According to my information Osama Bin Laden has his 51st birthday on Monday 10th March. I don't know how many cards he's likely to get since so many of his chums insist on blowing themselves to smithereens so here's one to pin to the wall of his cave. As a special RobV list extra then, herewith a list of 27 anagrams of Osama Bin Laden.
O misled banana
Ban maids alone
Beano dan islam
Damnable sonia
I am a bad nelson
Bad ale onanism
Neon islamabad
Insane lama bod
Inland amoebas
Bend a mona lisa
Bad asian lemon
Is a banal demon
A no-bend salami
A banal sin dome
Adam, a noble sin
Blamed on asian
Banal media son
Diana’s one lamb
A nomad lesbian
Man alone is bad
A son! A mandible!!
Medina on a slab
Bad oman aliens
Asian lab demon
A lebanon midas
Bad sea lion man
I’m no bean salad
Wednesday, 5 March 2008
Monday, 25 February 2008
TEN MORE COMMANDMENTS
I embarked on this project somewhat light heartedly but wound up absolutely in earnest. What I’m after here, I have come to realise, is a superstition-free code of ethics. Usually it’s somebody’s deity or other who comes up with such ideas which certainly makes it easier to bind believers into a social contract but ultimately sets up conflicts with the unconverted. This is my humble offering therefore towards a god-free code of conduct. I’ve worked hard not to descend to the sanctimonious, but it’s up to you to decide the degree to which I’ve succeeded.
Admittedly nobody’s doing any commanding here and they might be more accurately termed precepts but it’s all about marketing isn’t it? Ten More Commandments it is. Sue me, Moses, see if I care.
11. GET AWAY WITH IT Do no harm
There’s an old cynic’s cliché that says the eleventh commandment is ‘Don’t get caught’. That is not what I intend. Getting away with it goes deeper. Is it Google or Microsoft whose motto is ‘do no harm’? It should be both: It should be written into Company Law. I believe that to judge the morality of an action one must examine its consequences. Count your victims and measure (exactly how one does this is an open question) the degree of damage your act has created. No casualties, or better still improvement (we could argue about what that is too) then you’ve Got Away With It.
The eleventh commandment is about socially and environmentally responsible behaviour.
12. DON’T GET STUCK. Let go
There are two ways to become stuck – the voluntary and the involuntary. If your life is in a rut then perhaps you’ll like this one: if you’re on a roll right now you might experience a slight tendency to resist. Either way the trick is to relax your grip. By and large your oppressors are your own beliefs. I don’t mean become a creature without volition like a leaf on the wind. I tried that once and discovered there are contrary wills out there and if you don’t occasionally jostle for space even the sweetest souls can’t help but step on you. Carpe diem! Seize the day, yes, but don’t throttle it. Life, my friend, is a butterfly. Hold out your open palm and there she will settle and open up her pearly wings to you. Close your fist even for a moment and either she is crushed or flown. This applies to love, to wealth, to mood, to ideas, to the creative urge. Keep an eye on things for sure, but learn to trust the universe.
And for goodness’ sake don’t winge.
13. DON’T TRY TOO HARD. Be cool
I found myself the other day trying really hard not to try too hard and I knew I’d really lost the thread. ‘If you’re in a hole,’ they say, ‘stop digging’. Currently there’s someone, not entirely part of my life yet, whom I’ve been trying to impress. If she’s going to like me it will be for the me-ness of me, not some contrivance. So what did I do? I applied the Letting Go rule and although I don’t think I’ve quite won her heart as yet I discover the her-ness of her all along has been floating beside me on the stream of life. See? – there’s the butterfly and oh how she shines. I’m not going to stop doing the best I can though – see the get-it-right rule below.
Put this another way – force and coercion bend the world out of shape and between the lines of the be cool rule is an exhortation to non-violence. But I much prefer to talk about love than war.
14. DON’T APOLOGISE FOR YOURSELF Respect yourself.
Now I don’t mean ‘never apologise’. Apology is right and proper way to express contrition when one had wronged another. It declares willingness to embark on reparation and a resolve to do better in the future. But never, ever, self-disparage. The person most responsible for the maintenance of your dignity and self-respect is you. You cannot rely on others to do this for you. If you accidentally back into someone in the checkout queue say ‘excuse me’ or ‘please forgive me’ and save your sorrys for the serious stuff. To present yourself as unworthy is to invite contempt.
But don’t take yourself too seriously, eh?
15. PURSUE YOUR DREAMS Use your imagination
If you don’t have a dream how you gonna have a dream come true?
Without a dream to chase, life can become most dreadfully dull, at best a kind of endlessly complacent cycle of the satisfactory. And when you’re in that hole and you’ve stopped digging but still can’t find a way out, try using your imagination. There are prizes for the best ideas, I promise.
There’s nothing wrong with the occasional Impossible Dream either. The world needs Impossible Dreams (unless they involve Thousand Year Reichs). Given the probability of an ID coming to fruition we need shedloads of them to keep up the odds. And besides, a good few turn out not to be as impossible as you may think. Your perceived impossibility quotient could well be a measure of your own lack of imagination. The optimal technique, I find, is to have only the one ID at a time and therein invest your all. If you’re stuck, start with little daydreams and work up from there. Necessity is actually the Father of invention: its Mother is imagination.
I’ve always been a bit short on ambition myself, so this story has stuck in my gullet ever since I heard it (from a Christian priest curiously enough). An earnestly good man dies and approaches St Peter at the pearly gates. He has all his answers ready – he’s kept the commandments (the first ten anyway), been charitable and upright; he’s gone to church regularly. Instead of the expected question, St Peter floors him right away. ‘What risks have you taken?’ he demands. I still don’t know if the man gets in or not, or more to the point, how I rate my own chances.
As a matter of fact the imagination rule is almost impossible to sidestep since pretty much the entirety of our social reality is based on the imaginary. God, America and the Dollar are made of nothing but our dreams. I’m not knocking them, they are (though you may have your own views on their enactment) some of the most brilliant IDs of all time. And in the face of the almost universal public subscription to such notions, is it not a huge conceit to affect disbelief?
And finally folks, consider the construction of the Self. We are such stuff as dreams are made on.
16. LIVE TO THE FULL Have fun
Are you ready to rock and roll? Love life. This world is bursting at the seams with light and colour and sound and perfumes and tastes and all the delights of the spirit and the senses. Cash in your birthright of joy and resist to the utmost any who would seek to rob you of it. Exuberance is beauty. Laugh. Educate your sense of humour. Be Up not Down. Up-Up-Up-Upbeat, got that? Up. Don’t indulge the Down. Stop listening to Oasis - all that whining and complaining like sulky children, it’s bad for you. I know I can hardly talk with my prediliction for masses for the dead but in my defence the likes of Beethoven and Fauré do death about as full-on as you can get. So yes indeed, when it’s time, weep to the full as well.
Living to the full means dwelling in the present. Too much our consciousness is smeared across space and time, worrying about the future, dwelling in the past. Be here now.
Live ten tenths. When you’re dead you’ll wish you had paid more attention to your genitalia. Look on the bright side. Throw yourself up to the ears into the stream of life and wallow – don’t be foolish enough to think you can contrive to fill your private pond, just splash about, joy flows ever on. The Ten Thousand Things are there for your delectation. Illusions they ultimately may be but as phantasms go, matter is ultimately beguiling. Whoever wrote that we incarnate to eschew matter and mortify the flesh must have been barking mad. Revel in it, else what’s the bloody point?
This should not be taken as an invitation to excess and intoxication. Best include yourself under the do no harm rule. So…
16A. DON’T OVERDO IT
17. BE LOYAL Be friendly
This one’s about creating a robust and sustainable social infrastructure.
When, back in 1987, Maggie Thatcher, then Queen of England, said ‘There is no such thing as society’ she was making, in my view, one of the crassest and most socially damaging statements I have ever heard from a politician. ‘There are only individuals and families.’ she said. Listen lady, civilisation is not wrought by the neighbours conspiring on their own, by narrowed-eyed Crowleyites or solitary amoral Nietzchians relying solely on personal will, but by members of the human tribe working in harmony. Love shall be the whole of the law. If you’re already a loyal tribe-member, whether by virtue of your nationality, ethnicity, deity, skin-tone, football team or whatever, then I’m glad you’ve started out on the road to the social skill of affiliation. Such alliances however are all too often predicated not simply on the goodness of Us, but on the badness of the Other Guy. This won’t do. Until you’re a fully committed member of the human race entire then Grasshopper, you have not learned.
Sneerleaders, jeerleaders. Lately they appear to be becoming fashionable in some parts. There isn’t time for disparagement - if it’s a load of rubbish why fritter away your life running it down? – you only cheapen yourself and win the kind of pals who’ll wind up sneering at you. And betrayal, there’s an especially expensive vice, doubly pernicious because it works backwards in time, cancelling prior investment of love, trust and respect.
Love, friendship and co-operation are basically much more fun than competition. Be on the same side - not really so difficult since, it seems to me, the goals that most humans have in common are not ideological or religious so much as the honest pastimes of planting taters, making babies, singing songs.
A few random acts of kindness wouldn’t go amiss either.
18. BE PROFESSIONAL Get it right
Our thoughts and our actions make the world. If what you think and do is crappy you will make a crappy world. Do you want a crappy world? No? Then adopt an ethic of excellence and make yourself a quality world instead. Either you give it your best shot or you short-change yourself with a half-assed outcome which will serve only to underscore the sense of pointlessness you’re endlessly complaining about. Job satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) is the greater part of the paycheck. And this is about everything, not just the marketplace.
When sitting sit, when standing stand. Above all don’t wobble.
19 BE PREPARED FOR CHANGE Adapt!
The cause of suffering is rooted not so much in desire and attachment but in the failure to adapt. Besides death and taxes, the third certainty in life is that things change so you’d better learn to live with it. The ability to adapt is one of the great evolutionary advantages of the mammal so this one should come naturally. Embrace your changes. Adapt and evolve! Become ever more magnificent.
20 DO IT WITH STYLE Ars longa, Vita brevis
When God had finished making all the animals, ‘Go forth and multiply…’ he told them and they all rushed enthusiastically away and got on with it. ‘…With style!’ he shouted after them but, apart from the swans it remains an unanswered question as to how many of them heard.
Just doing it is not good enough. There ain’t nothin’ new under the sun, some say. If they’re right, if it is merely a matter of endlessly reinventing the wheel of birth and death then at least you can make some attempt to inject (besides, as a Professional, quality) grace, beauty and originality into your opus.
And so to summarise, here, in a nutshell, is how to do life.
Do no harm; don’t get stuck; be cool; respect yourself (but don’t take yourself too seriously); use your imagination; have fun (but don’t overdo it); be friendly; be professional; adapt! And whatever you do, do it with style.
Rob Valentine February 2008
I feel some acknowledgements are in order. Consider this my philosophoscar award acceptance speech. My grateful thanks to
Yunyu my muse
http://www.myspace.com/yunyu
Camilla – there’s lots of you in this. Thanks for the gift of all that wisdom over the years
Buddha Gautama with best wishes
William Blake. His Proverbs of Hell constitute my first Guest List. Well worth a visit at -
http://interglacial.com/~sburke/pub/prose/Blake_-_Proverbs_of_Hell.html
Jesus Christ. No hard feelings. It’s your followers who cause the problems.
William Shakespeare
Claire for putting me on the right track about apologies
The TV series ‘Kung Fu’ and ‘Monkey’
Mark L, probably the world’s coolest Anthropologist (ah, but which world?)
Admittedly nobody’s doing any commanding here and they might be more accurately termed precepts but it’s all about marketing isn’t it? Ten More Commandments it is. Sue me, Moses, see if I care.
11. GET AWAY WITH IT Do no harm
There’s an old cynic’s cliché that says the eleventh commandment is ‘Don’t get caught’. That is not what I intend. Getting away with it goes deeper. Is it Google or Microsoft whose motto is ‘do no harm’? It should be both: It should be written into Company Law. I believe that to judge the morality of an action one must examine its consequences. Count your victims and measure (exactly how one does this is an open question) the degree of damage your act has created. No casualties, or better still improvement (we could argue about what that is too) then you’ve Got Away With It.
The eleventh commandment is about socially and environmentally responsible behaviour.
12. DON’T GET STUCK. Let go
There are two ways to become stuck – the voluntary and the involuntary. If your life is in a rut then perhaps you’ll like this one: if you’re on a roll right now you might experience a slight tendency to resist. Either way the trick is to relax your grip. By and large your oppressors are your own beliefs. I don’t mean become a creature without volition like a leaf on the wind. I tried that once and discovered there are contrary wills out there and if you don’t occasionally jostle for space even the sweetest souls can’t help but step on you. Carpe diem! Seize the day, yes, but don’t throttle it. Life, my friend, is a butterfly. Hold out your open palm and there she will settle and open up her pearly wings to you. Close your fist even for a moment and either she is crushed or flown. This applies to love, to wealth, to mood, to ideas, to the creative urge. Keep an eye on things for sure, but learn to trust the universe.
And for goodness’ sake don’t winge.
13. DON’T TRY TOO HARD. Be cool
I found myself the other day trying really hard not to try too hard and I knew I’d really lost the thread. ‘If you’re in a hole,’ they say, ‘stop digging’. Currently there’s someone, not entirely part of my life yet, whom I’ve been trying to impress. If she’s going to like me it will be for the me-ness of me, not some contrivance. So what did I do? I applied the Letting Go rule and although I don’t think I’ve quite won her heart as yet I discover the her-ness of her all along has been floating beside me on the stream of life. See? – there’s the butterfly and oh how she shines. I’m not going to stop doing the best I can though – see the get-it-right rule below.
Put this another way – force and coercion bend the world out of shape and between the lines of the be cool rule is an exhortation to non-violence. But I much prefer to talk about love than war.
14. DON’T APOLOGISE FOR YOURSELF Respect yourself.
Now I don’t mean ‘never apologise’. Apology is right and proper way to express contrition when one had wronged another. It declares willingness to embark on reparation and a resolve to do better in the future. But never, ever, self-disparage. The person most responsible for the maintenance of your dignity and self-respect is you. You cannot rely on others to do this for you. If you accidentally back into someone in the checkout queue say ‘excuse me’ or ‘please forgive me’ and save your sorrys for the serious stuff. To present yourself as unworthy is to invite contempt.
But don’t take yourself too seriously, eh?
15. PURSUE YOUR DREAMS Use your imagination
If you don’t have a dream how you gonna have a dream come true?
Without a dream to chase, life can become most dreadfully dull, at best a kind of endlessly complacent cycle of the satisfactory. And when you’re in that hole and you’ve stopped digging but still can’t find a way out, try using your imagination. There are prizes for the best ideas, I promise.
There’s nothing wrong with the occasional Impossible Dream either. The world needs Impossible Dreams (unless they involve Thousand Year Reichs). Given the probability of an ID coming to fruition we need shedloads of them to keep up the odds. And besides, a good few turn out not to be as impossible as you may think. Your perceived impossibility quotient could well be a measure of your own lack of imagination. The optimal technique, I find, is to have only the one ID at a time and therein invest your all. If you’re stuck, start with little daydreams and work up from there. Necessity is actually the Father of invention: its Mother is imagination.
I’ve always been a bit short on ambition myself, so this story has stuck in my gullet ever since I heard it (from a Christian priest curiously enough). An earnestly good man dies and approaches St Peter at the pearly gates. He has all his answers ready – he’s kept the commandments (the first ten anyway), been charitable and upright; he’s gone to church regularly. Instead of the expected question, St Peter floors him right away. ‘What risks have you taken?’ he demands. I still don’t know if the man gets in or not, or more to the point, how I rate my own chances.
As a matter of fact the imagination rule is almost impossible to sidestep since pretty much the entirety of our social reality is based on the imaginary. God, America and the Dollar are made of nothing but our dreams. I’m not knocking them, they are (though you may have your own views on their enactment) some of the most brilliant IDs of all time. And in the face of the almost universal public subscription to such notions, is it not a huge conceit to affect disbelief?
And finally folks, consider the construction of the Self. We are such stuff as dreams are made on.
16. LIVE TO THE FULL Have fun
Are you ready to rock and roll? Love life. This world is bursting at the seams with light and colour and sound and perfumes and tastes and all the delights of the spirit and the senses. Cash in your birthright of joy and resist to the utmost any who would seek to rob you of it. Exuberance is beauty. Laugh. Educate your sense of humour. Be Up not Down. Up-Up-Up-Upbeat, got that? Up. Don’t indulge the Down. Stop listening to Oasis - all that whining and complaining like sulky children, it’s bad for you. I know I can hardly talk with my prediliction for masses for the dead but in my defence the likes of Beethoven and Fauré do death about as full-on as you can get. So yes indeed, when it’s time, weep to the full as well.
Living to the full means dwelling in the present. Too much our consciousness is smeared across space and time, worrying about the future, dwelling in the past. Be here now.
Live ten tenths. When you’re dead you’ll wish you had paid more attention to your genitalia. Look on the bright side. Throw yourself up to the ears into the stream of life and wallow – don’t be foolish enough to think you can contrive to fill your private pond, just splash about, joy flows ever on. The Ten Thousand Things are there for your delectation. Illusions they ultimately may be but as phantasms go, matter is ultimately beguiling. Whoever wrote that we incarnate to eschew matter and mortify the flesh must have been barking mad. Revel in it, else what’s the bloody point?
This should not be taken as an invitation to excess and intoxication. Best include yourself under the do no harm rule. So…
16A. DON’T OVERDO IT
17. BE LOYAL Be friendly
This one’s about creating a robust and sustainable social infrastructure.
When, back in 1987, Maggie Thatcher, then Queen of England, said ‘There is no such thing as society’ she was making, in my view, one of the crassest and most socially damaging statements I have ever heard from a politician. ‘There are only individuals and families.’ she said. Listen lady, civilisation is not wrought by the neighbours conspiring on their own, by narrowed-eyed Crowleyites or solitary amoral Nietzchians relying solely on personal will, but by members of the human tribe working in harmony. Love shall be the whole of the law. If you’re already a loyal tribe-member, whether by virtue of your nationality, ethnicity, deity, skin-tone, football team or whatever, then I’m glad you’ve started out on the road to the social skill of affiliation. Such alliances however are all too often predicated not simply on the goodness of Us, but on the badness of the Other Guy. This won’t do. Until you’re a fully committed member of the human race entire then Grasshopper, you have not learned.
Sneerleaders, jeerleaders. Lately they appear to be becoming fashionable in some parts. There isn’t time for disparagement - if it’s a load of rubbish why fritter away your life running it down? – you only cheapen yourself and win the kind of pals who’ll wind up sneering at you. And betrayal, there’s an especially expensive vice, doubly pernicious because it works backwards in time, cancelling prior investment of love, trust and respect.
Love, friendship and co-operation are basically much more fun than competition. Be on the same side - not really so difficult since, it seems to me, the goals that most humans have in common are not ideological or religious so much as the honest pastimes of planting taters, making babies, singing songs.
A few random acts of kindness wouldn’t go amiss either.
18. BE PROFESSIONAL Get it right
Our thoughts and our actions make the world. If what you think and do is crappy you will make a crappy world. Do you want a crappy world? No? Then adopt an ethic of excellence and make yourself a quality world instead. Either you give it your best shot or you short-change yourself with a half-assed outcome which will serve only to underscore the sense of pointlessness you’re endlessly complaining about. Job satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) is the greater part of the paycheck. And this is about everything, not just the marketplace.
When sitting sit, when standing stand. Above all don’t wobble.
19 BE PREPARED FOR CHANGE Adapt!
The cause of suffering is rooted not so much in desire and attachment but in the failure to adapt. Besides death and taxes, the third certainty in life is that things change so you’d better learn to live with it. The ability to adapt is one of the great evolutionary advantages of the mammal so this one should come naturally. Embrace your changes. Adapt and evolve! Become ever more magnificent.
20 DO IT WITH STYLE Ars longa, Vita brevis
When God had finished making all the animals, ‘Go forth and multiply…’ he told them and they all rushed enthusiastically away and got on with it. ‘…With style!’ he shouted after them but, apart from the swans it remains an unanswered question as to how many of them heard.
Just doing it is not good enough. There ain’t nothin’ new under the sun, some say. If they’re right, if it is merely a matter of endlessly reinventing the wheel of birth and death then at least you can make some attempt to inject (besides, as a Professional, quality) grace, beauty and originality into your opus.
And so to summarise, here, in a nutshell, is how to do life.
Do no harm; don’t get stuck; be cool; respect yourself (but don’t take yourself too seriously); use your imagination; have fun (but don’t overdo it); be friendly; be professional; adapt! And whatever you do, do it with style.
Rob Valentine February 2008
I feel some acknowledgements are in order. Consider this my philosophoscar award acceptance speech. My grateful thanks to
Yunyu my muse
http://www.myspace.com/yunyu
Camilla – there’s lots of you in this. Thanks for the gift of all that wisdom over the years
Buddha Gautama with best wishes
William Blake. His Proverbs of Hell constitute my first Guest List. Well worth a visit at -
http://interglacial.com/~sburke/pub/prose/Blake_-_Proverbs_of_Hell.html
Jesus Christ. No hard feelings. It’s your followers who cause the problems.
William Shakespeare
Claire for putting me on the right track about apologies
The TV series ‘Kung Fu’ and ‘Monkey’
Mark L, probably the world’s coolest Anthropologist (ah, but which world?)
Thursday, 14 February 2008
THINGS YOU WISH YOUR PARENTS NEVER SAID
I had some fun some years ago asking friends to name things they truly wish their parents hadn’t told them. People were only too keen to list the crimes and I suspect there was some therapeutic value in so doing. Some of them are parents themselves now and maybe using the same phrases. Or maybe, having thought about things, decided not to. There’s a Phillip Larkin poem that sums it all up nicely.
This Be The Verse
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.
My collection of indictments fell into eight categories, an eightfold path to doom if you will. Here are my notes from the time, pretty much unexpurgated. Additions welcome.
1) DIMINISHING. This leads to low self-esteem.
Mother knows best. Useless, clot, bone idle,waste of time/space,no good, not good enough, grow up why don’t you. Don’t be silly. Never mind – it’s personality that counts.
2) ALIENATING. This induces sexual and other repression and body armour.
That’ dirty.
3) JUDGEMENTAL. This creates guilt
Your fault. Look what you’ve done. Bad boy/girl/thing. We gave you everything (and you threw it back in our face) You brought it on yourself.
4) MORAL ABSOLUTE. Authoritarian/Anarchist it could swing either way.
Be good. Nice girls/boys don’t…Share that with your friends.
5) COMPARATIVE. The road to class consciousness, sexism, racism, righteousness
People will say, neighbours think…
6) THREATENING. How to induce paranoia in your offspring
Don’t you dare. Want a smack? Bogeyman will get you. If you don’t eat your cabbage the world will end. Wait till…
7) BLOCKING. Engenders depression, anger, mania
Be quiet. Don’t cry. Shut up. You don’t want that. Never mind, don’t you dare. Do as you’re told in our house. stop showing off.
8) ISOLATING. More depression. loneliness
Won’t love you if… nobody’s interested in you. We wanted a girl really. Don’t come out until you’re…
Who am I to lecture? I’m not a parent so I’ll never really understand how it is, still less arrive at a solution. I’ll let poet Adrian Mitchell have the last word via his riposte to Phillip Larkin.
They tuck you up, your Mum and Dad
They read you Peter Rabbit, too.
They give you all the treats they had
And add some extra, just for you.
They were tucked up when they were small,
(Pink perfume, blue tobacco-smoke),
By those whose kiss healed any fall,
Whose laughter doubled any joke.
Man hands on happiness to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
So love your parents all you can
And have some cheerful kids yourself
RobV February 14th 2008
This Be The Verse
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.
My collection of indictments fell into eight categories, an eightfold path to doom if you will. Here are my notes from the time, pretty much unexpurgated. Additions welcome.
1) DIMINISHING. This leads to low self-esteem.
Mother knows best. Useless, clot, bone idle,waste of time/space,no good, not good enough, grow up why don’t you. Don’t be silly. Never mind – it’s personality that counts.
2) ALIENATING. This induces sexual and other repression and body armour.
That’ dirty.
3) JUDGEMENTAL. This creates guilt
Your fault. Look what you’ve done. Bad boy/girl/thing. We gave you everything (and you threw it back in our face) You brought it on yourself.
4) MORAL ABSOLUTE. Authoritarian/Anarchist it could swing either way.
Be good. Nice girls/boys don’t…Share that with your friends.
5) COMPARATIVE. The road to class consciousness, sexism, racism, righteousness
People will say, neighbours think…
6) THREATENING. How to induce paranoia in your offspring
Don’t you dare. Want a smack? Bogeyman will get you. If you don’t eat your cabbage the world will end. Wait till…
7) BLOCKING. Engenders depression, anger, mania
Be quiet. Don’t cry. Shut up. You don’t want that. Never mind, don’t you dare. Do as you’re told in our house. stop showing off.
8) ISOLATING. More depression. loneliness
Won’t love you if… nobody’s interested in you. We wanted a girl really. Don’t come out until you’re…
Who am I to lecture? I’m not a parent so I’ll never really understand how it is, still less arrive at a solution. I’ll let poet Adrian Mitchell have the last word via his riposte to Phillip Larkin.
They tuck you up, your Mum and Dad
They read you Peter Rabbit, too.
They give you all the treats they had
And add some extra, just for you.
They were tucked up when they were small,
(Pink perfume, blue tobacco-smoke),
By those whose kiss healed any fall,
Whose laughter doubled any joke.
Man hands on happiness to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
So love your parents all you can
And have some cheerful kids yourself
RobV February 14th 2008
Monday, 4 February 2008
SEVEN DEADLY DESIRES
What do we really mean when we say ‘I want this Thing; this Person’? It occurs to me that there is an underlying agenda to our wants and that any particular desire is actually a token, a metaphor if you like, for one or more of a set of uber (or unter?) desires. ‘I want a Ferrari’ on the surface implies simply ‘nice car, have that’ but what lies beneath? Need for speed? for status? When it comes to the shiny baubles in the shops sometimes I suspect that what we hanker for is simply reflected sunshine. And as for our desire for the Other, when it comes to love is it merely the security of the mother’s breast we seek? Desire, says Buddha, is the source of all suffering, so, let’s go hunting for a basic vocabulary of desire and perhaps thereby become free.
‘Seven Deadly Desires’ is the catchy phrase that seduced me quite some years ago when I first started thinking about this. Perhaps there are more than seven (this is where your help comes in) but you have to stop somewhere. Maybe they’re not deadly either. For all I know we might one day wind up with ‘Nine Perfectly Reasonable Mortal Expectations’. Hardly so memorable though, so meanwhile, seven it is and deadly too. I haven’t yet found a desire that can’t be dragged and dropped into one of the categories below.
They need a bit of explaining. A spreadsheet, I discover with amusement is the best way to go about elucidation. Don’t have the column width here to do it justice but I’ll continue refining it and eventually stick it to my website and post a link here. A philosophical spreadsheet – not many of them on Google – I may be the internet’s first Excel metaphysician! Here goes. Sorry 'bout the dots - the only way I can find to format legibly.
DESIRE……… PHRASE………...……………DAYDREAM
Attention…....Look at me………….…..Centre of the universe
Certainty….... I know……………………..Right and righteous
Control……..…I’m in charge…………...If I ruled the world
Increase….…..More!………………….…..Lottery win
Change…….….Somewhere else………..Revolution
Completion…. All done…………………..For ever and ever
Surrender…….Tell me what to do…...Read my mind superman
Fear, the subject of another list-in-progress, raises its head here already, unsurprisingly really since fear and desire surely are two faces of the same coin. Thus, without really intending, I find I’m one small step along the way to a taxonomy of fear. There’s space in this row too to explore a relationship side to all this which I’ll head, not that I’m cynical or anything, DEMAND. Or do I mean impossible demand?
DESIRE ...........FEAR ...........................DEMAND
Attention .....…Abandonment ……….…Me Me Me
Certainty......... Unpredictability .........Understand me
Control ............Oppression ..................Be mine forever
Increase........... Scarcity .......................Love me more
Change .............Stagnation.................. Become the One I want
Completion ......Insecurity.................... Mr/Miss/Ms Right
Surrender .........Enslavement ...............I’m all yours
Lastly, it lately comes to me there’s an upside (perfectly reasonable) to the fulfillment of desire and, naturally, a dysfunctional aspect too. I haven’t fully thought this bit through and the downside column especially needs refinement. Please add/subtract/correct me if you think I’ve strayed. Here goes anyway.
DESIRE .........UPSIDE......... DOWNSIDE
Attention ......Fellowship .....Delinquency
Certainty .......Insight.......... Megalomania
Control.......... Autonomy..... Paranoia
Increase........ Prosperity..... Greed
Change......... Growth ..........Dilletantism
Completion ..Achievement ..Fanaticism
Surrender..... Service........... Irresponsibility
RobV February 4 2008
Addendum
Google provides but a single link to the phrase ‘seven deadly desires’. Seems an artist by the name of Olga Kisseleva stumbled on the phrase as well. You can find her at -
http://www.cityofwomen-a.si/root_found/2004/ea_skuc.htm
Her list goes Wealth. Power. Success. Beauty. Celebrity. Pleasure. Tax-free.
I leave it to you to shoehorn these into my categories
Feb 22. V1.0 of possibly the www's first ever philosophical spreadsheet now posted at
http://robvalentine.org/7_deadly_desires.xls
but of course you'll need microsoft excel to read it.
‘Seven Deadly Desires’ is the catchy phrase that seduced me quite some years ago when I first started thinking about this. Perhaps there are more than seven (this is where your help comes in) but you have to stop somewhere. Maybe they’re not deadly either. For all I know we might one day wind up with ‘Nine Perfectly Reasonable Mortal Expectations’. Hardly so memorable though, so meanwhile, seven it is and deadly too. I haven’t yet found a desire that can’t be dragged and dropped into one of the categories below.
They need a bit of explaining. A spreadsheet, I discover with amusement is the best way to go about elucidation. Don’t have the column width here to do it justice but I’ll continue refining it and eventually stick it to my website and post a link here. A philosophical spreadsheet – not many of them on Google – I may be the internet’s first Excel metaphysician! Here goes. Sorry 'bout the dots - the only way I can find to format legibly.
DESIRE……… PHRASE………...……………DAYDREAM
Attention…....Look at me………….…..Centre of the universe
Certainty….... I know……………………..Right and righteous
Control……..…I’m in charge…………...If I ruled the world
Increase….…..More!………………….…..Lottery win
Change…….….Somewhere else………..Revolution
Completion…. All done…………………..For ever and ever
Surrender…….Tell me what to do…...Read my mind superman
Fear, the subject of another list-in-progress, raises its head here already, unsurprisingly really since fear and desire surely are two faces of the same coin. Thus, without really intending, I find I’m one small step along the way to a taxonomy of fear. There’s space in this row too to explore a relationship side to all this which I’ll head, not that I’m cynical or anything, DEMAND. Or do I mean impossible demand?
DESIRE ...........FEAR ...........................DEMAND
Attention .....…Abandonment ……….…Me Me Me
Certainty......... Unpredictability .........Understand me
Control ............Oppression ..................Be mine forever
Increase........... Scarcity .......................Love me more
Change .............Stagnation.................. Become the One I want
Completion ......Insecurity.................... Mr/Miss/Ms Right
Surrender .........Enslavement ...............I’m all yours
Lastly, it lately comes to me there’s an upside (perfectly reasonable) to the fulfillment of desire and, naturally, a dysfunctional aspect too. I haven’t fully thought this bit through and the downside column especially needs refinement. Please add/subtract/correct me if you think I’ve strayed. Here goes anyway.
DESIRE .........UPSIDE......... DOWNSIDE
Attention ......Fellowship .....Delinquency
Certainty .......Insight.......... Megalomania
Control.......... Autonomy..... Paranoia
Increase........ Prosperity..... Greed
Change......... Growth ..........Dilletantism
Completion ..Achievement ..Fanaticism
Surrender..... Service........... Irresponsibility
RobV February 4 2008
Addendum
Google provides but a single link to the phrase ‘seven deadly desires’. Seems an artist by the name of Olga Kisseleva stumbled on the phrase as well. You can find her at -
http://www.cityofwomen-a.si/root_found/2004/ea_skuc.htm
Her list goes Wealth. Power. Success. Beauty. Celebrity. Pleasure. Tax-free.
I leave it to you to shoehorn these into my categories
Feb 22. V1.0 of possibly the www's first ever philosophical spreadsheet now posted at
http://robvalentine.org/7_deadly_desires.xls
but of course you'll need microsoft excel to read it.
Wednesday, 23 January 2008
Keynote speech
A warm welcome to my blog, though my intent is more board than blog since my visitors’ thoughts ideally will form a major part. Sorry ‘bout the highfallutin title, maybe Collective Philosophy would be better but these things are done on the fly and that’s the phrase that came along. I used to use the phrase Mathematical Mysticism but my hair was longer in those days.
Principally, for now at least, this page is about lists. The best people, it seems, do lists – eightfold path; four noble truths, ten commandments. Usually such folk go off alone into some mountain or other in search of enlightenment for days, months, years. Imagine if this task could be shared! Rather than enduring the wilderness for forty days and nights, hey, 40 people could do the job in a day; a thousand well co-ordinated philosophers could cover the same ground in less than an hour.
My personal collection of lists will follow as I find time and space to introduce them. All of these must be considered as work-in-progress except perhaps the Seven Deadly Desires (of which I’m particularly proud) to which list any addition would spoil the symmetry. Your contributions and comments will, I hope, help to refine these into something we can all find useful and constructive. I hope the structure of the page will enable additions and comments to be added swiftly and anonymously though you are welcome to leave an ID which will, I promise, be respected and never spammed nor passed on.
From time to time I shall also host a Guest List which you are also encouraged to post. I’ll try to ask politely before borrowing or linking to the lists of others.
Here’s a list of my lists, in no particular order and sans comment, all of which, with your gracious assistance, ultimately will be polished here to a high lustre.
Seven Deadly Desires
Ten more commandments
Enemies of love
Things you wish your Parents hadn’t said
A taxonomy of Fear
Be Do Have
What women want
What to do with desire
Pleasures
Rob Valentine
23 January 2008
Principally, for now at least, this page is about lists. The best people, it seems, do lists – eightfold path; four noble truths, ten commandments. Usually such folk go off alone into some mountain or other in search of enlightenment for days, months, years. Imagine if this task could be shared! Rather than enduring the wilderness for forty days and nights, hey, 40 people could do the job in a day; a thousand well co-ordinated philosophers could cover the same ground in less than an hour.
My personal collection of lists will follow as I find time and space to introduce them. All of these must be considered as work-in-progress except perhaps the Seven Deadly Desires (of which I’m particularly proud) to which list any addition would spoil the symmetry. Your contributions and comments will, I hope, help to refine these into something we can all find useful and constructive. I hope the structure of the page will enable additions and comments to be added swiftly and anonymously though you are welcome to leave an ID which will, I promise, be respected and never spammed nor passed on.
From time to time I shall also host a Guest List which you are also encouraged to post. I’ll try to ask politely before borrowing or linking to the lists of others.
Here’s a list of my lists, in no particular order and sans comment, all of which, with your gracious assistance, ultimately will be polished here to a high lustre.
Seven Deadly Desires
Ten more commandments
Enemies of love
Things you wish your Parents hadn’t said
A taxonomy of Fear
Be Do Have
What women want
What to do with desire
Pleasures
Rob Valentine
23 January 2008