Langeweile ist der Ursprung des Philosophierens

Langeweile ist der Ursprung des Philosophierens / Boredom is the wellspring of philosophizing

Mark Kingwell:

Boredom is an ineradicable part of everydayness, and world-weariness a fact of life. The poet John Berryman wrote: “Life, friends, is boring / We must not say so.” But actually, we must say so. Langeweile has much to teach us about existence, meaning, consciousness, and action.  When you are forced to confront your boredom – really confront its lessons, about desire and selfhood – the world stands out more vividly, even if time itself crawls spider-slow. All the more so when philosophizing arises from boredom, our cruel-to-be-kind teacher.

If you are lucky enough to feel bored right now, and are not simply scrambling to make ends meet or stay alive, do not give way to melancholy or flee into flashy new stimulus. Look out the bus window, which is itself a window on the soul. Embrace the burdens of your being in the world. You cannot escape from yourself, but you can examine the conditions of your own possibility.

archive.today/J5J8v

“bus windows: the ultimate philosophy school” (!i)


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Vintner’s Tales (1997): Michael Broadbent, 1927–2020

from the obituary:
… Random House agreed to settle a defamation suit brought by Broadbent over the publication of The Billionaire’s Vinegar, Benjamin Wallace’s account of the Jefferson wine affair. The publishers apologised for several passages in the book, issued a statement accepting that they were not true, paid an undisclosed amount of damages to Broadbent and agreed not to distribute the book in the United Kingdom.

The following year Koch sued Christie’s on the grounds that it had auctioned off, and thus vouchsafed for, the credentials … The case was dismissed in 2011 after a judge ruled that Koch was too late in filing his court action.

The scandal over the Jefferson wines was an embarrassment, but no one who knew Broadbent believed he had acted in anything other than good faith.

archived
Koch too late in filing court action against Christie’s (!nyt) / archived

Benjamin Wallace: The Billionaire’s Vinegar (!a)

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the present is a strawberry …

The Man and the Tiger – a well-known Buddhist story – was shared with a group in a Vancouver Unitarians RE session on the first Sunday of this month. This post looks more closely at what the story may mean.

“A man walking across a field encountered a tiger. The man fled, running …” —site:uua.org (!?)*

The Man and the Tiger is of course a myth, “a narrative that carries existential truth.” (!gb)

So, in other words:
  • the past is in the mind, as thoughts that come and go
  • the future is in the mind, as thoughts that come and go
  • the present is now and always is beyond the mind, as what is
  • the present is a gift / “the present is a strawberry …”
on that last point: "If the only prayer you say in your entire life is 'Thank you,' that is enough." / archive (!g)

and more words:
  • the past is a tiger you can ignore
  • the future is a tiger you can ignore
  • the present is a strawberry
  • the present is pure sensation

notes
*DuckDuckGo bang commands (!?) in parentheses link to results of a search for what they follow
image credit: Meelan Bawjee (!unsplash)
“you can ignore” … here, as elsewhere, “you can” need not mean “you should”
night and day are two mice, one black, one white, consuming what is vital to what is thought of as you
only in the mind is anything as it is thought to be
only in the mind is anyone as they are thought to be
“All that a guru can tell you is, ‘My dear sir, you are quite mistaken about yourself. You are not the person you think yourself to be.’” (!g)







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how the pandemic will end (Ed Yong, The Atlantic)

Bill Gates|TED2015 (transcript) :: the block quote below includes an embedded link to this TED talk

Ed Yong:
A global pandemic of this scale was inevitable. In recent years, hundreds of health experts have written books, white papers, and op-eds warning of the possibility. Bill Gates has been telling anyone who would listen, including the 18 million viewers of his TED Talk. In 2018, I wrote a story for The Atlantic arguing that America was not ready for the pandemic that would eventually come. In October, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security war-gamed what might happen if a new coronavirus swept the globe. And then one did. Hypotheticals became reality. “What if?” became “Now what?”





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Is our destruction of nature responsible for Covid-19?


tweets that link to the original Guardian article: top, latest


“As with almost all disasters, the Covid-19 disaster is the outcome of human choices.”
—Ilan Kelman (archive)

*an asterisk here shows that the about post links to this post
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