Assorted Notes

WEDNESDAY, 21 DECEMBER 2016

You get to know yourself in varied situations: by travelling to foreign countries, by spending time with people you don’t really like, and in trying times, alone or with other people.

You also learn about yourself by speculating with money, say on the financial markets. You observe how you feel and act when you end up with some profit, and how you feel and behave after a loss. You also learn how you feel and how you act after a catastrophic mishap.

How long it takes you to give up is another important thing you learn about yourself, as well as how long you keep doing something simply because you don’t want to give up, even though a stick blind man can see you’re getting nowhere.

Does it qualify as giving up if you shift your experience to something else, or when you apply things you have learned to an entirely different market? Would you then still think you wasted your time? Would you still think you wasted your money?

How do you calculate “profit” when it comes to self-knowledge? And does it necessarily mean it was less of a waste of time just because you learned a few useful things about yourself?

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WEDNESDAY, 19 OCTOBER 2016

On Friday, 5 October 2007 I wrote a note which began as follows: “Is self-denial – the denial of your values, of who you are – justifiable if the end result is good?”

I sketched a situation where someone who seems to be a good person commits an evil act, but for good reasons.

Long story short, I decided not to use the original text because I think when a “good person” commits an evil act – such as murder, for a good enough reason – like saving a hundred lives, he did not really act against his moral values, and he did not really sacrifice his “good conscience” in the same way as someone sacrificing life or limb to save someone else.

Nevertheless, I thought, surely one must draw a line somewhere.

I

Say someone saves a hundred lives by deceiving someone else and then killing them in the middle of the night – after winning that person’s confidence. The person feels very guilty, but the world is a better place. Is this not also a case of a person sacrificing himself for other people?

II

Say someone ends up providing long-term shelter to two hundred homeless people by deceiving someone else and then killing them in the middle of the night – after winning that person’s confidence. The person feels very guilty, but the world is a better place – those two hundred people will have a warm place to sleep. Is this also a case of a person sacrificing himself for other people?

III

Say someone saves a thousand people’s feelings by deceiving someone who insulted their religion and then killing them in the middle of the night. The person feels guilty, but the world, so he believes, is a better place because the community feels that justice was done. Is this a case of a person sacrificing himself for other people?

Many people would need a few minutes to contemplate the first two scenarios. I believe fewer people will need time before condemning the third scenario. The question remains: Where does one draw the line?

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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.

* * *

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.

* * *

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.

* * *

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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