Irvin D. Yalom – The Spinoza Problem

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Book Review, Irvin D. Yalom, Pantheism, Philosophy, Spinoza, The Spinoza Problem, The Therapeutic relationship

Novel ‘form’ used to explore ideas and the personalities which subscribe to them

Reviewing The Spinoza Problem is more than a little challenging, it is not quite successful as a novel, but is a far better way of educating the reader into grasping facets of Spinoza’s philosophy than any of the ‘Dummies’ type guides might be, because the information is woven in a more dramatic, narrative, human way

Irvin Yalom is a much revered humanistic psychotherapist. He is also a marvellous writer/communicator about these matters, and his non-fiction writings are rich, meaningful and informative, to practitioners and to those interested in our very human nature, and all the ethical and philosophical ideas which might arise from consciousness, and self-consciousness. He has written other novels, using a semi fictional framework to explore ideas.

In ‘The Spinoza Problem’ there are two parallel journeys happening, separated by nearly 300 years, and both stories, of real people with a strange, cross-time connection, are explored using a similar device, that of presenting the central character in each time, with a kind of analyst figure, a wise, self-reflective listener who can be trusted to explore how who we are, and our formative experiences, often determines how we think

God did not make us in His image – we made Him in our image

Baruch, later Bento Spinoza was a Portuguese Jew of extraordinary intellect and a rigorously independent, questioning nature. The Netherlands, where he lived and died was, in the 1660’s, a markedly tolerant society, where religious freedom, and different religions, were able to live side by side. Great things were expected of Spinoza within his community, where his understanding of religious texts and analytical mind seemed to indicate he would become a highly influential rabbi. This was not to be, however, as he began to question religion itself, and dismissed the forms as created by man, not God. Extraordinary thinking in those times, and brave to voice those thoughts : religious intolerance and fundamental beliefs were rather more the bedrock of the times, and dissent, in some cases, led to death. He had an extraordinary certainty in his own belief system, but also a tolerance towards others of different beliefs. He was, however, uncompromising in his insistence that he could not live untruthful to his own beliefs. The result was that he was cursed, excommunicated by his community, for the rest of his life. This was a man who hugely valued his community, but valued adherence to his own understanding of ‘truth’ more. Where I found his uncompromising adherence to that to be even more laudable, is that he did not feel the need to force others into his thinking. A rather unusual combination of uncompromising adherence and toleration. Often, those who hold most fiercely to their own ‘right’ seek to deny others theirs – where we are talking the systems of beliefs

nothing can occur contrary to the fixed laws of Nature. Nature, which is infinite and eternal and encompasses all substance in the universe, acts according to orderly laws that cannot be superseded by supernatural means

The shadow side of belief lies in the second figure, the one who searches for the solution to ‘The Spinoza Problem’ : Nazi Alfred Rosenberg, who was chief ‘theorist’ of the Party. Rosenberg, committed Anti-Semite, had a major problem with Spinoza – that he was a Jew, and was admired, hugely by the ‘good German’ Goethe, whom Rosenberg venerated. Here is a clear mark between mature and immature thinking, feeling, being – the inability to hold any kind of nuance or conflict between ‘this’ and ‘that’

You attempt to control the populace through the power of fear and hope – the traditional cudgels of religious leaders throughout history

Where the book particularly fascinated me is through Yalom’s own background as a psychotherapist, and one with a view which is both ‘narrow focus’ – this person, this story of theirs, and ‘broad focus’ – the overview, the wider issues. So, our own beliefs, which we generally believe are rationally driven, whilst the beliefs of others, with different opinions, we are more likely to believe spring from ‘personality and individual psychology’ than fact, are always driven more by ‘who we are’ than by rationality.

Yalom teases out, in the ‘invented’ encounters, giving Spinoza and Rosenberg people whom they can trust to have meaningful dialogue with, of the kind that happens in the best-run psychotherapeutic encounters, known history and personality traits. Obviously, more is known of the man Rosenberg through his writings, sayings, deeds as his is a more recent history – Rosenberg was one of those brought to trial, at Nuremberg, and executed for his war crimes, and his crimes against humanity. Yalom traces this aberrant personality and psychology, which the wider events of the times fitted so horribly well – when external political/economic systems hurt ‘the common man’ the easiest, and most terrible solution is to make some massed ‘other’ the cause.

This is what we are of course seeing, nascent, in the rise of what is being improperly named – ‘the alt right’. Let us name it – certainly there is proto Fascism as a driver : the so called ‘alt right’ leaders are using the terrible, dangerous language of Fascism, before it became powerful enough to translate word into action,  and the terrible, dangerous, ‘feeling thought’ is gaining credence.

Reason is leading me to the extraordinary conclusion that everything in the world is one substance, which is Nature, or, if you wish, God, and that everything, with no exception, can be understood through the illumination of natural law

To return (and how we need to) to Spinoza. There is a wealth of quite complex writing – which Yalom has clearly studied at depth – which can be used, with historical background about his life, and what has been said about him by others, whether at the time, or later students/researchers into his life an writing – to create an idea of who this man might have been. Certainly there is an enormous intellectual and emotional intelligence at work here, a visionary, positively inspirational individual. He may not have been an easy man to be around in some ways – those who are ‘greater’ in a kind of moral, ethical way than most of us, those who serve as ‘inspirers’ to our feebler selves to orientate towards, can easily inspire our fear and our dislike – through no fault of their own, but because they make us uncomfortable and uneasy with our own shortcomings. ‘Dead heroes’ of history may be easier to read about and be with, than the person better, more humane, more morally fine, who lives next door!

It is the fall from grace of the most highly placed that has always most excited crowds: the dark side of admiration is envy combined with disgruntlement at one’s own ordinariness

So, not quite fully satisfying as ‘novel’ Yalom, as ever, invites the reader to engage with themselves, and with ethical ideas, educating without standing dryly outside what is being explained

You can see I have categorised it as both fiction and non-fiction. I am trying to hold the ‘this AND that’ idea together, rather than this OR that.

I keep coming back in my mind, to that idea of ‘one substance’ in the quote which starts ‘Reason’ . Right there, is the idea of wholism, communality, community, respect towards other – including towards our planet itself. Not a splitting, not a division. Spinoza grasped the spirit of matter. Spiritual materialism, not the split, mechanistic version that is merely consumerism.

All quotes  come from the Spinoza section, and are either from his writing, or from a clarifying/ distillation/explanation of his philosophical framework.

Quotes from the ‘disordered thinking’ Rosenberg section do not bear repetition, and some of the current political leaders are espousing modern versions of them, daily, by spoken word and by tweet

The Spinoza Problem Amazon UK
The Spinoza Problem Amazon USA

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E.H. Gombrich – A Little History of the World

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A Little History of The World, Book Review, Children's Book Review, E.H. Gombrich, Ethics, History, Philosophy

Santa Claus doesn’t exist – when should the children be told about history?

E.H. Gombrich is probably best known as the author of a wonderful book on the History of Art, which I guess must have made its way, at some time, to every Art lovers bookshelf.

I recently discovered that he had, as a young man, written a wonderful history book for children, which was published in Austria in 1935, much later, translated into twenty five languages, , but only towards the end of Gombrich’s life (he died in 2001) did he produce an English version. This has also updated the History, taking it to the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Gombrich, born in Vienna in 1909, was an Austrian Jew, and made his home in England in 1936.

He originally wrote A Little History of The World, a history book for children, when he had been commissioned to translate an English history book into German. Gombrich was not very complimentary about the history book, instead, suggested to be publisher that he could do rather better, by writing a book about history himself, for children, The publisher took him up on this, and, quite astonishingly, he wrote his wonderful ‘little history’ in 6 weeks .

The sweep of this effortlessly readable book starts in prehistory, and in 40 chapters arrives at the tail end of the twentieth century.

Whilst there is a major focus on European history, what Gombrich is really looking at is a kind of exploration of empires – whether these are empires of the mind, of ideology, ideas, religions, politics and of course the regrettable history of empires won and lost through club, sword, firearm, bomb and all the rest of mankind’s panoply of destructive devices.

It has to be said, an account of several thousands of years of interminable war, war which almost every tribe humanity might belong to (whether city states, nation states, countries, followers of religious, political or other belief systems) seems, if it gets any sort of power, to want to batter another grouping into submission to, makes for pretty depressing, despairing reading. In some ways, stunning though this is, I’m quite glad I didn’t read it as a child, since I’m pretty sure I might have succumbed to hopelessness.

What absolutely makes this book at all possible, in terms of a sensitive young mind not getting overwhelmed and distraught by our peculiar species, is the great warmth, the immense humanity, and, yes, despite our bloody history, the compassionate optimism of Gombrich, who at every turn also sees the wonders and the marvels, the intelligence, the curiosity, the excitement and the heart that is also humanity’s heritage.

And then there is the far from small matter that he writes like a dream, talks directly to, rather than down to, his intended young audience – not to mention his admiring older audience.

He will, I hope, reach small people who might, by this, want to take charge of learning the sad lessons of the past, in order to help us to better avoid repeating errors in the future.

Here is Gombrich, with a wonderfully poetic and heartfelt, not to mention wise and encouraging, exhortation to his young audience, on the theme of time, and history itself, as a river. He has taken his audience on an imaginary journey, flying along the river of time, from prehistory to the present, and presents this spacious, soulful image

From close up, we can see it is a real river, with rippling waves like the sea. A strong wind is blowing and there are little crests of foam on the waves. Look carefully at the millions of shimmering white bubbles rising and then vanishing with each wave. Over and over again, new bubbles come to the surface and then vanish in time with the waves. For a brief moment they are lifted on the wave’s crest and then they sink down and are seen no more. We are like that. Each one of us no more than a tiny glimmering thing, a sparkling droplet on the waves of time which flow past beneath us into an unknown, misty future. We leap up, look around us and, before we know it, we vanish again. We can hardly be seen in the great river of time. New drops keep rising to the surface. And what we call our fate is no more than our struggle in that multitude of droplets in the rise and fall of one wave. But we must make use of that moment. It is worth the effort.

This is a marvellous, fascinating, deeply thought provoking, highly engaging and interesting book

It is beautifully complemented by woodcut images at the head of each chapter, by Clifford Harper

A Little History of the World Amazon UK
A Little History of the World Amazon USA

Erich Fromm – The Art Of Loving

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Book Review, Erich Fromm, Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology, The Art Of Loving

Love: equals care, responsibility, respect, knowledge

This is a quite extraordinary slim little volume. I started to underline certain sentences and paragraphs as being particularly potent and insightful, (or particularly open to fierce debate) and soon realised I might as well annotate the whole book

Inevitably, in the West we have come to focus more and more upon erotic love, the dizzying though often illusory experience of falling in love, which Fromm contrasts with the maturity of loving itself, in a sexual relationship – which he calls ‘standing in love’.

However this book goes way way beyond erotic love. He looks at love itself as an expression of life itself, and the act of giving, rather than taking.

The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love of the mother’s side, yet this very love must help the child to grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent.

The development of love is traced through key, primal experiences, firstly , that which he calls Motherly love – this is unconditional love, and if we are lucky, an experience which we have, that of being loved completely, for all we are, and taken care of. We need to do no more than BE, to inspire this kind of love. The second primal love is what he calls Fatherly love, which he sees as conditional. We earn father’s love by pleasing him, by being most like him, by accepting, therefore, responsibility. The third love is Brotherly love – this is an equal love, recognising you as similar to me. It respects your autonomy as well as my autonomy, and that respect prevents ‘Fatherly Love’ from becoming about domination – its the recognition of the individuality of other. This ‘brotherly love’ also tempers the blissful but unearned experience of maternal love. Mother and child will separate, and the child needs to have their autonomy recognised. We cannot respect without the fourth part of loving – knowledge. This requires self-knowledge, in order to see the other (and ourselves,) deeply and clearly. And that knowledge of the other needs still to come from that place of care (‘Motherly Love’)

Fromm’s background was in sociology, so he also looks at ‘love’ not just as it plays out in individual encounters, sexual love, parents and children, ‘brothers’ – peers and equals – but he looks at that idea of equality in societies, and condemns both Western Capitalism and Soviet Communism as equally, though differently, dehumanising our relationships. His own thinking is influenced by both Marx, and his own Jewish, Talmudic inheritance – he came from a rabbinical family. Although he was not, in the end, a theist, he traces, clearly, the positive (as well as the problematic) role that the development of religion had on society and on philiosophy and ethics, looking specifically at Old Testament stories, and unpicking them to find deeper meanings. He is in the end, most drawn to Buddhist thought, seeing this as a highly mature system, which properly incorporates the ‘all is connectedness’ bliss stage of motherly love (and falling in love, come to that!) the taking responsibility for oneself which is ‘Fatherly’ the respect for other and oneself and a deepening awareness of knowledge which can contain paradox.

Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others, is not love, love for one’s country which is not part of one’s love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship

He talks about the importance of practicing ‘the art of loving’ examining our own attitudes, actions and relationships scrupulously, as an on-going discipline. Like many psychotherapists, he is also aware of the importance of self-love – not narcissistic self-regard which paradoxically often leads to behaviour which is destructive, both to oneself and others, because that sort of self love is often a veneer for self-loathing, hence the desire to make everyone else serve MY will, because I cannot bear to look upon my ‘wrongness’. Proper self love, a pre-requisite for proper love of other, involves being able to own one’s shadow, shame, guilt, and be compassionate, but not self-indulgent towards oneself. (Internalising ‘mother’ unconditional love and ‘father’ earned love) The theory is clear and even simple, the practice, of course, a struggle. But a vital one, for the individual and for the way society as a whole functions.

I feel I’ve barely scratched the surface of this tremendous book, and no doubt re-readings will yield more rich fruit.

There is, however, one cavil, and it is major. Fromm was born in the very early part of the 20th century. His thinking about gender and sexuality may well have been much more enlightened than many, at the time. (written in 1957) But his view of homosexuality as the result of a ‘flaw’ – inadequate relationship mainly with mother – and a certain rigidity in the roles of ‘Mother’ and ‘Father’ is disturbing, and flawed, with the hindsight of half a century on. I found I had to read some sections tempering my twenty-first century awareness, and trying instead to see through the lens of half a century earlier. Reading in context, in other words.

If you can set this aside, the rest, I think, is gold.

The Art Of Loving Amazon UK
The Art Of Loving Amazon USA

Singing from the same hymn sheet, jargon, and the poet’s view

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Philosophy, Reflection, Soapbox, Writing

I’m currently reading a book written by a Western Buddhist, and struggling with it a lot. It is not, however, the teaching which is the source of my struggle and irritation. It is the writing.

More and more I find it is less and less what something is ABOUT that matters to me; it is the voice itself. This may mean that in the end I am doomed to be forever style over substance, and on one level this is true. However another way of experiencing this is that what interests me is the story, and can the storyteller make me experience the story.

This is as true for me in ‘texts about facts’ as it is in fiction. It is always an illusion to say a fact is devoid of an interpretation of it. Our subjectivity is always within the objective.

What has this got to do with the book about Buddhism?

It is this – any ism way of viewing the world, faith based, political, philosophical carries its own jargon within it, which means something to the cognoscenti, and is of course a very useful shorthand. But one of the major problems of jargon is that over time, its well-worn grooves move further and further away from the immediacy which caused their initial creation. And so the writing connects less and less with the experience.

There is a particular strand I come across in a lot of Western Buddhist instructional – I suppose vaguely ‘self-help’ writing which is intensely (I really mean over intensely) pragmatic salt-of-the-earth writing (or speaking) It’s the ‘monkey mind’ ‘loving instruction of a puppy’ the ‘be-here’ which is all about the (apologies to the easily offended) ’you have to smell the shit, taste the shit’ approach. Once, maybe with the first person who spoke those words or wrote those words, their effect was immediate, direct and wake-up. Now (for me) they are without power and jaded. Singing from the same hymn-sheet can mean singing by rote on auto-pilot, a mindless musical mumble of a well-worn groove.

The best writers, it seems to me (on anything) are those with poetic sensibilities. And by that I am not talking about intensely lyrical writing. What the poet does, because of the strictures imposed by form, is to carefully make words work. The best writers (in any medium) do not take their words lightly. Writing can be extremely plain and pared down to the bone, and yet be poetical in immediacy. What poetry and poets (if they are skillful!) does, and do, is to freshly mint the experience for the reader or listener. Poets (whether they write poetry or not) shake us awake into sharing the experience. They take the cliché of Moons/Junes/Hearts/Flowers used as symbols of love (or whatever) and break them apart.

Back to the self-help Buddhist book. What I suppose irritates even more is the unremitting focus on being pragmatic, on escaping the trap of illusion, facing things as they ARE. Well, life may be full of shit – but it is also full of stardust, mystery, the unfathomable. Personally, as reader, neither the shit nor the stardust in writing will work when their description relies on cliché.

Which is not to say the writer needs to try and forever shock or be ‘new’. But the writer does need to find a way to make sure they have not placed cliché between the thing itself and their truthful experience of it

I do like reading books which come from various – vexed word – ‘spiritual traditions.’ Which I suppose means books which grapple with what is not ultimately tangible. And some of these are written by atheists.

Perhaps in the end it comes down to personality – who finds the words that ignite you into really being here, waking up, and being able to hold (metaphorically, I think!) the shit and the stardust together.

Nothing is new, everything has been said before – but maybe a way of saying what has been said before makes it new enough to be heard, or seen, as if for the first time.

Paradoxically, some of the writers who have connected most with the ‘is-ness’ have not been writing from any ‘spiritual’ or instructional place. And the one I come back to, as sure pointer, is the Scottish poet Andrew Grieg, whose At The Loch of The Green Corrie is a deep delight. Michael Mayne, a Christian cleric, and Richard Holloway, one time Bishop of Edinburgh, and now atheist, are others. The nature poet and writer Kathleen Jamie is yet another. None say anything which has not been said before (philosophically) except, through the immediacy of language which is from their own tongues, this reader experiences the matter of their writing in immediacy.

Kathryn Schulz – Being Wrong: Adventures In The Margin Of Error

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Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, Book Review, Kathryn Schulz, Neurobiology, Philosophy

Fascinatingly right about being wrong – just too much of it.

This was a book at once absorbing and exhausting. Kathryn Schulz’ scholarly and wide-ranging enquiry into both the necessity of being wrong, the neuroscience of being wrong and the certainty of being right is well written, even with a light and playful touch at times. But it is just too long. Right about being wrong too much and too often. Nevertheless I do recommend this book, even if I times I wanted some severe cutting!

Schulz provides much evidence and draws good conclusions about why we absolutely need to make snap judgements and believe them – if you stop to think about the rustle in the high grass and the statistical likelihood of it being wind or a predator for too long, rather than just getting the hell out of there, lingering and pondering may just cost you your life; vamoosing may leave you feeling a little foolish, but perhaps you won’t even know you merely escaped certain death by a stray breezelet, rather than a crouching carnivore.

However, in complex social encounters we still have this need to hold on to our certainties, despite the fact that our senses, our experiences, our memories, our judgements and beliefs so often deceive us. And it generally feels awful, as earth shatteringly important and crucial to believe WE are right about who said what to whom back in that family argument at Aunt Doris’ wake, or whether my country or yours is right or wrong, as it would have been to get that rustling grass call right – even if we were wrong.

This Is Wrong. Roxor, DeviantArt Commons

If we CAN’T trust ourselves (despite being so often wrong) whom can we trust. There’s a mismatch between our logical ability to know I really CAN’T be right and YOU be wrong, every time, and how that FEELS. Most of the time my senses tell my sense I am right – therefore if you conclude differently it must be YOUR senses and sense that is wrong. However, YOUR senses tell your sense that YOU must be right and therefore I must be wrong…………….Schultz examines the difficulties, and the necessities of the balance between being able to accept our errors without losing trust in ourselves.

Sometimes, just being able to say ‘hey- it’s only my neurobiology here’, cuts the sting and devastation of what it feels like to be wrong, remarkably. In the end, it’s actually very far from being personal, a breeze in the grass, not a serpent!

Being Wrong: Adventures in The Margin Of Error Amazon UK
Being Wrong: Adventures in The Margin Of Error Amazon USA

Originally received as an ARC from Amazon Vine UK

R.H. Thouless – Straight and Crooked Thinking

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Argument, Book Review, Logic, Philosophy, R.H. Thouless, Soapbox, Straight and Crooked Thinking

A tool for examining my OWN thinking as much as anyone else’s

This is a brilliant little book. It clearly, cogently, and with use of easily understood and often amusing examples, shows the various flaws in thinking and analysis which many of us (I’m sure its not just me!) may be prone to when arguing for our convictions. Many arguments turn out to be about words themselves, not necessarily the ideologies behind them. Often we, or others, make statements which are about extremes ALL thises are thats, when the truth is some thises are thats, or we deconstruct our opponent’s arguments and expose their logical flaws, without being willing to do the same for our own. Many of our deeply held beliefs of course, more than we maybe like to own, come from our subconscious prejudice. WHO we are, and our experiences, often determining what we believe, and then we are selective in taking note of the evidence which bolsters our beliefs, whilst ignoring the evidence which refutes it.

This is such an excellent book. It avoids heat and emotionalism, shows how flaws in thinking happen from both sides of seemingly impenetrable divides – eg, left-wing and right-wing, rigidity across the divide between faith and atheism. The authors look at the types of arguments which are flawed through being poorly structured – and those which whilst being well structured logical arguments are based on false premises.

Bust of Socrates, The Louvre

I wish this had been part of my syllabus in school. Indeed, in a world where we are bombarded with blustering opinions from all sides, it could be said a book like this should be part of the curriculum, helping us all become better qualified to see where the arguments of public figures are flawed and manipulative but also, even more usefully, giving us tools for self-examination

This classic by English academician and psychologist Robert H. Thouless. has been re-edited by C.R. Thouless. I originally received it as an ARC from Amazon Vine UK

Straight and Crooked Thinking Amazon UK
Straight and Crooked Thinking Amazon USA

Sounds disgusting, sounds repellent – but……….

Tags

Big Pharma, health, Holism, Medicine, Philosophy, Reflection, Soapbox, Tangible Intangibility

Where the darkest shadow falls, the brightest light is shining

There is a blog I follow, Medical Revolt written by an American clinician, trained in conventional medicine, but married to a complementary health practitioner. I follow his blog with great interest as I too have a deep interest in complementary and holistic approaches to health.

Indeed, the word Hael, an old English word, has a word root from which other words, other concepts are derived – Hael, Whole, Health, Holy, Holistic, Holism (literally, what is holy, is also wholly, the whole is more Hale/Hael healthy than the sum of its parts. Hail! (as in a word used to greet) – is to wish good health – and therefore good all-the-sum-of-your-parts – body, mind, spirit – to the other.

Perhaps we could even say it is even more than to wish that to other – it is also to GREET (or recognise) that which is hale/whole/healthy/holy in each other. And where do we see or recognise the health/holy/completeness of the other – except from that part of ourselves which is similarly healthy/holy/complete, no matter how broken parts of us may be, or may appear to be, to ourselves or each other.

So………….what does this have to do with Medical Revolt’s blog, or the title or subtitle of this post……and why am I particularly interested in, and excited by, Mr Revolt’s blog, rather than any other blog about matters to do with health and wellbeing, whether physiological, psychological, spiritual or the whole-hael-of-what-is.

Well, it’s the SCIENCE. It’s incredibly common, for what I suppose I might loosely think of as the broad world of matter – physics – and the broad world of the intangible – metaphysics, to be distrustful or dismissive of each other. In fact there is a place where everything becomes (and indeed contains), its opposite

So I am rather more interested in finding out about cutting edge biological science from the edge where oppositions meet. It’s the Buddhist concept of ‘The Middle Way’. The ‘extremes of thinking’ for me – whether of number crunching pure statistics, or the edge of irrational (in my view) extremes of New Age-ism both frustrate me equally, because they fail to contain opposition, and the duality of homoeostasis AND entropy, – whatever movements there are towards the edge – expansion, dissolution, flying apart, this OR that, the opposite exists, the condensation, the contraction, the holding together. This AND That, rather than This OR That

Mr Revolt, for me, provides a beautiful illustration, approaching the far-out through a scientific rationale, or approaching the scientific precision of taking a thing apart to see its inner workings through the paradigm of encompassing the whole.

Not micro OR macro but micro AND macro (and of course the oppositional middle which contains the whole

Oh but hang on, what is it with the post title – there has been little of disgust and repellent so far, (you might be thinking, if you have had the patience to stay thus far) and what’s this about dark shadow and bright light, even:

commons on flicr –  silentius’ photostream,

There is an obvious physical manifestation that it is when the sun is brightest (more illuminative) that the shadows, the areas without light, where objects interrupt the light, are seen. Sunlight and shade are neither good nor bad, they are.  The above yin and yang version does the illustration through sunlight and shadow, night day, dark light

There is a concept, from Jungian psychotherapy, of the ‘shadow self’  – the self we do not wish others to see. It is the self we may not even wish to see ourselves. We don’t want to own that shameful self, that hidden self. This is the self (because WE place constructs on it of illumination good, hidden/shadow= shady, dodgy,bad) The shadow (whether individual, cultural, or of an epoch) – is however made visible through illumination, and the shadow contains within it the light and the illumination.

yes, yes, but what is it which is so disgusting????

Well Mr Medical Revolt (you will be REALLY pleased I’m not posting the obvious illustration at this point) made an absolutely FASCINATING (well it was, as far as I’m concerned) post about a rather counter-intuitive way of dealing with a potentially lethal gut bacterium, which is on the verge of being untreatable by any antibiotics – indeed has developed strength, virulence and population growth THROUGH the over-prescription of antibiotics. Here’s a pic of C.difficile – it is found in the intestine.

Medical Revolt’s post on ‘Poo Cure for Clostridium difficile’

Now, seeing the title of Mr Revolt’s post, aren’t you pleased I am going no further with graphics at this point?

What fascinated and interested me about his post, once I got beyond the Yeurrh gut (!) reaction stage, the disgust, the horrified embarrassed black humour, and even the science of it and the predictable anger at Big Pharma trying to suppress it, was this:

It was such an illustration of the shadow side, that which is unwanted, hidden, which we wish to eliminate (hah!) from ourselves, vent from ourselves, void from ourselves, being the part from where new health may come.

Strange to find excrement itself (well, it was strange to me) providing some sort of visceral (ha again) illumination about the metaphysics of dark and light, and the absorbed, acknowledged and integrated shadow rather than the disowned shadow

This post of mine, has, finally a practical purpose. As someone who doesn’t facebook, doesn’t tweet: I believe Medical Revolt’s post is hugely and scientifically important. Changes in medical thinking may often come ground up, rather than top down. Many extremely compassionate, caring dedicated clinicians ARE UNAWARE of unconventional effective, safer treatment protocols other than the protocols of Big Pharma itself or the last resort surgical scalpel – for all the obvious reason. PHARMA isn’t going to publicise the positive evidence of anything unpatentable.

Patients and clients are often the means by which other approaches come to the awareness of clinicians. Information just needs to be out there more widely in collective consciousness. If I did twit, face, or anything else, I would be twitfacing Mr Revolt’s post.

A journey of a thousand (virtual) miles  starts with a single facetwit!

Ancient Chinese Digital proverb, often unattributed to Lao Tzu

Flicr, Commons, elliotmoore photostream

John Gray – The Silence of Animals

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Book Review, John Gray, Philosophy, The Silence of Animals

Gray areas

This has been a difficult review to come to, as much of Gray’s book puzzled me. Not least, what exactly was he saying?

He is a brilliant stylistic writer – but sometimes, too much so, as his weary, epigrammatic style occasionally sacrifices clarity for a soundbite which is satisfying, but doesn’t pick apart so well

Echoing the Christian faith in free will, humanists hold that human beings are – or may sometimes become – free to choose their lives. They forget that the self that does the choosing has not itself been chosen

That last sentence has a beautiful structure to it which is typically Gray – but what exactly does it mean? I spent an age deciphering.

There are plenty of other places in this book where I found myself delighted by pithy, witty summings up:

Like cheap music, the myth of progress lifts the spirits as it numbs the brain

“When we discover something new about ourselves, we alter the person we have come to be”

However – and here is my problem, what exactly is the prophet of world weary doom actually saying:

1)    The idea of human shaped progress is a myth. Faiths and their followers, humanists and science all are deluded because they live by this myth.

2)    Anyone who says we can live without myths is foolish, and so the mythiest of myth makers (religions) understood our need to make sense of things through myth. Atheist scientists such as Dawkins may believe they are myth free but still subscribe to a myth – human shaped progress

3)    Mankind is an animal, though curiously unwilling to try and see the world from outside a human perspective which would let him experience that other realities exist

4)    There is no purpose, and the idea of spiritual progress, or the progress and evolution of humanity through science, or through philosophy is all foolish.

5)    Learn to accept a pragmatic despair and be present in the world here and now

With the inclusion, admiringly, of writers who had spent time attempting to ‘become one with an animal viewpoint’ I did begin to wonder whether this was all, at root, coming from understandable discomfort with what it means to be Homo sapiens. I concur completely that our tendency to only see the world through our own perspective as the be all and end all is misplaced, and leads to barbarism, but is J.A. Baker’s (one of the many writers Gray quotes) attempt to experience the world through the experience of peregrine falcon, any BETTER – it might be, for the peregrine – what of the lark?

Peregrine Falcon Wiki Commons

Unlike an earlier book of Gray’s, The Immortalisation Commission where he was clearly examining 3 very different approaches to the horrifying knowledge of our own – and everyone we love’s, mortality, this book is much more confused and confusing. It is a bit of a scamper through patchwork of literary and philosophical writings, and for this reader, I kept losing the way, forgetting where we were going and what exactly Gray was attempting to clarify for me.

In the end, my fairly permanent question became “And Your Point Is?”

Flicr Commons

A Patchwork Quilt. At times, a very beautiful patchwork quilt, but it had a very odd shape and I’m not quite certain what to do with it!

I received this as an ARC through The Amazon Vine programme, UK
The Silence of Animals Amazon UK
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Sara Maitland – A Book of Silence

Tags

A Book of Silence, Book Review, Meditation, Philosophy, Reflection, Religion and Spirituality, Sara Maitland, The Natural World

Many words about silence – almost an oxymoron

This is a wonderful and thought provoking book. Maitland explores silence both from her personal experience, and from the garnered writings, sayings and teachings of others who have either sought silence, or had silence thrust upon them.

Inevitably, many of the chosen experiences of silence come from those who sought silence and or solitude (as she points out, the two are not necessarily the same) as the route towards an experience of the Divine. Maitland recognises that certain groups of people, while not seeking a closer union with divinity, may encounter experience of profound silence and contemplation – for example, explorers in inhospitable climes. She finds a common felt sense of silence across written accounts of these various experiences, although inevitably it seems that those who consciously search for the experience in spiritual surrender may travel further into the silence.

I was also fascinated by her drawing out the difference between the ‘eremitical tradition’ – hermits seeking surrender to Divinity and the tradition of solitude as ‘the way of the artist’, which was part of the Romantic tradition, and has influenced much modern thinking about individual artistic creation. She contrasts the surrender of the ego, the losing of boundary, the merging with all, that is the spiritual way, and the solitary act of artistic creativity which is the fuller realisation of ‘Self’ – if you like, the clearest realisation of the individual.

I would have liked a little more exploration of the journey towards inner silence – that quietening of the mind’s chatter – even if one is in a noiseless environment, and solitary, the full mind can often feel like a crowd of irritating noisy chattering fools! (well, mine can!) She touches more briefly on this, in the final chapter. it is perhaps a more difficult subject to write about anyway, since how can the wordless space be described? To describe it with words is to lose it.
Image: Deviant Art.com
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Jonathan Balcombe – Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals

Tags

Book Review, Ethics, Jonathan Balcombe, Philosophy, Reflection, Science and nature, Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals

Embracing our animal nature may be the only hope for us

Jonathan Balcombe is an animal behaviourist of the right sort. By which I mean that he views animals with respect and empathy, in the same way, I surmise, as he views other members of his own animal species.

Essentially, this is the nub of the book. Balcombe eschews the idea of ‘anthropomorphising’ because in effect he shows (backed up by good references and citing) how time and again many of the ‘higher’ behaviours which we arrogantly assume are evidence of our unique ‘humanity’ – such as altruism, empathy, the ability to reason, language are in fact ‘animalistic’. There is not such a clear divide between ourselves and the rest of the, particularly, mammalian and avian world, though Balcombe also shows reptiles, fish and even insects to be more advanced than we might suppose.

In fact, rather disturbingly, the idea cannot help but surface that our unique
humanness may rather be a retrograde capacity to delight in the wanton infliction of suffering upon others, whether of our own species or of other, supposedly dumb (sic) animals. Balcombe posits that we may well have introduced the philiosophy of regarding ourselves as separate from other species in order to justify this brutality, to find an excuse for our cruelty towards other animals – and indeed, our cruelty, expressed across cultures, geographies and the centuries, towards individuals and groups of our own species, which the dominant cultural group regards as ‘subhuman’. This ability to separate the human from the subhuman has been responsible for some of our most intense acts of racial cruelty.

Balcombe’s well written, carefully thought through book ends with an impassioned argument in favour of veganism, on environmental grounds, as much as any other argument against the exploitation of our fellow, though non-human, animals.

Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals Amazon UK
Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals Amazon USA