Setbacks

Posted by on

“Conventional measures of potential, such as IQ tests, turn out to be rather impotent unless yoked to deeper aspects of character: the willingness to work through difficulties, and not be threatened by the failures that are an inevitable aspect of life.

“The problem is that we live in an X Factor culture world that is all about instant success and gratification. If kids think success happens effortlessly, why would they bother to persevere when they hit challenges and difficulties?”

People who haven’t developed the traits required for dealing with setbacks are often flustered by ambiguity and challenge. Well-adjusted young people do not ignore failuures, or give up when faced by them, but learn from them and don’t make the same mistakes again. Mistakes are learning opportunities, build resilience and self-understanding. Karl Popper is quoted as saying, “True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it”. (Mathew Said in The Guardian Weekly (edited))

Grit is the word I would use. It is a rare person who gets through life without a setback, mistake or crisis. One has to take it as calmly as possible, determine not to let it happen again, put it behind you and set out to do better next time. It’s a frame of mind.

“Now people will hate you again”.

Posted by on

Julian Barnes, in an article on 20 April 2017 asks what vision Brexiteers have for the future of Britain. “It seems”, he writes, “a mixture of Merrie England, Toytown and Singapore. Outward-looking in the sense of “open for business”, which tends to to mean “up for sale’; inward looking in other senses. Morally depleted by cutting ourselves off from Europe and sheltering beneath Trump’s fragrant armpit. What might we end up as? Perhaps a kind of Bigger Belgium, with quasi-American values and torn into separate nations again. Do we seriously think that those who voted for Brexit are going to be better off under this state-shrinking government? (I can’t recall the phrase ‘Poorer but Happier’ being used) That the NHS will be properly funded? That the increasing numbers on zero-hours contracts will not be exploited further? That the old winners will be the new, even bigger winners? Do we seriously believe that Mrs May, when she wins her election, will construct a ‘country that works for everyone’?”

“The Australian, Simon Leys, wrote about Australia: ‘Culture is born out of exchanges and thrives on differences. In this sense ‘national culture’ is a self-contradiction, and multiculturalism a pleonasm*. The death of culture lies in self-centredness and isolation”. The first concern should not be to create an Australian culture but a cultured Australia’.”

Julian Barnes continues by saying what I also half-feel in my conflicted heart. I love the country of my birth and owe it a huge debt. At the same time the aggressiveness and arrogance of the Brexiteers, who claim fallaciously that ‘The People have Spoken’ cannot help making one half hope that Europe will make the UK pay up all it owes, and keep it waiting for a deal; that Trump will ignore the Brits or make a humiliating offer; that those who wanted the departure of the East Europeans will find that it is now they who have to dig the potatoes and care for the old and dying; that the same people will find that they are worse off financially not better off at all; that the EU handouts will not be replaced by the British government; and that the safeguards and human rights brought them by the EU are dismantled and they are exploited with year-only contracts as never before; and that, as in America, the whole, but secret, idea was to enhance and fortify the power of the rich and the corporations.

But I also hope (against hope) that Britain will come out of the EU without too much collateral damage and that Epicurean moderation will win the day. If the above horrors occur they will affect my sons, my grandchildren and our friends. A mix of right-wing buffoons in charge and the Daily Mail braying in the background is not a good start, and many are convinced that foreigners will hate the Brits again. Let us pray not.

* Pleonasm: The use of more words than are necessary to convey meaning. The problem is very common in a country where people are paid by the number of words, not the depth of thought.

Long live regulations!

Posted by on

People of a right- wing disposition complain about the scores of rules and regulations put out by government. Let them stop and ponder the following:

If ruthless people stopped breaking the normal rules of civilised conduct there would be no need for any regulations at all.

If bankers stuck to lending to deserving businesses and individuals instead of trying to make fortunes in a week, there would be no call for regulations.

If companies paid a living wage, offered civilised things like pensions, decent holidays, safe environments, good terms of employment, no one would waste their time drawing up regulations governing employment.

One could wrire a book along these lines. In short, if we all acted with thoughtfulness and consideration towards our fellow citizens, in the spirit of Epicurus, we could have a government without rule-makers. The complainers are pointing their fingers in the wrong direction.

Cultural appropriation

Posted by on

Themed balls
Trinity Hall is a Cambridge College. Students there organised a Japan-themed ball, for which they were severely criticised. Students at Pembroke College cancelled a party themed on Around the World in Eighty Days, for which they had also been taken to task for “cultural appropriation”. These criticisms are riddled with irony. The idea that when we imitate something we are seeking to appropriate it, rather than appreciate it, is absurd. (Letter to the Time, author unknown)

Cricket
Cricket was originally a white Anglo-Saxon sport but it is now far more popular in Asian countries, so are they guilty of “cultural appropriation”? Adopting and developing a great passion for cricket is a tribute to its founders, and today it is a wonderful sport that is shared between countries, cultures and ethnicities. It has been globally elevated, not appropriated by anyone. The notion of “cultural appropriation” is an example of a more sinister politically correct mentality that is beginning to seep into our whole society. It must be refuted by intelligent people who truly value assimilation and integration as the way toward a more peaceful and harmonious society. (Mike Kemp, Truro, Cornwall 19 March 2016 The Week)

Jesus College, Cambridge
A large brass cockerel was taken by “vengeful Brits” in 1897, during a punitive expedition against the oba (king) of Benin, during which they pillaged a fortune in magnificent bronze sculptures, including the cockerel. The said cockerel was bequeathed in 1930 to the college (whose coat of arms features three cocks), and was proudly displayed in the dining hall – until last week, when Jesus’s students, inflamed by recent campaigns to right colonial-era wrongs, voted to return it to Nigeria. Even though the college obtained the bronze “entirely legitimately”, the authorities have now removed it from the hall, and are looking into the question of repatriation. I don’t blame the students – “idealism, like drunkenness, is an inevitable consequence of studenthood” – but, really, the dons should know better. (Tony Allen-Mills in The Sunday Times)

Editor’s note: such shenanigans never occur at Oxford, a large, respectable and august university, where the students are diligent, where they have better things to do with their time, such as “appropriating” thoughts and ideas from all over the world, thinking about them and critiquing them. This is what they are at university to do.

I personally have “culturally appropriated” the thought of Epicurus, or tried to. It would be nice if more people did the same. Epicurus wouldn’t complain.

Trump Tower: It tells you a lot, without speaking

Posted by on

I am in the middle of two weeks of jury duty, or, at least, standing by for jury duty. Yesterday I wasn’t required (white, old and looks like he might be rude to the judge about the number of incarcerations in the US, maybe?). In any event, I had half the morning off, so, feeling adventurous, I visited the Trump Tower hotel on my way home and announced that I would like a coffee.

Trump Tower is the converted old Post Office headquarters, and it shows. The inner atrium is a great well that reminded me of a Victorian railway station. There are no platforms, but you nonetheless expect a train to arrive at any minute. Indeed there was some sort of strange horizontal metal arrangement suspended from the top of the nine floors that reminded me of railway lines. After an initial struggle to tell the waiter that all I wanted was a cappuccino-and-no-I-am-not-a-resident, I was seated on a hideous plush sofa and could observe the gigantic American flag hanging on the wall, four versions of Fox News, complete with the necessary blondes, on massive screens behind the bar, totally incongruous and fussy chandeliers, and the Louis IXX gilt chairs (yes, I know there was no Louis IXX, but does Trump and his architect?). I did a mini-tour, locating Ivanka’s beauty salon. I think she must be in South Korea preventing the next nuclear war, because she wasn’t there.

At length the cappuccino arrived. It was the worst cappuccino I have ever had in my life. No taste at all, and the bubbles looked as if they came out of a fire hose. When I finished I had to pay, with tip, $13.00. This is the most expensive coffee I have ever had. The question is whether taking $13.00 from me constitutes a Presidential conflict of interest, in which case readers can look forward to the worst cappuccino in history actually getting into the legal history books. The adventure should have made me grumpy about wasting time and money. Instead it set me up with as much Epicurean ataraxia as I needed for the rest of the day because everything falls into place. I am now convinced that we can add bad taste to the other misdemeanors.