HEIDEGGER: OUR BEING IS A GIFT TO OTHERS; CHILDE ROLAND’S MEANINGLESS QUEST; VOTING IS EMOTIONAL, NOT RATIONAL; SOCIALISM AS UTOPIA; HIGH-TEMP COOKING A CARDIO DANGER

The Rock of Cashel, Ireland

**

My first thought was, he lied in every word,   
  That hoary cripple, with malicious eye   
  Askance to watch the working of his lie   
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford   
Suppression of the glee, that purs’d and scor’d          
  Its edge, at one more victim gain’d thereby.
. . .

Thus, I had so long suffer’d, in this quest,   
  Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ   
  So many times among “The Band”—to wit,   
The knights who to the Dark Tower’s search address’d            40
Their steps—that just to fail as they, seem’d best.   
  And all the doubt was now—should I be fit?

So, on I went. I think I never saw           
  Such starv’d ignoble nature; nothing throve:   
  For flowers—as well expect a cedar grove!   
But cockle, spurge, according to their law   
Might propagate their kind, with none to awe,   
  You ’d think; a burr had been a treasure trove.

No! penury, inertness and grimace,   
  In the strange sort, were the land’s portion. “See   
  Or shut your eyes,” said Nature peevishly,   
“It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:   
’T is the Last Judgment’s fire must cure this place,           
  Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.”

If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk
Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents
Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents
In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to balk
All hope of greenness? 'tis a brute must walk
Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents.

As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair I
n leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud
Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.
One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,
Stood stupefied, however he came there:
Thrust out past service from the devil's stud!

Alive? He might be dead for aught I know,
With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
And shut eyes underneath the rusty main;
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe; I
 never saw a brute I hated so;
He must be wicked to deserve such pain.
. . .

A sudden little river cross’d my path   
  As unexpected as a serpent comes.                                  110
  No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;   
This, as it froth’d by, might have been a bath   
For the fiend’s glowing hoof—to see the wrath   
  Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.   

So petty yet so spiteful All along,                             
  Low scrubby alders kneel’d down over it;   
  Drench’d willows flung them headlong in a fit   
Of mute despair, a suicidal throng:   
The river which had done them all the wrong,   
  Whate’er that was, roll’d by, deterr’d no whit.
. . .

Burningly it came on me all at once,                                    175
  This was the place! those two hills on the right,   
  Couch’d like two bulls lock’d horn in horn in fight,   
While, to the left, a tall scalp’d mountain … Dunce,   
Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,   
  After a life spent training for the sight!

What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?
The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart,
Built of brown stone, without a counterpart
In the whole world. The tempest's mocking elf
Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf
He strikes on, only when the timbers start.

Not see? because of night perhaps?—Why, day   
  Came back again for that! before it left,   
  The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:   
The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay,           
Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,—   
  “Now stab and end the creature—to the heft!”   

Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it toll’d   
  Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears   
  Of all the lost adventurers my peers,—           
How such a one was strong, and such was bold,   
And such was fortunate, yet each of old   
  Lost, lost! one moment knell’d the woe of years.   

There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met   
  To view the last of me, a living frame          
  For one more picture! in a sheet of flame   
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet   
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,   
  And blew “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.”

~ Robert Browning, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came (1858)

*
Childe = an aristocratic young man who has not yet been knighted

colloped = “having ridges or bunches of flesh, like collops”; a collop is a slice of meat; in German, “klops” is a meatball

slug-horn = a nonexistent horn found in the works of Browning

Thomas Moran: Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, 1859

This is a Wasteland-type poem inspired by King Lear.  I never worried about the meaning — just enjoyed the wild language. Did Browning intend to make a statement about meaningless medieval quests and the destructive military code of honor? Was he commenting on the barrenness of modernity, as Eliot later did?

Commentaries have of course been written, but I can’t resist the impression that more than anything, Browning was having a lot of fun with language. He said the poem came to him quickly, and that he didn’t intend any conscious allegory. That’s quite a confession from a poet who tended to be rather didactic!

Note how the poem seems to flow by itself. To me that’s a mark of the best poems — each line, each words, appears inevitable.

“He must be wicked to deserve such pain” — especially spoken of an innocent being, a horse — talk about blaming the victim! So right-wing . . . The honor culture is the ultimate in right-wing ideology. 

The Middle Ages were the era of “honor culture.” Childe Roland felt it would be a dishonor to abandon his quest, in spite of all the evidence he was going to an abysmal place. It’s about proving himself, showing that he’s “fit” (or, in more modern parlance, a “real man”). It’s the opposite of pragmatism, or simply of self-love and self-preservation. It’s also the opposite of caring for others — note that Roland’s quest serves no one but himself, in the sense of his deranged need to prove himself (as part of the deranged culture of knighthood).

Childe Roland does not even rescue any maidens, nor liberate anyone from the predations of a dragon. Nevertheless, he can still be called a “knight-errant.” Here “errant” means “wandering.” Nevertheless, when it comes to Childe Roland, we can easily conclude that his wandering through a wasteland was an error.

We the moderns, that is. In the nineteenth century, “honor” still mattered hugely, including its erroneous, macho, ego-driven interpretations. Dueling was illegal, but it was certainly practiced. War was glorified — that’s how you proved you were a “real man” — if you survived, that is. If not, parents were supposed to feel proud that their son died a hero.

Browning wasn’t really sure what he wanted to say in this poem — he admitted this — but he was still ahead of his time in showing a meaningless, self-destructive quest of a young man 
trying to live up to false ideas of honor. 
 The Knight Errant, John Everett Millais, 1870. Art as soft porn, anyone?

*

“Absolute faith is touted as a virtue. It's actually vile, the surrender of the greatest human gift, the power to reason. It's voluntary self-enslavement.” ~ Jeremy Sherman (author of the article about how nonsensical it is to hold on to the absolutes of Christianity and Buddhism — see my previous blog)

Oriana:

The good thing is that we don't have only one mind, but many — networks of neural pathways constantly compete for dominance. The “reason” (or "thinking") network (more developed in some people than in others) does not cease to be active in those who try to junk it in favor of unquestioning faith. It keeps whispering (the so-called “whisper of Satan”) and creating cognitive dissonance. It finds ways of being heard. The bad part is that then the person may get more and more crazy and extreme trying to defend what reason rejects. We don't rise in passionate defense of 2+2 = 4. We get passionate and extreme when we know we’re on shaky ground.
Lightning, Istanbul, the Faith Mosque in the background.
*

With 80 million sold, the best selling book by an American author ever, is Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. J.D.Salinger's Catcher in the Rye is #2 with 65 million.
Rosslyn Chapel, The Green Man

VOTING IS PRIMARILY ABOUT FEELINGS AND SIMILAR PERSONALITIES, NOT RATIONAL SELF-INTEREST

In recent years a growing body of evidence has shown that our political behavior is governed more by emotions and less by rationality. These findings contradict the way most of us think about political processes and voting. The theory of rational choice, influenced by great philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes and Emmanuel Kant, is considered to be the leading school of thought in political science since the second half of the twentieth century. But also outside academia political campaigners and the media primarily employ logical arguments, such as weighing candidates' pros and cons, and analyzing the implications of different policies. James Carville's famous phrase from Bill Clinton's early ’90s campaign, "It's the economy, stupid!" reflects a broad conventional wisdom that voting is primarily about money. But no, voting is primarily about feelings and emotions! This is, to an extent, unfortunate because it means that we sacrifice some of our interests and welfare on the altar of our psychology.

If voting was about influencing the election's outcome, you would have agreed with your next door neighbor who supports the rival party that you both stay home. But no. You want to be there to cast your vote, because voting is more about expression than about consequences. In a research paper that Esteban Klor and I published a few years ago, using data from U.S. state elections, we showed that patterns of state election turnouts are similar to patterns of football match turnouts. You will be more attracted to travel to the stadium and pay for a ticket if the two teams are close competitors and your team has a slightly higher chance of winning. After all, we expect to enjoy the game more when our team wins rather than loses.

Logic and reasoning are universal. We all use the same logic (though some use it more than others), but moral sentiments and emotions are idiosyncratic. They are derived from our personality, which is what makes each of us different. People whose personality tends toward conformity and privacy are more likely to vote Conservative, while those who are drawn toward solidarity and empathy are likely to find Labor to be a more attractive party, and people who reject authority and favor freedom are likely to align themselves with Liberal causes. [note: for the US, translate “Labor” as Democrats and Liberal as Libertarian]

The fact that we continue to debate issues endlessly, and yet never seem to agree, suggests that there is something in ideologies way beyond rationality. This other thing is none other than subjective taste, which, to a large extent, is shaped by our emotional being. "De gustibus non est disputandum," as the Latin idiom goes ("In matters of taste, there can be no disputes"), and, indeed, disputes never help bridge opposing ideologies.

In circumstances where reason is at odds with subjective taste, it is the latter that carries the day. In most cases we tend to pay attention selectively to the evidence that confirms our political orientation while pretending that the conflict between reason and taste does not exist. How many of our friends who regard themselves as right wing will admit that while they are disgusted by the idea of signing an agreement with fanatic ayatollahs, they logically realize that the West would be better off with the Iran agreement? How many of our left-wing friends will concede that while they are emotionally averse to any form of American intervention, the sanctions against Iran [did] seem to work and removing them [is] a dangerous move?

Our craving for ideology also means that we like our politicians to be ideologists. Vittorio Caprara and his associates showed that voters seek to vote for politicians who are similar to them in personality. Ideology is often the means by which politicians convey their personality to us. Politicians who downplay ideology are wrongly tagged by us as opportunists who are into politics for themselves and not for the public.

But our desire for ideologists comes with a price, because it creates the wrong incentives for our policy makers. Politicians are much more rational than we voters. They are governed primarily by their instinct for political survival. Our need for them to follow an ideology means that they will obey it to appease us. They even believe in their ideology to convince us that they will do so. But this is precisely against our interest as a public.

By understanding our craving for ideology there is a chance that one day we'll be able to dispense with it. When that happens we shall all be better off.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/feeling-smart/201505/emotional-ideologies

Oriana:

So there it is — “what oft was thought, but never so well expressed” — voting is emotional, not rational — just like religion and the stock market, and probably most things. But we need some rational window-dressing so we don’t feel we’re just slaves of passion.
Dali: The Enigma of Hitler, 1939


WE NEVER KNOW WHAT WE CAN BECOME FOR OTHERS THROUGH OUR BEING ~ Martin Heidegger to Hannah Arendt

Dear Miss Arendt!

    I must come see you this evening and speak to your heart.

    Everything should be simple and clear and pure between us. Only then will we be worthy of having been allowed to meet. You are my pupil and I your teacher, but that is only the occasion for what has happened to us.

    I will never be able to call you mine, but from now on you will belong in my life, and it shall grow with you.

    We never know what we can become for others through our Being.

That was the remarkable first love letter from Martin Heidegger to Hannah Arendt, who was 19 and his student. He was 36 and married. The letter was written in February of 1925. Their romance went on for four years.

And here is an excerpt from the letter Arendt sent him on her wedding day:

    Do not forget me, and do not forget how much and how deeply I know that our love has become the blessing of my life. This knowledge cannot be shaken, not even today, when, as a way out of my restlessness, I have found a home and a sense of belonging with someone about whom you might understand it least of all.

    […]

    I kiss your brow and your eyes,

    Your Hannah

https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/04/25/hannah-arendt-martin-heidegger-love-letters/

Oriana:

I love the quote that I used as the title. In youth I had no idea that I had anything to offer to anyone (I'm not exaggerating). The love object was everything — I was nothing. Over the years it slowly dawned on me that I did have this or that to offer — but when people said, “You have so much to give” I thought that were idealizing me in an unrealistic way. Yet Heidegger is right: even at a young age, simply what we are, our complex, unique, and deeply human personality, our whole being, is a gift to anyone who comes into our lives. If we become involved, both lives are changed, enlarged.

Reading about the gift of our being to others reminds me of a greater wonderful shock: the first time I read, in the Desiderata, You are a child of the Universe. You have a right to be here. That too was a granting of value — even if just the acknowledgement that you have a right to live, so you must have some value. We need to value ourselves and treat ourselves not with a whip, but with tenderness. Then kindness toward others will be automatic. 

“We never know what we can become for others through our being” just happens to be a beautiful “communitarian” argument against suicide. And I love it that Heidegger says that we don't know, we never know. In the deluded thinking of depression, we assume we have nothing to give — but we don't know what we can give — that even a casual remark we make can change someone's life.

And it’s precisely the interaction with the lover’s personality — his or her “being” — that makes love such a fascinating experience, full of surprises. “You are more like myself than I am,” someone told me once. But that’s an illusion that doesn’t hold for very long. Soon we discover the differences that remind us that the soul of another is a dark forest. But forests are full of birds and deer and dappled sunlight.

If our being is a gift to others, how opposite that is  from the self-loathing instilled by a toxic theology that tells you you are a worthless sinner.

~ “I would go [to confession] at LEAST once a week that last year I was Catholic. Lamentably, I was shackled down by the Church’s concept of sin, and what’s sickening to me is that I didn’t realize it till later because I’d grown so numb to that soul-crushing guilt. The Church made me think I was filthy and contemptible in nature and needed to be washed clean, when the dirt was, in fact, imaginary.

I don’t miss being told I was a sheep that needed saving.

I don’t miss being blind to the fact that I was being led to the slaughter, not to salvation.” ~

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularspectrum/2016/05/confessions-of-a-former-nun-wannabe/

Mary Magdalene kissing the feet of the crucified Christ, Tolentino Basilica, Italy, 14th century

But this is by far my favorite image: Penitent Mary Magdalene wearing only her hair; Toruń, St John's Cathedral, 14th century

GROWING UP WITH PRIVILEGE OR LACK OF IT

It’s been observed that if a person raised in poverty later gets rich, some of the personality traits and behaviors that we’d see in a poor person remain (think how many times you heard someone say, “My parents grew up during the Depression; they never threw away anything”). And someone raised in wealth but later impoverished may still automatically act like a rich person.

Here is my own observation along those lines that I don’t think anyone else has made. Around the year 2000 or so for a while I was corresponding with transgendered men. I was startled by their self-confidence until I realized the obvious: they grew up as boys, not girls, and usually lived for some years (sometimes many years) as men. I knew better than to say (over and over): “A woman wouldn’t say what you just said. Women generally don’t have that kind of self-confidence (or fearlessness, risk taking, boisterousness, aggressiveness, autonomy, action orientation, etc.)”

The irony was that these individuals repeatedly stated that they used to feel they were women imprisoned in a male body and had a fundamentally female psyche and personality. One boasted, “I feel I’m developing female intuition” (supposedly as a result of the surgery and hormone treatment). They also hoped that the hormone treatment would make them grow really large breasts — not the small buds they ended up with before deciding to get implants.

Those men who imagined that they were women in male bodies — they were downright MACHO. In my eyes,  it was more than self-confidence, it was swagger. Well, there was also some self-pity about how they suffered from being “in the wrong body,” and, post-surgery, some distress at losing muscle strength as result of drop in testosterone). It was quite a leap in awareness for me, that experience, that startling self-confidence and boldness (if as if hadn’t met men before! but these were men who wanted to be women, so gender was a central issue).

I finally understood the notorious “happiness gap” and the statement that men are happier just because they are men, even this arguably pathological bunch who wanted so much to be women (they had a completely unrealistic, mythologized idea of what it was like to be a woman — you’re beautiful and adored). Being in the dominant social group develops certain expectations, especially if you’re tall, handsome, and even somewhat athletic. And testosterone is a superb anti-depressant and energizer. True, these men end up losing much of their testosterone (the adrenal production of testosterone persists and may even increase) — but they grew up with it, and were significantly shaped by it (this extends far beyond stronger muscles and bones).

We’d all agree that putting on a dress does not transform a man into a woman. But it seems that even castration (in adulthood) still does not change a man to a woman. Having grown up male (“with male privilege” as a friend of mine would put it) prevails. And all this starts with the Y chromosome becoming activated during pregnancy, turning on testosterone production that virilizes the body and the brain of the fetus. Recently I said, “Freud was wrong: I never had penis envy; what I have is muscle envy." But more than that, I have self-confidence envy.

Now, I realize that this is not a politically correct piece. Yes, the stereotypes — if they hadn’t made themselves so blatant during that correspondence, this essay would not even exist. Now, of course I'm aware that not all men are happy just because they are men; the pressure to succeed can be brutal, the competition ruthless, and so on — more stereotypes, just from the other side. Of course we should see each person as an individual, eschewing stereotypes and trendy cultural clichés. But I just want to report what for me has been an eye-opening experience.
 
Oriana: Yes, the liar is ultimately defeated by reality, but . . . the liar doesn't think in terms of "ultimately." He wants to fool some people NOW, and then disappear before being found out.  Also, what we currently see is such a barrage of lies that there is no time to refute them one by one. Even worse, perhaps, is our knowing that millions of people couldn't care less about the truth.

SERAPHIM 

 
"In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings; with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew." ~ Isaiah 6: 1-3

Seraphim: Petites Heures de Jean de Berry. The text says “above him” but here they are below him, which makes for a better composition. Also, the train of his robe is NOT filling the temple. And what is that misshapen horizontal angel in the upper left?


THE SUFFRAGIST ORIGIN OF MOTHER’S DAY
 
~ “Mother's Day originated in 1870 as an appeal to women to leave the home for an "earnest day of counsel" in which women would meet together to influence international issues of the day.

The first Mothers Day proclamation began with the words, "Arise, then, women of this day!" It was a call to public action.

The Mother's Day proclamation urged women to take public policy into their own hands. It also asked women to stop supporting men who weren't dedicated to seeking peaceful settlements of international conflict.

"Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause," the proclamation continued.”

Mother's Day was born out of the suffragist movement of the 1850's and 1860's when women joined together to fight slavery and seek the vote. How fascinating that the bold history of Mother's Day has become transformed into a sanctification of women's domestic role.” ~

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-dance-connection/201305/mothers-day-the-true-story-never-told

quartz-filled geode with a cat inclusion

THE GREAT HISTORICAL ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE SOCIALIST IDEA WAS ITS ACTING AS A UTOPIA (never as an accomplished reality)
 
~ “My realization of the yawning fissure separating the socialist idea, which I wholeheartedly embraced, from the “really existing socialism” which I found difficult to swallow, occurred long before Rudolf Bahro coined the latter phrase in 1977 — and well before I was forced to leave Poland in 1968. One of my first publications of the British part of my academic life carried the title Socialism: The Active Utopia, which signaled its main message: the great historical accomplishment of the socialist idea was its acting as a utopia laying bare the social ills endemic in the status quo and spurring into remedial action.

What derived from that message was another belief: that declaring any kind of status quo as the “socialist idea fulfilled” cannot but be a death knell to what was its major, indeed paramount role to be played in history. In the longer run, such a declaration would have inevitably stripped the socialist utopia of that role (just as in the case of another utopia — that of democracy).” ~

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/disconnecting-acts-interview-zygmunt-bauman-part/#!

~ Zygmunt Bauman (1925-2017) was a Polish sociologist residing in the U.K., renowned for his books on modernity. Bauman “posited that a shift had taken place in modern society in the latter half of the 20th century; it had changed from a society of producers into a society of consumers. According to Bauman, this change reversed Freud's “modern” tradeoff — i.e., security was given up in order to enjoy more freedom, freedom to purchase, consume, and enjoy life.” ~



Some quotations:

~ Like the phoenix, socialism is reborn from every pile of ashes left day in, day out, by burnt-out human dreams and charred hopes.

Why should I be passionate? Because things could be different, they could be made better.

The carrying power of a bridge is not measured by the average strength of the pillars, but by the strength of the weakest pillar. I have always believed that you do not measure the health of a society by GNP, but by the condition of its worst off.

The risk of the Holocaust is not that it will be forgotten, but that it will be embalmed and surrounded by monuments and used to absolve all future sins.

I suspect that one of capitalism’s crucial assets derives from the fact that the imagination of economists, including its critics, lags well behind its own inventiveness, the arbitrariness of its undertakings and the ruthlessness of the way in which it proceeds.

A powerful case for a refurbished, secularized response to individual mortality was constructed and extensively argued by Émile Durkheim, one of the founders of modern sociology. He strove to insert and settle “society” in the place vacated by God and by Nature viewed as God’s creation or embodiment — and thereby to claim for the nascent nation-state that right to articulate, pronounce and enforce moral commandments and command the supreme loyalties of its subjects; the right previously reserved for the Lord of the Universe and His anointed earthly lieutenants.

Marcus Aurelius appoints personal character and conscience the ultimate refuge of happiness-seekers: the only place where dreams of happiness, doomed to die childless and intestate anywhere else, are not bound to be frustrated. ~ Zygmunt Bauman, The Art of Life

Oriana:

To me socialism — in the sense of SOCIAL SAFETY NET, not nationalization of industry — i.e. “social democracy,” not to be confused to Soviet-style “socialism” — is simply the outgrowth of decency, of caring, of knowing that society is a collective, collaborative enterprise.

DARWIN: COOPERATION IS THE KEY TO HUMAN SUCCESS
 
The roots of what has come to be known as "Social Darwinism" can be traced back to the robber baron era in the latter nineteenth century. The idea that the economy of a successful capitalist society amounts to a cut-throat competitive struggle, much like what was supposed to be the case in the natural world, was inspired by the British social theorist Herbert Spencer. In fact, it was Spencer who coined the term "survival of the fittest," not Darwin.

With Social Darwinist rhetoric, and policy proposals, being much in evidence these days, we should try to set the record straight about Darwin. In fact, Darwin's Darwinism was radically opposed to an individualistic, "nature, red in tooth and claw" political ideology (as the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson described it), especially in social species like honeybees and humankind. In his treatise on human evolution, The Descent of Man, published twelve years after The Origin of Species, Darwin recognized that humans evolved in interdependent cooperative groups, not as isolated individuals, and that cooperation was the key to our success.

Indeed, Darwin attributed our dominant position in nature and our remarkable cultural attainments to our evolved social, moral, and mental faculties, in combination with our language abilities. Following a discussion in The Descent devoted to the role of social behavior in various species, Darwin dealt at length with the subject of "Man as a Social Animal." He concluded that our morality is a product of the evolutionary process, and he believed that our "social instincts," including even our capacity for "sympathy," "kindness," and the desire for social "approbation," are rooted in human nature. The rudiments of these behaviors, he pointed out, can be found in other social species as well.

Darwin's Darwinism was grounded in a more accurate understanding of human nature, and of the circumscribed role of competition in any society. Social Darwinism represents a perversion of Darwin's views. It is time to consign it to the museum of antiquated ideologies.” ~

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-fair-society/201201/darwin-s-psychology

But great care should be exercised before trying to put any utopian ideas into practice.

Rembrandt: Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem, 1630
 
*

RELIGIOUS MODERATION IS THE DIRECT RESULT OF TAKING SCRIPTURE LESS AND LESS SERIOUSLY. So why not take it less seriously still? Why not admit the the Bible is merely a collection of imperfect books written by highly fallible human beings? ~ Sam Harris

Oriana:

This is a perfect observation: religious moderation is the result of seeing the “holy” scriptures as less and less holy. The progression is usually from the inerrant word of god to “divinely inspired” to entirely human. Not written or even inspired by a bearded dude in a nightshirt (typed: nightmare) somewhere up there in the clouds, but perhaps the voice of intuition, which is a tad schizophrenic — are own own thoughts being broadcast to us? Why would the voice of guidance, or intuition, be anything but our own? What if it proves fallible, as on occasion it does? .

Above all, we need to see that all “holy” scriptures are entirely human: the work of men bound by their ancient culture, writing with a tribal agenda: our god can beat your god, and later: our god is the only true god; you’re sacrificing lambs to idols, stupid; we’re slaughtering lambs at the only correct altar. What may have made sense thousands of years ago in the Ancient Near East should not have the strangling power of dead hand over us who live in a vastly different world.




“IT WAS CHRIST WHO KILLED JEHOVAH” ~ Will Durant

 
~ “Periodically in history man’s conception of God changes as man’s knowledge and moral sense improve, and these epochal transvaluations can upset not only philosophers but also whole nations and eras. We live in such an age, when the revelations of science, of history, and of the ethics of Christ have made it impossible for developed minds to believe in that “grim beard of a god” who frightened our forebears into decency. In this sense it was Christ who killed Jehovah.” ~ Will Durant, “Fallen Leaves”

Will Durant, raised a Catholic, did not believe in a personal god, but admired the ethical teachings of Christ. Ariel Durant, raised in a Jewish family, wrote this in In A Dual Autobiography by Ariel and Will Durant (1977): “We never deserted our faith for any other, but we lost most of it as we rubbed against a harsh and increasingly secular world . . . my Uncle Maurice helped to free me from such nonsense, and awoke in me a desire to read books and enter the world of thought.”

(Freud would probably appreciate the conclusion that Christ killed Yahweh. A son’s task is to kill his father, in a symbolic way.)
Ariel Durant

FOOD COOKED AT HIGH TEMPERATURE INCREASES RISK OF HEART DISEASE 
 
"When food is heated up to a high temperature, new compounds are created, and some of them are known to be harmful to health," said Raj Bhopal, professor of public health at the University of Edinburgh, who led the research. "This is not to do with frying. ... it's more to do with the cooking process, with the temperature.”

When foods are cooked at high temperatures, they release chemicals known as neo-formed contaminants, or NFCs. This group includes trans-fatty acids -- or trans fats -- that are known to increase the risk of heart disease. "When the temperature is high, (trans fats) are produced at a very high rate," Bhopal said.

The researchers believe cuisines that typically involve cooking food in hot oils at high temperatures may explain why higher rates of heart disease are seen in certain populations, such as among people of South Asian descent.

South Asians -- including residents of Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives and Sri Lanka -- have a four times greater risk of heart disease than the general population.

Bhopal's own research has investigated this rise in risk among people living in Scotland.

"In Scotland, the highest rates of heart attack are in the Pakistani population," he said, referring to one of his earlier studies. "The next group are Indians.”

At the bottom of the list were the Chinese.

"(They) were way down at the bottom," Bhopal said, adding that he was surprised, as all three communities had long been settled in Scotland and lived reasonably similar lifestyles. "The explanation had to be around food.”

"In the Chinese snacks, there are virtually no trans-fatty acids, less than 1% (in some cases)," Bhopal said. "In the Indian snacks, there's a vast amount." The Indian treat jalebi -- fried batter soaked in sugar syrup -- was found to average 17% trans fats and samosas 3.3%.

Bhopal believes the difference comes down to Chinese meals including more boiled foods, lightly fried items and stir-fries, whereas Indian cooking entails longer, deeper frying of foods and the use of pressure cookers. "The emphasis is on the temperature," he stressed.

Even more accurately, the emphasis is on the temperature of your oils.

"This study shows that by heating and frying, you can change what appear to be perfectly healthy oils and make them unhealthy," said Michael Miller, professor of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Maryland Medical Center, who was not involved in the research. By unhealthy, he means the creation of these chemical byproducts, such as trans fats. "Heart disease can manifest if you (then) reuse oils that have been boiled," Miller added.

The group also looked at other byproducts of heating oils to high temperatures, called advanced glycogen end-products. These are also known to increase the likelihood of heart disease.

Bhopal used the example of cooking a chicken to highlight the vast differences in how much of these byproducts are produced. When a chicken is boiled, this cooking process releases an average of 1,000 glycogen end-products, whereas roasting and frying produce 4,000 and 9,000, respectively. "Different forms of cooking are leading to vastly different results," he said.

"It makes sense to avoid snacks that are cooked in high-temperature oils," said Bhopal, who himself has now switched to cooking olive oil. "Olive oil does not heat up to a very high temperature," he said.

Miller agreed. "Try not to boil oils ... and it's best to avoid fried foods," he said.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/04/health/high-temperature-cooking-increases-heart-disease-risk/index.html

“What is of genuine importance is eternal vitality, not eternal life.” ~ Nietzsche

Not the boredom of the feeble Christian heaven, but “living dangerously.” This instantly reminded me of Blake’s “Energy is eternal delight.” And somehow that energy finds a venue for itself, the ideas and new areas of growth. It goes both ways: when a goal seizes the imagination, the energy will be found; and when energy is abundant, a goal will be found. Like a mountain river, the eternal vitality rushes on.

I also like the idea that self-esteem is related to the person’s “degree of animation.” Now, there can be excess — we don’t want manic energy. I want vitality, not over-excitement — steady, quiet energy rather than “wild” energy. But I’ll take any kind of energy over apathy. En marche!


ending on beauty

The everlasting universe of things
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Now dark—now glittering—now reflecting gloom—
Now lending splendor . . .
Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,
Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.

~ Shelley, Mont Blanc

  The River Arve at Chamonix

ENGLISH AS THE LANGUAGE OF EQUALITY, LANGUAGE AND PERSONALITY, THE CHURCH INSTEAD OF THE SECOND COMING, LIPOSUCTION AND LONGEVITY

Flamingo, photo by Paige Klee

I CAN BE A POET ONLY IN ENGLISH

Because the words might mean anything.
If you told me that table means
chair, I’d sink into a cushioned

table and lean back, on the deck
of The Titanic, which means
luxury before a fall —

Iceberg happens, but who could deny
that merde might mean
the highest grade of emerald?

In Polish “to cross yourself”
sounds almost like “to say goodbye.”
How could I write in a language

where you cross yourself before
you travel, step into water,
or commit suicide —

as if it’s not enough
to lose the future tense,
intended only for the young.

*

The Germans panicked when after the war
they got parcels  from America marked
GIFT. In German, Gift means poison.

The Old Germanic root of English “gift”
is giftu, poison.
Did the frost-bound Anglo-Saxons

guess, like the marble Greeks
with their pharmakon,
that a little poison could be a cure?

— though Socrates may have gone
too far, toasting the gods with hemlock,
saying death is no misfortune.

*

When a friend tells me, I’ll drop
you off, it sounds — Splat! —
like a misfortune, but it is a gift. Even

when we pray, A gift is God in action,
we cannot know if it’s a gift or poison
until later, from the vanishing point.

As we step into the dangerous
waters of memory, having failed
to cross ourselves,

let’s remember the primordial
meaning of “gift” was bride-price.
That’s why we toast To Life,

that dazzling and expensive bride —
a cup of kindness or poison
to cure us of this constant vanishing.

~ Oriana © 2016

It’s the first part of the poem that explains why “I can be a poet only in English.” It’s about the gift of emotional distance conferred by a second language.

The first line used to be “because the words don’t mean anything.” A friend corrected me, pointing out that logically I can’t say that. What I meant was “the words don’t mean anything at the emotional level.” If the word for excrement changed its meaning to “great treasure,” I would have no trouble adapting. Only native speakers would.

But imagine a native speaker of English now live and function in French. She knows what the word “merde” means and avoid tossing it around so as not to appear vulgar. But if instead it meant “compassion,” she’d have no trouble saying, “Merde is the supreme human value.”

I’ve often wondered what kind of poet I’d have become if I’d stayed in Poland — assuming I’d have become a poet at all (probably so, unless I’d never managed to dump Catholicism; then I’d have been too repressed to write). If I stayed in Poland and wrote in Polish as a secular person, a reasonably free mind, then I suspect that yes, I would have become a poet, but an entirely different kind of poet.

I was always playing with the language — as a young teen I loved archaic Polish, for instance, and also loved inventing new words. I didn’t especially like traditional Polish poetry (we were not exposed to the great post-war minimalist poets), but somehow I managed to discover a language poet, Miron Bialoszewski. My guess is that I would have become a language poet, fascinated not by the meaning of words but by their sound and playful transmutations. I might also try to write “intellectual” poems, in imitation of Szymborska. Both language poetry and intellectual poetry rely on detachment, distance. My Polish poetry would probably be heavy on wit and irony.

But personal narratives? Would I be able to write personal narratives in Polish? I can't imagine it. Too intimate, in both positive and negative sense. In the negative sense, for me Polish was the language of politeness, and that involves considerable inhibition. Too much deference, too many taboos.

At the time I wrote “I Can Be a Poet Only in English,” I fully meant it: how could I ever write a love poem in Polish? Yes, it is for me the language of the heart — and I can’t imagine writing a love poem in Polish precisely because it’s the language of the heart. Poetry requires distance, so instead of being flooded with emotions, one can focus on how to arrange words and create art — which can then touch the reader’s heart. It’s a paradox. In poetry, emotion is best expressed indirectly, through images, symbols, metaphor, brief “narrow-slice” narratives. Only then is emotion mysterious and powerful.

Wordsworth said that poetry is emotion recollected in tranquillity. That tranquillity was attainable in English, because the words “didn’t mean anything.” They were arbitrary chunks of sound. In Polish the words were too conditioned to evoke emotions.

I have experimented with translating my poems into Polish, and in one case the result was much more powerful in Polish — it’s generally agreed that Polish is more emotionally expressive than English. But the poems were all born in English since more than emotional expressiveness I needed emotional distance to speak about highly charged matters. The poems had to move away not only from the church, but, even more so, from mommy and daddy — and the Mommy and Daddy of the first culture.

And I have moved away. For me, even after decades of living in it, English remains the language of distance — and that’s gloriously liberating.
 
ENGLISH AS THE LANGUAGE OF EQUALITY

I’ve been listening to Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers.” It's better than “Blink,” even if less relentlessly documented. But it was the chapter on aviation safety that really hit home. Gladwell discusses the usual factors involved in crashes, such as bad weather and engine failure, but then he focuses on the degree to which a culture is hierarchical and deferential — a pattern reflected in speech. With special attention to Korean Airlines’ Guam crash in 1997 and the tragic black-box recording, he documents how the crew, speaking in Korean, simply did not dare correct the sleepy, dysfunctional captain. It would have been impolite.

Today the same airline has won awards for its safety. The biggest change? An American advisor was called in. The crew was forced to speak English — after being given more English lessons. Only those who became fluent in “the language of aviation” remained employed (at least according to Gladwell).

As someone who grew up in a deferential culture (at least as a “girl from a good home”) and learned to speak in a polite manner and not question authority, I understand this. When I arrived in the US, I was shocked by the bad manners, the impolite speech. At the same time, my polite expressions (I was trying to translate from Polish, prefacing requests with “Would you be so kind as to . . .”) confused people and even freaked them out. They expected short commands, skipping even “please.” This created clarity: “Open here”; “Exit.” What worked best in a crowded elevator was shouting “Four!” (I discovered this after first trying, “Would you be so kind as to press number 4?”)

But deep inside, I also felt more and more liberated. It wasn’t just that my peers were always saying fuck this and fuck that, those little blasphemies I loved. It was the egalitarianism and assertiveness of the language. Obviously an American co-pilot wouldn’t merely politely hint to the captain that he needed to pull up fast to avoid crashing.

When forced to speak English, the Korean crew had no trouble communicating with clarity, no matter how “rude” it would have sounded in Korean. And they felt comfortable being assertive. 

People who speak more than one language often say that they have a different personality depending on the language. I am softer and more polite in Polish, even if I try to avoid the formal address. A friend of mine says his mother sounded harsh and bossy in English; with her Polish friends, she was soft and charming. In her case, it’s possible to argue that she wasn’t sufficiently at home in English to be able to be charming in her English-language persona. But I am very much at home in English, and yet I too sense a difference. 

**

How did English become the least aristocratic language, becoming indeed probably the closest we have to the language of equality? I suspect the answer lies mainly in the diverse origins of modern English. It took in so many other languages that it was forced to simplify forms of address, the singular “you” becoming standard usage for everyone. True, it may have originally been meant as the more formal plural you, like the formal French “vous,” but because in English there is no separate grammar to differentiate the singular from the plural (that grammar fell from use not long after the time of Shakespeare), the “you” became direct, singular, and egalitarian.

In German, the respectful form of address is “Sie” — “they” — with verbs that follow reflecting the plural. “Are they satisfied with my essay?” you might address your teacher. I know it sounds funny in English, and practically insane. In Polish, it would be, “Is Mr. Professor satisfied with my essay?” — or simply an equivalent of “gentleman” or “lady.” Up to a certain age — meaning throughout high school — the teacher would reply using the singular “you,” thus maintaining the hierarchy. On my return trips I found the formal address ludicrous, stilted, and simply unbearable.

Here is the view of a Hindi speaker that I found online:

“My native language Hindi and the language I am learning, Japanese, have different pronouns and titles for giving respect to elders, authority and so on.

I hate it with a passion and do away with them as much as possible.

This is a large reason as to why I like English more than my native language.”

Another person on the Internet also commented how English felt a lot more egalitarian to her, and she also felt that her English-speaking teachers treated her in a more egalitarian manner.

To people who speak exclusively English it may not seem like much that you address everyone as simply “you,” and the person — regardless of social status, age, gender, or race, replies to you in the same manner. A five-year old says “you” to the teacher and the teacher says “you” to the child. But in fact this is revolutionary.

Does an egalitarian language automatically create an egalitarian culture? The question makes us instantly aware that there are many factors that create various degrees of hierarchy in a society. So I am forced to give a qualified answer: an egalitarian language does not by itself create an egalitarian culture — but it helps create a more egalitarian culture.

I strongly suspect that a culture can be helped by its language(s), or it can be stunted by the wrong kind of language, e.g. if you have to worry about five degrees of deference, or if it’s not clear if the action has been performed or is only intended. Gladwell gives the example of how Chinese helps children master mathematical operations — the language is already a kind of mathematics, so less translation is needed. 

ARE SOME LANGUAGES BETTER SUITED TO FRANKNESS, OTHERS TO LYING AND PRETENDING?

But in some other respects, it’s English that may be liberating to the Chinese:

“In another study, Chinese-English bilinguals were asked to describe themselves in each respective language and surprisingly their self-esteem and self-description differed depending on the language they were using. In English they reported higher self-esteem and described themselves in more individualistic terms, while in Chinese they perceived themselves mainly as members of groups they belonged to.”

 
Yet another study mentioned that Chinese women admitted to feeling pain in English, but not in Chinese. Thus English is more likely to be a language of frankness and truthfulness, of less social anxiety. And I can easily imagine an Asian woman saying in her polite native language that she has a happy marriage. But in English it’s likely to be another story.

Again, it’s hard to disentangle language from culture, but it seems to me that highly deferential languages are the languages of lying. These may be only people-pleasing white lies, but if you’re forced to say them every day, then your mind-set is that of lying rather than telling the truth. If the language tends to vagueness and suggestiveness rather than direct expressions, then it’s almost impossible to tell the truth.

Speaking a language that’s primarily a language of politeness rather than a language of equality is like having a faint smile always smeared on your face. Language too is a mask; the languages of politeness practically demand constant pretending. The subtle message is: “You are inferior. It’s forbidden to have thoughts of your own, to think your thoughts and feelings have value.” The constant collectivist message is: “Don’t be yourself.”

Social class and gender are of course heavily involved here. Yet pondering how to render “Religion is the greatest bullshit ever told” into Polish and coming up blank (except for much weaker “nonsense”), I realized that working-class Polish men would probably not have this problem. Yet in English no one, no matter how sheltered and refined, is unfamiliar with “impolite” terms. Profanity is used freely. There is an ugliness to it, yes — but profanity is an act of liberation, defying authority and breaking taboos.

Profanity announces that there are no sacred cows. Anything can be questioned — and that means we can grasp more of the complexity of life. For instance, we no longer have to pretend that motherhood is all sunshine and rainbows. It was in English that I first heard a mother admit that at least once a day she wishes she could flush her kids down the toilet. Now imagine that the word “toilet” is taboo and a woman is forced to use silly terms like “powder room.” Euphemism has its positive uses, but being confined to it is stultifying. Languages that “call a spade a spade” — languages with a wealth of curses rather than terms of politeness — make communication of ideas and feelings easier and more truthful.

http://blog.internations.org/2011/07/different-language-different-personality/

“I AM A DIFFERENT PERSON WHEN I SPEAK ENGLISH” — DIFFERENT LANGUAGE, DIFFERENT PERSONALITY?

~ “In English, my speech is very polite, with a relaxed tone, always saying "please" and "excuse me." When I speak Greek, I start talking more rapidly, with a tone of anxiety and in a kind of rude way . . .”

~ “I find when I'm speaking Russian I feel like a much more gentle, "softer" person. In English, I feel more “harsh,” “businesslike.”

Susan Ervin-Tripp conducted a study in which she asked Japanese-American women to complete sentences she gave them in both Japanese and English. She found that they proposed very different endings depending on the language used. Thus, for the sentence beginning, "When my wishes conflict with my family . . ." one participant's Japanese ending was, ". . . it is a time of great unhappiness," whereas the English ending was, ". . . I do what I want.”

More than forty years later, Baruch College Professor David Luna and his colleagues asked Hispanic American bilingual women students to interpret target advertisements picturing women, first in one language and, six months later, in the other. They found that in the Spanish sessions, the bilinguals perceived women in the ads as more self-sufficient as well as extrovert. In the English sessions, however, they expressed more traditional, other-dependent and family-oriented views of the women.”

However, the author of this article suggests that it’s not the language itself as the cultural context that brings out different personality traits:

“Although divided on the personality issue, most respondents agreed with the fact that different contexts, domains of life and interlocutors–which in turn induce different languages–trigger different impressions, attitudes and behaviors. Thus, as bicultural bilinguals we adapt to the situation or the person we are talking to, and change our language when we need to (see here), without actually changing our personality. One respondent put it very nicely: "... it is not a personality change but simply the expression of another part of our personality that is not shown as strongly in our other language(s)”.

Future research will hopefully use both explicit and implicit tests of attitudes and self-concept as suggested by yet another respondent. This is all the more important as it could be that not everyone is equally apt at judging that they "feel different" when they change language. In a recent study, researcher Katarzyna Ożańska-Ponikwia examined why some people report feeling different while others do not. She asked some 100 bilinguals made up of people who had grown up speaking two languages, immigrants who acquired their second language later on in life, as well as students who had stayed in a foreign country for an extended period of time, to give answers to two personality questionnaires and to give scale values to statements such as, "I feel I'm someone else while speaking English", or "Friends say that I'm a different person when I speak English".

What she found was that only people who are emotionally and socially skilled are able to notice feeling different. According to her, some people do not report changes in their behavior or in their perception or expression of emotions when changing language, not because they do not exist, but because they are unable to notice them. She speculates that it is people with above-average levels of social and emotional skills who can notice that they adapt aspects of their personality and behavior when using another language.”

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/life-bilingual/201111/change-language-change-personality

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/life-bilingual/201212/change-language-change-personality-part-ii


This "medieval Yoda" was found in a 14th illuminated manuscript known as Smithfield Decretals. It illustrates the story of Samson (don't ask). Oh lovable little demons! Perhaps the human imagination is not infinite after all, but keeps circling around certain patterns. 

Oriana:

I don’t have a definite answer here, but I think this much can be safely said: there is a lot of learning and adaptation that goes along with a language. To me the speakers of English (whether British or American) were dramatically different, and that no doubt brought out different aspects of my personality.

Emotional distance was much easier to me in English — which may come as a surprise to my American friends, who see me as quite emotionally expressive. But words in English don’t provoke a strong emotional reaction in me (simple Pavlovian conditioning seems to be at work here) so I can say (or write ) virtually anything in English — including words whose equivalent would never pass my lips in Polish (don’t forget that I was a “girl from a good home”). This emotional detachment from the words in English gives me a feeling of greater freedom to say anything — but because I am also aware that there could be consequences, I can be more controlled and calculating, depending on the context.

Here are more responses from the Internet:

~ I find that when I'm talking in Arabic, even when I'm not in an Arabic country, I'm a lot shyer and a lot more reserved. I'm also more deferential.

On the other hand, in English I'm a lot more talkative and assertive.”

~ I am equally bilingual in English and Malay yet I have extreme difficulty translating between the two languages. English is a very direct language, while Malay is prone to poetry, analogy, indirect or double meanings.” (Oriana: A language so ideally suited to poetry is the opposite of what you want for aviation safety.)

~ I’ve been living in Japan for 8 years now, and I really noticed a big difference when some Japanese women very fluent in French, and who have lived in France for a while, speak in French or in Japanese.

It might look or sound like a difference of personality or behavior but I think it’s just a cultural adaptation.

When these 2 women (who don’t know each other) speak in French, they’re more prone to irony and speak more frankly; they give their opinion in a more direct way and get onto topics they wouldn’t get onto when speaking in Japanese.

I should also add that the tone of their voices are really different when speaking in French or speaking in Japanese (lower in French, high pitched in Japanese) which gives even more the impression they are 2 different persons depending on the language they speak.

It's less obvious with a young Japanese boy I know when is switching from Japanese to French (well, he uses much more slang and swearwords in French!), or with a really extroverted Japanese girl I knew when she was switching from Japanese to French. Maybe because the way they behave naturally is already closer from the way French behave.

~ When I speak Indonesian, I find myself acting much more humble and shy/embarrassed (malu), and much more conscious of other's relative status, since it's very important to use polite language forms depending on status. I find myself becoming much more indirect and nuanced in my expression, yet cheerful, nosy and sociable in the manner I experience while living in Indonesia (where are you going? what are you doing? etc.) I literally feel more emotional in Indonesian.

~ Going with my native Slavic languages, I'm the proud carrier of the tradition of dark humor (not too dark but just enough to scare people with ethnic jokes). I am relatively conservative in my thoughts and my language/phrases, polite and overly shy.

When it comes to my French, I turn into the light and airy being, full of light and love, and perceive the world to be the same. I bathe in the sounds of the language, the tonality and the melody of its prose.

My English makes me to be an outgoing and positive person, a rather entertaining conversationalist and almost every other phrase that comes out of my mouth is just too witty not to share.

~ When I speak English, I feel more open because the country of origin always reminds me of a more straight-forward approach. When I speak Chinese or Indonesian, I become more reserved because the culture requires me to read between lines in conversation.

Oriana: Some people say that even their voice changes depending on the language. Others, though, insist there is no change in anything.

It’s obvious that culture and language can’t really be considered separately. I feel, however, that certain effects of learning a language later in life are real. If the second language reflects a more egalitarian culture (e..g  addressing everyone as  “you” rather than using deferential forms and the special grammar, indirect grammar that does with them), the speaker is likely to feel more assertive and have a higher self-esteem when using the egalitarian language. They become less timid, less passive, more frank (e.g. Chinese women will admit to feeling more pain if answering in English than in Chinese). If the second language stresses clarity rather than being vaguely poetic, the speaker is likely feel more rational, down-to-earth and businesslike. 

My favorite effect, though, is emotional detachment. When the second language is learned somewhat later in life (the critical factor is not growing up with it), the words don’t have conditioned emotional meanings. As I describe in my poem, curses might as well be endearments, so there is no big taboo against using or that word. Consequently the speaker is less inhibited and more relaxed — anything can be discussed (think of the Japanese women joking and discussing a wide range of subjects — in French).

Of course it takes a sufficient mastery of another language for these benefits. “With each new language, we gain a new soul,” my polyglot Aunt Henia told me. That’s because with a new language a new culture enters our psyche, enriching us. This may be particularly true of cultures that are in some ways more advanced than our culture of origin — for instance, being more egalitarian.

 

Always be sincere, even if you don't mean it. ~ Harry Truman

THERE IS NOT “TRUE SELF” ANYWAY (so go ahead, create a more vital, happy self)
 
“I am in the eighth grade. I just won a prize in my Sunday school class for memorizing the most Bible verses. I am a committed Christian. The next week, I read Camus’s The Stranger. There is no God. Later, I score a couple of touchdowns in the big game. I’m a serious jock, and don’t need to waste my time thinking about metaphysics.

But by the time I reached middle age, I still hadn’t discovered my unwavering “I.” Was I a phony? Spineless? Neurotic?

Problem was, the more I tried to uncover this deep self, the more frustrated I became. I could talk all day about my memories, fantasies, dreams, and I could reach some conclusions about what I thought my real identity was. But once I left the therapist's couch, I found that my insights didn't translate into clarity and ease. When I faced the difficult issues of my everyday life, I was just as bewildered and tormented as I had always been.

Reluctantly, I changed psychotherapists. I say reluctantly because I was very drawn to my first psychotherapist's ideas, grounded in the depth psychology of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. I had long studied and admired these thinkers, and was enamored of the idea that rigorous introspection could reveal true identity. 

My new psychotherapist practiced cognitive behavioral therapy, roughly based on the idea that a self is a collection of the habits that we choose to express. Our harmful habits cause our suffering; to ease the pain, create new habits. Making these habits is similar to fashioning a new narrative for ourselves, and acting out that narrative.

A philosophical school behind this kind of psychotherapy is pragmatism, as developed by William James at the turn of the twentieth century. James believed that there are no stable truths, but that truths “happen” (as Robert D. Richardson puts it in his biography of James) to those ideas that help us negotiate our world effectively, elegantly, aesthetically.

James also maintained that the habits we form to express these “truths” are what constitute a self. A psychotherapeutic corollary to this theory is that we won’t get happier by navel-gazing but simply by deciding to behave as a happy person might. Smile more, to put it crudely, and you will feel better.

Recent neuroscience bears out this idea that the “self” is a fabricated narrative. Michael Gazzaniga has shown how the left brain transforms the raw data of the right into meaningful stories. Daniel Dennett has demonstrated that the brain possess no central cognitive unit but rather processes data in several regions. What gives our being a “center of gravity” is language, with which we construct a cogent “I” to which we attribute, as we would to a character in a novel, intention, agency, rationality.

The notion that our identities are novels in the making is exhilarating. It grants us freedom, especially if we are sad, to create a more vital self. And our fictions are in fact not relative. Some are “truer” than others, if by truer we mean those narratives that are most alive, that connect us to the wide world in ways that are surprising, diverse, complex, ironic.

Though the work [of creating lively habits] is arduous, often sorrowful and fraught with failure, it is the artist’s labor, ecstatic, the struggle to transform painful, chaotic experience into orders exuberant and astonishing.”

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/morbid-curiosities/201505/fake-your-way-happiness

Sphinx, Neo-Assyrian, 9th-8th century bc
 
Oriana:

The pragmatic philosophy of William James makes perfect sense. It was revolutionary for his time, and still is: Smile, and you will feel happy. To this I’d add that beta-blockers work better than any metaphysics: a lot of misery is due to the nasty effects of adrenaline.

As for forming new habits: Think Small. “Think Big” is the most disastrous slogan out there. It practically guarantees failure. The principles of Think Small: baby steps, mini-projects, and micro-ambitions. These reinforce focus on the work, not the outcome, and thus practically guarantee success — which builds on itself. “We manage best when we manage small.”

How to be happy? Smiling helps. Fake being happy? Why not — I'm not against it. But I say, do something small — even quite tiny — and do it very well. Do it with excellence, with artistry.

Also, “Remember you are loved” — not necessarily in the sense of romantic love. For me it's often enough to remember that no matter what happens, I have myself — not that I have to define that self. It’s enough that my “self” is happening, interacting with the world — and I'm never bored with that.

*

ON THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF KNOWING ONE “TRUE SELF” AND ONE’S “TRUE” LIFE STORY

One reason I've always hated to talk about my life has been the keen realization that everything I say is false — not a deliberate lie, but an unavoidable partial and false version. Of course that happened too in poems, especially childhood poems: a painful sensation of enormous but inescapable lying, only partly redeemed by artistic merit. 

But I’ve grown easier on myself, knowing that absolute truth is neither knowable nor desirable, and art has to be selective and simplify. Rather than an accurate life story — aside from the important realization that I am not to blame for all the bad things that happened; circumstances played a huge part — it’s more important to have a life philosophy that serves the present, making it worth living. Besides, I can always treasure-hunt and polish the good things I produced in the past, those “inaccurate” poems and prose memories that I enjoy sharing with others.

ALFRED LOISY AND THE WRONG COMING: INSTEAD OF THE SECOND COMING, WE GOT THE CHURCH
 
“Jesus announced the coming of the Kingdom, but it was the Church that arrived.” ~ French theologian Alfred Loisy, 1902. He got excommunicated for this and other insights.

Jesus is never coming back. Never, never, never, never.

Not on the clouds of glory, nor even in a metaphorical way. Simply: never.

This doesn’t sadden me, but the thought that instead of the Kingdom we got the Church is depressing. It is said that Loisy made this remark with a note of regret. A false prophecy is commonplace; most predictions turn out to be wrong. But this was a colossal “wrong coming”. At least Loisy didn’t get burned at the stake, only because he was born late enough in history.

Another controversial position taken by Loisy was his distinction between the pre-Moses period dominated by the religion of El (or Elohim), and the post-Moses period when Yahweh gradually took over. El was the chief god of the Canaanite pantheon.

The best insights are often those that are put in the simplest words: “Jesus announced the coming of the Kingdom, but it was the Church that arrived.” Instead of the divine perfection, a flawed institution that almost instantly became oppressive and corrupt. “The Empire 
never ended." 

Furthermore, the entire message got completely derailed. The point was never dying and the afterlife in some disembodied state — that was never the Hebrew belief (the biblical belief was that life began with the first breath, and ended with the last breath — to exist, you had to be breathing — hence the clumsy notion of resurrection in the body).

No, the afterlife was never the point of the original Christian message. The point was supposed to be the future kingdom of god right here on earth. Deluded, yes, but at least we should take an honest look at what the message really was.
 
CAN LIPOSUCTION SLOW DOWN AGING?
 
Obesity, especially excessive belly fat, increases the risk of numerous diseases, including diabetes, atherosclerosis and cancer. In addition, the cytokines associated with the widespread inflammation related to excessive belly fat directly impair cognitive function. Worse, the effect of excessive belly fat ultimately increases the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

What would happen if these harmful fats cells were simply removed? Exercise can shrink fat cells but only liposuction can remove them from the body. A group of scientists at the Medical College of Georgia investigated this novel question by conducting three very clever experiments on obese and normal weight mice (Journal of Neuroscience, 2014). First, a group of obese mice were forced to exercise on a treadmill. Unlike the millions of Americans who own treadmills, these mice had no choice but to run. As expected, the daily treadmill exercising reduced belly fat, reduced the level of inflammation in their body, and significantly restructured how their brains’ function at the cellular level leading to greatly improved memory.

In a parallel study, the scientists surgically removed fat pads from a similar group of obese mice, i.e. they underwent a standard liposuction procedure. *The results were identical to those produced by running on the treadmill: inflammation was reduced and the mice became significantly smarter.* These findings confirm many recent studies that have documented the ability of fat cells to impair brain function and accelerate aging.

Then the scientists did something truly astonishing; they transplanted fat pads into normal, healthy weight mice. The impact of the fat cells was immediately obvious: the mice showed increased signs of brain and body inflammation and they developed deleterious changes in brain structure and function that lead to reduced memory performance, i.e. the rats became stupid.

The evidence is now quite overwhelming between increasing levels of body fat and a decline in virtually every aspect of normal brain function. The scientific literature is vast, including over 10,000 published articles that document the precise mechanisms underlying this connection. The relationship has been documented in humans, monkeys, rats and every organism that has been studied.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/your-brain-food/201403/liposuction-can-make-you-smarter

Oriana:

Of course the gold-standard study would be to randomly assign people to liposuction and control group, and track their aging. This simply can’t be done, so currently only the affluent undergo the removal of excess fat cell (by the way, surgery is not the only method; non-surgical techniques have recently been developed). And the affluent also live longer, but probably due to multiple factors, lower rates of obesity being only one of them.

ending on beauty:

What is of genuine importance is eternal vitality, not eternal life. ~ Nietzsche

This instantly reminded me of Blake’s “Energy is eternal delight.” And somehow that energy finds a venue for itself, the ideas and new areas of growth. It goes both ways: when a goal seizes the imagination, the energy will be found; and when energy is abundant, a goal will be found. Like a mountain river, the eternal vitality rushes on.

The everlasting universe of things
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Now dark—now glittering—now reflecting gloom—
Now lending splendor . . .
Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,
Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.

~ Shelley, Mont Blanc