I was talking to someone earlier today about when “Summer Time” begins. Today is May 1st, and I am in Ireland, and according to The Irish Calendar summer consists of the months of
from 01:00 UTC on the last Sunday in March until 01:00 UTC on the last Sunday in October each year.
So:
Europe is currently observing Summer Time.
So, Summer Time began in March, began today, and is due to begin in June.
This brings up a few things I have talked about before here, all relating to symbols and our relationship with them. Of course “Summer Time” is not a real thing. As I write this I am staring out at a dark, gloomy, grey sky which has been dropping water on us almost unrelentingly for 2 days now. Not what I would call “Summer”. “Summer Time” is an idea. It is also a socially constructed and shared convention, but it is entirely arbitrary and subjective. I wrote before about Alan Watts and his comments on time, specifically day-light savings time. It also brings to mind Robert Anton Wilson talking about his address, and how he could live in many different ‘places’ at once. Why? Because the address system is also a symbol – just like time.
Wilson also brings up Eastern Philosophy and its relationship to such systems of symbols. One aspect of Buddhism is how it stresses that our world of concepts and ideas is not the real world. This is something people like Watts and Wilson expressed time and time again. Symbols, words, ideas are important, they help us navigate the world, but the trick is to never be fooled by them. They are not reality, they are labels for reality. They help us understand reality, but they are not the real thing. “The Map is not the Territory”.
So, is it summer? The rain pounding my window says otherwise.
Go placidly amidst the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful.
So, yesterday, I posted a picture of Alan Watts’ “The Wisdom of Insecurity” – which carries the tagline “A Message of an Age of Anxiety”. My friend Ciaran made a comment about it, that I have myself thought about before.
But how long is an ‘age’ exactly? I’d imagine anxiety has always existed (and always will) in every ‘age’ and is not just specific to the ‘age’ in which Watts wrote this. Surely the stone age was also an age of anxiety as was the ‘space age’ as is the current information/technological age… and so on. It makes it seem like it is just a passing phase.
Well, the first thing I would note is that the tag line says it is ‘A Message for AN Age of Anxiety’. Which, it is. But Ciaran does raise a larger issue, one which immediately recalled a New York Times article I read some time ago, which alerted me to the fact I was previously unaware of, that “Age of Anxiety” is a term that predates Watts’ book.
The title comes from W.H. Auden’s 1948 poem “The Age of Anxiety”. The Times notes that the poem is not particularly well known – but the title is.
From the moment it appeared, the phrase has been used to characterize the consciousness of our era, the awareness of everything perilous about the modern world: the degradation of the environment, nuclear energy, religious fundamentalism, threats to privacy and the family, drugs, pornography, violence, terrorism. Since 1990, it has appeared in the title or subtitle of at least two dozen books on subjects ranging from science to politics to parenting to sex (“Mindblowing Sex in the Real World: Hot Tips for Doing It in the Age of Anxiety”). As a sticker on the bumper of the Western world, “the age of anxiety” has been ubiquitous for more than six decades now.
The Times article then asks – is it accurate? Do we live in THE Age of Anxiety? Maybe Watts was being particular (as was his way) in using the word “An”, acknowledging that it is probably wrong to describe this as THE age of Anxiety. Surely anxiety is something that has afflicted all times?
The other issue it raises is what do we mean by anxiety. For many, including the author of the Times piece, as well as friends who have heard me mention the title, anxiety is a very real thing, not just a throw away word to represent ‘worry’. Taken as a real disorder, anxiety is the most common psychiatric complaint in America.
But just because we have statistical evidence of the diagnosis, doesn’t mean that we are any more anxious than any previous generation. As the author, Daniel Smith, notes, previous eras were certainly more tumultuous than our own. I sometimes think of when people talk about how crazy and out of control modern times are, and I can’t help think that compared to the history of man kind, we must have it relatively easy? Smith claims that the difference is self-awareness. We are aware of our anxiety, and this in turn makes us even more anxious. Indeed, he points to evidence that there certainly was anxiety in previous eras – the difference is that we talk about our anxiety.
So, I think Watts got it right – we are living in AN Age of Anxiety, not THE Age. All ages are, an age of anxiety.
Incidentally, Watts book was written in 1958 – and in his introduction he describes a world about to collapse in on itself financially, culturally and socially. And when you read it today, he could have been talking about the last few years.
In reality there are no separate events. Life moves along like water, it’s all connected as the source of the river is connected to the mouth and the ocean. All the events or things going on are like whirlpools in a stream. Today you see a whirlpool and tomorrow you see a whirlpool in the same place, but it isn’t the same whirlpool because the water is changing every second.
…
When we speak about freedom from karma, freedom from being the puppet of the past, that simply involves a change in our thinking. It involves getting rid of the habit of thought whereby we define ourselves as the result of what has gone before.
We instead get into the more plausible, more reasonable habit of thought in which we don’t define ourselves in terms what we’ve done before but in terms of what we’re doing now. And that is liberation from the ridiculous situation of being a dog wagged by its tail.
Continuing a theme I like, that money is not wealth, the Malaysian Prime Minister, in between making some harsh (but fair) comments about Europe’s economy, observes:
“Currency is not a commodity”, he says.
“You sell coffee. Coffee… can be ground and made into a cup of coffee.
“But currency, you cannot grind it and make it into anything. It is just figures in the books of the banks and you can trade with figures in the books of banks only.
“There must be something solid to trade, then you can legitimately make money.”
So I tell you – Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.
The phrase ‘This too shall pass’ just jumped into my head, so I decided to look up its meaning online. Wikipedia describes it as ” a proverb indicating that all material conditions, positive or negative, are temporary.” It instantly made me think of the Buddhist concept of impermanence.
It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: “And this, too, shall pass away.” How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! — how consoling in the depths of affliction!
Which is a great way of expressing the meaning and power of the saying. In happy times it reminds you that they will not last for ever, and in sad times, likewise.
In Buddhism, impermanence is a central idea. Nothing is permanent in our world, everything arises and passes away and is always in flux, and indeed, our suffering, misery and dissatisfaction comes from the fact that we desire and strive for things to be permanent – when they cannot be.
Interestingly, there is more to the Lincoln quote, where he unfortunately misses the point:
And yet let us hope it is not quite true. Let us hope, rather, that by the best cultivation of the physical world, beneath and around us; and the intellectual and moral world within us, we shall secure an individual, social, and political prosperity and happiness, whose course shall be onward and upward, and which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away.
He still strives for the comfort of something that can be eternal and ever lasting – when nothing ever will be. This is the conflict that causes suffering, we will always be disappointed when what we hope will last forever dissolves. He wishes for a ‘prosperity and happiness’ that will always continue and grow, in a world where everything is always changing and breaking down.
Indeed, looking back in a modern light, isn’t this quest for an always ‘onward and upward’ prosperity what is getting the world in so much trouble?
Alas – happiness and prosperity definitely pass. But so too shall austerity and depression.
All things must pass – as George Harrison once sung.
Over on Boing Boing they are running a week of posts celebrating the life and work of Robert Anton Wilson. RAW is one of my favourite writers and thinkers. For some reason I don’t tend to reference him much on here – something I should rectify, but he’s one of those people who really broadened my mind and challenges my preconceptions, and has been highly influential to me. This clip below sums up the kinds of thing that Bob weaved together (Quantum Mechanics, belief systems, “the map is not the territory”, naive realism, religion, Zen Buddhism, the I Ching, skepticism and more…)
For some reason The KLF popped into my head earlier. I was musing on Twitter about how great they were when Caesar Lopez sent me a clip of the duo on The Late Late Show discussing with Gay Byrne their burning of one million pounds. The interview is fascinating – Gay Byrne is clearly mystified by the duo and their action, even going so far as to call them ‘weird people’.
It threw up some really interesting points. Byrne, speaking on behalf of the shocked and appaled citizens of the world, argues that they could have given the money to charity. Bill Drummond makes two excellent retorts – firstly, if they had of spent the money on ‘swimming pools and Rolls Royces’ people wouldn’t have been upset, which Gay Byrne concedes. The act of destroying the money is wrong – but spending it on superflous luxury items instead of helping the needy is not. This exposes an amazing hypocrasy.
Us burning that money doesn’t mean there are any less loaves of bread in the world, any less apples, and less anything. The only thing that’s less is a pile of paper.
Byrne retorts, saying there could have been more bread and apples. Drummond repeats that they did not destroy any tangible goods.
Byrne and the audience do not buy (or understand?) his line of thinking.
Joe Elliot of hair-rockers Def Leppard butts in, saying “I used to talk like that when I was 16″, and the audience also wade in with hostility, and there is a general air of bewilderment. There is also a great moment where Byrne asks “Why are you here?” to which he is answered “Because you invited us….” (It’s really worth watching…some great moments)
I never really understood the K Foundation burning the million pounds until this point. And as I watched it, I kept thinking of Alan Watts’ arguments about wealth and money
What wasn’t understood then, and still isn’t really understood today, is that the reality of money is of the same type as the reality of centimeters, grams, hours, or lines of longitude. Money is a way measuring wealth but is not wealth in itself. A chest of gold coins or a fat wallet of bills is of no use whatsoever to a wrecked sailor alone on a raft. He needs real wealth, in the form of a fish rod, a compass, an outboard motor with gas, and a female companion.
Maybe it was a really foolish act, but at the very least it gets people talking about something which is never really talked about, and now more than ever needs to be – our relationship with money and our concepts of what money really is.
