Tag: thought

Reading Lawrence Le Shan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_LeShan

For many years I have enjoyed the writings of Le shan.Recently I discovered that he had written a book about Evil.He also treated people with cancer for many years.I admire him

I am reading it slowly.I recommend,Alternate Realities from which some of his terminology comes.His book in Meditation is the best I have ever found.I was reading it as I was on a train going to my father in law’s funeral and a beautiful image cane to my mind

http://artquotes.robertgenn.com/auth_search.php?authid=6217

http://artquotes.robertgenn.com/auth_search.php?authid=6217

Lawrence LeShan -A man will be effective to the degree that he is able to concentrate! Concentration is not basically a mode of doing but above all a mode of Being. (Lawrence LeShan)

Never say logic again.

English: A schizophrenic patient at the Glore ...
English: A schizophrenic patient at the Glore Psychiatric Museum made this piece of cloth and it gives us a peek into her mind. Русский: Вышивка, сделанная пациентом, страдающим от шизофрении. Экспонат психиатрического музея Глор, Миссури. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Schizophrenia (Wayne Shorter album)
Schizophrenia (Wayne Shorter album) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My foreign students said I was too warm to be British,so turn off your heating now or face  execution as a  traitor.

What people forget is we Brits are a mixed race… then we have the nerve to call people,wogs,dagos and foreigners.we are all foreigners here apart from the Welsh.

Some students told me their dreams;s,anything to avoid algebra!

I  personally found quantum theory helps to avoid emotional overspill…

and topology  is useful for dressmakers

Dreams and love are all very well… if you are a millionaire.Till then keep on with figures,asymmetry and words.

Friends are no use unless you are a real person.Whatever she is.

Schizophrenia is to some extent cowardliness………….keep your feet on the ground and say straight out what you mean without entering into wordplay,fey ways,being a seer and seeing how life veers.It’s all absolute bullshit.Only not all bulls are male.

Some bulls are e-male.

Depression is mainly the result of being driven.So give up the chauffeur and take your time.

Some loose women are fast  and vice versa.Isn’t logic trying?

I was so thin  when I began lecturing I got half fare on the bus and I was 25.So studying keeps you young.Never say,Dirac,again.

I was so thin then I bought children’s clothes but now I am  twice the size.Then they said I might have TB,now they say I could get diabetes.Take your pick……there’s something in me that will never take the middle way.My middle gets in the way.

We all eat too much considering how little we do.Bring back the scrubbing  board,brush and hard green soap.But if I eat less I faint…. what an ‘orrible feeling as your vision shrinks to a pinpoint and you sweat all over but more on the top of the head…. and you throw yourself onto the floor… or the ceiling.

Once we were having a meal with another couple…with one of those heated plate things on the table.I passed out and for years they talked about it.They divorced later and blamed me!Still,I gave them something to talk about so maybe I helped.

If you get disturbed stop introspecting and sweep the floor or the pavement.Do useful things with your hands and help others.Be polite even if you think they are the Devil

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Acceptance may be the answer

 

free_animal_angels_screensaver-131729-3

This is an interesting article about how acceptance is so important for us in order to live the best way we can. when we have problems,neuroses etc.This website,The Negative Psychologist is one I came upon when reading another blog here.

http://www.thenegativepsychologist.com/2013/02/acceptance/

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Too chaste?

bathers-or-two-nude-women-gustave-courbet

Too chaste?

That’s a bit personal..I know

Is there an ideal level of chastity?

Can one be 40 per cent chaste?

Are there grades of chastity?

Is there a test for chastity?

If not,why is that?

If there is,hide it!

Is chastity a good idea?

Or just an idea…

Too chaste for whom?

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Eccentric beings and sensitive souls: Living well with what others call mental health issues

Do read this

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Safzoro's avatarrealsafzoro

When I was fifteen or so, my mother waded through the sea of clothes, books, school work and teenage flotsam and jetsam that covered my floor, and sat on the edge of my bed with tears in her eyes. I had to clean up, she said. It was really important that I get the room sorted. I made some excuse, but she cast her eyes downwards, subtly wiping a tear from the corner.

“I had a friend who never cleaned up. Every time you went into her house, the house was a complete bomb site. She had junk all over every surface. And she ended up in Ward 12B.”

Ward 12B, for those who never had the chance to go there, was the mental health ward at the old Canberra Hospital. So apparently, Mum believed that mess drove you mad and that cleaning was protective. It’s a particularly amusing little…

View original post 2,640 more words

I have enjoyed thinking,thoughtfulness and related topics

I have enjoyed thinking,thoughtfulness and related topics.I still am not satisfied.That is good because I shall carry on reading and thinking while goin through  winter.

I feel sorry it’s so hard for a layperson to find books which they can understand….with some effort but not too much.Evening classes are scarce when once they were common and cheap.And maybe Art or Music is better than study.

 

I’m au fait,you are auto da fe.

I CAN EXPLAIN EVERYTHING ...
I CAN EXPLAIN EVERYTHING … (Photo credit: mrbill78636)

What a toad of evil.Re laugh
Damned if you bare and damned if you swear.It’s obscene or a scheme for a wife.
He flinched at my heat and then did a runner.
Strangle a carrot and hunt for a whim.You will be deprived of words
He’s a cart horse trying to make out with a gazelle on steroids
The day came late when a follower took fright and I killed my blog by a blow
What is as dead as door mail?
Think not that the postman is no longer doing a service.
I am late as your dead cats pounced on me by the gate… for ghosts they sure can bite
Dead presidents don’t ring twice
You head wringer!You neck clinger!Leave me alone…don’t torture my verbs
I said it to give my defence not to give offence.Anyway he took offence and ran off
He gave a deadly flow to my brain..he savaged my self esteem.Now mt emotional intelligence has gone  too far
I’m au fait,you’re auto da fe
Health by a thousand cuts this winter in the NHS
I saw fear in his headlights…akka his eyes..
Dig for the cold bloggers in Iceland
Why dip your brow in the water when the horse won’t drink it?
Does dirt weep inside the vacuum cleaner and why do vacuums need cleaning?
You can have milk from my breast… how it got there is a mystery
Do words fly?
Does God ever cry?
And why?

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Heidegger and other scholars

http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavoj-zizek/articles/why-heidegger-made-the-right-step/

This is very interesting and not too difficult…he gives a longer account than I have seen elsewhere.

I can’t understand fully but am drawn to it  wondering about our  problems now

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Thinking,not living?

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/your-brain-childhood/201306/the-secret-summer-kids

Sometimes we think too much.22261308-circus-artists
Is thinking always bad?
Thoughtfulness is praised
but sometimes we need just to perceive;
To lose ourselves in this world
In the sun and in the rain
In the joy and in the pain.
We must engage
in the game of living,
though some
seem better than others,
like those children who stood on their heads,
or turned cartwheels.
I envied them,was awkward,clumsy,

Was already thinking too much

about the reasons for people’s behaviour
and looking for the patterns;

Was I a sinner?Where was Love?
Do we discover  patterns or create them?
Some can live with chaos more easily.
Better not think about that.
Better to see the sun hitting the water
and the ripples where the geese swam;
Reflections,refractions,distractions.
We have to face life in the end

Play wholeheartedly

Take the knocks and come back.

Keep tumbling

And flying.

God save the Queen

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A TED conversation on thinking

http://www.ted.com/conversations/13165/what_is_thinking_how_thin.html

I am still wondering about thinking…. and this is very good and has good links too.But the more I ponder the

more puzzled I get.Is that good?

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Sad news for literature and languages studies

 

In the USA and in the UK  we find fewer people are studying the humanities.Here it is because of the economic climate.. people wish to study “useful” subjects.Literature won’t get you a job,perhaps.It only enables you to live better.Already in schools the study of Greek and Latin has almost gone.

Economics still gets students………. odd considering that economists did not forecast the recession but were up to their necks in mathematical models.Economicis not a science and cannot be.I believe it’s a branch of philosophy in a broad sense.

I admit I did not study what we called “The Arts” at University but most of my friends did.But I read poetry.I liked Auden greatly.I read all the great novels.I read Doris Lessing and Iris Murdoch.I read Evelyn Waugh/I even read Nabokov…. what a writer!And I read Shakespeare Plays.

But with the much higher fees,recession and other worries,fewer students will spend three years studying the humanities.Plumbing or Carpentry are better options

I am thinking of writing some new plays.

A  Fit Plumber’s Nightly Schemes

Witches astir.

Ham to let.

Sing Fear.

Make up for the Mind

A Midsummer Balls Up.

The Emptiest.

Please defreeze me,let me grow.

A man without limits

Much Ado about Hacking.

As you Recycle it.

Julius Seized the Emails.

Fool Us and Squeeze Us.

Twelfth Fright.

Hacked to Death.

The Blaming of the Guru,

Prospero Not.

http://www.debate.org/opinions/are-the-arts-too-elitist

http://theamericanscholar.org/the-decline-of-the-english-department/?key=55705194

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From thinking to thoughtfulness

 

A week or two ago I was thinking about thinking.There is more than one kind of thinking.Some kinds,like rumination, are  often self destructive.Other kinds of thinking can turn one outside of one’s self and can become what I call “thoughtfulness”.And that is a a virtue.It combines awareness and caring towards others with standing back and considering what is best for them and ourselves.

Then there is what we might call ” blind thinking” which is totally self centred like the  chattering voices in our head

I want that red dress,he’s nasty,I am fed up being at work. so long…………all going on underneath our consciousness much of the time.We may be unaware of it but it can affect us and how we act towards others.It’s childish,turned inwards and trivial.Can we stop it? I am thinking about that,,, not brooding.I mean,my mind is open and I hope some new ideas will come to help me understand this blind thinking

How can we see and not be blind in our thinking?How can we be wise?

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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?

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The crucial importance of the face:More about Levinas

http://www.pietisten.org/summer02/facetoface.html

About the face in Levinas‘s philosphy.

This is a website in the USA.It  has  some good articles mainly relating to religon,spirituality,humanity and thought

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Thoughtfulness:Some reflections

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/thoughtfulnes

I became embroiled in “thinking” but I am more interested in thoughtfulness.To me this is connected to reflection and care.To be a thoughtful person I need to be involved with society.A thinker may remain aloof… and if you are a ruminator or a brooder this will detach you from the world of others too.So there’s a paradox  here about thinking and thought.

The other problem with thinking using logic and reasoning is the question of the premises you use.If they are not sensible,if they are wrong, if they are poor then thinking is entirely vain.And also by a careful choice of  premises or assumptions almost anything can be “proved”

Syllogisms can be useful but really what do they tell you except something you most likely already know

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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″

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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
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Why ruminating is bad for you.

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/01/20/why-ruminating-is-unhealthy-and-how-to-stop/

When I was young I used to ruminate or brood.Looking back it made me feel terrible.But  thinking is not the same as ruminating.And neither change our reality unless we act.To stop ruminating it may be enough to say it does not usually help when you feel down.Then maybe take a walk,look at the world of nature.Try talking to a kind friend instead if you can.

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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.

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“What is called thinking” by Heidegger

“What is called thinking”         by Heidegger

This seems a good introduction to the book and to discussing thinking  in our era

Short Extract from the article

Heidegger refers to Nietzsche’s diagnosis of our age as a time of nihilism: “The wasteland grows.” 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.

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What is thinking?

 

A propos of the quote from Doris Lessing,I turn over this question in; my mind.Thinking is not having  sentences or words passing through our conscious mind like,I envy that person who has just been on a cruise/bought a large house;did I lock the door; is my new neighbour gay;why am I here?

I assume people meditate to stop that mental chatter.If you stop it you may  find a painful feeling hiding.

So what is thinking?My mind goes blank.Is it a conversation with onesself or another?

When we have to make a decision,talking it over enables a seeing of different aspects/by one’s self,thinking may be a kind of confrontation .facing some idea,,,,dwelling on it.

It seems so simple but I don’t know what it is.

 

 

I looked up Levinas’s life

I found quite a good  short  account of the main outlines of Levinas’ life and work here.How very ironic he studied with Heidegger.His ideas seem very different from the philosophy I have studied before.I am well read but have only just heard of him when reading about Peter Lomas.I feel he may be very important in this world we now dwell in.I am unsure if I can understand his writing but have ordered a book by colin Davis

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