Loneliness, the word’s not strong enough For widows and their masculine counterparts. Ripped in half, that’s more the phrase; like tough.
No arms left now, that never will rebuff. No eager lips which whispering love impart Loneliness, the word’s not strong enough
People say, of course, the going’s rough The coming’s gone and nothing shall gestate Ripped in half, that’s more the phrase; like, tough.
Never more to share cartoons and laughs. Never more to be a chosen mate Loneliness, the word’s not wrong enough.
Did we know the heart of what we had? Did we learn the art of love. of fate? Ripped in half, that’s more the phrase; like, tough.
You have gone and closed now is the gate In a mad ball, I dance with love and hate Loneliness, the word’s not strong enough! Ripped in half, that’s more the phrase; like, tough.
Why am I thinking about original sin? No one talks about sin nowadays though nor about evil and yet in the last 120 years we had two terrible world wars we had the Holocaust we had Stalin not to mention the other more recent tragedies; you all know what I am referring to I think
That human beings can be involved in evil matters. What original sin was meant to be something that babies were born with something to do with sex being evil according to Santa Augustin of Hippo.
. So what is the problem?
Well I have a different explanation. Someone born into the economic system presently in Britain will be better off the many babies are in other parts of the world.
Yet the staff in care homes are not able to do their job with 100% satisfaction because the prime purpose of this care home is to make money for the owners and in order to make money you’ve got to charge a certain fee but not so high that no one will those who afford it with high enough to make a profit.
Well you can do this by having the minimum number of staff and paying them the minimum wage which currently in London is about £10 an hour.
There are never quite enough carers to answer the people’s bells as quickly as critical would like them to. So sometimes the people who can’t walk and therefore are in the gracious need will start to scream and shout or cry and sog and this can be very distressing for all of us to hear. Then they criticize the carers but it’s not the carers fault is it if you have say 18 people needing care with only two carers on duty then someone loses out. It’s like Darwin’s theory of evolution that the strongest will beat the weakest and the strongest of the old people even when they have dementia can dominate the atmosphere
They do get more attention simply because you can hear them so much. It can be tragic sometimes but it’s even more tragic to me to see the ones who have not got dementia but maybe have got cognitive decline and they’re just sit there half dead in the silence.
They are the forgotten people unless they have families close by and some families think that once their relative has got dementia they don’t need to visit them anymore but dementia is only part of what they are most of their personality is still intact. The name of the person may be forgotten but the familiar eyes on face and voice will be a great comfort
Where I see the sin is even with someone who feels that she’s got a vocation to be a carer to the elderly cannot be a carer in the full sense because she cannot look after anybody except the ones who are fairly fit she cannot look after anybody to the extent that they need. And there’s nothing in economic theory about a job being there to satisfy and genuine need for human caring for the old or disabled
.
The sin is not in the Carers but it is in the economic system of maximizing profits and minimizing labour costs.
If you look at a textbook for mathematical economics you will see the letters
L is labour, formerly known as people
C is capital. Representing money
To me it is dehumanising to call people labour and them in numbers which happens if you continue reading this economics book. Once you don’t see them as people then you can move them about do what you like to them make them part of an algebraic equation … So labor must be mobile and people cannot expect to live in the same city all their lives. Don’t worry about the elderly parents or their relatives etc they have to move elsewhere and while this is quite acceptable to some better off people if she’s not so good for people in lower paid jobs who are getting older. How many devices now we have so we can stay in touch with people far away because we can’t expect to stay near our friends or relatives for any length of time and that might be why our children use their phones so much as well.
What it means in a care home is that is it will be very unusual for all the residents to feel satisfied with their care but they will criticise the carers or the nurse or the manager for those people do not have any control over the number of staff.
It’s possible that some homes are more flexible than others but you can’t be sure of that but you cannot be. sure of anything
The original sin is the economic system together w together with the flaws and weaknesses of human beings which are there in the rich and the poor. Sometimes there are saints as well
Emile woke Mary up at 7am.It was a Sunday in late October, grey and damp though the sun was still not too low in the sky Go away, she told him.The clock has changed.It’s not 8 am yet.I have to wash my hair as well.Get the Observer out of the basket for me,please. I can’t read. the dear animal replied.And why don’t you rebel and stick to Summer Time? I know Stan wanted to send you to Eton but we couldn’t afford it.Yet you understand days and calenders, Mary joked sorrowfully She got up and found her fleece dressing gown; it was conker brown covered in coloured spots.She went downstairs and gave Emile a Whitby kipper.Then she made some tea and took it upstairs so she could drink it while she came round from her dreams Suddenly Annie ran into her bedroom wearing a long black vinyl coat and red knee-high boots You never locked the back door, she howled like a lost leopard which has had no food for weeks I don’t suppose anyone wants my old TV as it is only 19 inches.And my Chromebook is not something worth re-selling.I do have a new coat. How about Ray Monk’s life of Wittgenstein, Annie asked her defiantly, her apricot lips pouting childishly as the Riemann of Paris lipstick glittered uncannily like an imaginary number in a dream of Godel. The people who might enjoy reading it are by virtue of that , not the sort to steal or buy it on the black market. That is very racist, Annie told her.You should say:the beige market! Then nobody would know what I meant, Mary said lovingly Anyway, do you want to come to Marks with me? They have some beautiful coats in I’d like a pink wool coat, said Mary thoughtfully Quite right ,said Annie.Bring back feminine colours Actually, gay men might like pink coats, she continued.But if they go on the bus they might get dirty.Come to think of it, so will women’s coats They will have to buy pink puffa jackets and we can wash them at 30 deg.Mary whispered Using a special detergent, Annie asked? I have never seen a detergent for washing gay men.I don’t think they will fit into the washing machine.On the other hand, you are small so you will fit in Shall I get undressed first, Annie asked furtively. Yes, I’ll try to put you on a short wash for 15 minutes but it is your choice.Maybe a bath would be safer? No problem, said Annie intellectually.Are you having one with me? You’d better be careful, Mary ad-libbed.It might be sexual harassment. Well, I am not gay , said Annie. You never know till you try, Mary giggled ,like a child behind the school canteen Why, we might become gender fluid and then who knows? And so say all of us Miaow
You stabbed my heart when I was left alone Telling me my writing was like porn Now you give me nightmares, be my pest We all need one or two,and you confessed
My writing is so bad, you envy not Did I hit you on a painful spot? If others have a gift, that is their call You have yours , get out a net and trawl
Ambivalent in love which turns to hate We wound ourselves in making this our fate Talking overmuch lets such thoughts out As tea will pour down from a tilted spout
The ancient virtues,patience and restraint Shall be our wise protectors when distraught
What we need is not to disagree less, but to disagree better. And that starts when you turn away the rhetorical dope peddlers — the powerful people on your own side who are profiting from the culture of contempt. As satisfying as it can feel to hear that your foes are irredeemable, stupid and deviant, remember: When you find yourself hating something, someone is making money or winning elections or getting more famous and powerful. Unless a leader is actually teaching you something you didn’t know or expanding your worldview and moral outlook, you are being used.
Next, each of us can make a commitment never to treat others with contempt, even if we believe they deserve it. This might sound like a call for magnanimity, but it is just as much an appeal to self-interest. Contempt makes persuasion impossible — no one has ever been hated into agreement, after all — so its expression is either petty self-indulgence or cheap virtue signaling, neither of which wins converts.
What if you have been guilty of saying contemptuous things about or to others? Perhaps you have hurt someone with your harsh words, mockery or dismissiveness. I have, and I’m not proud of it. Start the road to recovery from this harmful addiction, and make amends wherever possible. It will set you free.
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Finally, we should see the contempt around us as what it truly is: an opportunity, not a threat. If you are on social media, on a college campus or in any place other than a cave by yourself, you will be treated with contempt very soon. This is a chance to change at least one heart — yours. Respond with warmheartedness and good humor. You are guaranteed to be happier. If that also affects the contemptuous person (or bystanders), it will be to the good.
The red leaves in the sunshine seem to smile A pale blue sky, a silver aeroplane I’m happy,I am warm, in your arms coiled
I have no heater but the kettle boiled I made us coffee then my parcel came My face in the small mirror had a smile
My love is deep, you never were on trial If we quarrel, we both share the blame I’m happy,I am warm, in your arms coiled
Our sorrow is, we have not made a child Jesus cursed the fig tree in its shame Yet red leaves in the sunshine seem to smile
Sorrow need not madden nor make bold We do not know the purpose nor the game I’m happy,I am warm now as I toil
We need old fashioned virtues like restraint We don’t see the whole as life we paint The red leaves in the sunshine seem to smile I’m happy,I am warm, the sea sings wild
Religion has been privatised like gas I know in church we still can hear the Mass Yet no Chaplain comes to dying men I did my best alone without a plan.
Inside the holy sanctuary bare I became the priest and comforter I sang the sacred songs and gathered crowds Outside our little cubicle they bowed
I saw a canopy of golden cloth Hanging down from heaven, as it does It came nearer till it touched his soul I was silent, love can’t take control
For a moment everything was still A little bird sat on the windowsill Then the cloth of gold was lifted high I wept the precious tears for those who die.
That one eternal moment gave us grace I see your shining eyes, your smiling face.
About the golden light what can I say? Love is near so we don’t nave to pray Enter into darkness without fear Another hand will guide us, help us steer
I had lost my faith I was bereft I could not speak, and sinking was my craft
Then a the soft bright cloud embraced my plight I felt a presence and I saw the light.
All my senses mingled into one
I saw I felt I touched all thought was gone.
Tears ran down my face in gratitude
Through despair I felt my life renewed.
Why should I be helped when many die? The mystery ,of God,the soul destroyed
On a personal level, Wittgenstein’s philosophical efforts reflect a struggle to disentangle his identity from the confusing, mystifying language of his original family. He had been brainwashed, so to speak, under the usurping pressure of his father’s self-centered universe. Hermann Wittgenstein was an epistemological tyrant, defining reality for all those who sought to be connected to him. This philosopher’s thinking, therefore, can be viewed as a self-deprogramming enterprise, ultimately directed toward the possibility of liberating himself from the paternal agenda and claiming his own place in this world.
Wittgenstein’s first book, the only one published during his lifetime, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921/2001), is an effort to clarify the relationship between the words of our language and what he called the “states of affairs” appearing in the world we perceive. Two specific assertion appear in this book, ones we believe are charged with personal significance:
“There is no such thing as the subject…”
“ The subject does not belong to the world…” (1922, p. 69)
On a philosophical level, this reminds us that we ought not to objectify the first person singular: the ‘I’ is not an item in the world. We are being told that the experiencing subject is not a content of the world we perceive; it is instead what he spoke of as a ‘limit’ of this world, a standpoint from which what we call “world” and all its contents appear.
If we lift the statements out of their ordinary philosophical context, and think about the personal, life-historical meaning they might contain, an epistemological rebellion on Wittgenstein’s part appears, one mounted against the powerful father who tried to be the all-defining director of his son’s existence. The son is saying:
“’I’ am not a thing belonging to your world, not anything anyone can define or control. My being lies outside the insanity of your self-absorption. Above all, know this: ‘I’ am not an item in the inventory of your possessions, to be made use of as you please!”
The pull of the father’s usurping authority, though, must have continued to be very strong, presenting an ever-present danger of falling back under his control and becoming once again the obedient extension of an irresistible will. This is not just a matter of a child fighting back against a parent who is strict and controlling. Wittgenstein’s separating himself from his father was a matter of rescuing his very being as someone independently real. A crisis occurred in his young life in which he saw that continuing to walk on the road laid out for him by his father would be to become permanently itemized on the list of his father’s many possessions. It would be to embrace annihilation.
A sign of the felt danger of returning to the obliterating conformity of his youth appears in a feature of Wittgenstein’s life that his biographers have noted but not fully understood. It was his incapacity to dissimulate, to lie, to conceal the truth because of the claim of whatever circumstance he was in. If he did move toward some concealment, which happened exceedingly rarely, he was thrown into a crisis of wanting to immediately kill himself. Our understanding of this inability to lie is that presenting anything other than what he felt and knew to be true posed the danger of a re-engulfment by the falseness of an identity based on the need to be accepted rather than on his own spontaneous intentionality and authenticity. If the only possibility was that of a false life, then his only option would have been death.
The philosopher enforced his emancipation from enslavement by cutting off relations with his father, and he refused even to accept his very substantial inheritance after the father finally died. Wittgenstein saw taking the money as sacrificing a very precarious sense of personal existence. The heart and soul of this man’s madness lies in the danger of annihilation that haunted him throughout his life. His philosophy we can thus view as a search for an answer to this ontological vulnerability.
His writings, for the most part, consist in aphoristic meditations focusing on language. He gives us trains of thought that attempt to expose various confusions into which we fall, arguing that many – perhaps all – of the classic problems of philosophy arise as secondary manifestations of these linguistic confusions. Wittgenstein engages himself, and his readers, in dialogues subjecting specific examples of how we speak and think to relentless reflection and analysis. In the process of these conversations, a profound critique of the whole Cartesian tradition emerges, a dismantling of metaphysical conceptions and distinctions that otherwise enwrap our thinking and imprison us within structures of unconscious confusion. Central in this transforming inquiry are understandings of human existence in terms of ‘mind,’ seen as a ‘thinking thing,’ an actual entity with an inside that looks out on a world from which it is essentially estranged. Such an idea, once posited, leads inexorably to a dualism: one begins to wonder how the entity ‘mind’ strangely, mysteriously connects to another entity, ‘body.’ He makes compelling arguments that specific linguistic confusions based on the human tendency to turn nouns into substantives lie at the root of such otherwise unfounded ideas. In Wittgenstein’s universe, there are no ‘minds’ that have interiors, no intrapsychic spaces in which ideas and feelings float about in some “queer medium,” no mysteries we need to be fascinated by regarding how the mental entity and its supposed contents relate to the physical object we call the body. Longstanding traditions in metaphysics are accordingly undercut and the terrain of philosophy is opened up to new and clarifying ways of exploring our existence. Well-known arguments against the coherence of solipsism as a philosophical position and also against the possibility of an individual ‘private language’ definitively refute the idea that it makes any sense to think of a human life in terms of an isolated ‘I,’ or ego. He was a post-Cartesian philosopher par excellence.
Wittgenstein sometimes viewed his scrutinizing of our linguistic expressions and associated patterns of thought as a form of ‘therapy,’ performed upon philosophy and society. It is our view that this therapy he offered to our civilization mirrored precisely the personal effort described earlier, in which his life goal was to free himself from the entangling confusions, invalidations, and annihilations pervading the family system of his youth. In this respect he succeeded in connecting uniquely personal issues to important currents and needs of the larger culture. His philosophical journey therefore allowed him to find a meaning for his life beyond the narrow orbit of his father’s deadly narcissism and helped him avoid the tragic fate of his brothers.
Let us turn now to one of Wittgenstein’s (1953) most important specific ideas: that of a so-called language game. It is an elusive term that he never formally defined in his various dialogues, so one has to note how he used it in various contexts and extract a meaning. Of course one of his most well-known formulations is that “the meaning is the use,” and exists nowhere else, which is a distinctively post-Cartesian view of semantics.
We think of a Wittgensteinian language game as a set of words and phrases, along with their customary usages, that form a quasi-organic system, such that when one uses one or two elements in the system one is catapulted into the whole, subject to its implicit rules, in some respects trapped within its horizons of possible discourse. The German word for this is Sprachspiel, and the word obviously derives from spielen: to play. A language game, in whatever sphere of our lives it becomes manifest, encloses us within a finite system of elements and possibilities, and subjects us to rules we knowingly or unknowingly tend to follow. Such a structure literally “plays” with our minds, shaping and directing our experiences according to preformed pathways and constraining them within pre-established boundaries. Wittgenstein wanted us to become aware of these systems in which we are all embedded, and this would be part of his therapy for our whole culture. The goal is one of ushering in a greater clarity about what we think and who and what we are, illuminating what he spoke of as our “complicated form of life.”
The primal language game of this man’s personal history was the communication system in his early family, which designated his existence – and those of his doomed brothers – as playthings, almost like chess pieces belonging to the father’s controlling agendas and properties. A clear perception of the mystifications and usurping invalidations of his early family world would obviously be of assistance in this man’s attempts to find his own way. He tried mightily in his philosophical reflections to release his discipline and the world at large from its “bewitchment” by language, even as he was able to free himself only very tenuously from the spell cast by his father.
Kierkegaard, S. (1834-1842) The Journals of Soren Kierkegaard. Excerpted in Bretall, R. (Ed.) A Kierkegaard Anthology, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1946.
Wittgenstein, L. (1922) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. London and New York: Routledge, 1974.
Wittgenstein, L. (1953) Philosophical Investigations. New York: Macmillan
I loved the stepping stones near Ambleside The river Rothay runs into the Mere Mingling with the Brathay day and night
In my childish state I wished to die To make the joy eternal, evermore I loved the stepping stones near Ambleside
But we went on to Grasmere,Wordsworth’s guide The river Rothay never suffered here Mingling with the Brathay day and night
As a child I often was denied The joy of nature,love but never fear I loved the stepping stones near Ambleside
The rivers make no effort, down they ride so should humans live and love sincere Mingling with our Natures day and night
Life may be a mountain or a mere The rivers flow, the stones are waiting clear I loved the stepping stones near Ambleside Crossing this dear water day and night
Aristotle was the fist who declared poetic truth to be superior to historical truth. He called poetry the most philosophic of all writings. Wordsworth agrees with Aristotle in this matter. Poetry is given an exalted position by Wordsworth in such a way that it treats the particular as well as the universal. Its aim is universal truth. Poetry is true to nature. Wordsworth declares poetry to be the “image” or “man and nature”. A poet has to keep in mind that his end (objective) is to impart pleasure. He declares poetry will adjust itself to the new discoveries and inventions of science. It will create a new idiom for the communication of new thoughts. But the poet’s truth is such that sees into heart of things and enables others to see the same. Poetic truth ties all mankind with love and a sense of oneness.
I must be poor I’m wearing a thick coat Sat here at the table where I write I know my grammar and I made a note Sat here is allowed but it ain’t right
My coat is dirty green and a bit black So I can sit on stairs when in a shop They don’t have chairs not even a stuffed sack When I can’t walk, they tell me I must hop.
If science was taught they’d know well that a hop Puts twice the weight onto a single foot Maybe I should give my legs the chop And get some steel ones when there is a glut
My coat is better now for I feel hot My hanky’s red for I have spilled my blood My nose was bleeding from a vein I cut I never took a drug but I pretend I could
LSD is too wild for my mind And even at my age I am with child I fear the risk of growing yet more kind The child’s my nephew and he ‘s very mild
They tell me that trees are a wonderful sight They have leaves hanging on them all day and all night. They tell me the golden sun shines in the sky It’s said to be so much brighter so high. I’d like to hear birdsong and thunder and hail. At all these pursuits worms are likely to fail. We only make holes in the soil as we move And we know almost nothing about feelings and love. We don’t know why we’re here or what purpose we serve And our earthen workplace is also our grave.
“The research also found that reading poetry, in particular, increases activity in the right hemisphere of the brain, an area concerned with “autobiographical memory”, helping the reader to reflect on and reappraise their own experiences in light of what they have read. The academics said this meant the classics were more useful than self-help books.
Philip Davis, an English professor who has worked on the study with the university’s magnetic resonance centre, will tell a conference this week: “Serious literature acts like a rocket-booster to the brain.
“The research shows the power of literature to shift mental pathways, to create new thoughts, shapes and connections in the young and the staid alike.”
In the first part of the research, the brain activity of 30 volunteers was monitored as they read passages from Shakespeare plays, including King Lear, Othello, Coriolanus and Macbeth, and again as they read the text rewritten in simpler form.
While reading the plain text, normal levels of electrical activity were displayed in their brains. When they read Shakespeare, however, the levels of activity “jumped” because of his use of words which were unfamiliar to the readers.
Scans of brain activity during reading show heightened electrical activity when faced with ‘challenging’ texts by great writers
In one example, volunteers read a line from King Lear: “A father and a gracious aged man: him have you madded”. They then read a simpler version: “A father and a gracious aged man: him you have enraged.”
Shakespeare’s use of the adjective “mad” as a verb sparked a higher level of brain activity than the straightforward prose.
The study went on to test how long the effect lasted. It found that the “peak” triggered by the unfamiliar word was sustained onto the following phrases, suggesting the striking word had hooked the reader, with their mind “primed for more attention”.
Some thinner branches tremble with desire Reaching out beyond the shrub’s wide shape The sun has drawn them up with its great fire
Yet, without learning, there is no Messiah. No support exists, they sulk and drape The thinner branches trembling with desire
To greatness and to height they had aspired Now will they turn out sullen as they mope? The sun has drawn them up with its great fire
Like the politicians who conspire The European failure stole our hopes Though little Hitlers tremble with desire
Unelected Minister, Prime liar. Will he ever cross the final tape? The sun has drawn Men up with its great fire.
As the West evolved through crime and rape We were thought Enlightened in our scope We loved the Inquisition, loved the fires The gods have punished us and never tire.
How my heart speaks 