Tag: Aristotle

I really should stop writing about Cornwall.

The tin tabernacle in Cadgwith

Another wet day in Cornwall – in Camborne they’ve exceeded the biblical flood by exceeding 40 consecutive days of rain. It hasn’t been a huge problem for us down at the southernmost tip except for the lanes – there’s only one really main road and the rest are pretty much lanes anyway and they are running with water; some right across and others at both edges but all the puddles are sheltering murderous suspension wrecking potholes. If anyone’s got a spare billion pounds we could do with some of it down here.

Anyway, the upshot of the long days confined to our rented cottage on the top of a cliff is that Madame has been doing a lot of internet surfing, and today she typed in my name into Gemini and discovered that I am the landlord of a pub in Helston whose wife was once a police dog-handler but who has sadly died. In fact, according to the infallible AI, several pubs in the neighbourhood are claiming that I am their landlord – which prompted me to ask her whether it would be OK to pop down to the Five Pilchards to see my virtual wife. Madame was not amused. Much as I love Google Gemini, it makes more false connections than a village gossip, and bigamy is still a crime.

Sadly spring has not sprung nearly as much as we’d hoped so neither the plant hunting nor the moth trapping have taken up much of our time and among other things – like writing this blog – we’ve been binge watching the old DVD’s we brought down. John Schlesinger’s “Cold Comfort Farm” is one of the funniest films ever, and Ian McKellen’s sermon to the Quivering Brethren as Amos Starkadder is an act of sheer joy. I’ve even (naughtily) started sermons myself once or twice with the words “ye’re all damned”; not forgetting to grip the edge of the pulpit and stare at the congregation with sheer malevolence for fifteen seconds. But we also watched Alec Guinness’s superb performance as George Smiley in John Le Carré’s Karla trilogy. The two BBC series miss out the middle book. It was a treat, and an acting seminar, to watch Alec Guinness playing such a morally complex character. The very last words that Smiley speaks as Karla is led away, when someone says “George you’ve won” and he replies “I suppose I have” made me wish I could hug him. It was so brilliantly done; the way he managed to express the sadness and loss of winning his epic battle.

All that ambiguity sent me straight back to yesterday’s post with the thought that I’d missed an important aspect of flourishing even though I did say that it’s by no means a primrose path. When, back in the day, I talked to parents about christening, I would often find that they had an odd idea that we believed that babies are born bad and needed to be made good by baptism. Something about washing away sins had taken root in the collective understanding. Frankly I think that’s a horrible idea, but even horrible ideas deserve a bit of thought. I talked yesterday about cultivating virtuous habits – Prudence, Justice, Temperance and Courage; but I didn’t offer any idea of what the starting point might be. The idea that we’re born bad and need to be made good which I described as horrible would be one place (but totally wrong I think). On the other hand I’d find it difficult to say that we’re born perfect at the top of a greasy pole of corruption because that’s equally far fetched and nasty. So what about a working definition of what we might call the human condition which pitches us somewhere near the middle point that Aristotle was so keen for us to maintain. Then we say that we can move up or down the scale by way of good or bad habits.

Each of the four or perhaps fifteen virtues which can, in combination lead us towards flourishing and fulfilment have their counterparts which can lead us in the opposite direction; unhappiness and suffering. As an example I could mention affairs. We’re all much of a muchness in the sexual attraction stakes; many of us have primary commitments but that doesn’t stop us from meeting others that we find attractive. In a very long career of helping people through crises of their own making, one factor comes to the surface almost every time. We rarely get ourselves into trouble in one giant act of folly. We do it step by tiny step and then one day it’s too late. The same goes for any kind of addiction; food, alcohol, drugs, erotic fantasies, fraud, thieving, field botany or hoarding rubbish. Thankfully I’m not a counsellor so you needn’t worry that I’m about to offer advice but I’ll just quote a line from an ee cummings poem –

where’s too far said he

where you are said she

Notice also that I haven’t mentioned any divine punishments or rewards. That’s because I don’t believe in them. None of the purported torments of hell can measure up to the guilt and shame brought upon us by our own perversity, although there are many occasions when I wish that Danté’s circles of hell which included special places for bishops, princes, corrupt politicians and not forgetting people who didn’t give a shit about anything or anyone. Occasionally I really wish that could be true. But there are always some wicked people who seem to get away with it. On the other hand I’ve sat with some horrible people who – as they lay dying – seemed to be suffering terrible agonies of remorse. Too late!

Conversely I think that the idea we should punish ourselves and live shadow lives in order to achieve the extremely notional rewards of heaven is also wicked. The way we live our lives can’t or shouldn’t be reduced to the spreadsheets and calculus of rulebooks. Is there anything wrong with muddling along and trying very hard to learn from your mistakes?

Looking out to sea in a gale from Kynance Cove café towards Lizard point. Hot chocolate – heaven; rocks – hell.

My green age

Imperforate St John’s Wort – Hypericum maculatum – on the allotment and occasionally used to treat mild depression but interacts dangerously with several other prescription medicines.

My friend Charlie (Professor) Stirton – formerly Director of the National Botanical Garden of Wales – sent me yesterday a copy of a talk he’d given to the Church in Wales in 2002. As ever I got about four pages in and stopped because he’d just given me a big thought – you know, the kind of thought that forces you to stop and, well – think; really think. Charlie does big thoughts – which is probably why I enjoy talking to him so much. Anyway, in the course of his paper he raised the issue of the way in which the Church (and I think he had society in general in his sights) is not very good at celebrating the great turning points in life with ceremony; what we in the trade call liturgy. So far so obvious, you might think, but what he drew from that – the occasions demanding recognition – went beyond the usual births deaths and marriages and talked about growing old. The crises of life; being born; entering puberty; falling in love, and possibly dying too – (although as Wittgenstein pointed out – “death is not an event in life”) – are all catered for, but growing old certainly is an event in life and for the most part we turn away from it; refuse to think about it and regard it as if it might be contagious. Can you even imagine your friends and especially your children wanting to celebrate the “dying of the light“? And so it becomes the thing we can’t talk about and it becomes the one major life event we usually travel alone. Yes we have hospices and they do wonderful work, but I’m not writing here about dying I’m writing about the autumn that precedes it; the inexorable minor irritations that can make us grumpy; arthritic hands and knees, irregular heart rhythms, vivid nightmares and the memories of old hurts and failures, loss of vigour and suchlike. Wisdom, sagacity can be a poor reward for struggling breathlessly up a flight of stairs and in any case the last thing most younger people want is the benefit of your accumulated experience. Growing old; the period between retirement and senility can feel like the prologue to an ultimate redundancy without compensation. A mystery tour where you see immediately the driver is as drunk as a skunk and the satnav has broken. What – really what is there to build a celebration around in all this?

But first, here’s a phrase that sticks in my mind from a lecture I attended many years ago. I was working as an Art Therapist at an old fashioned mental hospital. This was in the early days before Art Therapy had been codified, given diagnostic references and its very own theology. We had a talk from a professor of gerontology (the study of old age) and his opening remarks have never left me.

“Remember this” he said “…. “miserable young people make miserable old people”.

In other words – don’t wait to sort your shit until it’s too late. Or as Aristotle and most of the great religious teachers might have said more philosophically – human flourishing depends on right habits. So if you’re in your mid thirties – let’s say – in the years of your pomp – but not really enjoying life as much as you thought you would when you went after all those promotions and bonuses; don’t fall into the trap of kicking happiness down the road because the road might not get you as far as bucket lists and dream retirements. Right habits can be acquired but also need to be practised day by day. For some odd reason our culture teaches us to denigrate habits (boring and repetitive) but glorify feelings. However – sincerely believing that a very stupid or immoral act is right because it feels right – however sincerely that belief is held – is profoundly misguided. Doing the right thing demands consistency and practice so it’s best to start as young as possible.

So once you have reached the age when your inbox is looking less crowded, I think one necessary thing is to absolutely refuse to play along with all the OAP stereotypes. We need to find a form of what the Roman Catholic church wisely renamed as reconciliation in the late 20th century, which doesn’t even think about absolving us from all the hurt and shitstorms we’ve created in our younger days, but reconciles us to ourselves, our victims and and our lost and abandoned lovers. The dying of the light can only be accomplished well with a mind at peace.

We must learn to live completely in the moment, opening our arms to the occasional joys that come our way. Yesterday we talked to a friend whose sister had re-found love after a fifty year marriage followed by bereavement, but even a returned smile can make the sun come out for us.

Today, on the allotment we harvested courgettes, apples, aubergines, tomatoes and basil and, as I write this Madame is in the kitchen preparing supper for us; but as any gardener knows, we also have to weather our failures as well as celebrate our successes. This has been a truly difficult season and there have been moments when we wondered whether it was worth all the disappointments. But coping with failure without going under is a tremendously important life-skill – especially when the wheels begin to drop off.

But so far as Charlie’s challenge to find the equivalent of a marriage or naming ceremony to mark and celebrate the onset of old age as a distinct and potentially rewarding stage in life – that demands an enormous cultural reset. When I retired from paid work, I had a sweater made with the words “I’m not old, I’m experienced!” but Madame thought it was provocative (as if!), and I’ve hardly worn it.

So thanks Charlie – for an excellent question, and now I’ll get back to reading the rest of your presentation.

When did we get so scared of food?

2018-02-06 14.20.29I can answer that question for us at the Potwell Inn because one of our children suffered from his earliest months from what was thought to be lactose intolerance. It turned out to be something else and he’s now approaching forty and in good health, but that’s not the point.  For us that possibility – in the era before smartphones – meant that shopping became a nightmare in which small print was obsessively pored over and during which we carried a long printed list of safe foods which had to be updated every few weeks because manufacturers would change recipes and what was ‘safe’ one week would contain lactose a month later. Lactose was a cheap and easy recipe component that found its way into the most unexpected places. What that experience did – and this is the takeaway point – was to pathologise food for us. We were in an unusual and rare position and eventually, after several years of  hospital admissions, it became clear that lactose wasn’t the underlying problem and things kind of settled down again.

But once pathologised, food never really recovers and for many of us the relationship with it has become damaged.  ‘Lucky you’ you could justifiably say if you’re a subsistence farmer or relying on food banks to get through the week. What shameless narcissistic self-indulgence to be prattling on about the dangers of food when you’re so rich you can afford to throw it away.  ‘Just give us a share in that dangerous stuff you’re so scared of eating!’  This isn’t just an abstract ethical issue. Last night we were late getting home and I resorted to buying a ready meal (yes really) at the local supermarket just before it closed –  you should try it some time, it’s an eye opener.  There was a significant proportion of obviously poor people snapping up the reduced price food before it went to the bins. I even spotted one man who I know to be a street beggar with a basket of food. It was a big jolt, we mostly prefer poverty to be on the other side of a high cultural wall – who needs concrete and steel?  Wouldn’t we rather they waited an hour and stole it from the waste bins at the back or is it just their pride that stops them?

But for the lucky ones, aided by countless newspaper and television programmes, the message has become imprinted in our minds that food is potentially dangerous and by micromanaging our food intake we can live longer lives.  It’s a no-brainer as we all know, and so whilst we are fortunate enough (most of us) to live in the Promised Land flowing with milk and honey [Oh my God, milk? factory farmed and lethal: and honey? – unless it’s manuka honey at £15 a gram – pure lethal carbohydrate]; many who can afford it live on an aetiolated diet that keeps them perpetually anxious and those who can’t, eat manufactured junk that gives you diabetes and makes you fat, and disabled by shame and guilt.  Of course we all smile bravely and tell ourselves we’re really happy but:

We’re secretly as miserable as it’s possible to be!

Having a bad relationship with food, and tap water, and the air we breath, and with any number of ordinary indispensible aspects of our lives is so widespread that we hardly notice it, and when we do notice there’s often an ‘expert’ on hand to help us through. But all too often the experts want to sell us their remedy rather than attack the basic problem.  So we buy processed ‘slimming meals’ – there’s an oxymoron for you.  We lug vast quantities of bottled water around and – if we can afford it – buy organic food not realizing that the major producers have negotiated exemptions on the use of many chemicals we assume we paid extra to be spared from. We buy food supplements and herbal snake-oil in case they can stave off old age. Our behaviour, and especially our children’s behaviour, has been pathologised as well and we medicate five year olds in order to make them more ‘normal’. Our relationships, our culture and family life and sadly our dependence on bacteria (think only of our terror of rotting, even controlled rotting) have all been pathologised too and we’re frightened of a caterpillar on our cabbage and a bit of dirt on a potato, so we’re reduced to buying happiness on interest free credit from some behemoth that knows that the effect wears off when you unwrap it and then you’ll buy some more. Surely this can’t be good?

The Potwell Inn doesn’t actually have a ‘mission statement’ because trying to express the idea of flourishing without getting into psychobollocks, merchandising and quackery is harder to do than you’d imagine. But ironically we all know what flourishing feels like even if we can’t put it into words.  Equally a discussion about ‘being fully human’ is fraught with difficulties in a society that runs away screaming if it senses that even a mention of humanness is attempting to chainsaw the legs off diversity.  When did we get so scared of food? When did we get so scared of getting old? When did we get so scared of germs, or other people, or commitment, or thinking about hard stuff?

The Potwell Inn stands for flourishing and not, most certainly not just happiness which is an ephemeral pleasure that’s always ready to be driven out by the next dark fear. It’s flourishing we’re committed to and in order to flourish we believe that we need to overthrow the tyranny of pleasure altogether. I’m talking about both ancient (how about Aristotle?) and modern – Positive Psychology [feel free to skip a sentence whenever your mind clouds over].  I’m no academic, but if I were, I’d be looking at the work the Jubilee Centre at the University of Birmingham (UK) is doing.

What I am completely committed to doing is discovering through experience – through growing and harvesting and cooking;  through making and thinking, and learning not to be scared of my neighbours, and – to steal a phrase from Ernest Hemmingway in a letter to his daughter, “to recognise bullshit when you see it”; I’m learning about flourishing. What I’m conducting is a very practical experiment with the hope I might be able to share the results with a few other people.  It’s called the Potwell Inn because it’s open to anyone (except if you’re barred by the landlord for being a pain) and it’s a place of joy.