There is no true path



I come across a lot of people trying to figure out what their true calling, their true path in life, their mission of which if they found it they could live life with passion and to the full. Happiness incarnate, the secret formula to never having to work again.

 

I can tell you now I have followed Philosophy down the path of nihilism and asked the question of why we don't all commit suicide. Richard Dawkins can tell you we are an accident of evolution while Albert Camus can show you we stay alive out of force of habit more than anything else. Socrates can point out death is nothing to fear and Cicero can show you that life is long if you know how to live it.

 

Aristotle would have us work on the middle ground, not the endless pursuit of financial gain, neither a monkish life of abstinence and poverty. Socrates believed instead of the body beautiful, we should dedicate ourselves to improving our souls.

 

Well let me just say, after 40 years on this spinning planet, there is no absolute true path, there is no one passion, one all consuming thing that we must follow to the end of days. Am I the same person as when I was born? How about my thirteenth birthday? eighteen, twenty one, thirty?

 

The only thing I have absolutely retained from childhood is a love of reading. Fantasy fiction was my thing, now my tastes have changed and evolved and over the years I have encountered a wide range of interests.

 

No doubt my tastes, my pursuits, my aims and ambitions will change again over the next forty years. What I do know is, there is no true path other than the path you decide for yourself. Careers advisers, parents, friends, money, status, all will have an influence on the path you take, but the only true path in life is the one you give yourself, the one where you look in the mirror and you are happy with your choices.

 

Some will pursue financial gain, others to be a great parent or partner. Others will commit themselves to their art and live on subsistence wages. Some will devote themselves to helping others, while some will lie, cheat and steal their way through life.

 

The only person you are morally accountable to is the person you see in the mirror and if you can look yourself in the eye and honestly be proud of the path you have chosen, then you know you are on the right path and nothing anyone says should matter to you.

Insecurity and security overkill



Bruce Shneier - American security consultant

 

I want to talk about insecurity, why we all feel it, why we feel the need to get rid of it and why that need should stop.

 

13th January 2002, 46 year old airline pilot, Elwood Menear was checking in through security, when they found a pair of tweezers. They weren't on any banned list, but they paused, long enough for Menear to ask a sarcastic question. "Why are you worried about tweezers when I could crash the plane?" That would cost him a night in jail, suspension from US airways and months of legal battles before eventually being acquitted of 'making terroristic threats' and being able to go back to work.

 

Bruce Schneier commented, "There are precisely two things that have made air travel safer since 9/11: locks on cockpit doors, and teaching passengers that they have to fight back. ‘You can argue that there’s a third – sky marshals. But actually, once you tell people you have them, you don’t really need them. It’s the idea of sky marshals that makes us safer, not the marshals themselves."

 

And the point Schneier was making is, no matter how much 'stuff' you ban, terrorists will always be one step ahead. They are prepared to die on that plane, that's the difference.

 

So why do Governments want to make air travel so obnoxiously, tediously, painful? Not because they think it will make a jot of difference to actual safety, rather that it will ease the minds of it's citizens and offer 'security' and peace of mind.

 

Gone are the days of Hobbes' 'Brutal and short lives' and in are the creature comforts and complete switched off, uber safe lifestyles of Western Civilisations. We want to feel safe, we pay taxes so our Government will protect us from all harm and we need that security blanket that no one can hurt us.

 

News flash: Driving your car is more dangerous than flying in a plane. Our brains are all screwed up, to correct Aristotle, we are capable of rational thought, but we are not rational beings.

 

We react to things rather than listen to expert advice and think things through with a rational brain and we allow Governments to smother us in 'security blankets' that make life pretty unbearable whilst at the same time not really increasing our security at all.

 

In fact, when seatbelt laws were enforced in Britain, people felt 'safer' so they took greater risks on the roads. Far safer if compulsory steel spikes were fitted to steering wheels to impale our hearts in event of a crash and we would doubtless see road fatalities drop rather dramatically.

 

As comfortable Westerners we crave the pipe and slippers and look to Government to supply it, when in fact we should be more accepting of risk, to a degree, embrace freedoms more and live a happier lifestyle.