Chinese whispers at dawn.

I know I penned a post about nostalgia, and the toxicity of wishing to relive the past...Buuut I'm going back on that just this once.

Wouldn't it be nice if  instead of some Chinese whisper style form of argument that seems to be the norm now between groups of friends/colleagues/family members/everyone, we just lived like any general community prior to 1800.... Back then it was a case of:  Problem-Anger-Argument-Optional fight-Resolve. All out in the open, everybody has their say and there is closure. The best thing about this avenue was that come the morning of the day following the argument, everybody was as happy as could be with every body else, because there were no hidden feelings to provoke malice. It was Honest.

Or maybe even pistols at dawn? It didn't always end in the death of the loser, and there was a clear winner. There are indeed examples of contemporary disputes settled through means that with very little confusion result in a clear cut winner (and without the involvement of lawyers). Rock, Paper, Scissors any one? Drawing the short straw? An arm-wrestle? Now they might seem primitive and childish but in my humble opinion they'd sort a hell of a lot more problems out than this social espionage that is so prevalent.

It is frustrating because I know that I myself am particularly guilty of this pussy-footing around sore subjects, cowering away from confrontation and allowing resentment to build without any attempt at resolve. We as a society have become so scared and horrified by confrontation that the person who dares to  rebuke a rude pedestrian or an inconsiderate commuter is now seen as the rude one, the crazy one, the un-necessary trouble makers.

When it comes down to it, it seems we are all just too sensitive to deal with any affront to our general sitting on the fence approach to life.

This is a call for honesty, at the risk of being cut to shreds by a hundred devestating opinions on my personal character. But then I'm not scared.....Yeah right.

Peace.


Ps. The only reason I wrote this was to use the phrase 'Pussy-footing'. Pussy-footing.

When you're in bed, you're dead.

My friend gave me a book recently.

The whole book is incredible, but the one thing that sticks in my mind still is the aphorism 'When you're in bed, you're dead'. I spend an inordinate amount of time in my bed, and it irks me. Maybe it's Manchester's beautiful weather....or maybe I'm a lazy ass student, or maybe studying Nietzsche's crisis of nihilism has left me with naught but bed and facebook and cigarettes to cling to. Whichever reason it is, if any, the book aforementioned has jolted me from this apathetic pit of screen glare.

The book is titled 'Tuesdays with Morrie' and I would recommend it to every single person whether you're in bed and not quite dead or an active machine of social frenzy. It is the true story of a man called Morrie, a former lecturer struck with the disease called ALS (Amyotrophic  lateral sclerosis or motor neurone disease) and how he spends his last months on earth up until the moment of his death and beyond. The disease is a horrific one, slowly causing the loss of all movement and bodily function, until you have to be carried like a child, fed like a child and use the toilet like a child. One might think that in the face of all this, there could be no joy, but Morrie found it.

I know it sounds pretty grim, but I cannot express the feelings of joy and hope and so on and so forth, that filled me by the time I had turned the last page. Morrie didn't fear dying, because he was satisfied; Satisfied with the friends he had made, the people he had loved and the experiences that he had experienced. He refused to be in bed, because to him that was surrender and death.

But I take it to mean not just being in bed literally, but making your life into one big apathetic bed, in which you wallow, you stagnate and refuse to change or grow or learn, in which comfort and routine is paramount regardless of  the cost both spiritually and mentally. Morrie refused this offer of comfort and material lust and he was happy when he died, he had said goodbye to all the people he wished, he had said all he needed to say, taught all of the lessons he could. He was happy.

But anyway yeah, just read it. If I haven't convinced you, then just know I cried, a lot.

"So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning." - Morrie Schwartz


Also thank you Paul,

Peace.

God might be dead, but Philosophy is suffocating.

When I say Philosophy is dying, I don't mean that it is becoming a corpse, but rather that it is being strangled by the current ridiculing it receives from the general populace, it is being drained of life.

If I could recall the times people have asked me whether all I do is "sit in a room and think about stuff, like existence and God" for my course.....well I'd have a bloody good memory. It's not just insulting, it's pure ignorance. I don't ask of a Sports science student 'Do you just like, sit on a football field and drink protein shake and stuff?' because I understand that most if not all subjects studied at degree level involve some form of in depth analysis and at least a smidgen of intelligence to comprehend.

But it's not a case of suggesting that my course is any harder than the one somebody else might study (far from it), rather it feels like philosophy is a novelty now, it has become the really pissed uncle at a family wedding or choosing to ride on the Manchester tour bus even though you know the only sights you'll see are the shit weather and horrible 1970's architecture.

So is Philosophy important now? In my opinion yes, it is. It could be said that without philosophy there would be no mathematics, there would be no evolving moral direction and the sciences would be non-existent. I do not speak of philosophy as the subject in itself but rather the practice of philosophising, the act of questioning and theorising to discover truth and truth alone.

 So why has it become this decrepit pink elephant in the room. People vomit such vacuous crap as 'What kind of a job will you get with that degree?' or 'Only old people do philosophy'. Who the fuck are these people that they know nothing of the true value in such subjects as the humanities? They are the people that laughed at the madman in Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, they are the people who ridiculed Galileo when he suggested that the Earth was not the centre of our solar system.

I know these accusations might sound rather exaggerated but when you think about it, what is so different? The philosopher tries to encourage contemplation and questioning, and these degradations do naught but discourage 'deep' thought that goes beyond the next game of Call of Duty.

So please, I beg of you, next time you encounter somebody who is studying philosophy, don't roll your eyes at them and ask whether the chair still exists when nobody can see it, instead accept their vocation as a life choice and a passion....a serious vocation that should be respected, just like I respect your choice to do events management or sports nutrition, okay?

A man by the second name Alfred Whitehead said that 'All Philosophy is a footnote to Plato' so I'll leave you with a thought from dear old Plato:

"Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught falsehoods in school. And the person that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool." (c.427 - 347 BC)

Peace.