https://aeon.co/essays/how-to-solve-moral-problems-with-formal-logic-and-probability

Charles Darwin wrote in The Descent of Man (1871): ‘Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than knowledge.”

Lay down beside me let me hold you close

Take my hands and let us now embrace

Go to sleep in peace, I’ll hold you tight.

I would like to comfort you this night

Yet the boatman comes before the dawn

I’d like to hold you near me keep you warm

Once my little sister, now we’re old .

Old we are and never will be cold

Sharp tears do strike my face and fall to earth

The same that mother felt when giving birth.

She gave up and died without a cause

Complaining of her lot without a pause

I had no patience could not hear her speak ..

I could not tolerate the news so bleak.

Forgive me sister, I am here with you.

Surrendering to the pain of knowledge new.

On your voyage you will be alone

But you will be at peace we’re past the storms

The Lord will give the Lord may take away.

Tender are your family today

Negative capability

Dhttps://aeon.co/essays/deny-and-become-the-radical-ethos-of-negative-capability

i

Forget memory. Kill desire. Open up in the moment to unleash creativity, intuition, and even political transformation

by Paul Tritschler + BIO

Pablo Picasso was in his late 20s when he learned to paint like the Old Masters, but it took 30 years more to learn to paint like a child. His journey towards childlikeness, which he said he achieved through a process of self-forgetfulness, was fruitful but arduous, a lifelong fight against social influences. Finding a purer, more instinctual vision of the world required getting to know himself outside the boundaries of his social group. The task of finding a truly original voice while bound to a group is analogous to looking for your keys under a streetlight because it is too dark to search for them where they were lost. In both instances, we might improve the search by not looking: lost things often materialise when we shut them from our mind. In fact, we are not closing our mind but opening it, waiting for the unconscious, that great unknown, to solve the riddle. And quite often it does.

The unconscious can perform astonishing feats of memory, but it can also play a remarkable role in creativity: sudden insights, solutions and life-enhancing ideas sometimes surface unbidden when the mind is adrift in unconscious reverie. If such chance awakenings are possible, how can you replicate those conditions to become more the author, and less the reporter, of your own meaningful life story? To find that elusive voice, we’ve got to search in the ‘now’, in the moment of true, lived experience that fleetingly exists between past and future. It is within that space that we must seek the locus of personal transformation and change.

But being in the moment, developing an awareness of ‘now’, means gaining control over our thoughts and the unconscious patterning of memory so that they don’t intrude. If we can’t wrestle control over things, then something has gone awry in the master-servant relationship – there is truth in the old aphorism: ‘The mind is an excellent servant but a terrible master.’ To overcome this complex bind, we must identify how the mind constrains us, and then we must break free. Among the traps of the mind, there is preoccupation with the past (including attachment to intrusive memories) and preoccupation with the future (including continual desire). By definition, these lures are incompatible with being in the moment. We must offload this excess baggage to glimpse what we are and what we might become.

There might be none who has given voice to the process more eloquently than the mid-20th-century British psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion. It was Bion who said that one discovers truth, the ingredient essential to psychic growth, on the cusp of knowing and not knowing. On the cerebral map, not knowing is located somewhere at the edge of the world, and Bion demands that we stretch ourselves to the precipice and face it unflinchingly.

Bion’s approach can seem paradoxical because it restricts memory and desire while operating within the bounds of psychoanalysis, a profession that rests on the twin pillars of memory and desire. Yet the approach has been embraced by philosophers and self-seers for thousands of years. The practice has its beginnings with Plato, who contemplated the divine as something that was at once knowable and unknowable: knowable by way of all-pervasive beauty and perfection in the Universe, and unknowable by way of rational intellect. The thread of the idea was carried into history by the Christian mystical text The Cloud of Unknowing. This 14th-century work asks us to immerse our thoughts and desires under a cloud of forgetting, to surrender our ego to find some measure of reality. The Cloud’s intensely meditative and contemplative approach focuses on a single object or monosyllabic word – ‘God’ or ‘love’. 

https://www.inc.com/kevin-daum/17-reasons-people-aren-t-listening-to-you.html

Possibly you are only talking about yourself, you interrupt, and you whine

Oddsbodkins friend. Cripes you might be a narcissist. Damn it all . You are going to hell in a handbasket. Have you got a smoke alarm? Get ready, the end is nigh.

https://www.skillsyouneed.com/ips/tact-diplomacy.html

• Attentive Listening:  You need to be able to listen to not just what is being said but also how it is being said in order to understand, and react appropriately to, others.

https://columbiametro.com/article/the-skill-of-patience/

Search 

Learning to accept daily frustrations

By Thomas Barbian, Ph.D.

Patience is a virtue! Or, at least that is how the saying goes. But is it really? Patience is defined as “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble or suffering without getting angry or upset,” a definition with several important components. Patience is also a skill. We can work on increasing our ability to be patient and engage in practices to become a more patient person. 

Before looking at how to develop more patience, it is best to define what we are actually talking about. Patience (or the lack thereof — impatience) occurs in response to some sort of difficulty or delay in life that is not going according to expectation. A day can hardly be lived without encountering something that interferes with our plans, and so we might say that the “interferences” or “disruptions” are a normal part of life; to expect otherwise will make it difficult to be patient. 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbooksauthors/2020/02/20/the-importance-of-being-patient/

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/time-perception-aging_l_63973dc2e4b0169d76d92560

When you’re looking back, the less rich your representation is, the more it’s going to seem like the time went by quickly.”

In other words, our brains lump time together when the days or weeks are similar. So for an 80-year-old who largely does the same thing every day, the year is going to blend together in their mind and feel like it went by quickly.

The new and exciting things in a day are what make the days and months feel different, and thus set them apart in our minds.

I spent my grown up  life in  puzzles mazed
No more to play in parks  or climb green hills
Wondering was it true that Jesus saves.

On green hills,  the Herdwick sheep would graze
While in the town, the people swallowed pills
I spent my adult life in muddled maze.

On the sunny side,old people  prayed
For pensions were too small to pay the bills;
Some wondered in which Bank the Saviour saved

I  had been  obsessive in my ways
Keeping my accounts was not a thrill
I spent my entire life in puzzles mazed

How many  mortal sins,such thoughts would  prey
Of self torture,I have had my fill
Wondering is it true that Jesus saves

Jerusalem upon its rocky hill
Cannot show but maybe it can tell
I spent my adult life in puzzles mazed
Wondering  who and  what  Lord Jesus saves.

I was looking for my Jewish Cookery Book and  it  had vanished. I said a prayer, Then as I turned round it hit me on the head [ it’s quite light]

So I said, do you have to throw it at me,Lord?

But answer came there none [Lewis Carroll]

I wonder if I’ll need a new printer when I go home.

Do you really think that the middle of the night is a good time to think about printers or money?

Will my partner be prepared to read things on the screen rather than printed?

There is always question in your mind

What is the right question?

Ask someone else to read your writing

I don’t know what to do

Nothing is obviously the best.

Nothing how can I do nothing?

Well action can be dangerous if it’s taken without forethought

I think forethought is no longer practised in the Western mind.

Perhaps we are all using negative capability and we are living in uncertainty and doubt Because we have not yet been inspired or found our way to different kind of life

You can’t dwell in uncertainty for too long.

I know you’ll end up in the psychiatric unit.

Can we be trained to tolerate more uncertainty until we get a better answer?

I’ll have to think about that

Bion ( Wilfred Bion,psychoanalyst) did not advocate patience for its own sake, however. For him, as for Keats, (John Keats the poet) the intended outcome of negative capability was ‘achievement’. Not knowing tends to stimulate high levels of uncertainty and anxiety and is a threat to fresh thinking, whether in the analytic pair or in an organizational context. As a result, there is often pressure to invoke prior knowledge – that may no longer apply – or to adopt a new certainty too quickly, before a new pattern has had the chance to evolve (Bion, 1970: 124). Hence Eisold’s definition of negative capability as ‘precisely the ;ability to tolerate anxiety and fear, to stay in the place of uncertainty in order to allow for the emergence of new thoughts or perceptions’ (Eisold, 2000: 65). “

You were the centre of my universe
[What is a universe,by the way?]
You were the light in my life
[What about the sun?
You were perfect in every way
{ Name a few definite ones]
So why did you choose me?
[Why, what’s wrong with you?]
Now, you have thrown me away
Seems as  if I am trash
But some folk save the wrong things
Or put them in the wrong wash
[That might be a metaphor]
My washing machine  only works on the rapidest wash
[Good grief, that sounds positive]
Since it’s only 14 minutes,I do it twice
[Why would people want to know this?]
Sometimes I just do rinse and spin
‘But I didn’t realise that was an option at first
[Who cares?]
I am trying to save money so in future I shall just do one
{ why wash them at all, just steam them!]
I love elecricity
{ Is that a metaphor?]
I love gas
[Maybe it’s not]
I’ll cook my angel a roast
{ Do  angels eat?]
A roasted prayer of thanksgiving
{Sounds more  like a threat than a promise]
God will smell the odour
[Not if he doesn’t want to]
God will be happy
[Are you crackers?]
God is neither happy nor unhappy
[Make your mind up.This is  not logic class BTW}
God looks divine
[How can we compare the two?]
I have seen him
[Are you high?]
I don’t know what will happen next but I accept it all
[Very gracious!]
I wish Father Xmas would come tonight
{ Don’t we all?]
And to use a cliche,I love the entire universe.What ever that is!
Is that a bad poem?
Do cows eat grass
Do  sheep have woollen rugs  glued to their heads ?
I am finished
[At last!]

But it’s not bad enough

https://psyche.co/ideas/heartbreak-is-more-than-a-metaphor-are-you-at-risk

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/21/jared-diamond-upheaval-migration-minorities-how-countries-solve-crisis?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

I believe this is a very important topic and that if you have time to read the article I think you’ll find it beneficial. I think artists already know about this sometimes expressed as seeing things in a wider focus or daydreaming or reverie.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/144656/in-search-of-distraction

Distraction need not simply be another name for attention shifted (“I was looking at this, then I looked at that”). Attention is a form of “tension,” but the relaxation here — both that which creates the condition for the new perception and that which follows from it — is primarily conceived as passive (objects fall “upon the eye, are “carried to the heart”). The sense of one’s capacity of apprehension being “penetrated” is also strange; it’s as though, in a certain state of distractedness, our capacities are not our own. Yet this state isn’t conceived as deficit or disorder; although it arrives as Wordsworth has undertaken “final abandonment of hope,” it signals an advent. And even as he becomes distractedly absorbed by the bright star, the star itself is already luring him into a feeling for something other than itself, igniting “a sense of the Infinite.” The numinous turns nebulous. The unfocused seems to include — or to inspire — a new sense of freedom.

P

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/01/will-britain-survive/621095/

D

https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2005/jan/16/society?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Yes, climatic deterioration probably helped destroy Norse Greenland. But the Vikings also damned themselves. ‘The Inuit survived,’ he points out. ‘The Vikings’ disappearance was not inevitable.’

And hereby hangs our tale. Throughout the 500-plus pages of this densely argued, yet riveting treatise, Diamond, a geographer at University of California in Los Angeles and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, outlines the interrelated ecological reasons and economic causes for the disintegration, and survival, of societies throughout history.

Examples include the Mayans who stripped their land of trees (deforestation figures in just about all collapses, it transpires), triggering widespread soil erosion and starvation, and the Easter Islanders who destroyed their society in a fever of religious statue building and cannibalism. (‘The flesh of your mother sticks between my teeth,’ is still a popular island insul

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/01/brexit-too-complicated-for-referendum-says-jared-diamond?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Brexit was too complex to be decided by referendum and should have been left in the hands of elected representatives, not voters, Jared Diamond has said.

Speaking at the Hay festival on Saturday about his latest book, Upheaval, an analysis of world crises, the US historian said both individuals and nations could solve crises by “having a model of someone or a country who had a similar problem and solved it successfully”.

Britain had “little experience” with national referendums before the 2016 vote, he said, having only held two: the 1975 vote to remain in the European common market, and the 2011 vote on the UK’s parliamentary voting system. However, he said, in 2016 Britain could have looked overseas for examples of best practice, including Wisconsin and California in the US, two states that regularly hold referendums, and Italy, which has held more than 70 national referendums since 1946. S

I thought of my blog friends when I read this quote from “The Path: A New Way to Think About Everything” by Michael Puett, Christine Gross-Loh –

“From roughly 600 to 200 BC, an explosion of philosophical and religious movements throughout Eurasia gave rise to a wide variety of visions for human flourishing. During this period, which has come to be called the Axial Age, many of the ideas that developed in Greece also emerged in China and vice versa. In fact, in China, as we will see, certain beliefs arose that were very similar to those common in the West today. But in China, such views lost the day, while other ideas emerged in opposition, arguing for a very different path to a good life.”

Start reading this book for free: https://amzn.eu/4OnMiJB

Mary had been reading a new book called,” The Path” by Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Loh.To her surprise, she saw it reviewed on her phone where she read the guardian news

.She had decided to get out of bed on the other side
When she awoke the next day, she remembered her vow.Unfortunately, she forgot she was inside a fleece sleeping bag with a zip on one side only.Should she get some scissors and cut her way out on the other side?Or was that a foolish idea since nobody but she would know she had failed her to keep her first new promise.
She heard a noise and them her friend Annie came in wearing a long satin nightgown and a green velvet trench coat.
How do you like this, she asked Mary?
Mary was very red yet silent
What is wrong, with you Mary?
I need to pee but I can’t get out of bed on the wrong side.
You have no choice, said Annie.You must not wet the bed or die from a burst bladder. Get out on the right side

But I feel a failure on my first day.
Maybe that is your lesson.Accept you can’t do it and get on with your day.
Mary ran to the bathroom.What a relief passing water can be to poor ladies who suffer afflictions in these regions.
Annie went down to the bijou yet complex kitchen and began to make some toast and boil some eggs.She gazed at the peach walls and melon cupboard doors unable to decide if she liked them.Maybe kingfisher blue might have been better.Too late now.Mary could not afford a new kitchen even if this one was really old.At least it was not orange as was common in the 70’s.
Mary came in with her golden hair standing up on end like candlesticks from the Synagogue.
I just got a shock, she said
I can see your hair is standing on end.Was it the electric socket?
No, there was a man looking into the window and I was naked in the bath.
Perhaps it was King David, Annie joked.Why don’t you have frosted glass?
Stan said it would frost itself in the winter.He was the least practical man in the world.
Maybe we could glue artificial frost onto it?
Who was the man, asked Annie her cheeks pinker than her perky pink lipstick by Licumb ; those lips which were so thick and sensual with a lovely curve.
Mary tore her eyes away from these lips.I didn’t have my glasses on, she said.Maybe it was a man from a hot air balloon?
Maybe someone fancies you at last,saidAnnie.
Do you think I’d go out with a man who does things like that?
No, you could stay in with him, Annie joked, as tears of mirth made her green eyeshadow and red mascara stream down her cheeks like rain after a nuclear explosion.No wonder men ran after her in the street.
You could succumb to his charms,Annie whispered.
I think I’d like a man more sensitive than that, Mary screeched.
Well, Mary, you are so lacking in knowledge the art of flirting you only notice men when they do something really wild or unusual
Like what, asked Emile who had just munched up a bowl of dried cat food and was full of energy.
Well, Stan kept pretending he loved reading Newton’s original writings which he bought from some unusual website thinking it would impress Mary. However as he failed O leve; maths 5 times he could not understand it.He sobbed and cried in the public library and Mary was moved by his grief.Later on, though, he became angry at her intellectual talent and took me as his mistress to get back at her.She never even noticed!
I don’t see how having a mistress is a revenge on poor woman who was given her genes by God, said Emile.
Don’t be daft, she buys her jeans from TK Maxx, Annie answered.
And so do all of us.

I can’t write any more right now!

https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/ambivalence-healthy-researchers-have-mixed-feelings

Whether we’re aware of it or not, most of us view ambivalence as a mindset to be avoided. Decades of research have shown that holding both negative and positive attitudes about something makes us uncomfortable and anxious. More often than not, ambivalence is regarded as a weakness that causes unnecessary conflict.

That’s why most people are motivated to resolve their ambivalent feelings and take a stand one way or another. This is especially true when it comes to emotionally charged issues like abortion and the death penalty — we have a natural tendency to steer away from counter arguments.

There are times,

https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/how-to/how-to-deal-with-people-who-hate-you/

It is important to understand that not everyone will like you. If everyone you encountered liked you, it would probably mean you were not being your true, genuine self; because there are things in all of our personalities that will not appeal to some people, a natural predilection toward dislike is inevitable. Just as you probably do not like everyone you know, it’s okay if some people don’t like you.

Furthermore, some people will seem to dislike you even though it’s not personal. Sometimes, we have to perform necessary roles in the world, and people dislike their relationships within those roles. As a result, it’s important to understand why people seem to dislike us, so we can fix what we can and cope with what we can’t.

The Language of Hate and Acceptance

It’s much healthier to use the word dislike as opposed to hate, because hate implies that people hate intentionally, and purposely go out of their way to harm you or make your life worse. While this may be true in rare cases, more often than not, these people simply don’t want you to be part of their lives. Therefore, dislike is a much more accurate term.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45564/the-world-is-too-much-with-us

The world is too much with us late and soon

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

https://archive.nytimes.com/well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/06/14/sibling-rivalry-the-grown-up-version/

I have become interested in virtue and perception.It began when I read  a little Aristotle about virtue being a habit.That was quite recent.Before that for many years I believed virtuous acts would follow from being able to perceive well.But when we are fraught in our minds and eyes tighten up we perceive only what may be a danger to us.To perceive others well we need to be in a position to trust others and we need to feel secure.How is this possible?

From my studies I read that our ability to trust begins with a trusted caregiver in infancy,[See” atttachment and loss “by John Bowlby reference to come] We may be able to become more secure later by good fortune,friendship and love.If not,I seem to get the idea that if we are insecure and nervous we cannot truly perceive others and they may be in the same position.If we are very afraid then virtuous acts may be hard to accomplish. The reason is obvious… when. we are concerned with  mere survival as a person , in that state what we do to others  may be impossible for us to consider.We cannot truly see them and so we cannot act well towards them except by good luck.

Or if we are able to tolerate great anxiety,we may see better…. if not we are incapable…. Those whom we cannot see properly we cannot truly consider with feeling  and act on this feeling.We see them partly or mainly in terms of the fearful fantasies in our minds and cannot see them as  other and interesting.When we make a friend online we may feel safer but in fact we are more likely to misperceive them. When we are from a sad a or difficut background it may help greatly if we have some friends who might point out our errors if we trust enough to tell them.Or we may pretend to be hard and tough.Neither leads to virtue.If we trust God it may help but I believe we see God through the lens of our parents.. which is not always good…depending on the parents. When we live in fear,we cannot see what is there before us.We cannot let go.We cannot accept grace and love nor give it.We will try to live by will power.Ironically people who are fearful inside can develop a shell of toughness and pride and so are not seen as vulnerable  and/or lovable.

Tbey may seem frightening to others. This account may help to explain why politics is the way it is and also  we see that arguing is not persuasive when the other is not able to open up and see things more broadly.Arguing makes some of us tighten up and see less well.And it can be frightening too though some cultures find it more acceptable than others.

Here are some relevant blogs and articles

This author had a lot to say about perception… http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-marion-milner-1163951.html   http://susannanelson.wordpress.com/2014/03/02/happy-go-lucky/

http://glimpsejournal.wordpress.com/2014/05/11/the-real-bees-knees-stunning-micro-view-of-the-workers-behind-your-mothers-day-flowers/

Ok BB E Essex hubby