image: florian szillat

Subjective - that’s what we are. A man wins the lottery, he is happy, a woman loses her purse she is unhappy. We are influenced by things around us. We are like sheep herded by the dogs of cultural nuances. Whatever is happening in the world drives us, whatever the zeitgeist is colours what we think, feel and do.

Is this the totality of the human condition. Is this what we, as individuals, are obliged to engage with? Is this what you would choose to engage with?

The factors of this are simple enough. Yet they consume us as surely as though they were a monster. Let’s take a reality check here.

We are born. There is no choice in that, we are actuated by the actions of two people over whom we had no direct influence. We are born into a world that we had no part in creating, we enter it as an already up and running system. We did not create the Universe which upholds the planet we appear upon and we did not create the planet that sustains and supports our life. So we are born innocent, we are not culpable in any sense for where and how the world is or isn’t, what it may or may not be.

We grow and are educated by the world we find ourselves a part of against its criteria. We are given an education based upon cultural requirement. That education either ignores or does not deal with the most fundamental issues raised by our existence and, again like the sheep earlier, we are driven by the dogs of cultural imperative to the pens and enclosures that it wants us to occupy.

There is an old folk tale concerning the people of Hamelin in Germany who were plagued by a rat infestation. The legend tells that a man, a musician, turned up in the town claiming to have the ability to charm the rats and lead them away from the beleaguered town. He made a deal with the burghers of the town and cleared Hamelin of the rats. When the man claimed his payment the town’s leaders reneged upon the deal they had struck.

The man left the town and returned later whereupon he played his pipes and enchanted the children of the town, compelling them to follow him. He lead them into the mountains where the legend has it they entered a cave and were never seen again. Two children survived, one who was deaf and the other who was lame and unable to match the pace set by the piper.

The meaning and interpretation of this tale is fascinating in itself but the significant feature here is that the children became fascinated and enchanted by the tune that the piper played, they danced to his tune and followed him to a place of his choosing where he had them at his mercy.

Let’s shift the story and cast ourselves as the children and the world as the piper. Do you see how you dance to a tune that you never created? How you are fascinated and entranced by a world you never made? Is there anything wrong with this? No, of course not, but, the point here is that you are not in control of your own destiny.

 You become the marionette of something else that pulls your strings and makes you dance to its tune. The question here for you concerns the nature and intention of that which holds your strings in its thrall.

I say this simply because we are in the midst of, according to whose media stream you drink from, the most severe economic crisis ever, cataclysm, doom and gloom and all the rest of it. If you are in the west or a wealthy nation, let’s talk turkey for a moment, you own too much, eat too much and are absorbed by a false sense of entitlement. It’s OK, that’s what the world wanted you to become and it’s what you became. How do you solve the problems of the world? It’s simple, you go shopping! (Excuse me, did I hear that right? That is actually the advice being given by certain world leaders at the moment)

We could all do with slowing down, gross consumption has made us fat fools and lazy incompetents, do I exclude myself from this? Of course not, I’m in the same culture as everyone else and therefore not immune to what ails it.

The lifebelt is this: whatever the economic system does, however the markets react, whatever the situation regarding your personal equity, the Universe goes on. It really doesn’t matter - yes, it has immediate worldly ramifications, absolutely, and if it’s your livelihood that’s threatened then you have already decided I’m an idiot - but in the bigger picture it is of little consequence other than to the life you give it by thinking about it. This is a man made problem that doesn’t exist except in a conceptual universe of notional profits and losses.

The Universe has invested in you and implores you to be true to your birthright as a human being rather than a wage slave. What is the one poignant thing about the rat race? It has to end, there is no such thing as a race that never ends - remember our ancestor in Hamelin who lead the rats away, he actually charmed them into the river where they all drowned. The only thing about the rat race is - it is run on a carousel so you never see the finish line and usually it’s too late, by the time you realise it the moment has passed, you have given your life to a fickle master that probably never even knew you existed.

Make your truths permanent, base yourself upon foundations that do not shift like the sands in a desert, whatever anyone tells you about finances, derivatives and so on, it is all nonsense, if everyone cashed in their chips the system would be exposed for the house of cards that it is. Confidence is the key, your confidence is better invested in the Universe whose ways are timeless and true, unchanging and constant.

image: ali k

Found this article from AP interesting, it’s all grist to the mill of happiness, background information, food for thought:

By Eric Gorski and Trevor Tompson, The Associated Press

An extensive survey by The Associated Press and MTV found that people aged 13 to 24 who describe themselves as very spiritual or religious tend to be happier than those who don’t.

When it comes to spirituality, American young people also are remarkably tolerant - nearly 7 in 10 say that while they follow their own religious or spiritual beliefs, others might be true as well.

On the whole, the poll found religion is a vital part of the lives of many American young people, although with significant pockets that attach little or no importance to faith.

Forty-four percent say religion and spirituality is at least very important to them, 21 percent responded it is somewhat important, 20 percent say it plays a small part in their lives and 14 percent say it doesn’t play any role.

Among races, African-Americans are most likely to describe religion as being the single most important thing in their lives. Females are slightly more religious than males, and the South is the most religious region, the survey said.

The poll’s mission was to figure out what makes young people happy. And it appears religion helps.

Eighty percent of those who call religion or spirituality the most important thing in their lives say they’re happy, while 60 percent of those who say faith isn’t important to them consider themselves happy.

“If you believe God is helping you, then everything else isn’t as important and you can trust that there’s somebody there for you no matter what,” said Molly Luksik, a 21-year-old ballet dancer in Chicago and a Roman Catholic who attends Mass weekly. “Just going to church and everything … it’s very calming, and everyone is nice.”

Sociologists have long drawn a connection between happiness and the sense of community inherent to most religious practice. Lisa Pearce, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, said religion can indeed contribute to happiness, but she cautioned that the converse also can hold true.

“It’s easier for kids who are happy and have things going well in their life to find the time and energy to participate in religion,” said Pearce, co-principal investigator for the National Study of Youth and Religion. “It could be kids who have bad experiences in church end up leaving and being unhappy with religion.”

The poll also asked young people to choose between two statements about their views of other faiths.

Sixty-eight percent agree with the statement, “I follow my own religious and spiritual beliefs, but I think that other religious beliefs could be true as well.” Thirty-one percent choose, “I strongly believe that my religious beliefs are true and universal, and that other religious beliefs are not right.”

The latter statement is more likely to be the position of young teens 13 to 17 and those who attend religious services weekly.

However, tolerance is the rule overall. That doesn’t surprise the Rev. Paul Raushenbush, associate dean for religious life at Princeton University and author of “Teen Spirit: One World, Many Faiths.”

Young people eat lunch and play soccer with peers from other belief backgrounds, while adults tend to self-segregate with others of like mind, he said. Sweeping immigration reform in 1965 transformed America into the world’s most religiously diverse nation, and young people grew up with the second generation of the immigrant wave, he noted.

“This shows that it doesn’t require a lack of conviction in your own faith tradition to think someone else might have a similar type of conviction in their own,” Raushenbush said. “There is no sense of, ‘This diminishes my faith.’”

Traci Laichter, 14, went to Jewish preschool. Her grandparents are Holocaust survivors. Her family keeps kosher and displays a mezuzah - a little box holding verses from the Torah - on the door of their suburban Las Vegas home.

Her faith is strong and she believes it will last, but that doesn’t mean she thinks other faiths are devoid of truth.

“I believe whatever you believe is true to you and it really shouldn’t matter what other people think,” she said.

About 75 percent of those surveyed say God or a higher power has some impact on their happiness. At the same time, 90 percent believe happiness is at least partly under their own control.

“I think you do have control over how you are going to feel on a particular day,” said David Mueller of Lockport, N.Y., a 20-year-old college student who attends an evangelical Christian megachurch called The Chapel.

“When it comes to events in your whole life, it’s already somewhat laid out for you,” he said. “You can stray off to another path. But where God wants you to go, you are going to get there.”

–

The AP-MTV poll was conducted by Knowledge Networks Inc. from April 16 to 23, and involved online interviews with 1,280 people aged 13 to 24. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report.

 image: visualpanic

What is the synthesis and distillation of all knowledge? What is the most profound thing you have ever heard?

Think about it for a moment…

Well, what did you come up with? Anything?

This, my friend, is the ultimate description of the human situation at this time, on this planet; it is contained in the words thou mayest. Two small, slightly archaic sounding words that sum up our lot in totality.

What, you might wonder, do I mean? Contained within thou mayest is the crook and the flail, the agony and the ecstasy because it brings into play those most potent concepts choice and responsibility.

Thou mayest fundamentally says, you can choose, you may select that with which you shall engage and, furthermore, have executive prerogative over how you react to those things.

In a word it is permission. Permission from the Universe, from Creation to go out there and explore, to be according to your own choices and inclinations. What follows is a matter of semantics but you are here and you are allowed to be and determine your own outcomes and your own path.

I could expand upon this at length but it is not necessary here. Simply have the thought, think about it, consider it, ponder the infinite and your place within it, give the permission your consideration and see whether you agree with it. After all, you have the choice…

 image: bernard garon

How does it go? We stand in our own patch of diamonds but see it not…

Ever watch a dog chase its own tail? It’s great and the dog is usually oblivious to what it is doing, it gets so lost in the thrill or the passion of the chase.

Today I went for a walk with the head honcho, she who must be obeyed, the little woman, ‘er indoors. You know the person I mean, right? Well, we have a route that we take, down along the waterfront, along the jetty and out into the sea, it’s just under five miles there and back and we can crack along at some pace when we need to, it’s a real cobweb blaster, the negative ions of breaking waves, particularly when there’s a swell as there was today, and the salty breeze have a healing effect.

A huge ship was leaving the mouth of the river and heading out to sea, it looked modern as it had a very ‘of the moment’ feel to it, almost a stealth cargo ship, obviously designed to cut gracefully through the waves and weather whatever seas it might encounter. We sat on a bench on the breakwater and looked at the ship beginning its voyage. I don’t know if it was a coaster or about to cross an ocean but I fancied the thoughts of the seamen as they left the haven of the river and moved away from the land. I have ridden out storms at sea and know the joy of placing your feet back on firm ground, so I wondered about their collective experience, the combined encounters of the crew with the elements.

We were discussing the financial repercussions of the current economic situation, and how it might start to affect people’s habits and their spending patterns. We were considering how much sympathy members of the public might have for city high fliers who had for years traded the markets with other people’s money and paid themselves huge bonuses - we thought: not much. I explained that for every winner in the markets there has to be a loser, profit taking and successful trades by their nature mean someone else has taken a hit.

The markets are at once a complicated but also very simple place. The difficulty arises, as we are experiencing now, when all that hypothetical intrinsic value is suddenly exposed as worthless. Paper money, figures on computers but not ‘real’ in the tangible sense that a gold ingot is real or a treasure chest is real. This is when confidence wavers and the single most important element of the fiscal and commercial system that we currently enjoy/endure is confidence. Without confidence people will not invest, there is no speculation and the capital markets run dry. People become uneasy, they worry and they hold on to what they think they’ve got. The irrigation that cash flow provides to the economy is directly analogous to the need for water in agriculture.

So we looked at the ship and my best beloved said, “The ship of the financial markets, sailing on an ocean of misery.”

I couldn’t top that so I wont try to. 

 image: mafic

There isn’t room for moral ambiguity. Your life is really a one shot deal, semantics and philosophy can lead you some merry dances but this is all we know for certain. Faith is wonderful, belief is tremendous but their foundations are less than empirical, there is a certain degree of trust in agencies beyond our influence that drive these two charioteers and their companion, hope.

That they may exist and that there may be sound arguments in support of adhering to the counsel of these three retainers is not disputed by this writer. What is being alluded to here is the placing of one’s foundations in certainties and absolutes. What we know for certain is that we are here now and have a process going on. That may not always be so, in fact it definitely will not always be so in this form but the unknown there is when.

Therefore it is crucial that you are clear about what you do and the reasons why you do it. This is the true benchmark of where your life is. Not the stuff that is automatic and that you had no part in the genesis of, but those things that are unique to your life and your circumstance. You didn’t create the world, you didn’t create the computer screen you’re reading this on, they were here before you and came into existence despite you so you can’t really take the credit for them.

What you can do is take credit for the way you conduct yourself within that. I suppose it might be known in the vernacular as the arsehole question: are you an arsehole and if so why? There is no obligation upon any of us to be anything we don’t want to be. Even in the most dire circumstances there are still individuals who preserve their own dignity and integrity without succumbing to the law of the jungle.

Your question has to be, how dire are my circumstances? And yes it’s subjective, it’s all a matter of perception, there are some people running around out there very well provided for who’ve managed to shove their heads so far up their own backsides they’re seeing daylight out of their own mouths. If your life and its potential mean anything to you then these are matters you will give time to, meditate upon, consider and come to your own position upon. It’s not what you do that counts, it’s the reason why you do it that matters and likewise it is not your circumstance that matters but how you respond to it.

Be you pauper or prince, a mentor or a knave, at the top of the chain or the bottom, all are brother and sister, we are all defined to some extent by the actions of each of us and the affairs of the human race are what characterize us all.  None of us escapes the human condition, the art is to celebrate it and champion that which is best and progressive. We are capable of extraordinary things and can grasp concepts at the edge of the Universe, we can do and be better. You can do it.

‘Design a formula for the 21st century’ – that was the directive from the Swiss art critic Hans Ulrich Obrist to a selection of the world’s greatest creative thinkers. The result? A series of witty, playful reflections on modern life. Words by Simon Usborne

Saturday, 20 September 2008

Damien Hirst Newton’s Colour Wheel

Einstein was famously fond of the formula. During the summer of 1905, while carrying out his duties at a Swiss patent office, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist crafted what would become the most celebrated equation in history. E = mc², his proof that an object’s mass depends on its energy, was a formula of such startling simplicity that Einstein wondered whether “the Lord might be laughing … and leading me around by the nose”. The Lord did not laugh, and Einstein’s place in history was assured, but his interest in order extended beyond the realms of science. In a more playful mood, he is said to have penned a formula for success: “If A is success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.”

The desire to formulate the seemingly unformulatable – to crystallise esoteric concepts such as success into single equations – has occupied the thoughts of countless other thinkers, but perhaps nobody more than Hans Ulrich Obrist. The eminent curator and co-director of exhibitions at the Serpentine Gallery in London, has spent 15 years commissioning formulae from some of the biggest names in fields as diverse as mathematics and sociology, including Richard Dawkins, Damien Hirst and Yoko Ono. His brief was as concise as the most pleasing equation: “Make a formula for the 21st Century”. It flummoxed as many people as it fascinated but soon the contributions came flooding in.

What’s your formula for the 21st century? Click here to submit yours

Obrist has now published more than 100 of his favourite formulae in Formulas For Now. They range from the fun to the fundamental, via the unintelligible and, in many cases, illegible – and many do away with traditional formats in favour of diagrams, recipes, manuscripts and manifestos. The variety has delighted Obrist and the offering that tickled him most came from Richard Hamilton, the renowned painter and pioneer of pop art. Hamilton’s formula, 02 + I - 8 = p x (fa)3, where O is “the ball” and I is “the prick”, follows his limerick: “A Wrangler of Trinity Hall, had the most mathematical ball. The square of its weight, plus his prick minus eight, equalled Pi times the cube of fuck all.” “I love all the formulas in the book,” Obrist says, “but I find the combination of art, maths and humour in this one irresistible.”

The formula that first inspired Obrist was rather more vital. In an interview with a 100-year-old Albert Hoffman, the first man to synthesise LSD, the late Swiss scientist scrawled the formula for the psychedelic drug on the back of a napkin. “I found it fascinating that the life of this man could be summarised in this formula,” Obrist says, “and that an invention with so many social repercussions could be encapsulated on a napkin.”

Obrist used his contacts in the art world and beyond to invite others to offer their own formulae and the project quickly snowballed. “Whenever one arrived by e-mail I printed it out and pinned it on the wall. Little by little, it took over my life – they were everywhere.” If nothing else, publishing the book was a way to liberate the walls of Obrist’s study, but the curator turned collector is hungry for more. “This is something I want to grow over many years,” he says. “I hope it will go online and become a forum for anyone to submit ideas.” What about his own formula? “That’s my big unrealised project – despite being inspired by so many people, I still haven’t found my own answer. Perhaps I’ll put it in volume two.”

..if you meet him, beware. He is concerned with fulfilment, development, growth and well being. Do not fall for his shtick about doom and gloom, it’s a ploy to catch you off guard and leave you feeling happier without your even knowing it’s happened. He will try every low down, s.o.b. trick to lift your spirits and demonstrate the upside; you need a guy like this like you need… well you know what I mean. He will also use humour. Ruthlessly.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Are you happy now?

PS He is happier than a Nobel Prize winner

PPS He is not a Nobel Prize winner

 image: dhamzza

 image: e-chan

I attended a seminar today on the prevalence of ADHD in young people. Among other things that I do in a professional capacity, I have helped and supported kids like this for some years now. It’s extraordinary to discuss with other people those things that become acquired skills and how, as we evolve as individuals, those skills become a part of the portrait that our lives represent.

In many respects a responsible adult surrogates their sensibilities into the world of an individual who may be experiencing a chaotic reality. Their own cognitive process and ability to rationalise what their sensory apparatus is telling them is compromised by a range of factors. These range from the genetic to the stalled or simply dormant.

For us all the process of personal development has its mechanics rooted in the programming of our neural pathways. Put simply, the more we energize a particular route the more established within our repertoire as individuals it becomes. Given poor guidance, the absence of positive mentors or a compromised education we grow in an incomplete way. The pathways that become charged are those that are often the least beneficial to the person who has become their host. In pop culture this is known as the development of bad attitude. A fragmented development occurs, some things become accentuated and some things neglected which gives rise to a disjointed process characterised by the manifestation of inappropriate behaviour and poor decision making in our lives.

The art or the skill is in developing a sophisticated inner compass that negotiates the highways and byways along which we travel. There will always be opportunity for conflict and drama, but likewise there will be the opportunity for seamless passage from one chapter to the next in the unfolding of our lives. These things are seen in the skills present within the diplomat, the negotiator, the orator and the leader who seems to have the ability to make complicated processes appear simple and glaringly obvious.

In our own lives we must strive toward the assimilation of such skills, we must learn to be accomplished in the business of living so that our lives give the impression of being very simple, harmonious and gliding through the turbulent waters of the ocean of humanity like a sleek craft. When that impression is conveyed successfully the natural magic of life is such that the act will have become real, we will have powered those neural pathways, those synapses in such a way that a crystaline structure forms in our own mind and our own behavioural patterns.

For those who share a love of the esoteric, your reference here is the mummer’s art, the craft of Shakespeare and the ability to sublimate oneself to the already proven and demonstrated. In the movie Patton, the general surveys the scene of an ancient battlefield where the Carthaginians were defeated by the Romans and suggests that he was there, two thousand years before, this before he defeated Erwin Rommel, the finest military strategist in the German army. His allusion being that great warriors were in some way immortal, destined to reincarnate and fight military campaigns throughout time.

I do not know. However, the inference here is that the record of greatness exists and may be somehow accessed by any of us. That is a powerful notion, a singularly immense concept suggesting that we are all, in some way, washed by the same stream of life and that by proxy we are interconnected in a way that transcends the spatio-temporal concepts of here and now.

What we each have in our grasp is such a magnificent opportunity, I can do no more than salute those of you who pioneer the human story in your own way, whatever that may be. Strength, resilience and fortitude.

On Monday, happiness fell below 40% for the first time

WASHINGTON D.C. — The percentage of Americans experiencing a lot of happiness/enjoyment without a lot of stress/worry hit a new low for the year on Monday at 39%. The depressed mood coincides with the beginning of the turmoil on Wall Street and in the financial markets that began to unfold in the major news media on Sunday and Monday.

The index, which asks Americans 18 and older to reflect on the level of happiness and stress they experienced the day before the survey, has shown consistent upswings in mood on weekends and holidays for most Americans. Reflecting on the typical Saturday or Sunday, 58% of Americans report a lot of happiness and enjoyment without a lot of stress or worry. This drops to 46% on a typical Monday. This past weekend, Saturday was like most Saturdays (58%), but Sunday was uncharacteristic (53%), in line with the news of imminent troubles of Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy and Merrill Lynch. Still, the drop from Sunday to Monday was more than typical at 14 percentage points, and the drop in mood from Saturday to Monday was a full 19 points (compared to a typical 12-point drop in mood over the weekend to weekday transition).

The record low mood experienced Monday came with the news of Lehman Brothers filing for bankruptcy, Merrill Lynch being sold to Bank of America, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average registering a record decline. The lowest previously registered measure of happiness was 41%, with two of the four occasions when the number dipped to 41% also coinciding with economic woes, specifically on March 18, when the Fed announced a rate cut in response to a weakening economic outlook and on June 9, when gas prices rose to record highs. — Raksha Arora and Jim Harter

Survey Methods

For the Gallup Poll Daily tracking survey, Gallup is interviewing no fewer than 1,000 U.S. adults nationwide each day during 2008.

The U.S. mood results are based on data from Jan. 2-Sept. 16, 2008, the maximum margin of sampling error is ±2 percentage points.

Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones (for respondents with a landline telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell phone only).

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

To provide feedback or suggestions about how to improve Gallup.com, please e-mail feedback@gallup.com.

image: jeepz