A Breath of Fresh Air.

Amidst all the rather bleak news in the media at the moment I came across this article from one of my favourite websites. I think it's worth showing this in full as I feel the writer Ken Robinson is so refreshingly positive and I like to think that people with passions in their lives tend to attract others. Anyway here is the article and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.


"It was Jeremy Bentham, I believe, who said there are two types of people in this world: those who divide the world into two types and those who do not. Well, these days I do. On the one hand, I'm constantly surprised by how many people settle for so little fulfilment in their lives, who endure their lives rather than enjoy them. On the other, I know people who simply love what they do and couldn't imagine doing anything else. "This isn't what I do," they say, "this is who I am." There are people in every walk of life for whom this is true: people who are in their element. Being in your element involves doing something for which you have a natural aptitude. But it's more than that: it's about passion. You have to love it, too.
Passion can be a disconcerting idea in Britain, conjuring up images of fiery glances, pounding hearts and a hint of castanets. It's not always like that. Passion is a deep attraction. It can be for someone else or for a process: music, maths, cooking, sport, entrepreneurship, teaching… whatever fires your imagination and stokes your energy. We all have different aptitudes and we have unique passions. The challenge is to find them because it's in the fusion of both that we live our best lives.
An original meaning of "passion" is to suffer or endure, as in the Passion of Christ. Its modern meanings have evolved to include love, attraction and pleasure. Finding our own element is also a journey from endurance to enjoyment. It's a vital step, too, in moving from being one type of person to being the other type."


See the article and others on matters related to philosophy/psychology at:
http://www.theschooloflife.typepad.com/

Now I feel it's time to consider and cultivate my passions.

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.

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

‎"Those who seek power are not worthy of that power."

I'm reminded of the famous line on power from Plato's work: The Republic ‎"Those who seek power are not worthy of that power." Yes those who are obsessively driven by ambition or a lust for power seem to miss the point entirely and isn't the point people and their behaviour and emotions? I'm sure that once we learn to listen to each other and accept each other's views then we can create a better society.

Daily Food for Thought

This is great website ~ ideas for living

http://www.theschooloflife.typepad.com/