Category: Old age of my youth – 2016

MONDAY, 10 OCTOBER 2016

Like any intelligent person I read my quota of good articles on the internet. This post references a few such articles.

On 18 September 2016 Andrew Sullivan wrote about silence and technology in an article titled, “I Used to Be a Human Being”. He reminds readers that the Protestant Reformation began with an attack on the medieval fortresses of silence – monasteries. This was followed a few centuries later by the noise and disruption of the Industrial Revolution. He opines that silence has become a symbol of the worthless superstitions we have left behind. And the smartphone revolution of the last decade has according to him been the final nail in the coffin – where the last quiet moments that we still have, what he calls “the tiny cracks of inactivity in our lives” are also being filled with stimulus and noise.

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In another excellent opinion piece titled, “Will the Left Survive the Millennials?” author and journalist Lionel Shriver makes a few good points:

* When she grew up in the sixties and early 1970s, conservatives were the keepers of conformity. It was the people to the right of the political spectrum who were suspicious, always on the lookout for any signs of rebellion. Now, she believes, this role has been taken over by people on the left of the political spectrum.

* In an era where people are so incredibly sensitive, participation in public debate is becoming so risky, with the danger at every turn that you may accidentally use the wrong word or that you may fail to use the right degree of sensitivity regarding disability, sexual orientation, socio-economic class, race or ethnicity, that people might just start staying away altogether from social gatherings where there is an elevated risk of offending someone.

* She wonders how it has happened that liberal people in the West have come to embrace censorship and the imposition of orthodoxy in thought and speech as an ideology.

* She also reminds the reader that freedom of speech means that you have to be willing to protect the voices of people with whom you may totally disagree.

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The cognitive scientist, Donald Hoffman says evolution does not favour people who have a firm grasp of objective reality – reality as it actually is, but that it favours those who perceive reality in ways that enable them to survive most efficiently and procreate most successfully.

Read the piece, “What If Evolution Bred Reality Out Of Us?” by Adam Frank.

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And finally, wise words from someone who is trying to figure out how to lift a sports team from the valley of despair:

“[T]o paraphrase Albert Einstein, you cannot solve a problem with the same level of consciousness that created it. In other words, problems created with one type of thinking will persist until you think differently — and that usually requires different people (because, in my experience, it takes a mighty epiphany for a person to change their thinking drastically enough).”

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THURSDAY, 8 SEPTEMBER 2016

Since 2011 I have thought of the years 2006 to the beginning of 2011 as a period of loss. What exactly did I lose? Time, I have always thought – because I wasted so much of it trying to make money in all sorts of ways.

Here is a more positive view of that period: I learned how to publish my writing – including formatting manuscripts so they can be printed, the creation and formatting of electronic books, setting up a WordPress site, basic web design, marketing; I learned about sports betting and trading, and I started my education on trading on the financial markets.

And, ladies and gentlemen, soon I will be able to say that the period 2006 to early 2011 also yielded a project consisting of more than seventy pieces which will include notes on the long and difficult process of trying to make money without having to work for someone else – which makes the material very different from all the material that preceded it, because it is about making mistakes, falling on your face, embarrassing yourself, failing again and again and again … and in the end deciding that you’re going to spend more time doing things that make you happy.

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WEDNESDAY, 31 AUGUST 2016

Something completely different: I recently discovered Edie Sedgwick. Not only was she a sixties icon, she was also to some extent a symbol of that decade.

She was known for behaviour that was already problematic by the time she became part of Andy Warhol’s inner circle. She was sensual, attractive, vivacious, and a little dangerous. She was an avid drug user and drank and smoked as if she would live forever, loved with boundless passion, and ultimately failed to make the impact she and others had thought she would.

She limped into the next decade on the proverbial one leg, and died at the relatively young age of 28 while trying to recover from all the excess and extravagance of the preceding few years.

Watch this video compiled from clips from Andy Warhol’s films Poor Little Rich Girl and Beauty No 2:

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WEDNESDAY, 31 AUGUST 2016

Someone I follow on Twitter recently posted a link to a video of a young woman criticising a Lyft driver for his choice of dashboard decoration.

To understand what it is about, take a look at the video first:

(In short, after the woman gets in the car, she notices the man’s Hawaiian bobble head doll on his dashboard. She takes offense and expresses her surprise that the man is unconcerned about insulting the “continent of Hawaii”. She also insists on him removing the item.)

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I could easily have been one of these so-called Social Justice Warriors. I have this sometimes irrepressible desire to preach to people and to condemn their behaviour. On the other side I am well aware of horror stories of what happens when one group appoints themselves over other people, when they believe they have the right to judge other people because the latter are not pure enough, or because the things that they thought are quite innocuous are really horribly offensive, and concrete evidence of deep-seated incorrect attitudes about certain important issues.

Here are two examples from history:

* Starting in 1966, Red China leader Mao Zedong unleashed eager, fundamentalist students on the public to advance his own political agenda. The Red Guards broke into houses and pushed terrified citizens out of the way in a mad search for anything that would supposedly prove that the residents of the house were “bourgeois capitalist running dogs”. Items that were confiscated – ostensibly to destroy them but many items ended up in the private collections of Communist Party officials – included books, art, antiques, Western musical instruments and Western clothing like ties.

* The Khmer Rouge unleashed themselves on the ordinary people of Phnom Penh and elsewhere in Cambodia in the 1970s. Atrocities committed by the rabid fanatics included people being arrested and tortured for the simple “crime” of wearing glasses, which to the crazed zealots could only mean one thing: They were middle-class intellectuals who spied for the enemy.

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The woman in the video believed that she was entitled to prescribing to the man what items he may or may not place on his dashboard, even that she had a right to order him to remove a decorative item because it had offended her.

I reckon if she were not comfortable with the interior of his car, or even if he had something worse like a portrait of Adolf Hitler pasted on the back of the front seat, she could simply have exited the car, or if she only noticed the item after the journey had begun, she could have asked him to stop and let her out. Instead, she criticised him while insisting that he still take her to her destination – she wanted to criticise him without sacrificing the convenience he offered.

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Is it taboo to point things out to people or to shake your finger at someone and tell them that it upsets you to no end if they do or say this or that?

Here is what offends me to the point of nausea: some people in Taiwan drive their scooters with only one hand because the other hand is holding a cell phone, and their eyes are not on the road but on the damn phone. This really rubs me the wrong way. When I slide in next to such a wretched fool at a traffic light, I honk my horn enough times accompanied by a look so dirty that the person usually has no doubt about the fact that I think what they are doing is wrong. No, more than wrong – it is fucking stupid, because it is just a matter of time before the accursed halfwit hurts himself or worse, injures someone else.

So, do I have the right to be annoyed by someone else’s behaviour? I believe I do, when life or limb is at stake.

But to criticise someone else’s choice of decoration or word choice or clothing or joke is in my opinion getting dangerously close to the behaviour of the fanatical Red Guards of Mao’s China who foamed at the mouth at the mere sight of someone who did not look right, or who owned something politically “incorrect”, or who talked or thought in unacceptable ways.

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MONDAY, 18 JULY 2016

Another example of how my own beliefs are rooted in schools of thought and movements of which I did not have any direct knowledge:

“The Human Potential Movement (HPM) arose out of the counterculture milieu of the 1960s and formed around the concept of cultivating extraordinary potential that its advocates believe to lie largely untapped in all people. The movement took as its premise the belief that through the development of ‘human potential’, humans can experience an exceptional quality of life filled with happiness, creativity, and fulfilment. As a corollary, those who begin to unleash this assumed potential often find themselves directing their actions within society towards assisting others to release their potential. Adherents believe that the net effect of individuals cultivating their potential will bring about positive social change at large.”

The sociologist, Elizabeth Puttick, wrote as follows about the Human Potential Movement:

“The human potential movement (HPM) originated in the 1960s as a counter-cultural rebellion against mainstream psychology and organised religion. It is not in itself a religion, new or otherwise, but a psychological philosophy and framework, including a set of values that have made it one of the most significant and influential forces in modern Western society.”

A list of people who influenced the movement, and people who were influenced by the ideas popularised by the movement include the psychologist Abraham Maslow of hierarchy of needs fame, Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, and the self-help guru Anthony Robbins.

More information on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Potential_Movement

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