Tuesday 31 March 2020

Correct use of Shovel for Digging


Is there a correct way to use a shovel to dig? Your back will tell you. I'm now talking about the long handled shovel in particular the Irish Digging Shovel. About this time of the year I get some hits on a post that I wrote in 2012:
irish digging shovel

I have scoured the internet to see if there was any instruction on youtube. There is and it will generally put you in the hands of the chiropractor. Only one man offers any sound practice that uses the length of the haft as a lever and your thighs as a fulcrum point. He learned this art from his father who was a pipe layer and his stance betrays the usages of that occupation – closed with a shorter grip that would be the best method in a tight trench. He crosses the shovel across both thighs in a more crouched position than I use in digging mode. It works and the principles are much the same as I learned when I was a labourer on a building site from a 70 year old Cavan man.
shovel like a boss

Here is a short clip of myself 'I mbun sluaiste':
digging

Notice the rhythm of the sway back that lifts the shovelful easily and that the digging foot and the lower hand are on the same side.


Monday 30 March 2020

Self as Kuthastha/perpetually immovable


An Indian philosopher, no names, no pack drill, who referred to The Elusive Self of Advaita in a paper was probable speaking ironically, at least I hope so. On the other hand he might have been alluding to the impossibility of definition in the sense of setting the bounds to the concept of the self or demarcating it. Traditionally in Advaita the Self as one with Brahman would be anantam/boundless. Swami Satprakashananda in his book on the pramanas, Methods of Knowledge refers to the Self as kuthastha as an anvil. Kuthastha is also an epithet of Durga the consort of Shiva – perpetually immovable. Sankaracarya in his commentary on the Kena Upanisad (II.4) says that the Self is pratibodha videtam known with every moment of consciousness or each state of awareness. This he even extends to the state of deep dreamless sleep arguing (Upadesa Sahasri) that our knowledge on waking that we have been in that state is due to a bare or contentless self awareness which is never lost. Of course this goes against the chief tenet of empiricism which holds that we must have grounds for knowledge, or evidence of some sort. The Self does not require evidence, being, well, self-evident.

The search for wisdom is called atma vichara – inquiry into the Self. This resolves into an abiding with the Self as did the great modern sages Nisargadatta and Ramana Maharshi.

Friday 27 March 2020

Building in a time of Corona


Continuing the herd immunity conceit I notice that here in Ireland the building trade is being allowed to continue operating. One politician deplores this and offers the example of a site with 200 workers and one tap to wash their hands. To begin with I doubt this report - how could you keep that many builders in tea with one source of water. In any case builders are a keystone species of worker with needs which ramify through the whole economy. To pause their work would be to take away a major source of the borrowing that fuels our society. The altruistic building site injunction - THINK OF THE NEXT MAN - is apt. "Keep her going Shawnie, don't stall the digger'.

Meanwhile I press on with the Spring, digging over the garden and finishing off a kitchen cabinet. My son is learning the fine art of mitred nosing. 'Put away that square, it will not help.' I'm reading essays by Prabhat Mishra on 'Vritti' also known as 'mental modifications' or psychosis. My anthakarana also takes the form of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe - great book and picture . Dipping into A Journal of a Plague Year by Defoe. Very nasty dose, that bubonic plague. Ironically a lot of people were saved by staying on ships moored in the Pool of London and being victualled by watermen.

Wednesday 25 March 2020

Covidology


Covidology like codology. It’s endemic and philosophers who can only virtually pull their chins discover new ways of presenting the counter intuitive as a revelation. Don’t smack your foreheads please when you are told that the deaths in Italy are an artefact of the method of collation of data and a 60 year old with an excellent chance of survival with treatment should be passed over for the 20 year old with a poor prognosis with or without treatment. You see he’s got probably more life to lose and he could be deader for longer. And what about this warty thing on my forehead, it could be cancer. Nobody cares.

There is a laugh out there from Nick Laird’s NYRB blog:

Last Wednesday night I met my friend Eddy and we sat six feet apart on the bench in the middle of Houston Street—between the two traffic lanes—and drank: him a half-bottle of Woodford Reserve bourbon, and me a children’s thermos filled with Pinot Grigio. A bearded man dressed in rags and trimmed with lit-up Christmas lights wandered the empty sidewalk, shouting at the occasional car passing, “I feel you, I feel you, brother.”

Friday 20 March 2020

The Henry Sidgwick Virus


Henry Sidgwick’s esoteric morality will not pass unnoticed by the general hoi polloi these days despite the assiduous spinning of the moral tops. In the words of Bernard Williams ‘Government House Utilitarianism’. On the general principal that everything you are being told frequently by long faced experts is probably a lie the recent advocacy by the British Government of voodoo science ‘herd immunity’ was sure to be doubted. Moreover from our watching of elephants in a drought we knew that the natural cull should not be averted for the sake of the ultimate health of the herd. We can hear the smooth breathiness of David Attenborough telling us ‘ yes it is sad to see old boomers die, but by their demise property is released and the economic activities of the young and healthy will support those that are left. All in all their sacrifice will benefit the general population and we can go on to be more vigilant in the future.’


Was Henry Sidgwick a twister by which I mean a low, dishonest fellow given to schemes and strategems? Yes, I would answer but a principled one.

It appears to me, therefore, that the cases in which practical doubts are likely to arise, as to whether exceptions should be permitted from ordinary rules on Utilitarian principles, will mostly be those which I discussed in the first paragraph of this section: where the exceptions are not claimed for a few individuals, on the mere ground of their probable fewness, but either for persons generally under exceptional circumstances, or for a class of persons defined by exceptional qualities of intellect, temperament, or character. In such cases the Utilitarian may have no doubt that in a community consisting generally of enlightened Utilitarians, these grounds for exceptional ethical treatment would be regarded as valid; still he may, as I have said, doubt whether the more refined and complicated rule which recognises such exceptions is adapted for the community in which he is actually living; and whether the attempt to introduce it is not likely to do more harm by weakening current morality than good by improving its quality. Supposing such a doubt to arise, either in a case of this kind, or in one of the rare cases discussed in the preceding paragraph, it becomes necessary that the Utilitarian should consider carefully the extent to which his advice or example are likely to influence persons to whom they would be dangerous: and it is evident that the result of this consideration may depend largely on the degree of publicity which he gives to either advice or example. Thus, on Utilitarian principles, it may be right to do and privately recommend, under certain circumstances, what it would not be right to advocate openly; it may be right to teach openly to one set of persons what it would be wrong to teach to others; it may be conceivably right to do, if it can be done with comparative secrecy, what it would be wrong to do in the face of the world; and even, if perfect secrecy can be reasonably expected, what it would be wrong to recommend by private advice or example. These conclusions are all of a paradoxical character: there is no doubt that the moral consciousness of a plain man broadly repudiates the general notion of an esoteric morality, differing from that popularly taught; and it would be commonly agreed that an action which would be bad if done openly is not rendered good by secrecy. We may observe, however, that there are strong utilitarian reasons for maintaining generally this latter common opinion; for it is obviously advantageous, generally speaking, that acts which it is expedient to repress by social disapprobation should become known, as otherwise the disapprobation cannot operate; so that it seems inexpedient to support by any moral encouragement the natural disposition of men in general to conceal their wrong doings; besides that the concealment would in most cases have importantly injurious effects on the agent’s habits of veracity. Thus the Utilitarian conclusion, carefully stated, would seem to be this; that the opinion that secrecy may render an action right which would not otherwise be so should itself be kept comparatively secret; and similarly it seems expedient that the doctrine that esoteric morality is expedient should itself be kept esoteric. Or if this concealment be difficult to maintain, it may be desirable that Common Sense should repudiate the doctrines which it is expedient to confine to an enlightened few.
(from The Methods of Ethics)

Monday 16 March 2020

Islam and Perennialism


Given that Islam is radically supersessionist how can any of its adherents such as S.H. Nasr claim it as a perennialist/traditionalist path. It's stated purpose is to rectify the previous mistakes of the people of the book i.e. Christian and Jewish in a new and final prophetic message. Those latter have gone astray using a defective compass and bad maps, they have satnav.

Sunday 15 March 2020

A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe - Update


We had no such thing as printed newspapers in those days to spread rumours and reports of things, and to improve them by the invention of men, as I have lived to see practised since. But such things as these were gathered from the letters of merchants and others who corresponded abroad, and from them was handed about by word of mouth only; so that things did not spread instantly over the whole nation, as they do now.   But it seems that the Government had a true account of it, and several councils were held about ways to prevent its coming over; but all was kept very private.
From A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe pub.1722 possibly adapted from the journals of his uncle Henry Foe.

Friday 13 March 2020

A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen: A Counter Reading


A case can be made for Ibsen writing against himself and leaving the evidence of a counter consciousness that creates a mirror image of the other play in which Nora is not a feminist heroine but the protagonist of a soapy melodrama. “I’m taking off my fancy dress” she says and that is Ibsen leading us by the nose. She put it on initially, knowing Helmar was a dull banker who would not want shares in a bank that would lend him money. She married him readers because like her old friend Mrs. Linde she needed security and maybe the opposite of her feckless father. Even so Helmar helped out his father in law in unspecified ways that may have been a little crooked. As for the real conversation that they never had, on the contrary his dialogue was to work himself into a state of serious ill health. He knows that she probably saved his life by her manoeuvre but why did she not throw that up to him and then pitch herself on the ground in floods of tears. ‘You brute, you brute, oh you brute’. That would break any man.

Consider the nurse Ann Marie who gave up her own illegitimate child and was Nora’s nurse and a quasi mother to her. Remember too that Ibsen himself had a child by an older woman never recognised by him who ended up as a poor blacksmith. Not quite the feminist crusader in his private life.
Recall: McGahern&Casey
Her and Linde are examples of women that had a difficult time. Linde in the last act declares that Nora needs some honesty in her life. She hardly expects a catastrophe. As well she allies herself to Krogstadt which may put her in danger in her bank position but revenge for Nora in the first act agreeing that she does look a little older may be a factor!

Mrs. Linde. Listen to me, Nora. You are still very like a child in many ways, and I am older than you in many ways and have a little more experience. Let me tell you this—you ought to make an end of it with Doctor Rank.

Nora uses people. Dr. Rank who is an admirer and rich is being lined up as a saviour. He is mortally ill. She knows that she still has her looks. There’s always a scheme is her self absorbed pretty little head. Consider her relief when she she discovers that it’s only Rank’s imminent death that he is referring to.

Nora (gripping him by the arm). What have you found out? Doctor Rank, you must tell me.
Rank (sitting down by the stove). It is all up with me. And it can't be helped.
Nora (with a sigh of relief). Is it about yourself?
No Nora, it’s all about you and perhaps your forgery was a way of saving your position in society. The harder you slam the door the sooner you’ll be back.








Monday 9 March 2020

Quran translations


Looking at various translations of the Koran including The Study Quran with S.H. Nasr as chief editor I'm finding that most of them have a decidedly King Jamesian cadence. That was the hieratic language that seemed to the editors to fit and perhaps also may have been an influence on the original as delivered by Gabriel who in this case is like your brother-in-law relating the plot of a movie. Thomas Cleary has a poetic version . A reviewer noted:

It is common knowledge among many Muslims that the Quran cannot be translated into any language other than Arabic for then the original intended meaning of the verses may be lost

This is indisputable most of the time and otherwise quite certainly true.

Friday 6 March 2020

Perennialism Advaita and Islam (and Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr)


I wrote recently about Fr. Martin C. D'Arcy and his response to Aldous Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy:
D'Arcy/Huxley

The topic seems to be pursuing me as I have again come across it in some writing by Seyyed Hossein Nasr who claims to be one as a follower of Frithjof Schuon (1907 - 1988)who was a Sufi and a Perennialist/Traditionalist. There appears to be two strains of modern perennialism one having its source in Vedanta and associated with Ananda Coomaraswamy and Aldous Huxley. It's original inspiration would be the Bengali saint, Ramakrishna and his disciple Swami Vivekananda. The other source of this many paths one goal approach are Rene Guenon and Schuon who were Sufis.

Looking first at the Vedanta which seems the more metaphysical of the two streams. It is as though they stopped at Exodus 3 – I AM THAT I AM – and took that as the sole ground of their meditation. Nisargadatta Maharaj and Ramana Maharshi are two examples of the atma vichara (self inquiry) which is inspired by this sense of pure self-luminous being.

However when this many paths philosophy is parroted by the modern Hindu it does not require any level of knowledge about any other path. I remember an emblem of the followers of a certain guru which had on it the symbols of Buddhism (a wheel), Zoroasterianism (a flame), Christianity (a cross), Hinduism (Om sign), Islam (crescent). When the Jewish followers of this teacher reached critical mass a star of David was added. Seemingly there didn't seem to the original designers to be a difference between Judaism and Christianity. In fact the all is one attitude is an ontological charm against conversion which is the Hindu bete noir.

S.H. Nasr as a devout cradle Muslim seems a more equivocal figure. In a essay The Prophet and Prophetic Religion published in a collection The World Treasury of Modern Religious Thought ed. Jaroslav Pelikan pub. 1990; Nasr endows the ultimate prophet with the status of the perfect man:

Now a Prophet is a person whose average, overall character, the sum total of his actual conduct, is far superior to those of humanity in general. He is a man who is ab initio impatient with men and even with most of their ideals, and wishes to re-create history. Muslim orthodoxy, therefore, drew the logically correct conclusion that Prophets must be regarded as immune from serious errors (the doctrine of 'isma). Muhammad was such a person, in fact the only such person really known to history. That is why his overall behaviour is regarded by the Muslims as Sunna or the "perfect model." But, with all this, there were moments when he, as it were, "transcends himself" and his moral cognitive perception becomes so acute and so keen that his consciousness becomes identical with the moral law itself.

I have also seen Nasr on youtube telling us that there is no such word as secularism in Arabic or Persian given the perfect blend of religion and the state that is the Islamic polity. Yes, quite. Definately not the gentle Hindoo going along to get along.

Is there a core value of Perennialism that is rescuable? More anon.

Tuesday 3 March 2020

Simone Weil says


There’s an amusing cartoon on Simone Weil here:
simone
which reminds me how resistant I am to her. Her use of herself was dislocated, forced, misplaced and slightly futile. There is speculation that she was Asperger’s. Her extreme physical awkwardness is supposed to be an indication. No one wanted to be near Simone when she got her gun and perhaps fortunately her stepping into a pot of boiling oil put her hors de combat. It was foolish to starve herself to death mimicking the supposed rations of her countrymen when she might have lived to do her duty as a French scryer of mythology. She was young and therefore somewhat abstract and unable to ask in all humility - ‘what am I fit for’, ‘what ought I do’, what is the growing point of my competence, my dharma?