Merry Christmas! Or, 5 tips to staying sane over the festive season…

A puppy is for life, not just for Christmas – On the other hand, some of your more distant acquaintances (and some family!) may well only be for Christmas. Because you haven’t seen them for ages, it’s all too easy to slip straight back into last year’s arguments. If you know this happens, make a special effort to view them with fresh eyes, as if you’ve only just met. You’re unlikely to solve tensions of a lifetime over a few cold days in December; the arguments will only drag you down.

Loose lips sink ships – And nothing loosens them quicker than alcohol. If you’re already feeling irritated, a little too much liquid Christmas cheer will probably just cause you to say something you’d otherwise regret.

“I vant to be alone!” – Make time for yourself. Houses fill up over the festive period, creating less space and more friction, especially if you enjoy peace and quiet. Try going out for a walk occasionally. You never know, you might even enjoy the frosty scenery.

It’ll be lonely this Christmas… -  but if you’re on your own, or feeling lonely even around others, remember that for all the fuss, there’s nothing intrinsically special about these few days. All the cultural meaning we impart to it is man-made symbolism, created consicously & unconsciously through mutual reinforcement and over time. Christmas Day is also just the 25th of December, and New Year’s Day is just the 1st of January.

A change is gonna come – New Year’s Resolutions can sometime help move one from pre-contemplation into the contemplation phase of making changes, but unless planned carefully, they’re easily discarded making last-minute resolutions more likely to be a millstone around your neck or a reason to feel guilty about failing to make changes. So don’t make a resolution unless you’ve thought about it, and really mean it.

Feel free to add your own tips to the list!

A Very Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to everyone out there!

Mickey Mouse, Mammon, and the Pope

Disneyworld, Las Vegas, and the Vatican City. Three disparate locations; one shared phenomenon.

At Disney, it’s parade-time; in Vegas, it’s in effect as you walk onto the floor of a casino and observe the players; and in the Vatican City I saw it a week ago as the Pope was driven around St Peter’s Square.

All three places become home to communal acts of idolisation and worship. Despite different form, the essential emotional experience to participants is identical. The three locations are each overwhelmingly artificial; designed and built purely to facilitate worship. This deliberate other-worldliness is enforced by a shared obsession with pristine cleanliness within their borders, and a rigorously enforced exclusion of competing idols. Even the decor is carefully chosen to aggrandise the object of worship. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the tromp l’oeil clouds of Caesar’s Palace, and the fairytale castle of the Magic Kingdom all fulfil the same purpose.

It is the human condition to crave a shared spiritual experience and anyone watching the Champions League final earlier this evening saw football provide the medium, and Wembley Stadium the setting, for a similar emotional experience. It is a desire to be part of something bigger than oneself, and so achieve a sense of immortality and overcome the transience of life and the permanence of death. Religion, Mythology, Folklore, the idols of corporations (including the famous Mouse), and even more abstract concepts like Money, all fulfil this tribal need of allowing the propagation of a cultural meme to the next generation.

Later on the same day I saw the Pope, I was mulling over these ideas while sipping espresso in the Piazza Navona and watching tourists and locals go about their day. What were they really achieving? What was the fundamental meaning of all this travel and pseudo-pilgrimage? It reminded me of the concept of “bucket lists” and their wistful attempt to apply some quantitative criteria to measure the significance of a life. Is it really enough?

It’s a very human thing to want to be able to say you have achieved something in life, even it’s just to have been happy. People talk about the importance of “a good death”, sometimes equating it to a painless sudden death at an advanced age. But I rather think it’s more about achieving a sense of acceptance about death: what Erikson would describe as having enough Ego Integrity to no longer give death a sense of importance in life, and so no longer need idols to worship.

The Modern-Day Monk

It is not surprising that several guests at Friday’s Royal Wedding were anonymously quoted as “feeling jaded” yesterday. Anticipation of great events is commonly followed by a drained numbness, even if the event meets elevated expectations. Life thus passes by as a series of interspersed highs and, if not lows, mediocre neutrals. Is this the sum total of the human experience?

Man has historically found three ways to neutralise this nihilistic perspective: fame, religion and propagation.

Fame, with its associated glamour, can be fleeting or it can last a lifetime. Occasionally it outlasts its originating source and is considered worthy – or notorious – enough to be important to historical and cultural record. Whether transient or semi-permanent, its nourishment to the famous person is thin when weighed against the permanence of death. It can sustain the mind in the short-term, but is ultimately lacking.

To combat this failure of Temporal Power to assuage anomie, religion developed to offer believers escape from death, whether through reincarnation or heaven. Such Spiritual Might remains a comfort to many, channelling and guiding human emotion into soothingly predictable paths. Like Temporal Power, it offers individuals a larger sense of self that is part of a grander existence than Hobbes’ description of Man’s life as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”.

But for many, meaningful fame is impossible (the Warhol-esque 15 minutes of reality TV or social networking hardly counts) and religious faith escapes them, or is actively shunned. Frequently, their final refuge is propagation and it is a rare parent indeed that does not think of their children as the best thing they ever did.

Creating the next generation is certainly a valuable role; I would not want to see the human species wiped out! But does it truly offer a solution to the impermanence of man? I suggest not; the real essence of even the best of parents is lost from collective memory within at most four generations. As long as the parent does not think too deeply about this inevitable historical dissipation, Familial Legacy can substitute for either Temporal Power or Spiritual Might and stave off despair at the prospect of death.

What if none of the above are to the liking of the individual, if all are thought to fail the essential test of overcoming fear of death and giving life meaning, what then?

Enter the Modern-Day Monk.

The archetype of the man who seeks spiritual enlightenment through disengagement from the world is an ancient one. We see echoes of his presence in all the major world religions, mythologies and philosophies. Traditionally, the Monk has sought physical separation from the world; either to wander alone or in the company of select fellow travellers on a similar journey. He has used asceticism as a tool to aid enlightenment. Asceticism encourages the abandonment of sensual pleasure and material wealth, deeming these to be distractions from personal growth.

The Modern-Day Monk follows a different path to individuation. It is not physical abandonment of the world that is important, but intellectual detachment. This detachment from the value systems of others (the Temporal, Spiritual and Familial spheres) nonetheless permits material and emotional engagement with the world. He is able to weigh up and measure situations and people rapidly, allowing only positive effects through to his inner self. He comes across to others as tolerant and moderate, as he has no need to be otherwise. He enjoys the world, but does not let the world rule his inner heart. And in the face of new challenges, he has an inner core of willpower – a clear sense of self – to neutralise against torment.

The more philosophically (or religiously) minded will have already identified the characteristics outlined in the preceding four sentence as the Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and Fortitude respectively. The virtues are named Cardinal for being the hinge (L. cardo) upon which rests the door of life. It is not the door to a physical retreat from the world as the first step to an afterlife. It is a system to support and enhance our human desire to be part of the world, while not being ruled by it.

The Modern-Day Monk lives well, as well as wisely.

A Glittering Festive Tree

Susanoo, God of Storms, feuded violently with his sister Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess.

Susanoo’s actions proved so distasteful to Amaterasu that she retreated to a cave, hiding her light from the world and plunging it into the darkness of winter.

At the height of winter, the other gods of the Japanese Shinto pantheon planned to rouse her from her cave. They adorned a tree with jewels and bronze, burnished to a mirror shine.

Lured out by the racket of their merry dancing around the festive tree, Amaterasu peered out from her cave, and the ray of light so released was the Dawn. It glanced off the mirror and Amaterasu was fascinated by the beautiful face that looked back at her. She came out of the cave, and the other Gods quickly barred her retreat, ensuring the end of the long cold darkness.

On Christmas Eve, as millions follow the ancient pagan German tradition of decorating a tree with shiny baubles, albeit now to welcome the birth of Christ, it’s interesting to note that there is a distant echo of this adorning of a tree to wake a deity in a very different culture.

A Very Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it!

Wandering the Desert

At least three world religions were born in the Desert.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam all owe their origins to the baking heat and sparse environs of the desert landscape. Abraham, Moses, John the Baptist, Jesus Christ, Mohammed; they all had their greatest revelations when alone in desert (or at least very barren) landscapes. Depending on their leaning, the religously-minded would suggest that this is because communion with God is only possible either when Man divests himself of physical distractions and so can focus on spiritual matters, or when he undergoes sufficient physical and emotional turmoil to turn to God for salvation.

A secularist reading of the pattern would suggest that these individuals – already unusual or eccentric, and possibly predisposed to odd beliefs and experiences – sought out solitude because that predisposition led them to be dissatisfied with a mundane life. And then in that harsh environment, they became sufficiently physically distressed to become delirious, an experience they interpreted as spiritual in nature.

Whichever reading is true (and in the end, the answer that satisfies you most boils down to which interpretative model you have most faith in), wandering the desert has acquired symbolic significance as a rite of passage. Whether literal or metaphorical, the idea that Man has to separate himself from the rest of the world to achieve higher purpose is a theme common to both religion and mythology, as well as being present in several schools of philosophy.

My previous entry elicited an intriguing comment from Touch2Touch which tessellated elegantly with some of my own pre-existing thoughts, and inspired me to write a post on the theme of separation from others as a result of finding contentment, security and tranquillity in one’s own internal assessment of any given situation.

Social networks (using the term in its broadest sense, not the e-variety) can certainly help those who feel lost. They provide a means of temporarily laying off responsibility for one’s own actions, decision-making and emotional stability to others. Support systems can be vital in this context, but I always find myself cringing when people talk of supportive social networks in a longer-term sense. To me, this attitude belies the essential meaning of the word “support”. Before wanting support, the key question must surely be: “support to do what?”

I would suggest that the end goal is not to be permanently supported by others, constantly having to use friendships and acquaintances to buttress your own emotional and intellectual needs, but to feel strong and comfortable enough in one’s own skin to be independent of that need.

This requires uncommon clarity of thought and purpose, as well as an unusual degree of insight. It is also unlikely to result without a intense amount of self-confidence in the method by which these individuals assess the world. This will seem to border on arrogance, except that observers will notice the world bending around these individuals, moulding itself to their will, rather than hitting them head-on in a violent crash as inevitably happens to the genuinely arrogant.

Wandering the desert is not so painful for these individuals as it would be for others. They have an internal moral compass that generally points them in a direction they’re happy with, and seem to carry around a portable oasis that nourishes and refreshes them when need arises. They enjoy meeting fellow travellers; companionship and hospitality are good traditions and can bring fresh news. And sometimes they even travel together for a while with the more pleasant and wise of their fellow nomads. But eventually the call of the empty dune summons them back to a solitary journey.

The great unanswered question should be: “what lapse of thought called the prophets of world religion back from the desert to commune once more with an unwise and ungrateful population?”

Miserere Mei – Church v State

Image via Wikipedia

The oldest extant statute in English law is the Distress Act of 1267, specifying as it does the requirement for plaintiffs to pursue claims for damages (“distresses”) through the courts, rather than attempt to extort them by other means.

The Distress Act is part of the Statue of Marlborough issued by King Henry III. While the Distress Act contains the only laws not since repealed or superseded in the intervening centuries, other elements of the Statute of Marlborough took a long time to disappear from our legal system.

One such area was Benefit of Clergy, a provision originally enacted by Henry II, grandfather of the aforementioned Henry III. Prior to Henry II’s reign, English courts were presided over by both a representative of the Church and a representative of the state. Henry II was nothing if not a builder of centralised state power and disliked what he perceived as an infringement of ecclesiastical authority upon secular matters of crime and punishment. His creation of law courts without Church representation led to a power struggle with his former friend Thomas Becket, by then Archbishop of Canterbury but known to all schoolchildren since as a turbulent priest killed by miserable drones.

Becket in death achieved something he failed to during life. The public outcry over his murder was such that Henry was forced to permit the Church its own separate ecclesiastical courts, and any member of the clergy could choose to be tried under this system instead of by the secular state. This was much to the accused’s advantage as the ecclesiastical courts were generally far more lenient in both their trials and their punishments.

To gain this Benefit of Clergy, a priest had to demonstrate that he was indeed a man of the cloth. Initially this was done quite literally, by turning up appropriately garbed in religious clothes and with a tonsured head. This was later broadened into a literacy test, which allow educated laymen to also be tried under ecclesiastical court authority. The literacy test chosen was, appropriately enough, the ability to read from the Bible. Technically any section could be chosen… but the English legal system has always had a fondness for theatricality and ironic whimsy; Psalm 51 became the perennial favourite:

Miserere mei, Deus, secundum misericordiam tuam

 

O God, have mercy upon me, according to thine heartfelt mercifulness

Despite being watered down over the years, Benefit of Clergy was not fully expunged from the English legal system until the relatively late date of 1823. But conflict between Church and State authority remains. The protection from the criminal justice system afforded to paedophile priests by some in the Catholic Church, the growing use of Islamic Sharia Law even in secular Muslim states, the increasing encroachment of fundamentalist values into politics in America, the tension between secular and religious elements in Gaza and the West Bank, Hindu nationalism in parts of India… I could go on, but the list will be all too familiar to those reading this entry.

I do not think there is necessarily something specific to religion that leads to these tensions. I prefer to think of the conflict as something to be expected when two competing spheres of authority attempt to exert power over the same system. While religious faith can give its adherents a fixity of belief that can sometimes override logic, the same is true of anyone with a strong belief system whether religious or secular. The political world – and any pub by around 10pm – is full of such people.

The lesson to be learnt from the ever-present conflict between religious authority and secular power is that a nation can never truly be ruled by one element alone; Man is neither wholly rational nor wholly emotional, but a complex amalgam of the two, with the balance continually shifting in response to intrinsic and extrinsic variables. A shrewd powerbroker knows when to appeal to one and when to use another, just as the wise man knows when to use logic and when to trust his instincts.

The Happiness Equation

The Ancients worshipped a varied pantheon with a myriad of priests. In a creditable effort to simplify matters, people decided that a more streamlined arrangement was needed. After a temporary flirtation with a Trinity, the modern world setted on dualism, it being easier to practise as it has one fewer deity to remember. The twin gods of Money and Time have fought for the souls of men ever since.

Money has the High Priests of the Square Mile and the Central Banks, worshipping in cathedrals dedicated to either Keynes or Hayek (there being something of a sectarian schism between those two tribes), whilst Time has New Age Gurus, the Remnant of the Older Religions and the ever-thriving self-help and positive psychology industry fighting in its corner. Management Consultants merrily straddle the netherworld betwixt the two religions, drawing on elements of each mythology to subtly further their vampiric aim of feeding off the life energy of everyone else…

Both religions offer the prospect of happiness. Put simply: the more money you have, the more of a shield you have from the viccissitudes of life and the more power you have to acquire things that please you; and the more time you have, the more opportunity you have to enjoy your purchases and to be with those whose company you appreciate. Both approaches therefore essentially worship the same god behind the curtains: Control.

The most fundamental thing people seek is a sense of control over their lives: a sense of choice, and of decisions freely made from a position of insight.

Money and Time are just proxy measures of this inner sense of calm. Like any proxy measure, the degree of linkage can vary. I’ve blogged before that the relationship of Money to Happiness is sigmoidal, with a significant “flat” part in the graph where only small incremental increases in happiness occur between solid (but modest) incomes and truly astronomical ones. I’ve also disccussed how being more efficient can lead to more free time, but the question still arises of what to actually do with that free time in order to be happy.

Money and Time are necessary but not sufficient conditions for a sense of control over one’s destiny. Some achieve this by paradoxically ceding all control to another entity: a God, a Political Party, a Cause. Despite my tongue-in-cheek commentary in the first couple of paragraphs, absolute faith in an extraneous entity remains a potent way of reaching a sense of destiny, and so, inner peace.

However, those of us whose personality and natural inclination veers away from the prospect of giving up our individuality to a larger body, this is cannot be a solution. Religion, Politics, and Causes offer happiness only if you can give of yourself fully to them so your own individual existence no longer matters, and only the wider project does. A cult member is blissfully happy in their belief system, but a chink of doubt quickly leads to collapse of the edifice.

For the rest of us, we have to look within to create our own sense of destiny and meaning, and so achieve happiness. Money and Time form the solid foundations, Insight provides the labour, and Control creates the conduit to Happiness.

The Anti-hero

There are two kinds of anti-hero: the Everyman, and the character that contributors to the TV Tropes website would call the Magnificent Bastard. I’ve always loved reading and watching the exploits of the second kind of anti-hero.

The Everyman type is typically thrown into a difficult situation, fights against adversity and his baser nature and at the end of the piece, if not actually triumphant, at least survives in some way to fight another day. These are the Holden Caulfields, Arthur Dents, Winston Smiths and even Homer Simpsons of the world. They’re buffeted about, occasionally managing to stand up and make a difference, but rarely have full insight into what they’re doing and more usually get out of dangerous situations through a combination of luck and tenacity.

The Magnificent Bastard is entirely different. He is still a flawed character, but his flaw is not one of general mediocrity but that of a gaping mental chasm created by a deep psychological imbalance. These are the characters one loves to hate, the characters that are not all unsympathetic to the reader/viewer but those that society tells us we should not really be sympathising with. The sympathy is generated not so much because we approve of their actions, but because their actions reveal something of their flaw, and we – perhaps still undeservedly – admire them for their attempt to compensate for their flaw. Not for them a carefully planned course of therapy to find inner peace; these characters take revenge on the world that they feel made them this way.

Classics of the type would be Milton’s Lucifer (histrionic narcissist), Shakespeare’s Iago (morbidly jealous) and Macbeth (inferiority complex), Dorian Grey (another narcissist) and Machiavelli’s idealised Prince. Modern equivalents would be Patrick Bateman (narcissistic rage) and psychopaths like Hannibal Lecter, Gordon Gekko and James Bond. Not that they’re all men (though there tends to be preponderance of male characters), as women such as Becky Sharp, Miranda Frost and The White Witch also get in on the act.

I started thinking about this topic while chatting about the 80s supersoap Dallas elsewhere. You may have read recently that Larry Hagman (who of course played star of the show JR Ewing) recently won substantial damages against Citigroup for mismanagement of his investments. Naturally, that led to a slew of JR-related puns and quips, plus some nostalgic reminiscing of what a fun bit of escapist entertainment Dallas was. The character that made the show so watchable was JR Ewing, and he’s pretty much an archetypal example of the Magnificent Bastard antihero.

What stops him being a cartoon villain is that his character never acts out of pure evil, but always from a position that can be understood and, on a good day, sympathised with. He has a slew of what you might call “daddy issues”, and one could ascribe a good deal of his actions to a feeling that he could never quite measure up to Jock Ewing’s legacy, and a (probably failed) desire on his part for his son John Ross to never feel that way about him as a father figure. His extreme competitiveness with Jock and Bobby, his dismissive behaviour towards Gary and Ray, his general perception of people as dumb instruments to be manipulated, and his virgin madonna/whore dichotomous attitude towards women are all consistent with a theme of male inadequacy and arrested development due to an overbearing yet unloving father.

This is also probably what lets his character connect so brilliantly with the audience, especially men in the audience. By transposing the Jock Ewing father figure onto a patriachal and hierarchical society, we enjoy watching JR do all the things we, as individuals with a more rounded and mature personalities, could never do. He’s a classic anti-hero, collecting power and feeding off other people’s emotional distress, as a substitute for inner peace.

Characters are compelling because of their psychological reality, even when the that reality is stretched to an extreme caricature. We love reading about and watching anti-heros because they let us live out a few of our fantasies – even those we do not like to admit to ourselves – and this fantasy allows  us to stabilise our own psychological attitude to the world.

PS. if any of the characters mentioned above don’t instantly bring the source to mind, your reading/viewing list is, in order of appearance from the illustrating photo down: The Devil’s Advocate, Catcher in the Rye, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, 1984, The Simpsons, Paradise Lost, Othello, Macbeth, Portrait of Dorian Grey, The Prince, American Psycho, Silence of the Lambs, Wall Street, James Bond (any), Vanity Fair, The Devil Wears Prada, The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe, and, of course, Dallas. An eclectic list to keep you busy for a while!

Truth in Apophthegmata

I was recently browsing a collection of pithy sayings – there is often hidden depth in cynical barbs and old wives’ tales – and came across these little gems:

The Ginsberg Restatement of the Laws of Thermodynamics:

1. You can’t win
2. You can’t break even
3. You can’t quit

Freeman’s Commentary on the Ginsberg Restatement:

Every religion, or philosophical doctrine, is rooted in the negation of one element of Ginsberg’s Restatement, for example:

1. Capitalism is based on the assumption you can win
2. Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break even
3. Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the game

Amusing, of course, but perhaps also something to think about. I do agree that most of our attempts to provide some kind of grander order or meaning to the world stem in truth from our own psychological insecurities, writ large.

Religion and Philosophy are a societal expression of an ego defence mechanism. Ego defences are unconscious psychological strategies designed to protect the self from an otherwise traumatic situation, thus allowing someone to cope with reality while still maintaining their sense of self . There’s nothing wrong with an ego defence mechanism, provided it doesn’t become pathological and destructive to one’s overall well-being. Equally Religion and Philosophy, of whatever flavour, can be socially beneficial, provided they are not allowed to overwhelm each other and become pathologically doctrinaire.

Of course, the more astute reader has already noticed that this ideological position is in itself a philosophical one, as would be any expression of opinion in such matters. So it may simply be my own ego defence mechanism. Perhaps so, perhaps not. I don’t insist upon it. After all, to cite another aphorism, this time from satirist Dorothy Parker: “you can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think!“

The Baroness, the Taliban and the guy in the wheelchair

I always enjoy reading the latest twists and turns of Professor Susan Greenfield‘s (sorry, Baroness Greenfield’s) career. Partly because she was an excellent and inspiring tutor during my undergraduate days, partly because she has an awesomely quirky dress sense (her red leather trousers were quite infamous), and partly just because it reads like a good melodrama.

One of the more striking episodes revolved around her time as Director of the Royal Insitution. Its first female Director, she pushed through some fairly aggressive capital projects and was later dismissed from her position when the capital investments failed to recoup costs as expected. She then went on to accuse them of sexism and launched a legal action against them.

The latest story we can now add to her corpus of headline-grabbing stories is perhaps even odder. Stephen Hawking’s well-publicised recent change of heart on the (lack of a) need for God to kickstart Creation is interesting and mildly controversial but hardly justifies the use an emotionally-charged comparison to the Taliban. I do rather agree with the reporter’s insight in the last paragraph of the linked article that it reads more as a dig at Richard Dawkins’ “militant atheism” than at Hawkings’ milder statement.

Dawkins is not a character I have much sympathy for, though I should emphasise that I don’t believe I’ve spoken to him personally, at least not at sufficient length for me to recall it. But his public pronouncements on the question of whether God exists have the passionate fixity of belief more commonly associated with zealotry – Islamic or otherwise – rather than rational objectivity.

Note, I use the term “fixity of belief”, not “delusion”. His publicity-seeking phrase “The God Delusion”, as used in his best-selling book, is certainly one of the more flagrant abuses of psychiatric terminology in recent times.

To quote the DSM, a delusion is: “A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everybody else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not ordinarily accepted by other members of the person’s culture or subculture.” (emphasis mine)

As such, since there many people in our culture with religious faith, Dawkins claim that such belief is delusional in nature cannot be correct. It may be non-factual, but even if so, it would still not be delusional. To use inaccurate and distorted terminology to stigmatise and condemn those who believe differently to him is an act more consistent with unthinking faith in one’s own position rather than a rational objective position.

Hawking, it should be noted, makes no such exaggerated claim.