Paul Vitols's Blog, page 36

sketchbook: Friday 2 September 2011

FRI 2 SEP 2011 9:45 am MY LIVING-ROOM

There's a break in the racket of power-washing next door. I can hear the thrum of cars zooming by outside again, and even some gaps when there is no vehicle sound. But the power-washer compressor does keep running, just more quietly while there is a pause in the spraying. Now: the fluttery rumble of an accelerating truck, the blowhard groan of another rushing truck. And the spraying has recommenced; a swishing splatter, industrial sound like going through a car-wash. What sounds like a plastic tub being drummed by the pressurized spray.

So though my living-room itself is quiet and still, a seeming haven, the building is immersed in an agitated lake of noise, a crisscrossing traffic of soundwaves passing through the house as light passes through colored glass; modified and decreased, perhaps, but passing through nonetheless.

I'm bent over the pine Ikea coffee table, which is knotted and scarred and turning by slow degrees to a yellow-peach color. There are three remote controls, some pencils and pens, my eyeglasses, slips of paper on which I record my reading progress for Goodreads.com, the September 2011 issue of Scientific American, a small stack of DVDs, some cheap coasters of woven rush, a napkin, and the empty plastic bag that usually holds this sketchbook.

Now there's a moment quiet enough that I can hear the wall-clock ticking. But that's quickly drowned again by the motor-driven blast of spraying water next door.

my philosophy, part 3

In earlier posts I set out what I regard as two pillars of my personal philosophy: pragmatism and individualism. Today I thought I'd try to write about my third and final pillar, but I've had a hard time coming up with exactly what this one is, or what to call it.

How could that be, you wonder? How do I even know there's another "pillar" there?

I know it because to my ears, simply describing my philosophy as "pragmatic" and "individualistic" sounds incomplete. There's something about my beliefs and how I arrive at them that feels different from the way others arrive at theirs, at least as far as I can tell. The clue is that people I talk with often feel that my ideas are "way out" or unfamiliar or foreign, or that they come from strange and obscure sources. So I'm going to label this quality with a word I used a few days ago to characterize my reading (and now that I look at the post, I see that I also used it there to characterize my philosophy!): "eclectic".

So yes, eclectic, "selecting what appears to be best in various doctrines, methods, or styles".

But isn't that what everyone does anyway all the time? Don't we always choose the best of what's available to us? Why give this human tendency a special name?

The answer lies in the word various. We choose the best of the things that happen to be in front of us, or that happen to be known to us right now, but often that horizon is not very large, and we don't make any special effort to increase it. Our "favorite dish" is one of the things that Mom used to make—but we've never even sampled the cuisines of Mexico, Italy, France, India, or China. If we did, whether we liked it or not, we'd be in for a surprise. But if our mind and our tastebuds are open enough, we will find plenty to like out there.

As I write these things I feel a bit strange, because in my own eyes I'm not an adventurous person. I'm a homebody by nature and although I've tried many kinds of food, I'm content to eat mostly a few favorite things rather than continuing to hunt for new experiences. I rarely travel or even go out.

But intellectually I'm adventurous. I'm eager for new ideas and am willing to put up with difficulties in order to discover them and familiarize myself with them—difficulties like reading hard books attentively. I like knowledge for its own sake, and I don't care where it comes from. In that way it's like 24-carat gold: whether in the form of a coin, an earring, or a candlestick, it is the same pure substance. I want to know what is true, and life—and other great teachers—have taught me that appearances deceive. You have to look deeper.

The eclectic thinker is not interested in package deals, that is, in taking up philosophies wholesale, such as Platonism or Marxism or existentialism. Each element has to persuade on its own merits.

Again, this sounds obvious. Who willingly acquiesces in a beliefs that are awkward or incredible, just in order to "keep the set together" of some package? I believe we all do, at least some of the time, and some of us do it all of the time. A belief from an "outside" system might "break" our own adopted system, so we have to reject it, no matter how appealing or plausible it might be in itself.

An example from my own experience is astrology. I would say that my natural personal outlook is a scientific one. As a kid I loved science—I had my first subscription to Scientific American magazine at age 13—and expected to become a scientist when I grew up. My special interest was space science and up to my mid-teens I thought that becoming something like a radio astronomer would be one of the coolest things possible. To me, astrology was superstitious mumbo-jumbo. I agreed with Carl Sagan that it had "no validity whatsoever", and I scoffed at those who took it in any way seriously.

By my late teens, though, doubts had started to creep in. Not to do with astrology per se to begin with, but more a sense that truth was something bigger than what could be approached only through science. Works of literature and other art were having deep, powerful effects on what might be called my soul, and I wondered about new (to me) ideas like symbolism and the unconscious. I might not have been able to phrase it thus, but I was starting to hunger for some way of understanding my experience as a whole—tangible and intangible, inner and outer. I was awakening to a new kind of deep hunger in my life that I could not even give a name, but which I was able to recognize immediately when I read, in 1980, Jacob Needleman's introduction to the book The Sword of Gnosis:

The marvels of modern science are the end-result of a movement toward more liberal education and greater freedom of inquiry, wh ich began long ago with the vowed purpose of widening human knowledge. As the pressure of technology increases, however, the authentic patterns of human life are more and more upset, and a descent into total materialism seems to be inevitable. Man has thrust upon himself a standard of knowing and a view of reality which blind him to his possible role within the universal scheme. . . .

In offering a selection from the many available texts, the editor has necessarily to rely on his own need and hunger for a more impartial sense of himself. . . .

Back to astrology. As part of this restless groping for a wider, more total way of knowing, I started looking into symbols and occult ideas—including into astrology. And what I found, when I looked at it without bias, was that there seemed to be something to it. Intrigued, I began to study it more carefully, and before long become a more or less serious student of it. I learned to draw and interpret charts, and to this day I include astrology as one of my fields of study. The more I work with it, the more validity I find in it.

But astrology is not a science, certainly not in the modern sense. And according to the modern scientific view of the world, astrology cannot have any validity, because there is no conceivable physical mechanism that could make it work. If you're an astrophysicist who happens to be a Capricorn, you may be amused to find that you do possess a number of supposedly "Capricornian" traits, but this would not seduce you into thinking that there is any kind of objective validity to the idea of stars' and planets' influencing human qualities. Still less would you consider adding an astrological component to your roster of observations. To your knowledge, no university anywhere offers a science degree in astrology, and that's as it should be. Case closed.

But what about that amusing correlation between our Capricorn scientist and the list of Capricornian traits? It remains merely one of those "huh, how about that?" things—not worth changing a career, or a worldview, over.

And here's where I'm different. The truly eclectic philosopher takes on those things, those facts and beliefs, that appear to his unbiased gaze to be true, and accepts them. And if that acceptance throws a spanner into an existing theoretical framework, no matter how venerated, widely held, or socially enforced it might be, then that's just too bad. So much the worse for the theoretical framework. We need a new one, a better one, a more inclusive one. And I'm willing to work on that.

my philosophy, part 2

In my post of 17 August I explained how one pillar of my personal philosophy is pragmatism, or the difference each belief makes in the world of experience.

In my long journey to discover what my own beliefs are I eventually arrived at another pillar: individualism.

This "ism" applies more to thinking about ethics and politics. What is it exactly? We could do worse than starting with my trusty Webster's:

1 a (1): a doctrine that the interests of the individual are or ought to be ethically paramount; also: conduct guided by such a doctrine (2): the conception that all values, rights, and duties originate in individuals b: a theory maintaining the political and economic independence of the individual and stressing individual initiative, action, and interests; also: conduct or practice guided by such a theory

Yes, I subscribe to all of the above. But why does it matter?

The key points are the related ideas of ethics and justice. Aristotle holds that justice is experienced in only one place: the individual human soul, and nowhere else. This means that justice cannot be experienced by any group, except insofar as the group's individual members are experiencing it. It follows that if you want to promote justice for any group, such as a particular minority, the way to do so is to see that each individual within it is treated justly. Look after the individuals, and the groups look after themselves. We regard collective punishment as unjust, but collective rewards are equally unjust, and for the same reason: the preciousness of the individual is being disregarded.

I have a book called Individualism & Collectivism by the sociologist Harry C. Triandis. An American raised in Greece, he has spent his career studying individualism and collectivism, which he feels are complementary tendencies that exist within every society. Each society, however, has a dominant tendency toward one or the other, with most of the world—I think he reckons about three-quarters—living as mainly collectivist societies, the individualistic ones being those of Western Europe and its offshoots in North America, Australia, and other places. If I recall correctly, Triandis takes the view that individualism and collectivism are both necessary to human society, and one is not inherently preferable to the other.

But to the extent that that is what Professor Triandis thinks, I believe that I disagree. I believe that individualism is better than collectivism, that it represents a more evolved and a superior form of human society, one that is more free, more just, and more prosperous than any society organized around collectivism. I believe that the explosion of science, technology, wealth, and the concern for human rights that has occurred in the past three centuries or so has been because of the ideology of individualism, which came to birth in Europe. Other societies are coming to partake of these benefits to he extent that they embrace an individualistic worldview.

The heart of the difference between individualism and collectivism is the question of rights: whose rights matter more, those of the individual, or those of the group? When these come into conflict, which one should prevail? Triandis illustrates the difference between individualist thinking and collectivist thinking with the example of choosing one's marriage partner. In China, he says, it might be regarded as appropriate and even necessary for someone to consult with his boss at work about whether to marry and to whom, while that level of employer involvement in this question would be unthinkable in, say, Britain. Involving your boss in your decision to get married means that you are deferring to his judgment and authority about how your choice will affect the team—the group, the collective. And this is because the good of the group, at least as your boss sees it, comes before your personal good as you see it.

Even if it's not the boss getting involved, in collectivist societies the family certainly gets involved in the choice of marriage partners, usually choosing these for you to ensure that the interests of the family as a whole are looked after first. And your personal happiness? Why, that comes from doing your duty for the family!

One of the main features of collectivism is revealed by the example of the boss: it is authoritarian. The good of the group comes first, and who decides what that good is? The group's leaders, usually the head male. Is he always right? Well, it's his call to make, so yes, by definition, he's always right. Suck it up and move on. (Incidentally, this is why political forms of collectivism, such as communism, always require a dictator—one who is assumed to be benevolent.)

This aspect of collectivism was summed up by the science writer Loren Eiseley in words that struck me so much that I have memorized them:

The group ethic is whatever its leaders choose it to mean; it destroys the innocent and justifies the act in terms of the future.

There it is: collectivism is a doctrine of human sacrifice.

Of course, the issue is not so cut and dried as I'm making it sound here. Here's an example of my own: the overcrowded lifeboat. Too many people have piled into a lifeboat far out at sea. There are not enough provisions, and the boat will sunk by the first good-sized wave. If most of the people are to have a chance of surviving, some need to be cut loose and thrown overboard. Should they do this? If so, which ones, and chosen how?

Collectivism makes such questions relatively easy. The group will have a clear leader, and he will know clearly that his primary responsibility is to the group as a whole. He may not enjoy it, but he'll understand that his duty is to chuck some people overboard, and he'll choose which ones. Over they go, and the rest will, hopefully, have a better chance of survival. Disagree with his choices? Tough—you're not the leader; he is.

This is why I think individualism is a more evolved form of social organization. Collectivism is the natural condition of a society in "survival" mode. When dangers to the group are real and many, then you need to be tough and realistic about how to survive, which is, after all, job 1. Individualism is, in a way, a luxury of the society that has already survived. We don't need to be throwing people overboard, and we don't need the social institutions designed to enable us to do that—namely, authoritarian decision-making. We can afford democracy.

So there you have it: the personal philosophy of Paul Vitols comes slowly into view. I am a pragmatist and an individualist. I can think of one more pillar of my philosophy, but I'll save that for another time.

coincidences as messages

Having finished reading The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb on Monday, yesterday, Tuesday, I decided to resume reading volume 5 of The Great Books of the Western World, entitled simply Aeschylus Sophocles Euripides Aristophanes—a collection of the works of the great Greek playwrights.

I'm about 1/3 of the way through the 649-page volume, so I've finished the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles and am making my way through Euripides. Now where had I left off? Ah: I'm about to start a play called Hippolytus. Not knowing who that was or what it was about, I turned briefly to another book nearby called Classical Drama: Greek and Roman by Meyer Reinhold—a 1950s paperback I picked up from the estate of my late friend Harvey Burt (it has the name "Burt" felt-penned boldly on the edges of the pages outside the book). Reading the one-paragraph background to the play, I learned that Hippolytus was the illegitimate son of Theseus, king of Athens, by the Amazon queen Hippolyte. Hippolytus shunned women and spent his time hunting. Now Theseus had married the young princess of Crete, Phaedra, by whom he had had several children. But when Phaedra first saw Hippolytus, she fell madly in love with her stepson, who was about her own age. From that moment she struggled not to reveal her secret passion.

So much for the background. With that in hand, I jumped in and started reading the play aloud, a practice that I find greatly enhances my ability to understand and enjoy the play. As usual I read about 5 or 6 pages—maybe 40% of the play—then left off the rest for my next session and picked up my next book for the day: A Study of History, volume 2, by Arnold J. Toynbee.

I was getting to the end of his long chapter on "The Golden Mean", about how the right level of challenge to a society, neither too much nor too little, causes it to launch into vigorous, creative existence—to be born. And then I came to this passage:

In the language of Mythology, the encounter between two superhuman personalities, which is the dynamic force in human affairs and the key to the plots of the great tragic works of art, does not result semper et ubique et omnibus in the denouement which is given to the play in the Book of Job and in Goethe's Faust. A wager between God and the Devil in which the Devil cannot be the winner nor God the loser is not, after all, the course which the action of this universal drama invariably follows. It turns out that this is only one possible rendering of the plot—a rendering which depends upon the terms in which the bet is offered and taken; and there is another alternative rendering in which the denouement is that of Euripides' Hippolytus.

This passage is one of the more obscure ones I've come across in Toynbee, but how could I not be struck by seeing reference to the play Hippolytus when I had only discovered its existence and started reading it mere minutes before? It was a coincidence—and that made me feel good.

Why good? Because I believe coincidences are a sign that you are on the right track. They're telling you that you're going the right way, that you're in the right place at the right time. This notion though is not original with me.

Probably the first reference to this idea that I encountered was in reading Carl Jung, in particular his famous essay "Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle", published as part of volume 8 of his Collected Works, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. The essay, first published in 1952, proposes the introduction of a new concept and term, synchronicity, to label our experience of the meaningful connection of events that are connected in time and space by being simultaneously experienced, but which have no common causal connection. Jung gives a few examples. One, if I recall it correctly, happened when he was talking with a patient. The patient had had a dream in which was given a golden scarab. While she was relating the dream, there came a gentle tapping at the window behind Jung. He turned to see a flying insect tapping at the pane. When he opened the window, in flew a beetle: a common rose-chafer which is a scarabaeid and, in Jung's words, "the nearest analogy to a golden scarab that one finds in our latitudes, . . . which contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt an urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment."

The woman's dream and her telling of it presumably had no causal connection with the behavior of the beetle. But they nonetheless arrived together in a striking way—a way that felt meaningful to Jung and the patient. Most of us, if we think about it, have had similar experiences.

A memorable one for me concerned the same friend Harvey Burt whom I mentioned above, when he was ill in hospital in 2003. I was detailed to visit his house once or twice a week to take in the mail and see that all was well. One day I arrived to discover a gift-basket on the front porch containing a pot of white lilies. The attached card said something like, "To Marilyn from Michael and Diane"—all people I'd never heard of.

I phoned the florist and told them they'd made a mistake, and they sent someone to pick up the basket. But within the next day or two I got the news that Harvey had died. The white lilies had been for him after all—care of synchronicity.

Those are striking examples, but there are many smaller ones, if you keep your eyes peeled.

When I was reading Ulysses this year I learned that James Joyce regarded coincidences as signs of divine guidance, and I know that Caroline Myss teaches this as well: coincidences are how the Divine communicates with us and lets us know that we're on track. Joseph Campbell in Creative Mythology describes how Arthur Schopenhauer developed a similar idea in the early 19th century.

I'm not sure what "track" my Hippolytus coincidence is pointing to, but at the very least I take it as a sign that, for me, I'm at least reading the right things at the right time. I'll be interested to finish reading Hippolytus, which I intend to do this afternoon, to see whether Euripides has a message for me there. No matter what though, I feel an unseen guiding hand, and am very glad it's there.

a day's reading

I suppose that my reading, like my philosophy, is eclectic. At first I was going to say that it's not eclectic, but when I looked up eclectic I changed my mind:

1: selecting what appears to be best in various doctrines, methods, or styles; 2: composed of elements drawn from various sources; also: heterogeneous

Sure: what appears to be best.

If you visit my reading stack at Goodreads.com you'll see that I've got about a dozen books on the go. This accurately reflects the state of the table near the chair in the living-room where I do most of my reading, although on any given day I read from about four books, and usually the same ones from day to day, only shifting which ones slowly as my interest moves. Yesterday's session had me:

reading—and finishing—The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb
reading aloud to Kimmie another installment of The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
reading pages 375–382 of A Study of History, volume 2, by Arnold J. Toynbee
reading pages 126–134 of The Ages of Gold by Timothy Green

Why these books in particular?

First, I always have some work of fiction or other creative writing on the go. When I discovered, by reading a review in Biblical Archaeology Review, that Crumb had done a version of Genesis, I had to get it. I'm glad I did, although I found his straight treatment of the biblical book tame compared to his usually wild and ribald satire. He himself says that he regarded the project as a straight illustration job, and in that he succeeded. But I kind of got the feeling that he was drawing, so to speak, with one hand tied behind his back.

The Mayor of Casterbridge was Kimmie's choice. She likes me to read to her, and every once in a while we actually make time to do this. She had put this book on her bedside table after I'd recommended it as a good, worthwhile, literary read, but had not got round to reading it on her own. So we're doing it this way, and we're almost done. After each installment Kimmie says something like, "Wow, what a good book!"

A Study of History is a work I'm reading for more than one reason. I'd read about Toynbee's work years ago, and am now myself at work on an epic set in the ancient past. At some point I became interested in the question of how history unfolds generally, beyond the issue of what happened in this or that specific time and place. Reading Joseph Campbell had got me interested in history as a flow of ideas or spiritual ferments: the symbols and images that have ignited human passion and thereby caused those events in specific times and places. Campbell had been inspired by reading Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West, which I tried reading first. I made it maybe a quarter way through a library copy of volume 1. (Reading library books doesn't really work for me due to my slow pace and the fact that I like to read with a highlighter; I've since bought my own copies of Spengler's books.) In 2007 I decided to give Toynbee a try, and bought a used boxed set of the 2-volume abridgement of his opus edited by D. C. Somervell.

I was captivated. Toynbee, drawing on the entire tapestry of global human history from remotest antiquity up the present (he started writing in 1932 or so), concluded that the true unit of history was not the nation or state but the civilization, of which he counted about 21 (give or take) known to us since the dawn of records. Civilizations go through stages analogous to the life-cycle of an organism, with sections of each society acting in characteristic ways to bring about the changes. The civilization in which I sit as I type these words Toynbee calls Western Christendom.

When, later in 2007, in my study of literary genres, I read The Epic Cosmos edited by Larry Allums, I was excited by its contention that the epic genre is fundamentally about the birth and transformation of societies—of civilizations. It was probably then that I decided that I wanted to read all of Toynbee's work, and not just its abridged version. So I started searching for the old Oxford University Press paperbacks online, and have so far accumulated 5 of them. Here in volume 2 he is still discussing the topic "The Geneses of Civilizations". (Very briefly, a civilization is born when a primitive society, of which there have been many in the history of humanity, numbering probably in the thousands, and which by definition is simple and static, becomes subjected to stress of one kind or another. The stress, which can be of more than one kind, when it is in a certain range of intensity, elicits the creative energies of people to respond, and when they do so successfully a civilization is born.) Toynbee looks at historical events and sees deeper forces at work; I love this way of seeing.

As for The Ages of Gold, which I first heard about by reading an online article by Adrian Ash of BullionVault.com, reading this also serves a twofold purpose. My primary aim is to learn more about finance and economics, in particular about the role of precious metals in these. I've studied these topics fairly consistently for the past 17 years or so, and I am persuaded that we are living through the latest and largest episode of the destruction of so-called fiat currencies—paper money. The first paper-currency bust happened in China in the 8th century AD, not long after they invented paper. Since then the cyclic drama of switching from metallic money (gold and silver coins), to paper that represents the coins, to paper that no longer represents the coins, to the collapse of paper money in hyperinflation, has played out many times. It always ends in disaster, grief, and social upheaval. We're seeing it play out around us right now, worldwide. I wanted to learn more about the history of gold as a commodity and as a currency, and I appreciated another book of Timothy Green's, The New World of Gold, so I had no problem ordering this book online from its corporate publisher, GFMS Limited, a precious-metals consultancy.

My other reason is that the ancient history of gold casts an interesting light on the period of my epic. Money then as now was a key motivator in the world. The words of Deep Throat would have been understood perfectly well back then: "Follow the money."

There you have it: a snapshot of my reading period.

sketchbook: Saturday 20 August 2011

SAT. 20 AUG 2011 ca. 11:25 am MY FRONT PORCH

touch: My weight pressing warmly into my slippers; the soft, faintly damp, living texture of the paper against the skin of my hands; the glossy slim rigidity of the barrel of my pen. My T-shirt clings to different parts of my body with a slight friction as of salt.

taste: A faint savoriness of butter and bread.

smell: A neutral warmth and a faint earthiness.

sound: The insistent rush of engines, now dropping to background breathiness, now surging with a strain of acceleration like animals grunting with effort. Now a loud whirring-pinging of a vehicle passing with some part whirling and hitting inside. Cars: sounds of their passing, like outboard motors on a lake, like distant jets in the sky, like racecars with impatient drivers stomping on the gas, drivers acceleration with disproportionate loud speed, as though resenting having to have stopped at the intersection. And now the bus rolling to a stop, woman's electronic voice announcing the stop and the loud diesel roar of its departure.

sight: Sunshine falling on the yellowing grass of the boulevard separating the east- and westbound lanes of Keith Road. I'm in the shade cast by the building looking north. Bushy orbs of pieris and forsythia, freshly trimmed. Dark mass of tall holly-tree on my right, casting ragged-edged shadow along the speckled sidewalk. Shadow of a bird moves in a jiggling line across the road. A neat trapezoid of grass, the apron of concrete thought supports the bus-stop sign: a matte-textured steel pole with a plastic garbage-bin clamped to it, and the word Bus Stop on two signs clamped vertically at the top. 3 meters to the right, a "no parking" sign. The roadway itself is pale-gray snakeskin. The boulevard slopes up, young magnolias at the curbside, slightly older maples dotting the lawn, through which an asphalt path winds sinuously, a young couple pushing a black stroller along and tugging a black Labrador on a leash. A green MPV is parked up on the westbound lane, two Canadian flags hanging limp from its roof. Behind it: a white pickup. A dense hedge of cedar screens the lower story of the gray townhouses opposite, each of which has a projecting square overlooking the street with white rectangular windows. The squares are topped by sundecks with umbrellas and pavilion-awnings. Behind them is the gray slope of roof like the side of a truncated Egyptian pyramid, and beyond that, clear blue sky.

my philosophy, part 1

For some time I've wanted to write a post about philosophy, but I've found it hard to think of a way to begin. So I'll just jump in and see where I get to.

I believe that everyone has a philosophy, even though very few of us have a coherent or consistent philosophy, in the sense that all of our beliefs hang together and support each other. I suppose you could say then that we all have a number of different philosophies (plural), but I think it's more useful to stick with the singular, let it mean "the set of beliefs, explicit or implicit, on which I base my actions."

For we all take action continuously, and those actions are always based on what we think is true, or at least most probable. Life is short, time is precious, and deep down we don't like wasting it. (Incidentally, this universal human desire to economize on time is known in economics as "the disutility of labor".) When we do something, whatever it is, we want it to work; we want to be effective. And what makes us effective is mostly our knowledge. If I want to power up my computer I have to go through a certain sequence of steps, and now I know what that sequences of steps is. Doing things other than that sequence won't work, won't achieve the desired result, namely my computer being up and running. So I don't bother with those other, nonworking sequences.

But knowledge isn't the same thing as belief—is it? No, but I suspect the difference between them is very fuzzy if you examine them closely. I believe, for example, that the Taj Mahal exists; but do I know that it exists? I've never been there or seen it with my own eyes, so I'm accepting its existence based on indirect evidence. Also, I don't particularly have any reason to doubt its existence, other than the fact that I haven't personally seen it. In fact, such doubt would pretty much have to be based on a paranoid belief that the world is conspiring to make me believe falsely in the existence of the Taj Mahal, and if I'm not paranoid then such a scheme is just too far-fetched to be credible. In short, all the signs available to me point to the actual existence of the Taj Mahal, and no signs available to me point away from it. So far.

But is that the same thing as knowledge?

It's a matter of definition. For my part, I'm inclined to think that actual, true, conceptual knowledge is possible only in the realm of mathematics; every other type of conceptual knowing only approaches that more or less closely.

That's why belief is a safer term: it's what we treat as true for the purpose of our actions. So I'm saying that our philosophy is just the total set of beliefs that we use as the bases for our actions, no matter how miscellaneous, unconscious, and inconsistent it may be. It's like the toy-box that we throw all the toys in, whether they really belong together or not.

One excellent thing about being human is that we are able to work intentionally to improve our belief systems: to make them more complete, explicit, and consistent. We can think our way to a more adequate understanding of our world, and we have the best of reasons for doing so, namely, to become more effective in it. And we all want to do that because death approaches and time is precious.

This idea that the measure of truth is effectiveness is known in philosophy as pragmatism. The idea and the term were the creations of the 19th-century American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, and the idea was taken up and developed by other thinkers such as William James and John Dewey. I find pragmatism very appealing and convincing because I arrived there by my own separate path, and only later learned that it had a name and had been worked out by others before me.

So now you know one thing about my philosophy: it is pragmatic. Truth is what works, and what works most fully and most consistently and most reliably is what is most true. A belief is something that we think most likely to be true. We invariably base our actions on our beliefs.

So if your own actions sometimes puzzle you or surprise you or frustrate you, you need to open the hood on your beliefs and start finding out what they really are. The clues are always in your actions.

priorities

Over the past couple of weeks I've been rejigging my life a bit, seeking to determine what my priorities are, and then arranging my time to make sure I'm attending to my highest priorities. In the process I've missed posting to this blog, but I do intend to fit it in and keep up with it. Stay tuned!

The specific impetus to do this came from my typing notes from (and thereby rereading) Caroline Myss's 1997 book Why People Don't Heal and How They Can. I bought and read the book in November 2000, and highlighted it at that time; only now have I got around to typing those highlights into a Word document—part of my studying process. Caroline Myss's point of departure is that life is first of all a spiritual enterprise, and that the issue of health—the issue that brought people to her in her capacity as a "medical intuitive"—is tied intimately to our spiritual condition. That being the case, one of her first instructions to those wishing to heal and stay healthy is to connect or reconnect with their spiritual practice, whatever that is.

This advice affected me, for I left off my own spiritual practice, which is the practice of Buddhist meditation and the study of the Buddhist teachings, nine years ago, not long after my return from half a year spent as a temporarily ordained monk at Gampo Abbey in Cape Breton. I had my reasons for leaving off, but I won't go into them right now. Those reasons had nothing to do with my conviction in the validity and power of the teachings, for I had experienced that validity and that power unmistakably at first hand. Rereading Myss's words reawakened some of the hunger for teachings that had first become conscious in me back in about 1978.

The result was that when I looked honestly at my various interests, activities, and projects, the one I wanted to put at the top—at priority 1—was whatever came under the heading "Spirit". Accordingly, in the Word document I created on 27 July called "Priorities & Planning", I put Spirit as the first heading.

Looking at the other parts of my life that I wanted to organize, I came up with 4 more headings, and after some reflection I placed them in the order in which I felt they belong in my life. Along with Spirit, here they are:

Spirit
Health
Livelihood
Creativity
Citizenship

Under these headings I listed the different activities and projects that I want to pursue. Most of them fit under more than one heading, so I just let that happen and listed them repeatedly under whichever headings I felt they fit under. Under the Spirit heading came these:

meditation
dharma study
lojong slogan practice

(Dharma is the Sanskrit word used to name the Buddhist teachings. Lojong is a Tibetan word meaning "mind training". Lojong slogans are a particular practice used to work with your mind in the time you're not actually meditating.)

Under the Health heading came these:

meditation
dharma study
studying Myss's texts
keeping a healing journal
fitness
paying attention to diet
working on my archetypes
improving my guitar-playing

Here's an example of how two items, meditation and dharma study, are repeated under the new heading, because I feel these are important for health. The "healing journal" is simply a document in which I make notes relating to what I'm doing to promote my health. The "archetypes" I refer to are the ones described in Myss's Sacred Contracts. As for guitar-playing, I put it here because I read recently that musical training helps keep your brain working well as you age. It also just feels to do.

Under Livelihood came these:

marketing Truth of the Python and my others works
completing The Mission
writing and publishing nonfiction works as Kindle Singles
building out the static pages of my website
setting up a second, bookselling website

(The "second, bookselling website" was a scheme I hatched a couple of months ago when I felt frustrated in my efforts to find good e-books to read. I thought that I could create me own e-bookstore and stock it with only high-quality e-books. Sadly, I'll probably never have time to do it.)

And under Creativity:

completing The Mission
writing and publishing nonfiction works as Kindle Singles
improving my guitar-playing
building out the static pages of my website

And finally, under Citizenship:

progressing with my liberal education
building out the static pages of my website
writing and publishing nonfiction works as Kindle Singles

It took me a while to come up with the word Citizenship for this heading. I intend it to capture my feeling of social responsibility: my wish to help make the world a better place. I feel that my best contribution there will be through thinking and writing rather than through other means.

So there it is: a written statement of my priorities. I don't explicitly mention this blog, but it falls under at least two of the items above: "marketing Truth of the Python and my other works" and "building out the static pages of my website", toward which these blog posts are a first step.

And why did I put Spirit at the top? Because, in setting my priorities, I imagined myself on my deathbed, looking back over my life, and I asked myself: what activities would I feel best about having done, and regret the least? And I remembered one of the lojong instructions, which says (approximately), "Since wealth, fame, friendships, and honors do not follow you in death, there is not the slightest need for them and you can cheerfully forget about them." The only thing that goes with you is mind. Work on that.

sketchbook: Saturday 13 August 2011

SAT. 13 AUG 2011 ca. 2:00 pm THRIFTY FOODS

On a bench of black steel outside the new supermarket. All is new: new buildings made up of cubes, new wide concrete sidewalks, new gray shopping-carts. Only the asphalt of the parking-lot looks less new: it has faded to a medium gray, chalkstriped with fading white lines, blotched with motor oil.

The day is warm but not hot; a breeze gusts through the parking-lot, shivering the baby trees planted at intervals. Beyond the stores stand the green mountains, as though this were a shopping center in some remote community.

Senior citizens stalk carefully from the quiet sliding doors by me, toting bags. Younger couples walk faster, always hurrying a bit. An old black Chevy Blazer growls to life next to me, unburned gasoline wafting warmly in the moving air.

But now Kimmie has emerged from Bed Bath & Beyond, with a big box of 50 coathangers. We'll have to lug those home on foot—and I'm not even clear on why someone would want to pay money for them.

Preliminary Draft of a World Constitution by Robert M. Hutchins et al.

Preliminary Draft of a World Constitution by Robert M. Hutchins

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This "preliminary draft," a bold effort by a number of eminent thinkers writing at the beginning of the Cold War, is still valuable as food for thought and as a launching-point in the discussion about the possibility of world government.

As an admirer of both Mortimer J. Adler and Robert M. Hutchins, and also being a student of the problem of how to achieve cooperation among people worldwide, when I saw the title of this work in a bibliography somewhere I immediately set about finding a copy for myself.

I'm very glad I did. The slim hardback I bought online had been discarded by the Mercy College Library, Yorktown Center, and came with its library labels and "date due" sheet still attached. The draft constitution itself is only 36 pages long, including title page and table of contents; the rest of the 92 pages are taken up with some brief discussion of issues surrounding the writing of the draft, and appendixes that list associated documents and address a couple of other political matters. The draft was composed by the self-styled Committee to Frame a World Constitution, a group of 12 academics, one of whom eventually left the committee due to his inability to accept some of its ideas.

The Committee drafted its constitution in a series of 13 meetings held between November 1945 and July 1947. The Cold War had begun, the nuclear arms race was on, the new United Nations was showing signs of being ineffectual and doomed, and most of the 20th century to that date had been characterized by increasingly destructive warfare on ever widening scales. Hiroshima and Nagasaki had shown what the next conflagration would probably look like. The framers of this constitution, like many other people, felt sure that the only way to prevent such future holocausts was for the world to be organized under a single, federal, constitutional government, and they offered their draft as a starting point toward that end.

It begins with a 1-page preamble describing the principles and aims of the constitution. The preamble asserts that "the advancement of man in spiritual excellence and physical welfare" depends upon "universal peace", which in turn depends upon justice. It goes on to say that

iniquity and war inseparably spring from the competitive anarchy of the national states; [and] that therefore the age of nations must end, and the era of humanity begin. . . .

The constitution conceives a global federal government whose sovereignty is vested in the people of Earth, who will elect a global Federal Convention of delegates at 1 delegate per million of population. The Federal Convention will form 9 electoral colleges based on 9 geographic regions of Earth, who will in turn elect a President of the World Republic, a World Council of 99 Councilmen, and a Tribune of the People who will act as an advocate for people and groups that feel that their rights are being neglected or violated by the World Government or any of its component units. The President will have a Chancellor and a Cabinet, and with the World Council will establish a number of other bodies, including a Grand Tribunal which will set up the judiciary; a Chamber of Guardians responsible for military matters; and a House of Nationalities and States; a Senate; an Institute of Science, Education, and Culture; and finally a Planning Agency responsible for revenue and budget.

The rest of the text is concerned with the how-to of it: numbers, terms, eligibility, impeachment, and so on. It makes for fascinating reading because it is carefully thought out by people who have given the matter much study.

The draft constitution speaks right to some of the most important questions: Is world peace possible? How might it be achieved? What are its preconditions? Is a single overarching government necessary in order to achieve it? What are the risks attached to that, and are they worth it?

My own suspicion is that a World Government may be possible only if there is substantial agreement by everyone on what is the nature of man and what is the purpose of organizing human society. While you might—just—be able to get people to agree that "the advancement of man in spiritual excellence and physical welfare" is a good idea, getting them to agree on how to do that, or what it might look like, seems a lot tougher.

Of course, the constitution does not envision dispensing with nation-states; rather, it sees the World Government as a federation of them, so maybe its principles could indeed work at that level, while human diversity could be expressed down at the national level. And if a man and a woman from different sides of Earth can mate and have children, and can somehow form a working household, then can we not also find ways to get along, based on our common humanity?

I could have used more context around the actual draft. There are a few brief notes about some of the controversies experienced with the Committee, but mainly the reader is directed to an appendix of 150 supplementary documents, all no doubt very hard to procure now.

But the question of global governance is if anything more urgent now than ever. I'll be thinking about this draft constitution for some time to come as I try to figure out what I can do to make my world a better place.

View all my reviews