Mind altering substances



I thoroughly enjoy using the 'first do no harm' principle when it comes to controversial subjects, as in this case, 'mind altering substances'. Allow me to give an example, which if you haven't encountered already, chances are you know someone that has, nuisance neighbours!

 

So they love to play jungle music through the night and sleep all day, that's perfectly acceptable to me. However, if the volume of that music is so high it disturbs my peace and causes me 'harm', then I certainly do have a problem. I feel everyone has the right to do as they please in the privacy of their own home as long as it causes no harm to others.

 

Back to mind altering substances, Absinthe being a particular favourite of those that choose the Bohemian lifestyle, but most would equate illegal drugs I guess, again, I strictly adhere to the harm principle. Sherlock Holmes resorted to cocaine when he needed stimulation and I do empathise with him, how many days, weeks, months have I spent in the gaping maw of the black dog when there has been nothing to spike my intellectual curiosities. Now I am married, with children, I no longer participate in the heavy stuff to give me that release I need, because it may not just harm me. If by using these substances, I put myself in a position where I harm those closest to me, or mentally/physically harm myself and leave my loved ones to care for me or even grieve for me, that is going against my own principles, which I try never to do.

 

So when asked my opinion on mind altering substances, I have to say, 'First do no harm'. The problem is, where do we stop? Should I not be a construction worker because there are inherent risks, which could harm my family if I have a fatal accident? Or should we stick to the 'First do no harm' in the sense that only if my actions would lead to me causing directly harm to others, it is wrong? I do feel for the latter, the nuisance neighbour after being told repeatedly to turn the music down, but ignoring such requests, is obviously, deliberately, doing harm to others. Sherlock Holmes, locking himself in his room for days on end, with no food and injecting himself with cocaine, is not violating the principle, because he has locked himself away. Certainly after effects of concern or grief may occur, but the basis of the principle has not been violated.

 

So in conclusion I would say if you choose to use mind altering drugs and are fully aware of any risks to health and you lock yourself away so you cannot harm others while under the influence, go right ahead and use them. It's not something I personally use, nor advocate use of, but neither do I presume to judge or break people's free will of choice. Stick to the no harm principle and feel free to do as you please, laws after all are in constant flux and at the whim of politicians, not the people!



Taking the Psycho's out of Psychoanalysis



Reading an article, is psychoanalysis still relevant today? I pretty much answered in the negative and left it at that. Then I was pushed to actually 'read' the article and it's still a no, but, I do feel it fair to develop my answer just a tad for the uninitiated, so here goes.

 

So Sigmund Freud, a Victorian, invents an 'idea' (And remember ideas can become memes and once they go viral, are bulletproof, even with no primary evidence to support the idea), were talking 1910 here and he calls it, 'Psychoanalysis'.

 

So you have a problem, lets say depression, so Freud starts digging around in your head planting whack job ideas in your unconscious mind and magically, like a magician pulling the white rabbit out of his hat, finds that not only do you want to kill your father, but you also want to make babies with your mother! To be honest I think Freud was having some client projection problems in reverse and he was getting all his mental health issues out there, not the other way round.

 

Now thanks to Freud and his 'Oedipus complex', it is difficult to enjoy Sophocles trilogy: The Theban Plays the way I used to, despite the fact Freud just made up a complete load of crap, but I digress.

 

Freud is a lot like Karl Marx, in that Marx claimed to be compiling a 'scientific approach' to economic understanding. In fact Karl Popper thoroughly debunked the works of Marx and Engels as pure bunk because their works failed the falsifiability test. This he also applied to Psychoanalysis:

 

'As Popper represents it, the central problem in the philosophy of science is that of demarcation, i.e., of distinguishing between science and what he terms ‘non-science’, under which heading he ranks, amongst others, logic, metaphysics, psychoanalysis, and Adler's individual psychology... Popper accordingly repudiates induction and rejects the view that it is the characteristic method of scientific investigation and inference, substituting falsifiability in its place.

 

It is easy, he argues, to obtain evidence in favour of virtually any theory, and he consequently holds that such ‘corroboration’, as he terms it, should count scientifically only if it is the positive result of a genuinely ‘risky’ prediction, which might conceivably have been false.

 

For Popper, a theory is scientific only if it is refutable by a conceivable event. Every genuine test of a scientific theory, then, is logically an attempt to refute or to falsify it, and one genuine counter-instance falsifies the whole theory.'

 

Freud's Psychoanalysis was not, has not and likely never will be able to withstand the rigorous testing of the scientific method. It was a great idea that has stood the test of time to the Nth degree, he has his devoted disciples, in the same way Marx has his followers and neither party can ever be shown evidence to falsify the ideas of Marx or Freud, because the whole point of their work is the ideas are not falsifiable, the facts are shoe horned to fit the belief system of the acolytes.

 

Which brings me to the point of despair that in the 21st Century, even PhD professors still lack the most basic critical thinking skills or even a working knowledge of the scientific method. I can imagine the uneducated, and especially students, following the Dogma of Marx and to some degree Freud, but to expect normally intelligent and matured adults to swallow the dogma wholesale is ludicrous.

 

Try Cognitive behavioural therapy if you must try anything, it's based on Ancient Greek Philosophy, not plays, it works mostly by not telling you subconsciously you want to stab your father whilst raping your mother, rather it makes you in to an Ancient Greek Philosopher by telling you to question your own beliefs! You know that little voice that's always talking to you, question the validity of it's arguments, ask for evidence, that sort of thing. It works almost immediately and it's something, critical thinking skills, that should be drummed in from primary school upwards, that way I wouldn't have the need to write these articles!

 



So, you want to be an intellectual...

 

Lets make this clear, I am not an intellectual, when I listen to the William tell overture, I do automatically think of the Lone Ranger and I do get excited like a child again and sing along! I am if anything, Bohemian, I have both artistic and intellectual tendencies, but am not by any stretch an intellectual, no matter what the enemies I have crushed in intellectual discourse may say about me ;)

 

Out of curiosity, because I am that way inclined, I did a search for how to become more intellectual. It came up with dross and dirge by people that obviously are not intellectuals about how to become intellectuals; read books, watch educational T.V. programmes, listen to classical music &c.

 

I'm going to bullet point this for you in the simplest fashion I can so you can at least make a start:

• Writers
• Philosophers
• Social Scientists

They are your intellectual groups, if you don't fit in that category I'm sorry but you're not a proper, classified intellectual.

 

Now you might site Richard Dawkins as an intellectual, many have, but he was a physical scientist, Biologist and a good one at that. Intellectual? No way! Look at the mess he made of the atheist movement with 'The God delusion' and going on channel 4 with his half cocked diatribes against religion, he didn't have a clue what he was talking about!

 

Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Adam Smith, Marx, et al; true intellectuals that fit the above categories who's ideas have influenced the shaping of world events and stood the tests of time. Sure they all have their flaws in parts, but that's the beauty of being an intellectual, no matter if down the line ideas are over turned and changed, you still felt their impact and all political Philosophy is a mere footnote to Plato's 'Republic'.

 

You want to be more intellectual? Swallow some Philosophy or a branch of the Social Sciences, get a degree in Politics, Philosophy and economics if you like and then write those ideas down and change the world!



Literature's return on investment



It was Montaigne that said when he has one of his black dog days, he would sit and read a book for an hour and find the darkness had passed.

 

I had a conversation with a young lady on Tuesday about the books we read during our various life cycles. During my childhood years I grew an addiction to fantasy genre literature, this was highly likely triggered by reading Greek Mythology and watching the 'Sinbad' movies alongside classics such as 'clash of the Titans'. Being a young boy I lapped up all those fantastical monsters, Gods and heroes that saved the day. Every little boy wants to be a hero and deep down I probably still feel the same way. I also read because it was a way of escaping the harsh realities of my world and as Montaigne pointed out, it can work for adults also.

 

Then this lady said, you know, I used to read all the time, but then came college and university and I switched to knowledge books. And I said that's such a shame, because I used to read fiction with a passion, but I got to a certain age, where self imposed expectations saw me taking up 'knowledge books' as a sort of, 'You have to grow up at some point'. That point was me saying I need to learn something that will get me a job that pays good money, gains me respect, status and enough time to take a holiday so I can relax and read some fiction! I also wanted to beat lesser beings in intellectual argumentation, not just beat people, in Economic discussions I openly and publicly destroyed their puny arguments, I smashed them for daring to contradict the power of my self earned and hard won knowledge!

 

I regret that now, feel guilty in fact and If I could turn back the clock or even apologise to those people I smashed...

 

Now the lady in question is reading 'knowledge' books about her passion and I would never dissuade any one from that, hypocrite would spring to mind. What I would say is, I personally have enjoyed fiction and I have pushed myself to master a knowledge subject for status, respect and power, but have now returned to reading great literature and occasionally fantasy fiction, because I have learned a valuable lesson, something I told a person last week who put herself down for not being intellectual enough in her mind.

 

'Knowledge is a fleeting and ever changing topic'. Ideas, which she has by the bucket load, ideas can change humanity forever. The wheel was an idea, so was fire, so on throughout history, Ideas are most important, not knowledge. Aristotle was a very knowledgeable man on a variety of topics, but most would reach for Richard Dawkins if they wanted an easy read on Evolution, not Aristotle.

 

Fiction, the great works of literature can feed our brains, especially if we take something we enjoy reading and there's nothing wrong with reading 'children's' fiction as an adult. I have learned more philosophy and moral compassion from Alice's adventures in wonderland that from reading war and peace!

 

The bonus is we can have a face to face discussion about the latest novel we read. Who wants to sit and listen to me espouse the delights of the 8th edition of David Beggs' 'Economics'? However If I am at a coffee table with a couple of fellow readers and I mention I have just finished Kafka's great 'Metamorphosis', no doubt we could spend hours getting lost in the meaning behind that story.

 

Fiction will not give you a monetary return on your time perhaps, but it will make you more friends, make you a more interesting person to be around and hopefully make you a happier person in the process.

 

All that non-fiction can do is answer questions. It's fictions business to ask them. - Richard Hughes

 



My philosophy



Devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning...it's not about salary...it's not about status...when I give my time, when I make someone smile after feeling sad, it's as close to healthy as I ever feel...do the kinds of things that come from the heart...you'll be overwhelmed with what comes back.

Shouldn't we all be a 'black knight'.

I am a resilient man, I didn't survive nearly 40 years of hardship not being resilient, but even I have my moments akin to a persons sugar levels crashing, sometimes, too often lately, my optimism level crashes and it feels like the world is falling in on me.

 

My preferred tonic for that at moment is to blast some music that I really enjoy loud, through my earphones until my mood lifts, but I did wonder, could I not be more like the 'Black Knight' and challenge my perceptions much more vigorously?

 

(for those younger readers who don't know what I'm on about, please watch this clip)

 

Seriously, what can we not learn from the Black Knight? We lose our job, "Tis but a scratch", we lose our home because we can't pay the mortgage, "I've had worse", Arguments with whoever, "Come on you pansy", You go through divorce, "Oh! Had enough have we? Come back and take what's coming to you, you yellow bastard! Come back here and take what's coming to you! I'll bite your legs off!"

 

As Ed Miliband and co. can tell you, it's all about the spin doctoring and turning negatives in to positives. We should all aspire to be more like Monty Python's 'Black Knight' and if you need a reminder to cheer yourself up, always look on the bright side of life.



Why I reject the cultural climate

In conversation today ( a real one too, none of that text/email/facebook/ whats app &c malarkey) we got talking about the culture of today (Don't I always end up talking about culture?) and how if we don't have the latest smart phone, twitter, facebook, &c, we are deemed to be some alien sub-species that people read about in very old history books.

 

I was lucky enough to be born in an age before Internet even existed. I used to play outside, in the sun! If it was snowing, I threw snowballs! I knew my neighbours and most of them were my auntie!

 

Unfortunately I chose to write as an expression of my art and seemingly to get 'stuff' out 'there' you need social networking sites to push yourself forward. Saying that I try to follow the cultural climate as little as possible.

 

Talking heads telling us what 'art' is, how to dress, what phone, what laptop, what to eat, drink, think! We're walking blindly down a slippery slope to Orwell's '1984' and it is the minority that are rebelling against it.

 

I have an old Nokia that doesn't even have a camera, I do have an Ipod, but it is ancient and very handy for the gym. I have a P.C. but not an Ipad. There are certain things we 'need' which has meant when essential, I have moved with the times, but in the main I always keep in mind this analogy:

 

If I'm stranded on a desert island, do I really care if I have the latest brand phone, designer clothes, poshest house, eye wateringly expensive car, or any other frippery. I reject this materialist culture with a passion and if people want to get snarky about it, who cares, my kids are on a collision course for the pain of materialistic greed, someone has to take a stand and it may as well start with me!