Inner Gleams of Light

Go into any book shop today and you will find a bulging self help section. These works claim to have an instantly transformative power upon our difficulties, whatever they may be, be it stress, low confidence or finding happiness in a relationship. Do what they say, consume their message and your woes will dissolve, you will become more successful, confident or richer, whatever they promise. Now, I am sure some of these books do help people and have lovely uplifting, positive messages and some good advice on being pro active and making lists, but please! Whole, creaking book shelves full? Have we really lost our capacity to intuit anything to the extent that a multi-million self help industry is needed? Is modern mans resolve really that diminished that reading this rubbish is necessary? Are we that incapable of knowing what is true for ourselves, of looking within? Some of them have remarkable titles such as 'The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People' by Stephen Covey (which I confess to have once read and true to my ineffective nature have completely forgotten the message of) or Susan Jeffer's 'Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway' and of course the famous work by Dale Carnegie 'How to Win friends and Influence People.' I love the reduction of people to prizes to be won and possessed like objects in the title of that one. These work claim to give you information that will have a life changing metamorphic effect on you if you listen to and do what they say. Contemporary titles in this genre stick to the 'born again' theme, the prolific (and highly esteemed by Oprah no less) Deepak Chopra's new Book is entitled, 'Super Brain' and promises to 'unleash the explosive power of your mind to maximise health, happiness, and spiritual well being.' From there to the more nauseatingly entitled works, such as Rachel Bridges 'How to Make a Million Before Lunch' or Laura Vanderkam's 'What the Most Succesful People do Before Breakfast' (one presumes they go for swims in their private pools) it is clear 'self help' is booming. That is, conforming, being told what to do, what is self help, what is success, what it means to be you by society, is booming. Self reliance,  non-conformism apparently, is not. 

Recently, I came across a writer who would have shook his head at the obvious futility of these self help books. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was an American essayist who though admiring the individualism of these works would have held them to be hollow and to be full of emptiness. He would have pointed to the childishness of assuming some external lessons, some advise from without oneself could truly help someone, principally because you would be conforming by using a self help book. You would be believing that truth could be found without rather than within. Indeed, he begins the essay I am going to look at here, entitled Self Reliance with the latin phrase; Ne te quaesiveris extra which roughly translates as 'do not seek outside yourself.' In a world where the consumption of 'self help' is an industry, where we are encouraged to be what society wants us to be, Emerson's message is all the more relevant. He calls us to not to seek outside ourselves, to look within, to be self reliant, to think for ourselves and not be told how to think, not be told what we need to do, or how to be. We should not acquiesce, we should not so readily accept. It's a call for us all to tell the world who we are and not be what it thinks we should be.

Emerson was a major figure in the American Trancendental Movement. The Transcendental Movement held that truth can be revealed intuitively through nature by focusing on the internal, the mental, the inner spiritual essence of being human. In brief (very brief) they believed that socio-political institutions corrupt the soul, that they are harmful to the individual and the only fix to this harm is a staunch and defiant individualism; Self Reliance. In his essay Self Reliance he argued that 'self reliance' is a defense, a remedy, against the watering down of our inner life, the corrosion of ourselves, by society. Emerson had the conviction that our minds are presupposed to conformism, that we innately and foolishly comply. Emerson felt that this was the root of much of our unhappiness and that when we yield our intellect, when we disregard our convictions, and behave and act contrary to our self, this inner disharmony, caused by conformism will only ever lead to misery. Self reliance ultimately then meant for Emerson, non-conformism. To conform to society for Emerson was to lose something of ourselves, when our intellect, our thoughts, our ideas, our actions fall in line unthinkingly with everyone our magic, our immense potential, our precociousness as individuals is lost. Therefore we should eschew popular opinion and shrug off social pressure and trust ourselves. He was a man who believed that people are inherently good, that we are all inherently unique, and each one of us has vast dormant and untapped powers. However these powers are reduced and made void by conformism. Only in non-conformism is our genius realised and indeed he maintained that each of us have huge potential for genius. He wrote;

“To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius.”

He believed that there is something of great weight and brilliance in each of us and that conformism is what stifles our gifts to the world by robbing us of self belief in our own brilliance. To have confidence, a unyielding self trust in our own brilliance is therefore in a world of drab and bleak conformity, an act of genius. Emerson felt  'genius' is to have self belief in our private hearts and conformism gags this self belief by making us live out what is not true for us, instead of self belief, we pander weakly to the public, to society. A sturdy self reliance based in non-conformism is therefore the way to happiness for the individual, as ones self esteem is based on ones intrinsic character, ones deep self, not by external circumstances or some bullet pointed pieces of advice from a book claiming that you can unlock the power of your 'Super Brain'. For Emerson there is nothing to unlock, we just simply have to look; and look within. I am going to quote heavily and greedily from the essay, so if you have not read it I would urge you to read the essay first before reading this in order to get face to face with the man's beautiful writing before reading my chopped and hacked off sections of his work.

Non-conformism

To begin with Emerson asks us simply to be confident in ourselves and to have self trust in our own thought life. He suggests we should do this by learning to discern what is true for ourselves by being attentive to our thoughts. We should pay attention and be mindful of our mental content and sift through and disregard the unbearable thoughts, the simple thoughts and be more awake to the luminous ones we have. We should not be indifferent to the brightness and brilliance of these thoughts, just because they our ours. He writes;

“A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”

This is interesting. How often do you read a novel, watch a film or talk to someone and hear a thought or an idea that you have had before, but perhaps not fully articulated to yourself or dismissed? For Emerson it is a lack of self believe, it is a habit of shrugging of our ideas as being weightless that holds us back. Now, here you may raise a worldly, quizzical eyebrow at the mystical language he uses, the 'gleams of light' he refers to. Our minds wander, and can often churn out simplistic, aimless thoughts. The Beatles were of course spot on with the lyrics to 'Fixing a Hole';

I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in
And stops my mind from wandering
Where it will go

At this point it may amuse you to reflect momentarily on the title of Chopra's 'Super Brain'. Super Brain indeed! But for all the profane thoughts about what we should have for tea we have whilst we are playing football, for all the ludicrous daydreams we have mid conversation with people, thoughts of insight, vision and wisdom do occur to us. There is of course something of great potential in us and Emerson knew it. It is the 'gleams of light' that we have to learn to tune our mind to, to discern, to prune and ultimately to not dismiss. We un-confidently reject our own ideas, musings and conclusions when we should focus more on detecting these. He felt that this lack of self trust was a habit of conformism. Emerson felt it was the tyranny of society that robs us of these gleams of light, this inner potential as individuals that we all have. He writes;

“These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs. Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.”

I, in my previous post wrote of the importance of solitude, of a liberating solitude, and again here we are called to trust ourselves in solitude and not let our thoughts, our power, be diluted by society or as I wrote clunkily in my previous post, 'the society others'. And for Emerson in order to harness the potential of our solitude, of our inner gleams of light, we must be nonconformist; 'whoso would be a man, must be a non conformist.' And by that Emerson means that we must not let the 'integrity of our own mind' be disturbed by society, by interactions that confuse us, or by institutions that lead us astray. By pointing to the sacred nature of the integrity of our own mind Emerson suggests how deeply vulnerable we are to conformity and how firmly we must strive to uphold self truth. It is this sacredness we must constantly endeavor to maintain. Minds can be easily unsettled, confused and deluded by society, we must therefore be vigilant and non conformist, be unrelentingly protective of self truth. Indeed, it not self help books per se that Emerson would have had a problem with. Rather it would be consuming and living by such literature if it is not true for you that he would have had a problem with. If it is true for you and upholds the integrity of your mind, he would have applauded a person using such books. It is the conformity they represent that would have irked him and it is as if in the next passage of his prose that I will refer to, he is almost writing with these books in mind. It is hard for anyone to not smile knowingly at this;

“It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it...It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

Indeed, why should you develop 7 effective habits, if it is not a true for you as a person, if it does not resound with your soul? Why on earth should you want to make a million before lunch if that's not really what you want? To that I would also add if the book doesn't at any point mention having a cup of tea before lunch at some point then it truly can be dismissed as complete and utter pish posh! The power of solitude is again showed here, he maintains that only a firm resolve to uphold ones true self among society will lead to an enriched, enlightened and happier life. Conformism wastes your time and makes the essence of yourself unclear, or as he wrote more succinctly it 'blurs the impression of your character.' If we are honest, how often we do concede or hide our true opinions, or do we meekly let someone assert something we know to be wrong. I'm sure we are all guilty of doing so. Now, sometimes it is of course a matter of manners to let someone have there say, but how often do we find ourselves nodding along to someone talking absolute rubbish. We are lazy and take the easy option and just let things go, we cant be bothered to contest opinion, or to fight for truth. However Emerson knew that this attitude ultimately leads to a weakening in the confidence of our own self, it diminishes self trust and it leads to a crumbling of our capacity to hear the 'voices we hear in solitude' the 'gleams of light' that are our own genius; it 'scatters our force.' We lose our self trust by not seeing the value of truth, we let our self truth blow away in the wind and in the midst of the crowd, conform. He goes on to give a description of the awkwardness, the deep unease the lack of peace we feel when not being self reliant. The description frames vividly the foolishness of pandering to people's idiocy, of mindlessly conforming;

“There is a mortifying experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean "the foolish face of praise," the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved but moved by a low usurping willfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face with the most disagreeable sensation.”

We have all, I am sure been there. And isn't it the most obvious picture of our common inclination to conform? At first glance the example seems trivial and unconvincing, of course we should be polite and look interested even when it the conversational content boring, makes us uneasy or is disagreeable. It's only manners, only common courtesy.  Rather for Emerson, this is not a question of manners, of politeness, it is to be 'hindered by goodness.' When your face sets, your muscles tighten, you are made that uncomfortable why do we just let it slide? Why do we even begin to attempt to suffer fools gladly? Manners and politeness, could conceivably hinder us and be the 'good face' of the tyranny of society upon us. Maybe we should not let social etiquette hinder us, cause our minds to become muddled (and our face muscles to stiffen) and obstruct us from the truth-'the rude truth'! He goes on;

“I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways.”

Emerson urges us to take a robust and radical stand against conformism, for the sake of truth and our ultimately our own happiness. Emerson knew that to constantly subdue our self, to yield to others, to society and easily capitulate is to not live in peace. The example shows how we naturally respond to not living in self truth. Our faces set, we internally squirm. We cannot totally suppress our 'low usurping willfulness.' Our will, our desires, our truth cannot be entirely muffled or silenced.  The example shows how to not conform is our true nature, where we find peace;

“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”

If we are unprincipled and live mildly giving people the face aching 'foolish face of praise' we wont be standing up for what is true, for what is the truth for ourselves. We should not be affected, we should not be swayed, we should not conform, even if the face of what we refuse, is  'decent' and 'well spoken.' We should have no qualms about refusing anything that threatens our truth, the integrity of our minds. The name of goodness must therefore not limit our principles, what we hold to be fundamentally true from being lived. Emerson new that even in mild mannered, kind, decent society there is no peace to be found for us if we are not living in truth, if we are relenting to conformity. Only in non-conformity can we triumph, find release for our willfulness and find peace.

The Corpse of Your Memory

Emerson also knew of the problem of living in the past, of being dragged from the moment to past happenings, recollections and memories instead of being in the here and now. He felt that our readiness to conform is so ingrained that even our memories instill in us a fear of 'inconsistency'. We remember what we have previous said, done and believed and the fear of acting contrary to this he thought can stop up living in what is true for ourselves now. He writes;

“The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place?”

Ultimately we must not dilute ourselves solely in order to be seen to be seen as consistent, to never contradict ourselves. Emerson is correct in his assertion that if we are rigidly consistent we wont grow, consistency leads to a life in which we wont challenge ourselves, in which inner truth is stifled. There is a famous quote by the famous boxer Muhammed Ali that sprung to my mind when first reading his essay, “the man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.” It is important in life not to box ourselves in too much, not to shackle ourselves to who we have been. Our personality, our character, the truth of who we are is not to be wedged on fixed tracks like a train going solemnly and sedately to its sole destination. Kahlil Gibran put it better; "the soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed. The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals." The truth of who we are should be unfixed and free to roam, to unfold, without terror of inconsistency or disappointing anybody.

Emerson felt we revere the past too greatly due to a failing in the way we see each other. He argued that when we see someone we only have eyes to compute 'no other data' than past acts. We have a limited perception of people that only focuses on the past. Perhaps then, when we see people we should bear this in mind, and we should be mindful of how our minds deceive our eyes by bringing up an undue reverence for the past. It may us better than to have a crisp focus on the present when we see people. Emerson writes further on the past and inconsistency,  and what follows next is one of his most infamous lines; 

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.”

It it important to note the qualifier that it is a 'foolish' consistency he is speaking of, not consistency in general. He is not suggesting we bullishly change and contradict ourselves, he is not suggesting our integrity should go out of the window, rather what he is saying is that our pursuit of truth, of what is true for us should not be fixed and defined by a fear of being seen as inconsistent. We shouldn't sheepishly apologise for who we are, we shouldn't be sorry for what we believe, what we think, for what we hold to be true even if that is different to what we used to hold to be true. We should have a  self trust forged in the present, in the here and now, and as he writes, we should be the 'centre of things;'

“Let us never bow and apologize more. A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me. I will stand here for humanity, and though I would make it kind, I would make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom and trade and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor working wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the centre of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures you and all men and all events.”

We find that we should strive to live in this moment, for we 'belong to no other time or place.' We should not let our self reliance be limited by our past and we should not let the prospect of our future mould or define who we are and what is true for us now. He advises us to life in the present moment. Precisely because that is where we are grounded, that is where the roots of happiness lie, where what is true for us is. Simply put, that is where we are. 

“But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He  cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.”

If we do not live in the present, we will be blind to the 'riches that surround us' as the integrity of our  minds will be jumbled by thoughts of the past and future. There exists a German word, a word for which there is no direct parallel in English; 'Waldeinsamkeit.' It translates as 'the feeling of being alone in the woods.' However it means much more than that, it describes the infinite, free, meditative, 'at one with the universe feeling' one has when totally engulfed in nature. If we then resist conformity and are self reliant in the here and now, 'above time' in nature, in our true nature, perhaps the mysterious German word begins to grasp, to hint at, what we may feel when we heed the riches around us.

The Conspiracy of Society

Emerson wrote that 'society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.' This is clear to see today. Society tirelessly conspires to make us conform, for example, self doubt is a common symptom of living in the so called 'information age'. How can we be sure of anything when there is just so much information out there? We feel we can never be informed enough, we always feel a sort of nagging information deficit. This leads to a tendency to gorge on information, to endlessly consume the thoughts of others rather to to think for oneself. Our critical faculties are sidelined and instead a 'conformism of thought' becomes prevalent in us whereby we tend to just absorb the thoughts and ideas of others instead of being the author of our own. Knowledge has become about discerning your way through a soup of information rather than developing your own thoughts, conceptions or beliefs about anything. Our inner gleams of light are undetectable in the gloom of this conformist tendency. 

Emerson was a great defender of individualism, however perhaps not the individualism of today. We live in a society of heightened individualism where the individualism of our time is cheap. The crass emphasis on individual 'exceptionalism' on shows like the X Factor show how light and empty, how weightless, the individualism of our age is. Today's individualism is not based on looking within, it is an individualism based on consumption, not on seeking person truth or on the development of character but it is everything to do with conforming to ideals of talent, of success; of being, thinking acting and looking a certain way. And to add to that the previously mentioned multi-million pound global self help 'industry' shows how we have learnt to lazily look without ourselves instead of within. To look within is a radical message in today's world of I Phone Apps, HD television and 3d cinema where we are constantly discouraged to look within, to seek what is true for ourselves. Rather we live in a world of constant distraction, of endless entertainment, of superficial, rampant conformism. I feel Emerson's writings are massively pertinent to our age, the conspiracy is clear to see. We must therefore fight to cast of the repressive chains of conformity for the sake of our happiness and  maybe, we might find that from the dimness gleams of light may begin to emerge. 

An unshakeable, unyielding Self Reliance based on a quiet, radical solitude, rooted in non-conformism perhaps may be the answer to the conspiracy of society against us. By carrying with us a solitude that is not watered down by people, by being confident in ourselves having a brave self trust and not conforming we may begin to feel happier and more fulfilled; at peace. If we can perhaps learn to not be shackled to consistency, to not live in the past or future but in the here and now, in the present we may begin to live in, to experience, the peaceful, mystical  feeling of 'being alone in the woods.' And finally, if Emerson offers us anything, it is the relief of knowing that we can only ever be ourselves in life and that  being ourselves, ultimately is our greatest gift.

“Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation.”

If his message was relevant in the 1830's it seems it is all the relevant now. Emerson cannot be read like a 'self help' book because he is not telling us to do anything, rather his message is, that really, self help, is our job. I will end with this final excerpt;

“The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing and therefore self-relying soul.”

Mindfulness and Time: The Society of Others, Solitude and Being Very Busy.

The hour glass; with the sand at the top representing the future and the sand at the bottom representing the past is an enduring symbol of mortality and time. The here and now is represented by the small grains momentarily dropping down the minute channel in between the two. 'Time' is something that we all wish we had more of, we never seem to have enough of it. It is precious and elusive. Here I am going to cast my thoughts on three particular issues regarding 'time' and how mindfulness may remedy these issues. Mindfulness in short (there a libraries of books expounding on what is is) is a attentiveness on awareness on reality, a focus on the present moment that is practised through meditation focusing on breathing for example and discernment of our thoughts throughout the day. Firstly I will look at how we spend time in the society of others. Secondly, how we spend time with ourselves in solitude, alone. Thirdly and finally at the issue of being 'busy'.  I will write on these issues the only way I am capable of, which is by using the words and writings of others,they are my mouth piece.

The British Indie rock band Oasis (who also notably released an album entitled Be Here Now) have a track called 'Hello' that begins with the line, “I don't feel as if I know you, you take up all my time.” It is a typical 'stream of consciousness' style line written by the bands main song writer, Noel Gallagher. It is a lyric that has the quality of a sudden thought that has just bobbed up into the soup of your consciousness when someone close to you has hurt you, bored or irritated you, or perhaps something that might be said in an argument. It is a resounding and insightful line. It shows how it is perfectly possible and normal to feel lonely in a room full of people, in the society of others. It is only a simple 'one liner' from the whole song however it none the less serves to highlight the importance of how we can at times feel about 'time' and spending it  in the society of others, even the closest to us. We can feel lonely and we can feel that our precious time is being wasted. The existential anxiety at wasting our time can be morbidly painful. In short then, we all want to use 'our time' better and would like the time we spend with others sometimes to feel more fulfilling. In 'The Miracle of Mindfulness' by the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist Monk, Thich Nhat Hanh describes a conversation with a man called Allen who with his partner Sue, has a 7 year old son called Joey, and a newly born daughter named Ana. In the book, he describes how through mediation and mindfulness, Allen has come to 'see' time. 

"Iv discovered a way to have a lot more time. In the past, I sued to look at my time as if it were divided into several parts. One part I reserved for Joey, another part was for Sue, another part to help with Ana, another part for household work. The time left I considered my own. I could read, write, do research, go for walks. But now I try not to divide time into parts anymore. I consider my time with Joey and and Sue as my own time. When I help Joey with his homework, I try to find ways of seeing his time as my own time. I go through his lesson with him, sharing his presence and finding ways to be interested in what we do during that time. The time for him becomes my own time. The same with Sue. The remarkable thing is that now I have unlimited time for myself!"

The idea then is that we cease to stop rigidly and strictly compartmentalising and dividing time into 'time' spent doing house work, 'time' spent sending e-mails, but rather just concentrate on being present in very moment your are now actually in. Now, clearly, we cannot all stop setting aside time to do things and that is not what the author is suggesting. Rather the idea is that every opportunity in the company of others is an opportunity to be aware and present in the Here and Now. They are saying we should begin to 'see' time differently, the stress should not be put on the schedule, but on meeting your schedule, actually being where you need to be. If we are mindful of our thoughts in the company of others, we may be less likely to feel lonely, let down or bored, or less inclined to worry about what we say, and we will learn to simply enjoy the company of others more.  This is the key to Compassion, we see the negative thoughts that may arise in the company of others, feelings of loneliness, thoughts about being misunderstood, and we just let them come and go, likes waves on a beach and as come back to ourselves when our minds wander 'like a butterfly comes back to a flower after having fluttered around here and there for no apparent reason' as the Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard wrote in his book, 'The Art of Meditation.' We have compassion with ourselves, not getting angry at ourselves for thinking negative thoughts or day dreaming, rather we concentrate on being fully present with who ever we are with.  Regarding the society of others then, be with who are you are meant to be with, be there. Time stops being the unseen cage within which we live our lives and share our lives with others and becomes something that just is. 

Like the Oasis lyric, there is a line that for me sums up how we can sometimes feel about being on our own time with ourselves, in solitude. In Shakespeare's Henry VI, Richard Duke of Gloucester says the line, “I am myself alone.” Now without going into the context of the line in the play I think it stands out as a thing which me may all feel from time to time; the utter relief of solitude! I often think that 'man' changes the very instant there is someone else in the room, it's as if a second light bulb comes on in the brain as someone else enters. As soon as there are more than one person in a room, we change. The Shakespeare line, I think can perhaps suggest that we can struggle to be ourselves in the company of others and that feeling a sense of relief at being alone is natural. The philosopher Alain de Botton when writing about the role that books can play in giving our lives meaning and fulfillment wrote the following line, “they (books) prevent the morose suspicion that we do not fully belong to the human species, that we lie beyond comprehension.' This line ties in with the Shakespeare line, for me. I think often we can seek solitude just to get away from feeling misunderstood, patronised, bored and made intensely lonely by people. However if in the presence of others, as I have just discussed previously we aim to be mindful, we may be more present of mind to make our selves more understood and feel more fulfilled in the company of others. We may also reflect and find that in life, we are always going to feel those sorts of feelings about  people, even the closest to us. We may find that we need not eagerly seek salvation in others, but we can just simply start enjoy people for who they are through mindfulness. With a quieter mind when with others we may find that it is easier to meet the mind of the person whom with we are with, and connect better with them, the distance between us and others doesn't seem so far and frighteningly distant.

There is a breath taking bit of writing by W. Somerset Maugham in his novel the Moon and Sixpence that sums up the way we can often feel about the society of our fellow men and that sense of 'distance';

“Each one of us is alone in the world. He is shut in a tower of brass, and can communicate with his fellows only by signs, and the signs have no common value, so that their sense is vague and uncertain. We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them. We are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that, with all manner of beautiful and profound things to say, they are condemned to the banalities of the conversation manual. Their brain is seething with ideas, and they can only tell you that the umbrella of the gardener's aunt is in the house.”

This staggering beautiful piece of writing sums up the importance of mindfulness. There are maybe things we simply cannot communicate, we do live in 'towers of brass.' Ultimately the society of others will always fall short, only by mindfulness can we connect with others better, know each other better and perhaps even read each others thoughts with a sense of clarity. We may gain deeper insight into the living, breathing curious and enigmatic creatures we live our lives alongside in society. If we quiet our minds through mindfulness and meditation, 'the brain seething with ideas' may become a less frightening and ultimately frustrating place, we may even be clear minded enough to find the will to articulate our deepest thoughts 'the beautiful and profound things to say.' In mindfulness the inadequacy of words becomes something less bitter. T.S Eliot wrote; 'It's strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words.' That 'struggle for words' among the mind 'seething with ideas' becomes a lot easier and satisfying when our minds are clear. Mindfulness is the key to this. However as we shall see, the time we spend with others, is not were we should attempt to find happiness and fulfillment.

Montaigne in his work 'On Solitude' wrote, 'let us make our happiness depend on ourselves; let us allow ourselves from the bonds which tie us to others; let us gain power over ourselves to live really and truly alone-and of doing so in contentment.' What Montaigne is saying here, is that we should not feel so attached to our fellow men, that we should not let our internal life be governed by the comings and going of the world of men in which we live and move. Montaigne is saying that the time we spend in the society of others, is not futile, it is time well spent, however it is not were we shall find happiness and contentment, that is only something that we can nurture within ourselves. It is liberating advise. Our happiness depends on our selves. In solitude then it is just as important to be present and mindful with ourselves as when we are in the presence of others, for Montaigne, we are in solitude, even when we are in a room full of people and it is the needless 'bonds which tie us to others' which can hold back our happiness.

Now, Montaigne goes on to say this about the way our souls are, “There is hardly less torment in running a family than a whole country. Whenever our soul finds something to do she is there in her entirety: domestic tasks may be less important but they are no less importune.” Importune meaning something that is persistent to the point of annoyance. Montaigne understood that 'Whenever our soul finds something to do she is there in her entirety' which means that it is not the size or relevance of what we have to do that makes us feel any less frustrated by it. Montaigne was spot on when he said that lone, domestic tasks are just as important in our solitary life because it is the realisation that it is not what we do or who we are with, but how we do what we are doing. This is the secret to a fulfilling inner life and an enriching solitude. Thich Nhat Hanh writes;

"while washing the dishes one should only be washing the dishes,which means that while washing the dishes one should be completely ware of the fact that one is washing the dishes. At first glance, that might seem a little silly: why put so much stress on a simple thing? But that's precisely the point. The fact that I am standing there and washing these bowls is a wondrous reality. I'm being completely myself, following my breath, conscious of my presence, and conscious of my thoughts and actions. There's no way I can be tossed around mindlessly like a bottle slapped here and there on the waves."

Mindfulness then allows us to have a more centred, and grounded solitude and as I wrote before it can help us find peace in the company of others. Montaigne's advise 'allow ourselves from the bonds which tie us to others' is not simply advising us to become unsociable, self absorbed hermits, rather I believe that what he is saying is not far from the idea of mindfulness. Montaigne knew that the society of others is not ultimately were we find meaning, it is within ourselves and can only be within ourselves. He wrote beautifully and simply; 'we have a soul able to turn in on herself; she can keep herself company; 'in solis sis tibi turba locis' -in lonely places, be a crowd unto yourself.' Mindfulness can help us then with the 'time' we spend in the society of others and with ourselves in solitude. We become independent and a crowd unto our selves; we are a crowd unto ourselves when we are at peace with ourselves. The short comings of language and being with others are alleviated. We can learn to enjoy the society of others joyfully, mindful of ourselves. 

Now finally to that issue of our age, being busy. It is incredible to notice once you begin to attempt to hush your mind just how often our mind is thinking about the things we we need to do or what to do next. Our minds nag us constantly all day to do stuff. Why don't we give ourselves a break?! The monk Matthie Ricard also wrote; "remember that while your days are numbered, ordinary activities are like waves of the ocean-there is no end to them." There truly is no end to the ever expanding to do list constantly being conjured up by our minds. So let's at least just keep it simple, and just do one thing at a time. It worth doing a quick mind experiment at this point to really hit this point home. Stop reading this and just sit with your eyes shut for a minute and thoughts of remembering to record that documentary, and ironing that shirt, and getting some new tea bags come crashing in. Try it. An excellent article was brought to my attention by a good friend of mine, written by Tim Kreider for the New York Times entitled, ' The Busy Trap'. In it he argues against the idea that we are all really to busy for each other, that in fact being 'busy' in it's extreme form may perhaps be self deluding. Kreider writes;

"Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day...it’s hard to see this pretense of indispensability as anything other than a form of institutional self-delusion. More and more people in this country no longer make or do anything tangible; if your job wasn’t performed by a cat or a boa constrictor in a Richard Scarry book I’m not sure I believe it’s necessary. I can’t help but wonder whether all this histrionic exhaustion isn’t a way of covering up the fact that most of what we do doesn’t matter."

What we do, perhaps, may not matter, but the apparent 'run from meaninglesness' that may be causal of overt busyness is no excuse for living a life were each day we listen to people but not hear them, we talk to people but only reflect solely on what we say and one were are constantly in the company of others but unable to get beyond ourselves. Busyness is no excuse for a life were we sit alone but are splintered in a hundred different places at once 'tossed around mindlessly like a bottle slapped here and there on the waves.' Indeed, if we begin to stop seeing time in such a rigid way and resolved to be a little more concerned with being present we may find more meaning in life, and not have to fill our time so much with 'being busy' to find meaning. Plan for tomorrow yes, be organised,  but there is only the Here and Now and there will only ever be the here and now for us. It is always Now. For us there is only ever this moment. It is this leads to the idea of Buddhist idea of impermanence  put simply and crudely, that it is only delusion that attaches us to this world, and that that attachment is what leads to our suffering. The following is from the Diamond Sutra;

"thus shall ye think of this fleeting world:
a star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
a flash of lightening in a summer cloud;
a flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream."

If we realise the impermanence of our lives, our delusion attachment to the world to others, to ourselves, to the things we need to do, the cause of our suffering is up rooted and as Thich Nhat Hanh writes, 'life will be seen as infinitely precious, every second of it worth living.'

We live in a society were the discourse of time is monetised, we 'spend' it, we don't have any 'spare' time, we are 'short' of time, we 'invest' time in friends and relationships. Everyone is sweaty at the palms, anxious not to waste time. However for me it seems, that if we come to see time a little differently, if we resolve to be mindful of how we are (fully present) when when are using our time in the here and now, the way we spend our time may come to feel perhaps, a little more meaningful. And if when we are alone we strive to again be mindful, and not see fulfillment in the potential of time spent with others, but learn to enjoy solitude, and to nurture our inner resources through mindfulness, the very way we spend time in the company of others and in solitude may change. Our very lives could change. At least, we may be a little happier, perhaps feel a little more fulfilled and at peace with what we do with our time as the sand in the hour glass drops with  rapidity, yet somehow as slow, gentle and as sure as a meandering river, grain by grain. I shall leave the last word to Seneca who wrote in 'On the Shortness of Life;

"Everyone hurries his life on and suffers from a yearning for the future and a weariness of the present. But he who bestows all of his time on his own needs, who plans out every day as if it were his last, neither longs for nor fears for the morrow."

'Solitude' by John Martin (1843)

Chess and Happy 'Unreason.'

I have over the last few months begun playing chess with a friend back in England via e-mail using algebraic chess notifications. The horizontal lines on the chess board are alphabetised A-H and the vertical lines are numbered 1-8, so one notification for example may be, pawn moves to e4 etc. A system of beautiful simplicity in theory. Using e-mail is of course not as romantic as a game played by postal correspondence or, of course carrier pigeon, (or those owls in Harry Potter.) It's a shame really, this modern lack of romance, were everything is so coldly rationalised. The sociologist Max Weber talked of the Iron Cage of Rationality inherent to social life in Western capitalist societies. Now, in an ideal world (one where I wasn't apparently in a cage of rationality) I would have a poor minion run across the harsh, unforgiving surface of the world with my chess move tightly bound on a papyrus scroll, carrying my chess notification over dangerous land and tempestuous sea with bleeding heels like a Roman envoy from where I presently am in Sydney to my friend in Sheffield. However as the Rolling Stones rightly said, You Can't Always Get What You Want. We both had chess sets set up (see photo below) and would move the pieces as per the notifications we sent to each other, simple. You consider your move, type it in and click send, then move the piece accordingly on your board. Done. Couldn't be easier. In theory simple, that is what my friend and I thought till we attempted it.

Problems began around maybe 10-12 moves in. It's almost impossible to precise. It began with an e-mail where I was sure, nay, convinced I could take his Queen. I went over the move again and again, giddily and excitedly cackling at my opportunity and his erroneous over sight. Of course, I sent him an e-mail with my notification in a humble, conciliatory and gentlemanly tone. It read;

 “Before reading my next notification below I want you to take a few deep breaths and make sure you are sitting comfortably. Upon reading don't give in to too much self hate and loathing.....”

It actually transpired, to my dismay, the Bishop I had used to take his Queen was not where it was on his board, the move to take his Queen was impossible. His Queen would love to fight another day. The tin of worms was open, something had gone very wrong. Sure of my critical faculties I set up the chess pieces again as they were when you begin and began to pick through the e-mails, I would easily see where the error had arisen I thought naively. I spent a spirit sapping hour or so going through the labyrinthine e-mail trail to no avail. We had added moves as an after thought after lots of writing, or replied to previous e-mails with another move...I couldn’t work it out, it was utterly beyond me. My patient friend eventually worked it out , he'd accidentally moved a Knight instead of a Bishop previously. We knew the point where we had gone wrong and began afresh from there, even with an e-mailed photograph of his chess board showing exactly where his pieces were to cast out any further doubt or confusion. It was just a rock of the boat, no problem, it would be plain sailing from here on in.

5 moves later were both staring, across the world from each other, glassy eyed with confusion at our chess boards. He had moved a bishop into a place where it could be easily taken, it was obviously a mistake. After further investigation this time a typing error was seen to be to blame. The good old confusion inducing typo. No mistake it seems was beyond either of us! We hobbled on with the game. Literally a move or so later it became apparent that my friend had possibly got mixed up whether he was playing with the white or black pieces because he was using a chess set that had clear and opaque pieces. At this point we both decided to give up, throw the towel in and stat again. 

At time of writing I am happy to report we have managed to finish at least one game and are presently in the opening phase of another game, however the completed game was not without incident. I sent e-mails with untold numbers of typos in the notification. In one instance, I sent the notification for one move incorrectly not once, but twice whilst making some spaghetti bolognese. There are much easier ways of playing correspondence chess now. There are various chess sites where you play online and it saves the progress of the game, there's really no need to send a chess notification at all. None the less I think it's much more exciting to get an e-mail and read Nc3 and then to move the piece and see how the game is developing than to log on and simply see where the piece has moved to. I have just re-read this and realised to my utter dismay that I just wrote the sentence, 'it's much more exciting to get an e-mail and read Nc3 and then to move the piece and see who the game is developing..' (At this point I move away from the keyboard and hold my head in my hands, wearily, and wonder were it all went wrong.) 

Chess is famous for being an intellectual game that demands great concentration. It can be so draining on the mind they say, that it can make the mind crumble. The example of the grandmaster Bobby Fischer's break down into a world of paranoia is infamous. It has been suggested that it may be the infinite amount of possibilities and combinations being considered that eventually leads chess genius's minds to crack. AndrewAnthony wrote in a piece on Bobby Fischer; 

“His descent into wild and irrational behaviour is far from a unique narrative, particularly in chess. The history of the game contains many similar trajectories. As GK Chesterton noted in arguing that reason bred insanity: "Poets do not go mad, but chess players do." Akiba Rubinstein, the early 20th-century Polish grandmaster, would hide in the corner of the competition hall between moves, owing to his anthropophobia (fear of people), retiring from the game when schizophrenia got the better of him. William Steinitz, the Austrian who was the world's first undisputed chess champion, died in an asylum. Then there was Paul Morphy, the American who was said to be the 19th-century's finest player and to whom Fischer has frequently been compared: he quit the game, having beaten all his rivals, and began a decline into paranoid delusion. Aged 47, he was found dead in his bath, surrounded by women's shoes.”

My friend and I are lucky chess induced insanity is not an issue for us; if reason does breed insanity then we are both safe from madness, as we are both apparently, as we have seen, steeped in enough 'un-reason' to be happy and sane, with our bolognese, typos, moving incorrect pieces and confusion about which colour pieces we are. The lofty heights of chess are perhaps thankfully then beyond us, as is apparently sending an e-mail and moving a chess piece to it's correct place on a board! We are just lucky we do live in an age were e-mails are available, bless us both. To understate the issue, we would have both struggled with postal chess.

 

The Wretches That We Are.

This year I have made a conscientious effort to read Charles Dickens after I had a conversation in which I loftily described something as 'Dickensian' and realised, internally cringing, I was being completely and utterly dishonest with myself and that my only real contact with Dickens had been the musical from 1968, 'Oliver!' and 'The Muppet Christmas Carol'. However upon reading A Christmas Carol I personally found it to be a charming story of personal redemption and transformation and I feel it can still speak volumes today. Dickens knew, deep down we are all potential Scrooges, we are prone to be dismissive or in denial of our own pasts and we can often view the future as an unfolding series of problems and worries rather than a place of potential and of joy. Our relationship, our personal tether to the past and future can make us grumpy, unkind and more seriously, unhappy. Ultimately for me it is also a story about remembering who we are, remembering our own personal narratives and finding peace with ourselves so that we can utilise the past, present and future to find like Scrooge does as he walks around seeing the world anew that;

“everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk— that anything— could give him so much happiness.”

The story ends as we know with Scrooge a truly changed man, far from the cynical, gloomy and hard hearted man he once was. It is his resolve to let the spirits of the past, present and future 'strive within' him that is the catalyst for his change. It is worth reflecting on the past, present and future in the story briefly to show the real power and weightiness of Dickens's message that is really almost lost under the clichés of Christmas time in the story. The message that we can change and that life can be a joy and that we can find happiness even within our broken and rubbish self's.

To the past then. The past is constantly with us and Dickens knew this. He also knew that our relationship with the past can be unhealthy. Scrooge's relationship with the past is unhealthy. Scrooge, it seems is in denial of the past and seems to have become a dismissive man as we see at the start of the story where he initially shrugs of seeing the face of Marley's ghost appear on the door knocker. He denies the memory of how Belle his one time girlfriend left him for his love of money, she even seems to know that he will disregard and repress the memory of their parting prophetically saying;

“You may— the memory of what is past half makes me hope you will— have pain in this. A very, very brief time, and you will dismiss the recollection of it, gladly, as an unprofitable dream, from which it happened well that you awoke.”

Memories can pop up or suddenly flood our minds when we see an image, get a whiff of an old familiar smell or hear a sound or a song. They can be heavy and quite over powering. Memories can make us anxious, laugh, make us cringe or blush however it is our acknowledgement of our past that is ultimately important for Dickens, the good and the bad of the past have equal value, no matter how they make us feel. Dickens completely understood the power of being honest with ourselves about our own pasts and more importantly the power of our memories and of not being dismissive of our emotions. Often I think perhaps we all go through life only experiencing the memories and recollections that 'come to us' that bubble up from the depths and pop in our minds however the past can be a potent and powerful tool in informing our behaviour and how we feel and how happy we are. We should perhaps not just let our memories just simply appear within us. We react to our memories and Dickens is suggesting that we should in fact nurture our reaction to our memories, our past and develop a stance where the bad and painful memories can in fact roar and cheer us on in life. We can strive to become humble and compassionate in the light of our failings and our grave mistakes. We can resolve to love more in the light of our past loneliness, no matter how bitter. The past and it's pains can undoubtedly give us drive and can spur us on and inspire us. The French have a brilliant little phrase, 'l'espirit de l'escalier' which as far as I know means 'stairway wit.' It relates to the sensation of thinking of a come back after an argument when it is all too late. It is that sense of looking back and wishing we had done something else that can provide us with a burning zeal for the present moment. That is the power of the past Dickens wrote of. Our memories, the past, can inform us daily so that the 'shadows of the things that have been' our failings, our pain, the good times and the heaven sent moments of our life can make us strive to be better people each day. Scrooge upon being brought face to face with the past again was, over powered and fell to his knees. In the words of the philosopher Seneca who wrote quite rightly in 'On the Shortness of Life,' those who forget the past, neglect the future.”

In the story the Ghost of Christmas Present come to Scrooge next, however I am going to the future, or the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Scrooge is shown by the spirit a harrowing image of the future in which Tiny Tim is dead and he see's a conversation of some of his business associates about who is going to attend his funeral in which one of them reflects “upon my life I don’t know of anybody to go to it.” Finally, he comes to see his own grave coming face to face with his mortality and the finite nature of his life. The future for Dickens can ultimately provide us with a healthy regard for that great leveler of all things-Death. It is not our death in itself that should inform us but a striving to over come death in how we will be remembered. Dickens's message isn't a stale, morbid depressing one that we are all going to die one day, his message is we have one life to live and need to make the most of it, it is inherently both optimistic and realistic. To quote Seneca again who Dickens would have nodded in agreement with, we “have all the fears of mortals and all the desires of immortals.”

And finally to the present. The here and now. The Ghost of Christmas Present then as we know also visits Scrooge. He visits Bob Cratchit's house and see's the poverty of his employee Bob Cratchit and his son Tiny Tim who is ill, however they cannot afford treatment for him on the meager wages paid by Scrooge. He also see's his nephews family's talking negatively about him. Scrooge is shown the dire nature of his current life and his negative affect on those in his life. Dickens is showing us how the past and the future can inform in changing for the better our present situations and transforming positively our very character. The past and the future can provide us with an unbending and unyielding will to engage positively and joyfully with the here and now. We should live with unbridled joy and happiness at the prospect and potential in this very moment for goodness, the wretches that we are.

Dickens can serve to give us a resolve in the here and now to be cheery, to be wholly joyful, to enjoy others and to make the most of every moment. Dickens is showing how powerful a healthy relationship with the past can be, how it can inform us, whisper to us in this moment, inspire and and drive us on that strive to be better people. The future and it's prospect can also be a source of constant joy and happiness to us if we regard is as a jewel like opportunity to live fully and be who we are, and be good and ultimately be brilliant to each other. The prospect of death is something to be recognised and something the can serve to spur us on, something that can be over come by our life and how we lived it. Coming up to 2013 perhaps the best new years resolution then may be  perhaps old Ebenezer Scrooge's resolve; “I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.”

Football and the Dim, Dark Nooks and Crannies of the Mind

It was the existentialist philosopher Albert Camus who famously said, “All that I know surely about morality and the obligations of man, I owe to football.” Now, I haven’t the faintest idea what he meant by that, however the quote does show how it has been noticed that football has inherent, meaningful qualities from which we can learn about ourselves. In short then, it is been noticed football is about more than just efficacy. It is about acts of beauty, glory, skill and brilliance. Football therefore can point to something inherently brilliant about being an evolved, blinking, breathing, conscious creature. I think one of the ways in which football may do this perhaps, is in terms of psychology. Football, and I believe this to be beyond debate has produced some breathtaking moments of wonderful, inexplicable spontaneity. Now, where do those outrageous moments, those split second decisions come from? From what dim, dark nooks and crannies of the mind do these sparks of excellence spring forth?

Sports psychologists talk about the concept of being in the ‘zone' and having 'flow.' Flow is a pleasing experiential state that occurs during full capacity engagement in which an individual is performing at a level that is matched with the demands of the task. I think we can all experience flow even doing the most mundane and profane things, such as making ourselves a cup of tea or making the bed for example. It is commonplace in itself however it is when flow heightens to a state of being in "the zone" that I think things get interesting. The zone as Ed Smith, a retired professional cricketer perfectly put in his exceptional piece The Mystery of Sporting Form, is;

“an isolated experience of complete absorption, a period of time when there are no extraneous, irrelevant thoughts...What does it feel like, being in the zone? You do no more or no less than what you have to. There are few inessential movements, little psychological or physiological waste. Every movement has a purpose, a reason behind it.”

When a player is in the zone, perhaps then this is where the jaw dropping stuff starts happening. When the mind is clear of extraneous thoughts, it is fully focused, concentrated, the brilliant stuff has room to spring forth, the magic happens. The x wing lifts out of the swamp and Rooney scores an over head kick against Manchester City. Being in the zone is about 'just doing it' like the Nike slogan.To hammer home this point,  about 'just doing it' letting the mind do it's thing, the Guardian Secret Footballer wrote;

“You see, if you are a top footballer, your subconscious mind knows more about football then you ever will. It is only when our critical mind – the one we use for “thinking”, not just “doing” – gets involved that we get compromised. If we can just fall back on knowing that we know how to do something, and not having to consciously calculate how to do it, we stand more chance of performance. This is perfectly illustrated by the fact a player can make a pinpoint pass while running at speed, off balance, over 50 yards but when it comes to the penalty spot, the bit about turning amateur is in the fact that we start to “over think”. We become technical and mindful of the process.”

It seems then that the subconscious mind has more to do with what we do than what we think.  

In his piece, The Question: Do Footballers Know What they're Doing? Jonathan Wilson quotes from a Wayne Rooney interview;

"When a cross comes into a box," Rooney said, "there's so many things that go through your mind in a split second, like five or six different things you can do with the ball. You're asking yourself six questions in a split second. Maybe you've got time to bring it down on the chest and shoot, or you have to head it first-time. If the defender is there, you've obviously got to try and hit it first-time.”

We (Wilson) will come back to Rooney.

Now I know absolutely nothing of psychology, and I do not know enough to go into this in any detail whatsoever however from my layman's reading it seems evidence suggests that our subconscious mind does most of the work and that our minds may actually work to present to our conscious minds the illusion of free will, to trick us into being convinced of our agency. To use my poor handle of language, it seems brain activity occurs before action and the self conscious awareness of doing the action. The brain seems to act before we get the sensation of deciding to act. Sam Harris someone who would regard themselves both a philosopher and neuro-scientist blogged that;

"A persons conscious thoughts, intentions, and efforts at every moment are preceded by causes of which he is unaware." 

And to continue with the Wayne Rooney point here Wilson then goes on to write;

"If that is the case, then those six questions in a split-second" Rooney experiences have been answered before he has even asked them...and, if that is true, then it turns out...that (Alan) Shearer was right; that moments of sporting excellence are inexplicable."

It is the mystery of our minds in all this that really interests me. Not too long ago I watched BBC Horizon episode entitled Out of Control? In it scientists were told to represent on a piece of paper how much the conscious mind has to do with what we do. The small scribbles drawn to represent the amount our conscious mind had to do with what we do suggest our subconscious minds have a much larger role to play than previously thought. I think it may be the way that being in the zone shushes our conscious mind and clears its clunky processes from us that leads to moments of inexplicable brilliance (though this is of course not to discount individual genius) where our big mind, our subconscious mind, has more opportunity to shine through. Some goals are just so marvelous and awe provoking, I guess it is the inexplicable nature of them that makes them so magical to us.

Mass Produced Buddha Statues

Bangkok spreads out before you as you approach it from the airport by taxi, inching along the horizon the closer you get. It is a vast cityscape, a sprawling, awe provoking metropolis. A forest of gargantuan structures take up your whole field of vision. Over 1000 sky scrapers lurch up towards the hazy, ash-grey polluted sky. It feels dramatic, it looks powerful. Your are in the East, entering the mighty city of Bangkok. It is huge, Bangkok is a mega city, the term I believe generally used for a city who's population is roughly over ten million people. Now, in order to recall the rest of my personal experience of Bangkok clearly, a minuscule history will need to be brought to mind in the first instance.

Bangkok the capital city of Thailand, began life as a market town originally settled under the Kingdom of Ayutthaya on the Chao Phraya river which runs through the city today. The 'Kingdom' was essentially a bunch of principalities under the King of Ayutthaya. In the 1700's the Kingdom was invaded and ransacked by a Burmese invasion. Much of their art, temples and literature was tragically lost. The Burmese withdrew within the same year to concentrate on their war with the Chinese. Chaos reigned in the confusion after and a General Phraya Tak (who became king Taskin) fought the remaining Burmese and established the capital of Thonburi. General Chao Phraya Chakri who later became King Rama established the capital of Rattanosokin across the river from Thonburi. So where Bangkok is today was the site of two capital cities. King Rama mounted a coup against Taskin and became King in 1782. Today the ruins of the old city of Ayutthaya are preserved as a UNESCO world heritage site and thus King Rama became the founder of the modern Bangkok we know today. In the 1800's Bangkok heavily industrialised. There was a huge population boom in the 60's then came the Asian Investment boom in the 80's as multi-national corporations put there head quarters in Bangkok. Today Thailand is known as one of the Asian 'tiger cub' economies and as we know is heavily export driven.

Now, please forgive my nose-wrinkingly crude history but I feel it is necessary to be glanced at to really get across how how rapidly the city has undergone massive socio-economic change. The history shows how precious what is left of the old Ayutthaya Kingdom is and how it sits jewel like among the rushed concrete of modernity. To my mind this seems summed in the image of the infamous head of a Buddha statue in the old Ayutthaya city that has had the roots of a bodhi tree grow and wrap around it. In the same way the roots of modernity have enveloped the old city and the old temples. The future, the new, is squashed right up to the old.

The new Bangkok of today is a brave new world, far removed from it's past. All the major consumer culture symbols are present in the city today. You are never far from the yellow glow of the golden arches of McDonald's and the homogeneity, the predictability, the repeated nature, of western consumer culture. Conspicuous consumption, the buying of consumer goods to display social status is prevalent. The Siam Paragon shopping mall in Bangkok is one of the largest in Asia, with over 270 shops and ten floors it is of dizzying proportions. As a man who can feel overwhelmed in Tesco's when it's busy on a Saturday I was glad not to have gone, but noting it's presence in the city displays the cultural and historic shift that has taken place. It seems apt at this point to quote Zygmund Bauman when he wrote about the 2011 English Riots, “the fullness of consumer enjoyment means fullness of life. I shop, therefore I am. To shop or not to shop, this is the question.” And remember, in the world of today, "if you don't have an I-phone, well, you don't have an I-phone." I think that the enormity of the mall sums up the disparity of the Bankgkok of the past and the Bangkok of today. A pervasive consumerism is part of the new Bangkok, a Bangkok of hyper modernisation and consumption.

Of the old then, and the Ayutthaya past, the Temple of the Golden Buddha was to my mind the most impressive. At some point, before the Burmese invasion the statue was covered in plaster to prevent it being stolen. It wasn't until 1955 that by accident the plaster was chipped by and the secret golden statue inside was re-discovered. It is the worlds largest golden statue. When you see it you can imagine some villain out of a Indiana Jones film scheming to steal it. It sits knowingly in the temple, in the lotus position, in it's true form, utterly resplendent. Gold on that scale does not look tacky, it has a curious, glorious warmth to it. It conveys the sense that there is something more to us, something as brilliant as the glint of the light of the golden form. The temple walls are adorned in a beautiful and ornate hand painted pattern. To reflect on the patience and presence of mind it must have taken to paint is truly humbling. You get the sense stood in the temple with your bare feet flat on the mindfully cleaned floor, watching the statue glint under the dome of the meticulously painted walls that the statue was perhaps made by men with higher minds. 

As is normal with most cities the 'palace next to the slum' scenario occurs in Bangkok. The poor sit at the rich man's gates. You can see lame dogs limp among the flashing lights of the strip clubs and dirty children sleep on the street. Drunks lay asleep hunched over on the steps to shops. Graffiti, a global phenomenon is present on some bare walls. Bangkok is a city of exoticism, it is sin city. Your are constantly invited by men with a long list of sinful acts to go see a 'ping pong' show. He will do this by accompanying his proposition with an amusing 'pop-pop' noise. Men constantly offer porn dvd's in the street, stalls sell rows of sex paraphernalia. There are strip club all over the place and of course there are the lady boys.

To walk around Bangkok is to experience sensory overload. There is the noise, the din of the traffic, the constant beep of cars, the whistle of the traffic controllers and the shrill noise of the smaller engines of the tuk-tuks. The crash of the sky train meandering like a snake maybe 25 foot above you. The hum of people talking everywhere on phones, market men loudly advertising their products (it seems if they is a space on the pavement not constantly occupied by pedestrians someone will set up a stall there), large adverts on t.v screens can be heard and seen, looking ghostly above the urban landscape. Then there is the smell, food seems to get cooked in every crevice and cranny available and wafts tantalisingly into the streets. You feel the heat. It's not just hot it's the mugginess, the closeness of the heat is draining, the city essentially acts as a microwave. Then there is the the visual overload. The people of Bangkok live cheek by jowl. They hang from the rafters. Its an anthill. People! People are everywhere. People brushing past you, people passed out and homeless sat next to the pavement. Groups of people huddled around fuzzy t.v's down alley ways. People cooking, eating selling, buying. It's thrilling to just walk down the street and the city feels alive.

There was a night market near our hotel and I spent a good evening strolling through it. Now, I do not know whether this can be verified as a quantifiable, statistical truth however I have a deep inking that there may indeed be more fake watches in Bangkok than people. The shelves were full of knock of clothes, 'adides' t-shirts and the like. You can buy fake headphones, some unbelievably well faked trainers, fake hair dryers, everything and anything for anyone. For those with a warped and evil propensity towards violence knuckle dusters, knives, throwing knives, daggers, flick knives, tazer's, swords and replica air guns are all readily available to the discerning customer. Other stalls sell jewellery, pictures, and statues and mugs etc. From the stalls row upon row of mass produced Buddha's stare blankly at you from the stall after stall.

Earlier I referred to Bangkok as a brave new world, the title of Aldous Huxley's famous dystopian novel. The title, 'Brave New World' comes from a moment in the novel when the main protagonist Bernard Marx repeats ironically to himself the Shakespeare line “O brave new world, That has such people in it.” The line is taken from Shakespeare's the Tempest and is a line by a character called Miranda who after living a quiet and subdued life on an island sees civilisation for the first time and exclaims in wonder "How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't!" The line in the Tempest is also ironic as all she can see are some drunken sailors, however it is the wonderment and amazement that the line is exclaimed in that I think best optimistically sums up my very short experience of Bangkok. "How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't!"