surprising differences between Australia and America

1. * Our main right-wing party is called the 'liberal party', but, in the US, liberal means left wing
2. * In Australia, the color for labor (left wing) is red and the color for the liberals (right wing) is blue. In the US, the color for Republicans (right wing) is red, and the color for the democrats is blue.

heavy is the mantel

English was my worst subject in high school, but I had a friend who did 3 unit English, and I remember him studying Such is Life by Joseph Furphy and Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. Only years later, having read Such is Life and knowing something about Catch 22, did I realize what a huge ask our English teachers were making in selecting those texts. I've known PhD students that found Such is Life challenging and I've had smart adult friends who didn't get Catch 22 at all. 

what writing is about

My disordered thinking is replete with closure...it's all about ending and decline and defeat, but writing is all about possibility and potential. You can write about anything, and as soon as you do, you're creating meaning, even if you write about something negative.  

rights and wrongs

This morning I read Philippians chapter 2. Verse 3 and 4 read:

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

That's an attitude that is rare even among Christians. We hold onto our views tightly, and if someone thinks differently, we argue with them. We have to be convinced to change our view, if we do at all. But imagine having the attitude that others know better than you. Imagine if that, rather than telling people when you think they're wrong, was your default reaction. 

It might sound a bit illogical or even foolish, but it's the attitude that Christ had. He was in the right, and we're not, but he took on all the wrong so that, through his sacrifice, we could be made right. 

palimpsest

I deleted my old blog, caeusura, in 2019 and then at the start of 2020 I began this blog. I thought it was gone forever but when I checked the wayback machine, the whole thing was there. 

I've been working my way through the posts and adapting some of them to this blog. My overwhelming impression as I read through the old posts I wrote between 2014 and 2019 is one of 'cringe'. For that reason, a lot of the posts, I don't bother adapting them or using any of them. Sometimes I'll use and adapt a whole post, and sometimes I'll take a few lines or an idea and build a new post from that. 

It's very weird to think that this blog is now older than my old blog. 

I'm glad that I was able to retrieve my old blog because it means nothing - at least nothing that I want to keep - has been lost. 

in the mirror

Creating art of some kind is validating because it's an expression of individual humanity, an expression of character. We can't see ourselves. Just as, physically we can't see ourselves unless we look in a mirror, mentally and spiritually, it's the same. But when you create something, whether in writing, music, paint, pixels or whatever, it's like looking in a mirror because you see the expression of yourself. 

blog timeline

The first time I heard the word 'blog' was this century. It was in 2004 at UNSW in a thesis seminar. We went around the room and each person talked about their thesis, and one person said that they were doing their thesis on 'weblogs', which, they told us, is sometimes abbreviated to 'blogs'. 

Then a couple of years (I can't remember exactly) after that, I started my own blog. My blog has been through three iterations, this one being the latest. So, the timeline looks a bit like this:

2006 - 2013 version 1

2014 - 2019 'caeusura'

2020 - present, 'voracioutee' 

the folly of procedures

Something I've noticed, especially working with Units of Competency when I was a business trainer, is that, when you try to document work tasks and roles in words, in a thorough and systematic way, simple things become complicated. 

Documenting of a job becomes a job in itself, and the task of documenting is not always relevant or helpful. Take a simple task like making a cup of coffee. Writing a procedure that explains how to do that task is quite a difficult thing, because you have to assume that the reader doesn't know anything about making coffee. So, you have to tell them how much water to put in the kettle, and that the water will get very hot so be careful not to spill it on yourself, and there will be extra steps depending on how much, if any, sugar the person wants in their coffee, and then there's the question of milk and getting the milk out of the fridge and opening the milk, and putting the milk back in the fridge afterwards, and the whole procedure has to be repeated as many times as there are people you're making coffee for, etc

And does having that written procedure help at all with doing the task well? 

education system

In school, teachers always make assessments of students based on certain criteria and how those criteria apply to all the students they've known. So, it's easy for them to misjudge students' motives and character. 

stuff of novels

I read a book by James Fenimore Cooper at uni, and I thought it was so boring and slow moving, but now I look back on it and see it as very earthy and deep - a fine work of literature, and I want to read more of him. 

There have been a few classic novels that I felt that way about, which isn't surprising. Life and the world were more slow moving in the past. It's surprising that I don't feel like that more often with old novels, but I don't. Reading Middlemarch, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, David Copperfield, etc...although they were written in the nineteenth century, they don't feel slow moving. 

Sometimes more modern novels seem very slow moving. Actually, they are very slow moving. I find that's the case with some of Thomas Mann's works. I started reading Joseph and his Brothers, and I just couldn't do it. It just refused to start. It begins with a kind of meditation the subject of which I can't remember. I just remember that nothing of substance happened and I kept reading - 10 pages, 20 pages - and still nothing definite. So, I gave up. 

It makes me think that maybe some literature from the past is lost to us. No one can read certain books because our minds don't work the way they did in the past. 

goals don't work the way you think

The story of how you resolved to do something and then worked towards it and persevered and eventually achieved it is always a story that you tell afterwards. Always a distortion. 

worldview

Sometimes other people think they understand your situation and your motivations better than you do. They're quite direct about it. They'll tell you what's 'really' going on with you, contrary to what you think. It's weird. They have it all figured out and they tell you your story in great detail, and if you disagree, they'll argue with you and insist they're right. 

a great speech

One of my favorite scenes in literature is in Dostoevsky's The Demons. There was a man who pretty much everyone respected, and this radical group was trying to court him and get him on their side, because he would be a powerful asset. So, after a period of time and getting to know each other, he agreed that he would come and speak at one of their meetings. 

They were stoked. It was a real coup. So, he arrives at the meeting and gets up to speak, and there are hundreds of people intently listening and ready to hang on every word. It's a crowd of true believers. 

He begins by talking about how he has really closely observed the group and thought deeply about his observations - really reflecting on the meaning and essence of the group. Then he tells them what he came up with - what he sees as the meaning and essence of the group. He says, it's really about (and everyone is expecting him to say something deep, but he says....) stupidity. 

It's one of the funniest and most memorable lines I've read. 

generations

We can learn about historical events and periods, but we will never know what it was like to actually live through them, unless we actually did live through it. 

One of my favorite quotes is from William Wordsworth's 'Preface to Lyrical Ballads':

For a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and, unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. The most effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily taking place, and the increasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of their occupations produces a craving for extraordinary incident, which the rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies. To this tendency of life and manners the literature and theatrical exhibitions of the country have conformed themselves.[1]

It's so interesting because, looking back at the period of time he's talking about, from the 21st century, his time seems so slow and primitive. In our age, through the internet and computer technology, we can and do communicate with anywhere on earth virtually instantaneously. Wordsworth's was the era of the telegraph, the newspaper, and the train. 

It's like when you were in primary/ elementary school and you made the jump from 2nd grade to third, so you were no longer an infant, and things got a lot more serious. As an adult you look back on that and remember what it was like but still, compared with other life changes, it's very minor. 

---

[1] Wordsworth, William, Preface to Lyrical Ballads, 1800, Bartleby.com, section 8

inside out

Inside it's warm and comfortable. It's a haven. But appearances are deceptive, for inside is stagnant and dead, but outside is vibrant and alive. 

doors

I used to think that self-help and popular psychology books had some kind of special secret, but I eventually realized that that's not exactly true. They can be helpful, but I think it's usually more in the way of drawing out what you already know. 

lego poetry

There are lots of things that I can write about.....a session I had with a psychiatrist, Dostoevsky vs Tolstoy, a video I watched applying Susan Sontag's distinction between camp and chic to modern social media trends, but the beautiful thing is that I can create something new. I can write something that has never been written before, something not modular and pre-packaged. 

changing channels

For a while I was thinking that I would cycle through Medium, my blog, substack, patreon, and linkedIn. So, I'd write a post on Medium then after that on my blog, then substack, etc. But that just doesn't work for me. For me, it's very hard to switch and the kind of writing I want to do on each platform is so different. 

So, the way it has worked out is that, I write on Medium for a few months, then my blog for a few months, and so on. When I'm immersed in each project, I have no....what's the word? 'Interest' doesn't quite fit. 'Momentum' maybe....in the others. 

I've only made it to the second step - this blog. It's going to be a while before I get to substack, Patreon and LinkedIn, because I'm in no hurry. I'm content to write my blog for the indefinite future. But when I get to each of them, I will write something good. 

mirage

There's always a difference between the idea of doing things and the reality. At school, when I first got an assignment or essay, it seemed like I had so long to work on it and I pictured myself doing all this good work, but then it wouldn't eventuate. I would end up doing it at the last minute.

landing

Years ago, when I was first at uni, I had a friend who was studying philosophy and really loving it. To him it was all about ideas and philosophical questions and reasoning. That never interested me. I'm more interested in language and texts. 

That's why, years later, when I did become interested in philosophy, I was more interested in the history of philosophy and the primary texts than in some kind of philosophical debate. More recently still, I've found that the two different approaches are pretty much indistinguishable. To learn about philosophy is to explore the development of ideas through history and to engage with texts that reflect that development.