We do not go: we are borne along like things afloat, now bobbing now lashing about as the waters are angry or serene. Every day a new idea: and our humours change with the changes of the weather. We float about among diverse counsels: our willing of anything is never free, final or constant.
* * * * *
âThere is every possibility of speaking for and against anythingâ⊠âŠ
What has he gained if he then goes and provides his enemy with the means of recovery? What hope can a man have of daring to attack his enemies later, after they have rallied and re-mustered and are newly armed with vengeance and anger, when he did not dare to hunt them down when terrified and routed?
* * * * *
When he is threatened with a blow nothing can stop a man closing his eyes, or trembling if you set high on the edge of a precipice.
* * * * *
His dazed silence served them as a confession⊠it was not memory that was defective, they thought, but a case of guilt bridling his tongue and making him so feeble. What a good argument! Even when you merely aim to speak well you can be dazed by the place, the audience and their expectations. What can happen when you have to make an harangue on which your life depends!
* * * * *
When harmful things are compelling then, it seems, is the season for vain ones; in an age when so many behave wickedly it is almost praiseworthy merely to be useless.
* * * * *
It is not one deed that I see, not three, not a hundred, but morals, now commonly accepted, so monstrous in their inhumanity and above all in their disloyalty (which are for me the worst species of vice), that my mind cannot conceive of them without horror. Almost as much as with loathing they strike me with amazement. The practice of such remarkable wickedness is as much a sign of vigour and power in the soul as of error and unruliness.
~ Montaigne, The Complete Essays (1587-88)
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71 items tagged "SeenHeardRead"
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Into the neg
» talfryn.net
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A-Woozling
» talfryn.net
Hereâs one Pooh I so wouldnât mind hugging. Watching the trailer gave me a warm fuzzy feeling I havenât felt in a long, long while⊠quaint little childhood reminiscences.
âHallo!â said Piglet, âwhat are you doing?â
âHunting,â said Pooh.
âHunting what?â
âTracking something,â said Winnie-the-Pooh very mysteriously.
âTracking what?â said Piglet, coming closer.
âThatâs just what I ask myself. I ask myself, What?â
âWhat do you think youâll answer?â
âI shall have to wait until I catch up with it,â said Winnie-the-Pooh.
~ A.A.Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh (1962)
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âSelon moiâ
» talfryn.net
Few men can speak ordinately, wisely, adequately. And so errors which proceed from ignorance do not offend me: absurdity does. They understand neither why nor what they are told: they answer accordingly. It is enough to make you despair.
Yes, but what if I myself am taking things for other than they are? That may well be: that explains first of all why I condemn my inability to put up with it, holding it to be equally a defect in those who are right and those who are wrong, since there is always an element of tyrannical bad temper in being unable to tolerate characters different from your own. Secondly, there is in truth no greater silliness, none more enduring, than to be provoked and enraged by the silliness of the world â and there is none more bizarre. For it makes you principally irritated with yourself.
~ Montaigne, The Complete Essays (1587-88)
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Through the unknown
» talfryn.net
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.~ T. S. Eliot (1888 â 1965)
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A dose of medicine
» talfryn.net
During my last few hours of duty proper with YOG yesterday midnight, all systems crashed. I had never been more desperate to get back home, to snuggle up in bed. Temperature was rising, head was pounding.
I think my body was waiting for it, waiting for the excitement and everything to be over, holding out until I was done with the UK trip and the YOG before getting the rest it deserves.
So I watched some House. This particular scene made me laugh:
Dr Eric Foreman: Do you think⊠Iâm boring?
Dr Robert Chase: Yes.
Dr Eric Foreman: Youâre saying that just to screw with me.
Dr Robert Chase: Yeah. Why would you expect anything else?
Dr Eric Foreman: I expect House to pull my strings. I expect Cameron to make me feel better. I expect the new team to kiss my ass. And I expect you to be honest, because you donât give a crap.
Dr Robert Chase: âŠYes. Youâre boring. That speech was boring.
Dr Eric Foreman: [sarcastically] Thanks so much.
Dr Robert Chase: You donât let other peopleâs problems affect you. You donât let your *own* problems affect you. And itâs the problems that make us interesting. Youâre never out of control. Which is good⊠and⊠boring. Never losing control also means never putting yourself out there, never pushing your limits. On the other hand, you have a tattoo. Maybe Iâm wrong. -
On Virgil
» talfryn.net
The more our moral thoughts are abundant and solid the more engrossing they are and oppressive⊠We need our soul to be instructed in the means of sustaining evils and of fighting them off, instructed too in the rules of right-living and right-believing; and we need to awaken her to practise so fine an endeavour. But in the case of a soul of the common sort this must be done with moderation and some laxity: keep her continually tensed and you drive her mad.
Once upon a time I used to mark as exceptional the dark, depressing days: those days are now my routine ones; it is the ones which are beautiful and serene which are extraordinary now. I am close to the point when I shall jump for joy and accept anything which does not actually hurt as some new favour.
~ Montaigne, The Complete Essays (1587-88)
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Elements of circumstance
» talfryn.net
I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
I send them over land and sea,
I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me,
I give them all a rest.I let them rest from nine till five,
For I am busy then,
As well as breakfast, lunch, and tea,
For they are hungry men.
But different folk have different views.
I know a person small,
She keeps ten million serving-men,
Who get no rest at all!She sendsâem abroad on her own affairs,
From the second she opens her eyes,
One million Hows, two million Wheres,
And seven million Whys!~ Kipling, The Elephantâs Child in Just So Stories (1902)
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The butterfly of freedom
» talfryn.net -
On vanity III: Judging
» talfryn.net
Man is always inclined to regard the small circle in which he lives as the center of the world and to make his particular, private life the standard of the universe. But he must give up this vain pretense, this petty provincial way of thinking and judging.
~ Montaigne, The Complete Essays (1587-88)
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Riders
» talfryn.net
The surest thing there is is we are riders,
And though none too successful at it, guiders,
Through everything presented, land and tide
And now the very air, of what we ride.What is this talked-of mystery of birth
But being mounted bareback on the earth?
We can just see the infant up astride,
His small fist buried in the bushy hide.There is our wildest mountâa headless horse.
But though it runs unbridled off its course,
And all our blandishments would seem defied,
We have ideas yet that we havenât tried.~ Robert Frost
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Simplicity
» talfryn.net
How happy is the little stone
That rambles in the road alone,
And doesnât care about careers,
And exigencies never fears;
Whose coat of elemental brown
A passing universe put on;
And independent as the sun,
Associates or glows alone,
Fulfilling absolute decree
In casual simplicity.~ Emily Dickinson
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On Looking up by Chance at the Constellations
» talfryn.net
Youâll wait a long, long time for anything much
To happen in heaven beyond the floats of cloud
And the Northern Lights that run like tingling nerves.
The sun and moon get crossed, but they never touch,
Nor strike out fire from each other nor crash out loud.
The planets seem to interfere in their curves
But nothing ever happens, no harm is done.
We may as well go patiently on with our life,
And look elsewhere than to stars and moon and sun
For the shocks and changes we need to keep us sane.
It is true the longest drouth will end in rain,
The longest peace in China will end in strife.
Still it wouldnât reward the watcher to stay awake
In hopes of seeing the calm of heaven break
On his particular time and personal sight.
That calm seems certainly safe to last to-night.~ Robert Frost
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Keeping progress alive
» talfryn.net
The advantage to society of energetic intellectual activity is that it offers society self-awareness, wakefulness and clarity, inspiration and new ideas, and intelligence in debate and action. A sluggard community which never asks questions or inspects the world around it with a bright eye, and which never tries out different ways of understanding its circumstances, is sure first to stagnate, and then to slip backwards.
~ A. C. Grayling, The Form of Things: Essays on Life, Ideas and Liberty in the 21st Century (2006)
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âWhy clever people believe stupid thingsâ
» talfryn.net
Talking about backmasking, about the Freemasons, about conspiracy theories, about puddles of water, about intelligence, about the media, about hoaxes, about intentions, about politics, about assumptionsâŠ
As human beings, we have an innate ability to make something out of nothing. We see shapes in the clouds, and a man in the moon; we take a perfectly cheerful heavy-metal record, play it backwards, and hear hidden messages about Satan. Our ability to spot patterns is what allows us to make sense of the world; but sometimes, in our eagerness, we are oversensitive, trigger-happy, and mistakenly spot patterns where none exist.
~ Ben Goldacre, Bad Science
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Riveries
» talfryn.net
For most of us, our bright promise will always fall short of being actualised⊠It will remain no more than a hope carried over from childhood, or a dream entertained as we drive along a motorway and feel our plans hovering above the horizon. Extraordinary resilience, intelligence and good fortune are needed to redraw the map of our realityâŠ
Most of us stand poised on the edge of brilliance, haunted by the knowledge of our proximity, yet still demonstrably on the wrong side of the line, our dealings with reality undermined by a range of minor yet critical psychological flaws.
~ Alain de Botton, The pleasures and sorrows of work
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Woods
» talfryn.netShe looked up from the book and said, ‘What?’ and I said it again: ‘Only the mockingbird sings at the edge of the woods.’
She pursed her lips. ‘It’s like the words I just read, isn’t it? It makes you feel something and you don’t know what it is.’
~ Walter Tevis, Mockingbird
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Biodiversity volunteering and participatory monitoring
» talfryn.netExcerpt from Lawrence, A. (2005) Reluctant citizens? The disjuncture between participatory biological monitoring and participatory environmental governance. Paper presented at the International Sociology Conference “Environment, Knowledge and Democracy” 6-7 July 2005. Faculte des Sciences de Luminy, Marseilles. Full paper available here.
On the one hand, participants are longing for the opportunity, indeed the ‘excuse’, to observe nature; on the other, they are disenchanted with governance opportunities howsoever presented to them, and displace responsibility for decision-making on to others. Their relationship with science is ambivalent; whilst sceptical about the link between scientific data and good decision-making, many discover a new relationship with science… through satisfaction derived from contribution to ‘the bigger picture’.
… in relation to the institutions of conservation, many expressed powerlessness, resignation… carefully distanced themselves from the processes of power. Most felt there was little likelihood of their activities changing anything: ‘I don’t see our roles as having any power to change things, I see our role as ⊠providing records for other more experienced people to use ⊠I mean the decisions that I would want to make are probably not the decisions that are going to be made. Because I would be biased towards keeping things natural, whereas this is not always possible.’
Most significantly, these people are doing something because it is important and meaningful to them, and also links them up with other people because of that shared sense of meaning. ‘⊠their experiences and related discourses are not significant purely in terms of the environment per se. They also enhance the personal meaning of these individuals’ lives and, consequently, contribute to their sense of well-being.’
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Without anguish
» talfryn.netNemo altero fragilior est: nemo in crastinam sui certior.
[No man is frailer than another: no man more certain of the morrow.]The usefulness of living lies not in duration but in what you make of it. Some have lived long and lived little. See to it while you are still here. Whether you have lived enough depends not on a count of years but on your will.
Do you think you will never arrive whither you are ceaselessly heading? Yet every road has its end. And, if it is a relief to have company, is not the whole world proceeding at the same pace as you are?
~ Montaigne, The Complete Essays (1587-88)
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To be of use
» talfryn.net
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To judge a man
» talfryn.netWhy do you judge a man when he is all wrapped up like a parcel? He is only letting us see only such attributes as do not belong to him while hiding the only ones which enable us to judge his real worth… You must judge him not by his finery but by his own self… Measure his height with his stilts off: let him lay aside his wealth and his decorations and show us himself in his shimmy. Is his body functioning properly? Is it quick and healthy? What sort of soul does he have? Is his soul a beautiful one, able, happily endowed with all her functions? Are her riches her won or are they borrowed? Has luck had nothing to do with it? Is she calm, unruffled and contented? That is what we need to know; that is what the immense distances between us men should be judged by.
~ Montaigne, The Complete Essays (1587-88)
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Flight
» talfryn.netBirds in flight, claims the architect Vincenzo Volentieri, are not between places, they carry their places with them. We never wonder where they live: they are at home in the sky, in flight. Flight is their way of being in the world.
~ Geoff Dyer
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Decreation
» talfryn.netIt is necessary not to be “myself,” still less to be “ourselves.”
The city gives one the feeling of being at home.
We must take the feeling of being at home into exile
We must be rooted in the absence of a place.To uproot oneself socially and vegetatively.
To exile oneself from every earthly country.
To all that to others, from the outside, is a substitute for decreation and results in unreality
For by uprooting oneself one seeks greater reality.~ Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace
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That which is on paper
» talfryn.netWhy is it that our tongue, so simple for other purposes, becomes so obscure and unintelligible in wills and contracts? Why is it that a man who expresses himself with clarity in anything else that he says or writes cannot find any means of making declarations in such matters which do not sink into contradictions and obscurity? Is it not that the ‘princes’ of that art, striving with a peculiar application to select traditional terms and to use technical language, have so weighed every syllable and perused so minutely every species of conjunction that they end up entangled and bogged down in an infinitude of grammatical functions and tiny sub-clauses which defy all rule and order and any definite interpretation?
~ Montaigne, The Complete Essays (1587-88)
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On experience (V)
» talfryn.netJust as no event and no form completely resembles one another, neither does any completely differ. What an ingenious medley is Nature’s: if our faces were not alike we could not tell man from beast: if they were not unalike we could not tell man from man. All things are connected by some similarity; yet every example limps and any correspondence which we draw from experience is always feeble and imperfect; we can nevertheless find some corner or other by which to link our comparisons.
~ Montaigne, The Complete Essays (1587-88)
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ç©ăźćă
» talfryn.net
The flesh surrenders itself, he thought. Eternity takes back its own. Our bodies stirred these waters briefly, danced with a certain intoxication before the love of life and self, dealt with a few strange ideas, then submitted to the instruments of time. What can we say of this? I occurred. I am not… yet, I occurred.
~ Frank Herbertâs Dune Messiah, book II of the Dune Chronicles -
Of music
» talfryn.net… give me a proper melody that’s been written by one of our great composers any day. A song by Schubert or a nocturne by Chopin, something that will make the hairs of your head stand on end! The function of music is to liberate in the soul those feelings which normally we keep locked up in the heart. The great composers of the past were able to do this, but the musicians of today are satisfied with four notes in a line you can sell on a song-sheet at the street corner.
~ Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong
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Sniglets
» talfryn.netThe dicey moment when you should introduce two people but can’t remember one of their names: whomnesia, persona non data, notworking, mumbleduction, introducking
The realization of the perfect riposte three hours after the argument: hindser, retrotort, afterism
The momentary confusion experienced by everyone in the vicinity when a phone rings and no one is sure if it is his/hers or not: conphonesion, phonundrum, ringxiety, fauxallarm
sarchasm n. The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it
~ Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature
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Communal reinforcement
» talfryn.netIt feels almost too obvious to mention, but our values are socially reinforced by conformity and by the company we keep. We are selectively exposed to information that revalidates our beliefs, partly because we expose ourselves to situations where those beliefs are apparently confirmed; partly because we ask questions that will give validating answers; and partly because we expose ourselves to people who validate our beliefs.
~ Ben Goldacre, Bad Science
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Censorship - missing the mark?
» talfryn.netA mature society is one that reserves its moral outrage for what really matters: poverty and preventable diseases in the third world, arms sales, oppression, injustice. Bad language and sex might offend some, who certainly have a right to complain; but they do not have a right to censor… … After all, it is morally outrageous that moral outrage should be used as an excuse to perpetrate the outrage of censorship on others.
~ A. C. Grayling, The Form of Things: Essays on Life, Ideas and Liberty in the 21st Century
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Life in motion
» talfryn.netWe have changed the way we live at the most amazing speed: but we cannot change who we are at the same rate. Our hearts and souls and minds have been unable to keep up. Perhaps we will never truly keep up. We have evolved for the wild: the changes have come far too swiftly for us, and as a result, the deeper parts of us are forever missing the wild. We are not dead parrots, no: we are all of us just a little blue…
~ Simon Barnes, How to be wild
Blue sand digger wasp (Bembix sp., Sphecidae) -
Conversation as an exercise of minds
» talfryn.netI embark upon discussion and argument with great ease and liberty. Since opinions do not find me in a ready soil to thrust and spread their roots into, no premise shocks me, no belief turns me, no matter how opposite to my own they may be. There is no idea so frivolous or odd which does not appear to me to be fittingly produced by the mind of man.
~ Montaigne, The Complete Essays (1587-88)
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Unbearable Lightness of Being III
» talfryn.netTereza kept stroking Karenin’s head, which was quietly resting in her lap, while something like the following ran through her mind: There’s no particular merit in being nice to one’s fellow man. She had to treat the other villagers decently, because otherwise she couldn’t live there. Even with Tomas, she was obliged to behave lovingly because she needed him. We can never establish with certainly what part of our relations with others is the result of our emotions - love, antipathy, charity, or malice - and what part is predetermined by the constant power play among individuals.
True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind’s true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental dĂ©bĂącle, a dĂ©bĂącle so fundamental that all others stem from it.
~ Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
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On vanity II: Progress
» talfryn.netI fear that I will personally lose by the change. My mind does not always move straight ahead but backwards too. I distrust my present thoughts hardly less than my past ones and my second or third thoughts hardly less than my first. We are often as stupid when correcting ourselves as others… … I have long since grown old but not one inch wiser. ‘I’ now and ‘I’ then are certainly twain, but which ‘I’ was better? I know nothing about that. If we were always progressing towards improvement, to be old would be a beautiful thing.
~ Montaigne, The Complete Essays (1587-88)
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On vanity I: Appearances
» talfryn.netWe cheat ourselves of what is rightly useful to us in order to conform our appearances to the common opinion. We are not so much concerned with what the actual nature of our being is within us, as with how it is perceived by the public. Even wisdom and the good things of the mind seem fruitless to us if we enjoy them by ourselves, if they are not paraded before the approving eyes of others.
~ Montaigne, The Complete Essays (1587-88)
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Laughter
» talfryn.netThen it came, real laughter, total laughter, taking us into its immense tide. Bursts of repeated, rushing, unleashed laughter, magnificent laughter, sumptuous and mad… And we laugh our laughter into the infinity of laughter… O laughter!… to laugh is to live profoundly.
~ Milan Kundera, The book of laughter and forgetting
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Unbearable Lightness of Being II
» talfryn.netOur day-to-day life is bombarded with fortuities or, to be more precise, with the accidental meetings of people and events we call coincidences.
They are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurrence into a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of an individual’s life.
Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress.
It is wrong, then, to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences, but it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty.
~ Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
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The blackbird
» talfryn.netDuring the last two hundred years the blackbird has abandoned the woods to become a city bird. First in Great Britain at the end of the eighteenth century, then… Europe, Vienna and Prague… eastward to Budapest…
From the planet’s viewpoint, the blackbird’s invasion of the human world is certainly more important than the Spanish invasion of South America or the return to Palestine of the Jews. A shift in the relationships among the various kinds of creation is a shift of a higher order than changes in relations among various groups of the same kind…
And yet no one dares to interpret the last two centuries as the history of the invasion of man’s cities by the blackbird. All of us are prisoners of a rigid conception of what is important and what is not, and so we fasten our anxious gaze on the important, while from a hiding place behind our backs the unimportant wages its guerrilla war, which will end in surreptitiously changing the world and pouncing on us by surprise.
~ Milan Kundera, The book of laughter and forgetting
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Introspecting
» talfryn.netA realisation.
The more my emotions threaten to surface, the more I’d try to bottle them up.
These days, words, feelings… don’t come as easily as before.
It’s how I cope. I try to remain detached. At first, it takes some conscious effort. But now, I’m becoming effortlessly indifferent.
It’s been a while since I have attempted to re-settle back into life in Singapore, but it has not been easy, perhaps not really helped by where I’m working. I wasn’t really expecting this. I thought I’d be alright, thought I was prepared.
We ATCKs are supposed to be experienced, to be able to move from one culture, one setting, to another, with ease. Yes, we do, we adapt, and we cope. But rarely do we fit in. We try. Just like any other, we want to feel like belong, somewhere.
I picked up a book last week: Third Culture Kids - The experience of growing up among worlds.
I loved it. I could see myself in it, in the stories, in the descriptions of the global nomads, the challenges they face, the benefits of growing up among cultures:
Challenge: confused loyalties. Although their expanded worldview is a benefit, it can also leave TCKs with a sense of confusion about such complex things as politics, patriotism, and values.
Challenge: lack of true cultural balance. Becoming a cultural chameleon, however, brings special challenges as well. While appearing to be one of the crowd, inside they are still the cautious observer - always checking to see how they are doing. Some TCKs who flip-flop back and forth between various behavioural patterns have trouble figuring out their own value system from the multicultural mix they have been exposed to.
Benefits: less prejudice. They have been members of groups that include a striking collection of culturally and ethnically diverse people, and most have the ability to truly enjoy such diversity and to believe that people of all backgrounds can be full and equal participants in any given situation. TCKs who use their experiences well learn there is always a reason behind anyone’s behaviour - no matter how mystifying it appears.
Arrogance: real versus perceived. It seems the very awareness which helps TCKs view a situation from multiple perspectives can also make TCKs impatient or arrogant with others who only see things from their own perspective.
Social skills: Learning to live with the chronic change which often characterises their lifestyle gives many TCKs a great sense of inner confidence and strong feelings of self-reliance.
Rootlessness: There are several questions many TCKs have learned to dread. Among them are these two: “Where are you from?” and “Where is home?” Home connotes an emotional place - somewhere you truly belong. There simply is no real answer to that question for many TCKs… when someone asks where home is, “Everywhere and nowhere.” …[there is] no other answer. Many TCKs develop a migratory instinct that controls their lives. Along with their chronic rootlessness is a feeling of restlessness: “Here, where I am today, is temporary.”
> [www.talfryn.net]
> [www.talfryn.net]Relational patterns: Multiple separations tended to cause me to develop deeper relationships quicker. We tended to talk about things that matter spiritually, emotionally, and so on. I still become impatient with [what I see as] superficiality.
Effects of cycles of multiple losses on relationships. … struggled with a fear of intimacy because of the fear of loss. Too many close friends have moved away. Frequent, painful good-byes make some TCKs unwilling to risk emotional involvement again. Some try to limit their vulnerability to impending grief by refusing to acknowledge they care for anyone or anything. In the end, however, they know a pain of loneliness far greater than the one they are running from. The independence they have been so proud of turns into a profound isolation, which keeps them prisoner until the day they become willing to once more feel the pain of loss in order to know the joy of closeness. Some have separated so repeatedly from friends and relatives, they simply refuse to let themselves care about or need anyone again. The sad thing is, when pain shuts down, so is the capacity to feel or express joy.
The irretrievability of the past stare us in the face… during the leaving stage we knew these losses were coming, but now they are here. This is a crucial moment and one which can affect us for years to come: we must decide what we will do with the grief. Will we deal with it or try to pack it away, our of sight out of mind? Sometimes the chaos of the moment is so great we simply can’t afford to deal fully with the reality of what we are losing, and our only choice to survive seems to be to ignore those feelings. Too many people get through transition by packing away these painful feelings of loss and never taking them out consciously at a later stage. Years later they continue to exhibit the [same] patterns of behaviour.
> [www.talfryn.net]
> [www.talfryn.net]
> [www.talfryn.net]Delayed adolescent rebellion. A delayed adolescence is painful enough for the TCK who keeps wondering why he or she can’t be like others, but even more painful - not only for TCKs but their families as well - is a delayed adolescent rebellion, a time when the normal testing of rules either starts unexpectedly late or becomes exaggerated in an all-out, open defiance of nearly every possible convention the family and/or community holds dear and extends beyond the adolescent years.
Maintaining stability. … maintain some sense of connectedness with the past… through sacred objects… mementos that specifically reflect a certain place or moment of our lives. With artifacts gathered from around the world, all proving that “I was there! It’s a part of my history.” Each object serves as a good reminder that the current moment is a part of a bigger story of that person’s life. Pictures add a value to our lives that money alone can’t buy… gives us a lovely place to visit when we need a few reflective moments in the middle of this sometimes turbulent stage.
In the end, while many TCKs look back on their reentry period as one of the more stressful parts of their TCK experience, they still wouldn’t have wanted to miss much of what they learned from the process.
Darn right.
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On how we weep and laugh at the same thing
» talfryn.netNothing has changed; but our mind contemplates the matter in a different light and sees it from another aspect: for everything has many angles and many different sheens. Thoughts of kinship, old acquaintanceships, and affections suddenly seize our minds and stir them each according to their worth: but the change is so sudden that it escapes us:
Nil adeo fieri celeri ratione videtur
Quam si mens fieri proponit et inchoat ipsa
Ocius ergo animus quam res se perciet ulla
Ante oculos quarum in promptu natura videtur.[Nothing can be seen to match the rapidity of the thoughts which the mind produces and initiates. The mind is swifter than anything which the nature of our eyes allows them to see.]
~ Montaigne, The Complete Essays (1587-88)
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Recession may be the jolt
» talfryn.netAccording to the Archbishop of Westminster, the economic downturn could be the very thing that brings us to our senses. “It’s the end of a certain kind of selfish capitalism,” Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor said. âThis particular recession is a moment - a kairos - when we have to reflect as a country on what are the things that nourish the values, the virtues, we want to have… Capitalism needs to be underpinned with regulation and a moral purpose.”
“One feels very sorry for those losing their jobs but in times of recession people have to rely on friends and neighbours and families and things that really matter to them. That may be a good thing. I think people did lose their way a bit. It has been difficult to bring up children with the kind of values we want. Let’s face it, we now have a âme, me’ society, a more consumerist society, a utilitarian society, and our values and virtues have become diminished.”
“Some of it has got to do with having too much. If your worth just depends on your wealth, that is not healthy. Your worth should depend on who you are.”
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Montaigne on customs, the cement of society
» talfryn.netA man who wished to loose himself from the violent foregone conclusions of custom will find many things accepted as being indubitably settled which have nothing to support them but the hoary whiskers and wrinkels of attendance usage; let him tear off that mask, bring matters back to truth and reason, and he will feel his judgement turned upside-down, yet restored by this to a much surer state.
~ Montaigne, The Complete Essays (1587-88)
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Venus Drive
» talfryn.netMy nature tripping habits mirror that of my dining preferences - I always pick the same dishes, same places. Venus Drive this morning was a refreshing change of scenery. Or should I say… habitats. Alway from the mangroves and coasts, oddities of the entomological and arachnological worlds abound (too) in the secondary forests. Add to that the first star sighting of the day, spotted unexpectedly on a tree trunk - a beautiful Kendall’s Rock Gecko, which with its round pupils looks as if it’s living in a perpetual state of shock.
Kendall’s Rock Gecko (Cnemaspis kendalli)
Polyrhachis ants
Beetle larva, very possibly that of a Lampyrid (firefly)
A flat, green, camouflaged cricket with funny eyes
Wandering Spider (Ctenus sp.)
Huntsman Spider (Heteropoda sp.)More photos on Zoto.
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Decline of Mankind
» talfryn.netThe tragedy of the human race is being played out, Wolf Meynert began. Let us not be blinded by feverish enterprise or technological prosperity; these are but the fever patches on the cheeks of an organism already marked by death. Never has mankind experienced a greater upsurge to its life than today; yet find me one person who is happy, show me one class that is content, or one nation that does not feel threatened in its existence. Amidst all the gifts of civilisation, in Croesus-like wealth of spiritual and material values, we are all anxiety and malaise. And Wolf Meynert relentlessly analysed the spiritual condition of the world today, that mixture of fear and hate, of mistrust and megalomania, of cynicism and despondency: in one word, despair. Typical terminal syndromes. Moral agony.
~ Karel Äapek, War with the Newts (Catbird Press, new edition 2001)
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âRealpolitikâ
» talfryn.netOne must acknowledge Singapore’s uniqueness and intellectual interest… does not seem to obey the basic rules of political science… is the only affluent nation in the world that is not a genuine liberal democracy. It has had a one-party rule and a semi-authoritarian regime for forty years, but has maintained long-term economic growth… the government was led for forty years by a charismatic leader… but a personality cult seems non-existent. The bureaucracy has direct power over key financial and other resources, but the level of corruption is negligible. Thus, one can ask: is there something very right or very wrong about the city-state?
~ Maria Francesch-Huidobro, Governance, Politics and the Environment: A Singapore Study (2008)
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Itâs a bird⊠itâs aâŠ
» talfryn.netNewly released UFO files - October 2008
The files contain a wide range of UFO-related documents covering the years 1986â1992. If you want to find out more about close encounters over Gatwick Airport, alien abductions, stray satellites - and what the UK Government thought of it all - then this is the place to be.
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Twitch twitch
» talfryn.netFor some people finding rarities is the raison d’ĂȘtre of their birding selves. That act of independent discovery has been elevated almost to the status of a principle, which often forms the basis of opposition to twitching. Some argue that without those who go faithfully to watch the same area day in, day out, in the hope they might find something unusual, no rare birds would every be discovered. Twitchers, by contrast, are viewed as parasitic upon the endeavours of these other honest ornithological toilers, who are known as ‘patch-workers’.
The fact is that many birders both twitch others’ rarities and also work a local patch themselves… Finding rarities is enormously satisfying, but if we’re honest a major part of the thrill is the kudos derived from our peers’ metaphoric thumbs of approval. Without the rare bird being found there would certainly be no twitch. But then without the twitch there can be no glory or, at least, much less glory.
~ Mark Cocker, Birders: Tales of a Tribe (2001)
And ’tis the bird which has set the local birders and bazooka photographers a-frenzy:
An Eurasian Curlew (Numenius arquata) (the bird in the background is the more common, and much smaller, Whimbrel) first sighted in Buloh yesterday after the volunteers’ appreciation day activities, and again today by other birder-hopefuls. And to think that they’re so common in the UK that they’re simply referred to as the ‘curlew’, and we saw them everywhere on the beaches in Guernsey!
Disclaimer: I am not a twitcher!
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Memory
» talfryn.netMemory never recaptures reality. Memory reconstructs. All reconstructions change the original, becoming external frames of reference that inevitably fall short.
~ Frank Herbert’s Heretics of Dune, book V of the Dune Chronicles
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The stakes are too high
» talfryn.netThe global financial networks of the new economy are inherently unstable. They produce random patterns of informational turbulence that may destabilize any company, as well as entire countries or regions, regardless of their economic performances.
At the existential human level, the most alarming feature of the new economy may be that it is shaped in very fundamental ways by machines. The so-called ‘global market’, strictly speaking, is not a market at all but a network of machines programmed according to a single value - money-making for the sake of making money - to the exclusion of all other values. In the words of Manuel Castells:
“The outcome of the process of financial globalization may be that we have created an Automaton at the core of our economies that is decisively conditioning our lives. Humankind’s nightmare of seeing our machines taking control of our world seems on the edge of becoming reality - not in the form of robots that eliminate jobs or government computers that police our lives, but as an electronically based system of financial transactions.”
~ Fritjof Capra, The Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable Living (2002)
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Union of the sciences
» talfryn.netFrom the lack of a true social theory comes the debilitating failure of the social sciences to communicate with the natural sciences and even with one another… the disciplines of both need to be defined by the scales of time and space they individually encompass and not just by subject matter as in past practice, and then they need to be connected.
A convergence has in fact begun. The natural sciences, by their own swift expansion in subject matter during past several decades, are drawing close to the social sciences. Four bridges across the divide are in place. The first is cognitive neuroscience, with elements of cognitive psychology… The second is human behavioural genetics… influence of the genes on mental development. The third… is evolutionary biology, including the hybrid offspring sociobiology… set out to explain the hereditary origins of social behaviour. The fourth is the environmental sciences. The connection of the last field to social theory may at first seem tenuous, but is not. The natural environment is the theatre in which the human species evolved and to which its physiology and behaviour are finely adapted. Neither human biology nor the social sciences can make full sense until their world views take account of that unyielding framework.
~ Edward O Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998)
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Into the Wild
» talfryn.netA lot of us are like that - I’m like that, Ed Abbey was like that, and it sounds like this McCandless kid was like that: We like companionship, see, but we can’t stand to be around people for very long. So we go get ourselves lost, come back for a while, then get the hell out again.
~ Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild (1996)
* * * * *
Getting the hell outta there can feel good, but so can the coming back bit, too.
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Live the best you can
» talfryn.netConfine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your own life. The object can be stated this way: Live the best you can. Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Otherwise, you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play. Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck.
~ Frank Herbert’s Chapterhouse: Dune, book VI of the Dune Chronicles
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Moral decisions
» talfryn.net“Many histories are largely worthless because prejudiced, written to please one powerful group or another. Wait for your eyes to be opened, my dear. We are the best historians. We were there.”
“And my viewpoint will change daily?” Very introspective.
“That’s a lesson the Bashar reminded us to keep fresh in our minds. The past must be reinterpreted by the present.”
“I’m not sure I will enjoy that, Mother Superior. So many moral decisions.”
“Moral decisions are always easy to recognize,” Odrade said. “They are where you abandon self-interest.”
Streggi looked at Odrade with awe. “The courage it must take!”
“Not courage!” Not even desperation. What we do is, in its most basic sense, natural. Things done because there is no other choice.”
“Sometimes you make me feel ignorant, Mother Superior.”
“Excellent! That’s beginning wisdom. There are many kinds of ignorance, Streggi. The basest is to follow yur own desires without examining them. Sometimes, we do it unconsciously. Hone your sensitivity. Be aware of what you do unconsciously. Always ask: ‘When I did that, what was I trying to gain?’ ”
~ Frank Herbert’s Chapterhouse: Dune, book VI of the Dune Chronicles
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Knowing limits
» talfryn.netTo know a thing well, know its limits. Only when pushed beyond its tolerances will true nature be seen.
~ Frank Herbert’s Chapterhouse: Dune, book VI of the Dune Chronicles
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Say it in equations
» talfryn.netI was watching the telly, and saw the trailer for the TV series Eureka.
The taglines went:
Science - Ethics = Murder
Emotions - Logic = Faith
Life - Dreams = JobI wonder.
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Moral conflict
» talfryn.netPaul Ehrlich, the distinguished Stanford University biologist who won the prestigious Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, believes that every ethical system originated in the human mind, a biological entity. He does not think, like many dualist philosophers, that there are moral truths out there, waiting to be discovered, that are distinct and independent of the messy mass of neurons that house the human mind. We are bound to our empirical existence, and our moral sense is therefore grounded firmly in the human world.
Ehrlich concedes that the capacity to construct amoral system is a product of evolution. We can imagine the consequences of our actions, think about alternatives, and imagine what others are feeling. All these are valuable qualities, and with free will are preconditions for creating a moral system. But the content of that system, he believes, is not dependent on our genes. It is an outcome of human culture, and as such can take many different forms.
~ Lord Robert Winston, Human Instinct: How Our Primeval Impulses Shape Our Modern Lives (2002)
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Human behaviour, a chaotic system
» talfryn.netJust as the speck of dust is at the mercy of many forces, so is human behaviour. We are pushed and pulled in all directions by many different biological, cognitive and cultural forces. Some of these may oppose one another, and some may pull in the same direction. It is entirely possible that two instinctual tendencies may act at odds to each other. But that does not mean these forces cannot coexist; it just means that the track through space is more difficult to understand. Just because we have one adaptive mechanism that promotes violence and another that promotes co-operation does not mean that our explanations of these forces are confused. We are pushed one way and pulled another, and our challenge is to try to disentangle the forces and explain their origins.
~ Lord Robert Winston, in Human Instinct: How Our Primeval Impulses Shape Our Modern Lives (2002)
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Natural attraction
» talfryn.netWhat an imperceptive lot we are. Surrounded by so much, so fascinating and so real, that we do not see (hear, smell touch, taste) in nature, yet so gullible and so seduced by claims for novel power that we mistake the tricks of mediocre magicians for glimpses of a psychic world beyond our ken. The paranormal may be a fantasy; it is certainly a haven for charlatans. But ‘parahuman’ powers of perception lie all about us in birds, bees, and bacteria. And we can use the instruments of science to sense and understand what we cannot directly perceive.
~ Stephen Jay Gould in The Panda’s Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History (1980)
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Fixity
» talfryn.netParadox is a pointer telling you to look beyond it. If paradoxes bother you, that betrays your deep desire for absolutes. The relativist treats a paradox merely as interesting, perhaps amusing or even, dreadful thought educational.
~ Frank Herbert’s God Emperor of Dune, book IV of the Dune Chronicles
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Is âgayâ ok?
» talfryn.netAn interesting article from BBC, published in 2003 but recently gaining popularity as one of their ‘Most Emailed’ selections, on the Church’s divided view on homosexuality:
BBC :: What does the Bible actually say about being gay?
It presents quotations from the Bible and discusses both the pro- and anti- stances.
Part of the reason the views diverge so much is because Christians think of the Bible differently. Some see it as literally the word of God, divine inspiration which humans should not question. Others see it rather as a book which is a witness to God’s message, but one which was written by humans and thus has flaws.
I suppose this was a lead-on from another more recent, but slightly-biased (the research is based in the UK) article:
BBC :: How ‘gay’ became children’s insult of choice
The word “gay” is now the most frequently used term of abuse in schools, says a report. How did it get to be so prevalent and why do children use homophobic insults to get at each other?
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On the universe⊠in Children of Dune
» talfryn.netThe assumption that humans exist within an essentially impermanent universe, taken as an operational precept, demands that the intellect become a totally aware balancing instrument. But the intellect cannot react thus without involving the entire organism. Such an organism may be recognized by its burning, driving behavior. And thus it is with a society treated as an organism. But here we encounter an old inertia. Societies move to the goading of ancient, reactive impulses. They demand permanence. Any attempt to display the universe of impermanence arouses rejection patterns, fear, anger, and despair. Then how do we explain the acceptance of prescience? Simply: the giver of prescient visions, because he speaks of an absolute (permanent) realization may be greeted with joy by humankind even while predicting the most dire events.
The universe is just there; that’s the only way a Fedaykin can view it and remain the master of his senses. The universe neither threatens nor promises. It holds things beyond our sway: the fall of a meteor, the eruption of a spiceblow, growing old and dying. These are the realities of this universe and they must be faced regardless of how you feel about them. You cannot fend off such realities with words. They will come at you in their own wordless way and then, then you will understand what is meant by ‘life and death’. Understanding this, you will be filled with joy.
~ Frank Herbert, in Children of Dune, book III of the Dune Chronicles
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Jacqueline speaks
» talfryn.netNot me, but Dame Jacqueline Wilson, bestselling author of children’s books (whenever I read that name, I hear it being called out in the voice of one of my cub scouts, who likes to call me by that name, in full, and I’d refuse to respond).
From BBC: Dame’s fears for ‘adult’ children
“I think children act like adults at an alarmingly early age,” said the Tracy Beaker creator.
“It’s good that we want the best for our children nowadays, but perhaps we should remember they are only children and need a little loving guidance.”
Hmm, echoes of similar sentiments.
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âChildren âdamagedâ by materialismâ
» talfryn.netMost adults in the UK believe that children’s well-being is being damaged because childhood has become too commercial, a lifestyle poll has found.
“Unless we question our own behaviour as a society we risk creating a generation who are left unfulfilled through chasing unattainable lifestyles.”
Source: BBC News
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Mr Dickensâ lesson
» talfryn.net“… these losses, severe though they may be, remind us of what no person can take, and that is our minds and our imaginations.”
Daniel stuck up his hand.
“Yes, Daniel?”
“Where are our imaginations?”
“Out there, Daniel… … And in here.”
“Close your eyes,” he said to Daniel, “and in a voice only you can hear, say your name. Say it to yourself only.”
“Let’s all do it,” said Mr Watts. “Close your eyes and silently recite your name.”
The sound of my name took me to a place inside my head. I already new that words could take you into a new world, but I didn’t know that on the strength of one word spoken for my ears only I would find myself in a room that no one else knew about.
I do not know what you are supposed to do with memories like these. It feels wrong to want to forget. Perhaps this is why we write these things down, so we can move on.
But at this point I am always reminded of what Mr Watts once told us kids about what it is to be a gentleman. It is an old-fashioned view. Others, and these days I include myself, will want to substitute ‘gentleman’ with ‘moral person’. He said that to be human is to be moral, and you cannot have a day off when it suits.
~ Lloyd Jones, Mister Pip
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Dune
» talfryn.netThe backcover of this first book in the chronicles describes Dune as a ‘stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, environmentalism and politics‘, in what is ‘undoubtedly the grandest epic in science fiction.’
I fully agree with this claim, although I like Star Wars too (more for its vast alien universe and action, less for its black-and-white, good-and-evil, Jedi-vs-Sith morality). George Lucas himself did once say that it was Dune which inspired Star Wars. And Dune is much, much more sophisticated and draws more parallels to the real world. Ecology, religion, politics, philosophy, and lots of action and plot twists - it’s everything I could have asked for in a book. All my interests… all in one package!
The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called “spannungsbogen” - which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing.
“To the working planetologist [ecologist], his most important tool is human beings,” his father said. “You must first cultivate ecological literacy among the people.”
Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.
“You must gauge the approaching maker carefully,” Stilgar had explained. “You must stand close enough that you can mount it as it passes, yet not so close that it engulfs you.”
When law and duty are one, united by religion, you never become fully conscious, fully aware of yourself. You are always a little less than an individual.
Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is true of humans in the finite space of a planetary ecosystem as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the ecosystem, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive.
“There’s an internally recognized beauty of motion and balance on any man-healthy planet,” Kynes said. “You see this beauty a dynamic stabilizing effect essential to all life. Its aim is simple: to maintain and produce coordinated patterns of greater and greater diversity. Life improves the closed system’s capacity to sustain life. Life - all life - is in the service of life.”
“The thing the ecologically illiterate don’t realize about an ecosystem,” Kynes said, “is that it’s a system. A system! … A system has order, a flowing from point to point. If something dams that flow, order collapses. The untrained might miss that collapse until it was too late. That’s why the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.”
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The Unbearable Lightness of Being
» talfryn.netWhat had drawn me to Milan Kundera’s bestselling novel, unbeknownst to me when I first glanced through it in the bookshops, was its underlying existentialist nature.
Are our lives burdened by the weight of our chores and our missions, or are we burdened by life because of its very lightness, for it is afterall but a sketch, and we struggle to attach some significance to our existence? Einmal ist keinmal?
At times comical, at times tragic, at times - once too often - lusty, this is, despite its title, a heavyweight. Although only 300 pages long, it took me more than two weeks to finish this book (compared to a few days for Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy!). In its interwoven stories tracing the lives of a few entirely believable characters (including a German Shepherd), it explores some (sometimes very mature) philosophical and political themes amidst an Eastern European historical backdrop. This is not a book for everyone, but if you have the patience, you’ll definitely be rewarded.
Some excerpts:
He remained annoyed with himself until he realized that not knowing what he wanted was actually quite natural.
We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.
There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?
Our day-to-day life is bombarded with fortuities or, to be more precise, with the accidental meetings of people and events we call coincidences.
They are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurrence int a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of an individual’s life.
Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress.
It is wrong, then, to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences, but it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty.
Being a woman is a fate Sabina did not choose. What we have not chosen we cannot consider either our merit or our failure. Sabina believed that she had to assume the correct attitude to her unchosen fate. To rebel against being born a woman seemed as foolish to her as to take pride in it.
… living in truth, lying neither to ourselves nor to others, was possible only away from the public: the moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that eye, and nothing we do is truthful.
Tereza kept stroking Karenin’s head, which was quietly resting in her lap, while something like the following ran through her mind: There’s no particular merit in being nice to one’s fellow man. She had to treat the other villagers decently, because otherwise she couldn’t live there. Even with Tomas, she was obliged to behave lovingly because she needed him. We can never establish with certainly what part of our relations with others is the result of our emotions - love, antipathy, charity, or malice - and what part is predetermined by the constant power play among individuals.
True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind’s true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental dĂ©bĂącle, a dĂ©bĂącle so fundamental that all others stem from it.
Sometimes you make up your mind about something without knowing why, and your decision persist by the power of inertia. Every year it gets harder to change.
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Labels
» talfryn.net… I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone, or that’s an evil one, because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels.
~ Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass
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The grossness of over-realism
» talfryn.netAs I was viewing the trailers for upcoming film Beowulf, a sudden jolt of repulsion hit me. The graphics and cinematics were great… yes, it looked life-like, but it was too real (and yet, not real). Angelina Jolie and Anthony Hopkins didn’t just look weird. They looked freaky. And I didn’t think “wow!”… I thought “yuck”. Which surprised me just as much, for I thought I should be impressed by the quality of the CGI and rendering.
Today while looking through BBC’s Day in Pictures, I felt it again - look at pic #4… I thought it rather unnerving.
I decided to find out what exactly it is that I’m feeling when I see these things, and I discovered the existence of the Uncanny Valley hypothesis:
Stated simply, the idea is that if one were to plot emotional response against similarity to human appearance and movement, the curve is not a sure, steady upward trend. Instead, there is a peak shortly before one reaches a completely human âlookâ… but then a deep chasm plunges below neutrality into a strongly negative response before rebounding to a second peak where resemblance to humanity is complete.
This chasmâthe uncanny valley of Doctor Moriâs thesisârepresents the point at which a person observing the creature or object in question sees something that is nearly human, but just enough off-kilter to seem eerie or disquieting. The first peak, moreover, is where that same individual would see something that is human enough to arouse some empathy, yet at the same time is clearly enough not human to avoid the sense of wrongness.
Source: Dave Byrant, The Uncanny Valley
More related reads:
A Walk in the Valley of the Uncanny
Monsters of Photorealism
The Undead Zone -
Subdued voices? Not on the web!
» talfryn.netDear friends, Today, our petition to China and the UN Security Council to stop the brutal crackdown on peaceful Burmese protesters is being delivered to the world in a full page ad in the Financial Times worldwide — but the ad was rejected by other newspapers like the South China Morning Post and the Singapore Straits [...] -
âBlessed Unrestâ
» talfryn.netI knew that picking this book up would mark the start of a period of time in which I would be rendered incapable of accomplishing anything remotely constructive… other than reading the book… which is precisely why I only picked it up after I had (more or less) finished writing up my thesis (it’s still [...] -
1-minute green films
» talfryn.netPublic voting for the Friends of the Earth’s green film competition is now open. Even if you’re not placing a vote for the People’s Choice award, some of the entries are quite interesting to watch. -
Feeling bad about cheating?
» talfryn.netWhen you cheat on your partner you add to the heartbreak, pain and jealousy in the atmosphere. Cheatneutral offsets your cheating by funding someone else to be faithful and NOT cheat. This neutralises the pain and unhappy emotion and leaves you with a clear conscience. ~ cheatneutral.com Sceptics of carbon offsetting will appreciate this short spoof. How [...]
