ल'औतरे Blog

I have another blog at www.sallybm.worpress.com

Check it out. Dude. :-P

India

I'm going to India for 6 weeks this summer. Maaaan it's going to be hot. And amazing. Wow. I'll be in Delhi for 3 weeks and Chennai (SE coast) for another 3 weeks, and I'll be spending time in a school, doing some research and doing some work experience with a multinational (forgive me Lord for I have sinned)! If any of my millions of readers have any advice etc then please comment below! Obviously I'll have some more exciting India-related posts in 3-4 weeks time when I'm in the jewel itself. Whoopeedoo.

And sorry- I appreciated this is all rather jammy.

:-) A tes souhaits,

Sally

More brilliant things I've found

Ooooh my God. If this doesn't make you stop, laugh, and gawp in awe, nothing will:

http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/

Excellenté:

http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/

I will, of course, be adding more...

Canova

If anything's an argument for the objectivity of beauty and the value of art, Canova is it. He was, objectively, splendid, as I've just discovered:

To have a look (my advice!), go on The State Heritage Museum website and type Canova into the search bar. The descriptions that go with the sculptures are really useful, if not essential, if you're not familiar with the sculptures and their contexts.

This is a direct link to a page with photos at the bottom:
http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/fcgi-bin/db2www/quickSearch.mac/gallery?selLang=English&tmCond=canova&Go.x=0&Go.y=0

But those photos weren't working for me so you might need to try this one...
http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/2003/Antonio_Canova/bio1.asp
...for the sculptures alone with no descriptions. You do really need the descriptions though, at least for some of them, like Orpheus.

O, Orpheus... "asterix sniff" doesn't really do the great man justice does it?

Well, happy admiring :-)
(To all those millions of avid readers I get on this thing)

Everything that can happen does

This idea came to me on a walk today, listening to a podcast about the Persian philosopher Avicenna (Philosophy Bites). Avicenna said that the universe is made up of contingent things, and so must itself be contingent, and caused by a necessary thing. Which means there is some necessary entity which caused the universe.

Well, maybe we have the wrong perspective on cause and effect. Maybe, rather than things causing other things to happen, things PREVENT other things from happening. This would lead to the same, deterministic outcomes we see in the world around us, so long as there ARE things to prevent forces interacting in any other way (which, according to the laws of physics, there are). But then when it comes to explaining why the universe is here, we can say, standing before matter came to exist "Is there any reason there shouldn't be matter?" And it seems the answer was "No", since matter did come to be. Hence there being something rather than nothing, without a need for a necessary cause like God.

I foresee several problems with this, which I don't quite understand enough to put into words in this tired state in which I'm writing. But one is that we still seem to need to explain why what exists, and only what exists, exists. If it wasn't specifically caused, why did it come to be as it was? Or is this just one of an infinite number of possible universes that came to exist?

...I'm sure I read once that quantum physics says that everything that can possibly happen DOES happen, by the world splitting off into two parallel universes. Which didn't bother me too much at the time, since I think there is only one thing that can happen- that which does- so that things would remain pretty much as they seem under that conception. But then quantum physics I think suggests otherwise there as well? I know there are theories of quantum uncertainty and infinite universes somewhere in quantum physics or string theory or something...

Eek. Why do I always have these outlandish thoughts before bed-time, and why don't I keep them to myself until morning? Meh. Anyway, if you're reading, please hurl some criticism at the basic thought for me, that perhaps everything that can happen does.

Much as grassy arse

It's Just a Ride

Bill Hicks' wonderful philosophy on life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMUiwTubYu0

"It's not enough just to question authority...

...You've got to speak with it too."

As expressed by Taylor Mali here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCNIBV87wV4

Some Wonderful/ inspiring songs

I had a friend who was down recently, so I made her a CD (amongst other encouraging things...!). Anyway, I realised I'd found a nice collection of songs to inspire and uplift and spur you along the right path etc etc, so thought I'd share them with anyone reading this from out there in the ether (helloooo!).

Why Walk When You Can Fly- Mary Chapin Carpenter
Breathe- Alexi Murdoch
The Heart Of Life- John Mayer
Hakuna Matata (The Lion King)
Oxygen- Willy Mason
Bridge Over Troubled Water- Simon & Garfunkel
We Are One (The Lion King II: Simba's Pride)
Power Of Two- Indigo Girls
Get Out The Map- Indigo Girls
Oh, Had I A Golden Thread- Eva Cassidy
You've Got A Friend In Me (Toy Story)
The Bare Necesseties (The Jungle Book)
Forever Young- Bob Dylan
Yellow- Coldplay
Here Comes The Sun- Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel
Wide Open Spaces- Dixie Chicks
Suddenly I See- KT Tunstall
Search For A Hero- M People
You've Got A Friend- James Taylor
I Promise You- Show Of Hands

Awwwwgh. Such good songs. I'm happier already :-)

Harmonica

I've just bought a harmonica, and I have to share with you my excitement at its glory. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW. Oh, it's hot. Seriously, everyone with any musical blood running through their body should buy one. MMine was £9.95, first hand from just a normal music shop, and it's perfectly good. It's chromatic which means I can play all the notes I could on a small piano. And they're just amazing, coz it's pretty impossible to make a tune that sounds wrong, and you can get so many different sounds and tones and styles out of them, and they just about fit in your pocket and can be played anywhere...

Except maybe in Quaker meetings, libraries, etc. I was going to go to a Quaker meeting this morning. i've been once before and it's awesome. It's a bit strange at first, coz all you do is sit in silence for an hour with everyone else in the room, and every now and then someone says something to the meeting that they want to share. But it's so peaceful, and it helps you calm and evaluate and organise and settle your thoughts. Also, you're meant to think about love and community and God etc (I'm not religious, but religious Quakers (!) see it as sitting listening for God), so you end up thinking about important things and valuing love etc a lot more. Anyway, I've onyl been once so I'm making some sweeping generalisations here, but I'd say, as with the harmonica, try it at least once coz it's one of those experiences that's worth while for what it teaches you even if you don't want to do it regularly. As with all non-addictive, legal things, don't knock it until you've tried it!

All the best (end of babbling).

Sally

Right…

What doesn’t make sense, is that there isn’t one thing that makes an emotion positive (/negative). Sometimes, I really enjoy falling asleep to tranquil classical music; it creates a positive emotion in me. At other times, I enjoy almost getting angry, or upset, listening to vicious rock music. I also get a positive emotion when enjoying the juicy sweetness of big fresh oranges, though that emotion in itself is quite different from the pleasure I experience when indulging in rich chocolate fudge cake. Different again is the pleasurable jolt of glancing the person you love. All these positive emotions are quite different sorts of happiness/ pleasure/ enjoyment.

The same disparity can be seen in pains. A paper cut can feel like the worst pain ever… then you loose someone you love. And how does that compare with the fear felt when your own untimely death presents itself to you? Or the shame of acting improperly towards someone, and being publicly “found out”?

We might try and rank these emotions from most to least desirable. In life, we do just that whenever we have to make a judgement about how we should act. But how do we rank emotional outcomes when there is such disparity?

It might seem we’re influenced by how long those emotions last, or by how pleasurable the later side effects of those emotion are. But considering only the present experience of an emotion, it seems impossible to rationally apply any sort of rank whatsoever. Bentham suggested it was simply a matter of intensity of pleasure pain… but is it? Really? Isn’t the pleasure of tranquil meditation simply a different type of pleasure from that we experience listening to angry rock music? I can’t see the significant common quality. All that seems the same is that in both cases, we desire the emotion, and judge it to be “positive”.

So do we rank emotions simply by how much we desire them (or desire not to feel them)? Are our desires therefore arbitrary? I can desire things for many different- and crucially, separate- reasons, and the separateness of these reasons denies the possibility of comparing them on any scale of value. Comparing two types of pleasure to discover which is “greatest” is akin to comparing 10cm and 10 degrees Celsius to deduce which is bigger. Impossible. They’re just not the same type of thing- their values lie in different qualities.

So, how do we do rank emotions? Why do we value “positive emotions” at all, and what puts this in contrast to out distaste for “negative emotions”? Mustn’t there be some common unit if there is to be any sense made of any of our choices whatsoever?

And why is it that even though no one I ask can answer these questions, we’re all (me included) still fairly content to go on in ignorance? We can’t even justify our fear at the potential breakdown of morality until we’ve fully investigated the evidence for the meaninglessness of that morality. If we knew exactly why we went on, we’d have cracked the whole conundrum! But as it is…
*Walks into a wall

**Can’t decide if it really matters, if I'm being philosophically consistent, but gets some anti-bump cream just in case

Dostoyevsky on the problem of evil

This extract is said by Ivan (Dostoyevsky) in Chapter 35 (/4) of the Three Brothers Karamazov.

“With my pitiful, earthly, Euclidian understanding, all I know is that there is suffering and that there are none guilty; that cause follows effect, simply and directly…— but… what comfort is it to me…? — I must have justice, or I will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote infinite time and space, but here on earth, and that I could see myself… Surely I haven’t suffered simply that I, my crimes and my sufferings, may manure the soil of the future harmony for somebody else... I want to be there when everyone suddenly understands what it has all been for. All the religions of the world are built on this longing, and I am a believer. But then there are the children, and what am I to do about them? … in their case what I mean is so unanswerably clear. Listen! If all must suffer to pay for the eternal harmony, what have children to do with it, tell me, please? It’s beyond all comprehension why they should suffer, and why they should pay for the harmony. Why should they, too, furnish material to enrich the soil for the harmony of the future? … And if it is really true that they must share responsibility for all their fathers’ crimes, such a truth is not of this world and is beyond my comprehension. Some jester will say, perhaps, that the child would have grown up and have sinned, but you see he didn’t grow up, he was torn to pieces by the dogs, at eight years old… I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be when everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: ‘Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.’ When the mother embraces the fiend who threw her child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears, ‘Thou art just, O Lord!’... But what pulls me up here is that I can’t accept that harmony. And while I am on earth, I make haste to take my own measures… I don’t want to cry aloud [‘Thou art just, O Lord’] then… I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It’s not worth the tears of that one tortured child who beat itself on the breast with its little fist and prayed in its stinking outhouse, with its unexpiated tears to ‘dear, kind God’! It’s not worth it, because those tears are unatoned for. They must be atoned for, or there can be no harmony. But how? How are you going to atone for them? Is it possible? …What good can hell do, since those children have already been tortured? And what becomes of harmony, if there is hell? ... And if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price. I don’t want the mother to embrace the oppressor who threw her son to the dogs!… Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive? I don’t want harmony. From love for humanity I don’t want it. I would rather be left with the unavenged suffering... Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it’s beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing. It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket”

phosphorescence antidisestablishmentarianism

There, now my blog has a googlewhack. It really does have everything you'd need from a blog. Oh why oh why does no one care ? :-( hee hee

Goodness poem

This poem is not good at all. I spent far too long writing it (about an hour!) and am not really sure why I’m posting it here, except for my prediction that it will not be read! Then again, me writing this forward shows I’m not wholly confident of that fact. Anyway, I want to start writing poems again, and putting them on here and having any comments that might come along might spur me on. I think it expresses a bit of my confusion at morality which is troubling me at the moment, and my further confusion at other people’s finding no problem with it what so ever. It’s far more difficult than nearly everyone seems to give it “proper” credit for.

Simple Goodness

Actin’ proper
Ain’t s’ hard;
Jus’ do what’s right and
Be on yer guard.

Follow yer conscience!
Follow yer ‘eart!
Follow yer ‘ead, lass
(t’sensible part)-

T’part that’s for others.
T’part that’s for pleasure.
T’part for the “now”.
That part that’s for ever.

Then it ought’a be clear
What’s to do and what’s not.
But I see yer fumbling.
There’s some’et y’ain’t got…

Look:

If it ‘urts other people,
Or if it ‘urts you,
Or t’dear bless’d creatures,
It ain’t right to do!

If it violates Jesus,
Or t’law o’ the Land,
Or that of commonsense,
Or it’s otherwise banned,

Or it just dun’t feel right,
Or yer told it’s a sin,
Or yer duty’s in question,
You just shouldn’t a’ been

Tryin’ it in the first place!
Yer’ll know if it’s right;
There’s books for’t instruct yer!
Reading ‘em might

'av 'elped yer conundrum!
But alas, yer moved wrong.
("In movin' at all?")
Well, it won't be long

'Till all the world grabs yer
And blasts out yer sentence:
"Eternity outcast;
No chance for repentance"
...

"Phew", she breathes.

My First Blog

Hi there, cyberworld.

Blogging seems to be the thing to be doing right now. How else can you spread your opinions to the world, prove everyone you're right, and eventually take them all under your immensely powerful (*correction-LOVING) wing?

But this is not a good start. I'm hardly going to win you over with such blatant attempts at world domination. Peter and Valentine did it much better. The human world has, on the surface, evolved so that anyone who wants to take power in it must do so politely, quietly, and without causing a fuss for everyone else (notice the sunflower), who really want to just get on with their own lives thank you very much.

Oh what a load of dribble. Future blogs will be better. This first blog was just THROWN on me by blogspot once I'd signed up and it seemed the right thing to do, to have a point to improve from and look back on if nothing more. Note: Sally's first (be kind) major mistake in attempting world domination through blogging: dribbling all over her debut blog.

My blogs will probably be largely philosophical. I'm not powerful enough for anyone to care about the me behind the ideas as of yet. I'm safe, that way :-) I'm probably not brainy and original enough for anyone to care about the ideas, now I come to think of it... but again, I've started, so I'll finish. (Mistake number 2?)

It'll also be a travel blog as I'm having a gap year from June, including 5 months in Cambodia and possibly 6-8 weeks in India. I do hope you're jealous. Well, if you are, make some plans! Go book a flight or something. There's loads'a volunteer organisations'll have you. What're you waiting for?

When I rule the world, everyone will live abroad helping those less fortunate than themselves

:-|

So long (this blogging, self-importance thing is already getting to my head)

Best wishes to ya, with promises of better, less egotistical blogs in the future (blame the overwhelming excitingness of writing a first blog)

Salski