Philosophy – Page 8 – Achilles & Aristotle

Wax on, wax off

Nine hours: aches in the triceps and the biceps, the adductors and the back, the shoulders and the groin – and a right pain in the butt cheeks.

Two bruised knees and the gait of an eighty year old – but it is done. No, not a karate training montage, but an old wooden floor made new.

Karate Kid’s Mr Miyagi would be proud. A front room floor is scraped and chipped free of decades of paint splashes, sanded and hammered and oiled and waxed.

And I am physically whacked. If I sit down I’ll be stuck down, so staying on my feet is the only option. But you can’t beat the sense of achievement of a laborious job well done. As TV Tropes rightly has it:

“Before Enlightenment, carry water, chop wood.
After Enlightenment, carry water, chop wood.”

— Buddhist Saying

Life, Philosophy

Pax Romana

Spending time with friends at New Year, a penny dropped – I do like my peace and quiet. I can do ‘gregarious’ in bursts. But in the main I’d rather be a respectful distance from folk having a good time. Ideally in the next room.

Perhaps, with the passage of years, I’m more interested in knowledge than conversation? The Platonic ideal of ‘justified true belief‘ appeals far more than the garrulous Socratic Method – especially when Google and Wikipedia are such reliable and immediate alternate sources.

I’m far more up for the first two legs of the Reithian ideal of inform, educate and entertain – although one excellent rediscovery this New Year’s has been a tall, well iced Gin and Tonic which puts me far more in the mood for the latter.

And perhaps this is the crux of it. As Russell Crowe famously said to a baying crowd in Gladiator: “Are you not entertained?” I recognise a duty to engage and take part, but after a few thrusts and parries, a lap or two around the sociability track and a couple of good conversational gambits – I’m done.

More booze and I’m nodding off, more chat and I’m reaching for the iPhone for facts and data… And so to the kitchen for my reliable friend the dishwasher. A pot, porcelain and pan-based puzzle of stacking and arrangement, which doesn’t answer back – peace at last.

Achilles, Life, Philosophy, Psychology

Sisyphus

Albert Camus, the French Algerian Existentialist, challenges us to be happy as Sisyphus. That Greek King was damned by Zeus to forever roll a boulder uphill, only to have it roll back down as soon as the summit was achieved.

For Camus, the human condition requires us to face the futility of Sisyphus – that we are alone in the universe without meaning or destiny, each pointlessly rolling our own boulder uphill. But Camus’s challenge to us, is to smile and be happy in the face of this futility – not sad or downcast.

And the lot of Sisyphus, was mine yesterday – faced with several hundredweight of miscellaneous building rubbish to shift, in a biblical downpour. Badly bagged, paint dripping from it, from a narrow alley to an unknown refuse site without proper parking or help.

Three bags in – I was Sisyphus. Drenched, cold, back stiff and a hamstring already taught. With dozens more bags and wood and board and plastic and blinds and rubble and cement and soaking dustsheets and rags and sharp stuff and awkward stuff and worst of all paint-dripping stuff. A ball ache to match the back ache.

Toying with chucking it in, taking shelter or hoping it would all go away, Monsieur Camus came to mind -smiling enigmatically, with the collar turned up on his French trench-coat…

All human existence was momentarily encapsulated in sacks, rubble and timbers. To be happy as Sisyphus, the triumph of the spirit over drudgery – the satisfaction of a thankless task well done.

And it was done. Drenched, back-breaking, four car loads of dripping, spiky, heavy building debris bit the dust. And a happy Sisyphus was I.

So much so, that after a couple of celebratory beers and a pepperoni pizza, I cheerfully armed myself with two chisels and cleared two staircases of carpet staples and nails.

Zeus himself would have been grudgingly impressed and Camus was right. Sisyphus, happy, is the satisfaction of a thankless task well done. And that’s about all there is to life – chin up, put a smile on your face and keep rolling that boulder.

Life, Philosophy, Psychology

Embodied

Blame René Descartes. Mind separated from body – dualism – was his big idea. “I think therefore I am” is probably a fair bet, but Thomas Aquinas got the whole story – we are but one; body and mind entwined.

If in doubt, check out the limbic system or the brain of a crocodile – or indeed the limbic system responding to a crocodile. Fright, fight and flight. Simple instinct doing automatically what nature intended, without the need for laboured thought. The body is more intelligent thank we think. Conscious thought is a bit-part player in most of what we are.

As an aside, I’m increasingly persuaded that the main block to artificial intelligence is not the number and speed of processors mimicking ‘neurones’ but the lack of ‘sensors’ – ie no body to carry so called embodied intelligence. Look at an iPhone – is it software or hardware? It’s neither – it’s both.

At the recommendation of two friends I’m trying ‘mindfulness meditation’ in pursuit of ‘inner peace’. And in the process it’s a shock to discover I am blissfully unaware – almost 100% of the time – of what my body is doing, feels like or needs. All I generally think about is what I’m thinking about.

Bodies get a raw deal, celebrated only for ‘beauty’, reviled for decline and decay. But like a well kept older car, a classic chassis is something to celebrate – and keep rust free and polished.

This week, in my fist ever eye test, I discover I have two healthy optic nerves, two unblemished retinas and scored a perfect 16 in the ‘puff’ test of eyeball pressure. My eyes will neither explode nor collapse in the foreseeable future. Marvellous.

Part of the point of ‘mindfulness’, I’m learning, is to recognise that there’s 70+ kilos of amazing living breathing body here as well as 1.5kg of grey matter.

Remembering you actually are your body – forgetting the contemporary obsession with how it looks – and instead marvelling that it lives and breathes and broadly speaking works, is harder to do than it seems.

Western philosophy has largely forgotten bodies since Aquinas. So I’m going East for a few weeks to meditate on the philosophical reconnection of mind with body. It’s no more complicated than breathing.

Life, Odysseus, Philosophy, Writing

Cogito ergonomics sum

I think therefore I am – ‘the cogito’ – is Descartes most famous contribution to philosophy. I might doubt everything else; that I am thinking is a certainty.

But thinking – and doing something about it – requires a comparative absence of distraction and ideally a modicum of comfort. And that’s where design comes in.

One of the reasons I’ve written less in the last few weeks is my new shiny iPhone 5. In many ways a splendid device. But more is sometimes less. And I find I can’t write on it.

It’s too big. I can’t reach the top corner ‘action’ buttons. It feels like it’s constantly going to tip over backwards – and tumble and smash into small, beautifully machined Apple pieces.

So I’m back tapping on the iPhone 4 (which I couldn’t give up despite a generous financial offer from a good friend). Fast, fluid, typing is a doddle again.

Ergonomics matter. Hard to think when you’re uncomfortable, hard to write when your hand hurts.

Technology isn’t always getting better. The iPhone 4 is my perfect writing device. Like Hemingway’s Moleskine or Remington’s typewriter, when it comes to writing iPhone 4 is the classic.