A Philosopher and His Horse

Socrates went walking with his favourite horse

Horse asked "Where are we going?"

"To the river of course

You're going to get something 

We all need from our youth

When you take a drink

From the waters of truth"

Soon they arrived at a barren empty shore

Horse asked "What do I do now?"

"Take a drink then get more

You'll get knowledge and widsom

And all that good stuff

That will arm you for the future

Because life can be tough"

The horse it stepped forward but then came to a stop

And said "I cannot drink from this"

"Well why on earth not??"

"The problem," said the horse

"And don't think me uncouth

But I have a question

Just what is truth?"

Socrates did wail and said "what will people think?

I've lead this horse to water

But I can't make him drink!"

said the horse "I've seen Star Wars films" 

Both the old and the new

They say there are many truths

From a certain point of view"

Socrates did swear and he tore at his beard

"Lectured by a horse

Now that's bloody weird!

I'm going to leave you now

And amble over yonder

You've right done my head in

And I need to ponder"

Horse turns to audience and says "The moral of this tale

Never assume you can know it all

If you do you will fail

For every ending a start point

For every consequence a cause

This poem is now over

This is my truth, tell me yours"

The Pursuit of Happiness

Should we pursue happiness?

I watched a very witty graduation speech by an Australian comedian called Tim Minchin.  In it, he listed the 9 principles that he thought one should live their life by:

1. You don't have to have a dream.

2. Don't seek happiness.

3. Remember, it's all luck.

4. Exercise.

5. Be hard on your opinions.

6. Be a teacher.

7. Define yourself by what you love.

8. Respect people with less power than you.

9. Don't rush.

The one that caught my eye the most was Don’t seek happiness.  This interested me in its diametric opposition to the American 'ideal' which we know as ‘The Pursuit of Happiness.'

‘The Pursuit of Happiness' is a principle, an ideal that I have admired without reservation in the past.  This is probably because other sets of ideals and principles set out by nation states were always ‘weighty’ and of very 'high' morality and worthiness.  Witness similar initial stipulations proposed by post revolutionary France, and the Marxist inspired protocols of Russia, USA's future cold war enemy (in its incarnation as the USSR).  If there was an argument for America as a more attractive destination for those seeking a new life, I thought to myself, surely then this "Happiness clause" was it?
 
John Lennon, of course, famously got in trouble at school for answering the question "what do you want to be when you grow up" with the answer "to be happy".

On the other hand the legendary motor racing driver Niki Lauda, declared that "happiness is the enemy".  Who is right, I wonder?

The answer, possibly, lies between the urge to 'act' and the contentment to simply 'be'.  Should we try to change the world or should we be content to simply wonder at it?  There's your existential conundrum for the day.

The Gamut of Emotions

Gamut?!  Gamut?!  What kind of stupid word is that anyway?  Can't we just say range?!  Anyway...  let's take a look at my handy gamutometor of emotion...

Note that madness lies both above ecstasy, below despair and off the scale at either end of the gamutometer.  Now, considering madness goes hand in hand with genius, we must logically conclude that one must ride a wave of intense emotion in order to express whatever world changing idea is in one's genius's locker.  And it's okay Mr Spock, you can still be a genius despite your emotion free outlook.  You're half alien.

Ever Changing Moods

I have generally spent life at the mercy of mood swings.  The lyric "I'm up and down like a bride's nightie, I'm up and down and I don't know why, ooh, I'm happy and then I'm blue" has applied to me almost constantly.  I've learned that when you're up, accept the situation and be grateful, and that when you're down, it can sometimes be useful to locate the source of your despondency, as you may be able to correct the situation and cheer yourself up. 

Of course sometimes there is no real reason for your funk.  You're trapped inside the ageing skin of a mortal human that is hurtling through an endless uncaring cosmos on a mote of dust.  You could fill this vacuum inside you with gratuitous eating, sex, violence or blog writing.  Or you could simply appreciate the notion that if this is the worst quandary on your mind, you're probably not trapped in a famine, a natural disaster or a war zone.

Or you could get out there and pursue some happiness...

 

The Ghost in the Machine - Or Where Are We Going, Part 2

Our lives are increasingly being lived virtually.  As well as a literal, we also leave an electronic footprint.  In the younger generation this dual life is even more strongly realised.

For those of us who have taken part in the internet revolution, it feels strange to think that moving forward there are two versions of yourself - the 'real' you, and the virtual you.  Sometimes I think of the 'virtual me' that I have left as a computerised echo across the World Wide Web.  In my virtual life, I have taken part in many conversations and debates online.  I've shot the breeze, reacted to the issues of the day, told stories, argued, joked around, played my favourite music, lost my temper, made friends, made enemies and flirted. 

Indeed, if the diaries of such as Samuel Pepys have caused such fascination with their snapshots of 17th century life in London, what will it be like for future generations to look back at us?  As the first 'cyber generation', I would imagine that we will have a certain hold over the imagination by default.

If future generations chose, and as technology advances, I would imagine they would be able to make a perfectly serviceable facsimile of my virtual self, warts and all, that they would be able to interact with if that was their fancy.  For all I know I may have just given one of my descendents that very idea! I can only hope that my simulacrum will offer a modicum of entertainment.

We have seen films such as The Matrix, Total Recall and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (among many, many other movies and books) play with the idea of living in an artificially constructed world, and now we stand at the shoreline of that virtual universe, and the watermark is slowly rising as we witness the digitization of existence.

I wrote Where Are We Going part 1 some thirteen or fourteen years ago for a website I hosted that has long been consigned to the virtual dustbin (thank you AOL).  In this blog I speculated that one day the last 'physical' human would download themselves into a Universe contained within a subatomic cube that would then be cast adrift and float through the cosmos (if it was small enough it perhaps could  even survive the theoretical Heat Death of the Universe, thus granting us immortality).  When I look around I see we are well on course for that possible future.

I can imagine the horrified thoughts that may be coursing through the mind of a reader as they contemplate this future, trapped in a pseudo reality where you will never feel the wind upon your face or watch a sunrise and stuff like that - but the way I look at it as long as uncontrolled human interactions remain a part of your world, there will always be something there to stop you getting bored.  Besides which life, and how it is lived by that time, will have evolved to such an extent we can't know or judge what those cats will be finding groovy.

And if they get that bored they can always talk to my ghost!

Once More With Feeling - Or A Moan About Writer's Block

I've always envied those that can create prolifically.  Creatively I'm what in football terms is called a 'confidence player'.  i.e. a player for which certain things, psychological and sometimes physical, have to be in place before they can produce (including the famous 'arm round the shoulder', which is usually provided by the manager/coach, and accompanied by words that will indulge the confidence player's ego).

Of course, writing is not football, and it's very difficult to define what those 'certain things' might be, in creative terms, unfortunately.  For myself, engendering creativity is almost like an engine that needs a different combination of actions applied to it every time before it will 'kick start' (there's kind of an idea in there already I guess...).  The good news is that once it belches out an idea, and that light bulb clicks on, I feel compelled to scribble down whatever it's told me I should be writing about.

One day, perhaps, science will derive the mathematical formula that is behind the human creative spark.  I have mixed feelings about this prospect.  On the one hand harnessing this force could give us a very powerful tool in the advancement of knowledge and all kinds of progress.  On the other hand, would it make us any more ethical, any more moral?  At the worst I suppose it could speed us down the road to extinction as we come up with ever more creative methods of destruction.

The other reservation I have about the 'mathematical formula of creativity' is just the feeling that some mysteries should remain mysteries.  There is nothing logical I can give to justify this feeling, other than a need to believe that there is still some magic in the Universe.

Getting back to what (to the best of my knowledge) inspires me to write, I would say vision and feeling.  A vision comes to you, and it is accompanied by the feeling that the vision gives to you.  Recently, I collaborated on plotting a story based upon this picture:

The person who collaborated with me suggested that although I was making plenty of suggestions as to the concepts and the course of the story, I wasn't putting much 'feeling' into it.  At the time I did kind of dismiss the criticism as a bit girly (hope my collaborator doesn't mind me putting it in those terms if she's reading...) but upon reflection I find the criticism may have been valid.  I suppose it was down to the affect that the picture had on me, ultimately.

So is there a 'creative fuel' that can be guaranteed to supply both the 'vision' and the 'feeling'?  For me, there is: music.  Not every piece of music of course.  just certain pieces and at certain times.

And so I'll close this blog with an example of a song that has had precisely this affect, and screamed at me "I am a story waiting to happen".

Will I ever write that story?  Maybe.

If you listen to this song and get a 'vision and a feeling' then you have my commiserations - because there's something in your mind that works in a similar way to mine.

 

That's Me in the Corner - That's Me in the Spotlight...

There's a person I'm connected with on Twitter - you could say this person has an impestuous temperament.  But my Twitter timeline is always livened up by what they have to say.  Today this person, among all the other random 140 character pronouncements, made a declaration.

"I've just had an epiphany.  There is no God."

"That's pretty heavy," I responded.

"I know, right?"

This exhange got me thinking.  It was pretty strange to share such a moment with this person in such a way, and it shows how the world is changing.  Before the dawn of social networking, such an epiphany would have been an intensely personal and private life changing moment.  Now such an utterence is lost among the flow of updates that are announced to the world on a semi-regular basis.

"Went to the shops"

"Fed the cat"

"Rejected the concept of a Universal Creator"

"Listened to the new Red Hot Chili Peppers album (it's kicking!)"

"Jim's behaving like a right idiot at the minute"

etc

etc

The question I asked myself is, are we trivialising such moments by letting them escape in the flow of updates, statuses and random musings?  Have they become banal because of this?

I decided the answer was no.  Why?  Because the way these moments come and go is a reflection of the way life is really lived.  We have these thoughts.  We make these decisions, and then we do something else.  Whatever thoughts go through our mind, and whatever happens, when these moments have gone, we carry on.  We just get on with it.

Why? 

Because there's nothing else we can do.

"Remember life is strange
And life keeps getting stranger every day."
Procession, New Order

Half Past Planck Time in the Castle on the Singularity

The family of Gormenghost had lived on the Singularity for the entire length of the Planck time, which is all the time that had ever existed.  They lived upon the Singularity that is all that was.  There had never been a beginning, and as far as they were concerned there would never be an end – and that was just how they liked it.

Appropriately, considering it was the Planck Time, their main hobby was Planking.  And so it was that Lord Sirius Gormenghost, the one hundred and thirty seventh Lord in the known and recorded line of Gormenghosts, was lying stiffly, face down upon the castle ramparts, when Berkeley, the court vizier, stepped outside and found him.

Berkeley clapped loudly when he saw Sirius’s display of Planking.  “Most impressive my Lord!” he declared.

“Well take a photograph then!” insisted Sirius.

Berkeley quickly produced a camera and took a snapshot of his Planking Lord.  Satisfied, Sirius dismounted, and began to brush his ornately designed robes that had been handed down through the generations of Gormenghosts.  As he did so, he glanced at the sky, which had suddenly turned purple.  “So what have you been up to then?” Sirius asked Berkeley; he was still looking at the sky in a distracted manner as he spoke. 

Berkley also glanced at the sky, but then he turned to address Sirius, his expression grave.  “I have been in a conference,” he said, “with Cameron, the Court Cosmologist.”

“Not a conference with Cameron the Court Cosmologist!” said Sirius wryly, “Is he causing a commotion again?”

Berkeley’s expression did not flicker, and he regarded Sirius with a stony glance.  The head of the Gormenghost family sighed.  “Go on”, he said in a resigned voice, “What did old misery guts have to say?”

“The news is grim, my Lord…”

“It always is with him!”

“… it appears the Planck time is coming to an end,” finished Berkeley.

Lord Gormenghost scowled.  “What do you mean the Planck Time is coming to an end?” he roared, “The Planck time never comes to an end! There have been one hundred and thirty seven known Gormenghosts that have planked here in the time of Planck, and there’ll be at least one hundred and thirty seven more plankers, you take it from me!”

“There’s no need to shoot the messenger,” said Berkeley in a curt voice. He looked again to the sky and his countenance darkened.  “But you should know that Cameron said that a great change is coming – he said that a Universe is to be born; a Universe of infinite variety and of great wonder, and our time will be swept away before it.  

“He said that this new Universe would be made of gasses, and of metals and something called water, and he said there would even be sentient creatures to wonder at all of it and reflect upon their place in the great scheme of things.”

“Sentient creatures?” said an aggrieved Lord Gormenghost, “Sentient?!  We’re sentient damn you!”

“Apparently we are not,” replied Berkeley, “Cameron claimed that we are merely conceptual illusions that foreshadow what is to come.”

“Foreshadow?  Illusion?! I’m no illusion!” spat Gormenghost, his dander rising ever higher.  He turned towards the roiling, purple sky and gestured grandly “I think therefore I am!!” he declared.

“That’s just what I said my Lord,” said Berkeley expectantly. 

“Oh yes, what did he say?”

“He said that statement is a flawed supposition as it assumes the existence of the thinker.”

“Damn his eyes he’s insufferable!” shouted Sirius in frustration, “I’ve a good mind to -”

Gormenghost never completed his sentence, for at that moment a deep sound issued from the centre of the singularity that was all that was.  At the same time, the sky above them turned from purple to black, and back to purple, and they saw a vision – a vision of a spiralling white structure, reaching over them and pointing towards a future which they would never be part of.

Sirius stammered, and forgot his anger.  For in that instant he knew that everything he had just been told was about to come true.  “Call him,” he told Berkeley, “call him up here now.”

Berkeley took a deep breath and yelled at the top of his voice: “Call Cameron the Court Cosmologist!”

The shout was taken up throughout the castle as the court astronomer was called to be present at his Lord’s behest, and they heard the summons shouted out again and again: “Call Cameron the Court Cosmologist!”

Eventually Cameron appeared, looking dishevelled, his ornate robes golden but untidy, as if he’d just been having a nap.  “Can I help you gentlemen?” he asked.

“Yes!” replied Sirius hotly.  He pointed to the sky, “you can tell us what that is!”

Cameron looked up and sucked in the air around him with a whistle.  “Oooh, it’s started,” He said nodding as he spoke, “yes, this conforms with my calculations all right.

”“What has?!  What’s started?”

Cameron folded his arms and looked at his lord sidelong.  “The force of gravity separating from the electronuclear force,” he explained, “Yep, this is what I expected.  It’s the onset of the Grand Unification Epoch, see.”

“Speak words we can understand damn you!” demanded Sirius, “what’s going to happen now?”

“Well,” said Cameron with a sniff, “nothing we’d like.”

At that point in time they heard another voice calling out in another part of the castle.  It was a woman’s voice, and Sirius recognised it is that of his wife, the lady Gertrude Gormenghost.

“Yes! Yes!” she screamed “Yes! Oh… big boy!  Yes!  Yes!  Yes!” 

Accompanying the Lady Gormenghost’s voice the squeak of bedsprings could clearly be heard.  

For an instant the three men were silent, their mouths hanging open in surprise at this new intrusion.“What in the singularity is that?!” decried Sirius, his voice reaching new levels of disbelief.  “Is that the Lady Gertrude?  My Lady Gertrude?” 

“Ah,” said Berkeley awkwardly.

“Ah,” echoed Cameron.  

The court vizier and cosmologist exchanged furtive glances – a glance that was not missed by Sirius.  

“What do you know?!  What’s going on?” he roared.  “Out with it or you’ll both be beheaded!”

“I’m sorry my Lord…” began Berkeley.

“Oooohhh yes!!” screamed the Lady Gertrude.

“It’s the Lady Gertrude.  She’s become ‘friendly’ with the court gardner…” began Cameron.

“She has been showing him….”

“Her potted plants…”

“For a while now…”

“Yes!  Oh yes!!”

Sirius just starred at them.  And the indescribable hum from the heart of singularity increased in volume.  The sky flickered as if it were aflame, and great orbs were shown there, and coloured lights, and forks of coruscating violence.

Lord Gormenghost’s shoulders slumped.  “And I was in such a good mood, too.” He said sorrowfully.

“Do not despair,” recited Cameron in a bored mechanical tone, “this is not the end this is not the beginning of the end rather this is the end of the beginning.”

“I’m nearly there!” called out Gertrude.

“At least someone’s enjoying the Big Bang,” muttered Berkeley.

“Oh… fuck off, the lot of you.” concluded Sirius sullenly.  He turned away from the others and shook his head in despair.

One hundred and thirty seven Gormenghosts, Sirius thought to himself.  One hundred and thirty seven - that were known of.  Generation after generation of plankers; living safe upon the singularity that was everything – and this is what it came to: trapped here with a traitorous wife, a cranky cosmologist and a po-faced vizier.

He looked again at the vivid sky, but this time his sight alighted on a signpost, high above the castle ramparts, that warned people not to trespass in the kitchens when a meal was being cooked.  

“Look at that sign,” he said to the vizier and the cosmologist.

“What about it?” asked Berkeley as he and Cameron studied the object.

“What do you think?” said Sirius in a pointed tone.  

He waited as they considered his words, and around them the thunder of cosmic birth rolled and blasted out.  It was not long before they understood his intentions.

“No way…” intoned Berkeley.

“Yes way!” said Sirius gleefully.

“You’re crazy!” said Cameron.

“Maybe,” Sirius agreed, “but if this is the end of the Planck time then I’m going to go out Planking!”

With that he began to shin up the support struts that held up the sign, climbing towards the sky, which was now composed of purple concentric circles of infinite complexity that resonated with the hum of power that spread out of the singularity.

With open mouths, Berkeley and Cameron watched him climb, until with yells of delight, they celebrated as they watched him lying stiffly atop the sign.  

“Not bad eh?” Sirius called down.

“Fantastic planking!” cheered Berkeley.

“The man’s a planking marvel!” declared Cameron.

“Photograph!” demanded Sirius.

Berkeley fumbled for his camera, but then he paused and frowned, looking around as if trying to locate something or someone.  “Did anybody hear that?” he called out.

“Hear what?” shouted down Sirius.

“That voice,” said Berkeley.  

“Voice?” shouted Sirius, his voice partially obscured by the edge of the sign.

“Yes, a voice,” called Berkeley, “As if issued from some vast and mighty omnipresent being that was making a pronouncement that would echo through eternity.”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“What did the voice say?” asked Cameron.

“’Let there be light,’” answered Berkeley.

“Damn silly thing to say,” Shouted out Sirius, “where’s that photograph?!”

“Sorry my Lord!”  Berkeley produced his camera and aimed it at his prostrate, planking lord.  But even as he pressed down the shutter, his conceptual existence was ended. 

Thus reality was born.