My attention has been brought, recently, to my own state of mind. I suppose it has been towards the back of my mind for a while that there is something not very healthy about the state of my mind at the moment. A combination of dissatisfaction at work and life in general has been growing over the last few years.
The behaviour of our eldest daughter, which, although not abysmal, was cause for some concern, prompted my wife to borrow a book by Tanya Byron, the child psychologist, from the library. There is nothing in the book that I was not already aware of from her programmes (House of Tiny Tearaways and Little Angels), but it was useful to be reminded of her approach; in particular, the need to examine ones own psychology. As she says, children are little barometers of our own mental health.
What I am most concerned about is the constant level of anxiety that I suffer. It is not a strong anxiety such as some suffer, leading to panic attacks. However, it needs examining. I have been interested in Cognitive Behavioural Therapies since I read a paper someone lent me at university to help me with depression. Previous to university, I borrowed a book from the library in Hull called "Self-help with Your Anxiety". This taught me some very useful relaxation techniques and transformed my life, for a little while, until the depression of my university years kicked in.
Depression isn't such a problem for me any more. Somehow, I have learned to spot the signs early on and modify my thoughts accordingly. I haven't been able to modify my thoughts at all with this general, low-level anxiety, however.
I have, therefore, bought a book from Amazon called "The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook". It has some pretty good reviews. It takes a practical approach, which is obviously what I need.
I suppose I am hoping it will do two things:
1. Provide me with a greater sense of peace. Someone, a very long time ago, once said that I should give my soul a rest. I feel like I need to take that advice, at last.
2. That I will gain some clarity on what I would like to do in life. My dissatisfaction with work may just be an illusion; or it may be that I need to do something radically different; or, maybe I just need to change job! I am hoping, however, that I will decide that I want to write a children's book in my spare time. Not that I have any spare time!
You see, I feel as though there are so many things I would like to do with may non-existent spare time: practice my piano more, learn JavaFX, learn Scala, write an application for monitoring personal finances, write an application to help with examining data sets; but I cannot do any one of these very well or quickly. If I can gain some clarity of thought and a little more peace of mind, I might be able to decide on one thing.
And behind it all is a desire to make money so that we are not poor in our old age.
My blog entry Can humanity be redeemed describes how I have lost belief that humanity can be, in balance, a force for good. Maybe that belief is a prerequisite for good mental health.
I am lucky in that I have a life partner whom I can talk to about these things. How awful it must be for people who have to hide their innermost selves from those closest to them.
Showing posts with label humanism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label humanism. Show all posts
Friday, 25 June 2010
Monday, 15 March 2010
Thoughts on The God Delusion
I can honestly say that The God Delusion is a wonderful book; well-written, and full of clear, logical thinking. Since I am myself an atheist, it is not surprising that I should make such a positive statement. However, there is something about Dawkins's book that I feel somewhat dissatisfied with. Dawkins is an anti-postmodernist. He dismisses relativist thinking and what I might call liberal culturalism.
Firstly, let me make clear what I mean by 'relativist thinking', since this is the most important part of my argument. I am a sort of amateurist Nietzschean. That is to say, I find Nietzsche's writings amazingly powerful, but could not say that I really understand them in any depth. Frankly, I do not have the time to study them in detail (unfortunately). What I have got from the Nietzsche I have read is a sense that meaning (and morality) is not fixed. We gain our ideas of morality from our culture, our upbringing, and that cultural heritage lends us a moral compass. In that sense, Christianity is seen as a cultural phenomenon rather than a Truth (note the capital 'T', it is very important). Nietzsche sees mathematics and science in the same light. Even logic. There is a difference, of course: Nietzsche, I am sure, would not argue that scientific discovery is the same as religious faith; what I think Nietzsche is saying is that the value we place on logic is not fixed. In that sense, although the observations of science cannot be counter-argued, the value we place on those observations can go up as well as down.
This is, unfortunately, something that we witness every day. Dawkins's own book has many accounts of people who fly in the face of logic and observed phenomena. For example, many (if not all) religious Christian fundamentalists believe that dinosaur bones were placed in the earth by god to test our faith. Now, to my mind, this is an observed phenomenon. We know that many people do not value science highly, even though its methods have yielded wonderful truths about ourselves, the planet we live on and the universe at large. What relativism explains is this observed phenomenon. One might say that relativism is a fact rather than a political bias (although I don't like the word 'fact').
Dawkins, however, sees relativism as a problem. He seems to think (and many 'relativists' may agree with him) that relativism means that there is no way to value competing viewpoints: that world-from-god has equal value to world-from-existential-fact. Nietzsche would disagree with him. To value is human. We cannot help but value. The key is to state your prejudices - your "sine qua non" - the premises on which your judgements stand (belief in logic being one of your prejudices). For Nietzsche, 'saying yes' - being positive - being 'healthy' was his stated underlying principle for judgements - and being honest!
My argument here stems from the fundamental reason that atheism struck me as the only option as a teenager. The argument was put to me that being a Christian depends on being told about Christianity. For people who existed before Christ and for people geographically remote from the Christian world or for people with different, competing cultural identities, Christianity is not an option. To put it another way, had I been born in a remote Borneo village, I would not be a Christian: I would believe with equal force something else. The 'truth' I had been told about for most of my childhood seemed to have little value. It was dependent on chance.
Cultural relativism, then, led me to atheism. It seems to me a great shame that Dawkins does not see the value of it to support his arguments rather than weaken them. It does not seem absurd to me to state that the value of truth-through-scientific-methodology is greater than the value of truth-through-revelation and that this is not incompatible with notions of cultural relativism.
Indeed, embracing cultural relativism would strengthen Dawkins's arguments considerably.
Firstly, let me make clear what I mean by 'relativist thinking', since this is the most important part of my argument. I am a sort of amateurist Nietzschean. That is to say, I find Nietzsche's writings amazingly powerful, but could not say that I really understand them in any depth. Frankly, I do not have the time to study them in detail (unfortunately). What I have got from the Nietzsche I have read is a sense that meaning (and morality) is not fixed. We gain our ideas of morality from our culture, our upbringing, and that cultural heritage lends us a moral compass. In that sense, Christianity is seen as a cultural phenomenon rather than a Truth (note the capital 'T', it is very important). Nietzsche sees mathematics and science in the same light. Even logic. There is a difference, of course: Nietzsche, I am sure, would not argue that scientific discovery is the same as religious faith; what I think Nietzsche is saying is that the value we place on logic is not fixed. In that sense, although the observations of science cannot be counter-argued, the value we place on those observations can go up as well as down.
This is, unfortunately, something that we witness every day. Dawkins's own book has many accounts of people who fly in the face of logic and observed phenomena. For example, many (if not all) religious Christian fundamentalists believe that dinosaur bones were placed in the earth by god to test our faith. Now, to my mind, this is an observed phenomenon. We know that many people do not value science highly, even though its methods have yielded wonderful truths about ourselves, the planet we live on and the universe at large. What relativism explains is this observed phenomenon. One might say that relativism is a fact rather than a political bias (although I don't like the word 'fact').
Dawkins, however, sees relativism as a problem. He seems to think (and many 'relativists' may agree with him) that relativism means that there is no way to value competing viewpoints: that world-from-god has equal value to world-from-existential-fact. Nietzsche would disagree with him. To value is human. We cannot help but value. The key is to state your prejudices - your "sine qua non" - the premises on which your judgements stand (belief in logic being one of your prejudices). For Nietzsche, 'saying yes' - being positive - being 'healthy' was his stated underlying principle for judgements - and being honest!
My argument here stems from the fundamental reason that atheism struck me as the only option as a teenager. The argument was put to me that being a Christian depends on being told about Christianity. For people who existed before Christ and for people geographically remote from the Christian world or for people with different, competing cultural identities, Christianity is not an option. To put it another way, had I been born in a remote Borneo village, I would not be a Christian: I would believe with equal force something else. The 'truth' I had been told about for most of my childhood seemed to have little value. It was dependent on chance.
Cultural relativism, then, led me to atheism. It seems to me a great shame that Dawkins does not see the value of it to support his arguments rather than weaken them. It does not seem absurd to me to state that the value of truth-through-scientific-methodology is greater than the value of truth-through-revelation and that this is not incompatible with notions of cultural relativism.
Indeed, embracing cultural relativism would strengthen Dawkins's arguments considerably.
Friday, 24 April 2009
Feminist Wedding?
Here's a link to an article by a feminist who is getting married.
She seems very nice and sensible, but I have a couple of things that I'd like to say to her.
Firstly, I really hate the idea that deciding on how roles are split in a relationship is a 'feminist' idea. Okay, I can see how feminist thinking would need a different split in a relationship to the traditional one. But every relationship is different. Only relationships which aren't very deep are 'traditional'. My wife and I share the housework. I didn't expect her to do more than me. I don't think of this as 'feminist'. It's just how we do things. The point is: it doesn't need a label - it's just you. My wife does think of herself as a feminist. But really this just means that she doesn't want to be a bored housewife.
Secondly, that whole thing about weddings is a bit old-fashioned. It seems to me that the biggest problem you have is not with the notion of marriage but with the notion of a Christian marriage; the answer to which is simple: don't have a Christian wedding.
My wife and I had a humanist wedding. We got to decide exactly what we wanted in the ceremony. There was no 'giving away' of the bride. The structure of the wedding still had some of the traditional aspects: the bride dressed in white coming down the isle; readings, albeit secular ones; but that was what we wanted. We pillaged tradition for the things we liked.
You cannot ignore the fact that one of you is male and one female. To do so would represent an absurd blindness to a biological fact. Men and women are different. That's not to say that either is 'better' on the whole. Men tend to be stronger than women, women tend to be better at remembering and organising than men. It's not universal, but it's not imposed by culture either: it's biological.
What's more, you can never ignore the culture you were brought up in. Without culture, everything is meaningless. Your attitude to cultural aspects will help morph it into something new - and this is where it is important to have an attitude; but don't imagine that you will never be a cultural stereotype. All you can do is create your own idea of a stereotype
She seems very nice and sensible, but I have a couple of things that I'd like to say to her.
Firstly, I really hate the idea that deciding on how roles are split in a relationship is a 'feminist' idea. Okay, I can see how feminist thinking would need a different split in a relationship to the traditional one. But every relationship is different. Only relationships which aren't very deep are 'traditional'. My wife and I share the housework. I didn't expect her to do more than me. I don't think of this as 'feminist'. It's just how we do things. The point is: it doesn't need a label - it's just you. My wife does think of herself as a feminist. But really this just means that she doesn't want to be a bored housewife.
Secondly, that whole thing about weddings is a bit old-fashioned. It seems to me that the biggest problem you have is not with the notion of marriage but with the notion of a Christian marriage; the answer to which is simple: don't have a Christian wedding.
My wife and I had a humanist wedding. We got to decide exactly what we wanted in the ceremony. There was no 'giving away' of the bride. The structure of the wedding still had some of the traditional aspects: the bride dressed in white coming down the isle; readings, albeit secular ones; but that was what we wanted. We pillaged tradition for the things we liked.
You cannot ignore the fact that one of you is male and one female. To do so would represent an absurd blindness to a biological fact. Men and women are different. That's not to say that either is 'better' on the whole. Men tend to be stronger than women, women tend to be better at remembering and organising than men. It's not universal, but it's not imposed by culture either: it's biological.
What's more, you can never ignore the culture you were brought up in. Without culture, everything is meaningless. Your attitude to cultural aspects will help morph it into something new - and this is where it is important to have an attitude; but don't imagine that you will never be a cultural stereotype. All you can do is create your own idea of a stereotype
Wednesday, 15 October 2008
Can humanity be redeemed?
I have changed.
In the very heart of my being, I am a different person.
The way I define myself; the way I define humanity: it is all changed utterly; but there is no beauty sufficient to redeem humanity for me. I can see no hope for humanity.
Yesterday on the radio I heard the account of Zawadi Mongane, a young woman from the Congo, who was forced to hang her own baby by rebel soldiers after watching them butcher other villagers, including her brother and her two oldest children.
No person living or dead can do enough to assuage that crime. I feel guilt and utter shame that fellow human beings could perpetrate such a crime.
Reckless, thoughtless selfishness seems to be the norm for people. I have known this for a long time. Never before now have I understood the depths of depravity that human beings can sink to. Despite the vast works of art, literature and history that exist dedicated to the holocaust, it somehow never quite struck home. Maybe because it was an historical act - an act outside my lifetime - and also maybe because of the political manipulation that so often goes hand-in-hand with holocaust accounts; and maybe also because the descendants of the victims of that holocaust are intent on becoming aggressors and criminals in their own right in the way they treat the Palestinian people inside and outside Israel. For them, it was not a crime against humanity, but a crime against Judaism.
Can anything redeem humanity from this crime against Zawadi Mongane? It seems to me that if every human being alive and yet to come were to do nothing but good, selfless acts for all eternity, it would be insufficient.
We are men of filth.
In the very heart of my being, I am a different person.
The way I define myself; the way I define humanity: it is all changed utterly; but there is no beauty sufficient to redeem humanity for me. I can see no hope for humanity.
Yesterday on the radio I heard the account of Zawadi Mongane, a young woman from the Congo, who was forced to hang her own baby by rebel soldiers after watching them butcher other villagers, including her brother and her two oldest children.
No person living or dead can do enough to assuage that crime. I feel guilt and utter shame that fellow human beings could perpetrate such a crime.
Reckless, thoughtless selfishness seems to be the norm for people. I have known this for a long time. Never before now have I understood the depths of depravity that human beings can sink to. Despite the vast works of art, literature and history that exist dedicated to the holocaust, it somehow never quite struck home. Maybe because it was an historical act - an act outside my lifetime - and also maybe because of the political manipulation that so often goes hand-in-hand with holocaust accounts; and maybe also because the descendants of the victims of that holocaust are intent on becoming aggressors and criminals in their own right in the way they treat the Palestinian people inside and outside Israel. For them, it was not a crime against humanity, but a crime against Judaism.
Can anything redeem humanity from this crime against Zawadi Mongane? It seems to me that if every human being alive and yet to come were to do nothing but good, selfless acts for all eternity, it would be insufficient.
We are men of filth.
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