Category: Psychology

Aristotle, Ethics, Philosophy, Psychology

Shame There

Does seeing cruelty make us more or less likely to engage in it? Catalunya has just banned bullfights. But I saw one in Colombia nearly 20 years ago and felt I could see the nobility in it which Hemingway describes in ‘Death in the afternoon’.

Montaigne though thinks cruelty to animals does desensitise us:

Those natures that are sanguinary towards beasts discover a natural proneness to cruelty. After they had accustomed themselves at Rome to spectacles of the slaughter of animals, they proceeded to those of the slaughter of men, of gladiators.

He also points out Karma was alive and kicking in Roman France:

The religion of our ancient Gauls maintained that souls, being eternal, never ceased to remove and shift their places from one body to another; mixing moreover with this fancy some consideration of divine justice, they said that God assigned it another body to inhabit, more or less painful, and proper for its condition:

If it had been valiant, he lodged it in the body of a lion; if voluptuous, in that of a hog; if timorous, in that of a hart or hare; if malicious, in that of a fox, and so of the rest, till having purified it by this chastisement, it again entered into the body of some other man.

But if we think animals deserve our humanity, only, to keep in check our brutality to each other, the story of Koko the Gorilla suggests they are well able to judge us too.

Koko, a 40 year old female Gorilla has mastered the American Sign Language for 2000 words. But like the Border Collie which has learnt the name of 4000 stuffed toys, it’s easy to dismiss this as trial and error ‘behaviourism’ – action for reward with nothing ‘thought’ in between.

The story told by the scientist who oversees Koko suggests differently:

“It happened by accident – someone sent a DVD about primates and I didn’t really look at it, but it was playing when I looked and saw Koko watching a graphic bushmeat scene. I hadn’t previewed it like I should have. The next day Koko picked up an insert from a newspaper and it was a supermarket ad. She held up a section full of pictures of meat and signed “Shame there.”

So simple, but so powerful as a summary of what we’re capable of. As Aristotle said we are the best and worst of animals.

Ethics, Life, Philosophy, Psychology

Five Minutes

What is time? Judging by my day today, five minutes is the difference between happy and sad, frustration, tears, pressure in the chest cavity and making it just in time – or just too late.

As Kierkegaard said, the demands of the ‘ethical phase’ of life are unlimited. And they lead ultimately to failure and despair. 

But perhaps not. Five minutes is also long enough to clear your thoughts, take a breath and change the internal weather. A smile, a shrug, a stoical thought and a moment’s reflection before marching on. 

It all gets done, and if the demands are unlimited, the rewards are too – a big hug from a small child, a smile of thanks from a good person you’ve helped and the sense of being appreciated, needed and loved.

As the philosopher king and Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote in his Meditations:

The only rewards of our existence here are an unstained character and unselfish acts.

It’s not all bad meeting the insatiable needs of others, so long as you save the odd five minutes for yourself.

Language, Life, Psychology

Sacre Bleu

A splendid weekend en famille à Paris was marred only by two extraordinarily slooowly served meals. I’d write Zzzzz. But with four children, from 4 to 8 years old, over an hour of waiting – each time – for any food was more @!&£.

I was less bothered than the people I was with. Perhaps because having lived in Paris, I find surly service strangely reassuring. As a Parisien taxi driver told me on my last visit:

God, he is deciding to make a very beautiful country. He is making it very big and putting beautiful countryside and animals in it. He is giving it very good food and very good drink. But then he is realising every-body will want to live here. Merde. So he has an ideé! He puts French people there, so nobody else will want to stay!

In fact once you get the hang of French ‘pipple’ they are quite straightforward. First contact is often brusque – borderline rude – to a British taste (or Australian since we were with Aussies). But give as good as you get and add a bit of humour and you’re ‘best mates’ in no time. It’s as if there’s a threshold of rudeness, which you have to meet, to join ‘Le club français’. Too polite and you’re not worth the bother.

An inscription on the pillared back of Versailles shouts out in capital letters ‘To all the glories of France’. You can’t beat Paris: the Tour Eiffel, the Champs Élysées, crazy driving, le hot dog, le steak frites et le petit café to finish.

Add to that the people. Splendidly rude. But often warm, once the ‘first joust’ is done. It wouldn’t be la belle France without them.

Aristotle, Ethics, Life, Philosophy, Psychology

Character Forming

I read an interesting article in my old favourite the New Scientist this week. I’ve been ploughing through some accumulated backnumbers, the magazine having recently been forcibly rehabilitated as a format, after the missus trod on my Kindle and bust it.

What goes around comes around, as the rustling of magazine pages and the need for more light to read newsprint disturbs her slumber at lights out. I feel a shade guilty and remember that part of the reason I bought a Kindle was to be a more considerate bedfellow – and to save my dwindling night reading vision. More carrots and a new Kindle are in order.

Back to the point. The article’s writer Samuel Barondes says ‘personality’ is best understood as a composite of: dispositional traits, troublesome patterns, character strengths and sense of identity.

I like this idea. But a trying to remember it, sat on the Tube today, mutation and evolution intervened and I came up with a subtly different variant:

1) Innate preferences
2) Experiences
3) Bad traits
4) Our internal narrative.

Similar, but not quite the same. I’ve subconsciously pulled out experiences – and therefore, implicitly, the environment. Perhaps that’s because I increasingly believe much of what we are is shaped by chance and circumstances.

But ‘bad patterns’ or traits, as a significant part of who we all are, is a discovery. When you think about it we all have them. And when it comes to bringing them to life, Theophrastus, whom the article signposts, takes some beating. Theophrastus was a pupil of Aristotle and wrote extensively on flora. He also wrote a field guide to that most variegated of fauna – the human being.

The Characters of Theophrastus – a bit like Aristotle’s ‘On Physiognomy’ – tend towards the negative in people. Perhaps both disliked extremes and preferred the ‘golden mean’ as their prescription for the ‘good’ character. For his part Barondes says every culture values self-control, kindness and a sense of one’s place in the universe.

I read Theophrastus’s thirty ‘characters’, and to my growing embarrassment recognised myself strongly in two, and a little in another one. The good news, at least based on my list, is I can forgive myself a bit.

Some of my bad patterns are innate, some the fault of my environment. But my best defence against my ‘bad traits’ is an increasingly clear narrative if who I am and what I am for. Half-way through my life, I reckon the last element of ‘character’ is the one I can do most about.

We are all basically a self-edited ‘story’ looking backwards. And, following Aristotle, we are all the sum of our actions going forward. So I conclude it’s well worth continuing to pay proper attention to both. Theophrastus is a warning to those who don’t.

Achilles, Aristotle, Ethics, Life, Philosophy, Psychology, Truisms

The Eaves

Cycling to work every day I get a regular soaking. Decent waterproofs help. But there are days, when looking out of the kitchen window, I don’t fancy it much. A number of years ago in the book ‘Angry White Pyjamas’ I read a quote from the Hagakure – the Japanese Book of the Samurai. It advised stepping out from the eaves:

There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When meeting with a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road. But doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, you still get wet. When you are resolved from the beginning, you will not be perplexed, though you still get the same soaking. This understanding extends to everything.

I was reminded of this, in the week, by Montaigne’s similar write-up on the Roman Legions:

Their military discipline was much ruder than ours, and accordingly produced much greater effects. The jeer that was given a Lacedaemonian soldier is marvellously pat to this purpose, who, in an expedition of war, was reproached for having been seen under the roof of a house: they were so inured to hardship that, let the weather be what it would, it was a shame to be seen under any other cover than the roof of heaven. We should not march our people very far at that rate.

I don’t mind being rained on, but I’ve often thought I’d last about five minutes on a proper Roman or Medieval battlefield. Some glum milling about before, and then probably a spirited moment of excessive unavoidable bravery early doors followed by a sharp death. That sounds about my fate. I can only assume my forebears were quick to procreate, as I don’t reckon we’d have lasted long.

But my other pet theory is we were scouts and messengers. Sharp eyed endurance runners with a precise tongue. Who knows. The Hagakure is admirably clear on the matter: ‘Bravery and cowardice are not things which can be conjectured in times of peace. They are in different categories.’

Some Hagakure quotes are positively Aristotelian, take:

‘Intelligence is nothing more than discussing things with others. Limitless wisdom comes of this.’

But like Aristotle, with his theories on biles and humours – and posture, character and beards – not everything in the Hagakure is to modern tastes. As ‘Angry White Pyjamas’ also highlighted:

When one departs for the front, he should carry rice in a bag. His underwear should be made from the skin of a badger. This way he will not have lice. In a long campaign, lice are troublesome.

I’ll step out from the eaves in GoreTex and Lycra, but I draw the line at the skin of a badger.