A little peace

One damaged cell  divides  until it kills.

For in the end we pay the rich man’s bills.

The air polluted ravages and maims

Now it’s cruelly late to curse and blame

Oh sister how we played  with our dolls’ prams

In our industrial  town there were no lambs.

No sheep could safely graze in smokey streets.

No lark would rise amazed, the dawn to  greet.

For you my sister breathed in that bad air

We hear  the tread, the  foot steps on the stair.

So patient still, I wish that you would shout.

From your eye I see one tear fall out.

My single sister I can see your pain

Your lips are dry you cough and cough again.

Your mouth is hurting so you cannot eat.

And on the telephone you barely speak

In the world  some million others groan

Yes we’re fragile, merely flesh and bone

Even so the tears run in my sleep.

Into my face these tears will slowly seep.

I didn’t grasp at first that she would die

And leave me here alone to curse and cry

Hold me in your arms my kindly friends.

From your touch a little peace descends

Do thoughts precede words? Puzzling about thoughts

When we are with a child before she learns to speak,we see she nevertheless is ils thinking.Some people such as Wilfred Bion put forward the idea that wild thoughts are there like wild animals,seeking a mind that will think them

Being alive unchosen may be worse

If you think of Auschwitz think of this

Your children will not die by means of gas

All of us will walk that final path

But we have lived our lives so on we pass

The Jews of Europe killed without a word.

The death of God no longer feels absurd

What they might have given forever lost.

Prescription murder,there will be a cost.

As we walk around in obscene dress

The rational and objective caused this mess

Be thankful that our God did not choose us.

Yet being unchosen and alive is worse.

Right direction

If you are going in the wrong direction there is no pointt hurrying.

Don’t start walking until you have had a very good look at where you are literally or metaphorically.

.Have you got a map?

If you wear spectacles clean them

In any case .more haste less speed

How do you no if it is the right direction?

By instinct or intuition and by conversations with a good friend

But don’t wait for too long as you might grow roots.

There’s no foe

The mind inhabits every body cell

When we’re tense the mind is tense as well

Thoughts are strangled choked the mind is crazed

All our body cells this crush obey.

Suspicion narrows eyes. And purses lips.

As we tense, the mind itself will shrink

Turning violent, hearts attacked by pain

No good thoughts are nurtured by this strain

How can we relax and trust once more?

The war dead moan, the Jews scream, Ariel roars.

Feel the pain precisely, let it go

Warmer heart remember there’s no foe

Do you remember?

Do you remember before type C USB cords?

Before robot vacuum cleaners

Before swiping

Before digital cameras

Before smartphones with cameras

Before you could charge 4 things at once

Before you could charge anything.

Where we had telephone kiosks

And we got paper envelopes with letters inside

Before we could have live chats

With British gas or e.ON

When the children playing out of doors

Were we arguing about which TV programme to watch

When now we have our own screens

When will we stop having sex with another person

Yet we will have to fantasise or look at porn

There will be no exit from our heads

The vacuum cleaner will still work night and day

Do you remember?

Do you remember before type C USB cords

Before robot vacuum cleaners

Before swiping

For digital cameras

Before smartphones with cameras

Before you could charge 4 things at once

Before you could charge anything.

Where we had telephone kiosks

And we got paper envelopes with letters inside

Before we can have live chats

With British gas or e.ON

When the street was busy with women at home and children playing out of doors

Were we arguing about which TV programme to watch

When I know we have our own screens

When will we stop having sex with another person

Yet we will have to fantasise or look at porn

There will be no exit from our heads

Higher Education

I wanted to buy a light weight jacket.I would like it in Unnatural I told them boldly

We don’t do that colour

Well you do Natural!.Every thesis has an opposite one.So with colours

This is not a University, Mrs Hegel

Why tell me that?

You know toi much logic

I am terribly sorry.I shall try to forget it.Along with Grammar

Spelling Thinking Sanity Argument Maths Literary Criticism Theology Philosophy

Wittgenstein Einstein Hegel

Wow I feel sorry for you.You have so much to forget

That’s a novel way of looking at

Education

And it costs so much too

Is

No breeze

How sad it is to see dried river beds

The clouds no longer weep my love is dead

The water does not flow, there is no breeze

The leaves have fallen from the summer trees

The space around our thoughts

 

 

Scillies-StMary's

 

https://www.psychalive.org/the-space-around-thoughts/

 

“Our addiction to the grasping tendency of mind causes us to overlook the spaces around thoughts, the felt penumbra that gives our experience its subtle beauty and meaning. Neglecting these fluid spaces within the mindstream contributes to a general tendency to over-identify with the contents of our mind, and to assume that we are the originator and custodian of them. The troublesome equation “I = my thoughts about reality” creates a narrowed sense of self, along with an anxiety about our thoughts as territory we have to defend. (p. 53)”

 

“In the “Memorial Address,” philosopher Martin Heidegger suggests a certain type of Being-with when he describes the phenomena of Andenken, or “thinking toward” (Stambaugh, 1990, p. 90) as “a kind of waiting, not a passive waiting, but a very attentive, intense one” (p. 87). Stambaugh says Inständigkeit, or a posture of “indwelling,” underwrites this quality of attending to:

Inständigkeit or perdurance is a kind of intensely perceptive sticking something through, sticking it out, perhaps something akin to what we do when we try to recall something we’ve forgotten. It reminds me of what Buddhist thinker Dogen called “sustained exertion.” (p. 87)

With sustained exertion and indwelling with the whole of the experience (thoughts as well as the spaces around them), we can see “what it is that Heidegger wants us to let go of” to “lead us back to the direction of Being” (p. 87), emphasizing that man’s “special nature” is that he or she is, essentially, a “meditative being” (Heidegger, 1966, p. 56).”

Intellectual perspective

What is humor except crossing a boundary?
I wish I were an ivy growing on your wall
I wish I were a berry
Just about to fall
I wish I were a hazelnut
And you would break a tooth
For my name is Sally
and not, and not,not Ruth
Image

Is thinking a conversation? And dreaming…?It takes two!

Dwelling on these thoughts about thinking,and knowing much thinking is blind and cut off from the people outside us is it valid to compare they say it to different kinds of talk’conversation?

Thinker-

Free thinker?

With a trusted friend or teacher we may open our hearts and ears.We may talk and listen .We may learn and give our friend new ideas…but also this conversation may be risky.So more frequently we gossip,talk about the weather or argue over trivialities.We may chat with a friend simply to show we are with them or as they say,To touch base…in other words to comfort and give security.

When we are alone,we might worry for hours.Some people used to worry a lot about their sins.Or whether  they had enough money.Or some daydream and fantasise about,Fifty Shades of Grey.Maybe actual thinking or thought is rare.

I am not proposing we should be thinking all day.We would go mad!But were we to think,would it be like a conversation with the Other within?So we’d be listening as well as talking silently?A kind of internal conversation may be taking place.We all know that our unconscious mind may be thinking while we are woolgathering or taking a a bath.Eureka..Archimedes famous cry.And dreams are also a kind of thought  in images.They are a communication.Some people have had dreams which they felt were a message from God.

In a real conversation something new might be born…And why is thinking associated with tension and effort?

Does it matter how many people read your post?

 

At home Oct 20 006If we write a perceptive post or a humorous post  we will  feel happy  if a lot of people read it.But,if   it helps just one person or amuses just one person then that is enough.We don’t know how far the ripples will spread.

If a butterfly in the South ~America flapping its wings can cause a storm in Europe…a few good words or  one perceptive photo might have a strong influence.We will never know.

My blog up to now

tWeeds or flowers

I am a woman over the age of sixty.My hair has fallen out not to mention my teeth.Yet.I still enjoy learning,talking and seeing new perspectives.I h ave been advised not to put my photograph on the Internet . If you want to see a photo of a woman can  you get friendly with, please look elsewhere.I am looking for people who like books and ideas and humor.I am not looking for love online.I don’t believe it is possible or wise for me

This blog is about thoughts, writers,books,humor and related topics .As and when I discover  writing  I feel is worth sharing I will share it here

After a short time I seem to have gone into philosophical  issues more than I imagined and it has proved hard work.I shall return to books again of a different type.I think it’s the people who interest me…trying to imagine what it was like in Germany in the 1930′s and wondering what I would have done.~Yes,people fascinate me.Sometimes I think education can be a bad thing unless it’s very high quality.We learn a little and grow conceited.We believe we know everything and can tell others what to think,This worries me about even University education in Britain now.

I am also veering into ethics and into the interface between being an intellectual who thinks and being someone who considers the impact on our personal and inner life of the issues I come across.And how even thinking can be bad for  you!True of feeling too sometimes.So which part of us decides on where the line should be drawn?

Can this be true?

The shadow of a human

th Cloudy sju wiki

One side of us is good and the other is bad

We are like old gramophone records

Sometimes we are playing the good side

Then late we play the reverse.

The brighter the appearance

The darker the shadow

so Jung decided

Which may explain

why he and Heidegger

did not see the truth about the Nazis.

Jung got a top job

because all the Jewish psychoanalysts had to flee Austria and Germany

And later France

Jung was unable

to use his own insights

I guess we are all  a bit like that.

But we must keep trying…..

We need to accept  the pain

Of knowing we have a shadow.

If not,we will do harm

for if we don’t know it

we cannot control it

Thinking… the last post?

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-child-in-time/201008/what-do-we-mean-thinking

This article is  filed under child psychology.I think it is very good and also gives many references.I got into this thinking lark because I was reading  Heidegger‘s book,”What is called thinking.”but as I said initially my blog is about books…and all this thinking is tiring me .even though it is fascinating.Heidegger is hard and now I have got a book about Levinas to read too

And though I am very concerned about Heidegger’s being in the Nazi part yet I value his words a few of which I have copied below

Reading-Heidegger-philosophy-at-a-6

So he understood his own actions then?

“If it is Being that most calls for thought, what most calls to be thought about in our age is the forgetting or withdrawal of Being. And it is due to the withdrawal of Being that we are still not thinking. In contrast to Hegel’s notion of history, Heidegger’s is a history wherein we find ourselves increasingly fallen from and more distant from Being. Being withdraws in our technological age as the experience of thinking is reduced to calculative rationality. “Thinking” has become the experience of using rationality as a device to operate on a world of things already reified into a network of ends. In our age, Heidegger (1968) will go on to argue, ratio has trumped legein. The thoughtfulness of calculative rationality threatens to obliterate the possibility for being-thoughtful.

 

And yet

“Heidegger’s Nazism and the failure to confront it are philosophically significant for Heidegger’s philosophy, for its reception, and for philosophy itself. At a time when some are still concerned to deny the existence of the Holocaust, in effect to deny that Nazism was Nazism, and many still deny that Nazism had a more than tangential appeal to one of the most significant theories of this century, merely to assert the philosophical significance of an abject philosophical failure to seize the historical moment for the German Volk and Being is not likely to win the day. Yet there is something absurd, even grotesque about the conjunction of the statement that Heidegger is an important, even a great philosopher, perhaps one of the few seminal thinkers in the history of the tradition, with the realization that he, like many of his followers, entirely failed, in fact failed in the most dismal manner, to grasp or even to confront Nazism. If philosophy is its time captured in thought, and if Heidegger and his epigones have basically failed to grasp their epoch, can we avoid the conclusion that they have also failed this test, failed as philosophers?

  • Tom Rockmore (1992) On Heidegger’s Nazism and Philosophy. Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 289″

Related articles

What puzzles me about Arendt and Eichmann in Jerusalem

After reading the material  I have posted on,I saw that Arendt  believed Eichmann was not psychotic or crazy.She said he “did not think”.It puzzle me because one factor above all would seem to me to be relevant.That if a senior Nazi had decided he  did not agree with the Final Solution or any policy of the Nazis he would have been shot and/or his family would have been attacked.So fear would have played a  major role even if he had wished to stop what he ws doing.A big factor that allows humans to murder others en masse like the witches is to define them as somehow not human.And secondly to criticize their behaviour when it is cause by the conditions they are forced to live in.Jews were moneylenders because Christians were not allowed to do it [ charging interest was not allowed them]Being  rather intelligent some Jews became wealthy and were criticised as being only interested in money,grasping and avaricious.Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.Now in the UK this is happening to the sick,poor and unemployed.Scapegoats are attacked when times are hard. Whenever people meet a murderer they are surprised how normal they look.And other people look weird but are in fact good and kind,maybe a little handicapped in some way or just eccentric.Judging by appearances is an error; and especially if they are first  impressions

Keeping reality at bay

       “Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality.”
Hannah Arendt

An article about critical thinking

http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/becoming-a-critic-of-your-thinking/478

The above website is very good,in my view

EXTRACT

Thinking Gets Us Into Trouble Because We Often:
  • jump to conclusions
  • fail to think-through implications
  • lose track of their goal
  • are unrealistic
  • focus on the trivial
  • fail to notice contradictions
  • accept inaccurate information
  • ask vague questions
  • give vague answers
  • ask loaded questions
  • ask irrelevant questions
  • confuse questions of different types
  • answer questions we are not competent to answer
  • come to conclusions based on inaccurate or irrelevant information
  • ignore information that does not support our view
  • make inferences not justified by our experience
  • distort data and state it inaccurately
  • fail to notice the inferences we make
  • come to unreasonable conclusions
  • fail to notice our assumptions
  • often make unjustified assumptions
  • miss key ideas
  • use irrelevant ideas
  • form confused ideas
  • form superficial concepts
  • misuse words
  • ignore relevant viewpoints
  • cannot see issues from points of view other than our own
  • confuse issues of different types
  • are unaware of our prejudices
  • think narrowly
  • think imprecisely
  • think illogically
  • think one-sidedly
  • think simplistically
  • think hypocritically
  • think superficially
  • think ethnocentrically
  • think egocentrically
  • think irrationally
  • do poor problem solving
  • make poor decisions
  • are poor communicators

Thinking about what is called thinking [Heidegger]

I have now got the book “What is called thinking” by Martin Heidegger despite my qualms about his political history.I know he wrote it in German  and hence a translation may  give a different meaning so maybe my thoughts are not sensible….and my first thoughts are………….. it is fascinating title.He is looking at an activity that we humans do.He is asking what it is we do when we say we think.So before I read it  I am putting a few reflections.Thinking means standing back,waiting and reflecting.Often we do things  because our parents did or our friends.Then sometimes we wonder about our life,we pause and try to examine how we are living.Or we could be solving an intellectual problem.Some things like quadratic equations can be solved by a formula.And many people are happy just to perform this rote activity But even though its math,you are not thinking when you do that.And I have an intuition  that we avoid thinking much of the time because we step outside our automatic patterns.I once read an article that says depression comes on us when we face a problem at the unconscious level.The tiredness,slowness and painful feelings make us withdraw and that gives our minds time to reflect.So there must also be unconscious thinking.Maybe  that  other mind  uses images as  in dreams.And we all know that “sleeping” on a problem often produces a solution.Thinking may not be verbal all of the time.And we must have something to think about.We  must be participating in the world of Others.Language comes via others.We are part of a society…at first just a few family members.But our tongue is shared with many people.And when we think in words,those words came before us and go on after us.

Do thoughts precede words? Puzzling about thoughts

When we are with a child before she learns to speak,we see she nevertheless is ils thinking.Some people such as Wilfred Bion put forward the idea that wild thoughts are there like wild animals,seeking a mind that will think them