Woman's Hour

I listened, in awe, to Woman's Hour today. Dr Heidi Kastner, forensic psychiatrist, was given the daunting task of uncovering the history of Josef Fritzl, infamous for his appalling crimes against his daughter while he held her captive at his home in Austria.

This is worth listening to and you have about 7 days to do so. People who can express themselves well in more than one language are truly intelligent and Dr Kastner is a prime example. Brilliant. here is the link

Florence and the Machine, “Decade of the Mind” and Eternal Life with Ritalin

This week I downloaded the great music of Florence and the Machine and Flo might be surprised that she has moved me, at my age, in the midst of an autumnal trawl through my mind and body.

With the exception of this blog my brain has barely been exercised in the interest of anything much during this year and then I learn that we have nearly arrived in a Decade of the Mind (2010-2020) and a conference was held in Berlin, 10-12 September. Looking at the agenda the delegates got down to some interesting thinking on social policy, education and health.

As you will know, those who have actually read any of my words, during a good part of late August I had access to the student mind under pressure. To my amazement I learned that there are lots of students who have completed varying degrees of degree with liberally dispensed Ritalin, a drug I always imagined had been designed to aid the less well parented child who suffered from ADHD. Attention deficit is clearly a problem for any student who has shaded a few lectures after nights out and to lean on something like Ritalin at a crucial period in their education actually doesn’t surprise me.

What does surprise me is that pharma companies have geared up a series of mood drugs that can cognitively enhance the brains of those that can afford them, whether prescriptively or commercially. These drugs being described very aptly in last weekend’s Observer Magazine as cosmetic surgery for the brain. Go here for the full story which first appeared in the New Yorker back in April. The writer, Margaret Talbot, really gets into the grey matter and there are no grey areas. People who use this stuff for cognitive enhancement are doing so to give themselves an edge in the workplace and elsewhere and are evidently starting to believe the ultimate miracle of life. That there is no death.

Ms Talbot’s article includes mention of this web site which I strongly recommend. Here you will find young attractive, obviously well off, classy, educated people with “PhDs and great careers” who are clearly onto something; such as everlasting life. At the home of the Institute of Immortalists you will find Immortalists who believe that in their lifetime there will be everlasting life. How strange is that concept? To discover everlasting life within the confines of mortality

The 1hour 45 minute film at Imminst.org is no better than watching any other eccentric sect that inhabits the mediocre minds of over-bred, unblemished, bourgeois white people. And when they talk of everlasting life, saving lives and then requesting donations and building communities, with a backdrop of nice children on swings, it all starts to become clear that behind the cognitive enhancement lies all the insecurities that build mindless religions.

While Imminst offer dreams of eternal life, surgically enhanced bodies and new drugs to underpin their moderate intellects the life span of human beings in parts of Africa remains at around 40 years

Science will gradually and progressively improve and extend our lives and we may well inhabit space. But science should never advance without good philosophy. The human mind and its lifelong production is arguably immortal but the physical vehicle which bears it through life becomes a little uninteresting

Thanks to the ancient Greeks we can learn of ataraxia. To my mind ataraxia is the intellectual, all knowing, shrug of the shoulders. When I was young, eternal life meant perpetual time with people I wasn’t keen on. The Immortalists can get on with it

The ladies and gentlemen of Decade of the Mind seem to have a more realistic and sociable agenda and Florence and her Machine can continue to make art. “A Kiss with a Fist is Better Than None”!! Thanks Florence

Blimey! Comedy in Worthing

Somebody is doing something right with the programming at the theatres in Worthing. Stewart Lee is giving us a gig. Although he may just be on a fact finding mission for a new set. Nonetheless I shall be there on 7th October. For more info on the 41st best stand up go here

Marx, Lehmann Bros, Bertrand Russell and the Communist Manifesto in Worthing

On my desk sits a picture of Bertrand Russell “…with pipe and slippers”, a picture I discovered in Rome last year at the same time as I was nearing the completion of Russell’s “History of Western Philosophy”. I installed the picture at the suggestion of a friend who thought Russell would provide inspiration. The book, which was an Xmas gift from my son, has been both inspiring and extremely useful for reference. The picture, however, has had no magical, spiritual or material influence on my life and I dare say Russell would have found it amusing that his picture was in place rather as a holy picture might have been in my young Roman Catholic years

Now though, the picture is festooned with Postit notes as is the rest of my desk area, which I ceded to my son when he arrived at my place to complete his Master’s dissertation. He completed the work last Monday and is now in Greece. The Postits remain as I endeavour to absorb these prompts.

To the left of Russell’s head is “Hegel – Universality+particularity ANTAGONISM”. To the right “explain exploitation and then why the proletariat would want to recreate it (?)”. Then there are these - “ideology comes from the material conditions, and so they must be abolished (universal revolution)” “ideology is the capitalist’s drive” “crisis is the crowning point of ideology”.

On the first anniversary of the Lehmann Brothers collapse and having recently learnt from a very sound informant that one top banker spends £2000 per week on food for his family of four, for me to be contemplating these slightly arcane Postit messages has been straightening and finally informative. I think I might get to like Karl Marx

During my commercial and general work life I have experienced many stressful, demanding periods but nothing had prepared me for the time I spent with my son as he approached the delivery day for his work. During the final 36 hours he slept for just 90 minutes. I didn’t manage much more myself although I did manage to complete a cryptic crossword for the first time in many years

During the build up to Delivery Day, 7th September, there was occasionally some humour and this took the biscuit for me

“I need a copy of the Communist Manifesto!!” he announced rather overbearingly.

…….it was Friday afternoon, 4th September, and the tension had reached a level I had not envisaged. Only two clear days to go before the delivery of this piece of work, his dissertation for an MA, which, by then was grafted onto me and living uneasily alongside a very separate perception of urgency, importance and the Marxist view on the current economic situation

Living in Worthing is often intellectually challenging. Challenging from the ankles up. To suddenly be in need of the communist manifesto in a town which has not produced a Labour Councillor in 40 years is a truly shocking thought. Could one find a Walnut Whip widely available at a Weight Watchers convention?

Waterstones was Luke’s suggestion. The Waterstones which is only 50 metres from my front door files philosophy under “Mysticism and Alternative Therapy”. The local library did not answer the phone. The Communist Manifesto discussion ended behind a firmly closed door.

In time the need for the Communist Manifesto had, somehow, been diminished by his new train of thought. I had retired to some ironic ironing.

I can’t remember exactly how much time Luke spent with me but it has been one of the most profoundly stimulating times of my entire existence. My life played out roughly as normal but against the utterly unfamiliar academic backdrop. I do know that the acquisition of knowledge, the development of ideas and the sharing of all that information is humankind’s highest achievement

I must see if I can find a Communist Manifesto in Worthing.