Cleverness and Wisdom

Isn't it such a good feeling when someone who you really cherish buys you a special gift. It was a fascinating book or a series of essays incorporating philosophy, psychology, literature and so much more. In fact I came across this earlier on when the writer explores the differences between cleverness and wisdom. He points out that "where cleverness satisfies itself with winning arguments in the abstract, wisdom is a practical art, aimed at making deft judgements in the midst of everyday complications." I'm reminded of what a former colleague once said to me that anybody can be 'clever, clever' just paraphrasing or quoting writers, but what really changes society is having the wisdom, decency and goodness in knowing how to act in given situations or when faced with "everyday complications."

Perhaps on a similar note and again worth quoting are the famous words from Socrates who felt that "the unexamined life was not worth living and preferring dialogue to speeches, he'd get you to reflect on yourself and your actions in a way that would either lend them greater meaning or inspire you to make changes, and so create the meaning your life lacked." I think this is so true to ensure that each day can have fulfillling experiences.

The Good Samaritan

I was so pleased on arriving home on Christmas Eve. After a long and fatiguing journey back on the train, I thought that my mobile phone had been stolen; there I was at Piccadilly Station in Manchester rummaging through all my pockets and with five layers on, I was sweating away. I even traced my path back along the platform just hoping that there it would be just before my eyes, my treasured mobile phone. Unfortunately it was not to be and I resigned myself to being a victim of crime until I arrived home when I was confronted with the great news that a good samaritan had picked it up and handed it in to the lost property office; I was so relieved, so here's celebrating the good samaritan and the festive spirit.

Christmas Wishes

Christmas wishes to all and let's try and make the good spirit last all year; wouldn't the world be a much better place then. I've just found this article in the online Guardian newspaper by one of my favourite writers/essayists/philosphers: AC Grayling at Cambridge University.  

Peace and goodwill to all

Taking the season's greetings and applying them on a full-time basis might just make the world a better place.

• 
• AC Grayling

If the expression "ordinary person" applied to anyone - and assuredly, except in the most reductive of statistical senses, it does not: the rule everywhere is individuality, and wonderfully so - you could get few gamblers to bet against a world-wide poll showing a massive majority in favour of the following (very meaningful) abstractions: peace, stability, justice. Why, then, is there so little of any of these things in so many parts of the world?

The question is only partly rhetorical. The part that is rhetorical recognises that there are many reasons why these abstractions remain so, and alas a lot of them are not just down to the activities of competing state-or-economy-controlling power elites (though they are the ones with the money and the biggest guns, and therefore are the major cause), but from lack of knowledge about other people and other ways, and the resulting possibilities for suspicion, fear and hostility on the part of enough "ordinary people" who otherwise wish that those abstractions would become concrete.
It's a mess: it means that in regard to what most of us most want, we are ourselves parties to ensuring we are least likely to get it.
Lip service is paid to these abstractions at this time of year, in parts of the world where a seasonal reminder occurs that they are meant to be our best goals. Of course it is a good thing that for a couple of weeks people send one another cards and greet one another in the street with professions of hope that goodwill and peace on earth will reign, whatever the basis of the hope: which for a humanist consists in taking very seriously indeed the obvious fact of the difference in people's lives between suffering and joy, deprivation and opportunity, captive minds and open hearts; conjoined with a profound desire to see everyone everywhere liberated into the rich possibilities that being human can bring. But how much better still if we sent each other cards and said these things all year round.

The task is an essential combination of the political and (take the word in a strictly secular sense to denote the fulfilment of the needs, aspirations and potentialities of heart and mind) spiritual. While there is poverty and conflict, millions are condemned to the loss of possibility that, as a result, makes "village Hampdens and mute inglorious Miltons" of them. What chiefly stands in their way is the fact that they are regarded as nothing but instruments (and at other times as obstacles) to the wealth and power of the few. The fact that things have ever been thus is no excuse, although surprisingly this is a premise of all conservatisms; there are precious few institutions of any kind which are not, just in virtue of being institutions, conservative in some way or degree.

Immanuel Kant argued that the arena of moral endeavour should be regarded as a "kingdom of ends". That everyone should always be treated as an end in himself or herself, never as a means to anything else. Think what it would mean if everyone actually thought this way. And this, incidentally, is the least of it: I would include all animals in this domain, as "moral patients" although they are not moral agents - that is, as worthy of moral regard. But the immediate task is to prevent people being too often and too reflexively thought of in the mass, individually indistinguishable, as numbers and statistics, treated as units for employment in industry or war, or for marketing purposes, or as percentages of votes.

When thinking about future housing and infrastructure, and estimating demographic effects on school and hospital provision, planners have to think in the lump, of course; just as they must when organising aid for refugees. But good planning gets down to particularities sooner rather than later. When the result includes such details as (say) toilets that have twice as many water closets in the ladies' as in the gents' you get the approving feeling that someone succeeded in planning for real people at last.
"Real people" rather than "ordinary people": that among other things is what a sense of the individuality of individuals means, and it should at very least give anyone pause who thought about the consequences of big political and economic decisions, like going to war or failing to control industrial pollution. In particular, it is where thoughts of the near-universal desiderata of peace, stability and justice typically obtrude, because they are essential parts of the framework that help to make individual good lives possible.
That suggests the other aspect to be addressed: the individual responsibility to stop thinking of others as bearers of singular identities differentiated only by generic characteristics: "Jew, black, this, that" - these are always a potential source of horrors. And people who think of themselves under the rubric of a singular identity ("I am an X") do themselves a disservice as well as those upon whom they place the distorting demand to treat them just in that one light. In an ideal world - the one where peace, stability and justice are the norm and their breakdown a terrible aberration - individual human beings would encounter one another first and foremost as exactly that: individual human beings, and whatever else they are (women, men, Christians, atheists, tennis players, Labour supporters, lovers of film, Stones fans, regular holidayers in Turkey, and so on for the many other things any one person could be) would be additional to that, and they would merit (or sometimes not) friendship and respect on the basis of their personal qualities, and only secondarily for some of their major choices about beliefs, politics and the rest. You might disagree with someone's views on a number of topics, but if he is kind, thoughtful and honourable that will trump much, which shows what really matters here.
In that ideal situation, seasonal hopes about goodwill and peace would be a lot less a matter of mere hope than they are now. But that is no reason for not continuing to hope. So I wish peace and goodwill to you all, and a happy new year.

                    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/dec/25/peaceandgoodwilltoall

Christmas Cheer

I found these lovely images on Google so it's time to celebrate the festive spirit ^^

Where has grammar been hiding all these years? | Macmillan

I came across this article earlier on. Whoops apparently according to the self appointed guardians of the English language, one should never end a sentence with a preposition nor split an infinitive despite the classic example from James Kirk. Perhaps we should all boldly go forward and study Michael Swan's 'Practical English Usage' or Martin Parrot's 'Grammar for English Language Teachers' to consider how the language is used today rather than how it should be used; usually this is based on an 18th century Latin model of grammar and what is the present year 2010, oh yes I almost forgot. Perhaps as David Crystal points out it's time to consider the variety of Englishes used by around 2 billion people throughout the world, the vast majority of whom are non native speakers as opposed to the models used by the 60 million speakers in the UK.

Click this link to access the article:

 Where has  grammar been hiding all these years? Macmillan

A Winter Landscape

There's been a lot of criticism towards the authorities lately in Old Blighty but I love the winter snow clad landscape; to go out for a stroll in the crisp chill air is so refreshing and healthy too, as long as you're wrapped up of course. So why try to fly halfway around the world chasing the heat of the sunshine? There's nothing like returning home to a cosy warm room, pleasant music and a good film or an interesting novel after a morning or afternoon stroll . So here are a few photos of the beautiful winter.