Predictions (A Pick 'n' Mix)

Humankind are materially omnipotent

Nature returns to itself

The body becomes a template for fetish and pleasure

The efforts of humankind are undone with new growth

The mind is a contingency for potential and possibility

A layer of detritus becomes new sediment

There is no break between the organic and the artificial

On the surface humans walk as equals to nature

Technology has made all of one weave within a virtual realm
Yet still operating at the level of the body and its senses

Morality has no consequence as all desires are catered for

There is no augmentation or manipulation

Information is currency in this free association of minds

Natural selection regains its place as arbiter of fate

Society is once more the weave of art and religion into tradition

There is no separation and therefore no science

Change is absolute and necessary
Values interchangeable

Circle of Protection

I)
The wolves surround him only in the dead of night
When he is alone in the circle of jagged stones.
Only once have paws broken the circle
(Once was enough for an eternity of shuddering)

Something rises and falls within him
A something which vanishes without the misty breath
Of proud canines waiting, watching him with hungry stare;
A something he cannot find alone in his tower
When the sentinels are at the gate

Yet here he is alone, with the wolves and the cosmos
And the moon

He searches through the night
Like a dancer, like a philosopher
Like both at once
The danger his divine inspiration
His body his parchment
His body his inquiry
Embodied, frightened, inescapable

He knows and feels the struggles
Feels the tingles, the scorching biles
He feels close to death
He fears the howls, and the growls
He hates the stench of dog
He wants to destroy them for defying him
Searching for what it is within which makes him so

Why does it not just go away?
Why can his will not wrestle it down?
Why can it not be dreamed away?

A voice answers to himself, from a place of paradox
Within him and yet not him:
'As the taste of water cannot but help grace your lips
As the chill night air cannot help but cover your skin
As your heaving breast cannot help rising and falling
So your sixth sense cannot turn away from peril'

He asks: 'what is that sense, that sixth sense inside?
What does it find, what does it seek'

He is fortunate tonight; another answer!:
'It seeks the world outside.
And what is it made of but Nature itself?
The push of a creature, its natural desires
The torch that cannot be put out
The striving, the unfolding
Its dignity, its distinction
Against the hostility of all things;
The hostility of a world'

A world beyond! A world sensible by intuition
That cannot be an illusion
Something other than he, perhaps more powerful
The creator which will destroy him
A world inescapable, irresistable
Situations and circumstances
And he laments his condition

II)
In the circle of protection the wolves creep
The wise ones wait, a fool may attack
The fool is the danger, the sight of mangy fur his biggest fear
The circle is not enough
His sixth sense knows it, and he searches for something else
A sign, a weapon, a shield, a hole to hide away
He cannot find one
He must find one

Regeneration?
He fears the wounds
Though the body-hurt heals
Heals itself, the wounds heal,
But fear of wounds never does

Strength?
He fears his lack of strength
Though he is strong
He fears his fear of lack of strength!
Sometimes it prevails
But strength tested eventually fails.

Retreat?
He fears what will happen to his spirit
To fly, and fly again, ever afraid
Ever weak and hopeless
He can never outrun the shadow of fear

Lute-song?
He fears the echo of his favourite strains
Will forever haunt him and contain wolves
In between their notes

Allies?
It is dark
There are none here

Virtue?
Something lights in his chest
The pulsing of virtue
Embedded in his heart
Virtue, his ally, his sole ally
Is this his passage from the wolves?

The voice speaks mockingly:
'What do the flesh-eaters know of virtue?
Whatever your disposition, they seek only your flesh!
What good virtue shone upon unscrupulous men
Let alone wolves?'

The dancer and the philosopher answers
Flitting between the jagged stones, growing ever surer
'I am virtuous, I may die peacefully
I may be blasted from my body into the sparkling yonder
Of the earthly heavens.
From the tale I draw purpose and from the purpose i draw virtue
Did you not know that all life was a story, and virtue the rules of its collective author?
Did you not know that I have one choice, to embody virtue whatever the peril?
I could at least always do that!
Fire cannot harm me, nor water drown me,
The gale cannot push me, the earth cannot swallow me
Though they rend my body, I am virtue embodied!'

He grew in confidence, skirting closer and closer to circle's edge
The wolves looked one to the other in concern
The wise one smiling a wry smile

iii)
His heart raced, his blood flowed keenly
And he gained a suit stronger than any mail
Harder than iron, enduring like stone
Virtue, virtue filled him!

He smiled to himself

The wolves never left that night
But he walked through them all the same
And the solemn creatures watched him vanish
Toward the light of the moon
Fearlessly sleeping like a child between the roots of an oak
Trustingly waiting the day

Selim 'Selim' Talat

The Freedom To What?

Freedom of choice is acclaimed in our society as something good. The greater the quantity of choice, the better. More TV channels, more species of chocolate bar, more movies to watch, more persons to fornicate with, and so forth. However, I think this acclaim is highly misguided. Freedom of choice is not a bad thing, I just do not think it is necessarily always a good thing. The ability to choose between various options is not in and of itself of any value, especially if those choices are poor (see all those TV channels!) A simple example of this is as follows: in scenario A you have a choice between a thousand poisons. In scenario B you have a choice between two cups of tea. However much you may dislike tea (a highly unrealistic proposition, but bare with it!) the latter scenario would be superior, despite the fact that there was less choice involved. Just having more things to choose does not mean our situation is any better.

So why do we as a society value freedom of choice, spectrum of choice, and quantity of choice as if it were the single most important facet of being happy and human? Why but because we are what we consume, rather than what we create. We have created a society of, if you'll excuse the cliche, nectar obsessed drones and all of us are responsible. Materialistic, individualistic hedonism is the dominator of our Age, and desperate shallowness the engine of growth. The freedom to have desires satisfied has been placed above the freedom to be left alone to develop and create wonderful things. We tolerate ever more intrusions into our privacy from ever more powerful states and corporations (provided we get our banal TV channels and little treats on the weekend). We have willingly given away true power, democratic power, for comfortable pleasure.

For the average citizen what is there to live for beyond pleasure and status-chasing, in this part of the world they happen to call the West? With little sense of belonging to society or to a meaningful narrative; with no natural blossoming of joy from the mastery of skills and creation of art, we must be given false joy by being constantly overwhelmed by material things and fleeting desires. And in order to shift these things upon us we must first feel inadequate, incomplete. An entire media industry exists to this end, trying to make us feel like we are missing out on something someone else has got; perverting our natural competitive streak into something far more ruthless and twisted.

A huge question mark now hangs over our heads: how long is this going to go on for before we are awakened? In truth, we already are waking up. But we are not enlightened just yet. We still have this entitlement to the bountiful gifts of the earth, and feel like we have earned the right to destroy natural beauty and creatures for the sake of an appetite which can never be fulfilled. Desire is still seen as an end in itself, rather than something to be channelled away harmlessly (or in the extreme, to be flushed away like any other bodily waste).

In this age of desire fulfillment, no one has the moral ground to attack any other. Desire is a universal malaise. The poor are just as desirous as the rich, women just as much as men. We are all desirous. The major problem is not that in our current state some people can fulfill their desires more than others. Balancing out the level of destructive hedonism is not going to make things that much better. The problem is that for the average citizen the highest value is desire fulfillment - rather than scientific endeavour, philosophical discovery, artistic creation, natural belonging, and so on. This is why freedom to choose between pleasures is problematic; it is no real freedom at all, enslaving us all to unfulfillable desire.

I am not arguing that freedom is a bad thing. I am not arguing that oppression of freedom, or conservative fear of freedom, is any form of solution to our goalless hedonism. I believe that individual freedom for all should be the end goal of justice. We should be free to be choose, but we should not use that liberty to choose poorly (the maxim 'harm ye none, do as ye will' sums it up perfectly). Nor should we see quantity of choice as important as quality. This doesn't mean that I believe we should never choose pleasurable (or even self-destructive) options, only that it should never be our ultimate goal, nor a regular occurence, nor something to be proud of.

We can be truly glorious -

We are in this part of the world they happen to call the West, perhaps the most imperialistic gathering of civilizations there ever was. The world has imitated our vices and vitues to a large extent, and because of this we are arrogant enough to consider ourselves the centre of the world - which is not entirely untrue. We needn't continue practicing our vices, which fuel wars in distant parts of the world for material enrichment. With a new value system, we could create a heroic individualism of universal Justice, which measures wealth in human cultivation; education, art, philosophy, science, and sees pleasure as a mere sideshow to these more pressing desires. To choose such greatness is to choose wisely. Our highest honour could be to those most virtuous, not those most self-important and parasitic (the rich!) With our power we could lead the world, not trammel it. We could answer the nihilism of God's death with a heroic humanism and environmental belonging, filling the void in our souls with a spiritual reconnection to the earth and its creatures.

The highest praise we might bestow should be upon the astronauts who risk everything to ascend to the final frontier, the scientists who work toward the nuclear fusion which will end our energy needs, the philosophers who help us make sense of a rapidly changing world and our place in it, the great artists who bring these human achievements to light, and everyone who ever lived for more than just themselves. We must turn away from the vapid, empty, soulless celebrities whose mere mention is enough to soil the whole of this newsletter, and who will leave us empty in our graves if we do not turn away from their sick light. We would have wasted it all for nothing.

The problem is that this transformation of our values requires us to challenge the comfortable, shiny, glamourous world we are fooled into thinking actually exists. I think this would take a heroic departure from evolution's path, the reversal of the natural instinct from danger to security, familiarity to newness, pain to pleasure. We would have to let go of all of our most comforting myths. We would have to be brave to even begin such a change, but brave in an intellectual sense, more than a 'run into a burning building to save a child' sense.

Selim 'Selim' Talat

Stories

From the pond they call life,

the fame they make believe,

seven billion lives ascend

asleep in their own dreams,

with the weight of life upon them,

trying their best to make amends

forever beyond their reach.

Conjecture: The moral dilemma of when/if it is right to kill another only arises in a society where the sheer weight of its population guarantees the act of murder. Conversely, the smaller the population, the less likely it is that murder will occur and hence the need for its moral argument, as it would seem absurd to kill in an environment where every individual is required to work with the group in order that the group survives.

Where the population is great, hegemony ensconced, resource capture and distribution industrialised and an economy of self-created scarcity in motion, then it will follow that the life of the individual, in such a programmed mass, is of little consequence to the whole and murder, whether by the state or an individual, will be more likely for this fact.

People will need to be convinced of the immorality (or morality when the state is the perpetrator) of the act of murder and laws imposed to control those who see through this ‘story’ and attempt it all the same.

The story given will omit any mention of population as a cause and instead will divert the reader’s attention to powers outside of their normal perception: a God, a form or an ideal. The reason for this is that the makers of the law must never be threatened, or their laws brought into question, by values arising from our direct physical relation to the world/environment about us, experiences of which are rudimentary and within the grasp of all.

When such values are realised the structure of power/control crumbles and is most likely to be replaced by another hegemony once a better ‘story’ is found, and so we witness the succession of philosophies, religions and political ism’s.

Given this set of circumstances we can use pragmatism in our daily lives to work our way through, however, we are often simply responding to ever new structures of power rather than ‘realising’ our actual relationship to our environment: our actual ‘being-in-the-world’. To put it another way: while we are busy fighting the spectacle and creating our own stories, like the one I am telling you now, we forget that we are animals preoccupied mostly with eating, defecating, sleeping, procreating and dreaming, and it is here we find the essence, eternally sought yet never to be found, hidden by ourselves.

Simon Leake

On Technology

The most considerable difference between previous generations and those born after the 8o’s, or better still, between 1950 and 2000 is the incredible speed of technology’s improvement and reachability to the world. The internet! Mobile phones, smart phones, androids! The Hubble telescope! This is not nothing and unless other areas of learning being keep up with the speed with which mechanical technology is advancing, they will really lag behind. This is the case with Philosophy, unless it keeps up with the changing times (meaning technology in this case) it could become obsolete. Even though the study of the world and the human being, through ethics, epistemology, metaphysics and all other nice them for branches of thought that Philosophy looks at will never be obsolete in a level of abstract importance, and will always always be necessary for us as humans; there is a danger that the flashing blue light that illuminates our screen will make us forget everything, even what is important, even ourselves.

The American Transcendentalist Philosopher Henry David Thoreau said of technology: “Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end,… We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.” 

 

In a way I think he means that never have we have such good means of communications, yet nothing really worthy to communicate. If he said that about the telegraph, imagine what he would say now! Reading a text message thread of a twitter account. Poor Thoreau!

Now a days we have the means to educate the whole world, to spread news and truth, and instigate real change but guess what? The biggest use we give our technology is sending petty messages to people when we are bored and we invent and manufacture social personas that we are ‘happy with’ but are not who we are or how we really feel.

Do not get me wrong, this is not by any means an attack to technology. The point of this article is to shine light on the fact that although technology is advancing so fast and is becoming more available; our moral, social, intellectual attributes are not advancing at the same rate, or are not being distributed at the same rate, or are taking the back seat to mechanical technology. Our ‘what’ is getting better, but our ‘why’ is lagging behind. Let me give an example, and important one to my eyes. There is a big debate going on at the moment: privacy on the internet.

So it turns out the National Security Agency or NSA has created a program to collect all the data of everything you do on the internet. American citizens and others, of course. The have even built massive infrastructure to store the hardware necessary for all the information to go to. All you have ever looked at or posted on the internet, every conversation you have, everything you have purchased, everything will be known and stored, like a file. Great! Not great. Really, not great. The internet has become like a second collective consciousness for humanity and to my view, no government or agency has any business storing and possessing the very personal life of so many millions of people. Something, along the lines, is not right. We must review the purpose of it and the ethics of it. We must open debates. Here is where Philosophy has a place again. In the midst of a technology wave, we must swim to find our moral ground again.

Technology doesn’t need to be a scary thing. It can be a marvellous thing. It gives us the means to spread art and information to the whole world at incredible speeds! But we must also beware that this speed will end up standardizing knowledge, ethics and aesthetics. The word technology comes from the Greek word techne, which means art, skill or cunning of hand. And logia, which means branch of learning. Technology is a testament to the refinement of our skill, to what we can achieve and become. It is what it is because of the tools and objects that we’ve created with our hands, from our minds. But as the current state of the world tells us, technology will always work better when it is in agreement and balance with nature and the human being, not against it. Technology is for thriving, yet for so long we have also used it for war and destruction.

It is almost a cliché to say that Einstein did not have the intention to kill so many human beings when he split the atom. None the less, this is the use we have given to the discovery of such a brilliant mind. Perhaps when we understand and heal and tackle our self-destructive instinct and our desire to hurt others, maybe then we will use our technology for higher purposes. I’m afraid to say that this change needs to happen as we don’t want our very survival to hang from a string. Just imagine, if the money spent on wars and drones was spent on good infrastructure, education and nutrition! We would catapult a hundred years into the future and have a better chance at exploring space! But for now, it’ll be nice to have a world we can look at and feel proud. 

 

You may now think I’m an idealist (or at best, very impatient for change), but I do believe that technology is not the problem and governments alone are not the problem either. I think part of the problem is that too many generations now, in the developed world, have become too comfortable and we all feel unable to do anything real about it all. Unfortunately, personal technology (which is how I call mobile phones, laptops, etc) seem to accentuate the bubble in which we live our lives. We can burst the bubble and use our technology to connect instead of isolate and distract. How? By remembering what is important and remembering why we built all these things in the first place.

Eliza Veretilo

Defending Human Rights - Impartially

Well, I was writing about Jeremy Clarkson in the last issue – from Belgium even – and if it doesn’t rain but it pours.

In the last issue I discussed him calling his dog ‘Didier Dogba’. He has now had a final warning over racist remarks, having been caught using the n-word under his breath:

Eeny meeny miney mo / *atch * n***** *y *he *oe

the second line mumbled. On the 1st May he contacted the Daily Mirror ‘begging forgiveness’. However two days later he re-opened the issue and ‘attacked them for making him issue a public apology over his N-word shame.’

A lot of people protested that it wasn’t racist in the context, including some black people. Indeed it appears to many to be a matter of legitimate disagreement. Now the problem is that the BBC has to oppose racism and sexism, but nevertheless be impartial in any debate concerning what constitutes racism and sexism. It is highly problematic whether this is logically sustainable. Therefore one has to be pragmatic on the safe side.

I argued in my last article that it was often intuition that mattered. And in this case black people have that intuition but others don’t. Therefore for white people the only acceptable policy is never use such controversial language, ever, not even in quotes to dis racists, since usually such an attempt at humour or irony is clumsy. And what makes you think everyone understand irony?

If indeed the BBC had spelt that out, then they would have a cast-iron case for ‘setting JC free’, not least because he retracted the apology two days later. But the fact remains that he, and indeed his lieutenants, would not see it this way. As Hugh Muir said in his Guardian diary on Tuesday (6/5/2014), “the Clarkson war on so-called political correctness goes back a long way.”

But here we have precisely the problem for the BBC that I have just mentioned: they have to be anti-racist, but must be impartial in any debate concerning what constitutes racism and sexism. To say that JC is not being racist to take sides, and indeed giving Jeremy Clarkson a platform for his ‘war’ on political correctness.

After all this, it is easy to research this war: it is easy to google or merely search the Daily Mirror to unearth his war crimes - a string of unpleasant jibes pertaining to ethnicity and other factors:

In December 2005 he gave a Nazi salute while presenting a Top Gear piece on German car-maker BMW, suggesting that its satnav “only goes to Poland”. (Daily Mirror, )

Clarkson is well known for courting controversy - last year he was cleared of breaching the broadcasting code by watchdog Ofcom after comparing a Japanese car to people with growths on their faces.

He had previously faced a storm of protest from mental health charities after he branded people who throw themselves under trains as "selfish" and was forced to apologise for telling BBC One's The One Show that striking workers should be shot.

[The team having built a bridge over the River Kwai in Thailand] As a south-east Asian man walked over it, Clarkson said: “That is a proud moment, but there’s a slope on it.” / The Ofcom investigation, announced today, will look at whether the clip counted as a breach of content standards.

This is not a war on correctness, it is a war of harassment against victims of non-correctness, and the BBC would certainly lose its impartiality if it controversially condoned such harassment.

One might call it anti-anti-racism, anti-anti-sexism, etc. And I said in the last issue:

There is something known as mock disrespect which displays actual respect or actual affection (and respect): you avoid it if there's real disrespect.

If there is real disrespect, one might say that here we have not mock disrespect, but mock-mock-disrespect.

And we haven’t even started with his anti-anti-pollution attitude re motor-cars. The BBC has to be anti-pollution: to tolerate his anti-anti-pollution attitude means they are not so much either partial or impartial, as partial to two conflicting attitudes... so much for the profit motive creeping in...

Post-script, on golly*ogs -

The said word is a compound word, of which the second element is a racist word, which I have sanitised in the usual way. That aside, are these dolls racist? We may note that the first occasion for them to be banned was in Nazi Germany. It is said that they depict an inane grinning black person, implying black people are inane.

In Wiki:

“Florence Kate Upton was born in 1873 in Flushing, New York, the daughter of English parents who had emigrated to the United States three years previously. … she moved back to England … when she was fourteen. There she spent several years drawing and developing her artistic skills. In order to afford tuition to art school, she illustrated a children's book entitled The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls and a Golliwogg. The 1895 book included a character named the Golliwogg, who was first described as "a horrid sight, the blackest gnome", but who quickly turned out to be a friendly character, and is later attributed with a "kind face." A product of the blackface minstrel tradition, the Golliwogg had jet black skin; bright, red lips; and wild, woolly hair. He wore red trousers, a shirt with a stiff collar, red bow-tie, and a blue jacket with tails — all traditional minstrel attire."

“Upton's book and its many sequels were extremely successful in England, largely because of the popularity of the Golliwogg. … Upton's Golliwogg was jovial, friendly and gallant, but some later golliwogs were sinister or menacing characters.

“The golliwog contributed enormously to the spread of blackface iconography in Europe. … ”

It is useful to have the history of the doll, not least when s/he took on a variety of characters, where unfavourable stereotyping was not at all obvious. On the other hand it is connected with the black-and-white minstrels, who are nowadays labelled as racist.

According to wiki, the doll may sometimes be female when home-made but is generally male. This is interesting, in that I associated the big eyes with lots of white showing, with a black nanny. The expression does not to my mind associate with stupidity, but with the faces one makes with children.

Why not have a golly-poppa or golly-momma, perhaps with a streak of grey hair? Perhaps produced under Fair Trade.

I make this suggestion precisely because it is an example of something where a white person has no intuitions. Maybe Robinsons are totally compromised and should keep their heads under the parapet, but any such suggestions have to be subject to the intuitions of the potential ‘victim’.

And again, the BBC and other public organisations have to be both anti-racist and impartial.

According to wiki, the doll may sometimes be female when home-made but is generally male. This is interesting, in that I associated the big eyes with lots of white showing, with a black nanny. The expression does not to my mind associate with stupidity, but with the faces one makes with children.

Why not have a golly-poppa or golly-momma, perhaps with a streak of grey hair? Perhaps produced under Fair Trade.

I make this suggestion precisely because it is an example of something where a white person has no intuitions. Maybe Robinsons are totally compromised and should keep their heads under the parapet, but any such suggestions have to be subject to the intuitions of the potential ‘victim’.

And again, the BBC and other public organisations have to be both anti-racist and impartial.

Meditations on Virtue: Part II

In part one of my meditations, I listed as cardinal virtues Self-Awareness and Creativity. Five other virtues I listed as humility, patience, courage, compassion and dignity. However, seven is not enough, so I wish to expound on seven more virtues I feel are most important.

Sacrifice - We cannot always rely on enlightened self-interest to create a good society. It is all too easy for wealth to lock itself behind vast gates, in which case it is no longer enlightened self-interest to concern itself with others. And besides, thinking that people will only do something for others if it is also in their own interests is quite a cynical position. Sacrifice, doing something for the sake of another, even at ones own expense, should be emphasized here. It is an almost mystic experience of selflessness; a transcendence of the individuated self.

Sacrifice is what makes great artists and great genii. Most people will not exchange comfort for hardship, will not exchange convention for daring, will not exchange security for freedom. Only the genius will strive after some creative passion at the cost of everything else. They are capable of so much more precisely because of their sacrifices; the life of a genius being something like one long risk.

Sacrifice taken to extremes is dangerous, as is sacrifice for a stupid cause. It can lead to horrible outcomes and supreme irresponsibility (it wasn't my fault, I was just obeying a higher power / the interests of my nation). Soldiers fighting for their beloved dictator / cabal of corporate overlords are self-sacrificing, but they are certainly not nobler for it! Yet when combined with the other virtues, sacrifice can be a driving force, a transcendent act which should defy cynicism and show our interconnectedness. A simple maxim for this virtue: Sacrifice, but for the right end.

Reliability - Repetition has a vital place in the human being. Religions have been successful at indoctrinating the masses with their maxims, and many philosophers also strive to distil their ideas into the easily rememberable. This is because repetition is important, and so is reliability.

The hum-drum is necessary and beneath no one. Predictability and mediocrity are an unsung necessities for certain tasks, and so too must we cultivate this virtue inside of us.  Honesty, robustness, stability. As drab as these things are, and as mechanical as they are, I cannot help but see them as a virtue in the right circumstances.

Persistence is, as they say, the key to success. Of course, reliability can be wretched if we are reliably being wretched! Reliability comes after the fact - once we know what we need to do, we do it in the manner of a mule. It may mean that we can become inflexible, yet with regular doses of philosophy, we can avoid becoming dogmatic, one-track creatures.

A humourous maxim for this virtue might be: Turning up is half the battle won.

Spirituality - This is a virtue sullied by dogmatic aspects of religion throughout the ages, and soiled in our modern-era by exoticizing 'Eastern' mysticism. Yet we must not dismiss spirituality because of these associations. Spirituality is part of us - all of us. When we feel reverence toward the cosmos, what we might call mystic experiences, and we have faith that it is more than a brain spasm or some delusion, we are accepting our spirituality..

In reverence and awe of the cosmos; gazing up at the immensity of space, surrounded by mighty oaks, observing the complexity of a snail's shell, standing upon the site of an old battle, questioning infinity, observing ancient ruins covered in lost languages, we are anchored to the earth-cosmos-history, feeling our ever-changing place within its bosom. We are experiencing something that came before language, philosophy, civilization. A profound sense of being.

Of all traits of character spirituality is the hardest to pinpoint, the most unpredictable. It is always just beyond comprehension. Yet this mysterious element inside us is not to be dismissed by our scientific. age. The spiritual need only be felt and enjoyed. Such a universal wonder cannot be reliably measured and tested by the empiricist's eye. Nor can it be pigeon-holed into any one religion; which might steal away our shared inheritance. 

Spirituality is a supreme paradox, for at once it is individualistic; no one can tell you how you should respond to these feelings, and also utterly selfless; the self is lost in the greater whole, in supreme moments of understanding. We must not deny it, we must not embrace it. We must let it be. My listing spirituality as a virtue is not to cultivate it, nor to force it, but merely to let it through as and when it comes. This can be a powerful unifying force, as all of us are prone to it. Perhaps it is the knot that will tie all of humanity together into universal kinship. Let us end on a maxim: As being precedes language, so spirituality precedes language.

Aestheticness - By aestheticness I mean two things. Firstly, the ability to literally see beauty, even where it may not be seen. It is not a given that we take notice of beauty. Natural beauty, for instance, can be easily drowned out by garish shop-fronts, bright lights and intruding billboards. It takes time and maturity to do away with the hideous and appreciate the natural splendour of the world. Secondly I mean an appreciation of good art, music, literature and so on. In this sense aesthetics is not literally a sense of beauty (although it can be). Aesthetics is taste, consideration, not being dragged along by convention. There is a world of difference between that which is popular and that which is good. This is not to say that the good is never popular, only that what is popular is often soul-draining tripe.

Such arts should be despised, poorly constructed cash-ins reviled, copies of copies of copies disdained. Such works poison the word art! The good arts are those which rejuvenate the soul, which carry us on journeys and build our empathy, which connect us into them and leave us in awe, which make us feel connected to earth-cosmos-history, which enlighten us to just causes. We must cultivate such tastes.

Animal Kinship -  Of all human contradictions, our attitude toward animals is the most disgraceful. There are animals for keeping, and animals for slaughtering, animals for hunting, and animals for reducing to egg-laying machines and milk pumps. Of course, different animals have different traits: we would not want to keep flesh-eating tigers in our homes as often as we would like a friendly spider-monkey. Yet what we could universally accept is that each animal is an individual, and thus an end in itself, rather than something merely useful to us. In the language of virtue, an animal should be treated with 'Dignity'.

Our treatment of animals is the epitome of moral good, and this has been said from Kant, to Gandhi, to Bentham. Not only is it compassionate to take an animal into your home, and by extension into society, it is also beneficial to us if we are willing to appreciate them, their ways, their vices. I would call Animal Kinship a cardinal virtue, as it is our closest path into nature: as our societies evolve, so do our attitudes toward nature. We shape nature, as we are shaped by it; we are part of it, not separate. An animal for kin, communicating with another species - what else could indicate this truth more?

Intelligence - Intelligence, to my mind, can be boiled down to this - how well we use the knowledge and resources available to us in order to survive. It is a cardinal virtue relating to our brute survival and sanity. It is the thoughtful development of our technology to make the physical world more bearable. A humourous maxim for this virtue could be: Curiosity + Caution = Intelligence!  We take it for granted that we have the basic intelligence to survive, and will continue surviving into the future. I do not think we should take this for granted - humanity is a deeply stupid beast, capable of making immensely idiotic decisions.

Self-destruction seems to be hard-wired into us. Just not destroying ourselves is a supreme achievement which we should praise highly: it is only by cultivating intelligence that we might develop the long-term thinking necessary to survive into eternity.

Temperance - The elder cousin of humility, temperance has rightfully been called a cardinal virtue since the ancients. Indeed, the arch-master of temperance, Mr. Epicurus, predicted the atomizing misery which material excess (consumerism) would bring two and a half thousand years ago! The self-restraint of an Epicurean springs from the real pleasures of life; friendship, independence and an analyized life; filling oneself with goodness. Luxury and debauchery is seen only as a very occasional indulgence, and not something to hate oneself for.

Temperance must be distanced from the romance of religious asceticism, of bodily self-hatred, self-righteous sacrifice and devotion to 'the divine'. We are not practicers of temperance because we are humbling ourselves before some 'divinity'. We practice temperance because it gives us happiness here, on earth.

Excess is dismal, foolish, destructive. Temperance negates excess. One who honestly believes in the virtues must have the temperance to disdain from their destructive appetite; one of the greatest vices threatening our future on this planet. I do not put the sorry state of our moral place in the world entirely down to 'evil' or powermongery, but to the rampant desires of ordinary people, with their false promise of satisfaction. In this day and age temperance is possibly the most important virtue of all.

The Subject

There is much talk of men being the primary subject. Or more specifically, white, relatively young, European or North American males are the subject and the rest of us are but a variation to this ideal of human being. There is currently endless literature on this, to the point that my topic almost feels redundant. Yet this still needs to be stressed. Why? Because of the same reason that all the rest of literature is written about this and that is to bring the issue to light, to de-normalise it. 

 

I’m not saying that every white man has an easy life and that all is handed to them, of course not. It’s not about privilege, it’s about identity. When your culture, gender, appearance and so on, is not the norm, you start to question your validity as a human being, thus hindering your progress. The plant does not question whether it is a rose or a lily… it just grows. 

 

We can’t. We create and accept cages all around us. Cages that cut our roots and make us silent and insecure. The first of these cages is that of our appearance. We fall into the trap of being “different” and step by step, day by day, we carve wounds into our personal being to the point of running the risk of never actualising the potential of the beautiful thing we might have been. We hope one day someone will notice the gift we carry inside of us and that belief will elevate us to heights of acceptance, of success, of happiness.

But it seems that an actualised life is only reserved for a few. That only certain people can walk this Earth feeling worthy, feeling error free. I have noticed that Europeans and North Americans already have more self-entitlement than people from other origins (South Americans for example). Only these people can relax their defences to the point that they don’t have to worry about being persecuted and being belittled. Once that is out of the way they can think! They can think of the world and of self-development! Whereas the rest have to think on whether their existence is remotely ok.

Why has most of Philosophy been written by white European males? Answer: it hasn’t. Philosophy as a subject is a very ancient discipline that has existed all over the world. The Philosophy we study in the Western world is the edited Philosophy of the Western world (apply the same principle with most if not all subjects). It is not THE Philosophy, just the current trends of the latest European thought. The thought of men of privilege who never had to fight starvation or persecution and thus were able to sit and think, and investigate themselves and our Universe. But do not misunderstand me please, I do not see this as a bad thing at all. I think this should be the goal of a society; to develop itself to the point where its people can dedicate themselves to contemplation, to art, to investigation, without the struggle to survive another day.

There are still millions in our world who live in a daily struggle to survive, to feed themselves, to look after their children whilst in a war zone. There are still millions of girls and women who cannot access the most basic education, there are still people who are so ignorant of themselves and their own history that they take a nationality as a thing of pride, but do not want to take any moral responsibility for the things that that nation has done.

The reason why it is important to realise these things is that once we become aware that the wealth and power of nations is built upon the blood and sweat of others, and not because of some divine entitlement, we begin to grow some kind of empathy for other nations, for other people. Only through understanding each other can we become complete people and start doing something better for this otherwise ridiculous world.

Eliza Veretilo

Cetacean Rights

 

Where could we have gotten the destructive idea that this world is ours to do as we please, that humans are so utterly special that we are the only ones privileged with a 'soul'? Where could we have gotten the destructive idea that we are utterly separate from this whole cosmos thing, that our ability to reason is more important than our ability to feel and that we are therefore above natural instincts, and indeed above all things natural? Where could we have gotten the destructive idea that we are free to put our desire for materials and status above the principle of life, to chase our desires to the ends of the earth, or rather, the end of the earth?

The answers are more nuanced than I can give here, and vary across the world. But here in the West, Judeo-Christian religion, Enlightenment individualism and Consumerism, respectively, would be a good place to start! To carry these prejudices is part of being a 'civilized' human being, as opposed to a 'savage', or, heaven forbid, some form of hippy!

For too long we have confused 'civilization' with striving to be better than everything else, rather than being benevolent toward everything else. The so-called civilized ones chose mastery over mutuality, and imposed binary concepts (nature / civilization, black / white, master / slave, self / other, man / woman, good / evil) upon a world where these concepts are irrelevant illusions. Civilization has not tempered violence out of Man, and indeed, if you look at the superpowers of history, civilization has only given them new and exciting ways to create and / or destroy things. In short, if you move the posts which mark out what is civilized, civilization as we know it does not score terribly well.

It took us long enough to recognise the basic rights of fellow humans in our own societies, let alone those half way across the world. Well, now a group of humans has redeemed us all somewhat and extended those basic rights to a non-human species; the cetaceans.

Perhaps this indicates that our view of nature is finally changing. Maybe the rights of dolphin and whale will be a foot in the door for us to mature into a real civilization. The first step on a long, long path to moral and technological enlightenment! For now at least the Cetaceans populations of India are free from human abuse and predation, and perhaps this will spread across the rest of the world. Cetaceans have the same basic rights not to be harmed or exploited that human beings do (although oddly enough, the environment and prey they need to survive are not necessarily protected). Let us take a direct look at this legalistic morality, from the first seven clauses of the bill of rights found at cetaceanrights.org:

i) Every individual cetacean has the right to life.

ii) No cetacean should be held in captivity or servitude; be subject to cruel treatment; or be removed from their natural environment.

iii) All cetaceans have the right to freedom of movement and residence within their natural environment.

iv) No cetacean is the property of any State, corporation, human group or individual.

v) Cetaceans have the right to the protection of their natural environment.

vi) Cetaceans have the right not to be subject to the disruption of their cultures.

vii) The rights, freedoms and norms set forth in this Declaration should be protected under international and domestic law.

Now that whales and dolphins are by law immune to the harpoon and the net, what of similarly intelligent creatures? Pachyderms are not only beautiful and awe-inspiring, but have brains as complex as our own. Is it right to turn them into ivory or use them as circus entertainment? And bringing things closer to home, what about Primates? Not only do they form complex societies, but some of them can use language in a clever and intuitive way.

Where can the line possibly be drawn? Why does an animal species need to be intelligent, accustomed to 'family values' and fully self-aware for us to stop killing them and plundering their habitats? The principle of life, the axiom of harm not lest thou be harmed, should be enough for us to respect all that breathes, at least to the extent that we do not intrude upon their basic 'liberty' to survive, thrive or perish in their native environments (how arrogant of me to even use liberty in such a way!)

But here is the real rub. Why should I care about a whale, a dolphin or an orangutang when my own economic situation is dire. Lets say I have a child on the way, I can't afford to pay my electricity bills, nor go out with my friends. That guy I hated from school is driving an executive motorized vehicle and going out with a fashion model whilst I am forever stuck on sweaty public transport solutions, going out with with no one at all. Why should I pay interest to such abstract concerns which are so distant from my own?

I guess the obvious answer is that it is not an abstract notion, and that without environmental awareness we are all pretty much dead in the long run - so it is something of enlightened self-interested at the very least. Secondly, the problems facing us are not mutually exclusive. You are not either 'in it for the Whales' or 'in it for the poor' or 'in it for yourself'. If you see the human world as entirely separate from nature, than you might prioritise one over the other to the extent that everything outside of your sphere of experience effectively ceases to exist. A word for this kind of closed-mindedness is 'ignorance' (although 'irresponsible' would probably be better, as it can account for those who know but do not care). If you see us all as belonging to one thing, nature, it is inconsistant to make this separation. You can care about both and all. Indeed, going to that pro-whale protest, you might meet that pro-squatter girl who helps you sort out with your housing problem.

However, I am a romantic mind, and I will go one step further. To care about a distant sea mammal has a far deeper and more resonating purpose. We have lost a sense of wonder, our flat lives dominated by trash entertainment, material excess and soul-crushing labour. Our eyes see nary further than the walls of our city, and it is a rare occasion that we take in the literal depth of a hilly landscape or the sheer wonder of a starry sky. Our trees stand in neat rows, our parks are contrived and dull, our rivers are hidden beneath concrete slabs. Our art is in decay, our heroes are artificial faces and withered heroin-inflicted innards, our natural souls are dying. A bit of wildness will help inject our lives with the real excitement and sense of belonging which cannot be provided by human societies alone.

We need causes to fight for. We need to live for something beyond the four walls of a house and the weekend trip to a shopping mall. This is the vitality of existence. This is the battle that we need to rise up and fight. This is the antidote to nihilism, disconnection, depression, meaninglessness.

Preserving incredible creatures for the future is part of that purpose, and part of our common inheritance.

Selim 'Selim' Talat

The beauty of Friedrich Nietzsche

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” – Hamlet, written by William Shakespeare, Act 2 Scene 2.

Having defended Friedrich Nietzsche from scars which never left a wound – in other words, spurious accusations – I now feel comfortable in writing an analysis which isn’t directed at making a modern audience more comfortable with his controversial philosophy. Of course, if our minds were truly free from prejudice and indoctrination, I wouldn’t have had to contextualise his thinking. However, as we are tethered to an intellectual bondage, my previous essay was all too necessary.

This essay shall hereafter be a pithy analysis of Beyond Good and Evil, an excellent read which I enjoyed in the sand dunes of Saudi Arabia. This essay will be composed of an analysis of selected quotes.

Quote one:

“The time for petty politics is past: the very next century will bring with it the struggle for mastery over the whole Earth.”

Nietzsche dismisses petty politics where there is an obligation to read a newspaper with breakfast. Consequently, he asserts that what is needed is a compulsion towards grand politics and a struggle for mastery.

It seems, quite sadly, that with globalisation, Nietzsche was somewhat prophetic: the will to power – in the form of economic greed – has manifested itself within a culture which has an insatiable lust for money in the form of the American economic empire.

The will of this empire, controlled by a Bildeberger from his billionaire’s yacht, has gripped Mankind by its genitals and dominates it accordingly. Most humorously – although this is the darkest of all comedies here – the American public have been enslaved by this will, insofar as their petty morality has been perverted into a glib interest in highly convoluted talent shows, and in the form of redundant opinions which repeat, mindlessly, the might of the dictator; their wills being passively subverted so that their perception is their pseudo-reality.

Alas, Nietzsche was right!

Quote two:

“To prepare for great enterprises and collective experiments in discipline and breeding so as to make an end of that gruesome dominion of chance that has hitherto been called ‘history’.”

It is quite easy – all too easy – to see how Hitler cherry picked and highlighted elements of Nietzsche’s philosophy for his own ends. To develop an Übermensch, Nietzsche claimed that such a visionary enterprise, such as a collective experiment, could certify power for such a race of superior beings.

The influence of Nietzsche on social Darwinism is obvious – but – but(!) – he ignores the classic counter; the utmost importance of nurture. The afore-mentioned debate is now very tired and trite. Nevertheless, scientific experiments, whose origination and intent we must remain sceptical of, can sometimes add a drop of vitality to an ocean of stagnation.

Also, I sense a contradiction in Nietzsche’s philosophy here: that is, unless I misunderstand Nietzsche’s ideas, he seems to despise what he calls an “obedience to uniformity”; yet, how could a collectivist experiment occur without an agreed degree of uniformity?

Perhaps (although perhapses are dangerous – not to mention all too human), it is best not to take an idea to an extreme and realise that Nietzsche will inevitably prioritise some of his ideas – or even ideals – over others. Or, as the great man put it himself, “only an idiot doesn’t contradict himself three times a day.”

Quote three:

“Everything that raises the individual above the herd and makes his neighbour quail is henceforth called evil.”

The veracity of Nietzsche’s statement, for me, is practically a self-evident truth. I almost want to let it stand alone. However, I have so much to say about it. A pertinent example would be the English education system, and in particular, modern GCSE league tables: successful schools are deemed one which amasses the most numerous amount of passes. Students who are on the C/D borderline are therefore selected and prioritised by schools as results are deemed everything.

Mediocrity is evidently the current ethos of British society. To ensure that the lump in the middle is the most important is a slap in the face towards success and progress. If we truly wanted to progress as a society, shouldn’t we place every student with an equality of opportunity, but accept that there will be a standard deviation of outcomes on any given standardised assessment?

Are we so scared of intelligence that it is prioritised so lowly by society after society after society?

Best selling newspapers which an eight year old could read; popular TV shows which showcase a dancing canine; package holidays; mundane conversation about the weather; Towie; pop music; ubiquitous comedy; decadent hedonism; celebrity big brother...the list of mediocrity is almost endless. How can it be that what is unique is detested, but that the bilge of everyday banality is celebrated?

Quote four:

“What a philosopher is, is hard to learn, because it cannot be taught: one has to ‘know’ it from experience.”

If the above point is absolutely true, then the study of philosophy is, of course, utterly redundant. However, I genuinely think that philosophers are born, rather than created; despite that, I also think any discipline can be taught, but whether it can be truly learned is another matter. We also have to trust that when Nietzsche speaks of learning that he is very much measuring learning from his precocious and lofty position of a truly misunderstood genius.

Most people with an interest in philosophy weren’t taught the subject in mandatory schooling (except if you happen to be French). No. Instead, they gravitated towards the discipline themselves – philosophers are the thinkers, the misfits, the contrarians, the true individuals who feel forced, yes forced, to converse, write and debate about knowledge, truth, beauty, the self, life, death and all of the other facets of humanity which require discussion, debate, examination and re-examination.

To paraphrase Nietzsche, our truths are not for everyone but that only and justly serves makes them all the more valuable in our own esteem.

Conclusion:

In all honesty, I could wax lyrical about Nietzsche, and perhaps I shall. As can be determined, Nietzsche’s philosophy is very current: his predictions were often correct. His disdain for mediocrity was passionate and extremely well thought through. However arrogant and judgemental Nietzsche was, his literary style (coupled with his ability to realise an uncomfortable truth) makes him one of the most alluring philosophers there has ever been.

Samuel Mack-Poole