - especially when faced with a range of barriers - past learned behaviour, economic considerations, social and familial commitments, and many other issues - is an interesting exercise, which is engaging more of the population today (given the "aging" population in the first world, with more people living loinger with more money, able or needing to contemplate these issues for longer in their life).
This is the wider definition of what work may be about, or indeed, completely redefining the question. It is, indeed, something which has been ongoing for millenia, and repeatedly revisited with each new generation, in their own manner, in their own time, at the right time for them.
Each age, in the journey in life, has its own answer to fulfil - and, then, creates the questions for the answers they are living.
As I go about contemplating the questions and adhering the answers, there are valid alternate opinions and ideas which must not be forgotten, must not be ignored. Hence the value of conversation and discussion with others, through which one can be open and querulous.
Thus, as a result of such investigation and discussion, one of the elements I am forgetting is this:
"The conditions of conquest are always easy. We have but to toil awhile, endure awhile, believe always, and never turn back." - Marcus AAnnaeus Seneca
and
"Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance." - Samuel Johnson
and
"He who labors diligently need never despair; for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor." - Menander
and (my favourite - simply due to the awesome output from this man)
"I was made to work; if you are equally industrious, you will be equally successful." - Johann Sebastian Bach
I have lost the will to continually toil, to never doubt, never look back, never stop.
I am sure that it is a temporary event, and, indeed, it only relates to a few select situations. There are a range of things which don't interest me, don't have the "pull" to maintain the motivation and drive the engine of toil. There are plenty of situations where I put in quite a deal of effort. Doesn't seem to make much reward (over and above what is expected or known to happen). This simply compounds the sense of loss, and the lack of energy to continue to toil. Cycle and spiral conspire.
Now there's a concept.
There is so much to say about this subject.
What you say is correct.
What I say is (also) correct.
And what many others have said is also correct.
This is an area of discourse which each side (of which there are many) could go on about, swapping "serves", almost forever (and there are plenty enough commentators).
Since there are some that, quite cogently, argue that work constitutes a great portion of our time and our self-image and mental well-being, then it would be right to consider the issues of work in depth, and from many angles, in order to understand and then apply one's knowledge, for a better life for oneself, if for no other (more glorified) reason.
I just got this little interesting piece of information about work sent to me:
"They make up for than half of the work force. They work longer hours than everyone else in the company. From their ranks come most of the top managers. They're the midcareer employees, the solid citizens between the ages of 35 and 55 whom companies bank on for their loyalty and commitment. And they're not happy. In fact, they're burned out, bored and bottlenecked, new research reveals. Only 33% of the 7,700 workers the authors surveyed feel energized by their work; 36% say they're in dead end jobs. One in three is not satisfied with his or her job. One in five is looking for another. Companies are ill prepared to manage this group because it is so pervasive, largely invisible, and culturally uncharted. That neglect is bad for business: Many companies risk losing some of their best people or - even worse - ending up with an army of disaffected people who stay."
from
"Managing Middlescence"
Robert Morison, Tamara Erickson, Ken Dychtwald.
Harvard Business Review Boston:Mar 2006. Vol. 84, Iss. 3, p. 78-86
The implication of this abstract is that work is important, and that it is not being treated with enough respect within organisations - particularly for a whole range of disaffected workers. Luckily for you, you currently just miss out on the age range they mention. Unluckily for me, I do not.
Your comments about your work strike me as much about doing something which one considers worthwhile, as it does about "work" in a slightly narrower definition (of turning up to an office to do something to earn some money). It is the concept of alienation from work (for the proletariat - a la Marx) - in both its positive and negative aspects.
There is the wider definition of work. It can have a definite spiritual dimension. Gurdjieff was a relatively recent mystic who emphasised that one "works" (in the classic sense of working and earning a living) and that this "work", if done in the correct manner (there were a whole range of other things which accompanied this), then that would lead to spiritual development (and ultimately enlightenment). The founding Protestants (especially the Methodists and Calvinists) were very strong on the concept of work. Dr Martin Luther King said: "All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence."
The wider definition can have work being anything which one works at and which therefore can easily be something which provides pleasure and enhancement and many other elements.
And if this is what work is for one, then so much the better, since there is a great alignment between what one is doing and what one wants to do and one finds fulfilment in. These are the lucky people in the world.
One of the things to consider though is that not everyone may be so lucky - either from the start or somewhere through the process. These people that are "alienated" from their work must still work in order to earn money, and sometimes must engage in the most soul destroying of work in order to survive. Obviously, there are extremes here, since, due to the sheer number of people involved in this "condition", the sliding scales are minutely graduated - one example for every possible variation on the "theme" could no doubt be found somewhere in the world, and most likely in any country (although some countries would have the scale skewed one way or another more than other countries - thus the well-to-do first world countries would have more people earning good money and living an easy life yet still suffering an existenstial alienation from their work (and life, indeed) - more so than those living in poor third-world countries, who may be alienated from their work (think, factory line workers in sweat shops) but still lead a life of deprivation and, maybe, despair (maybe not).).
A careful reading of literature etc relating to this alienation would shed some light on this condition, and what it might mean to the society that these people live in, and provide a small amount of insight into the motivations behind certain acts. The more extreme forms of alienation, both work wise, but more generally from the society as a whole (even the global social concept currently in vogue), can lead to extreme forms of reaction - anger, violence, even terrorism (so-called, although it is now, unfortunately, become a catch-phrase to describe a bevy of issues and circumstances and acts that are generally undifferentiated and undiscerning).
Actually experiencing an element of the same alienation can, at times, assist in understanding what people are going through, and what drives certain behaviours (as opposed to others, which, we as "rational" individuals with a certain world-view, would consider sub-optimal or detrimental).
There is an element of actually experiencing this alienation that I am talking about when I talk about work and what it means, to me, at the moment.
Mind you, sometimes, having had an experience of this sort of alienation does not necessarily assist in making one's behaviour or reactions when dealing with certain types of situation any better - sometimes, one simply repeats (falls back on) previous learned responses. More so the pity for oneself, for one's organisation and for society.
Aristotle said: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."
Partially, this is what work is about. It is about doing things to be excellent, so that one is excellent all the time.
I surmise that there is an element of this in what you have said - that it gives you great pleasure to be the best that you can be, and the best that others expect you to be, through your work. The quote by Theodore I. Rubin probably sums up some of the attitude: "Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best."
Or to put it another way, in another quote:
"When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another." - Helen Keller
Aristotle also said "Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work" and backed it up with "All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind".
I could not agree more with the latter comment. Back we go to the concept of alienation from work, due to the nature of it having to be paid work. If your work does not need to encompass any concept of needing to be paid for (in that you are either independently wealthy, or, psychologically, do not have a notion that you have to work in order to be paid, or do not need to be paid, whether for work or not), then, according to Aristotle, there can be no question of alienation from work - and working into ever increasing pleasure will result in rewarded perfection, or, alternately and as effectively, increased perfection in work will be rewarded with pleasure.
But, see, I was also talking about a range of other things, possibly well expressed by Krishnamurti when he said: "You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life."
I am very much interested in the fact that a complete or whole life has many constitutes, of which work is only one. How to integrate all these elements into a fulfilling whole - especially when faced with a range of barriers - past learned behaviour, economic considerations, social and familial commitments, and many other issues - is an interesting exercise, which is engaging more of the population today (given the "aging" population in the first world, with more people living loinger with more money, able or needing to contemplate these issues for longer in their life).
This is the wider definition of what work may be about, or indeed, completely redefining the question. It is, indeed, something which has been ongoing for millenia, and repeatedly revisited with each new generation, in their own manner, in their own time, at the right time for them.
Each age, in the journey in life, has its own answer to fulfil - and, then, creates the questions for the answers they are living.
As I go about contemplating the questions and adhering the answers, there are valid alternate opinions and ideas which must not be forgotten, must not be ignored. Hence the value of conversation and discussion with others, through which one can be open and querulous.
Thus, as a result of such investigation and discussion, one of the elements I am forgetting is this:
"The conditions of conquest are always easy. We have but to toil awhile, endure awhile, believe always, and never turn back." - Marcus AAnnaeus Seneca
and
"Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance." - Samuel Johnson
and
"He who labors diligently need never despair; for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor." - Menander
and (my favourite - simply due to the awesome output from this man)
"I was made to work; if you are equally industrious, you will be equally successful." - Johann Sebastian Bach
I have lost the will to continually toil, to never doubt, never look back, never stop.
I am sure that it is a temporary event, and, indeed, it only relates to a few select situations. There are a range of things which don't interest me, don't have the "pull" to maintain the motivation and drive the engine of toil. There are plenty of situations where I put in quite a deal of effort. Doesn't seem to make much reward (over and above what is expected or known to happen). This simply compounds the sense of loss, and the lack of energy to continue to toil. Cycle and spiral conspire.
futures ineffectualness
Work has a place (especially in the Ethical life - as per Kierkegaard - or his antagonist in the book) and executing work in the appropriate manner with the appropriate attitude/mind is an important part of living a proper life.
Yet work, as we all know, is not all in life.
And business has even less a claim on life than work has - it is a pale cousin to proper work - yet assumes too great an importance and leads one astray (as a painted harlot of siren call for riches and fame).
And so I have been consolidating on the mental/psychological/spiritual improvement in re work and relationships that I started in the previous job I just had and have continued, albeit in a slightly different manner, in this job.
There is an element of adjusting to work and doing particular work (whatever it may be) for a while, until other conditions relating to my life are modified, and then looking at more radical choices associated with work and activity. There are lots of plans that I have - too many plans to actually be executed in the one lifetime that I have available to me (assuming that I will even live for a long time).
And it is certainly the case that whilst I may plan for, think about, fantazise over many different potential futures and types of work (or activities) that I could do in the future, it is virtually certain that what actually transpires in the future will be different from what I have thought and dreamt about. I am sure that, maybe, some of it will be somewhat similar, but it is just as likely that it will be completely different.
Which is an interesting concept to contemplate and address (psychologically). On the one hand, it provides a wonderful weird sort of hope for the future - hope that whatever things are like now, the future will provide something new and different, sufficiently new and different enough, to not be the same as before (in one's mind - of course, from an "identity" perspective, nothing EVER is the same as before, nor ever could be, due to the transpiration of time) that one will be invigorated and assaulted with the necessity to address life - and, therefore, as such, to live life - to engage and thereby make something worthwhile of the life lived, simply by the act of living that life in a conscious and wilful
manner. This is a good thing!
On the other hand, it is a little disconcerting to know that whatever you may think and hope for is essentially hopeless, it will never happen - and, therefore, why hope? Why bother to think, or plan, or contemplate the future?
Faced with one's ineffectualness, why bother at all - just let it all slide by, since whatever will happen is not known to us, and will happen anyway.
And it is further disconcerting to realise that one realises this and yet one still plans and dreams and hopes and thinks, way into the future, constantly turning and refining and stucturing and organising whatever it is that should be happening (and yet may never happen).
And then to realise that all of these positions, contradictory as they are, are all valid, all at the one time, and that one must hold them all in one's mind, all at once, and then still move forward, through an effort of WILL, which does, indeed, create whatever one will be moving into for the future.
Enough!
Yet work, as we all know, is not all in life.
And business has even less a claim on life than work has - it is a pale cousin to proper work - yet assumes too great an importance and leads one astray (as a painted harlot of siren call for riches and fame).
And so I have been consolidating on the mental/psychological/spiritual improvement in re work and relationships that I started in the previous job I just had and have continued, albeit in a slightly different manner, in this job.
There is an element of adjusting to work and doing particular work (whatever it may be) for a while, until other conditions relating to my life are modified, and then looking at more radical choices associated with work and activity. There are lots of plans that I have - too many plans to actually be executed in the one lifetime that I have available to me (assuming that I will even live for a long time).
And it is certainly the case that whilst I may plan for, think about, fantazise over many different potential futures and types of work (or activities) that I could do in the future, it is virtually certain that what actually transpires in the future will be different from what I have thought and dreamt about. I am sure that, maybe, some of it will be somewhat similar, but it is just as likely that it will be completely different.
Which is an interesting concept to contemplate and address (psychologically). On the one hand, it provides a wonderful weird sort of hope for the future - hope that whatever things are like now, the future will provide something new and different, sufficiently new and different enough, to not be the same as before (in one's mind - of course, from an "identity" perspective, nothing EVER is the same as before, nor ever could be, due to the transpiration of time) that one will be invigorated and assaulted with the necessity to address life - and, therefore, as such, to live life - to engage and thereby make something worthwhile of the life lived, simply by the act of living that life in a conscious and wilful
manner. This is a good thing!
On the other hand, it is a little disconcerting to know that whatever you may think and hope for is essentially hopeless, it will never happen - and, therefore, why hope? Why bother to think, or plan, or contemplate the future?
Faced with one's ineffectualness, why bother at all - just let it all slide by, since whatever will happen is not known to us, and will happen anyway.
And it is further disconcerting to realise that one realises this and yet one still plans and dreams and hopes and thinks, way into the future, constantly turning and refining and stucturing and organising whatever it is that should be happening (and yet may never happen).
And then to realise that all of these positions, contradictory as they are, are all valid, all at the one time, and that one must hold them all in one's mind, all at once, and then still move forward, through an effort of WILL, which does, indeed, create whatever one will be moving into for the future.
Enough!
Thursday, 23 February 2006
In my house there is a cave
In my house there is a cave
And in the cave is nothing at all
Pure and wonderfully empty
Resplendent, with a light like the sun.
- Han shan
And in the cave is nothing at all
Pure and wonderfully empty
Resplendent, with a light like the sun.
- Han shan
Tuesday, 21 February 2006
Behind a blood-stained curtain
Behind a blood-stained curtain, love has spread its gardens.
Lovers are busy with the beauty of the love that is beyond explanation.
Intellect says: 'The six directions are the limit, there is nothing beyond them.'
Love says:'There is a road, and I have journeyed on it many times.'
Love detected markets beyond that market.
Intellect says:'Do not set foot on the land of annihilation;
There is nothing there but thorns.'
Love says;'Those thorns you feel are only inside you!
Be silent! remove the thorn of existence from the foot of the heart;
So that you may see the gardens within.'
O Shams of Tabriz! you are the Sun cloaked by the cloud of speech;
When your Sun rose, all the words melted!
(Divan 132:1-3, 6-8)
Lovers are busy with the beauty of the love that is beyond explanation.
Intellect says: 'The six directions are the limit, there is nothing beyond them.'
Love says:'There is a road, and I have journeyed on it many times.'
Love detected markets beyond that market.
Intellect says:'Do not set foot on the land of annihilation;
There is nothing there but thorns.'
Love says;'Those thorns you feel are only inside you!
Be silent! remove the thorn of existence from the foot of the heart;
So that you may see the gardens within.'
O Shams of Tabriz! you are the Sun cloaked by the cloud of speech;
When your Sun rose, all the words melted!
(Divan 132:1-3, 6-8)
Monday, 20 February 2006
Plato's Republic Book VII
BOOK VII.
And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened
or unenlightened:--Behold! human beings living in a underground den, which
has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here
they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained
so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by
the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is
blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a
raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way,
like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which
they show the puppets.
I see.
And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of
vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and
various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking,
others silent.
You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners.
Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the
shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the
cave?
True, he said; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were
never allowed to move their heads?
And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would only
see the shadows?
Yes, he said.
And if they were able to converse with one another, would they not suppose
that they were naming what was actually before them?
Very true.
And suppose further that the prison had an echo which came from the other
side, would they not be sure to fancy when one of the passers-by spoke that
the voice which they heard came from the passing shadow?
No question, he replied.
To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of
the images.
That is certain.
And now look again, and see what will naturally follow if the prisoners are
released and disabused of their error. At first, when any of them is
liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and
walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will
distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his
former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one saying to
him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is
approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real
existence, he has a clearer vision,--what will be his reply? And you may
further imagine that his instructor is pointing to the objects as they pass
and requiring him to name them,--will he not be perplexed? Will he not
fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects
which are now shown to him?
Far truer.
And if he is compelled to look straight at the light, will he not have a
pain in his eyes which will make him turn away to take refuge in the
objects of vision which he can see, and which he will conceive to be in
reality clearer than the things which are now being shown to him?
True, he said.
And suppose once more, that he is reluctantly dragged up a steep and rugged
ascent, and held fast until he is forced into the presence of the sun
himself, is he not likely to be pained and irritated? When he approaches
the light his eyes will be dazzled, and he will not be able to see anything
at all of what are now called realities.
Not all in a moment, he said.
He will require to grow accustomed to the sight of the upper world. And
first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other
objects in the water, and then the objects themselves; then he will gaze
upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heaven; and he
will see the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or the light of
the sun by day?
Certainly.
Last of all he will be able to see the sun, and not mere reflections of him
in the water, but he will see him in his own proper place, and not in
another; and he will contemplate him as he is.
Certainly.
He will then proceed to argue that this is he who gives the season and the
years, and is the guardian of all that is in the visible world, and in a
certain way the cause of all things which he and his fellows have been
accustomed to behold?
Clearly, he said, he would first see the sun and then reason about him.
And when he remembered his old habitation, and the wisdom of the den and
his fellow-prisoners, do you not suppose that he would felicitate himself
on the change, and pity them?
Certainly, he would.
And if they were in the habit of conferring honours among themselves on
those who were quickest to observe the passing shadows and to remark which
of them went before, and which followed after, and which were together; and
who were therefore best able to draw conclusions as to the future, do you
think that he would care for such honours and glories, or envy the
possessors of them? Would he not say with Homer,
'Better to be the poor servant of a poor master,'
and to endure anything, rather than think as they do and live after their
manner?
Yes, he said, I think that he would rather suffer anything than entertain
these false notions and live in this miserable manner.
Imagine once more, I said, such an one coming suddenly out of the sun to be
replaced in his old situation; would he not be certain to have his eyes
full of darkness?
To be sure, he said.
And if there were a contest, and he had to compete in measuring the shadows
with the prisoners who had never moved out of the den, while his sight was
still weak, and before his eyes had become steady (and the time which would
be needed to acquire this new habit of sight might be very considerable),
would he not be ridiculous? Men would say of him that up he went and down
he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of
ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the
light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death.
No question, he said.
This entire allegory, I said, you may now append, dear Glaucon, to the
previous argument; the prison-house is the world of sight, the light of the
fire is the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the
journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world
according to my poor belief, which, at your desire, I have expressed--
whether rightly or wrongly God knows. But, whether true or false, my
opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of
all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to
be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light
and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of
reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which
he who would act rationally either in public or private life must have his
eye fixed.
I agree, he said, as far as I am able to understand you.
Moreover, I said, you must not wonder that those who attain to this
beatific vision are unwilling to descend to human affairs; for their souls
are ever hastening into the upper world where they desire to dwell; which
desire of theirs is very natural, if our allegory may be trusted.
Yes, very natural.
And is there anything surprising in one who passes from divine
contemplations to the evil state of man, misbehaving himself in a
ridiculous manner; if, while his eyes are blinking and before he has become
accustomed to the surrounding darkness, he is compelled to fight in courts
of law, or in other places, about the images or the shadows of images of
justice, and is endeavouring to meet the conceptions of those who have
never yet seen absolute justice?
Anything but surprising, he replied.
Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the
eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of
the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye,
quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees
any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh;
he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter
life, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having
turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. And he will
count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity
the other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from
below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh
which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the den.
That, he said, is a very just distinction.
But then, if I am right, certain professors of education must be wrong when
they say that they can put a knowledge into the soul which was not there
before, like sight into blind eyes.
They undoubtedly say this, he replied.
Whereas, our argument shows that the power and capacity of learning exists
in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from
darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of
knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the
world of becoming into that of being, and learn by degrees to endure the
sight of being, and of the brightest and best of being, or in other words,
of the good.
Very true.
And must there not be some art which will effect conversion in the easiest
and quickest manner; not implanting the faculty of sight, for that exists
already, but has been turned in the wrong direction, and is looking away
from the truth?
Yes, he said, such an art may be presumed.
And whereas the other so-called virtues of the soul seem to be akin to
bodily qualities, for even when they are not originally innate they can be
implanted later by habit and exercise, the virtue of wisdom more than
anything else contains a divine element which always remains, and by this
conversion is rendered useful and profitable; or, on the other hand,
hurtful and useless. Did you never observe the narrow intelligence
flashing from the keen eye of a clever rogue--how eager he is, how clearly
his paltry soul sees the way to his end; he is the reverse of blind, but
his keen eye-sight is forced into the service of evil, and he is
mischievous in proportion to his cleverness?
Very true, he said.
But what if there had been a circumcision of such natures in the days of
their youth; and they had been severed from those sensual pleasures, such
as eating and drinking, which, like leaden weights, were attached to them
at their birth, and which drag them down and turn the vision of their souls
upon the things that are below--if, I say, they had been released from
these impediments and turned in the opposite direction, the very same
faculty in them would have seen the truth as keenly as they see what their
eyes are turned to now.
Very likely.
And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened
or unenlightened:--Behold! human beings living in a underground den, which
has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here
they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained
so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by
the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is
blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a
raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way,
like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which
they show the puppets.
I see.
And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of
vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and
various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking,
others silent.
You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners.
Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the
shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the
cave?
True, he said; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were
never allowed to move their heads?
And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would only
see the shadows?
Yes, he said.
And if they were able to converse with one another, would they not suppose
that they were naming what was actually before them?
Very true.
And suppose further that the prison had an echo which came from the other
side, would they not be sure to fancy when one of the passers-by spoke that
the voice which they heard came from the passing shadow?
No question, he replied.
To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of
the images.
That is certain.
And now look again, and see what will naturally follow if the prisoners are
released and disabused of their error. At first, when any of them is
liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and
walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will
distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his
former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one saying to
him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is
approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real
existence, he has a clearer vision,--what will be his reply? And you may
further imagine that his instructor is pointing to the objects as they pass
and requiring him to name them,--will he not be perplexed? Will he not
fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects
which are now shown to him?
Far truer.
And if he is compelled to look straight at the light, will he not have a
pain in his eyes which will make him turn away to take refuge in the
objects of vision which he can see, and which he will conceive to be in
reality clearer than the things which are now being shown to him?
True, he said.
And suppose once more, that he is reluctantly dragged up a steep and rugged
ascent, and held fast until he is forced into the presence of the sun
himself, is he not likely to be pained and irritated? When he approaches
the light his eyes will be dazzled, and he will not be able to see anything
at all of what are now called realities.
Not all in a moment, he said.
He will require to grow accustomed to the sight of the upper world. And
first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other
objects in the water, and then the objects themselves; then he will gaze
upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heaven; and he
will see the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or the light of
the sun by day?
Certainly.
Last of all he will be able to see the sun, and not mere reflections of him
in the water, but he will see him in his own proper place, and not in
another; and he will contemplate him as he is.
Certainly.
He will then proceed to argue that this is he who gives the season and the
years, and is the guardian of all that is in the visible world, and in a
certain way the cause of all things which he and his fellows have been
accustomed to behold?
Clearly, he said, he would first see the sun and then reason about him.
And when he remembered his old habitation, and the wisdom of the den and
his fellow-prisoners, do you not suppose that he would felicitate himself
on the change, and pity them?
Certainly, he would.
And if they were in the habit of conferring honours among themselves on
those who were quickest to observe the passing shadows and to remark which
of them went before, and which followed after, and which were together; and
who were therefore best able to draw conclusions as to the future, do you
think that he would care for such honours and glories, or envy the
possessors of them? Would he not say with Homer,
'Better to be the poor servant of a poor master,'
and to endure anything, rather than think as they do and live after their
manner?
Yes, he said, I think that he would rather suffer anything than entertain
these false notions and live in this miserable manner.
Imagine once more, I said, such an one coming suddenly out of the sun to be
replaced in his old situation; would he not be certain to have his eyes
full of darkness?
To be sure, he said.
And if there were a contest, and he had to compete in measuring the shadows
with the prisoners who had never moved out of the den, while his sight was
still weak, and before his eyes had become steady (and the time which would
be needed to acquire this new habit of sight might be very considerable),
would he not be ridiculous? Men would say of him that up he went and down
he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of
ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the
light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death.
No question, he said.
This entire allegory, I said, you may now append, dear Glaucon, to the
previous argument; the prison-house is the world of sight, the light of the
fire is the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the
journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world
according to my poor belief, which, at your desire, I have expressed--
whether rightly or wrongly God knows. But, whether true or false, my
opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of
all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to
be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light
and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of
reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which
he who would act rationally either in public or private life must have his
eye fixed.
I agree, he said, as far as I am able to understand you.
Moreover, I said, you must not wonder that those who attain to this
beatific vision are unwilling to descend to human affairs; for their souls
are ever hastening into the upper world where they desire to dwell; which
desire of theirs is very natural, if our allegory may be trusted.
Yes, very natural.
And is there anything surprising in one who passes from divine
contemplations to the evil state of man, misbehaving himself in a
ridiculous manner; if, while his eyes are blinking and before he has become
accustomed to the surrounding darkness, he is compelled to fight in courts
of law, or in other places, about the images or the shadows of images of
justice, and is endeavouring to meet the conceptions of those who have
never yet seen absolute justice?
Anything but surprising, he replied.
Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the
eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of
the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye,
quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees
any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh;
he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter
life, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having
turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. And he will
count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity
the other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from
below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh
which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the den.
That, he said, is a very just distinction.
But then, if I am right, certain professors of education must be wrong when
they say that they can put a knowledge into the soul which was not there
before, like sight into blind eyes.
They undoubtedly say this, he replied.
Whereas, our argument shows that the power and capacity of learning exists
in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from
darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of
knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the
world of becoming into that of being, and learn by degrees to endure the
sight of being, and of the brightest and best of being, or in other words,
of the good.
Very true.
And must there not be some art which will effect conversion in the easiest
and quickest manner; not implanting the faculty of sight, for that exists
already, but has been turned in the wrong direction, and is looking away
from the truth?
Yes, he said, such an art may be presumed.
And whereas the other so-called virtues of the soul seem to be akin to
bodily qualities, for even when they are not originally innate they can be
implanted later by habit and exercise, the virtue of wisdom more than
anything else contains a divine element which always remains, and by this
conversion is rendered useful and profitable; or, on the other hand,
hurtful and useless. Did you never observe the narrow intelligence
flashing from the keen eye of a clever rogue--how eager he is, how clearly
his paltry soul sees the way to his end; he is the reverse of blind, but
his keen eye-sight is forced into the service of evil, and he is
mischievous in proportion to his cleverness?
Very true, he said.
But what if there had been a circumcision of such natures in the days of
their youth; and they had been severed from those sensual pleasures, such
as eating and drinking, which, like leaden weights, were attached to them
at their birth, and which drag them down and turn the vision of their souls
upon the things that are below--if, I say, they had been released from
these impediments and turned in the opposite direction, the very same
faculty in them would have seen the truth as keenly as they see what their
eyes are turned to now.
Very likely.
Sunday, 29 January 2006
Sundays
Some days Sundays just wear me out. Not because they are necessarily busy or hectic. Nor because there are difficult things to do.
Simply because there is so much expectation associated with being able to do so much on the Sunday, and work is looming the next day, and yet, hardly anything gets done - regardless of how much actually does get done (which, on some days, is quite a lot), it is always that the expectation is never quite lived up to, and Sunday evening comes around and I feel sort of deflated and annoyed that yet another week has gone by without the masterful breakthrough in life.
Simply because there is so much expectation associated with being able to do so much on the Sunday, and work is looming the next day, and yet, hardly anything gets done - regardless of how much actually does get done (which, on some days, is quite a lot), it is always that the expectation is never quite lived up to, and Sunday evening comes around and I feel sort of deflated and annoyed that yet another week has gone by without the masterful breakthrough in life.
Monday, 23 January 2006
a thousand meters of melancholy
I shall go to the store of the tailor of lovers, tomorrow;
Wearing my long robe made from a thousand meters of melancholy.
He can cut you off from Yazid and sew you onto Zayd;
he can pair you with this one and separate you from the other.
He can attach you to one to whom you give your heart for life;
What a fabric, what a stitch, what a miracle-making hand.
(Divan 216:1-3) -- Rumi
Wearing my long robe made from a thousand meters of melancholy.
He can cut you off from Yazid and sew you onto Zayd;
he can pair you with this one and separate you from the other.
He can attach you to one to whom you give your heart for life;
What a fabric, what a stitch, what a miracle-making hand.
(Divan 216:1-3) -- Rumi
Friday, 30 December 2005
Non formosus erat, sed erat facundus Ulixes
Non formosus erat, sed erat facundus Ulixes,
et tamen aequoreas torsit amore Deas.
Soren Kierkegaard
"Either/Or - A Fragment of Life"
p. 299
Penguin Classics, London, 1992, 2004
------------------------------------------------
'Ulysses was not handsome, but he was eloquent, and he caused the sea goddesses [Circe and Calypso] to be tormented with love.'
Cf. Ovid, Ars amandii, II, 123.
et tamen aequoreas torsit amore Deas.
Soren Kierkegaard
"Either/Or - A Fragment of Life"
p. 299
Penguin Classics, London, 1992, 2004
------------------------------------------------
'Ulysses was not handsome, but he was eloquent, and he caused the sea goddesses [Circe and Calypso] to be tormented with love.'
Cf. Ovid, Ars amandii, II, 123.
She must owe me nothing
She must owe me nothing, for she must be free; love exists only in freedom, only in freedom are there recreation and everlasting amusement.
Soren Kierkegaard
"Either/Or - A Fragment of Life"
p. 299
Penguin Classics, London, 1992, 2004
Soren Kierkegaard
"Either/Or - A Fragment of Life"
p. 299
Penguin Classics, London, 1992, 2004
Die eine is verliebt gar sehr
Die eine is verliebt gar sehr;
Die andre ware er gerne.
Soren Kierkegaard
"Either/Or - A Fragment of Life"
p. 295
Penguin Classics, London, 1992, 2004
-------------------------------------------------
The one is madly in love;
The other would like to be.
From Joseph von Eichendorff's poem, 'Vor der Stadt'
Die andre ware er gerne.
Soren Kierkegaard
"Either/Or - A Fragment of Life"
p. 295
Penguin Classics, London, 1992, 2004
-------------------------------------------------
The one is madly in love;
The other would like to be.
From Joseph von Eichendorff's poem, 'Vor der Stadt'
What rejuvenating power a young girl has
What rejuvenating power a young girl has! Not the freshness of the morning air, not the soughing of the wind, not the coolness of the ocean, not the fragrance of wine and its delicious bouquet - nothing else in the world has this rejuvenating power.
Soren Kierkegaard
"Either/Or - A Fragment of Life"
p. 291
Penguin Classics, London, 1992, 2004
Soren Kierkegaard
"Either/Or - A Fragment of Life"
p. 291
Penguin Classics, London, 1992, 2004
Saturday, 17 December 2005
dear Symparanekromenoi
" ... we who are not consonants sounding together in the noise of life, but soltary birds in the stillness of night, gathered together only now and then, to be edified by representations of life's misery, the length of the day, and the endless duration of time; we, dear Symparanekromenoi, who have no faith in the game of happiness or the fortune of fools, we who believe in nohing but misfortune."
Soren Kierkegaard
"Either/Or - A Fragment of Life"
p. 212
Penguin Classics, London, 1992, 2004
Soren Kierkegaard
"Either/Or - A Fragment of Life"
p. 212
Penguin Classics, London, 1992, 2004
Friday, 16 December 2005
the inquisitive rabble which as a rule is as dimwitted as it is inquisitive
"So everything is in order and she can reckon fairly safely on going through life without awakening any suspicion on the minds of the inquisitive rabble which as a rule is as dimwitted as it is inquisitive."
Soren Kierkegaard
"Either/Or - A Fragment of Life"
p. 196
Penguin Classics, London, 1992, 2004
Soren Kierkegaard
"Either/Or - A Fragment of Life"
p. 196
Penguin Classics, London, 1992, 2004
Thursday, 15 December 2005
Life flies by
Life flies by
and we must stand still
to ingest time and matter and energy
for we are chaos
Thursday 15 December 2005 10:37am
and we must stand still
to ingest time and matter and energy
for we are chaos
Thursday 15 December 2005 10:37am
Wednesday, 14 December 2005
nothing left but eyes blinded with tears
"In due course the writing became weaker and less distinct; finally the paper itself crumbled away and he had nothing left but eyes blinded with tears."
Soren Kierkegaard
"Either/Or - A Fragment of Life"
p. 187
Penguin Classics, London, 1992, 2004
Soren Kierkegaard
"Either/Or - A Fragment of Life"
p. 187
Penguin Classics, London, 1992, 2004
Tuesday, 13 December 2005
Secret Beckoning
"It is not the merry smile of happy maidens that moves us, but the secret beckoning of sorrow."
Soren Kierkegaard
"Either/Or - A Fragment of Life"
p. 173
Penguin Classics, London, 1992, 2004
Soren Kierkegaard
"Either/Or - A Fragment of Life"
p. 173
Penguin Classics, London, 1992, 2004
Monday, 12 December 2005
the rushing wind
"It is true men say the divine voice is not in the rushing wind but in the gentle breeze, but our ears are not made to pick up gentle breezes, only to gulp in the din of the elements. And why does it not break forth in still greater violence, making an end of life and the world and this brief speech, which at least has the supreme advantage that it is soon ended! Yes, let that vortex which is the innermost principle of the world, even though people are not aware of it but busily eat and drink and marry and propogate without a heed, let it break forth with the last terrible shriek, which more surely than the last trump proclaims the overthrow of everything, let it more and whirl away this naked cliff on which we stand, as easily as fluff before the breath of our nostrils."
Soren Kierkegaard
"Either/Or - A Fragment of Life"
p. 168
Penguin Classics, London, 1992, 2004
Soren Kierkegaard
"Either/Or - A Fragment of Life"
p. 168
Penguin Classics, London, 1992, 2004
Sunday, 11 December 2005
I am no friend of metaphors
"I am no friend of metaphors;
modern literature has given me a great aversion to them;
it has come almost to the point where, everytime I come upon a metaphor, I am seized by an involuntary fear that its true purposes is to conceal an obscurity in the thought."
Soren Kierkegaard
"Either/Or - A Fragment of Life"
p. 130
Penguin Classics, London, 1992, 2004
Sunday 11 December 2005 6:37am
(Waiting to fly to Singapore)
modern literature has given me a great aversion to them;
it has come almost to the point where, everytime I come upon a metaphor, I am seized by an involuntary fear that its true purposes is to conceal an obscurity in the thought."
Soren Kierkegaard
"Either/Or - A Fragment of Life"
p. 130
Penguin Classics, London, 1992, 2004
Sunday 11 December 2005 6:37am
(Waiting to fly to Singapore)
Thursday, 8 December 2005
Avoiding Work
Then there are the people who not only never deliver anything but also actively avoid work (or actively avoid actually achieving anything, or committing to anything) by any means possible. The emply many strategems. Some of the more common include the following.
Spend as much time as possible talking to people and having meetings, in the name of people needing to communicate - without there being an actual reason for the communication or the need to talk or meet;
Find someone else or some other area which can be "blamed" or allocated o do the work which should be in one's area. This works particularly well if the areas al have to work together in some manner, and if there is some common or "higher" goal they all should work towards (and the more nebulous the goal the better);
Allocate work to other people but do nothing in relation to assisting or ensuring that it is done, or checking an understanding of what needs to be done, and then ensure that have many excuses for not having done the work - making sure the excuses are not to do with you.
Thursday 8 December 2005 5:23pm
Spend as much time as possible talking to people and having meetings, in the name of people needing to communicate - without there being an actual reason for the communication or the need to talk or meet;
Find someone else or some other area which can be "blamed" or allocated o do the work which should be in one's area. This works particularly well if the areas al have to work together in some manner, and if there is some common or "higher" goal they all should work towards (and the more nebulous the goal the better);
Allocate work to other people but do nothing in relation to assisting or ensuring that it is done, or checking an understanding of what needs to be done, and then ensure that have many excuses for not having done the work - making sure the excuses are not to do with you.
Thursday 8 December 2005 5:23pm
Don Juan Reportage
Just skipping through some past material and noticed a recent entry that mentioned Don Juan from the Carlos Castenada series of books. Then - goodness - I am currently just reading about Don Juan / Don Giovanni (the tale and the Mozart opera) in "Either/Or - A Fragment of Life" by Soren Kierkegaard. They are 2 completely different characters / situations and absolutely no relation to each other apart from the same name - which is so common that it would be unlikely that one would not come across a potential coincidence like this. But, in an area so culturally and intellectually diverse and separate, it is interesting that I should have come across them, or written about the, in such a short space of time.
A little piece of reportage for what it is worth - fodder for later thought.
Thursday 8 December 2005 08:51am
A little piece of reportage for what it is worth - fodder for later thought.
Thursday 8 December 2005 08:51am
Monday, 5 December 2005
The Joy of Programming
the pleasure of crafting something that is useful
"Crafting" through the centuries
creativity - in itself
the urge to create - from scratch
this mitigates against sharing and re-use
software as a "plastic" tool
(more than) chimps and other animals
The psychological urge
from early tool making by prehistoric ancestors
Prehistoric man made tools - it made his life easier and made him the pre-eminent "creature"
Tool making was individual - originally everyone did it
Tool making happened for millions of years - it became ingrained into the "genes" of the psyche
(but if so, why doesn't everyone do this ??)
Prehistoric man has always "created" too - in artistic and other manners
The "creative" urge manifests itself in myriad ways in modern man -not just "art" per se
Ditto for tool making
Much of science can be viewed as "tool making and creativity"
As can Engineering
So, for a subset of humanity, these 2 urges combine in terms of software development
Make the distinction about those in the ICT industries that have these 2 urges (tools and creativity) combined and present - versus those just working in the industry - managing, selling, etc.
Thus, for those who are "toolmakers" - which is many programmers (or even those who did program but no longer and just occasionally dabble), the "buzz" is the creation - from scratch, actually making the toll and seeing it used (even if only by themselves alone).
(Re)Using someone else's tool does not give this innate joy
Hence the persistent lack of re-use of/in software
Hence the constant change/movement - even progress - in software
Hence the difficulty in getting programmers to change their ways
"Crafting" through the centuries
creativity - in itself
the urge to create - from scratch
this mitigates against sharing and re-use
software as a "plastic" tool
(more than) chimps and other animals
The psychological urge
from early tool making by prehistoric ancestors
Prehistoric man made tools - it made his life easier and made him the pre-eminent "creature"
Tool making was individual - originally everyone did it
Tool making happened for millions of years - it became ingrained into the "genes" of the psyche
(but if so, why doesn't everyone do this ??)
Prehistoric man has always "created" too - in artistic and other manners
The "creative" urge manifests itself in myriad ways in modern man -not just "art" per se
Ditto for tool making
Much of science can be viewed as "tool making and creativity"
As can Engineering
So, for a subset of humanity, these 2 urges combine in terms of software development
Make the distinction about those in the ICT industries that have these 2 urges (tools and creativity) combined and present - versus those just working in the industry - managing, selling, etc.
Thus, for those who are "toolmakers" - which is many programmers (or even those who did program but no longer and just occasionally dabble), the "buzz" is the creation - from scratch, actually making the toll and seeing it used (even if only by themselves alone).
(Re)Using someone else's tool does not give this innate joy
Hence the persistent lack of re-use of/in software
Hence the constant change/movement - even progress - in software
Hence the difficulty in getting programmers to change their ways
Sunday, 4 December 2005
The sense of achievement and forward progress is illusory
Sunday 4 December 2005 10:07am
The sense of achievement and forward progress is illusory. It is critically important for mental stability - or the impression of mental "health" (so to speak). Maybe it is just a "western" thing, and western in terms of capitalism and consumerism. Economic "health" depends on progress of purchasing - ever new items to buy - new and better and nicer and cooler and whatever it is that we desire (or require - although the latter is minimal and marginal - we barely require any small proportion of what we consume and what we desire to actually keep going for our allotted time).
It is not all capitalist conspiracy though. Actual progress - say in scientific, medical and engineereing terms - is made, which actually improves the general human lot in life. People live longer on average. They do not die of many causes common in previous generations. They are healthier and more active for longer. They live a more comfortable life and are able to do more "things" (at least this is true for a wide range of citizens of the "first world", even the "developing nations" - even if not true for millions upon millions in under-developed nations and the poor throughout the world. This is the case - they (the poor) do not enjoy the benefits being spoken about about - in virtually any ways at all. But simply because one whole group do not participate, or accord to the theory, this does not invalidate the theory in relation to the other group (who do participate) and the theory in general).
But for all the "real" progress, each person needs to "believe" that they, individually, have made forward progress, themselves - in whatever way is meaningful to them, at that point in time in their development or life. Part of the "belief" may relate to "meaningfulness" - progress made is the meaning of existence - or, more properly, the validation of the meaning which has been ascribed to that which is progressed.
The sense of achievement and forward progress is illusory. It is critically important for mental stability - or the impression of mental "health" (so to speak). Maybe it is just a "western" thing, and western in terms of capitalism and consumerism. Economic "health" depends on progress of purchasing - ever new items to buy - new and better and nicer and cooler and whatever it is that we desire (or require - although the latter is minimal and marginal - we barely require any small proportion of what we consume and what we desire to actually keep going for our allotted time).
It is not all capitalist conspiracy though. Actual progress - say in scientific, medical and engineereing terms - is made, which actually improves the general human lot in life. People live longer on average. They do not die of many causes common in previous generations. They are healthier and more active for longer. They live a more comfortable life and are able to do more "things" (at least this is true for a wide range of citizens of the "first world", even the "developing nations" - even if not true for millions upon millions in under-developed nations and the poor throughout the world. This is the case - they (the poor) do not enjoy the benefits being spoken about about - in virtually any ways at all. But simply because one whole group do not participate, or accord to the theory, this does not invalidate the theory in relation to the other group (who do participate) and the theory in general).
But for all the "real" progress, each person needs to "believe" that they, individually, have made forward progress, themselves - in whatever way is meaningful to them, at that point in time in their development or life. Part of the "belief" may relate to "meaningfulness" - progress made is the meaning of existence - or, more properly, the validation of the meaning which has been ascribed to that which is progressed.
Tuesday, 29 November 2005
"Those who were dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music." - Friedrich Nietzsche
"Those who were dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music." - Friedrich Nietzsche
"Our needs are few," said Chinese sage Lao-Tse. "Our wants are endless."
"Our needs are few," said Chinese sage Lao-Tse. "Our wants are endless."
Grandeur, savoir, renomme,
Grandeur, savoir, renomme,
Amitie, plaisir et bien,
Tout n'est que vent, que fumee:
Pour mieux dire, tout n'est rien.
by Paul Pelisson (1624-93)
from Lessing - Zerstreute Anmerkungen uber das Epigramm
from Kierkegaard, Soren - Either/Or
introduction to Diapsalmata
Penguin Classics 1992, 2004
---------------------------------------------------------
Rank, knowledge, renown,
Friendship, pleasure and means,
All is but wind, but smoke:
To say it better, all is nought.
Amitie, plaisir et bien,
Tout n'est que vent, que fumee:
Pour mieux dire, tout n'est rien.
by Paul Pelisson (1624-93)
from Lessing - Zerstreute Anmerkungen uber das Epigramm
from Kierkegaard, Soren - Either/Or
introduction to Diapsalmata
Penguin Classics 1992, 2004
---------------------------------------------------------
Rank, knowledge, renown,
Friendship, pleasure and means,
All is but wind, but smoke:
To say it better, all is nought.
Monday, 28 November 2005
I said I shall tell the tale of my heart as best as I can
I said I shall tell the tale of my heart as best as I can;
Caught in the storm of my tears, with a bleeding heart,
I failed to do that!
I tried to relate to event in broken, muted words;
The cup of my thoughts was so fragile, that I fell into pieces like shattered glass.
Many ships were wrecked in this storm;
What is my little helpless boat in comparison?
The waves destroyed my ship, neither good remained nor bad;
Free from myself, I tied my body to a raft.
Now, I am neither up nor down-no this is not a fair description;
I am up on a wave one instant, and down under another the next.
I am not aware of my existence, I know only this:
When I am, I am not, and when I am not, I am!
(Divan 1419:1-6)
Rumi
Caught in the storm of my tears, with a bleeding heart,
I failed to do that!
I tried to relate to event in broken, muted words;
The cup of my thoughts was so fragile, that I fell into pieces like shattered glass.
Many ships were wrecked in this storm;
What is my little helpless boat in comparison?
The waves destroyed my ship, neither good remained nor bad;
Free from myself, I tied my body to a raft.
Now, I am neither up nor down-no this is not a fair description;
I am up on a wave one instant, and down under another the next.
I am not aware of my existence, I know only this:
When I am, I am not, and when I am not, I am!
(Divan 1419:1-6)
Rumi
Wednesday, 23 November 2005
Who is the beauty who has arrived sweetly?
Who is this? who is the beauty who has arrived sweetly?
Who has arrived at our house drunken with shoes under arms.
By way of trickery came that ruby-lipped, asking for fire;
Who does he intend to burn this time, I wonder. He has come alone.
O come! you the source of fire, come! how could you ask us for fire?
By God this is another trick, O you who have arrived so unexpectedly.
(Divan 2278:1,3,4)
Rumi
Who has arrived at our house drunken with shoes under arms.
By way of trickery came that ruby-lipped, asking for fire;
Who does he intend to burn this time, I wonder. He has come alone.
O come! you the source of fire, come! how could you ask us for fire?
By God this is another trick, O you who have arrived so unexpectedly.
(Divan 2278:1,3,4)
Rumi
Monday, 21 November 2005
Becoming a buddha is easy
Becoming a buddha is easy
But ending illusions is hard
So many frosted moonlit nights
I’ve sat and felt the cold before dawn.
- Shih-wu (1272-1352)
But ending illusions is hard
So many frosted moonlit nights
I’ve sat and felt the cold before dawn.
- Shih-wu (1272-1352)
Scientia e Lux
Are single people more self-obsessed than those in relationships?
It stands to reason I suppose!
If there is no one to focus one's attention on, then that attention will more likely revolve around what is there, ie oneself. Putting it another way - one's attention (or focus or view of the world) can be viewed as a sphere, emanating from oneself in the middle, like a sphere of light from a single source - a little like the Platonic concept (insert reference here).
The light is strongest closest to the source and that is where the person can see most clearly, but note the person can only see outwardly - since the person is looking forwardly and the light views forwardly. Anyway, one can see most clearly closer to oneself and the further out one peers, the dimmer the light and the harder it is to discern things.
This metaphor works well if the light source is like a fire, or candle, or equivalent - it is precisely what Plato conceptualised (insert here the actual text from Plato).
But the metaphor can also be extended to incorporate modern technology. Say that the light source is a torch. A focussed beam of light which shoots a long way into the distance but is narrow, so that only a few things can be seen in a narrow field of view. This ewuates to the increasing specialisation of knowledge that has been developing since man first spoke and wrote. This is very much apparent in recent times (the last couple of hundred years) where many people know a lot about a very small area (their torch illuminates a small patch on the distant cave wall but shows nothing else of the cave).
And the metaphor can be extended even further. Newer technologies (here, in the metaphor equating to new ways of providing light) correspond to new ways of thinking, new modes of knowledge, new domains of knowing, new concepts of understanding.
Some of the metaphors include: floodlights - a large light source, illuminating a wide area - we have the resources now to know a lot about many subjects, in a short period of time - technology, particularly computing and communications technologies, allows one to find out a lot very quickly, and (sometimes) to a surprising depth. But, just as with a floodlight, there are still shadows, and the light only goes so far.
Interestingly, with knowledge, the more that the "cave" is lit up, the larger the cave seems to get, and the more nooks and crannies and previously undiscovered passages and holes - and whole other caves - become apparent. And the cave (caves) itself even seems to change shape as more and different lights are added to those already there.
The best analogy is that of a construction company slowly building a scaffolding of multiple lights of all kinds and types to illuminate every part of the "cave". Slowly, lots of knowledge is made known to many more people. Indeed, the size of the cave thus illuminated becomes so large that a single person can not explore the whole lit area in just one life. In many case, people simply stay in one place - far too much effort to try anything else. Sometimes, people decide the add extra specialised lights to the general illumination so they can look at a piece of the cave in more detail.
This raises an interesting point. Can (or should) one work at developing new technology to either (1) more quickly build the illumination platform/structure in more parts of the cave system, and/or (2) more quickly travel through the cave, viewing/photographing (storing for later retrieval) the parts/walls of the cave travelled through.
This is a knowledge engineering exercise. Actually, more precisely, it is an exercise in engineering a facility which processes knowledge in another manner (whether that manner is better, faster and more efficient, more effective and more efficacious is a matter for consideration by those using the method and those observing such use. It is a contingency decision).
Thus, there have been technologies developed to assist in travelling through the cave more quickly (speed reading for instance, accelerated learning is another example. Other examples could include hypnotic suggestion and there are those that would propose a variety of pharmaceuticals (drugs and other substances) which enhance or assist knowledge acquisition (learning) or knowledge use/retrieval).
Further analogies/metaphors could be conceptualised in relation to this knowledge "geometry". One could conceive of a whole series of fibre optic cables criss-crossing the cave, connecting one point to another (actually, a better analogy would be tiny targetted lasers which shine from one point to another). This would be the Semantic Web - inter-connected knowledge.
Another metaphor would be that of somebody walking through the cave, but with lights strapped to all parts of their body. As they turned, the lights on their head and shoulders would illuminate what they were facing but there would also be lights on the shoes, in all directions, illuminating where one was standing and where one wanted to walk. There would be stronger lights on the waist, forward, sideways and in the rear, which would cast a bright glow all around the person, in all directions, so that the person could not only readily see the general vicinity, but that also other people could readily see that person (and the same applies of this person to other persons).
What does this metaphor mean in practice, to knowledge and knowing. It could be interpreted in many ways, since the precise mechanism of knowing relating to this metaphor does not really exist yet at this stage. One interpretation could be as follows.
The person represents the act of knowledge gathering and even knowledge creation. The person is the understanding of learning (how to learn) and getting to know. This is a process (a living moving entity) but it is also a thing, it is also knowledge itself (it may not be well defined knowledge, it may be ephemeral or volatile knowledge but it is still knowledge).
The act of the person moving through the cave is the act of learning new knowledge. The movement is guided by the lights on the feet as well as on the waist. These are "focusers"of knowledge. These are pieces of knowing, of a certain type, which assist in guiding the further investigation into knowing - knowledge about how to know (or learn) about something else. The something else is what is being illuminated by the lights on the head and shoulders, which one volitionally points at (ie the knowledge that one wants to know about or learn).
The other knowledge, which is illuminated from the feet (mostly) is unconscious - or more properly, non-volitional - knowledge. It is "provided" as a matter of course, to help guide the learning process. It is illuminating a topography which has been created by someone else (and may have even been created by oneself earlier) to help guide one's investigative perambulations.
In today's current terms, this "topography" would be conceptualised as ontologies (or taxonomies or topic maps - even though these terms are not synonymous) but not necessarily one single ontology or static ontologies, but as multiple ontologies which are linked together, and as ontologies which may be personalised, on an individual basis, based on a core ontology but modified for one's own use. These ontologies guide one through areas of knowledge, indicating what needs to be known, where it is and how to move from one piece or area of knowledge to another.
The "as important" element of this metaphor is the creation of a "knowledge base" for the individual as they move around, acquiring knowledge. The process used to acquire that knowledge is recorded and stored (as a knowledge structure, ie ontology and instances, itself) and the knowledge thus acquired (or attempted to be acquired) is linked (stored), possibly together with an evaluation of the strength of the acquisition (how well the knowledge was understood) (corresponding to the strength of the luminosity maybe in the metaphor).
This is the knowledge of the "body" as it moves and is the illumination which radiates from the lights at the waist of the person. This is most likely knowledge that the person themselves will use but it is also helpful knowledge for others - it allows them to "model" that others have done to get to a certain point (to understand something or to behave in a certain manner)0 and thus, possibly learn more quickly.
This is one of the essences of NLP - and this process just described is one means of "encoding" NLP.
The other potential extension of this already rather too extended metaphor is relating the luminous light in a sphere surrounding the person from the lights around the waist to the sphere of light which is a person when a sorceror can "see" other people properly in the series of Don Juan books by Carlos Castenada.
A person is really a ball of light, a complex conglomeration of light fibres which constitute and surround the person (at the same time), and extend out (or reach out) from the person. Some of the light "fibres" can reach out for great distances, and these are the means for sorcerors to travel great distances in no time, or even to "time travel". They are also the means whreby sorcerors can change shape, into other animals, or into other people, or even into various non-human non-natural "mythical" shapes/creatures.
Every living being consists of these fibres of light. Some beings are much "brighter" and "stronger" than others, because they have developed their consciousness more (their ability to "see") and some people have learnt (been taught) the ability to manipulate the fibres or strands of light - in order to perform extraordinary deeds.
The metaphor from the Castenada series deals with knowledge but mostly from the perspective of what one can know in order to gain or have power. The knowledge to manipulate the light fibres gives on power - which allows one to do things - the ultimate of which is to disappear completely - not die (ever), not live (ever).
How does all this relate to knowledge acquisition and processing? To the Semantic Web and such forth? No idea.
How does it all relate to single people being more self obsessed than "coupled" people?
It maybe that the metaphor just does not apply. Two people standing together, close together, will project more light than just one person. They theoretically could see more and understand more. But, is this the case? And, even if it was, does it help? Does it mean anything?
It might be that the single person must "marshall" their energy more, in order to maintain their focus and seeing, and that this increases the "self-obsession". Plausible and possible but not meaningful in the metaphor.
Finally, it may be that two people coupled together must be aware of each other, so as not to coause troubles with the others "apparatus" (so to speak, if you know what I mean). Thus, they are more aware of the "other" - initially the "significant other", and, then, as an extension and a by-product, all others (and thus, by definition, less self-obsessed). Once again, plausible and possible - and this time, more meaningful in relation to the metaphor. Being "forced" to understand (to know) someone else also focuses one's efforts at knowing, and one's knowing or knowledge itself, in an outward manner.
KnowledgeOfTheWorld - PlatonicConceptExtended
Are single people more self-obsessed than those in relationships?
It stands to reason, I suppose!
If there is no-one to focus one's attention on, then that attention will more likely revolve around what is there, ie oneself. Putting it another way - one's attention (or focus or view of the world) can be viewed as a sphere, emanating from oneself in the middle, like a sphere of light, from a single source - a little like the Platonic concept (the cave, and the light).
The light is strongest closest to the source, and that is where the person can see most clearly - but note, the person can only see outwardly - since the person is looking forwardly and the light views forwardly.
Anyway, one can see most clearly closer to oneself and the further out one peers, the dimmer the light and the harder it is to discern things.
This metaphor works well if the light source is like a fire, or candle, or equivalent - it is what Plato conceptualised.
(See Plato's Republic Book VII for the text of what Plato wrote).
But the metaphor can also be extended, to incorporate modern technology. Suppose that the light source is a torch. A focussed beam of light which shoots a long way into the distance butis narrow, so only a few things can be seen in a narrow field of view.
This equates to the increasing specialisation of knowledge - that has been developing since man first spoke and wrote. This is very much apparent in recent times (the last couple of hundred years) where many people know a lot about a very small area (their torch illuminates a small patch on the distant cave wall - but shows nothing else of the cave).
And the metaphor can be extended even further. Newer technologies, (here, in the metaphor, equating to new ways of providing light correspond to new ways of thinking, new modes of knowledge, new domains of knowing, new concepts of understanding).
Some of the metaphors include floodlights - a large light scene, illuminating a wide area - we have the resources now to know a lot about many subjects - in a short period of time - technology, particularly computing and communications technologies, allows one to find out a lot very quickly, and (sometimes) to a surprising depth. But, just as with a floodlight, there are still shadows, and the light still only goes so far.
Interestingly, with knowledge, the more that the "cave" is lit up, the larger the cave seems to get, and the more nooks and crannies and previously undiscovered passages and holes - and whole other caves.
And the cave (caves) itself even seems to change shape as more and different lights are added to those already there. The best analogy is that of a construction company slowly building a scaffolding of multiple lights of all kinds and types to illuminate every part of the "cave". Slowly, (lots of) knowledge is made known to many more people. Indeed, the size of the case thus illuminated becomes so large that a single person can not explore the whole lit area in just one life. In many cases, people simply stay in one place - far too much effort to try anything else. Sometimes, people decide to add extra specialised lights to the general illumination so thay can look at a piece of the cave in more detail.
This raises an interesting point. Can (or should) one work at developing new technology to either (1) more quickly build the illumination platform/structure in more parts of the case system, and/or (2) more quickly travel through the cave, viewing/photographing (storing for later retrieval) the parts/walls of the cave travelled through.
This is a knowledge engineering exercise. Actually, more precisely, it is an exercise in engineering a facility which processes knowledge in another manner. (Whether that manner is better - faster and more efficient, more effective and more efficacious - is a matter for consideration by those using the method and those observing such use. It is a contingency decision).
Thus, there have been techniques developed to assist in travelling through the cave more quickly (speed reading, for isntance, accelerated learning is another example. Other examples could include hypnotic suggestion and there are those that would propose a variety of parmaceuticals (drugs and other substances) which enhance or assist knowledge acquisition (learning) or knowledge use/retrieval).
Further analogies/metaphors could be conceptualised in relation to this knowledge "geometry". One could conceive of a whole series of fibre optic cables criss-crossing the cave, connecting one point to another (actually, a better analogy would be tiny targetted lasers which shone from one point to another). This could be the Semantic Web - interconnected knowledge.
Another metaphor would be that of somebody walking through the cave, but with lights strapped to all parts of their body. As they turned, the lights on their head and shoulders would illuminate what they were facing but there would also be lights on the shoes, in all directions, illuminating where one was standing and where one wanted to walk. There would be stronger lights on the waist, forward, sideways and in the rear, which would cast a bright glow all around the person, in all directions, so that the person could not only readily see the general vicinity, but also, other people could also readily see that person (and the same applies of this person to other persons).
What does this metaphor mean in practice, to knowledge and knowing. It could be interpreted in many ways, since the precise mechanism of knowing relating to this metaphor does not really exist yet, at this time.
One interpretation would be as follows. The person represents the act of knowledge gathering and even knowledge creation. The person is the understanding of (how to) learning, and getting to know. This is a process (a living moving entity) but it is also a thing, it is also knowledge itself (it may not be well defined knowledge, it may be ephemeral or volatile knowledge, but it is still knowledge). The act of the person moving through the cave is the act of learning new knowledge.
The movement is guided by the lights onthe feet as well as on the waist. These are "focusers" of knowledge. These are pieces of knowledge, of a certain type, which assist in guiding the further investigation into knowing (knowledge about how to know (or learn) about something else. The something else is what is being illuminated by the lights on the head and shoulders, which one volitionally points at (ie the knowledge that one wants to know about or learn)). The other knowledge which is illuminated from the feet (mostly) is unconscious - or more properly, non-volitional - knowledge. It is "provided" as a matter of course, to help guide the learning process. It is illuminating a topography which has been created by someone else (and may have even been created by oneself earlier) to help guide one's investigative perambulations. In today's current terms, this "topography" could be conceptualised as ontologies (or taxonomies or topic maps) but not necessarily one single ontology or static ontologies, but as multiple ontologies which are linked together, and as ontologies which may be personalised, on an individual basis, based on a core ontology but modified for one's own use. These ontologies guide one through areas of knowledge, indicating what needs to be known, where it is and how to move from one piece or area of knowledge to another.
These "special" ontologies can be called "methontologies" (singular: methontology) - a combination of the words "method" and "ontology", with reference to "methodology" as well. The methontologies are methods of structuring knowledge to acquire knowledge.
The "as important" element of this metaphor is the creation of a "knowledge base" for the individual as they move around, acquiring knowledge. The process used to acquire that knowledge is recorded and stored (as a knowledge structure, ie ontology and instances, itself) and the knowledge thus acquired (or attempted to be acquired) is linked (stored), possibly together with an evaluation of the strength of the acquisition (how well the knowledge was understood) (corresponding to the strength of the luminosity, maybe, in the metaphor).
This is the knowledge of the "body" (of the person) as it moves, and is the illumination which radiates fromthe lights at the waist of the person. This is most likely knowledge that the person themselves will use but it is also helpful knowledge for others - it allows them to "model" what others have done / gained / understood in order to get to a certain point (to understand something or to behave in a certain manner) and thus possibly, learn more quickly.
This is one of the essences of [[NLP]] - and this process just described above is one means of "encoding" [[NLP]].
The other potential extension of this already rather too extended metaphor is relating the luminous light in a sphere surrounding the person from the lights around the waist to the sphere of light which is a person when a sorceror can "see" other people properly in the series of Don Juan books by Carlos Castenada.
A person is really a ball of light, a complex conglomeration of light fibres which constitute and surround the person (at the same time), and extend out (or reach out) from the person. Some of the light "fibres" can reach out for great distances, and these are the means for sorcerors to travel great distances in no time, or even to "time travel". They are also the means whereby sorcerors can change shape, into other
animals, or into other people, or even into various non-human non-natural "mythical" spirits/shapes/creatures. Every living being consists of these fibres of light - just in different configurations. Some beings are much "brighter" and "stronger" than others, because they have developed their consciousness more (their ability to "see", in Castenada terms), and some people have learnt (been taught) the ability to manipulate the fibres or strands of light, in order to perform extraordinary deeds.
The metaphor from the Castenada series deals with knowledge, but mostly from the perspective of what one can know in order to gain or have power. The knowledge to manipulate the light fibres gives one power - which allows one to do things or control things - the ultimate of which is to disappear completely - not die (ever), not live (ever).
How does all this relate to knowledge acquisition and processing? To Semantic Webs and such forth? No idea!
How does it all relate to single people being more self obsessed than "coupled" people?
It may be that the metaphor just does not apply.
Two people standing together, close together, will project more light than just one person. They theoretically could see more and understand more. But, is this the case? And, even if it was, does it help? Does it mean anything?
It might be that the single person must "marshall" their energy more, in order to maintain their focus and seeing, and that this increases the "self-obsession". Plausible and possible but not meaningful in the metaphor.
Finally, it may be that two people coupled together must be aware of each other, so as not to cause troubles with the other's "apparatus" (so to speak, if you know what I mean!). Thus, they are more aware of the "other" - initially just the "significant other", and, then, as an extension and a by-product, all others (and thus, by definition, less self-bsessed). Once again, plausible and possible - and this time, more meaningful in relation to the metaphor - but not necessarily actually the root cause or determinate of such behaviour (since it is probably caused by a variety of other means/situations). Being "forced" to understand (to know) someone else also focuses one's efforts at knowing, and one's knowing or knowledge itself, in an outward manner.
It stands to reason, I suppose!
If there is no-one to focus one's attention on, then that attention will more likely revolve around what is there, ie oneself. Putting it another way - one's attention (or focus or view of the world) can be viewed as a sphere, emanating from oneself in the middle, like a sphere of light, from a single source - a little like the Platonic concept (the cave, and the light).
The light is strongest closest to the source, and that is where the person can see most clearly - but note, the person can only see outwardly - since the person is looking forwardly and the light views forwardly.
Anyway, one can see most clearly closer to oneself and the further out one peers, the dimmer the light and the harder it is to discern things.
This metaphor works well if the light source is like a fire, or candle, or equivalent - it is what Plato conceptualised.
(See Plato's Republic Book VII for the text of what Plato wrote).
But the metaphor can also be extended, to incorporate modern technology. Suppose that the light source is a torch. A focussed beam of light which shoots a long way into the distance butis narrow, so only a few things can be seen in a narrow field of view.
This equates to the increasing specialisation of knowledge - that has been developing since man first spoke and wrote. This is very much apparent in recent times (the last couple of hundred years) where many people know a lot about a very small area (their torch illuminates a small patch on the distant cave wall - but shows nothing else of the cave).
And the metaphor can be extended even further. Newer technologies, (here, in the metaphor, equating to new ways of providing light correspond to new ways of thinking, new modes of knowledge, new domains of knowing, new concepts of understanding).
Some of the metaphors include floodlights - a large light scene, illuminating a wide area - we have the resources now to know a lot about many subjects - in a short period of time - technology, particularly computing and communications technologies, allows one to find out a lot very quickly, and (sometimes) to a surprising depth. But, just as with a floodlight, there are still shadows, and the light still only goes so far.
Interestingly, with knowledge, the more that the "cave" is lit up, the larger the cave seems to get, and the more nooks and crannies and previously undiscovered passages and holes - and whole other caves.
And the cave (caves) itself even seems to change shape as more and different lights are added to those already there. The best analogy is that of a construction company slowly building a scaffolding of multiple lights of all kinds and types to illuminate every part of the "cave". Slowly, (lots of) knowledge is made known to many more people. Indeed, the size of the case thus illuminated becomes so large that a single person can not explore the whole lit area in just one life. In many cases, people simply stay in one place - far too much effort to try anything else. Sometimes, people decide to add extra specialised lights to the general illumination so thay can look at a piece of the cave in more detail.
This raises an interesting point. Can (or should) one work at developing new technology to either (1) more quickly build the illumination platform/structure in more parts of the case system, and/or (2) more quickly travel through the cave, viewing/photographing (storing for later retrieval) the parts/walls of the cave travelled through.
This is a knowledge engineering exercise. Actually, more precisely, it is an exercise in engineering a facility which processes knowledge in another manner. (Whether that manner is better - faster and more efficient, more effective and more efficacious - is a matter for consideration by those using the method and those observing such use. It is a contingency decision).
Thus, there have been techniques developed to assist in travelling through the cave more quickly (speed reading, for isntance, accelerated learning is another example. Other examples could include hypnotic suggestion and there are those that would propose a variety of parmaceuticals (drugs and other substances) which enhance or assist knowledge acquisition (learning) or knowledge use/retrieval).
Further analogies/metaphors could be conceptualised in relation to this knowledge "geometry". One could conceive of a whole series of fibre optic cables criss-crossing the cave, connecting one point to another (actually, a better analogy would be tiny targetted lasers which shone from one point to another). This could be the Semantic Web - interconnected knowledge.
Another metaphor would be that of somebody walking through the cave, but with lights strapped to all parts of their body. As they turned, the lights on their head and shoulders would illuminate what they were facing but there would also be lights on the shoes, in all directions, illuminating where one was standing and where one wanted to walk. There would be stronger lights on the waist, forward, sideways and in the rear, which would cast a bright glow all around the person, in all directions, so that the person could not only readily see the general vicinity, but also, other people could also readily see that person (and the same applies of this person to other persons).
What does this metaphor mean in practice, to knowledge and knowing. It could be interpreted in many ways, since the precise mechanism of knowing relating to this metaphor does not really exist yet, at this time.
One interpretation would be as follows. The person represents the act of knowledge gathering and even knowledge creation. The person is the understanding of (how to) learning, and getting to know. This is a process (a living moving entity) but it is also a thing, it is also knowledge itself (it may not be well defined knowledge, it may be ephemeral or volatile knowledge, but it is still knowledge). The act of the person moving through the cave is the act of learning new knowledge.
The movement is guided by the lights onthe feet as well as on the waist. These are "focusers" of knowledge. These are pieces of knowledge, of a certain type, which assist in guiding the further investigation into knowing (knowledge about how to know (or learn) about something else. The something else is what is being illuminated by the lights on the head and shoulders, which one volitionally points at (ie the knowledge that one wants to know about or learn)). The other knowledge which is illuminated from the feet (mostly) is unconscious - or more properly, non-volitional - knowledge. It is "provided" as a matter of course, to help guide the learning process. It is illuminating a topography which has been created by someone else (and may have even been created by oneself earlier) to help guide one's investigative perambulations. In today's current terms, this "topography" could be conceptualised as ontologies (or taxonomies or topic maps) but not necessarily one single ontology or static ontologies, but as multiple ontologies which are linked together, and as ontologies which may be personalised, on an individual basis, based on a core ontology but modified for one's own use. These ontologies guide one through areas of knowledge, indicating what needs to be known, where it is and how to move from one piece or area of knowledge to another.
These "special" ontologies can be called "methontologies" (singular: methontology) - a combination of the words "method" and "ontology", with reference to "methodology" as well. The methontologies are methods of structuring knowledge to acquire knowledge.
The "as important" element of this metaphor is the creation of a "knowledge base" for the individual as they move around, acquiring knowledge. The process used to acquire that knowledge is recorded and stored (as a knowledge structure, ie ontology and instances, itself) and the knowledge thus acquired (or attempted to be acquired) is linked (stored), possibly together with an evaluation of the strength of the acquisition (how well the knowledge was understood) (corresponding to the strength of the luminosity, maybe, in the metaphor).
This is the knowledge of the "body" (of the person) as it moves, and is the illumination which radiates fromthe lights at the waist of the person. This is most likely knowledge that the person themselves will use but it is also helpful knowledge for others - it allows them to "model" what others have done / gained / understood in order to get to a certain point (to understand something or to behave in a certain manner) and thus possibly, learn more quickly.
This is one of the essences of [[NLP]] - and this process just described above is one means of "encoding" [[NLP]].
The other potential extension of this already rather too extended metaphor is relating the luminous light in a sphere surrounding the person from the lights around the waist to the sphere of light which is a person when a sorceror can "see" other people properly in the series of Don Juan books by Carlos Castenada.
A person is really a ball of light, a complex conglomeration of light fibres which constitute and surround the person (at the same time), and extend out (or reach out) from the person. Some of the light "fibres" can reach out for great distances, and these are the means for sorcerors to travel great distances in no time, or even to "time travel". They are also the means whereby sorcerors can change shape, into other
animals, or into other people, or even into various non-human non-natural "mythical" spirits/shapes/creatures. Every living being consists of these fibres of light - just in different configurations. Some beings are much "brighter" and "stronger" than others, because they have developed their consciousness more (their ability to "see", in Castenada terms), and some people have learnt (been taught) the ability to manipulate the fibres or strands of light, in order to perform extraordinary deeds.
The metaphor from the Castenada series deals with knowledge, but mostly from the perspective of what one can know in order to gain or have power. The knowledge to manipulate the light fibres gives one power - which allows one to do things or control things - the ultimate of which is to disappear completely - not die (ever), not live (ever).
How does all this relate to knowledge acquisition and processing? To Semantic Webs and such forth? No idea!
How does it all relate to single people being more self obsessed than "coupled" people?
It may be that the metaphor just does not apply.
Two people standing together, close together, will project more light than just one person. They theoretically could see more and understand more. But, is this the case? And, even if it was, does it help? Does it mean anything?
It might be that the single person must "marshall" their energy more, in order to maintain their focus and seeing, and that this increases the "self-obsession". Plausible and possible but not meaningful in the metaphor.
Finally, it may be that two people coupled together must be aware of each other, so as not to cause troubles with the other's "apparatus" (so to speak, if you know what I mean!). Thus, they are more aware of the "other" - initially just the "significant other", and, then, as an extension and a by-product, all others (and thus, by definition, less self-bsessed). Once again, plausible and possible - and this time, more meaningful in relation to the metaphor - but not necessarily actually the root cause or determinate of such behaviour (since it is probably caused by a variety of other means/situations). Being "forced" to understand (to know) someone else also focuses one's efforts at knowing, and one's knowing or knowledge itself, in an outward manner.
Friday, 18 November 2005
What is called an action in a stricter sense, a deed undertaken in the consciousness of a purpose
"What is called an action in a stricter sense, a deed undertaken in the consciousness of a purpose"
Soren Kierkegaard, "Either/Or", p. 123, Penguin Classics 1992, 2004
Soren Kierkegaard, "Either/Or", p. 123, Penguin Classics 1992, 2004
Monday, 7 November 2005
giggling Time and remembrance Art existence
The giggling universe. The repetitive Glass. The non-contact silences, forward stares of the necessary participants (or, more aptly, the participants of necessity).
The time that dribbles away, spent on a million minutiae, that are, oh, so important, and, are, oh so forgotten the next year, month, week, even minute. Facing the horror that one will never get there, will never reach the space of one's dreams or of fantastical thoughts (fantastical as in fantasm, fantasy), since time has slowly yet constantly erected the barriers impassable - and time, as an abstraction and a nothingness, can not be undone, pulled down, destroyed or dismantled.
Must live with time.
It is like - spotwelding parts of existence together. Taking bits and pieces of scrap and fashioning a work of art. The scrap being the jumble of disjointed experiences comprising what one remembers of one's life. The art of work (oops. the work of art - but, surely, for most of humanity, are they not the same thing. Maybe they are not. Yet, should they not be - for a fulfilling life) is one's life. One tries to create and re-create (and, in these times, recreate) one's life. In some manner. Hopefully as the beautiful work of art, as a remembrance and a memorial. At least in one's dreams. Maybe not as reality. Works of art are so fickle. One tiny mistake, at any time during its creation and it is imperfect, it is ruined. Is this not so much the lot of every life, except the exceptional few (note the double 'except' - the real meaning being drawn out) (and even then, maybe the exceptional have simply managed to hide the imperfection(s) - either themselves or by others (who followed)).
The time that dribbles away, spent on a million minutiae, that are, oh, so important, and, are, oh so forgotten the next year, month, week, even minute. Facing the horror that one will never get there, will never reach the space of one's dreams or of fantastical thoughts (fantastical as in fantasm, fantasy), since time has slowly yet constantly erected the barriers impassable - and time, as an abstraction and a nothingness, can not be undone, pulled down, destroyed or dismantled.
Must live with time.
It is like - spotwelding parts of existence together. Taking bits and pieces of scrap and fashioning a work of art. The scrap being the jumble of disjointed experiences comprising what one remembers of one's life. The art of work (oops. the work of art - but, surely, for most of humanity, are they not the same thing. Maybe they are not. Yet, should they not be - for a fulfilling life) is one's life. One tries to create and re-create (and, in these times, recreate) one's life. In some manner. Hopefully as the beautiful work of art, as a remembrance and a memorial. At least in one's dreams. Maybe not as reality. Works of art are so fickle. One tiny mistake, at any time during its creation and it is imperfect, it is ruined. Is this not so much the lot of every life, except the exceptional few (note the double 'except' - the real meaning being drawn out) (and even then, maybe the exceptional have simply managed to hide the imperfection(s) - either themselves or by others (who followed)).
Snowly of The World of Warcraft - Dead
[004] Snowly of The World of Warcraft (Xinhua) A young girl nicknamed "Snowly" died last month after playing the online game "World of Warcraft" for several continuous days during the national day holiday. Several days before Snowly's death, the girl was said to be preparing for a relatively difficult part of the game (namely, to kill the Black Dragon Prince) and had very little rest. She told her friends that she felt very tired. A big online funeral was held for Snowly one week after her death (see photo from The First).
http://www.zonaeuropa.com/200511brief.htm#004
Thursday, 3 November 2005
Longer and Shorter
Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.
Blaise Pascal (in 1657)
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter.
Blaise Pascal (in 1657)
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter.
If anyone asks you about ...
If anyone asks you about the huris, show your face, say: like this!
If anyone asks you about the moon, climb up on the roof, say: like this!
If anyone seeks a fairy, let them see your countenance,
If anyone asks about the aroma of musk, untie your hair [and] say: like this!
If anyone asks: 'How do the clouds uncover the moon?' untie the front of your robe, knot by knot, say: like this!
If anyone asks: 'How did Jesus raise the dead?' kiss me on the lips, say: like this!
If anyone asks: 'What are those killed by love like?' direct him to me, say: like this!
If anyone asks you how tall I am, show him your arched eyebrows, say: like this!
(Divan 1826:1-6)
If anyone asks you about the moon, climb up on the roof, say: like this!
If anyone seeks a fairy, let them see your countenance,
If anyone asks about the aroma of musk, untie your hair [and] say: like this!
If anyone asks: 'How do the clouds uncover the moon?' untie the front of your robe, knot by knot, say: like this!
If anyone asks: 'How did Jesus raise the dead?' kiss me on the lips, say: like this!
If anyone asks: 'What are those killed by love like?' direct him to me, say: like this!
If anyone asks you how tall I am, show him your arched eyebrows, say: like this!
(Divan 1826:1-6)
Tuesday, 6 September 2005
Monday, 29 August 2005
The End
Therefore, if enough time was left to me to complete my work, my first concern would be to describe the people in it, even at the risk of making them seem colossal and unnatural creatures, as occupying a place far larger than the very limited one reserved for them in space, a place in fact almost infinitely extended, since they are in simultaneous contact, like giants immersed in the years, with such distant periods of their lives, between which so many days have taken up their place - in Time.
THE END
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"Finding Time Again" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 6)
p. 358, Penguin Classics, 2003
THE END
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"Finding Time Again" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 6)
p. 358, Penguin Classics, 2003
Sunday, 28 August 2005
Eternal duration is no more promised to books than it is to men
But, as Elstir found with Chardin, one can remake something one loves only by renouncing it. No doubt my books too, like my mortal being, would eventually die, one day. But one has to resign oneself to dying. One accepts the thought that in ten years oneself, in a hundred years one's books, will not exist. Eternal duration is no more promised to books than it is to men.
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"Finding Time Again" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 6)
p. 353, Penguin Classics, 2003
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"Finding Time Again" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 6)
p. 353, Penguin Classics, 2003
Saturday, 27 August 2005
This idea of death established itself permanently within me
This idea of death established itself permanently within me, in the way that love does. Not that I was in love with death, I hated it. But after having contemplated it from time to time, as one does a woman with whom one is not yet in love, the thought of it adhered to the deepest stratum of my brain so completely that I could not think about anything without its first passing through the idea of death, and even if I was doing nothing, remaining in a state of complete repose, the idea of death kept me company as ceaselessly as the idea of my self. I do not think that, on the day when I became half-dead, it was the accidents which characterized that state, the incapacity to descend a staircase, to recall a name, to get up, that had even unconsciously caused this idea of death, the idea that I was already practically dead, so much as that they had both come together and the great mirror of the mind had inevitably reflected a new reality.
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"Finding Time Again" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 6)
p. 352, Penguin Classics, 2003
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"Finding Time Again" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 6)
p. 352, Penguin Classics, 2003
Friday, 26 August 2005
Successive deaths
These successive deaths, so feared by the self they were doomed to annihilate, so meaningless, so gentle after they had happened and when the person who was afraid of them was no longer there to feel them, had enabled me for some time now to understand how unwise it would be to be frightened of death. But it was now that I had been indifferent to it for a while that I was
starting to fear it again, although in a different form, not for myself but for my book, for the birth of which this life of mine threatened by so many dangers was, for a time at least, indispensable. Victor Hugo says:
'If faut que l'herbe pousse et que les enfants meurant.'
Personally, I say that the cruel law of art is that human beings die and that we ourselves die after exhausting all the forms of suffering, so that not the grass of oblivion may grow, but the grass of eternal life, the vigorous grass of fruitful works of art, on which future generations will come, heedless of those asleep beneath it, to have their dejeuner sur l'herbe.
[Grass has to grow, and children have to die.]
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"Finding Time Again" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 6)
p. 348, Penguin Classics, 2003
starting to fear it again, although in a different form, not for myself but for my book, for the birth of which this life of mine threatened by so many dangers was, for a time at least, indispensable. Victor Hugo says:
'If faut que l'herbe pousse et que les enfants meurant.'
Personally, I say that the cruel law of art is that human beings die and that we ourselves die after exhausting all the forms of suffering, so that not the grass of oblivion may grow, but the grass of eternal life, the vigorous grass of fruitful works of art, on which future generations will come, heedless of those asleep beneath it, to have their dejeuner sur l'herbe.
[Grass has to grow, and children have to die.]
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"Finding Time Again" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 6)
p. 348, Penguin Classics, 2003
Thursday, 25 August 2005
Not one's type
For these reasons and many others, the fact that we have our greatest moments of unhappiness with women who are not 'our type' is not simply a product of mocking destiny which brings our happiness into being only in the form which pleases us least.
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"Finding Time Again" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 6)
p. 331, Penguin Classics, 2003
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"Finding Time Again" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 6)
p. 331, Penguin Classics, 2003
Wednesday, 24 August 2005
Emporte le bonheur and laisse-moi l'ennui
"Emporte le bonheur and laisse-moi l'ennui"
- Victor Hugo, from Les Contemplations, IV. ii
(Take the happiness and leave the boredom to me)
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"Finding Time Again" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 6)
p. 315, Penguin Classics, 2003
- Victor Hugo, from Les Contemplations, IV. ii
(Take the happiness and leave the boredom to me)
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"Finding Time Again" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 6)
p. 315, Penguin Classics, 2003
Thursday, 18 August 2005
A delicate, sweet scent of heliotrope
‘A delicate, sweet scent of heliotrope wafted from a little patch of beans in full flower; it was brought to us not by a breeze from our own land, but by a wild wind from Newfoundland, unconnected to the exiled plant, without congenial reminiscence and pleasure. In this perfume not breathed by beauty, not purified in her bosom, not scattered in her path, in this perfume of a new dawn, new cultivation and new world, there was all the melancholy of regret, of absence and of youth.’
From “Memoires d’outre-tombe” by Chateaubriand
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"Finding Time Again" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 6)
p. 228, Penguin Classics, 2003
From “Memoires d’outre-tombe” by Chateaubriand
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"Finding Time Again" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 6)
p. 228, Penguin Classics, 2003
Real life is literature
Real life, life finally uncovered and clarified, the only life in consequence lived to the full, is literature. Life in this sense dwells within all ordinary people as much as in the artist. But they do not see it because they are not trying to shed light on it. And so their past is cluttered with countless photographic negatives, which continue to be useless because their intellect has never ‘developed’ them. Our lives; and the lives of other people, too; because style for a writer, like colour for a painter, is a question not of technique but of vision. It is the revelation, which would be impossible by direct or conscious means, of the qualitative difference in the ways we perceive the world, a difference which, if there were no art, would remain the eternal secret of each individual. It is only through art that we can escape from ourselves and know how another person sees a universe which is not the same as our own and whose landscapes would otherwise have remained as unknown as nay there may be on the moon.
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"Finding Time Again" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 6)
p. 204, Penguin Classics, 2003
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"Finding Time Again" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 6)
p. 204, Penguin Classics, 2003
Some mystery-loving minds maintain that objects retain something of the eyes that have looked at them
Some mystery-loving minds maintain that objects retain something of the eyes that have looked at them, that we can see monuments and pictures only through an almost tangible veil woven over them through the centuries by the love and contemplation of so many admirers. This fantasy would become truth if they transposed it into the realm of the only reality each person, knows, into the domain of their own sensitivity. Yes, in that sense and that sense only (but it is much the more important one), a thing which we have looked at long ago, if we see it again, brings back to us, along with our original gaze, all the images which that gaze contained.
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"Finding Time Again" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 6)
p. 193, Penguin Classics, 2003
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"Finding Time Again" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 6)
p. 193, Penguin Classics, 2003
Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness
"Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness; but it does so by setting us bodily free from our surroundings and giving us back our primitive, unattached state"
Thomas Mann (German novelist and essayist, 1875-1955)
Thomas Mann (German novelist and essayist, 1875-1955)
Thursday, 21 July 2005
The tightfisted sea!
The tightfisted sea! in its willful silence
Says: 'I know nothing,
I have not seen any pearls!'
Rumi : Divan 109:1-9
Says: 'I know nothing,
I have not seen any pearls!'
Rumi : Divan 109:1-9
Sunday, 10 July 2005
Marcel Proust was born on 10 July 1871
Marcel Proust was born on 10 July 1871 (French novelist and author, 1871-1922)
(on which day, coincidentally, I finished reading "The Fugitive" and moved onto "Finding Time Again", in 2005)
(on which day, coincidentally, I finished reading "The Fugitive" and moved onto "Finding Time Again", in 2005)
Grief
For in this world where everything wears out, where everything perishes, there is one thing that collapses and is more completely destroyed than anything else, and leaves fewer traces than beauty itself: and that is grief.
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Fugitive" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 656, Penguin Classics, 2003
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Fugitive" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 656, Penguin Classics, 2003
Saturday, 9 July 2005
... daily habits existed whose origins we ourselves had forgotten ...
As some need the scent of a forest or the sound of the lapping waters of a lake, I needed to feel her sleeping beside me at night and, during the day, to have her always beside me in the car. For even if we forget a love affair, it may determine the form of the love affair that follows. Already in the very heart of the earlier love affair daily habits existed whose origins we ourselves had forgotten; it was the anguish we first felt one day which made us desperately desire, then systematically repeat like rituals whose original meaning is forgiven, our beloved all the way back to her door, to move her into our home, to attend in person or through the presence of a trusted friend all her comings and goings - all these habits are smooth highways where every day our love follows paths which in former times were scored out by the molten lava of our ardent emotions. But these habits survive the disappearance of the woman concerned, even her memory. They shape, if not all our love affairs, at least certain of our loves, as they recur in turn.
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Fugitive" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
pps. 641-2, Penguin Classics, 2003
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Fugitive" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
pps. 641-2, Penguin Classics, 2003
Everything we believe imperishable tends towards destruction
Everything we believe imperishable tends towards destruction; a social position, like everything else, is not given once and for all but, just like the power of an empire, is reconstituted from moment to moment through a sort of endless renewed process of creation, which explains the apparent anomalies of social or political history over half a century. The creation of the world did not happen 'in the beginning', it happens from day to day.
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Fugitive" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 633, Penguin Classics, 2003
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Fugitive" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 633, Penguin Classics, 2003
Thursday, 7 July 2005
.. a creature of no fixed age ...
For man is a creature of no fixed age, a creature who has the ability to become years younger in only a few seconds and who, surrounded by walls formed by the periods of time that he has lived through, floats around in their midst but as in a pool whose level keeps constantly changing, thus putting hiim within reach now of one time period, now of another.
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Fugitive" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 578, Penguin Classics, 2003
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Fugitive" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 578, Penguin Classics, 2003
Tuesday, 5 July 2005
Happiness
"Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you"
Nathaniel Hawthorne (born July 4, 1804, died 1864)
(American short-story writer and novelist)
Nathaniel Hawthorne (born July 4, 1804, died 1864)
(American short-story writer and novelist)
Tuesday, 28 June 2005
Passing days gradually cover over those which went before and are themselves buried by those that come after.
Raising a corner of the heavy veil of habit (habit which stultifies us and which during the whole course of our existence hides more or less the whole universe from us, and under cover of utter darkness, without changing their labels, substitutes for the most dangerous or intoxicating poisons of life something anodyne which procures no delight), these memories returned to me as on their first appearance, with the same sharp, fresh novelty that each new season brings as it returns, changing our routine time-table and providing us, even in the realm of our pleasures - if we climb into a carriage on the first fine day of spring or leave the house at sunrise - with an exultant awareness of our most insignificant actions, which invests this one intense moment with more value than the totality of the days preceding it. As they recede, passing days gradually cover over those which went before and are themselves buried by those that come after. But each past day remains deposited within us as in some vast library where there are copies even of the oldest books, which probably no one will ever ask to consult. And yet if this past day should pass through the translucent layers of the folowing eras, rise to the surface and spread out from within us until it covers our whole surface, then for a moment names will resume their former meanings, people their former faces and we our former souls, and we shall feel with a diffuse but newly tolerable and transient sense of suffering, the problems which remained intractable for so long and which caused us so much anguish at the time. Our selves are composed of successive states, superimposed. But this superimposition is not immutable like the stratification of a mountain. A tremor is liable at any moment to throw older layers back up to the surface.
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Fugitive" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 509, Penguin Classics, 2003
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Fugitive" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 509, Penguin Classics, 2003
Tuesday, 21 June 2005
... the cloying, degrading morass of real life ...
As long as things are possible, we defer them, and they can assume their power of attraction and their apparent ease of accomplishment only when, projected into the ideal void of imagination, they are withdrawn from immersion in the cloying, degrading morass of real life. The idea that we shall die is more cruel than dying itself, but less cruel than the idea that someone else is dead, than the idea that, when the waters of reality close after having engulfed a person's being, they smoothly, without so much as a ripple, cover the spot from which that being is excluded, where neither will nor knowledge exist any longer, and from which it is as difficult to return to the idea of what that person's being had experienced as it is difficult, even while memories of their life are still fresh, to think that this person is assimilable to the insubstantial images and memories left by the characters of a novel that we have read.
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Fugitive" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
pps. 474-5, Penguin Classics, 2003
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Fugitive" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
pps. 474-5, Penguin Classics, 2003
Marble Coldness
"Much of the marble coldness of Hester's impression was to be attributed to the circumstance that her life had turned, in a great measure, from passion and feeling, to thought. Standing alone, as to any dependent on society, and with little Pearl to be guided and protected- alone, and hopeless of retrieving her position, even as she had not scorned to consider it desirable, she cast away the fragments of a broken chain."
from
Nathaniel Hawthorne
(American short-story writer and novelist, 1804-1864).
Source:
http://en.thinkexist.com/default.asp?url=http%3A//en.thinkexist.com/quotation/much-of-the-marble-coldness-of-hester-s/357397.html
from
Nathaniel Hawthorne
(American short-story writer and novelist, 1804-1864).
Source:
http://en.thinkexist.com/default.asp?url=http%3A//en.thinkexist.com/quotation/much-of-the-marble-coldness-of-hester-s/357397.html
SLUBBERDEGULLION
SLUBBERDEGULLION
A filthy, slobbering person.
English, whatever its other merits, has as many disparaging words as one would possibly desire. The example that follows is from Sir Thomas Urquhart’s translation of Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel, dated 1653, which draws heavily on vocabulary used in Scotland in his time:
The bun-sellers or cake-makers were in nothing inclinable to their request; but, which was worse, did injure them most outrageously, called them prattling gabblers, lickorous gluttons, freckled bittors, mangy rascals, shite-a-bed scoundrels, drunken roysters, sly knaves, drowsy loiterers, slapsauce fellows, slabberdegullion druggels, lubberly louts, cozening foxes, ruffian rogues, paltry customers, sycophant-varlets, drawlatch hoydens, flouting milksops, jeering companions, staring clowns, forlorn snakes, ninny lobcocks, scurvy sneaksbies, fondling fops, base loons, saucy coxcombs, idle lusks, scoffing braggarts, noddy meacocks, blockish grutnols, doddipol-joltheads, jobbernol goosecaps, foolish loggerheads, flutch calf-lollies, grouthead gnat-snappers, lob-dotterels, gaping changelings, codshead loobies, woodcock slangams, ninny-hammer flycatchers, noddypeak simpletons, turdy gut, shitten shepherds, and other suchlike defamatory epithets; saying further, that it was not for them to eat of these dainty cakes, but might very well content themselves with the coarse unranged bread, or to eat of the great brown household loaf.
You don’t hear invective like that any more, and few of us would understand it if we did. There’s enough material there for a year of Weird Words, but I’ve picked out slabberdegullion (a rare spelling of slubberdegullion), a word which nobody hearing it could possibly consider a compliment. There are examples of it on record from the seventeenth century down to the early twentieth but it appears now only as a deliberate archaism.
The experts disagree about where it came from. The first part is clearly English slobber, but the rest is less certain. It might be cullion, an old word for a testicle (it’s related to French couillon and Spanish cojones), which by the sixteenth century was a term of contempt for a man. It might instead conceivably be linked to the Scots dialect gullion for a quagmire or a pool of mud containing semi-liquid decayed vegetable matter, but that’s only recorded rather later.
Source: World Wide Words. Copyright © Michael Quinion, 1996–2005.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-slu1.htm
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nice to see that we have been abusing our fellow man linguistically as well as physically for years on end.
Some of these examples would be perfect sprinkled in various texts one has to write on a daily basis (emails to co-workers, business plans (hopefully about the competition and not one's own organisation), novels, letters to loved ones (or at least, family!), etc.
What think you?
A filthy, slobbering person.
English, whatever its other merits, has as many disparaging words as one would possibly desire. The example that follows is from Sir Thomas Urquhart’s translation of Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel, dated 1653, which draws heavily on vocabulary used in Scotland in his time:
The bun-sellers or cake-makers were in nothing inclinable to their request; but, which was worse, did injure them most outrageously, called them prattling gabblers, lickorous gluttons, freckled bittors, mangy rascals, shite-a-bed scoundrels, drunken roysters, sly knaves, drowsy loiterers, slapsauce fellows, slabberdegullion druggels, lubberly louts, cozening foxes, ruffian rogues, paltry customers, sycophant-varlets, drawlatch hoydens, flouting milksops, jeering companions, staring clowns, forlorn snakes, ninny lobcocks, scurvy sneaksbies, fondling fops, base loons, saucy coxcombs, idle lusks, scoffing braggarts, noddy meacocks, blockish grutnols, doddipol-joltheads, jobbernol goosecaps, foolish loggerheads, flutch calf-lollies, grouthead gnat-snappers, lob-dotterels, gaping changelings, codshead loobies, woodcock slangams, ninny-hammer flycatchers, noddypeak simpletons, turdy gut, shitten shepherds, and other suchlike defamatory epithets; saying further, that it was not for them to eat of these dainty cakes, but might very well content themselves with the coarse unranged bread, or to eat of the great brown household loaf.
You don’t hear invective like that any more, and few of us would understand it if we did. There’s enough material there for a year of Weird Words, but I’ve picked out slabberdegullion (a rare spelling of slubberdegullion), a word which nobody hearing it could possibly consider a compliment. There are examples of it on record from the seventeenth century down to the early twentieth but it appears now only as a deliberate archaism.
The experts disagree about where it came from. The first part is clearly English slobber, but the rest is less certain. It might be cullion, an old word for a testicle (it’s related to French couillon and Spanish cojones), which by the sixteenth century was a term of contempt for a man. It might instead conceivably be linked to the Scots dialect gullion for a quagmire or a pool of mud containing semi-liquid decayed vegetable matter, but that’s only recorded rather later.
Source: World Wide Words. Copyright © Michael Quinion, 1996–2005.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-slu1.htm
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nice to see that we have been abusing our fellow man linguistically as well as physically for years on end.
Some of these examples would be perfect sprinkled in various texts one has to write on a daily basis (emails to co-workers, business plans (hopefully about the competition and not one's own organisation), novels, letters to loved ones (or at least, family!), etc.
What think you?
Tuesday, 14 June 2005
Change and Desires
We believe that we may change things around us to suit our desires, we believe this because otherwise we can see no aceptable solution. We do not think of the solution which occurs most frequently and which is also acceptable: when we do not manage to change things to suit our desires, but our desires gradually change. We become indifferent to a situation which we had hoped to change when we found it unbearable. We were not able to overcome the obstacle, althought this was our only desire, yet life led us round or beyond it, and afterwards if we turn back towards the past we can hardly catch sight of it in the distance, so imperceptible has it become.
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Fugitive" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 419, Penguin Classics, 2003
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Fugitive" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 419, Penguin Classics, 2003
The links between persons
The links between another person and ourselves exist only in our minds. Memory weakens them as it fades, and despite the illusions which we hope to deceive us and with which, whether from love, friendship, politeness, human respect or from duty, we hope to deceive others, we exist on our own. Man is a being who cannot move beyond his own boundaries, who knows others only within himself, and if he alleges the contrary, he is lying. And I would have been so afraid that someone might take away my need for her and my love for her, had they been able to do so, that I convinced myself that these were essential for my life.
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Fugitive" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 418, Penguin Classics, 2003
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Fugitive" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 418, Penguin Classics, 2003
Desire Suffering Satisfaction Forgetting
The more desire advances, the more true possession recedes. So that if it is possible to obtain happiness, or at least freedom from suffering, what we should seek is not the satisfaction, but the gradual reduction and final elimination of desire. We try to see those we love, we should try not to see them, for only the process of forgetting leads finally to the extinction of desire.
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Fugitive" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
pps. 417-418, Penguin Classics, 2003
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Fugitive" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
pps. 417-418, Penguin Classics, 2003
Wednesday, 8 June 2005
... and if in the end she did surrender ...
... and if in the end she did surrender, I would never be able to forget the time when she had been alone, and even if finally victorious, I would have suffered defeat in the past, that is to say irrevocably.
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Fugitive" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 401, Penguin Classics, 2003
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Fugitive" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 401, Penguin Classics, 2003
Thursday, 2 June 2005
Habit the fearsome goddess
I had thought that I no longer loved Albertine, believing that I had taken everything into account, that I was completely lucid and that I had plumbed the depths of my heart. But however great our intelligence, it cannot conceive all the elements that constitute it and which remain undetected as long as no event capable of isolating them makes them start to solidify out of the volatile state in which they exist for most of the time. I was mistakened when I thought that I saw clearly into my heart. But this knowledge, which the finest insights of my intellect had not given to me, had just been brought home to me, as hard, dazzling and strange as crystals of salt, through the sudden stimulus of pain. I had become so accustomed to having Albertine beside me, and now I suddenly saw Habit in a completely new perspective. Until now I had considered it above all a negative force suppressing the originality and even our awareness of our perceptions; now I saw it as a fearsome goddess, so attached to us, with her inscrutable face so grafted on to our hearts that if she detaches herself and turns away from us, this deity, whose presence we were barely able to discern, inflicts upon us the most terrible suffering, and then she is as cruel as death.
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Fugitive" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 388, Penguin Classics, 2003
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Fugitive" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 388, Penguin Classics, 2003
Thursday, 19 May 2005
... The world of real differences ...
The world of real differences does not exist on the surface of the earth, among all the countries levelled by our perceptions; how much less, therefore, does it exist among the 'worldly'. Does it in fact exist anywhere? The Vinteuil septet had seemed to tell me that it did. But where?
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Prisoner" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 254, Penguin Classics, 2003
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Prisoner" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 254, Penguin Classics, 2003
Tuesday, 17 May 2005
I went crazy last night
I went crazy last night, love ran into me and said:
'I am coming, do not shout, do not tear your clothes, speak no more.'
'O love!' I said: 'I am afraid of other things.'
'There is nothing else' it said: 'speak no more.
I shall whisper hidden words into your ear;
You just nod in approval! except in secret speak no more!'
(Divan 2219:1-5)
Rumi
'I am coming, do not shout, do not tear your clothes, speak no more.'
'O love!' I said: 'I am afraid of other things.'
'There is nothing else' it said: 'speak no more.
I shall whisper hidden words into your ear;
You just nod in approval! except in secret speak no more!'
(Divan 2219:1-5)
Rumi
Monday, 16 May 2005
... The only real journey, the only Fountain of Youth, would be to travel not towards new landscapes, but with new eyes ...
But is it not the case that these elements, this final residue which we are obliged to keep to ourselves, which speech cannot convey even from friend to friend, from master to pupil, from lover to mistress, that this inexpressible thing which reveals the qualitative difference between what each of us has felt and has had to leave on the threshold of the phrases which he uses to communicate with others, something which he can do only by dwelling on points of experience common to all and consequently of no interest to any, can be expressed through art, the art of a Vinteuil or an Elstir, which makes manifest in the colours of the spectrum the intimate make-up of those worlds we call individuals, and which without art we should never know? Wings, another respiratory system which allowed us to cross the immensity of space, would not help us. For if we went to Mars or Venus while keeping the same sense, everything we might see there would take on the same aspect as the things we know on Earth. The only real journey, the only Fountain of Youth, would be to travel not towards new landscapes, but with new eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them can see, or can be; and we can do that with the help of an Elstir, a Vinteuil; with them and their like we can truly fly from star to star.
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Prisoner" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
pps. 236-7, Penguin Classics, 2003
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Prisoner" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
pps. 236-7, Penguin Classics, 2003
Sunday, 15 May 2005
Information as Active Authoring on an Interpersonal Basis
"Several years ago I was talking with Tim O'Reilly about the discomfort we both felt about treating information as a commodity. It seemed to us that information was something more, and quite different, than the communicable form of knowledge. It was not a commodity, exactly, and was insulted by the generality we call "content".
Information, we observed, is derived from the verb *inform,* which is related to the verb *form*. To *inform* is not to "deliver information", but rather to *form* the other party. If you tell me something I didn't know before, I am changed by that. If I believe you, and value what you say, I have granted you authority. Meaning, I have given you the right to *author* what I know. Therefore, *we are all authors of each other*. This is a profoundly human condition in any case, but it is an especially important aspect of the open source value system. By forming each other, as we also form useful software, we are making the world. Not merely changing it."
Not sure that I have come across such a concept of "Active" information before, especially in relation to "information" "authoring" or "forming" something within a person - the very act of communicating information becomes an active involvement in creating something new in another.
Surely there must be some philosophical or psychological precursor to this notion? Who else wrote about such concepts?
Tuesday, 10 May 2005
Proust everywhere
Didn't quite know how many people reference Proust out there (on the 'net) - but then again, I shouldn't be surprised (of course - but sometimes, in one's little egocentric universe, the breadth of universality surprises and disturbs at the same time).
Clairity's Place has this blog on the Proust Project - path to leader to deeper inquiry.
But just as surprising (well, not really, is the number of people referencing Proust who have never read him). That's the damage for becoming a cultural icon (after one's death).
(PS - I am sure I will talk about something else when I have finished his masterwork!)
Clairity's Place has this blog on the Proust Project - path to leader to deeper inquiry.
But just as surprising (well, not really, is the number of people referencing Proust who have never read him). That's the damage for becoming a cultural icon (after one's death).
(PS - I am sure I will talk about something else when I have finished his masterwork!)
Friday, 6 May 2005
Blogging - self-referentially
Did you see this article on blogs?
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_18/b3931001_mz001.htm
No, I hadn't, but on reading it - couldn't agree more.
And the wonderful reference to the babies blog (quite a cute little joke).
http://thedowningboys.blogspot.com/2005/04/yucky-dee-doo-day.html
OK. Blogs are interesting and are multiplying at germ warfare rates.
And they can have some influence on companies.
Mostly "disruptive", as the writer mostly hinted at (strongly and literally in one place).
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_18/b3931001_mz001.htm
No, I hadn't, but on reading it - couldn't agree more.
And the wonderful reference to the babies blog (quite a cute little joke).
http://thedowningboys.blogspot.com/2005/04/yucky-dee-doo-day.html
OK. Blogs are interesting and are multiplying at germ warfare rates.
And they can have some influence on companies.
Mostly "disruptive", as the writer mostly hinted at (strongly and literally in one place).
Grows quickly. Just like the web did (after a while - same for blogs).
And then mainstreams and falls in on its own mass - something else comes along which not really supersedes but rather enhances (in addition to) that "older" technology. Nothing is ever lost - just added to.
Ditto for blogging.
Not everyone will blog or want to or make it a part of their normal day.
Next...
Thursday, 5 May 2005
Reverse Cyborgism
Somebody (http://velvetbreeze.blogspot.com/) wrote:
I am so super super tired. I am going to blue-screen soon.
Love the computer reference for a human medical condition. Reverse Cyborg thinking.
Are we being "reversed" into Cyborgism?
I am so super super tired. I am going to blue-screen soon.
Love the computer reference for a human medical condition. Reverse Cyborg thinking.
Are we being "reversed" into Cyborgism?
Wednesday, 4 May 2005
Universal Truth and Difference
The universe is true for all of us and different for each one.
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Prisoner" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 171, Penguin Classics, 2003
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Prisoner" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 171, Penguin Classics, 2003
Tuesday, 3 May 2005
The managing editor, an honest, clumsy soul ...
The managing editor, an honest, clumsy soul, lies quite straightforwardly, like an architect who assures you your house will be ready on a date when it will not have been started.
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Prisoner" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 162, Penguin Classics, 2003
-------------------------------------------------
Isn't it nice to know that more than 100 years later, certain aspects of society remain obstinately similar.
What is it about building that means it is always late?
And since we are involved in the "building of technology" industry, and software systems are notoriously always late (one way or another, regardless of the "scoping" changes that various game-players use to "pretend" that they are "on time, on budget"), are we now talking about some "universal verisimilitude" that is ingrained in the nature of human activity ...
Building Something Aways Takes Longer Than One Expects (Or Wants)
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Prisoner" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 162, Penguin Classics, 2003
-------------------------------------------------
Isn't it nice to know that more than 100 years later, certain aspects of society remain obstinately similar.
What is it about building that means it is always late?
And since we are involved in the "building of technology" industry, and software systems are notoriously always late (one way or another, regardless of the "scoping" changes that various game-players use to "pretend" that they are "on time, on budget"), are we now talking about some "universal verisimilitude" that is ingrained in the nature of human activity ...
Building Something Aways Takes Longer Than One Expects (Or Wants)
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