Glob-a-log

There’s a very nice article about Kierkegaard in today’s Guardian. Even better: It’s only the first part of a promised series of articles about this philosopher (or ‘Christian thinker’, as some have tried to pigeon hole him.)

Though I am an agnostic myself I’ve always had a soft spot for Kierkegaard. He has both an entertaining and an original way of looking at (and writing about) the world….

… and I do think he has some interesting – and even important – things to say about the way we live; things that seem to have become even more relevant today.

To quote the writer of the article, Clare Carlisle:

“For Kierkegaard, the most pressing question for each person is the meaning of his or her own existence, which arises from this relationship with the self. For example, we can be more or less self-aware; we can wish to be other than how we are; we can trust or mistrust, like or dislike ourselves. Perhaps we can even make decisions about who we will become.”

Which is self-evident in the way things only become clear after someone who is truly articulate has pointed them out.

Anyway, what Kierkegaard suggests, in one of his books is that

“people in our time, because of so much knowledge, have forgotten what it means to exist”.

He wrote that in 1846 – almost one-and-a-half century before the Age of Internet…

Again, quoting Carslile:

“[Kierkegaard] is not arguing that knowledge is a bad thing, but pointing out that its pursuit, however worthwhile in itself, can be a distraction from existential issues.”

Amen.

I mean, information – which word I would have preferred to ‘knowledge’ here – is fun. Details are fun.

So, while it is, for instance, nice to know that the smallest house in Great Britain (the Quay House) measures a cool 10 by 6 feet (≈3 by 1.8 meters), it’s ever so much more satisfying to learn that the last person to live there was a man called Robert Jones – a fisherman who was 6ft 3in (≈2,15 meters) tall.

On the other hand, if your life and your mind’s eyes have become as disintegrated as an overheated Google search engine and when your soul is shackled to a thousand pub quizzes…

… then you could do far worse than turn off your computer and turn off your mobile, for a few weeks or so, and retire to a comfy couch with one of Kierkegaard’s (many, many) books.

Thus endeth today’s sermon.

(Okay, so we’ll just have to be philosophical about Kierkegaard’s absence here…)

Leave it to Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker to have us sobbing into our chips, while contemplating the tricky nature of time (’The King of Things’) and channelling the ghost of Kurt ’so it goes’ Vonnegut and the Tralfamadorians.

So, yes, here’s a short quote from yet another one of his brilliant columns. Go and read it immediately after you’re done here:

“Still, it’s easy to picture a collapsing bridge. Picturing a collapsing environment is trickier. Hollywood has tried its best, but all I learned from sitting through The Day After Tomorrow is that, contrary to my previous expectations, the end of the world might be boring.”

More excerpts from the Gospel according to C.B.:

- Time will outlive you, your offspring, your offspring’s robots and your offspring’s robots’ springs.

- Perhaps joggers have a few additional Tralfamadorian synapses; only by experimenting on their brains can we be sure.

- [T]he closest thing we have [to Tralfamadorian grey matter] is LSD, which must be pumped into the water supply as a matter of urgency.

So, perhaps, if we have worlds enough and time, we could pump LSD into a statistically significant sample of joggers and then experiment on their brains?

Though that might be a waste of LSD and a good experiment.

I’d rather go for another test group. It might not be good science (since the group is, despite its claim of the opposite, anything but representative) but I’d love to have LSD pumped into the chambers of the European parliament, the House of Lords, the Kremlin, the Knesset, the House & Senate and everywhere else where politicians gather to enrich themselves and fuck with us.

If I could see that happen during my life time I would not give one self-pitying squeak when that King of Things would come for me but go gentle (and grinning like mad) into that good night.

Bleh! That’s such a toss of terrible tripe - So, let’s end with this one:

(Yes, much much better…!)

One of the books I’m reading at the moment is Graeme Gibson’s ‘The Bedside Book of Beasts’.

Here’s a quote from it:

“Once we discarded animal spirits and adopted anthropomorphic Gods, we began to thank them [for the food] – and by implication, our selves – instead of the creatures who gave their lives to feed us. This shift served to depersonalize our relationship with the meat on our plate, in the same way that technology later depersonalized the killing of the living beast.”

There’s much more really good stuff in the book, so go out and buy a copy when you’re done here, if you can.

Anyway, I was reminded of that quote when I read the following nit of nonsense in today’s Guardian:

“A member of the New York’s legislative assembly has introduced a bill that would ban the use of salt in restaurant kitchens. The ban’s proposer says it would give consumers the choice about whether to add salt to their meal. Restaurants trying to sneak a bit of sodium chloride on to the plate would be fined $1,000 every time they were caught.”

We’ve come a long way, haven’t we? We moved from those Lascaux caves, where we left those beautiful drawings on the walls and now we send out rockets into space – but we’ve become very strange in the process: So far removed from our ancestor bones and our ancestor souls that we think we’re no longer part of nature.

Which is probably why we inhabit and treat our bodies as if they were our adversaries and why we have such a deranged and unhealthy relationship with our food.

Okay, one more quote from Gibson’s book before I go:

“Now, of course, few of us thank anything or anyone for the gift of our food. Which in the light of industrial agriculture seems appropriate: it would be adding insult to injury to offer thanks to a battery hen or turkey, considering the horrors we’ve inflicted upon it.”

(There are worse things than being a one horse town…)

I’m sure there will be people who will condemn the actions by the town officials of Topeka (Kansas) as a cheap stunt – or the shoddiest sell-out this side of a certain mess of pottage.

Let me state firmly though that I’m not one of those nay-sayers.

I think it’s a brilliant idea. So, my best wishes to The Town Formerly Known As Topeka:

“An American city, Topeka, has renamed itself “Google” for a month, as it bids for the chance to host the search engine’s new high-speed broadband network.”

As I said, a brilliant scheme…

… and one I plan to emulate.

So, for fairly obvious reasons, I will change my name to Brad Pitt…

… trusting that this will lead to a high-speed connection with Angelina.

(If you want another kind of love, I’ll change my name for you…)

(INCOMING: I just found this clip - Dance me to the end of love, indeed.)

(Africa welcomes Scottish tourists…)

‘Hearsay’, ‘gossip’, rumour’: Those terms are so past their sell by dates – and now, thanks to the Telegraph, we finally have something to replace them with.

So, let’s finally enter this brave new millennium with the much more satisfying phrase:

‘Non scientific research’,

as used in the following article:

“Scotland’s notoriously bad weather appears to be behind why more of the country’s population appeared to be blessed with ginger hair, new research has claimed. The non scientific research found that in areas where the temperatures in summer were cooler and winter days were shorter – such as in Scotland – people with ginger hair were more likely to survive and evolve. This was compared to people with the trait living in places with hot temperatures, such as Africa where humans are thought to have evolved, where people with a ginger hair genetic strain were more likely to die.”

Perhaps so.

I can see that your average ginger haired Scot would have a hard time of it in Africa. Picture a Saturday night in ye olde jungle…

… where the local population would have found shelter in the trees, while the red top kilted ones would stagger from tree to tree, desperately seeking for any place that would serve a kebab, some second hand haggis or a deep fried Mars bar…

… which is definitely something Darwin would frown upon…

… though exactly the type of behaviour the local predatory wildlife would enjoy while it lasted.

It won’t be long now before the British people will decide which one of their political parties they loathe marginally less than the others – which won’t be easy, since all of them are about as charming as a horde of drunken Millwall hooligans on pit-bull parade duty.

That’s the price you have to pay though, when you live in a democracy. You’re actually expected to vote for one lying shithead or the other. Which is still marginally better than living in North Korea, where there’s just the one sleeze beak (who wouldn’t recognize a voting booth if it kicked him in the balls) but not by all that much.

Anyway, even before the electorate has had a chance to do so, science has already spoken, by way of some neuroscientist at Bangor University:

“David Cameron’s body language has been deemed more attractive to voters than that of Gordon Brown.”

Which would seem to spell big trouble for the Beloved Leader, since:

“[A]ccording to psychologists, the words spoken by politicians are less important than their body language.”

I’m sure that that is true.

Even the most simple-minded floating voter knows that a politician’s word is worth as much as the Zimbabwean dollar. Or, to stay closer at home, even the most dim-witted inhabitant of the most cerebrally challenged Big Brother house could tell you that your average politician is as dependable as British Airway’s Terminal 5.

So, as a voter you might as well put your faith in body language.

Which does indeed spell trouble for Gordon (Saviour of the Universe) Brown. Not that Cameron is that much shakes in the body language department. He would have serious trouble out-charming even the most shallow shadow puppet on a cloudy day…

… but being as alluring as the love child of Christopher Walken and Kathy Bates is hardly a handicap if Gordon Brown is your opponent…

… the latter having the charm of chlamydia, the wit of a Great White and the body language of a schizophrenic cement mixer with Tourette’s.

(Gordon & David: Let me hear your body talk - and hand me that barf bag…)

Okay, first a short excerpt from the transcript of an old BBC 4 ‘Point of View’ programme, titled ‘The Golf Ball Potato Crisp’, written and read by Clive James:

“Shakespeare was only one of [Montaigne's] many readers who caught fire at that idea. Shakespeare knew Montaigne’s writings inside out. They helped set the standard for the way our greatest playwright separated what he knew from what he didn’t know. But not even Shakespeare had an opinion about the golf-ball potato crisp, because it had not yet arrived in the world.”

James, in his typical Janusian way of looking at stuff in both a goofy and an intellectual way, links golf balls, dead French philosophers, Global Warming, Shakespeare and potato harvest machines with the importance of scepticism and still manages to weave a tightly knit and very pleasant little aural carpet (waving his knitting gear with the assured ease of an old composer/director but with a wide and slightly wicked grin on his face.)

The point he ultimately makes is a valid one, I think. Not many human beings are like Montaigne and probably none of us asks that question ‘What do I know?’ often enough.

The whole Global Warming discussion is a very good example of this. How many politicians, journalists, pub sages, bloggers or internet newspaper commentators who bombard us with their varying versions of the ‘I-am-right-and-I-am-righteous’ truth actually know anything about the science? How many scientists do?

Me, I have no axes to grind here. I declare myself a floating agnostic: Sometimes, I seem to tend to lean slightly into this direction, sometimes slightly into the other but always with that rock solid certainty at the core of my being that informs me that I truly don’t know shit about the whole subject. Dylan sang about not needing to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. I’m more like an old-fashioned weathervane, perched on top of his stone tower of doubt, not knowing which way to turn.

Still, I do read the papers and I try to follow these issues – and I admit that has led me to some pretty firm conclusions, which I am quite happy to share with you.

Here goes:

1) On the one hand, I truly would love it if that soi-disant vast majority of climate change experts were wrong. Firstly, for the simple reason that I wouldn’t like the earth to warm up that much, and that fast. A Tibetan monk may be able to keep his cool about that but if, like me, you live in Holland, of which about half lies under the sea level as it stands, you’d prefer the oceans not to rise by much more. Secondly though, I have to admit that I would simply love it if that self-important majority was wrong, because I will always root for the maverick minority view. Pit the might of the Roman Catholic Church against Galileo Galilei and I will wear my ‘E pur si muove!’ T-shirt proudly. (Come to think of it, scientist Freeman Dyson would make a most wonderful Galilei…)

2) On the other hand, it would almost be worth it for my country to become a latter day Atlantis (even though that might inconvenience our coffee shop owners and clients somewhat) for the simple reason that so many of the very loudmouth Global Warming deniers are such ugly little oiks. Know nothing types who broadly fall into two categories: Right wing dingbats and conspiracy theory freaks. (Okay, maybe that’s just one category, after all.) Again, I’m not saying everyone who seriously doubts the reality of (a man-made) Global Warming belongs to that sick tribe but too many do – and too many of them, if forced to choose between the sure destruction of the earth and giving up a few luxuries, would close their eyes and ears and go “NA-NA-NA-CAN’T-HEAR-YOU!!!!!”, while driving their 4WD SUVs through the gates of a Global Hell.

3) On the other hand, yet again, I would also prefer the majority of these doom-selling scientists to be wrong, because so many of their lay followers are such terrible, terrible people. Don’t get me wrong: I still donate some money each month to Greenpeace. I may not always agree with all their ideas and I do find a lot of their campaigning material too calculatingly sentimental but I do think it is important to have strong environmental organisations, if only as a counterweight to industrial lobby groups. However, there is a type of fanatic eco-church member that is utterly insufferable. They’re like the warped mirror images of Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin – but without the charm. If you would give them a pair of God Buttons that, if pushed, would decide whether Global Warming would be real or not, they would push the self-destruct button without a minute’s thought. This bunch would rather have all of us die than to live in a world where people could drive their cars, eat fast food and fly Ryan Air with no real consequences to the health of the planet. Obviously, as it is with their opponents, not all environmental activists are like that at all but there are still way too many of those loathsome hair shirt types around and people like that never ever deserve to be right.

Ah well, but what do I know, after all? I’m that weathervane, remember?

Which, perhaps, is not such a bad position to be in. There is something restful in admitting that you simply don’t know enough about stuff to get caught up in this really ugly (and, by now, frankly rather boring and repetitive) debate.

Plus, if those sea levels would indeed happen to rise, any time soon, the top of a church tower would not be the worst place to find yourself when you’re in Holland.

Chances are that all of you who read this are pretty unhappy. That’s what the following article seems to suggest anyway.

So, unless you are of a certain, very particular age, you’d better start taking those happy pills now:

“Seventy-four year-olds are the most contented people in the population, according to new research. Fewer responsibilities, financial worries and more time to yourself leads to contentment previously unknown in earlier life.”

Mind you, they do have a point – though I’d have to say that there are enough people out there who are so tedious, dull-witted and pain-in-the neckerish that I doubt they would enjoy ‘more time to themselves’. I mean, think about it: everybody has met his or her share of party bores. So, imagine how it must be to live on the inside of those skulls…

Anyway, I’m not quite sureabout those ‘fewer financial worries’, to be honest. Certainly, most of the baby boomers seem to have done alright for themselves but there are still enough pensioners eating catfood and spending many a miserable winter day being cold to the bone, ’cause they can’t afford the cost of heating their homes properly.

Still, there’s something to say for that ‘fewer responsibilities’ argument. That, plus the fact that they will never, ever have to deal with – or even see – their former colleagues again.

As the following article shows, happiness is not having to go through the daily, soul-vacuuming ritual of the office tea ceremony:

“A report shows that women make more than three times as many cups of tea as men in the workplace. Two-thirds of men told a study they invented bogus reasons for not making hot drinks, while one in four sneaked off to make one just for themselves. The study of 3,000 workers by Cafedirect revealed that men also moan more about having to make drinks for their colleagues. Recruitment consultants – the UK’s biggest tea drinkers – generally spend almost as long moaning about tea (four minutes) as making it (five minutes).”

(Mad hatter party bores, indeed…)

Stop the presses…!

Praise be to our men and women in white coats who discovered a way to end world hunger.

They found that food flown in by airoplanes relieved all symptoms of hunger. “It has to do with the sound of the motors on the planes”, one scientists explained.

Okay, I made that up – but only after I read the following article in today’s Telegraph:

“Obese people should try living in the mountains if they want to lose weight, according to scientists. Fat is much easier to burn off where the air is thin, researchers said, a phenomenon that could lead to tents that mimic the atmosphere of countries like Tibet and Argentina.”

Far be it rom me to cast doubt on these findings but what made me think of those planes & food parcels must surely also be obvious to, let’s say, a Dachshund with Alzheimers.

To wit, one of the things about mountains is that they go up and down a fair bit, which ensures that people who live in these natural work-out zones will always burn more calories than flatlanders.

Ah well, all of this is, in more ways than one, quite academic to me. Holland isn’t that renowned for its mountains – and if the global warming crowd is right, we won’t be able to burn off those calories with those famed silver skates of ours (and I can’t see how even those ‘thin air’ scientists can come up with evidence that sticking fingers into dykes will help us get rid of our surplus fat.)

Right, that’s all we bloody need.

I mean, as if it is isn’t enough knowing that humankind can produce people like Robert Mugabe and Glenn Beck some seriously fucked up scientists now claim that your average football hooligan is more evolved than, let’s say, a Mother Theresa:

“Researchers now believe that being aggressive, intolerant and short-tempered could be a sign of a more advanced nature. A more childlike attitude to behaviour such as tolerance and sharing, could, in contrast, be an indication of not being as developed, the new study suggests.”

To which, in the spirit of this research, I can only answer with a, “Fuck off and die, you white-coated morons.”

(Yes, that’s ever so much more civilized than THIS…)