On human behaviour
Jean-Paul Sartre, about 1950 Click for source
“We are left alone, without excuse. That is what I mean when I say man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does.”
It comes from a provocative 1946 lecture, “Existentialism is a Humanism”, short enough at 10,000 words to read in a single session. I call it provocative because he challenges the normal unconsidered views about freedom, responsibility, good and evil. You can certainly call it dated, that is to say, of its time, when France in particular was trying to recover from the Nazi occupation, sweeping up a chaotic litter of moral compromises and insidious betrayals. Some called the collaborators culpable for aiding and abetting the murderous invaders. But for every German soldier killed by a member of the secret Resistance, ten French hostages might be lined up and shot by way of reprisal. Who then had clean hands? The Catholic Church wasn’t able to provide guidance on this point, and in any case, Sartre was an atheist. He had been interested in Marxism, but saw that the Communists in practice were a hierarchy, with Machiavellian strategists at the top and no regard for moral principles at any level.
Sartre called himself an Existentialist, claiming that in the case of human beings, “existence precedes essence”. For him there is no God to define our “essence”, i.e. our true nature and purpose in life. We create it ourselves, each individually. It follows that he is the enemy of unthinking conformity.
“Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he conceives himself after already existing—as he wills to be after that leap towards existence. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself.”
It’s a strenuous philosophy.
“We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is.”
What provokes me first is that like most philosophers and the doctrines of most religions, he separates man from the rest of nature. To Sartre, you sense that the rest of nature is little more than a painted backdrop. He’s only interested in the actors strutting the boards.
Equally provocative is his absurd-sounding claim that there is no inbuilt human nature, nothing till we make a “leap towards existence”. So how does he see humanity? Foundlings left on the church steps, or in the bulrushes along the Nile, with no known forebears? Sartre sounds like a real city-boy, who thinks eggs are harvested from egg-plants, and philosophy comes from the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He was first attracted to philosophy as a teenager, after reading Bergson, who had attended that same university 45 years before he did. Bergson was first attracted to philosophy by the Theory of Evolution, which Sartre appears to ignore in his later thought.
For myself, I’ve become convinced of a unity between all of nature; man being just one species of many, just one bundle of genes that can reproduce itself, if you will. My conviction arises not so much from the Theory of Evolution, Darwinian or Neo-Darwinian, but a series of intuitions, mystical revelations, call them what you will. If I were to try and debate with Sartre on his own terms, I’d posit a universal essence, which is both one and many. Does essence precede existence, or vice versa? I don’t care. If I am anything, I’m an animist. Every existence contains its own essence, call it soul if you like. This I feel with all six or seven senses, when I step outside this study into the fresh air, under the sky.
Is there such a thing as human nature? Despite his own denials, Sartre does accept the idea, as in this further excerpt from his lecture:
“Every purpose, even that of a Chinese, an Indian or a Negro, can be understood by a European. . . . In every purpose there is universality, in this sense that every purpose is comprehensible to every man. . . . There is always some way of understanding an idiot, a child, a primitive man or a foreigner if one has sufficient information. In this sense we may say that there is a human universality, but it is not something given; it is being perpetually made.”
Good, so we agree thus far. And just as he was aroused to concern after the traumas and moral dilemmas of the war which in 1946 had just ended, I’m aroused to concern today on the matter of human behaviour. It’s a topic as big as the world, so I’ll narrow it down to “good and evil”, or even more narrowly to “deliberate killing”, specifically “massacre”.
What is “evil”? It’s a moral judgement, once defined by reference to the Ten Commandments, or “The Law and the Prophets” as Jesus put it, speaking as a Jew to other Jews. Even when such religions have been swept from popular consciousness, the concept of evil, “pure evil”, hangs in the air, especially in popular media for whom it is an invitation to the readers’ sense of blood-lust; a legitimate target to be hunted down and made extinct. What else is a “war on terror”? What else are all the violent movies?
Death-squad member Herman Koto re-creates his fatal acts
against fellow Indonesians via the lavish song-and-dance
number in the documentary “The Act of Killing” (click for source)
Fifty years later, in a largely atheist & progressive United Kingdom, the most unavoidable accidents can arouse mass mourning, floral shrines, soul-searching, the hunt for culprits, special Cathedral masses and headlines like “Archbishop cried with relatives of victims of Glasgow bin lorry tragedy”. Most noticeably of all, there was a rush by leading politicians of every party, however small, to express their own grief and condolences on behalf of just about everyone. (The vehicle went out of control after the driver’s suspected heart attack.)
My point here is not to blame politicians, media or a conformist public. I agree with Sartre that “In every purpose there is universality, in this sense that every purpose is comprehensible to every man”; except that I would use the word “behaviour” rather than “purpose”. His existentialist manifesto, expressed in the 1946 lecture, stresses the responsibility implicit in being “condemned to freedom”, that each one of us must will ourselves into existence, decide how we will behave. And so I call him “city boy”, who doesn’t understand that in nature, there is only behaviour, much of it instinctive, uncontrolled by will. In humans it is theoretically controllable, but freedom does not grow on trees.
According to the theory of evolution, nature is not controlled by purpose. Creation does not proceed by design, but a continuous process of natural selection, which has produced cats and Man. A cat doesn’t create itself by an act of will: it merely follows its nature. Man has the additional faculty of reason, which allows it to establish and pursue its purposes. Such is human nature.
What then is Evil: apart that is from the content of sermons, political speeches and popular sentiment as exploited by the media? It’s a moral judgement, as I’ve said. But why do we distance ourselves from it, and half-believe it’s a force in its own right, like a deadly virus? Fear, of course. It resembles the virus in that we must protect ourselves from massacre, genocide, stray bullets, passionate violence in the home or street?
But why do they, the perpetrators, do it? Are they vermin, to be exterminated by any means without trial or respectful burial? I ask the question not rhetorically, not to arouse emotions one way or the other. We are all blinded by fear and politics so much that we don’t take the trouble to answer the question properly. I think the answer is not very complex.
Firstly, the human race has always been warlike. Genocide has always occurred. Tribes have fought other tribes, and since agriculture was started, wars over land have never ceased. It is in the blood of young men to train themselves, test themselves competitively, and seek victory; and also to find fellowship in tribe or regiment, in the sacred bond of mutual defence.
Secondly the tribal instinct values conformity. Individual scruples are sacrificed to the leader, who takes on the moral responsibility.
Finally, and most significantly I think in the lands from the Levant east to Pakistan, the common factor in chronic violence is not Islam, but humiliation. This is an emotion stronger than the fear of death. On reflection I would not call it an emotion, for that implies a temporary state. Let’s call it a malady, for in the sufferer’s eyes, it can be cured by revenge. They say revenge is sweet, but the only sweetness is in the way it miraculously cures the sufferer of humiliation: not just when it is carried out, but from the moment when it is planned.
With this new understanding, we connect Raskolnikov, in Crime and Punishment, with every suicide bomber, every young man from a good family who goes off to join ISIL, every youth who goes into a school armed, and takes out as many as he can before turning the gun on himself, or being taken out himself by a SWAT team.
I discover that I don’t need a theory of evil. “Every purpose is comprehensible to every man.”
At this point we may say, as we think beyond mere senseless murder to other, darker crimes, “But what about such-and-such? I can’t understand that. I don’t even want to think about it. If the perpetrator wasn’t utterly insane, then what?” And we work ourselves up into a froth of speechless outrage. But again, I think the answer is straightforward, and explicable with aspects of human nature we can recognize within ourselves, from experience. Without being a diagnosed psychopath, we need only desensitize ourselves to the suffering of others, by invoking our personal or communal sense of righteousness. Or we can say, “There are things I prefer not to know about.”
Meanwhile, we live in a world ruled by power (political & brute force), commerce and the media. For most of us they, and the laws they have helped create, decide the sensitivities, and what is fair game.
29 Comments:
PS on Glasgow: it seems to have become another city noted for "mawkish sentimentality", like Liverpool. One is not allowed to say so though - see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3758340.stm - without a grovelling apology for offending every inhabitant. I don't personally remember the Blitz, mainly because I wasn't born yet, but was brought up to "Business as usual", Dunkirk Spirit and stiff upper lip.
I find this post a most interesting piece of work, but not one with which I can totally agree. Or is it perhaps that it raises questions which I cannot answer with any confidence?
It seems to me that man cannot be separated from the rest of creation, but that he can be seen from two different points of view. If it be true that the outer world takes on the aspect of illusoriness whose perceived existence is based on assessments made by the mind, as an autonomous or even independent force, then there is a case to be made that Man-as-you is different from Man-as-me. Man-as-you belongs to the uncertain, and therefore illusory, world; Man-as-me is the only reality that I can know......unless there is another way of 'knowing'!
What is evil? You claim that it is (if I understand you correctly) a moral judgement. If so then good, and the base from which that stems, viz. love, is also nothing more than a moral judgement. I do wonder why, therefore, a spiritually developed person such as Jesus would exort us to love. It seems to me that Love is the transfigured form of that spectrum of qualities that we assess as being 'good'. The other side of that coin, and inseparable from love, is Evil, the transfigured spectrum of all the qualities we assess as 'bad'. It is wonky thinking to accept the existence of one without the other.
It appears to me that in an age where we are told by popular psychology to "get in touch with our feelings", all that we are doing ( rather than make legitimate assessment) is to de-transfigure love into a swill of emotionalism which you call mawkishness. Unfortunately (yes, we have reached a point of agreement) we are not allowed to speak out against such trends. If we do we trigger the letting loose of a torrent of hateful abuse, even death threats. The emotional mob continues to rule, as it does elsewhere amongst, for example, militant religionists.
Finally, and I can only assume I have missed a point you were making, why do you limit humiliation as the common factor in chronic violence rather than Islam? The notion of humiliation, loss of face, is surely highly prevalent in all Asian countries. It is pure and blatant egoism! Limiting the geographical region to the Middle East, as far as Pakistan, is more likely to favour the idea that the appalling violence is Islam-based. But are we not going off at a tangent here?
Is not the root cause of chronic violence - wherever it is found - somewhere inside humanity, regardless of the appropriated cause, in the region where lives the very reality of Evil?
Taking on Sartre, eh? Had to rub my eyes to believe it.
"Equally provocative is his absurd-sounding claim that there is no inbuilt human nature, nothing till we make a 'leap towards existence'. So how does he see humanity? Foundlings left on the church steps, or in the bulrushes along the Nile, with no known forebears?"
Have to pretty much agree with you here. It's silly to say that there's NOTHING innate driving human behavior. Strikes me as a case of trying to crudely simplify human beings to make them fit a theory. Reminds me of that old joke where the cop finds a severed head on the road on he kicks it into the ditch because he can't think of how to spell "interstate" and it'll be easier to write "ditch", so he adjusts the facts accordingly.
Human beings can be messy creatures (even with their heads still attached.) I think it would be better put to say that human beings have more creative latitude in their behavior than animals do. Whereas a bird builds a nest by its nature, and certain birds only build certain nests, a human being can live in a variety of domiciles from house to hut to apartment, or even forsake the comfort of a domicile altogether and push all his earthly belongings around in a shopping cart. In short, the human being can explore all the possible living arrangements under the sun in a way that the birds cannot. As so it is with a great deal of human behavior. However, the other side of that is that we laugh, we cry, we bond, we yearn to stay or go, we rebuke our parents at certain ages, we fret for our children, all with such patterns of recognizable regularity that clearly suggests some kind of natural drives and instincts, to the point even the rare aberrations from these things seem to be the exceptions which prove the rule. And from that view, the line between our behavior and the animals' is a thin one.
As far as that creative latitude goes, and as far as it extends, and so much as we're concerned with whatever "meaning" our existence come to have, I'm all for the idea that we mint our own coin in that realm. But I also agree that we shouldn't completely forsake the fact that we are of nature and from nature and carry on as though we were left on the church steps of existence.
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You are right to question my use of the phrase “moral judgement”. Quite apart from the Ten Commandments and similar exhortations before the arrival of Jesus, we have an everyday use of “evil” which I would not call over-emotional, because it is instinctual. Just as physical defilement with infectious or poisonous substances may arouse in us a reflex of disgust, so we may respond also to certain forms of human behaviour, even in hearsay: cruelty to children, say, or beheading a man in his own home in front of his family. Basic instinct, not moral judgement. And I suspect that the laws defining what is “unclean” in Leviticus arise from the same sense of disgust, even though in some cases it may have been a quirk of the original Levite who wrote down the rules.
But let’s talk about good as the opposite of evil. If evil is a label applied to disgust against certain human actions, is good a label for that which delights us? I am purposely avoiding the notion that good and evil are handed down to us from God, or his representative on earth Jesus. Whatever is handed down dulls the sharpness of our personal discovery.
When you say “It seems to me that Love is the transfigured form of that spectrum of qualities that we assess as being ‘good’, I want to take your word for it. That is, to interpret “it seems to me” as introducing an actual experience corresponding to what you are expressing in words, perhaps an experience not easy to describe more concretely. So I’ll grant you the link between “good” and “love”, except that we are clearly using these words in a special spiritual way. For example as a Christian, or a disciplinarian father of a generation now departed, someone might say, “I’m doing this for your own good!”, whilst the recipient sees it otherwise, and suffers. In the same way, the exhortation to “love thy neighbour as thyself” may be considered gross interference by the neighbour, who wants nothing more onerous than to be left alone.
I accept that you didn’t mean these petty things at all. We think differently that’s all. And when I think of “evil”, it doesn’t occur to me that it’s the opposite of good, and vice versa. I don’t see the linkage. And I prefer to think of evil in terms of human disgust, not moral judgement.
Bryan thanks for your comment. It’s late, I’ll respond tomorrow, after this third & final point answering Tom’s critique.
3)
It was careless of me not to include a connection, which I had drafted somewhere, between Islam and humiliation. Like an odd sock it got mysteriously swallowed up in the wash.
I make the connection like this: Islam is traditional, it is anti-Western for a myriad historical reasons which are not hard to research. Ataturk in Turkey and [some other guy(s) in Egypt tried to drag their respective countries into the 20th century but found they had to suppress Islam in consequence: a clumsy move of course which came back to bite them as every hasty or clumsy move in history tends to do.
Islam is authoritarian, doesn’t like democracy, doesn’t like its worshippers following the religion à la carte according to taste, such as drinking alcohol, dressing how you like, ignoring Ramadan and marrying an infidel. In short, Islam itself provides opportunities for humiliation even when you don’t consider the backwardness of countries in which it predominates. The backwardness may be traced to lack of economic development and democracy. The topic is complex, there are exceptions, generalization is invidious.
But I also took care to mention non-Islamic, non-Asian examples of random violence and massacres, in which humiliation and desire for revenge are likely motives.
I'm an animist, too. But people I know don't believe so I keep it to myself. I figure if they can't see or feel the spirits then maybe they aren't suppose too.
There's a Lakota saying; "When man moves away from nature his heart hardens". Native Americans don't talk much about evil. They understand like you do that they way a person acts one day may not be the way he acts the next:
"All things in this world are two. In our minds we are two good and evil. With our eyes we see two things, things that are fair and things that are ugly. We have the right hand that stikes and the left hand full of kindness near the heart. One foot may lead us to an evil way, the other foot may lead us to a good. So are all things two, all two." - Eagle Chief, Pawnee.
I guess all a person can do in this day and age when it is so hard to tell evil from good, is to -listen-.
Native American writer, Linda Hogan says beautifully;
"Walking, I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say, watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands."
In anticipation of your reply, I'd like to mention a debate I had with someone about a year or so ago on the subject of free will. I saved some of the transcript of that debate and I meant to send it to you some time, as it was a fairly interesting discussion, one that brought up aspects of the issue that I was surprised I hadn't considered before.
My opponent was arguing against free will strictly on the grounds that it was physically impossible. The idea was that if our bodies are driven by physical, chemical, and electrical processes which are subject to the same physical laws and causality as everything else, then at what point in these processes does a will that originates in the mind intersect with the physical plane and take control? In other words, for free will to work, it seems that you would have to postulate some sort of "ghost in the machine" that can reach in and touch off a chain of causality, that can pull the appropriate strings and levers, without itself being subject to physical causality. For instance, suppose I were to voluntarily raise my hand. From my standpoint, I decide to do it, and then I take control of my arm and raise it. But suppose someone on the outside were to trace the genesis of this act. They would start with the muscles which were triggered by the nerve impulses from the brain, which in turn were triggered by such and such and so on. At what point, if any, would this person run into a dead end where they would have to say, "this is where the will got the ball rolling"?
Once I wrapped my head around the ramifications of this, it was quite a blow. I felt like there was some flaw in this argument, but I couldn't figure it out. Instead, I argued for free will on psychological (even subjective) grounds. I said that free will was as indispensable a part of our experience as consciousness itself. Even if someone sat you down and showed you that consciousness was physically impossible, you'd still believe in it, because you experience it directly. Even an "illusion" of consciousness would require consciousness to be experienced, to the point that calling it "illusion" is rendered meaningless. And so it is with free will. Someone can't just stop believing in free will, chuck it over their shoulder, and then coast along through the rest of their life on auto-pilot. They can't abdicate the choices they're faced with. Even if you convince them that the "ghost in the machine" is an absurdity, they STILL have to be that ghost and they still have to take control of that machine. We are, as you quoted above, doomed to be free.
I'm not sure how relevant this is, but it seemed relevant enough.
Woodsybit Moss, I very much like those simple Native American expressions, and that you can take them on so easily as in harmony with your own movement in the world. I like 'em a lot better than my own struggles to talk about good and evil above, which somehow tried to take in the foreign policy of powerful nations, the struggles of old religions to keep their place in a world which has moved on, and the rabble-rousing rhetoric of popular culture, which knows that you sell movies, newspapers and votes by appealing to a sense of outrage that dwells in all of us and only needs to be stimulated. Instead of that, Linda Hogan says "Walk, and listen."
Apologies for deleting a comment above. Here it is again, correcting "philosophy of mind" to what I meant to say, “Theory of Mind”:
Tom, thanks for taking the trouble to produce such an excellent critique. You have compelled me to consider your points very seriously, and cede some ground to you, so I’ll take them one by one. Here’s the first.
1) I accept that many, especially from a spiritual viewpoint, claim to see this world as illusion—at any rate that’s the terminology they use, which I don’t find particularly helpful, which doesn’t mean I disagree at all with their intent. But I don’t think this notion of Man-as-me-real, Man-as-you-uncertain holds water. There’s a thing called Theory of Mind which Bryan brought up recently and it’s very useful for understanding how we gradually learn to see others as being just just like us. We can put ourselves in others’ shoes, it’s no more sophisticated than that, though I’ll grant that small children, autistic persons and psychopathic personalities may never progress that far. I’ll confess to having taken a ridiculously long time myself.
As for “another way of knowing”, I’m not sure that we need be that subtle. If I see spirituality in myself, I can see it in others, and if not actually see it, be confident that it’s there. In privileged moments this recognition may extend (as I hinted in the post above as well as elsewhere) to any living creature, and perhaps inanimate matter too, at a stretch. And when Sartre says “In every purpose there is universality, in this sense that every purpose is comprehensible to every man”, I believe he is acknowledging the same thing, though he only sees it in his fellow-man. And perhaps he can only see it in a fellow human being who makes a leap from mere conformity into making his own self. But maybe you and I don’t disagree on this at all. And of course we can (and do) frequently delude ourselves as to what goes on out there, or what goes on in this person. To take an example from the mating game, we misinterpret the signals the other gives out, and imagine ourselves loved. As a non-cat lover, for example, I don’t think that signals from a cat to a human indicate reciprocatal affection, though we are happy to delude ourselves in the matter.
To be continued
Bryan, I liked your expression “creative latitude”, so much richer in meaning than mere “choice”. For free will is so much more than deciding whether to turn left or right at a crossroads. It’s being able to see that there is a left or right to choose from, and more than that, it’s being able to turn a vague dissatisfaction into a plan and then execute that plan.
And so you see that the “simpler” creature, if I may put it that way, can’t see a range of options, lacks creative latitude, can’t imagine the future enough to make a plan, lacks the skills to execute the plan.
And the whole thing, the scope or lack of scope, is likely to be physical. For example this morning I heard a charitable appeal on the radio on behalf of young aphasics, those who cannot talk or understand language. As you point out, Sartre is trying to fit a theory. I think it’s one which he constructs specifically to refute the viewpoints of other philosophers, the Catholic Church, the French Communist Party, and pretty much all comers.
Perhaps he ignored the influence of evolution because he only knew of the theory via Bergson’s “creative” and unorthodox version. Meanwhile, the “modern evolutionary thesis” was being put together at the same time as Sartre’s most significant thought.
For me, to put it very simply, there is human free-will but it’s limited by three or more factors:
Human nature as handed down from our genetic inheritance
Individual mental or physical capabilitie, which are obviously variable in a lifetime
The individual’s path to attainment of freedom. From Sartre’s point of view it would be to act for oneself rather than conform to the crowd. From another point of view it would be to overcome psychological hangups etc. From a spiritual point of view . . . (the list goes on)
Oh, and by the way, the term wasn't "philosophy of mind", but rather "theory of mind", although you certainly have the gist of it. It's not a theory in the sense that the "theory of evolution" or the "theory of relativity" are theories, which is to say that it isn't some particular person's brainchild or the product of some particular school of thought. It's a theory in the sense that we ALL formulate this theory. We extrapolate from our experience and implicitly presume that other people are conscious beings like ourselves rather than just animated objects going through the pre-programmed motions of appearing human without thought or awareness, since as Tom points out, we really don't KNOW this for certain. Still, it's a reasonable conclusion that we all eventually reach, a "theory" that we settle on that you are like me and I am like you and so on. The salient point, when it comes to a child's development, isn't really about any doubts on this score, of course. It's about opening up and seeing these other dimensions to people, where heretofore they were just flat figures against the backdrop of the child's world.
Annnnnd I see you've already addressed the mistake. Nice.
To Blake I think that 'condemned' and 'free' would be contraries not opposites. They would be seen as parts of the process through which man experiences life in the material world. When the essential man enters the field of time and space he experiences constraints and opportunities. The clarity of Eternity would fade as matter began to obscure ones vision and the five senses became the avenues of perception.
Becoming subject to error or 'blindness to the Divine Vision' is the fall which leads to the Last Judgment when error is cast out and the return journey begins. Unfortunately we become preoccupied with removing the speck from our neighbor's eye without removing the log from out own. This is a sense in which we are condemned: being assigned the task of sifting out the matter which obscures our vision, from the vision itself which is hidden in matter.
To Blake the removal of error is a continual process of cleansing the doors of perception. Freedom is the ability to see everything as it is: Infinite. Without the process there would be no product.
That's interesting. What does Ellie think, in 2014? And when you added a comment on my previous post, “condemned to be free”?, in quotes, I'm wondering now whether you had Sartre's usage in mind, or Blake’s putative interpretation.
This is off topic. Just want to say that during the bad winter weather you are having, it has been reassuring to come here in the morning & see posts & comments from you.
I hope you are keeping warm enough. I picture you as the sort that would sacrifice your own coat or blanket to keep another warm.
An off-topic reply is therefore demanded, dear Woodsy. As it happens I’ve been staying indoors as much as possible, not with the express intention of preventing anyone in the street from taking off my cloak (obliging me to obey Jesus and offer my coat also); but suffering from a variety of man-flu, with fever, lassitude and chronic hiccups; & if I over-react to these symptoms, & take to my bed, I have the excuse of wanting to get it over with before some family festivities this coming weekend.
Oh no, I am so sorry you are sick. Is there anything I can get you???
I think the way that you British keep your humor even in sickness or danger is endearing & remarkable. I've never heard of hiccups with the flu, but you aren't dead so it's not Ebola...
There's a story from last year on 'The Telegraph'. Think it's called 'Man Flu Does Exist...". About how men really do feel rougher when they're sick, because your temperature receptors in your brains are bigger than women's. It's fact. A Dr. Ellison wrote a whole book about it called "Getting Your Head Around The Brain, focusing on the difference between minds of men & women." Gosh, that's a long title. Maybe I wrote it down wrong.
Anyway, I'm so sorry you are sick. I really am. Hope you feel better real soon!
There's another article titled " 'Man Flu' the truth that women don't want to hear" - written more for wives like me I'm sure, than sweet caring wives like yours.
It explains why men get high temps etc. than we do.
Included on there is this recipe;
Man Flu Soup
4 Cloves of garlic
Small dish (I assume they mean 'dash') of fresh ginger
One red chili with seeds
Red Onion
Sweet potatov
Shitake Mushrooms
Vegtable Stock
The ingredients are rich in flammators & de-congestant properties to clear the nose, while the onions have the added benefit of fighting bacteria & viruses.
The sugar in the Shitake Mushrooms can also boost the white-blood cell count, boosting the body's defenses.
Use the soup as the base for a curry as well.
I meant "anti-inflammatory" & it's "shiitake" mushrooms. Sorry. Feel better!
Bless you!
I've tried to make a statement of what ellie thinks on Dec 30, 2014.
Sartre's basic premise is the non-existence of God. Blake basically believes in God as immanent and transcendent, but the God within dominated his thought. I study Blake to learn how he worked out the application of his direct experience of God to psychological, social, political and economic situations. Anyone who studies Blake finds there not what others find, but what he himself is capable of discerning. Perhaps we project our biases on Blake rather than understanding his. But anyone's thought and interpretation of experience is based on assumptions about the outer world and the inner world.
Blake said:
"I must Create a System, or be enslav'd by another Mans
I will not Reason & Compare: my business is to Create"
I believe that the author of Genesis got it right when he said that man is made in the image of God. I'd rather think of myself as an image of God than as flesh and bones and blood and receptors of sensation. We think in images: photographic, digital, holographic, language, electronic. My parents are dead in the flesh but the image of them is alive in the inheritance they passed on to their descendents. We receive by assimilating images. We formulate by coordinating images. We transmit by producing images. That insubstantial image which we can never catch and cage is of greater value than words which can be articulated or treasure which can be accumulated.
Hebrews 11
[1] Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Faith may be equated with what Blake called Imagination or Spiritual Sensation.
Now I may begin to see how this works, when you say “Anyone who studies Blake finds there not what others find, but what he himself is capable of discerning.” You and Larry are part of a long tradition of scholars, who go deeper and deeper into original texts and images, or other scholars’ interpretations of them, to find keys with which they are able to open chambers within their own souls, or intellectual understanding. Like Kabbalists for example within the Jewish tradition. But they are found in many traditions. Sir Isaac Newton for example is known to have studied the Bible in order to yield scientific information, discovering for example that the world will not end at least till 2060, which is reassuring for us older ones.
Less systematically, I have gone to the book of Nature through wayfaring, or at its most primitive, stepping outside my warm hut to sniff the air and see the sky. And when it comes to texts, I remain naturally promiscuous, offering loyalty to authors purely on a temporary basis. And I often get the most from them through disputation: an inner posthumous dialogue which has the effect of belittling their godlike reputation, bringing them down to a human level that I can understand.
So there is Blake, not godlike but a visionary, not a sage but a sometimes irascible Londoner, struggling always, seldom venerated in his lifetime. As I’ve mentioned before, my psychoanalyst Theodore Faithfull back in 1964 pretty much built his therapeutic system on Blake and the Four-Fold Nature of Man, pushing Sigmund Freud to one side apart from the couch and the interpretation of dreams.
Thank you Ellie. Here we are, with another year to live, move and have our being. For which much gratitude to Life, that prime Force defined by Newton as something which keeps on going in a straight line until acted upon by another Force, Death.
My preference is for wayfaring under the sky in all weathers, & to read directly from the Book of Nature. But then Winter comes, and it is cosier to curl up with a good book.
My latest reading is Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition; in which she says that the via activa was known to the Greeks as a secondary thing that tried to take us away from the primary thing, the via contemplativa: something in the history of philosophy which gives much cause for contemplation.
I looked back on your references to Theodore Faithfull. Although he hasn't left a very distinct trail on the internet, I found something (besides Blake) that I can relate to. The school of which he was headmaster, Priory Gate, was an antecedent of a school in which I once taught for a period of 6 months. The NC Advancement School also was a school for troubled boys based on the theory that their problems could be solved if they were given enough autonomy, freedom and understanding. I found it to be a less than successful strategy.
My command of Blake does not qualify me to be called a scholar. My role is simply to accumulate scraps and pieces of his work and fit them together in a from which may interest others. Without the pictures I probably wouldn't have maintained my pursuit because poetry in general does not appeal to me. I am a prospector digging for gems which I can display to a public who is blind to their availability.
The next book I must read is The Developing Mind by Daniel Siegel, a Christmas gift.
Priory Gate School
https://books.google.com/books?id=JpNTB8XX1y4C&pg=PP20&lpg=PP20&dq=priory+gate+school&source=bl&ots=DLV0felrop&sig=8rQUK8WnmX4H5skTZc5VMAavKPw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=iZ6mVMiwFsbngwTDzILoAw&ved=0CB0Q6AEwADgK#v=onepage&q=priory%20gate%20school&f=false
NC Advancement School
http://ncpedia.org/advancement-school
Excellent blog post, thoroughly researched and well argued. Because of the influence of Hannah Arendt on my own thinking, herself a thinker who disliked Sartre's universalist philosophy, I can offer an alternative perspective to the question of what or who is Man in the singular. For Arendt, who saw herself as a political theorist rather than a philosopher, there are only men, in the plural, (and women too but she was old-fashioned in that way) and plurality and genetic diversity would lend itself to that claim. The more I grow up - I turn thirty this year - the more I make the realization that there is no 'Man-species' as such, except perhaps from a strictly biological and abstract viewpoint, but a variety of types and sub species of human beings who all have to, somehow or rather, cohabit on this planet, peacefully or not. Politics deals with human plurality whereas Philosophy, Psychology and the Sciences to an extent deal with man in the singular. This in my view is Sartre's main shortcoming as I believe he failed to appreciate the importance of plurality as an ever active and philosophically sensitive phenomenon in life as it has been given and handed to us.
Thanks, Bubo, it's taking me a while to get used to this idea from Arendt, in fact it's taking a while to get through her book, The Human Condition, with all the fine distinctions it makes, e.g. between labour, work & action.
Most philosophies, I would have thought, are universalist to the extent that they think of humanity as a single species; but Sartre deviates from this to the extent that he thinks when we take hold of our freedom we can make ourselves into whatever we like, i.e. unique individuals who don't conform to imposed norms.
I got on well with Arendt's book at first when she said how the Greeks put Vita Contempliva above Vita Activa - because I do too. But then I saw that she wanted to set contemplation to one side.
Thanks for your remarks, Ellie. It was clear that Faithfull was not considered at all respectable. His school, even in those more tolerant days, had attracted a certain amount of scandal. And even in his eighties, he could behave ‘scandalously’, by which I mean raise people's eyebrows, rather than get himself or others into actual trouble.
I was looking forward to going somewhere to "enjoy a smoke", especially since I kicked the habit nearly four years ago and yet still yearn for it often (and even indulge in it occasionally in my dreams), but alas I found that the place itself had gone up in smoke. A unfortunate fire hazard, I suppose?
Yes, there was an unfortunate case of "spontaneous combustion" as we call it, but you may now return to the smoking lounge here.
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