11.22.2023 – ataraxia

ataraxia
understand what can be and
what can’t be controlled

Today in the Guardian, Brigid Delaney, a onetime columnist for Guardian Australia, posted the story, Six ways to make your life easier and more peaceful – by using stoic principles asked the question:

“ … how could I still be informed while staying sane? Could I feel at peace when there seemed be an increasing amount of global instability?”

And she answered, “Then, I discovered the ancient Greek and Roman philosophy of stoicism.“

According to wikipedia, “Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy that flourished in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. The Stoics believed that the practice of virtue is enough to achieve eudaimonia: a well-lived, flourishing life. The Stoics identified the path to achieving it with a life spent practicing certain virtues in everyday life such as courage or temperance and living in accordance with nature.”

The article was interesting and worth the 5 minutes that the website decided it might take me to read it.

I really liked her section being relaxed.

Relaxed is something I have always aspired to.

Relaxation is something I rarely find.

I guess I should have been a runner.

Not a jogger.

But a runner.

A sprinter.

As Sam Mussabini says in the movie, Chariots of Fire, “... a short sprint is run on nerves. It’s tailor-made for neurotics.“

Ms. Delaney writes under the heading, Be Relaxed:

The Greeks had a word for the state of mind we need to cultivate to remain calm: ataraxia.

Ataraxia is a state where you are free from distress and worry. Ancient philosophers believed achieving ataraxia created an emotional homeostasis, where the effect wouldn’t just be a more stable base-level mood, but one that would hopefully flow out to the people around you.

If you are more tranquil, you will be less likely to react or combust if something doesn’t go your way.

Imagine that your flight is delayed because of bad weather. You could react and take out your anger and frustration on the airline staff (who have no power to change the weather) or you could accept that the situation is out of your control – and remain calm and chilled.

With ataraxia, not only do you not ruin your own day, you avoid ruining other people’s too. In a tranquil state you may even make better decisions.

Ideally, someone in a state of ataraxia is not gripped by high emotions – such as lust, envy or fear. Rather, they have used the control test to understand what they can control, and what they can’t.

I had to look up how ataraxia is pronounced.

Say anorexia but swap Atar for Anor and you’ve got it.

Can’t wait until I tell someone I am embracing ataraxia and wait for them to want to check my weight.

I really like that last sentence.

More to the point, the last part of the last sentence.

… understand what they can control, and what they can’t.

I am not sure that those Stoic fellers in ancient Greece ever met Dutch people.

I won’t say that the Dutch part of me isn’t happy unless I am worrying about something whether I can control that thing or not but I will say, it sure feels like it sometime.

If nothing else to worry about, there is the weather.

And if the weather is nice, then, like the joke goes, Calvinism is the concern that someone somewhere in the world is having a good time.

Ataraxia.

… understand what they can control, and what they can’t.

In his book, That Time of Year (Arcade Publishing, New York, 2020), Garrison Keillor wrote:

My classmate Margaret Keenan, who became a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. She didn’t claim to heal people but to lead them toward some sort of understanding. I never heard her speak with contempt or derision about anyone, not even Death, whom she saw coming a long way off and met with serenity.

She didn’t claim to heal people but to lead them toward some sort of understanding.

That, for me, was about the best description of therapy I had ever read.

Lead them toward some sort of understanding.

And one of those things needed to be understood is what we can control and what we can’t.

Accept that the situation is out of your control – and remain calm and chilled.

I am not good at this.

Also if I am making that effort to remain calm and chill, forces outside my control seem to demand that I make an effort at gaining control of out of control situations whether such control is possible or not or maybe even if advisable or not.

Sometimes a level of plausible deniability is a good thing.

But I want to try.

And I will try.

I will shoot for achieving ataraxia.

A level of ataraxia that creates an emotional homeostasis, where the effect wouldn’t just be a more stable base-level mood, but one that would hopefully flow out to the people around me.

Ataraxic I guess.

Why not?

Hey, after the beach, who wants to go for a beer?

Just a November Day in the Low Country and looking ataraxic!

11.14.2023 – it’s OK unless

it’s OK unless
overly convoluted
entirely stupid

David Hale, ESPN Staff Writer, in his article, College football Week 11 highlights: Top plays, games, takeaways, commented on the the University of Michigan and sign-gate writing:

It’s a story that will be adjudicated — by the Big Ten, by fans, by media, by courts, by Connor Stalions’ vacuum company investors — with only a passing nod to due process, objective truth or reasoned context.

After all, it’s OK to discern the opponent’s signs from TV copy, or the all-22, or to call up former graduate assistants to dish on their old team, but it’s not OK to buy a ticket, sit in the stands and watch. Whether that makes sense might be a worthy question, but the only issue at hand is whether Michigan broke a rule — a literal written rule and, perhaps, the unwritten rule in which gamesmanship is OK unless it’s overly convoluted, entirely stupid and executed by a guy with a hilarious name.

Whether any of this makes sense might be a worthy question.

I am reminded of something my brother Jack once said.

Jack went to Michigan in late 1960’s as was as close to being a hippie as any one in our family.

Not sure how much, but I do think he took part in the anti-war protests that made Ann Arbor and Port Huron famous.

All I know for sure is that there is a story of Jack talking with one of his Ann Arbor buddies, both of them now respected lawyers, and the buddy said my bother, with some relief, ‘aren’t you happy that Ann Arbor Police announced they had just cleaned house and threw out all those records from when we were in school?’

I also remember a summer afternoon where Jack fell in the lake with his wallet in his back pocket.

Like you do in those moments, he emptied his wallet of everything and spread it out to dry and wonder of wonder, there was his 15 year old draft card.

He looked at if for a minute.

Then he got some matches and lit it on fire and watched as his draft card burned up.

“I thought it would feel like more,” he said.

But I digress.

Jack would watch Michigan football games with us as a family and he was such a fan, he made notes of almost every play on a yellow pad as he watched.

I asked him once what he did with his notes and said “nothing, he just took notes to keep from falling asleep.

So about 20 years, in a marketing effort, the University of Michigan made these cutouts, twenty five feet high, out of steel panels from the words of the Michigan fight song.

These panels were fastened to the outside of the stadium is what became known as the ‘Halo’.

It lasted two years as the the fans and alumni went nutz.

How ugly.

How crass.

How stupid.

How dumb.

Awful.

Didn’t seem to be particularly well executed.

Ugliest.

I I asked Jack what he thought.

He was silent then he said, “Entirely Appropriate!”

Wading through sign-gate, I know exactly what he means.

11.9.2023 – lead a private life

lead a private life
mostly because nobody
is interested

Up until two years ago when he had met Shelley he had led a totally private life, mostly because, he now supposed, nobody was interested. There was a specific sorrow and yearning to find a truly remote deer cabin, and trade the off-season rent of it for some maintenance.

From the Brown Dog Novellas by Jim Harrison.

In all those dystopian worlds, taking the definition of the word from the online dictionary which is, relating to or denoting an imagined state or society where there is great suffering or injustice, one of the underlying themes is that the state or for lack of better term, Big Brother, is watching you.

In 1984, the hero has to get up and perform calisthenics in front of a ‘view-screen’ that can never be turned off.

Every once in awhile the on screen group leader will yell at the hero to get his butt in gear.

I could never get my arms around that part of dystopia.

If you have cameras watching everybody, you need someone to watch the cameras.

As Henry Kissinger said of Richard Nixon’s White House tapes, 10,000 hours of tapes will take 10,000 hours to listen to.

Why, how, could or would any one single person be worth tracking if you have a Government that is totally in control of everything.

Today someone can steal my identity.

Someone can steal my list of books that I have read.

Someone can get an image of the house where I live and sometimes that image has my car in the diveway.

Well, who wants to know?

Anyone who goes to the trouble of stealing my identity will have to deal with my credit history and my credit score along with the fact that they most likely will start getting letters from the University of Michigan Alumni Association asking for money.

Good luck dealing with all that.

Reminds me of a TV cop show where some kid walked off with someone’s stainless steel silverware and the cop told him that if brought that to a pawn shop, he would have to pay the pawnbroker to take it off his hands.

Back when I was going to Riverside Junior High School in Grand Rapids, Michigan where I grew up, I volunteered to work in the school library.

One day, sitting at the desk, I started opening drawers and found a stapled together bunch of papers.

Written on top were the words, “MASTER LIST – ALL STUDENTS.”

What it was was a mimeographed list of all the students at Riverside with their name, address, phone number as well as parents names.

I looked at for a minute and said to myself, “this is cool,” and I slipped the pages into a notebook and took it with me when I left that day.

Boy of boy, I felt like I had power.

I had everyone’s name.

I had everyone’s parent’s names.

I had their phone numbers and addresses.

And there was nothing I could do with it.

If I showed to anyone I knew it would get out that I had it.

Aside from looking at the information on some friends about who I already knew all that information.

It started to gnaw at me that I had the pages and I started thinking someone might notice they were gone from the library.

Then the pages started beating like the tell tale heart in the Poe short story.

I finally said to myself, ‘SO NOW WHAT? WHAT MIGHT YOU DO WITH ALL THIS INFORMATION?”

And the next shift I had in the library, I put it back.

SO much information.

I guess I depend on there being so much information out there that my life can remain private.

Not so much that it isn’t out there, but, gee whiz, who would be interested in me?

11.5.2023 – c’mon read my future

c’mon read my future
you haven’t got any … your
future’s all used up

I go looking for news.

What I get is speculation.

This is going to be bad …

This is bad news for …

This will have a negative impact on …

Might be talking about politics, Joe Biden, Mr. Trump, the Country at large, the World at large, the environment, the economy or University of Michigan Football.

Glooooom and dooooom but nothing ever seems to finally happen.

Of course, no one warned, predicated or said it will be bad if Hamas attacks Israel.

This Hamas folks just came out of nowhere.

Otherwise the news cycles just cycle along and we hear more and more about how this or that will be bad … when …

When?

I mean, When?

Just more speculation.

Prognostication.

Predicition.

So many of these news cycles have become seemingly never ending soap operas which is probably what the folks who find themselves the subject of these news cycles are hoping for so that we will get so worn out that by time it is time for the bad times to start, we will have given up and gone home.

In the movie, Touch of Evil, a drunk and worn out Otis Campbell like Orson Welles stumbles into the room of a gypsy fortune teller and demand’s that the fortune teller use the cards to tell his fortune.

“Come on. Read my future for me,” says Welles.

“You haven’t got any.” says the fortune teller.

“Hmm? What do you mean?” says Welles.

“… Your future’s all used up.“

The fortune teller is played by Marlene Dietrich wearing a black wig.

In and interview, years later, Ms. Dietrich said, “I think I never said a line as well as the last line.“

Your future’s all used up.

In so many ways, in too many ways, I feel like I know just what the fortune teller means.

Still, all we is get is this speculation.

10.24.2023 – a living standard

a living standard
so sparse, removed, be consigned
to history books

“Destitute” is a term that conjures up the Victorian era – a living standard so sparse, so removed from modern civilisation, that by all rights it should be consigned to the history books. You only have to read through the aching interviews in the JRF study to see what destitution in modern Britain looks like: children wearing their parents’ clothes because that’s all there is in the wardrobe; eating a banana as a single daytime meal; taking the one permitted toilet roll a week from the local church donation. Gone are the workhouses. Nowadays, we send the poor to sift through charity bins.

From the article, The Tories have created a new poverty – one so deep and vicious it requires Victorian vocabulary by Frances Ryan.

As the two men said to Mr. Scrooge, “… it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts …”

A Christmas Carol was written in December, 1845.

So much progress has been made in the last 180 years.

Then one day you read a statistic that somehow feels both shocking and wearily unsurprising: about 3.8 million people experienced destitution in the UK last year. That’s the equivalent of almost half the population of London being unable to meet their most basic needs to stay warm, dry, clean and fed.