Something must be done!

'All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.' Blaise Pascal

I have often wondered if Man (in the gender-neutral sense of the word) has a nature. To ask this question does risk being massively general, not to mention seeing Man as a fixed entity, rather than an evolving entity. It is also a question running the risk of generalizing ones own cultural heritage (or brain-spamming) across a vastly varied globe.

I do, however, think Man has a nature. And that nature is 'to do things'. It sounds a bit obvious and general - and you might accuse this vague answer of being meaningless. Of course Man has to do things! Yet I am not saying 'to do things' as a massively broad prophecy. I am in fact saying that Man would rather do something over nothing. Given a choice between grief and nothing, Man would choose grief; it agonises Man less than boredom.

Man is a creature of motion, never able to stay still without a powerful reason to do so. The essence of Man is therefore action. Even stupid or 'evil' action will suffice over inaction. In fact, what does Man call more evil than inaction? (He may also call inaction anti-social or cowardly!)

The gaps in Man's endless movement - which we call holi-days, are windows set into his tightly packed schedule. And those holi-days are not spent in rest, but grief! If the sabbatical were to be truly a time of rest, Man would do nothing with them, rather than something. Sadly for Man, he is obliged, even coerced, into going on holi-days in an attempt to prove to the world that he is enjoying himself.

For Man is a social animal, however much he may try and deny it and call himself an individualist. In short, he cares about what other people have, what other people think he has, what other people think he should do, what other people think he thinks about what they think he should do, and so forth.

Preferably, Man would like to have more than his fellow specimen one or two notches up or down on the 'scales of success'. Man is the great comparer, the great envier. He is pushed and pulled into motion by his petty dreams; dreams of quantity over quality. Even though this appalling state of affairs is so dismal and unsatisfying (even for the winners), Man would rather clutch onto his second-rate existence then pause for thought. For to truly think about the soiled world he lives in is to destroy it utterly.

But why? What drives Man on in the face of such obvious ignorance, depravity and simple stupidity?

The simple answer is evolution. We have not evolved to be thinkers - we have evolved to perform immediately pressing linear tasks. But this is not to reduce the whole of Man (the story-teller, the inventor, the artist) to chemical reactions and genes. That would be silly, Man is not his genes.

However, part of Man is his physical body and this is forever an influence upon his character, producing in him that which feels intuitively right without explanation. For instance, why should Man fornicate and procreate? Because it feels right to do so.

Nature is a circular entity. Try asking it question: Why exist? That I might exist. Why grow? So that I may grow. Why reproduce? That my offspring may reproduce. Why adapt? That I might become more adaptable to my environment. Unsatisfying answers to the philosopher!

Observing the white moss growing on the windowsill, one colony has dominated more of the sill than its fellows. In the context of the moss, that larger moss is something of an expansionist empire! But why are they growing? That they may grow. There is no reason beyond this and nor do they need a greater reason to continue their quest for mastery of the window-sill. To the outside observer, it seems utterly futile, but try telling that to the moss (or by analogy, anyone who thinks the purpose of life is just to procreate and seek nutrients)!

Fortunately, we homo sapiens sapiens have been 'blessed' to be more than a colony of moss, or a fruit fly, or a tiger, or what have you. We have the power of language, the power to create many great things - literature and mathematics and of course philosophy! And we have the creativity to dream of timeless scapes and create wonderful works of art. And we can invent incredible new devices that alleviate the suffering imposed upon us by nature. And we can reach the stars.

We have imagination.

Our ability to imagine the perfection of affairs in the world (in this world) creates for us a virtuous character to strive for. This is the boon of our imagination. Many a philosopher has posited worlds which exist outside of space-time where perfection exists. Many a religion has promised bliss and eternal salvation in this life or the next. I do not believe either of these to be true. They are perfections which exist only in our minds, as opposed to the actual world confronting us. Still, they are another means of keeping us moving.

These perfect dreams are what grant us purpose, and allow us to be virtuous; for virtue can only exist when there is an end purpose toward which we may move. Far from making us idle utopian dreamers, this perfection is the yardstick against which we can compare our underachieving selves.

We do have a purpose, and that is to glorify our creativity, our intellect and our spirituality (self-awareness) over our evolutionary commands. When something feels right without explanation, it is nature's voice. Love, hatred, visceral emotion, sensual pleasure, this is the voice of nature. When something is dreamed as in art, or reasoned as in philosophy, or observed as in scientific endeavour, it is the creation of Man, built on the foundation of his so lofty mind. It is of great value. It can take us beyond adaptation to our environment into the realm of what I call the imperfect balance of Man; the best we can possibly do. Fiction and art is often a direct representation of this striving, a spiritual journey without which life would be quite unbearable.

For to think that we have no cause greater than to procreate, seek worldly power and enjoy physical pleasure is to set the bar extremely low, and invite all sorts of horrid wars, greed, hedonism, pretense, madness and tribalism into the 'daily life' of our species.

To conclude, I would fain return to the beginning of this article. We must allow our wretchedness to fail and die, rather than maintaining it for the sake of something to do. For this we must recognise that sometimes, just sometimes, doing nothing is better than doing something.

St. Zagarus

A fish called Pythagoras

I once kept some fish

I called one Pythagoras

He swam round and round the tank

And to be frank

I thought he was working out the cubic capacity.

To keep them fit

I fed them on flakes because that's all it takes

But he was a sod he took out a fishing rod

Caught all the others and ate all his brothers

I was a bit peeved but then I conceived

An idea..Oh lord what a killer.

In his tank I put a mirror

Well.

When he saw his reflection

Section by section he ate himself

And finished with his head.

Now Pythagoras is dead.

You didn't expect a happy ending did you?

John Smallshaw

Is Advertising Ethical?

For a start, is advertising a consensual activity? Clearly it is not, though some people might say that it is neutral, since people who see the advertising haven’t actually said 'No'.

This is an important issue, since a significant part of our spending relates to goods we would not otherwise have bought, and therefore don’t need. In particular we have the phenomenon of pester power, where kids see adverts and what the eye seeth, the heart grieveth. In one country at least, Sweden, advertising that targets children is banned.

At present, in Botswana, the government is trying to do all it can to evict the Bushmen, or San, since the area they inhabit offers opportunities of wealth from diamonds. But they need neither diamonds, nor the goods that advertisers want us to want. And they have skills that our ancestors lost when they ate the apple of knowledge and were expelled from the Garden of Eden. So perhaps what we can still learn from them is a greater asset than the diamonds.

In my view, it is an infringement of our liberties that we need to take positive action to avoid seeing such advertisements, and further, little in our society trains us to resist the misleading elements of advertising. Thus there must be a freedom from psychological conditioning to aid somebody’s thirst for profit. What this really means is that people will not see any advertising unless they go to the classifieds or click on the appropriate button.

Big business will throw up their hands in horror, saying that advertising promotes growth. But in reality it doesn’t hold back growth, but redistributes growth.

However there is one way in which advertising creates growth in addition to redistributing it: the advertising industry. This is a form of growth – including the branding and marketing - that clearly doesn’t add to people’s standard of living. This is what the East Germans found out when they had the opportunity to buy Wessi goods – if they could afford them after losing their jobs – the packaging might have been more glossy, but the contents were not necessarily better. So the packaging doesn’t really add to their standard of living either.

So if a restriction on advertising really does cause people to spend less, they won’t mind paying more in taxes for such things as the environment, health and education.

I would still permit unsolicited advertising for road safety campaigns, charity advertising, public opinion campaigns and the like, where such knowledge is in the public interest. And maybe for small businesses, to some extent, though not much positive action is needed to avoid those little cards in the newsagents’ window.

And coming back to Page Three, which is essentially an advert for the Sun: anyone has the right to read a newspaper that claims to be opinion-forming. But Page Three is nothing to do with opinion-forming, or shouldn’t be. One should not need to take positive action to avoid it, which you do in fact need to when it is the first thing you see when you start looking inside the paper. Why not have a don’t drink and drive advert on Page Three? And if we really are to be foolish and naughty, pop those pictures on Page Two, which is less intrusive and we only see it after the ‘good’ adverts.

Well some time ago I presented two diagrams to capture exploitation:

 

And here we see a difference between the exploitative methods of liberals and conservatives. Here the liberals educate the exploiters, and keep the exploited people happy. But conservatives keep the exploiters happy, make no attempt to keep the exploited peoples happy, and scare the fellow exploiters when the exploited start being ‘awkward and unreasonable’. So the grey is the colour here for exploitation of ignorance and keeping people in blissful ignorance. But though the powers that be will complain that they are merely respecting people’s freedom, in reality it is all about anything but freedom.

So how do we relate advertising to freedom? In general, there is a need for advertisers to positively avoid the need for readers to positively avoid what they want to positively avoid. And indeed, though it is a vain hope, advertisers should want to positively avoid all this. If they don’t, don’t buy their goods.

And of course let’s have a don’t drink and drive advert on Page Three.

Martin Prior

Can science tell us anything about how to live a happy life?

It seems unlikely to many that science can provide us with any kind of real guidance about how to live a happy and successful life. Science is a cold, dispassionate and objective discipline practised by white-coated professors, working long hours in dull laboratories. It can tell us a great deal about the visible natural world maybe, but little about the things that really matter; happiness, love, loss, morality, ethics and our less favourable characteristics too, jealousy, aggression, malice. Evolutionary psychologists I’m sure would want to tell us about natural selection’s role in shaping these characteristics but can they tell us anything of the essence of these qualities or how to survive them?

If I may now get philosophical, what is happiness and how do we know when we have it - can we ever know? In contemporary western societies those charged by the State with measuring and improving people’s happiness aren’t mystics or clergymen, but therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists. And most of these work within the NHS.

Psychologist Ivan Tyrell suggests that realisation in the following areas leads to overall human happiness: security, autonomy and control, emotional connection, a sense of community, friendship and intimacy, privacy, a sense of status, competence and achievement, and a life of meaning and purpose are the benchmark for psychological contentment and well-being. These principles hopefully aren’t simply conjured up but have some basis in science and research.

A reasonable question might be: Can science tell us anything about happiness and how to get it, via therapy or in other way? Research psychologists certainly try to. A researcher may not be able to measure happiness under a microscope but he can analyse qualitative measures. Researchers are forever asking therapy clients questions such as: do you feel happier after your therapy? Do you feel that you have now mastered more control of your difficulties? Did you find the therapy useful? Answers to these questions and others like them are compared to peoples self-rated happiness scales who have not had therapy, or to those who have had different therapies. Large numbers of responses are statistically compared across a range of therapies and no therapy. These results form the basis of the research evidence. It is in fact relatively easy to find out how helpful people subjectively considered their therapy to be.

Science, and research particularly, have already made a huge impact on the NHS. Since 1995 all treatments provided by the NHS have required explicit authorisation and endorsement from the National Institute for Clinical Excellence [NICE]. Only treatments, investigations, tests and therapies supported by the best available research evidence receive approval.

NICE expects all therapists to support any claims that their preferred model of therapy works with research evidence to support it. And if it does not, it could cease to exist, at least within the NHS. It is not difficult to imagine how this idea makes psychotherapists nervous, particularly if their preferred therapy does not have NICE backing, and there are in fact a lot that don’t.

It might be reasonable to assume that the NICE recommendations act as a useful guide for both patients and service commissioners. But NICE and the scientific method themselves are not without their detractors.

For example, many psychoanalysts see an irreconcilable contradiction between therapies that explore the unconscious and irrational drives and scientific models that emphasise objectivity and empiricism. By definition the unconscious mind can only rarely be known and never seen; attempts to observe and quantify it therefore must be futile. The objectification of human experience into calculable scientific chunks is impossible and to be discouraged, so the argument goes. There can be no room for a value-free science when it comes to examining therapy and also outcomes for therapy. This is a commonly held view and a cursory glance at any psychotherapy journal will reveal it.

Many psychotherapists remain passionate in their conviction that their therapies are healing, nurturing and empowering and also that they sit outside of any kind of scientific discourse. And for many patients this may be true, but do therapists have a right to this general claim, and is it credible?

This might be an acceptable position if psychotherapy, psychology and psychiatry were not littered with the stories of failed, unhelpful and sometimes even harmful treatments. Thomas Szasz said that if a therapist believes that they are doing the right thing then a mental patient can be subjected to any kind of abusive treatment in the name of helping. Why? - because the therapist knows he is doing the right thing and because they are inherently good people, of course.

But patients typically are not given access to all of the information they need to make an informed judgement about the right therapy for them. When they do have it, they may not have the power to say no, even when it would be in their interests to do so.

Bruno Bettelheim was an Austrian-born American child psychologist and writer. He gained an international reputation for his work on Freud, psychoanalysis, and emotionally disturbed children. He was at the forefront of many psychoanalytic theories, including those that promoted the notion that cold, frigid and emotionally disengaged mothers caused autism in their children. Bettelheim’s idea took root in the US in the 1960’s and 70’s and led to many young people receiving treatments, therapies and often long term institutionalisation as a method to cure them of their autism. The idea was that the removal of an autistic child from a cold mother could be curative in itself.

There is only one problem with the ‘frigid mother’ theory and that is that there is a not a shred of evidence to support it. A simple examination of the logic used to construct the argument would reveal it to be nonsense and the available evidence base, around even in the 60’s should have completely destroyed it. One of the saddest parts of the story, for me, is that many parents were so desperate for help that they were happy to be coerced by Bettelheim into thinking that long term institutionalisation was a reasonable step to take. Often relationships between parents and their children never recovered from the prolonged separation.

Many of these institutionalised children are now suing the Bettelheim foundation, claiming it was them and their theories that abused them and not their mothers. Good luck to them! Many of these children were denied an opportunity to stay at home with loving and caring parents.

So why did the idea survive as long as it did and why does it still have influence in some areas of psychotherapy today, particularly on the continent? Because people want it to be true and believe it ought to be true. The scientific model could have told us very readily that psychotherapy treatments for autism don’t work and secondly that the huge weight of evidence supports a biological / neuro-developmental cause for autism.

‘Cold mother’ theory and Bettelheim himself, of course, are not the only examples of bogus therapies that could have been checked by proper scientific investigation. Another involves ‘attachment based holding therapy and rebirthing’. It was promoted and still is as a cure for entrenched relationship difficulties between parent and child. Holding therapy advocates the enforced holding of a child by a parent in the hope that eventually a child begins to make a successful bond with a parent/carer or adopter. These holds, in a variety of forms, can go on for hours. Again this abusive and harmful treatment, with absolutely no research evidence to support it, is vigorously promoted by its proponents.

Unfortunately in its more extreme forms it has led to the deaths of children in the US. In one case a child was bound so tightly in a carpet [this is a modification of holding therapy called rebirthing] that the child suffocated and died. The Candace Newmaker scandal makes for a thoroughly miserable read. Again scientific research was showing that the theory behind holding and rebirthing was nonsense and that there were clearly no beneficial effects.

Many of the founding fathers of therapy have been at the receiving end of this kind of critique including Freud, Klein, Bowlby, Erikson and many others besides. It would be wrong to say that all therapists who don’t embrace science and research are necessarily engaging in harmful practice. But it is right perhaps to say that science adds an important safeguard to the excesses of therapy evangelism; and therapists seem particularly susceptible to evangelism for reasons best left to the therapists’ therapists to understand. A more blunt reason for their reserved nature could simply be that they know that science is about to expose their emperor’s lack of clothes. As a fan of Occam’s razor I am quite happy to endorse that idea.

All is not lost however, as science is showing that many therapies do in fact work and can improve happiness. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is one, Family Therapy another. Unfortunately however psychotherapy continues to offer treatments with little empirical support. This at worst is harmful, at best a simple waste of time and money. Patients have a right to be protected from phoney treatments and the sooner science rids us of them the better. Only then can we really concentrate on what can make a difference.

Toby Humphreys

Philosophy Takeaway Newsletter 66

Is a mathematical proposition in any way related to 'truth' / reality?

There are three key differing beliefs in mathematics when discussing whether a mathematical proposition is in any way related to truth or reality: Platonism, Formalism and Intuitionism. These perspectives are actually applicable to language in general. However, all a mathematical proposition really is, is a statement. “One apple plus one apple equals two apples.” is the same as “1+1=2”

Plato believed that there was a distinction between what we perceive to be our reality and what reality is. He argued that we should take our beliefs and analyse these, reducing and questioning our assumptions until we reach an ultimate truth or reality (the dialectic).

He distinguished between the one and the many. For example, there is a potential infinity of things we call gold in the world: gold necklaces, gold rings, gold paper, and so on. However when we ask what gold is, it is the element Au, it is what all these things have in common.

Mathematics seems to be a universal language. For example, say you have an Englishman and a Frenchman and they both walk into a bar…. Or you know are just chatting in any other location. The Frenchman asks the Englishman what he means by “cheeky”. There is no French alternative that completely embodies the meaning of the word. However if there are circular beer mats on the table, cylindrical cheeky glasses of beer on the bar, and some round bar stools outside, and so on, they will both recognise the shape of the circle. They will both know that the connection between these things is a circle. Plato believes that this is because we recognise the true form of the circle, and that this true form is the reality rather than just our perception of many objects that are circular. There can hardly be a perfect circle ever created in our physical universe due to the nature of pi, but the concept of what a circle is, is known to many. It is important to note that Plato did not think that these true forms were ideas but believed that these are external and objective to us, and even to space and time.

Platonism within mathematics takes his ideas and argues that there are abstract mathematical objects whose existences are independent of us. The mathematical objects have true forms, not just the circle as per the above but sets, equations, propositions, and so on. Mathematical truths are therefore discovered using the dialectic, rather than being invented. If you look at this position from a mathematical perspective it is quite convenient. Firstly we could potentially solve any mathematical problem, as we only have to discover rationally all the mathematically true forms that could exist.

One of the problems with the Platonist argument is that if these truths are completely independent to us, how do we test these ideas to see if they are true? Take the gold example. If I say “this necklace is gold” we can test this by analyzing the necklace and confirming that it is or is not made of Au. However with Plato’s viewpoint it seems that we will always perceive reality differently from its true form. So if we test the proposition “One plus one equals two” even though our perception would be that this is correct, if these are abstract and independent from our perception then how is this useful? One of the reasons mathematics is so important to our views of existence is that it enhances scientific theories. However it seems that by claiming mathematical objects and propositions are independent of our perceptions, Platonism disregards this altogether.

Intuitionism argues that instead of having these independent forms, mathematics is just a creation of the mind. Mathematical propositions can only be proved true by reasoning that proves it to be true – and therefore we can communicate mathematics only if other minds have come to the same logical conclusion. We can rationally postulate mathematics, but it can also be applied to every day empirical reality if you believe that the mind and body are interlinked – therefore corresponding with science.

How/why do we have maths in the first place? Where did this thing that so many people struggle with/become super geniuses at come from? Look at your hands! How many fingers are you holding up? How many slices of cake have you eaten today? How much money do you need to give the shopkeeper for that pinot grigio and packet of fags? Maths stems from counting, counting became measuring for house building and such (remember back to your school days the endless bore of Pythagoras' theorem?) With Platonism all of this is irrelevant. However with Intuitionism you could argue that although these empirical things are not the mathematics, the logic and reason we have used to create them in our minds is.

The problem with this theory is when we introduce mathematical entities called irrational numbers. Remember that thing called Pi (π) (mmm pie). You used it to calculate the area / circumference / diameter of a circle – maybe you still do. But what is Pi? Pi is a really long number beginning with 3.14159265358… The number of decimal digits on this number is infinite, but unlike rational numbers they form no pattern. This means that even if we manage to calculate the next digit, we will have no idea what the one after that is. The problem with the irrational number for intuitionism is that it is irrational. Therefore we can’t just derive this in our minds. For Platonism this would not be a problem – for example where Intuitionists would argue that infinity or an irrational number could not exist as we have no experience of this in our physical world, Platonists would argue that there was a true form of infinity or of pi we are yet to discover.

So if these two arguments don’t work is maths just devoid of meaning? If we are not really sure if these independent abstract ideas exist and we can’t just make them up in our heads, what is a mathematical proposition and how does it work? Formalists argue that mathematical propositions are just a game we play, making up a story. Mathematical propositions and concepts are part of the story of maths in the same way the tardis is part of the story of Doctor Who. However just like a story these things make sense in the story but not outside it. There is a man who flies through time and space in a police box… that doesn’t make sense in the same way that 'what the hell does 10/2=5 actually mean?' does. Unlike sciences such as biology which is a study of something else – life, maths is just the study of maths. Mathematics studies quantity, structure, space and change for example, but these are mathematical concepts themselves. However, unlike Doctor Who, mathematics is logical and we can use it to describe objective things outside of mathematics. For example we can use it to model and predict the weather – but the weather isn’t actually mathematics – we’ve just made it mathsy by putting our perspective on it.

So are people who claim that mathematics is on a higher plane of existence talking out of their bums? I think that the only answer can be sort of, sometimes and depends. I’ve only written about a few of the theories here and in that not gone into much detail. However all of them relate to what you think quantifies as existence in the first place – is existence just in the mind or do you believe that there’s something else out there, and if so which is the higher plane? Platonism depends a lot on faith that these objects exist - but would you say that someone who has a belief in religion, philosophy, and so on, was a bum talker? If maths is just a game, but can be useful, does this mean it’s any less part of existence?

Rhiannon Whiting

TWELVE YEARS OF SLAVERY

This story of one man's plight, kidnapped from his family home and forced into a life of slavery, reawakens one to the horrific acts that may be committed in the shadows of a sick mind.

This shadow casts an ideology of power, fear and evil, that unites men and women of the same colour, and divides them if they are of a different colour. Yet there are other divisions cast in the same way. Of great importance are such stories, which vividly demonstrate and show just how base we can become within a delusional narrative.

When such a narrative spreads into the minds and the actions of people, one enters into a false dialogue. One becomes seemingly ensnared by theatre, as a character who cannot see any other alternative unfolding of events; frozen and fixed within a self-fulfilling nightmare of which one partakes. When freedom of choice is limited within the parameters of such a story, it appears there is no way out. Permeating the unconscious behaviours, we so-called thinkers become enslaved to it, only to be awakened to drives pushing us into a direction none of us wish to go.

How can that be? It simply would not, if there was at one's disposal, a true, fair and moral tale. If there was more than one set of parameters, more than one theatrical performance, likewise there would be more than one script. However, who will narrate, produce, combust into a flame of flickering ideas? Becoming stuck in the thick slime of beliefs which allude to no other option but this one, one fails to do so.

Any sparks of creativity are quickly extinguished by the dominant powers, whose very foundation of truth contradicts any rebellion against them. From fear of retribution, the rulers, or benefactors, will conceal and destroy the tools of creativity and freedom. Passion and creative thought is quickly curtailed as folly, even by those who may be freed by it. Scared of the vengeful violence that occurs within such a paradigm, the nightmare deepens, reinforcing a fixed monologue of shit. What then, can awaken one from this evil reverie, when reason may ride the wildest dreams, and a fiction may be perfectly logical?

Indeed, a great author with a turbulent mind is needed to rage against such systems. A new story needs to be written. One which will encourage the minds of people to believe in something completely different, and so set them free from partaking in a play where only misery, loss, and fear is injected into all of our hearts; even those of the powerful. Lest their hearts have already burned out, surrounded by no light by which they may be guided out, let them be reignited by the imagination. The freedom to write and to think outside of such a dialogue presents a dash for freedom beyond the maze.

Do not believe, any of you, that there is no way out. Do not believe, not for a single second, that there is no alternative. For as long as human beings preserve the ability to tell stories, especially those stories which may find different assumptions, assumptions which lay the foundations for better conclusions, then it simply is not true that there is nothing we can do. It is wrong that you must play the role of the slave, or the master. Reject such notions as having no place in your story.

Once you have done this you may tell others, who also must reject such notions. And only when enough people have realised that they have been entranced and hypnotised by a persuasive lie, may they break out of it.

However, the lie is not the hardest part to accept, it is the fact that one may believe that they chose such a life. But no, this is not true either. It is only when one is made aware, when one understands they have been tricked, that they have any power to choose otherwise. But unless one wakes the others, one's own attempts to break out of such a narrative will be rife with booby traps, and zombies.

Ellese Elliott

New Year’s Deconstruction!

It is a new year, technically, according to the Gregorian calendar we seem to follow. Still, our phone, calendars and laptops will reset and we will have the brand new opportunity to rewrite our history. Indeed we always have the opportunity to do that, but on dates such as this, when and where the ‘beginning’ is so evident, we can do it consciously. This year, I didn’t make a resolution, this year; I propose we do the opposite, this year I propose we do a deconstruction.

Did you know the number one cause of unhappiness and failure in people are wrong beliefs? Yes. Well, I´m not sure that´s completely accurate but it should be. We follow lies and tales from others that insist that their way is the way and then we crash and burn. But this doesn't need to be so. My proposal for this new year is that each one of us takes the bucket of assumptions and beliefs that we carry around with us and put it to the test.

Maybe you are familiar with Descartes, the 17^th Century French Philosopher (‘I think therefore I am’ guy). To begin writing his master piece, The Meditations, he locked himself in a room and started to doubt everything he thought he knew (he even doubted he had a body!) He practiced extreme skepticism. I am not here suggesting you lock yourself in a room and do the same, but you can use it as a metaphor to review what you really hold as truth. From our principles to what we believe from the media, politics, the internet, our family, friends, colleagues, parents and what not. We are constantly being influenced by what other say and communicate. I think this year we owe it to ourselves to review this beliefs and try to know our selves and hold a system of belief that doesn't melt like butter under the first ray of light and truth.

From the moment we are children and are sent to school, we are already presented and fed one version of reality. I don’t here want to get into details of what was good or bad, useful or not, because I am sure each one has their own opinion on the school system). My point is that our own faculty of free thinking and discernment has been intervened our entire life and we deserve to regain possession of our own reason.

So this year, I´m not going to try to loose weight or make more money or stop swearing or whatever it is that I ever made myself promise before. This year, I am going to doubt anything that I held as a truth but smelt like a lie. This year I am going to review where my beliefs come from and act on them. Why? Because I am certain that the person inside the layers of conditioning and assumptions has a lot to say. What better than to get acquainted with ourselves a little bit for once.

Happy New Year and good luck with your own meditations!

Eliza Veretilo

Philosophy Takeaway Newsletter 65

The stuff of legends... and Bible stories

So where was the Garden of Eden? Probably nowhere, since it was home not only to the sources of the Tigris, Euphrates and Araxes – the latter on the eastern borders of Turkey and Iran – but also was home to the source of the Blue Nile, or at least a river in Ethiopia. But maybe such things were possible in the time before the Flood!

Well, I think there was a place which lay between the Tigris and the Araxes, which is the best candidate, and the archaeologist David M. Rohl also holds this view, though not uncontroversially. This is Lake Oremiyeh. And the fourth river would not be the Blue Nile, but the variously named Uizhun or Serid Rud, just south of Lake Oremiyeh. As far as I am concerned, this is quite a neat solution for a biblical puzzle.

But Lake Oremiyeh is in fact a self-contained Lake, and has no outlets to the sea. Consequently, like the Dead Sea, it is a salt lake. It is nevertheless fertile, but clearly such a self-contained system cannot be over-exploited.

Well, with the arrival of an apple which can be cultivated to have an edible taste, that is indeed knowledge, and leaves open the way for over-exploitation. In early days, if a community had no problems of poverty, it doubled, so in the end, a community that suffers from over-population cannot remain in a self-contained Utopia.

So a Utopia requires knowledge, but knowledge precludes Utopia. :,[

THE BIG APPLE?

So what does it mean to say one is trying to locate the Garden of Eden? Does it make any difference if you are a believer, atheist or agnostic?Probably a lot.

Speaking as an agnostic, I would say that I wouldn’t know until I have found it.

If it is something real, like the Flood, recounted in Australian Aboriginal tales, or Troy, recounted in Homer. You can make these symbolic, even if they do exist. Maybe Oremiye is not the Garden of Eden, but one can still make it symbolic: look at the way it is being horribly polluted in modern Iran.

But if such places are purely symbolic, you will never know, will you?

Martin Prior