crank

There are certain ways of thinking that are generally regarded by psychologists and other mental health experts as unhealthy. One big one, is the 'should statement'. According to this view, it's not good for us to think, 'I should do X' - to think and act in accordance with imperatives that we feel obliged to follow. We shouldn't do things just because we feel like we should.

Along the same lines, it's not good for our self-esteem when we adopt and adhere to beliefs and values because they are strongly held by another person or group that we respect. We ought to live according to values that we have wrought for ourselves, not values that we impose on ourselves because it's the 'right' thing or because we've been told this value or practice is important.

But there are certain issues, to do with faith, where these principles can become problematic. If you're deeply religious, it doesn't matter what psychologists say, if God, as you conceive of God, tells you that you should do something, then that takes precedence.

I think the solution to this apparent conflict is to not be dogmatic and legalistic about anything - psychology, religion or anything else.

If you are too intense and inflexible about absolutely never making should statements to yourself, you've missed the point. Ironically, you're actually slavishly following one big should statement: don't follow should statements.

I think the opposite extreme - blind obedience - always doing what you think you should do, is unsatisfactory as well. That won't lead to fulfilment and personal growth. As a believer, I question the value of blind obedience and legalistic righteousness.

So, both extremes - never following should statements, and always following should statements, are unhealthy. As a believer, there are imperatives that apply to your life, and that might make you think that that's always wrong, but it's not. There is a place for should statements. There are bad things that you might be tempted to do, and there's nothing wrong with adhering to the 'should statement' - I should not do that. Likewise, there are good things about which you feel, I should do that, and there's nothing wrong with acting on that. 

I suppose the important factor is why you are, or are not, doing these things. Is it just because that's what you've been told you should or should not do, or is it a reflection of your values? It's generally not good if it's just what you've been told, and there's some threat of punishment or reward involved. There's a place for that - like for example with kids. For their own good you need them to do and not do certain things without having to fully understand the reasons. 

A more mature position is where you act according to your values, and also there's some discretion - you don't feel like you absolutely always have to do what you think you 'should' do. I used to be like that about sharing my faith. I thought I had to share my faith - talk to people about God - in literally every situation that I found myself in, whether it was practical or considerate and whether people wanted to hear it or not. The more inappropriate and humiliating the better, because that was a better demonstration of faith. But that wasn't sustainable and I no longer think that's what God wants. 

redaction

I wrote 900 pages with my inner censor turned off. Then I started trying to edit that and make it readable as a proper text. It's worth doing that, but you also lose something. 

There's a certain value and meaning in the lack of punctuation and typos, and you lose that when you fix it. 

gr8 werk

Great scholarship divides and polarizes opinion. Mikhail Bakhtin's doctoral thesis is a prime example. The assessment committee was divided. Half of them thought it was rubbish - insane nonsense. Half of them thought it was a work of genius of the highest order. Things got so heated the whole town was divided and the authorities had to be called in. 

Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence is another good example. He shared it with some of his colleagues just to test the waters and they advised him not to publish it. It was too 'out there'. They told him, whatever this is, it is not literary criticism. But he went ahead and published it.

Bloom's colleagues were right, in a way. It wasn't really literary criticism as they knew it. Same with Bakhtin's works. They're strange and not what we expect. There's a poetic quality about these texts. 

The best works redefine the field. We don't even know the extent of our debt to Harold Bloom. We take it for granted that there are 6 great English poets of Romanticism: Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Byron, Coleridge, but that's only because Bloom insisted on it. 

hot tache

Achtung Baby is U2's grunge album

futili-tea

I don't think anyone reads my substack: lit. People don't even view it. I have 5 subscribers. There's no clamoring. No one has bated breath, abated breath, or anything like that....people are just out here breathing normally. Yet, I will continue because it's a very worthwhile project. 

palimpsest

I thought my old blog, caeusura, was gone forever after I deleted it and started this blog in January 2020, but then I looked it up on the 'wayback machine' and it was all there, from the first post in mid 2014 to the last post in late 2017....actually, now that I think of it, that may not be all of it because that would mean I didn't write anything on it at all in 2018 and 2019, which is hard to believe. 

The main thing I feel in reading through all the posts is a sense of 'cringe'. Maybe that's natural. Some time I might look back at my early posts on this blog and see if it's any different. 

I'm glad I found it though because I can use at least some of the posts and build on them to make new posts for this blog. 

once more with attitude

Writing is a way of manifesting the struggle. It's a corresponding struggle. Depression makes your thoughts end in negation. You want to write but every idea you have seems inadequate. 

But you can write anyway, in defiance. Depression inhibits expression and expression defies depression. That sense of connection you get when you interact with other people in meaningful ways is quite simply the opposite of depression.

As recorded in the GROW 'blue book': 

As egocentricity is the cause of stunted growth or disintegrating personal life, decentralisation from self and participation in a community of persons is the very process of recovery or personal growth.

What strikes me about that quote is how it doesn't just say that participation in a community is helpful to your recovery or will have a positive effect. It says it is the process of recovery and growth. That in itself is actual recovery. 

worry

I wore a groove into my brain. I worried about something so hard for so long that it made a circular path in my brain. 

I came to understand that 

the real problem wasn't the thing I was worried about

it was the worry

now it's one thing

- the worst thing - 

and later something else

there's a lesson in that 

a|way

I tend to always rehearse for the future, thinking about what I'm going to say and do. There have been times though, when the future seemed untenable. Whatever option - whatever path - I considered, seemed unworkable. There was no viable option. 

Such moments must be a crucible that forces you to grow, forces you to rely on God. The impossibility of it opens a space for new, unheard-of possibilities.  

When there is no path forward, God says:

Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. (Isaiah 43:19) 

hyper

I went through a period for a few years where a lot of the time, when I would try to sleep, just as I was drifting into sleep, my mind would wake me up with a jolt. again and again, sometimes for a whole night, and sometimes 2 nights in a row. 

I must be missing it

There's something very ironic about style and fashion. People are trying to be cool and unique by doing what other people - all the cool people - are doing. People are trying to distinguish themselves by conforming. 

words ➕ truth

Thoughts on 2 Timothy 2....

Being a follower of Christ is not like an interest or a hobby. It consumes your whole life.

Suffering is transformed when it is given meaning.

Paul warns us (or, actually, Timothy) not to get caught up in arguments over words or in 'godless, foolish discussions'. It's interesting because, in a way, Christianity and everything we do in our lives is about words. I only know about Paul and Jesus and Christianity through reading words from the Bible and using words to communicate with people.

But the important question is, 'what is behind the words?' In a relationship, words are crucial. Communication is like the essence of a relationship but the relationship itself is far more than the words. The words are like the finger pointing at the moon - they are not the moon itself.

That's why Paul warns us not to get into arguments over words, because it's not the words themselves that matter. What matters is the truth. Words are used as a means of expressing the truth but the truth is always more than the words. 

reboot

It's hard to change because you have to let go of the old to embrace the new, and you don't really know the new.

When I stopped drinking, I began a new life, and I think of that new life as a tree. At the start it was just a seedling or a baby. Defenseless and fragile. But alive.

It's the real me. It's my real life. 

My old life is like a house that I've built to protect myself. 

I venture out into the outside world that seems so hostile and threatening and the more I do, the more I come to understand that my real life lives outside. 

obliquy

i'm learning something – learning to do something – that really makes a huge difference to me. it's not a conscious thing. it's not something i do by effort. but it's something that somehow happens and i'm learning to allow it to happen. i get these feelings of inner tension and it's exhausting because i don't know how to relieve that tension, and it goes on and on. it makes me feel helpless and it's distressing. but somehow now, i'm able to begin to let it go. to just forget it. it's not about effort. when i try to relieve the tension by meditating or whatever, i just end up getting frustrated, because i'm all the more aware of this tension. i become so aware of this tension that i can't relieve and i worry about whether i'm going to be able to sleep and I feel desperate. but then i just gave up and decided to watch tv. and that's when i started to feel better. there's something about just stopping and letting things take their course. it's more restful to the mind sometimes to just let your thoughts flow, than it is to try and stop all the thoughts.

That's one of the lessons of The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris. He describes these mindfulness-based techniques that you can practice and you will feel better, but it's crucial that you don't use the techniques to achieve the goal of feeling better. You have to let the techniques take their course and not grasp on to the result you want. You will get the result, but not by seeking it. 

when we pray

I never (or rarely) used to say the Lord's prayer/ the 'Our Father...' because it always seemed to me that it's better to pray in my own words. I associated repeating certain words from memory with religiosity and not real spirituality. 

BUT....I was thinking about it, and this prayer was Jesus's answer to the disciples' question, 'how should we pray?', so how can I say that it's not how I should pray when Jesus himself said, 'pray like this'.

So lately I've been saying the Lord's prayer as part of my regular prayer. 

Something that struck me is the communal nature of the prayer. It's Our Father.....Our daily bread....Our trespasses.....We forgive....lead us....deliver Us. Some of the words, I change when I say it. Like, the traditional - 'Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name....', when I say it I modernize it - 'Father in heaven, hallowed be your name...'. So I was thinking, if I'm praying it on my own, should I change all the 'our's to 'my', and 'we' to 'I' and 'us' to 'me' to make it my prayer? 

The answer comes back to my initial point, that this is how Jesus tells us to pray. He said that when we pray, it should be 'our' and 'we' and 'us', so that's how we pray. 

judging by appearance

In general, it's better to be positive than negative, but sometimes negativity can be refreshing, and sometimes positivity can be obnoxious and shallow. You know those people who are just very honest when everyone else is trying to be polite....I like that. 

The book of the Bible that is most like this is Ecclesiastes. It's like, everything is meaningless.....I've tried all these things to make me happy - to fulfil me - and nothing does. It's just refreshing to read a message like that in the Bible of all books. 

I was part of a Christian group for many years where joyfulness was obligatory. You were judged according to how joyful you were, among other things. Of course, no one can really know how joyful you are, so you were judged by how joyful you appeared to be. So, to avoid getting into trouble everyone was always trying to appear to be joyful. We justified it with the idea that that was what we were meant to do - that was God's will. We weren't being fake. We were denying ourselves as it teaches you to do in the Bible. We made ourselves appear to be joyful, whether we felt like it or not. 

The irony is that forced joy is the very definition of fake joy. Real joy and love and faith are always based on freedom of choice. Real faith doesn't come from a refusal to countenance any doubts whatsoever. Being positive is not about rigidly refusing to be negative about anything. Real repentance is not about eschewing any kind of struggle completely. 

satisfaction

It's a good thing to do what you really want to do in life - to follow your dream and to do the things you enjoy and are passionate about. But you can't do those things all the time, and actually, you wouldn't want to. Life involves a range of experiences and feelings. A lot of satisfaction and fulfilment in life comes from doing things you don't feel like doing or things that are difficult. 

12

According to AA and other twelve step programs, you can't get help or help yourself with your problem until you admit there's a problem. Why is it so hard for us to admit it? I think it's because we feel that it reflects badly on us. We don't want people to think there's something wrong with us. We don't want to appear weak. I don't think it's just about what other people think of us though. It's a perception issue. People really don't see that they have a problem. 

Although I am an alcoholic, and I will never drink again, I've never been to AA, but I went to a mental health twelve step support group called GROW, which really helped. I learnt a whole different way of thinking from what I was used to. What I appreciated was the way that it provided an environment where it was normal and acceptable to talk about things that are normally pretty taboo. 

One of the big lessons I learnt from my involvement with the group was that truth is not self-evident. There are a lot of lies that we just accept as true simply because they seem true. That was the big lesson - a lot of my thoughts and perceptions were straight up lies....not just a little bit distorted, but actual lies. 

escape

At times I have wanted simple answers to important questions but, ultimately, I'm glad that the answers aren't simple. I was part of a group that wanted to simplify the message and what it meant to be a Christian. It's kind of exciting and refreshing at first to concede to that influence. It's a known challenge. Ultimately, it was a kind of enslavement and deception. It wasn't true. Thank God. When I was part of it, I thought that this is reality. It was a small, constrained world. But I thought, well, God made this world and decided on the rules, so I need to accept them. I thought that I would be in that world for the rest of my life and beyond because leaving was unthinkable. 

It was liberating when the reality of my life was no longer confined to those boundaries and rules.

Even though I no longer agree with them, I don't regret my time with them because it was part of my journey. My commitment from the start was to God, and that remained the case, and I think the more I sought God and pursued my relationship with God, the more that groups rigors and processes seemed empty, soulless, mechanical - not 'of God'. Drawing closer to God drew me away from them. 

winning

We all have our own world that we live in, and no one can touch that world. We face challenges, we overcome, and the victory is ours. A victory is not a trophy or a certificate that you frame, it's something that lives in you - something that you embody, permanently.

langue

In The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco talks about how medieval monks subverted the text of the Bible through the illustrations they drew in the margins. This works in two ways. Firstly, the margins frame the text and framing augments meaning. 

Secondly, margins are narrow which means that the meaning conveyed within them is concentrated. It's like when you take a small portion out of a picture, that portion somehow becomes more vivid and vibrant. 

The same principle applies to language. If you have a passage of writing, and you take out phrases and sentences, they have more potential meaning than they did when they were part of the passage. When they were part of the passage, they were just a vehicle to deliver the meaning of the passage. The reader hurriedly moves through them. Nothing interesting or noteworthy happens. But when you take them out of the passage, their meaning is, first of all, concentrated, because, instead of having to give your attention to the whole passage, you're now attending to these few words. 

Then also, there's a lot of creative potential now. You could put the words or phrases with other words or phrases that they wouldn't normally go with, thus creating new and interesting meanings. 

fire

Something you don't see a lot in TV shows or movies is people who are idealistic and passionate about things. We see a lot of Machiavellian characters whose passion and interest are devoted solely to getting and exercising more power. 

In a novel, if there are a few short statements of true, well-expressed passion, the whole book will center itself around them and they will echo beyond the book.

This kind of passion is not hype, bluster or anger. That's often what we mean when we talk about passion, but you see that sort of passion all the time. You see it every day in politics. People try to show that sort of passion when they make speeches, because it's impressive. They do it for effect. But this other sort of passion can be expressed without raising your voice or even sometimes without speaking because it's not about effect. It's about truth and substance and conviction.

now

What is more important - acceptance of where you are and what you've got or making progress towards your goals and dreams and what you want? On an actual physical journey, it's definitely the latter. If you are walking from one place to another, you keep walking. But life is different. 

The future itself never arrives, or rather, we never arrive at it. All we really have control over is the present moment. In a sense, that's true, but in a sense, it's not. The present moment is not all we have. Our past and our future are ours as well, we just have a different relationship with them. And, just like lines and points are ideals that can never be realized in this world because a true line or point would be invisible, the present moment is an unrealizable concept. So, effectively, there's no such thing as the present moment, or, at least, we can't really perceive it. We live on a continuum between the past and the future and our present is informed by both.

words for it

Sometimes it's hard for me to distinguish between what is depression and what is anxiety, which makes sense when you think about it because it's not like the two are compartmentalized in one's mind. 

And, strangely, my own judgement about these things isn't definitive. Like, there have been a couple of times when I thought that my main problem was anxiety but when my psychologist gave me that test that measures your levels of stress, anxiety and depression, she said that I was suffering from severe depression but only moderate anxiety.

I suppose that the depression is just so intense that I perceive it as anxiety. Like, to my mind, anxiety is more intense than depression. Depression sounds like something subdued, even benign - something manageable - but what I was experiencing at those times was not very manageable....like, that's why I was seeing a psychologist - to get help in managing my mental health issues. 

Labels are useful, even if they have a negative side. Just to be able to have words for different issues we experience enables us to address those issues. We can say - this issue is why I am being like this, and people will know what we are talking about. The reason that's so helpful is that communication goes a long way towards dealing with these issues. Then, on the other hand, labels can also become limitations. 

cut

The way we think of things and represent them is always a distortion. To tell the truth we have to lie and make stuff up. For example, it seems pretty obvious that the shortest distance between two points would be a straight line, but on earth, that isn't true. Because the earth is round, the shortest distance is always a curved line. And speaking of lines, the line itself is another example of this kind of simplification. A true line has no thickness and therefore would be invisible. So, when we draw a line, it isn't really a line - it's a rectangle - but it represents a line.

We suspend our disbelief though. When we watch a film or read a book, it evokes in us the sense of a story that happened in time and space. It evokes in us the perception of something very different from a book or a film or even what can be shown in a book or film. Films are only a couple of hours long, but they generally portray periods of time that are much longer. 

When I watched Adolescence, I noticed that they filmed all the parts that would normally be cut - like, people walking places. I learnt later that that's because they made every episode in single takes, with no cuts, which was quite a technical achievement. I don't know why they did that but when I was watching it I was thinking about how it makes the series more realistic, because life is punctuated with waiting times and walking from one place to another. 

the mystery of progress

Anything special or meaningful has an unpleasant side to it - a necessary shadow. Progress is always necessarily challenging and painful, among other things. 

You can't really see progress as you're making it. If you're like me, you're just aware of all the challenges. Then the progress seems to appear all at once. 

a movement begins

There were 3 bears and 3 pigs that shared a house in Bankstown. The bears were named Wilhelm, Alexandria and Neptune and the pigs were named Edison, Roe and Nerf. Wilhelm and Alexandria were best friends, as were Edison and Roe, but really they were all friends. Neptune and Nerf were in a band together.

It was a happy household. There were jokes with no animosity. Every day, the pigs would laugh at the way the bears' fur stood up in the morning and the bears laughed at the sound the pigs' trotters made on the floorboards.

They were just ordinary people in the early days, but they were destined to go down in history as key figures in the movement we now call antignomeanthropomorphanism. It all began with a scandal, which led to a crisis, which led to revolution, which led to a reformation. At the time, no one foresaw the upheaval that would result from the revelations that Hello Kitty was not a cat.

It had all blown over, actually - the HelloKittygate scandal - but, as revelations do, it had planted a seed. Nerf began to ask himself questions, about himself and his associates, that had never occurred to him before. In time, he came to the conviction that all 6 members of his household, including himself, were not people or animals - they were anthropomorphic characters. The rest is history.

serendipity

The idea that we achieve our own goals through application and perseverance is kind of a myth. Good things always have an element of surprise. Also, a lot of things that we don't associate with progress and success - like setbacks, failures and weaknesses - are crucial ingredients of success. 

It's not that our efforts are irrelevant, but they aren't everything. 

deformalization

According to the Russian Formalist school of literary criticism, 'defamiliarization' is the fundamental essence of literature. Language prolongs the perceptive process, leading the reader to question and enrich the meaning being conveyed. Does it though? Yes. Consider how we can think much faster than we read, or how we can read much faster in our heads than we can read aloud. 

If you perceive an event or object yourself, you will form certain impressions and views about it. If you read a text about it, you are perceiving that event or object through the text. Your mind has to process the text, and that slows it down, giving it more time to create meaning. And during that extra time, the object or event is defamiliarized, because you are perceiving a text, not the object or event itself.

When we are familiar with something, we don't really look closely at it. We already know it so we don't have to pay attention to it. Viewing that thing through a text gets us to slow down and pay attention to it, which 'makes it strange'. 

thoughts

We constantly have thoughts going through our minds. When we express those thoughts in writing, it's an exercise in partial translation rather than transcription, because our thoughts are multi-dimensional and can't be represented in any tangible medium.

being here

If you replace the negative prefix of the word 'negation' with the prefix of 'positive', you get 'position', which is surprising. Negation is kind of esoteric and philosophical. Position is very concrete and definite. They're not obviously opposites but they are opposites, since the opposite of negation is 'being' - actually being somewhere - being in a position. We posit ideas. We take a position on issues.

no thyself

I am the only self I know. But knowing yourself is a strange thing. It's not like knowing someone else. Just like you can't see your own face, you aren't aware of your own self. Other people see qualities in me - good and bad - but I don't. We rely on a mirror to see our physical appearance and we rely on responses from others to get a sense of ourselves.

It's funny how we don't really know ourselves. In a way, you know yourself better than anyone else, but, at the same time, you don't know yourself. When you are having a conversation and you say something funny or interesting, it's as funny or interesting to you as it is to the person you are talking to. It's new and surprising to you even though you said it, because it comes partly from this self that you don't fully know. You don't know what this self is going to say.

When I write, a lot of it is responding to what I just wrote. I'll read what I just wrote and see where I can go from there. I respond to it as if.....not as if someone else wrote it, but not exactly as if I wrote it either. The key point is that I respond to it. It's composition and response. I'm a composer and responder. 

compulsion

Opposites are intimately related. You can't be courageous unless you are afraid. And strength is rooted in weakness. One becomes extraordinary by being ordinary. Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are, in fact, the same person.

When religious groups try to banish all possibility of doubt or sin - when they try to enforce goodness by demanding adherence to a set of rules or principles - they extinguish people's faith. Because choice is fundamental to love and faith. When you love, value and believe in a person or in God or even in an ideal, it motivates you to think, say and do certain things. You choose to do those things. If you are compelled or coerced into doing those things, it's not the same. It's not real love or real faith.

We learn through failure and struggle. We don't learn by being told what to do and then doing it because we're told. We have to discover the right thing to do for ourselves. So, struggle and setbacks and mistakes are part of the process. I think religious groups sometimes make the mistake of demonizing struggle itself and insisting that you say, do and be certain things because they have told you to do or because according to their view the Bible tells you to. They want compliance with a set of rules, not realizing that what matters is the heart. 

@play

The state of flow is when you forget the mechanics of things. When you are learning something, you have to focus on the mechanics and doing all the different parts well.

Driving is a good example. When you know how to do it, a lot of it becomes automatic. Typing is another example, or any kind of writing. As I write, I'm only aware of what I'm expressing. I don't have to pay attention to each letter or word or to the mechanics of using language. Similarly with art. I've noticed how, with digital art, these days I'm not aware of what my hands are doing. It's as if my mind is directly creating what I want. Or video games. 

But then, with creative processes, after you have mastered the mechanics you can go back to being aware of the mechanics again and do interesting things. You play with the interaction between the mechanics and the process.

use it in a sentence

I'm always rehearsing conversations in advance and reviewing them in retrospect and when I'm working on a writing project, I'm always writing it in my head, as all my reading and notes get fed into that continual process of composing, but when I have a good idea, I have to write it down the first chance I get, otherwise I might lose it - because an idea can be quite complex, with multiple stages and links, and the short-term memory just can't hold things like that. 

why you should watch that film for the 10th time

I like those shows where they follow people through their lives - like the '7 up' series, where they interviewed a group of 7 year olds in England and then interviewed them again every 7 years after that, and they make a film each time. The most recent one was 63 up, in 2019, which means the next one will be 70 up in 2026. 

The films involve a kind of storytelling. That's how we understand reality - through stories. There's a universal element about each person's story and the story of all of them together, and there's an individual element. 

I'm reluctant to watch the series again because I've watched at least some of the episodes over and over. So, I think it would be boring to watch them again, but actually, I know that it wouldn't be or it might not be - it needn't be, because I would probably see something new that I haven't noticed before. My familiarity with the series needn't be a source of boredom. It there are new elements as well, my familiarity would just heighten the tension between the known and the new, and tension is the source of meaning. 

hate at first sight

When we don't like something, we feel obliged to completely avoid it, but maybe it would be better to be intrigued by our initial distain and see it as an indicator that something merits further investigation. 

connection

If I have a hometown, it would be Sydney or maybe Wollongong. I have lived in and around Sydney and Wollongong my whole life since I was 4, apart from an 8 month stay in Hong Kong.

As I travel through these cities, I pass through a whole series of places that I have very strong memories about - different places I have worked or lived in or where my friends have lived. The trip I'm on links very different parts of my life.

It's like the kind of triangulation that happens with learning. You learn about some historic figure or phenomenon when you're learning about one subject and then you encounter the same key figures and developments in a completely different subject, and it enriches your knowledge of all of it. 

momentum

One of the indications that I'm well mentally, or recovering, is that I'm interested in things. It's really noticeable. It stands out because it's so different from the depressed mind. 

I remember one time when I was walking out of my room and I looked at one of my books and I felt that sense of interest. It was so memorable because I had gone for a long time without feeling any interest in anything. 

what you need

In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord; in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying; my soul refuses to be comforted. - Psalm 77:2 (RSV)

There is an implication here that our soul knows better than we do. You don't usually refuse something despite yourself.

Part of us wants comfort and relief and part of us wants God. But those two parts belong to us and must both be accommodated. They must come to terms with each other.

They actually work together to help us grow. Because our need for comfort and our need for God are ultimately the same thing, we just don't realize that at first.

disinterested is the opposite of bored

I read Jon Ronson's, So You've Been Publicly Shamed and really enjoyed it. I was thinking about what makes this, or any other book or show or speech or whatever, compelling. What engages me? I think it's when it's not what you expect. I'm not that interested in the book's ostensible subject matter - people being publicly shamed and how, in today's world, with social media and so on, people can be exposed to extremely severe shaming and criticism. The book works through issues related to that subject. But that's not what holds my attention. The subject of the book isn't that interesting to me. It's something else.

It's a combination of the fact that what I'm reading is interesting but also, I don't really know what it's getting at or where it's going. I don't really care about the argument the book makes (its thesis) or the conclusions the writer comes to...I'm not even interested in the argument or the points he makes. I don't really want to learn anything from it or increase my understanding.

But strangely and ironically, I think that's what makes for good learning...that's what makes for engagement....disinterestedness. Not 'uninterestedness' - no, it's actually the opposite. Disinterestedness is intense curiosity but for the enjoyment of it - not because you need to learn about it to complete some project or get something done. To be disinterested is to be detached from results [which is different from not caring], and a lot of really, really good things come about as a result of disinterestedness.

It seems like a strange word (because you would think that the 'dis' pre-fix signifies opposition, but it doesn't). The key to understanding it is to realize that it's talking about a different type of interest to the one we're referring to when we say something is interesting. Normally that's about having some kind of stake in the matter, whether that's in terms of money or particular results. We can speak of having 'a financial interest' in a project. To be disinterested means you don't favor one side or the other, but rather you favor the truth or some other altruistic goal. If someone is disinterested, it means they are doing something because they really want to do that thing. They don't have any ulterior motives or agendas. And, ironically, the results - the results attained when someone doesn't really care about results - are often spectacular....far more so than when someone is trying to achieve a particular goal.

I think...I'm open to debate about this, but I think...that some of the best learning is disinterested learning. One of the joys of research is that you don't know how your research is going to be used. Some of the most useful things in this world began with research with the aim of expanding our knowledge and understanding of some field, and only later was the practical application figured out. 

transit scholarship

You know that problem when you don't name your files systematically - you name the latest one 'new', then the next one 'new new', and the one after that 'updated new' - so you can't tell by the names of the files, which is the latest one? It becomes very confusing. I think literary scholarship has a problem like that. 

Why did they call 'modernism' 'modernism'? Modern means current, doesn't it? So, what were they going to do when modern no longer meant early twentieth century? [Assuming that's the definition you're using. Sometimes 'modernism' is used to refer to the period beginning with the enlightenment and the scientific revolution.] Well, you call the next thing 'post-modernism', which is really just deferring and exacerbating the problem, because it kind of means 'after now'. So, what do you call the next development after 'post-modernism'? Scholars have solved the problem by declaring that theory no longer exists.....yes, we are living in a post-theory world.

Another good example is the so-called 'new criticism', which isn't new at all anymore. It's actually around a hundred years old now, but it's still called 'new criticism' because that's what it was called when it was actually new. It seems like literary scholars are a lot like normal human beings. They get excited about what they are doing, and they think that no one has ever thought or done those things before, and, for some reason, they don't stop and think about what will come next. They're like the people who push and shove to get on the bus, but once they are on, they won't move down the aisle so other people can get on.

the meaning of pain

"Recovery is terrifying when you don't know who you are without your sadness."
(via drunkblogging) source: little-miss-tragedy

This really resonated with me. It's like that song - 'how?', by John Lennon....how can I go forward when I don't know which way I'm facing?

Of course, I have a concept of mental health and happiness; I've just never experienced it. And yet, I make progress. I have made progress.

What matters is the direction you're facing. Instead of holding up this perfect ideal of blissful happiness (which no one actually ever attains anyway) and seeing how far short you fall, consider your progress. 

We always demonize struggle. We think there must be something seriously wrong with us to be struggling like this. But actually, struggles are valuable. That's one of the lessons I've learnt from life in general but more specifically from my taper (coming off valium). 

When you're experiencing some kind of mental pain, it's not what it feels like. It feels like you're being broken down, but the opposite is happening. A good analogy I've heard is renovating a house. To renovate, you might have to knock down some walls and things are going to look pretty rough before it starts to look good. Making involves breaking. Likewise, the process of healing your mind is going to hurt, but the hurt is a reflection of healing. 

the stultifying effect of systems

I'm not a fan of systems. It seems like systems always take a good thing - like spirituality or religion or business - and corrupt that thing. When some worthwhile endeavor is made into a system, the results are not just second-rate; the results are negative, destructive and even evil - the opposite of good.

Systems don't recognize the individual. It's especially problematic when you try to systematize everything - all aspects of life - as they do in some religious groups. Someone has a problem?.....OK, bring in a leader to counsel them. Then the leader listens just enough to make an assessment about the ideologically correct (according to the system) analysis of the problem. They do a kind of calculation and come up with a formulaic solution that would apply to anyone with this problem. That's all the person is to this leader: a problem to be solved. 

When the guys from the Sydney Church of Christ were studying the Bible with me, what I didn't realize at the time was that the studies and the things they said were part of a formula. This was a process with desired results at every stage. I got to know that process very well once I had joined the group. But, over time, I came to see the studies as a kind of blunt instrument. Exactly the same studies were done with everyone, with the same expected results. There's no real discovery or newness, just a list of expected results.

One day I said to them that what I would like to do is to go away and read the Bible for myself, and reflect on the issues that they were raising, and come to my own conclusions - generate my own convictions from what I read. Their response was that it was much better to continue with the studies (what they call 'guard the gospel') because they knew what verses to point out and what to say about them and they could get me ready to become a disciple much more quickly than if I just studied the Bible on my own. So, I continued with the studies and got baptized and remained a member of that group for 12 years. 

It occurred to me recently that my original idea of reading the Bible for myself and drawing insights from it that are my own, is what ended up happening. Through all my years with that group and all the years since, to this day, I read the Bible regularly and draw my own insights from it. I think that's really what it's all about. It's about your own personal connection with God and you drawing meaning from the Bible.  

they crave that mineral

This is adapted from a post on my old blog (caeusura) that I wrote on July 2, 2014. ***

Zachaeus the tax collector wanted to see Jesus but because of the crowds and because he was short, he climbed a tree. Jesus walked up to the tree and told Zachaeus that he was going to have dinner at his place that day. How could you resist an invitation like that? Was Zachaeus a Christian? Did he become a Christian (or a disciple)? Was he 'saved'? None of that seems particularly relevant. He was a person and Jesus interacted with him.

Jesus was (is) remarkably straightforward in his dealings with people. I sometimes wonder how Jesus would feel about Christians today and their churches. One of the things that I notice about some churches is that they have an agenda. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, the church should have an agenda. But that agenda needs to be pure and honest. There shouldn't be ulterior motives. With some groups, members want to be your friend and they want to share the message - the gospel or good news - with you, but not because those things are worthwhile and valuable in themselves, but because they want to convert you - they want a result. 

After being part of a Christian group that had many of the characteristics of a cult, for 12 years, I have an aversion to those kinds of agendas. For example, I try to avoid those people who approach you in the street and want you to make a regular donation to their cause. They act as if they want to speak to you - they feign friendliness, but it's because they want you to donate. I don't hate them. I've even signed up for some of them. But I dislike what they do, because I have done a similar thing myself, just in a different context. 

One of the things that gave me a lot of joy after leaving the group I mentioned was being around people and interacting with them without having an agenda. It felt so good, for the first time in many years, to just talk to people and interact with them for the pleasure of doing that. And to be able to say what I wanted and what I really felt, instead of what I felt I had to say.

poetry without words

I wrote this post on my old blog, caeusura, on July, 18, 2014. I was going to edit and revise it but it has a kind of completeness the way it is, with its flaws * * * *

When a computer stores data, we call that memory and we also call it memory when we recall information or events. But what do the two processes - computer memory and human memory - have in common? They are both a kind of record. But when we open a file we have stored in a computer, we don't say that the computer is remembering. Remembering is a human thing. Implicit within the concept of remembering is that of forgetting. Computers don't forget things, so they don't remember things. And each person's memories are unique to them.

But what constitutes a memory? A kind of mnemonics is involved. A single detail represents the whole. In literature, this trope is called synecdoche. It's like a box with a label on it. But what language is the label written in? It's a kind of poetry, for sure.

It's a poetry without language and the box isn't really a box. No - it's not without language - it's without words. It's a very eloquent language. It's the language of gesture - the language of animals, the sea and the sky.

creative goals

I'm very cycle based - at least more so than some other people. So, I make progress and think about my goals in a different way. It's not so much about increments for me - although of course to the external observer, I will be making progress in increments - but it's more like: I push really hard, then fall back a bit, then push really hard, fall back a bit, and so on. 

I remember watching a YouTube video where the presenter was talking about a very well-known and lauded self-help book, and she said, it may be a good book, but that's not how I work. And this is a book that everyone was raving about. 

I feel that way about SMART goals - the idea that, to be valid and effective, every goal has to have each of the five elements: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely. Goals have been an important part of my life for at least 30 years, but I have different types of goals for different purposes. Like for example, I have 'next level goals' and at the other extreme I have 'progress goals'. Both serve an important purpose and both are very different. Next level goals are things that are basically unrealistic. Something like - being a professional artist who exhibits work in galleries. It's encouraging to have goals like that because, everyone and everything may tell you it's impossible, but it's not impossible so why not dream it and pursue it. Then, at the other end of the scale, there are progress goals, which are eminently achievable. The challenge with these is to think of very easy ways to move in the direction you want to move in. The beauty of these goals is how easy they are, but, at the same time, how worthwhile and positive they are. So, it could be something like, I'm going to eat this different kind of food that I don't normally eat, or I'm going to go for a walk or I'm going to have a conversation. 

One type of goal that I never formulate though, is SMART goals.