When truth becomes a casualty, democracy is put at risk

 You may know of Raimond Gaita as the author of Romulus, My Father, a memoir of his childhood, as the only child of postwar European parents growing up in rural Australia. It was turned into a movie directed by Richard Roxborough (his directorial debut) and starring Eric Bana. What you may not know is that Raimond Gaita is also a professor of philosophy who happens to live in the same metropolis as me, albeit in different suburbs.
 
I borrowed his latest tome, Justice and Hope; Essays, Lectures and Other Writings, from my local library (published last year, 2023), and have barely made a dent in the 33 essays, unequally divided into 6 parts. So far, I’ve read the 5 essays in Part 1: An Unconditional Love of the World, and just the first essay of Part 2: Truth and Judgement, which is titled rather provocatively, The Intelligentsia in the Age of Trump. Each essay heading includes the year it was written, and the essay on the Trump phenomenon (my term, not his) was written in 2017, so after Trump’s election but well before his ignominious attempt to retain power following his election defeat in 2020. And, of course, he now has more stature and influence than ever, having just won the Presidential nomination from the Republican Party for the 2024 election, which is only months away as I write.
 
Gaita doesn’t write like an academic in that he uses plain language and is not afraid to include personal anecdotes if he thinks they’re relevant, and doesn’t pretend that he’s nonpartisan in his political views. The first 5 essays regarding ‘an unconditional love of the world’ all deal with other writers and postwar intellects, all concerned with the inhumane conditions that many people suffered, and some managed to survive, during World War 2. This is confronting and completely unvarnished testimony, much darker and rawer than anything I’ve come across in the world of fiction, as if no writer’s imagination could possibly capture the absolute lowest and worst aspects of humanity.
 
None of us really know how we would react in those conditions. Sometimes in dreams we may get a hint. I’ve sometimes considered dreams as experiments that our minds play on us to test our moral fortitude. I know from my father’s experiences in WW2, both in the theatre of war and as a POW, that one’s moral compass can be bent out of shape. He told me of how he once threatened to kill someone who was stealing from wounded who were under his care. The fact that the person he threatened was English and the wounded were Arabs says a lot, as my father held the same racial prejudices as most of his generation. But I suspect he’d witnessed so much unnecessary death and destruction on such a massive scale that the life of a petty, opportunistic thief seemed worthless indeed. When he returned, he had a recurring dream where there was someone outside the house and he feared to confront them. And then on one occasion he did and killed them barehanded. His telling of this tale (when I was much older, of course) reminded me of Luke Skywalker meeting and killing his Jungian shadow in The Empire Strikes Back. My father could be a fearsome presence in those early years of my life – he had demons and they affected us all.
 
Another one of my tangents, but Gaita’s ruminations on the worst of humanity perpetrated by a nation with a rich and rightly exalted history makes one realise that we should not take anything for granted. I’ve long believed that anyone can commit evil given the right circumstances. We all live under this thin veneer that only exists because we mostly have everything we need and are generally surrounded by people who have no real axe to grind and who don’t see our existence as a threat to their own wellbeing.
 
I recently saw the movie, Civil War, starring Kirsten Dunst, who plays a journalist covering a hypothetical conflict in America, consequential to an authoritarian government taking control of the White House. The aspect that I found most believable was how the rule of law no longer seemed to apply, and people had become completely tribal whereupon one’s neighbour could become one’s enemy. I’ve seen documentaries on conflicts in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia where this has happened – neighbours become mortal enemies, virtually overnight, because they suddenly find themselves on opposite sides of a tribal divide. I found the movie quite scary because it showed what happens when the veneer of civility we take for granted is not just lifted, but disappears.
 
On the first page of his essay on Trump, Gaita sets the tone and the context that resulted in Brexit on one side of the Atlantic and Trump’s Republican nomination on the other.
 
Before Donald Trump became the Republican nominee, Brexit forced many among the left-liberal intelligentsia to ask why they had not realised that resentment, anger and even hatred could go so deep as they did in parts of the electorate.
 
I think the root cause of all these dissatisfactions and resentments that lead to political upheavals that no one sees coming is trenchant inequality. I remember my father telling me when I was a child that the conflict in Ireland wasn’t between 2 religious groups but about wealth and inequality. I suspect he was right, even though it seems equally simplistic.
 
In all these divisions that we’ve seen, including in Australia, is the perception that people living in rural areas are being left out of the political process and not getting their fair share of representation, and consequentially everything else that follows from that, which results in what might be called a falling ‘standard of living’. The fallout from the GFC, which was global, exacerbated these differences, both perceived and real, and conservative politicians took advantage. They depicted the Left as ‘elitist’, which is alluded to in the title of Gaita’s essay, and is ‘code’ for ignorant and arrogant. This happened in Australia and I suspect in other Western democracies as well, like the UK and America.
 
Gaita expresses better than most how Trump has changed politics in America, if no where else, by going outside the bounds of normal accepted behaviour for a world leader. In effect, he’s changed the social norms that one associates with a person holding that position.
 
To illustrate my point, I’ll provide selected quotes, albeit out of context.
 
To call Trump a radically unconventional politician is like calling the mafia unconventional debt collectors; it is to fail to understand how important are the conventions, often unspoken, that enables decency in politics. Trump has poured a can of excrement over those conventions.
 
He has this to say about Trump’s ‘alternative facts’ not only espoused by him, but his most loyal followers.

In linking reiterated accusations of fake news to elites, Trump and his accomplices intended to undermine the conceptual and epistemic space that makes conversations between citizens possible.
 
It is hardly possible to exaggerate the seriousness of this. The most powerful democracy on Earth, the nation that considers itself and is often considered by others to be the leader of ‘the free world’, has a president who attacks unrelentingly the conversational space that can exist only because it is based on a common understanding – the space in which citizens can confidently ask one another what facts support their opinions. If they can’t ask that of one another, if they can’t agree on when something counts as having been established as fact, then the value of democracy is diminished.
 
He then goes on to cite J.D. Vance’s (recently nominated as Trump’s running VP), Hillbilly Elegy, where ‘he tells us… that Obama is not an American, that he was “born in some far-flung corner of the world”, that he has ties to Islamic extremism…’ and much worse.
 
Regarding some of Trump’s worse excesses during his 2016 campaign like getting the crowd to shout “Lock her up!” (his political opponent at the time) Gaita makes this point:
 
At the time, a CNN reporter said that his opponents did not take him seriously, but they did take him literally, whereas his supporters took him seriously but not literally. It was repeated many times… he would be reigned in by the Republicans in the House and the Senate and by trusted institutions. [But] He hasn’t changed in office.
 
It’s worth contemplating what this means if he wins Office again in 2024. He’s made it quite clear he’s out for revenge, and he’s also now been given effective immunity from prosecution by the Supreme Court if he seeks revenge through the Justice Department while he’s in Office. There is also the infamous Project 2025 which has the totally unhidden agenda to get rid of the so-called ‘deep state’ and replace public servants with Trump acolytes, not unlike a dictatorship. Did I just use that word?
 
Trump has achieved something I’ve never witnessed before, which Gaita doesn’t mention, though I have the benefit of an additional 7 years hindsight. What I’m referring to is that Trump has created an alternative universe, and from the commentary I’ve read on forums like Quora and elsewhere, you either live in one universe or the other – it’s impossible to claim you inhabit both. In other words, Trump has created an unbridgeable divide, which can’t be reconciled politically or intellectually. In one universe, Biden stole the 2020 POTUS election from Trump, and in another universe, Trump attempted to overturn the election and failed.
 
This is the depth of division that Trump has created in his country, and you have to ask: How far will people go to defend their version of the truth?
 
It was less than a century ago that fascism threatened the entire world order and created the most extensive conflict witnessed by humankind. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that we are on the potential brink of creating a new brand of authoritarianism in the country epitomised by the slogan, ‘the free world’.

Zen and the art of flow

 This was triggered by a newsletter I received from ABC Classic (Australian radio station) with a link to a study done on ‘flow’, which is a term coined by physiologist, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, to describe a specific psychological experience that many (if not all) people have had when totally immersed in some activity that they not only enjoy but have developed some expertise in.
 
The study was performed by Dr John Kounios from Drexel University's Creative Research Lab in Philadelphia, who “examined the 'neural and psychological correlates of flow' in a sample of jazz guitarists.” The article was authored by Jennifer Mills from ABC Classic’s sister station, ABC Jazz. But the experience of ‘flow’ just doesn’t apply to mental or artistic activities, but also sporting activities like playing tennis or cricket. Mills heads her article with the claim that ‘New research helps unlock the secrets of flow, an important tool for creative and problem solving tasks’. She quotes Csikszentmihalyi to provide a working definition:
 
"A state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it."
 
I believe I’ve experienced ‘flow’ in 2 quite disparate activities: writing fiction and driving a car. Just to clarify, some people think that experiencing flow while driving means that you daydream, whereas I’m talking about the exact opposite. I hardly ever daydream while driving, and if I find myself doing it, I bring myself back to the moment. Of course, cars are designed these days to insulate you from the experience of driving as much as possible, as we evolve towards self-driving cars. Thankfully, there are still cars available that are designed to involve you in the experience and not remove you from it.
 
I was struck by the fact that the study used jazz musicians, as I’ve often compared the ability to play jazz with the ability to write dialogue (even though I’m not a musician). They both require extemporisation. The article references Nat Bartsch, whom I’ve seen perform live and whose music is an unusual style of jazz in that it can be very contemplative. I saw her perform one of her albums with her quartet, augmented with a cello, which made it a one-off, unique performance. (This is a different concert performed in Sydney without the cellist.)
 
The study emphasised the point that the more experienced practitioners taking part were the ones more likely to experience ‘flow’. In other words, to experience ‘flow’ you need to reach a certain skill-level. In emphasising this point, the author quotes jazz legend, Charlie Parker:
 
"You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practise, practise, practise. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail."
 
I can totally identify with this, as when I started writing it was complete crap, to the extent that I wouldn’t show it to anyone. For some irrational reason, I had the self-belief – some might say, arrogance – that, with enough perseverance and practice, I could ‘break-through’ into the required skill-level. In fact, I now create characters and write dialogue with little conscious effort – it’s become a ‘delegated’ task, so I can concentrate on the more complex tasks of resolving plot points, developing moral dilemmas and formulating plot twists. Notice that these require a completely different set of skills that also had to be learned from scratch. But all this can come together, often in unexpected and surprising ways, when one is in the mental state of ‘flow’. I’ve described this as a feeling like you’re an observer, not the progenitor, so the process occurs as if you’re a medium and you just have to trust it.
 
Dr. Steffan Herff, leader of the Sydney Music, Mind and Body Lab at Sydney University, makes a point that supports this experience:
 
"One component that makes flow so interesting from a cognitive neuroscience and psychology perspective, is that it comes with a 'loss of self-consciousness'."
 
And this allows me to segue into Zen Buddhism. Many years ago, I read an excellent book by Daisetz Suzuki titled, Zen and Japanese Culture, where he traces the evolutionary development of Zen, starting with Buddhism in India, then being adopted in China, where it was influenced by Taoism, before reaching Japan, where it was assimilated into a sister-religion (for want of a better term) with Shintoism, which is an animistic religion.
 
Suzuki describes Zen as going inward rather than outward, while acknowledging that the two can’t be disconnected. But I think it’s the loss of ‘self’ that makes it relevant to the experience of flow. When Suzuki described the way Zen is practiced in Japan, he talked about being in the moment, whatever the activity, and for me, this is an ideal that we rarely attain. It was only much later that I realised that this is synonymous with flow as described by Csikszentmihalyi and currently being examined in the studies referenced above.
 
I’ve only once before written a post on Zen (not counting a post on Buddhism and Christianity), which arose from reading Douglas Hofstadter’s seminal tome, Godel Escher Bach (which is not about Zen, although it gets a mention), and it’s worth quoting this summation from myself:
 
My own take on this is that one’s ego is not involved yet one feels totally engaged. It requires one to be completely in the moment, and what I’ve found in this situation is that time disappears. Sportsmen call it being ‘in the zone’ and it’s something that most of us have experienced at some time or another.

The universal quest for meaning

I’ve already cited Philosophy Now (Issue 162, June/July 2024) in my last 2 posts and I’m about to do it again. Every issue has a theme, and this one is called ‘The Meaning Issue’, so it’s no surprise that 2 of the articles reference Viktor Frankl’s seminal book, Man’s Search for Meaning. I’ve said that it’s probably the only book I’ve read that I think everyone should read.
 
For those who don’t know, Frankl was an Auschwitz survivor and a ‘logotherapist’, a term he coined to describe his own version of existential psychological therapy. Basically, Frankl saw purpose as being the unrecognised essence of our existence, and its lack as a source of mental issues like depression, neuroticism and stress. I’ve written about the importance of purpose previously, so I might repeat myself.
 
One of the articles (by Georgia Arkell) compares Frankl’s ideas on existentialism with Sartre’s, and finds Frankl more optimistic. I know that I’m taking a famous line out of context, but I feel it sums up their differences. Sartre famously said, ‘Hell is other people’, but Frankl lived through hell, and would no doubt, have strongly disagreed. Frankl argued that we can find meaning even under the most extreme circumstances, and he should know.
 
To quote from Arkell’s article:
 
Frankl noted that the prisoners who appeared to have the highest chance of survival were those with some aim or meaning directed beyond themselves and beyond day to day survival.
 
Then there is this, in Frankl’s own words (from Man’s Search for Meaning):
 
…it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner-decision and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally then, any man can, under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him – mentally and spiritually.
 
I should point out that my own father spent 2.5 years as a POW in Germany, though it wasn’t a death camp, even though, according to his own testimony, it was only Red Cross food parcels that kept him alive. He rarely talked about it, as he was a firm believer that you couldn’t make the experience of war, in all its manifestations, comprehensible to anyone who hadn’t experienced it. But in light of Frankl’s words, I wonder now how my father did find meaning. There is one aspect of his experience that might shed some light on that – he escaped no less than 3 times.
 
My father was very principled, some might say, to a fault. He volunteered to stay and look after the wounded when they were ordered to evacuate Crete, because, as he said, it was his job (he was an ambulance officer in the Field Ambulance Corp). That action probably later saved his life, but that’s another story. Also on Crete, while trying to escape with another prisoner with the help of a local woman (it was always the women who did this, according to my father), they were discovered by a German, whilst hiding. My father gave himself up so the other 2 could escape. The Australian escapee made it back home and was able to tell my grandmother that her son was still alive (she only knew he was missing in action). But the 3 attempts I mentioned all happened after he was taken to Germany, and on one occasion, the Commandant asked him, why did he escape? My father answered matter-of-factly, ‘It’s my job’. Apparently, due to his sincerity (not for being a smart-arse), the Commandant chose not to punish him.
 
So, I think my father survived because he stuck to some core values and principles that became his own rock and anchor. His attempts to escape are manifestations of his personal affirmation that he never lost hope.
 
Frankl understood better than most, because of his lived experience, the importance of hope to a person’s survival. As an aside, our (Australian) government has a very deliberate policy of eliminating all hope for asylum seekers who arrive by sea. I think it’s so iniquitous, it should be a recognised crime – it goes to the heart of human rights. Slightly off-topic, but very relevant.
 
Loss of hope is something I’ve explored in my own fiction, where we witness its loss like a ball of tightly wound string slowly unravelling (not the metaphor I used in the book), as a key character is abandoned on a distant world (it’s sci-fi, for those who don’t know). I’ve been told by at least one reader that it’s the most impactful section in the book. True story: I was once sitting next to someone on a bus who was up to that part of the book, and as he got up to leave, he said, ‘If she dies, I’ll never speak to you again.’
 
See how easily I get side-tracked - my mind goes off on tangents – I can’t help myself. I’m the same in conversations.
 
Back to the topic: the other article in Philosophy Now that references Frankl, Finding Meaning in Suffering, by Patrick Testa (a psychiatric clinician with a BA in philosophy and political science) also quotes from Man’s Search for Meaning:
 
There are some authors who contend that meanings and values are nothing but defense mechanisms or reaction formulations…  But for myself, I would not be willing to live merely for the sake of my defense mechanisms, nor would I be ready to die merely for the sake of my reaction formulations. (Emphasis in Testa’s quote)
 
This quote was the original trigger for this essay, as it leads me to consider the role of identity. I’ve long argued that identity is what someone is willing to die for (which Frankl specifically mentions), therefore willing to kill for. Identity is strongly related to ‘meaning’ for most people, albeit at a subconscious level. For some people, their identity is their profession, for others it’s their heritage, and for many it’s their political affiliation. The point about identity is that it both binds us and divides us.
 
But if you were to ask someone what their identity is, they might well struggle to answer – I know I do – but if it appears to be threatened, even erroneously, they will become combative. Speaking for myself, I struggled to find meaning for a large portion of my life, seeking it in relationships that were more fantasy than realistic. I think I only found meaning (or purpose) when I was able to channel my artistic drives and also express my intellectual meanderings like I’m doing on this blog. So that axiomatically becomes my identity. I’ve written more than once about the importance of freedom, by which I mean the freedom to express one’s thoughts and any artistic urges. Even in my profession (which is in engineering), I found I was best when left to my own devices, and suffered most when someone tried to put me in a box and confine me to their way of thinking.
 
I can’t imagine living in a society where that particular freedom is curtailed, yet they exist. I would argue that a society where its participants can’t flourish would stagnate and not progress in any way, except possibly in a strictly material sense. We’ve seen that in totalitarian regimes all over the world.
 
Lastly, one can’t leave this topic without talking about religion. In fact, I imagine that many, on reading the title, would have expected that would be the starting point. I’ll provide a reference at the end, but very early on in the life of this blog, I wrote a post called Hope, which was really a response to a somewhat facile argument by William Lane Craig that atheists can’t possibly have hope. I don’t think I can improve on that argument here, but it also ties into the topic of identity that I just referred to.
 
Apart from identity, which is usually cultural, there is the universal regard for human suffering. As pointed out in the articles I cited, suffering is an unavoidable aspect of life. The Buddhist philosophy makes this its starting point – It’s the first of the Four Noble Truths, from which the other 3 stem. I expect a lot of religions have arisen as a means to psychologically ‘explain’ the purpose of suffering. It’s also a feature of virtually all fiction, without a religious argument in sight.
 
But it’s also a key feature of Frankl’s philosophy. Arguably, without suffering, we can’t find meaning. I’ve argued previously that we don’t find wisdom through learning and achievements, but through dealing with adversity – it’s even a specific teaching in the I Ching, albeit expressed in different words:
 
Adversity is the opposite of success, but it can lead to success if it befalls the right person.
 
I expect many of us can identify with that. Meaning can be found in the darkest of psychological places, yet without it, we wouldn’t keep going.
 
 
Other posts relevant to this topic: Homage to my Old Man; Hope; The importance of purpose; Freedom, justice, happiness and truth; Freedom, a moral imperative.
 

Feeling is fundamental

 I’m not sure I’ve ever had an original idea, but I sometimes raise one that no one else seems to talk about. And this is one of them: I contend that the primary, essential attribute of consciousness is to be able to feel, and the ability to comprehend is a secondary attribute.
 
I don’t even mind if this contentious idea triggers debate, but we tend to always discuss consciousness in the context of human consciousness, where we metaphorically talk about making decisions based on the ‘head’ or the ‘heart’. I’m unsure of the origin of this dichotomy, but there is an inference that our emotional and rational ‘centres’ (for want of a better word) have different loci (effectively, different locations). No one believes that, of course, but possibly people once did. The thing is that we are all aware that sometimes our emotional self and rational self can be in conflict. This is already going down a path I didn’t intend, so I may return at a later point.
 
There is some debate about whether insects have consciousness, but I believe they do because they demonstrate behaviours associated with fear and desire, be it for sustenance or company. In other respects, I think they behave like automatons. Colonies of ants and bees can build a nest without a blueprint except the one that apparently exists in their DNA. Spiders build webs and birds build nests, but they don’t do it the way we would – it’s all done organically, as if they have a model in their brain that they can follow; we actually don’t know.
 
So I think the original role of consciousness in evolutionary terms was to feel, concordant with abilities to act on those feelings. I don’t believe plants can feel, but they’d have very limited ability to act on them, even if they could. They can communicate chemically, and generally rely on the animal kingdom to propagate, which is why a global threat to bee populations is very serious indeed.
 
So, in evolutionary terms, I think feeling came before cognitive abilities – a point I’ve made before. It’s one of the reasons that I think AI will never be sentient – a viewpoint not shared by most scientists and philosophers, from what I’ve read.  AI is all about cognitive abilities; specifically, the ability to acquire knowledge and then deploy it to solve problems. Some argue that by programming biases into the AI, we will be simulating emotions. I’ve explored this notion in my own sci-fi, where I’ve added so-called ‘attachment programming’ to an AI to simulate loyalty. This is fiction, remember, but it seems plausible.
 
Psychological studies have revealed that we need an emotive component to behave rationally, which seems counter-intuitive. But would we really prefer if everyone was a zombie or a psychopath, with no ability to empathise or show compassion. We see enough of this already. As I’ve pointed out before, in any ingroup-outgroup scenario, totally rational individuals can become totally irrational. We’ve all observed this, possibly actively participated.
 
An oft made point (by me) that I feel is not given enough consideration is the fact that without consciousness, the universe might as well not exist. I agree with Paul Davies (who does espouse something similar) that the universe’s ability to be self-aware, would seem to be a necessary condition for its existence (my wording, not his). I recently read a stimulating essay in the latest edition of Philosophy Now (Issue 162, June/July 2024) titled enigmatically, Significance, by Ruben David Azevedo, a ‘Portuguese philosophy and social sciences teacher’. His self-described intent is to ‘Tell us why, in a limitless universe, we’re not insignificant’. In fact, that was the trigger for this post. He makes the point (that I’ve made elsewhere myself), that in both time and space, we couldn’t be more insignificant, which leads many scientists and philosophers to see us as a freakish by-product of an otherwise purposeless universe. A perspective that Davies has coined ‘the absurd universe’. In light of this, it’s worth reading Azevedo’s conclusion:
 
In sum, humans are neither insignificant nor negligible in this mind-blowing universe. No living being is. Our smallness and apparent peripherality are far from being measures of our insignificance. Instead, it may well be the case that we represent the apex of cosmic evolution, for we have this absolute evident and at the same time mysterious ability called consciousness to know both ourselves and the universe.
 
I’m not averse to the idea that there is a cosmic role for consciousness. I like John Wheeler’s obvious yet pertinent observation:
 
The Universe gave rise to consciousness, and consciousness gives meaning to the Universe.
 
And this is my point: without consciousness, the Universe would have no meaning. And getting back to the title of this essay, we give the Universe feeling. In fact, I’d say that the ability to feel is more significant than the ability to know or comprehend.
 
Think about the role of art in all its manifestations, and how it’s totally dependent on the ability to feel. In some respects, I consider AI-generated art a perversion, because any feeling we have for its products is of our own making, not the AI’s.
 
I’m one of those weird people who can even find beauty in mathematics, while acknowledging only a limited ability to pursue it. It’s extraordinary that I can find beauty in a symphony, or a well-written story, or the relationship between prime numbers and Riemann’s Zeta function.

Addendum: I realised I can’t leave this topic without briefly discussing the biochemical role in emotional responses and behaviours. I’m thinking of the brain’s drugs-of-choice like serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin and endorphins. Some may argue that these natural ‘messengers’ are all that’s required to explain emotions. However, there are other drugs, like alcohol and caffeine (arguably the most common) that also affect us emotionally, sometimes to our detriment. My point being that the former are nature’s target-specific mechanisms to influence the way we feel, without actually being the genesis of feelings per se.

Daniel C Dennett (28 March 1942 - 19 April 2024)

 I only learned about Dennett’s passing in the latest issue of Philosophy Now (Issue 162, June/July 2024), where Daniel Hutto (Professor of Philosophical Psychology at the University of Wollongong) wrote a 3-page obituary. Not that long ago, I watched an interview with him, following the publication of his last book, I’ve Been Thinking, which, from what I gathered, is basically a memoir, as well as an insight into his philosophical musings. (I haven’t read it, but that’s the impression I got from the interview.)
 
I should point out that I have fundamental philosophical differences with Dennett, but he’s not someone you can ignore. I must confess I’ve only read one of his books (decades ago), Freedom Evolves (2006), though I’ve read enough of his interviews and commentary to be familiar with his fundamental philosophical views. It’s something of a failing on my part that I haven’t read his most famous tome, Consciousness Explained (1991). Paul Davies once nominated it among his top 5 books, along with Douglas Hofstadter’s Godel Escher Bach. But then he gave a tongue-in-cheek compliment by quipping, ‘Some have said that he explained consciousness away.’
 
Speaking of Hofstadter, he and Dennett co-published a book, The Mind’s I, which is really a collection of essays by different authors, upon which Dennett and Hofstadter commented. I wrote a short review covering only a small selection of said essays on this blog back in 2009.
 
Dennett wasn’t afraid to tackle the big philosophical issues, in particular, anything relating to consciousness. He was unusual for a philosopher in that he took more than a passing interest in science, and appreciated the discourse that axiomatically arises between the 2 disciplines, while many others (on both sides) emphasise the tension that seems to arise and often morphs into antagonism.
 
What I found illuminating in one of his YouTube videos was how Dennett’s views of the world hadn’t really changed that much over time (mind you, neither have mine), and it got me thinking that it reinforces an idea I’ve long held, but was once iterated by Nietzsche, that our original impulses are intuitive or emotive and then we rationalise them with argument. I can’t help but feel that this is what Dennett did, though he did it extremely well.
 
I like the quote at the head of Hutto’s obituary: “The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.”

 

The negative side of positive thinking

 This was a topic in last week’s New Scientist (8 June 2024) under the heading, The Happiness Trap, an article written by Conor Feehly, a (freelance journalist, based in Bangkok). Basically, he talks about the plethora of ‘self-help’ books and in particular, the ‘emergence of the positive psychology movement in 1998’. I was surprised he could provide a year, when one would tend to think it was a generational transition. At least, that’s my experience.
 
He then discusses the backlash (my term, not his) that’s occurred since, and mentions a study, ‘published in 2022, [by] an international group of psychologists exploring how societal pressure to be happy affects people in 40 countries’ (my emphasis). He cites Brock Bastian at the University of Melbourne, who was part of the study, “When we are not willing to accept negative emotions as a part of life, this can mean that we may see negative emotions as a sign there is something wrong with us.” And this gets to the nub of the issue.
 
I can’t help but think that there is a generational effect, if not a divide. I see myself as being in between, generationally speaking. My parents lived through the Great Depression and WW2, so they experienced enough negative emotion for all of us. Growing up in rural NSW, we didn’t have much but neither did anyone else, so we didn’t think that was exceptional. There was a lot of negative emotion in our lives as a consequence of the trauma that my Dad experienced as both a wartime serviceman and a prisoner-of-war. It was only much later, as an adult, that I realised this was not the norm. Back then, PTSD wasn’t a term.
 
One of the things that struck me in Feehly’s article was the idea of ‘acceptance’. To quote:
 
Research shows that when people accepted their negative emotions – rather than judging mental experience as good or bad – they become more emotionally resilient, experiencing fewer negative feelings in response to environmental stressors and attaining a greater sense of well-being.
 
He also says in the same context:
 
The good news is that, as we age, we increasingly rely on acceptance – which might help to explain why older people tend to report better emotional well-being.
 
As one of that cohort (older people), I can identify with that sentiment. Acceptance is a multi-faceted word, because one of the unexpected benefits of getting older is that we learn to accept ourselves, becoming less critical and judgemental, and hopefully extending that to others.
 
In our youth, acceptance by one’s peers is a prime driver of self-esteem and associated behaviours, and social media has to a large extent hijacked that impulse, which was also highlighted by Brock Bastian (cited above).
 
I’ve got side-tracked to the extent that this is the antithesis of the so-called ‘positive psychology movement’, possibly because I think my generation largely avoided that trap. We are more likely to see that a ‘think positive’ attitude in the face of all of life’s dilemmas and problems is a delusion. What’s obvious is that negative emotional states have evolutionary value, because they have ancient roots. The other point that’s obvious to me is that we are all addicted to stories, where we vicariously experience negative emotions on a regular basis. In fact, a story that only contained positive emotions would never be read, or watched.
 
What has always been obvious to me, and which I’ve written about before, including in the very early history of this blog, is that we need adversity to gain wisdom. As I keep saying, it’s the theme of virtually every story ever told. When I look back on my early adult years and how seemingly insurmountable they felt, my older self is so grateful I persevered. There is a hypothetical often raised: what advice would you give your younger self? I’d just say, ‘Hang in there, it gets better.’