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Archive for December, 2024

Failing to grasp matter

Posted in Uncategorized on December 20, 2024| Leave a Comment »

I love a misty morning like this. I love how the mist blurs and obscures the landscape. Soon after getting home from taking this photo I read this, in Iain McGilchrist’s “The Matter with Things”

The atom has the curious property that while from a distance it has a blurry self-consistency, it does not become clearer, but more indistinct, as you zoom in, so that there is less and less to see, until it evades your grasp entirely.

The physicist, Carlo Rovelli, writes beautifully about this subject –

A handful of elementary particles, which vibrate and fluctuate constantly between existence and non-existence and swarm in space even when it seems that there is nothing there, combine together to infinity like the letters of a cosmic alphabet to tell the immense history of galaxies, of the innumerable stars, of sunlight, of mountains, woods and fields of grain, of the smiling faces of the young at parties, and of the night sky studded with stars.

Can you imagine? Shift your perspective from a world filled with “solid” unchanging objects, to one of “elementary particles, which vibrate and fluctuate constantly between existence and non-existence” and how does the world look? As he writes elsewhere, the universe isn’t made of solid objects but of relationships and events. That’s quite a different way to perceive reality, don’t you think?

Writing this just now I find my mind calling up one of the books which changed my thinking about health care – Hans-Georg Gadamer’s “Enigma of Health”. In those essays he makes it clear that health isn’t an object we can measure, or a product we can make. Think of it this way. Chances are you are not particularly aware of your right thumb at this very moment, but trap it in a car door, and you become instantly extremely, excruciatingly aware of it! But once that injured thumb has healed, it fades into the background again. We doctors are taught a lot about pathology and the natural history of diseases. But “health”? It’s not even easy to define. We can become aware of the parts of our body which are diseased, but it’s pretty difficult to notice actual health…..that’s the enigma….as you heal, the diseased part becomes kind of invisible again.

Here’s a photo I took on the nearby Ile d’Oleron one day –

And here’s a passage from Carlo Rovelli, which goes well with this image –

The world is not a collection of things, it is a collection of events. The difference between things and events is that things persist in time, events have a limited duration. A stone is a prototypical ‘thing’: we can ask ourselves where it will be tomorrow. The world is made up of networks of kisses, not stones.

The universe isn’t as solid or fixed as we often assume. And I think that’s beautiful.

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Calling all souls….

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 19, 2024| 2 Comments »

This is one of my favourite photos. It shows two things which always fascinate me. Firstly, the duck, which is apparently just sitting on the water is sending out ripples across the surface in the most beautiful pattern of concentric circles. Secondly, the fish appear to swimming around the duck, some even following the actual ripples.

This is a great example of how just by living we change the world around us and influence the lives of others.

D H Lawrence said –

As we live, we are transmitters of life.

When I’ve looked at this photo in the past, I’ve been struck by how we “influencers”, but, after reading this sentence by Lawrence, I think “transmitters” is a better word to use. Besides, “influencers” has become synonymous with marketers, and, in so doing, has lost some of its beauty for me.

We transmit life just by living. As I breathe, as I consume food and drink, as I digest, as move around this little planet, I change the air, the water, the soil, as I go. As I think, and feel, and imagine, and communicate, I change the lives of others. This blog, which really started just as a personal space to gather things that interest me, has, over the years, become a transmitter. I know that from the feedback I receive from people all over the world. That’s become an explicit part of my writing here. I want to share my life experiences. I want to share my photos, my words, in the hope that you, and maybe others you know, will be touched by them, inspired by them. I hope what I create here brings you some joy, evokes some wonder and reflection, and brightens your everyday. Because, creating these posts, does that for me!

We are transmitters of life, and each of us leads a unique, special, life. We are transmitters of life through our personal stories, none of us telling an identical story to another person. We are transmitters of life through our actions and our thoughts. Collectively, we humans shape and sculpt the Earth. We should stay conscious of that. It’ll help us make better choices.

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Two worlds

Posted in Uncategorized on December 18, 2024| Leave a Comment »

I’ve been thinking about the value of Art recently, partly in relation to words I’m wary of.…like “utility”, and partly in relation to an article I read about culture and health.

Then, today, I remembered a scene from The Forsyte Saga, which I think the problem of communication between those who appreciate Art, and those who have a much more utilitarian mindset, is portrayed brilliantly by these two actors, Gina McKee, and Damian Lewis.

C.P. Snow famously described the “two cultures” of science and the humanities. However, I think the clash of world views can’t be neatly fitted into these two domains of learning. Rather, I think Iain McGilchrist’s explanation of the two types of focus which we use when we are using our left and right hemispheres, is a better one. It’s pretty clear that issues of utility and manipulation are in the domain of the left hemisphere, and that our appreciation of connections, and values, requires our use of the right hemisphere.

If you search my blog for “divided brain”, you’ll find some posts where I summarise some of his explanations. Alternatively, start here.

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Culture and health

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 17, 2024| Leave a Comment »

I read an article in the Guardian today entitled “Consuming arts and culture is good for health and wellbeing, research finds” It caught my eye – first because I thought consuming arts and culture ??!! I hate that. I don’t consume arts, I experience/enjoy/participate in…..not consume…. and what is culture anyway? Well, let’s leave that issue for another day. The next thought I had was “I don’t enjoy arts in order to improve my health or wellbeing, and this headline leads me to think these folk are about to try and justify arts on the basis of their utility. But, in fact, the article is even worse than the headline suggests. Here’s how it begins –

Most people are familiar with the buzz that attending a memorable play, film, concert or art exhibition can trigger. But now it is official: consuming culture is good for your health and wellbeing – and generates £8bn a year worth of improvements in people’s quality of life and higher productivity.

Seriously? I might have felt a “buzz” but, “now it is official” – “it generates £8bn a year of improvements in people’s quality of life and higher productivity”. Oh, thank goodness they’ve quantified that. Otherwise I’d have been stuck with my personal delusion that I was just enjoying something, or that it was adding meaning to my life!

Look, I understand what these people are doing, and, at one level, I commend them for it. They are trying to make an economic case for what isn’t measurable. We can’t measure paintings, poems or music. We can’t even really measure “health and wellbeing” (instead we invent questionnaires, the answers to which we allocate scores, then we say we are measuring the invisible – ok, another controversial view I can return to another day) They are claiming that, for example, going to a weekly drawing class at a museum is worth £1310 to each person from “going to see their GP less and feeling better about their lives”. Really? £1310? Not £1315? These apparently definite figures remind me of the old joke that 86.57% of statistics are made up……but, good on them for trying to make the case for arts funding to governments and policy makers who seem to understand only sums and measurements.

But, fundamentally, this makes me hugely uncomfortable. Can’t we make a case for the place of arts “and culture” in our lives without reducing them to arbitrary financial “values”, or so-called “measurements”. I don’t need any of those justifications to play music every day, to write, to read novels, to visit galleries and delight in their works, to feel the connections to their creators……

However, I read, just the other day, that more and more universities in the UK are closing down their Humanities courses, claiming that students don’t want them because they don’t see how they can lead to remunerative employment. Oh goodness, what has happened to our idea of education? What have we reduced that to? Is education only valuable if it lets you get a job managing a McDonalds outlet, or selling people “stuff”?

I hope reports like this one do stimulate debate about the Humanities. I hope they stimulate debate about what makes our lives valuable and meaningful. Meanwhile…..I’m going to continue taking photos, writing, sharing my creativity. I’m going to continue listening to music, reading novels, visiting museums and galleries – because those are some of the activities that bring me joy, that amaze me, that make me think, that help create meaning in my life. If all that contributes positively to my “health and wellbeing”, then so be it. But that’s not the reason I’ll keep filling my daily life with “arts and culture”.

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Nature’s allegories

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 16, 2024| Leave a Comment »

I was looking for exactly this photo the other day, and was delighted when I found it in my library – but I didn’t take it. My daughter, Amy, did. I’m pretty sure I’ve taken photos exactly like this in the past but it must be back to the days of 35mm film because I can’t find any in my digital library. This is a view of part of the River Forth, at Stirling, and it shows beautifully how the river twists, turns and curves around so much at this point in its journey.

I picked up a couple of little books by a French author, Olivier Clerc, when I was in Biarritz fairly recently. One is called “La Grenouille qui ne savait pas qu’elle etait cuite….” (which is about the frog who didn’t know she was being boiled) and the other is “Rien ne peut empecher la riviere de couler…..” (nothing can prevent the river from flowing. In both books, this Swiss author, writes about life lessons he’s learned by taking an analogical perspective on natural phenomena. He argues that as well as thinking analytically, which we are encouraged to do all the time, we should also develop the skills of thinking analogically. That in doing so we will find life itself becomes richer, deeper and more meaningful. I think he’s absolutely right.

The first essay in the second of those books is about how a river can be viewed two ways – first of all, you can see that it twists this way and that (just like the River Forth in this photo), and that if you trace the course of a river from where it starts in the mountains, you find that there seems no logic to its path – it heads west, perhaps, then south, then east perhaps and so on. It disappears at times, flowing into a lake, only to reappear out the opposite side, or into a marsh, or even below ground, before re-emerging perhaps many miles further on. And yet, we call the river by the same name along this twisting, turning, ever changing path. But there’s a second way to look at the river, and that’s to take a lateral slice through the landscape and see that, at every single point, the water is flowing downhill. At no point does it ever, ever turn around and start to flow uphill. It just doesn’t. It continues from Spring to Ocean, in a constantly downhill direction. He points out that these two views of the river show both continuity (as it flows through the landscape) and coherence, as it heads constantly downhill to achieve its goal of reaching the ocean).

He draws several lessons from this, not least being that behaviour is often hard to understand because we see it superficially, and that, we need to look beneath to see the underlying motivations, values and goals, in order to understand why someone is acting the way they do. He says this teaches us to be humble, to accept uncertainty, and to inspire us to look below the surface, to better understand others. What are the coherent threads that run through an individual story, be that of a person, a group within society, a culture, or even a nation? What lies beneath the apparent randomness, the veering this way and that, over years, and decades, that actually reveals the core beliefs, values and purposes?

I like anything which inspires me to pause and reflect. And I think learning to look at the natural world analogically can really deepen the joy of everyday life.

Oh, and just before I leave……I’m suddenly remembering a line from John O’Donohue –

“I would love to live like a river flows,
carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.”

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Words I’m wary of……

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on December 15, 2024| Leave a Comment »

There are some words which are used a lot these days, which make me uncomfortable. Every time I hear them used I find my mind filling with questions and doubts.

The first of these is “Growth”. The Labour government in the UK has come to power from a campaign fixed firmly on the concept of growth. It’s a word used by politicians and economists all the time. But growth of what? If I understand them, they are typically referring to something called “economic activity”, by which they mean the production of more goods, the delivery of more services, and the greater consumption of both by the populace. But is this not a bit lacking in nuance? Does a better, more sustainable future for us, for our children and their grandchildren, lie down the path of ever greater consumption? All this in a finite planet? I read the Club of Rome report, “Limits to Growth”, back when it came out, I think, in the 70s, and whilst much of the projected data in that report didn’t pan out, the underlying principle was that we can’t keep depleting limited natural resources, destroying ecosystems, and producing every more pollution. That seems right to me. There are natural limits to growth, just as there are natural limits to healing and to Life. But, more than that, just chasing growth without specifying growth of what, and for what purpose, lacks all value. Producing and consuming more highly processed food is causing an epidemic of obesity and chronic disease. Producing and consuming more oil and gas is heating up the planet, and polluting the oceans with plastics which will never disappear. If we want to pursue growth, shouldn’t we at least be clear about exactly what it is we want to grow, while remaining mindful of the damaging effects of too much production and consumption. There is also the issue of distribution of the fruits of any growth. The economies of the world have been growing – they’ve been shovelling more and more wealth into the hands of a tiny handful of people, whilst populations everywhere creak under the strain of a “cost of living crisis”. The pursuit of growth for growth’s sake, makes me uncomfortable.

The second word which bothers me is “‘utility”. I read a great quote the other day – “those who believe in utility have to answer the question – utility for what? if the answer is just more utility you have a problem”. It’s the same issue as the growth question I suppose. When utility become the exclusive goal, again we lose all contact with quality and values. Something which is “utilitarian” just lacks something, doesn’t it? It’s limited, superficial, thin. It leads to the charge about “knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing”. Yes, we want our goods and services to be useful, and in that respect, we have to pay attention to their utility, but we’ve got to ask – utility for what? Is it to further our pursuits of Beauty, Truth and Goodness? Is it to further our wellbeing? To increase justice and fairness? Is it to facilitate the flow of love and kindness? Or what?

The third word which troubles me is “efficiency”. Especially, “cost efficiency”. The extreme pursuit of “the greatest bang for the buck”, of “paying attention to the bottom line” is replacing value in Life, with profit in corporate pockets. Our Public services, of health care, education, social care, and so on, are in crisis. We’ve closed hospital beds, failed to invest in training and employment of highly skilled professionals, and we find ourselves with increasing, unmet demand, and an annual cycle of “how are we going to cope” every single winter. Living organisms are complex adaptive systems and our services should be modelled on them, because they are there to improve the quality of Life, not to increase profits for a small group of “investors”. One of the characteristics of complex systems is “redundancy” – they have more adaptive strategies, systems and resources in place than they “need” at any particular moment, so that when a new, large challenge comes along, they can respond. They can deal with it. We’ve trimmed everything back to the bone. Didn’t the Covid pandemic show us that? Clear as day? Didn’t it expose our vulnerabilities, our inequalities, our impoverished resources? The efficiency of a machine, of the production of machines, is not the same as the efficiency of living, natural organisms. We are not machines. We are not machine like. And we need the services which are designed with Life in mind, with humans in mind, not those with the goals of profit making industrial production.

What are your bug bear words? These are my top three. I don’t think I’ve articulated them here before, so I thought I’d take today to do so. I hope that next time you hear someone talk about growth, utility, or efficiency, you’ll stop to reflect and ask what they actually mean by those words, and whether or not you think they are contributing to a more healthy, more flourishing society.

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Inside, outside, and beyond the Self

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 14, 2024| Leave a Comment »

The English philosopher, Mary Midgley, in her response to those who said the Self was an illusion, said “If the Self is an illusion, who is it who is having this illusion?”

Philosophers, psychologists, psychiatrists and neuroscientists, continue to debate exactly what the Self is. I’m taking a pragmatic, maybe simplistic approach. For me, the Self is what does the experiencing. Me, myself and I, as the song goes…….All the sensations I experience, are experienced by my Self. Yes, I know there are complex sensory cells and networks throughout the body which enable me to pick and process various signals, energies and waves which flow around and through my body. But, ultimately, the experiencing of the light, of colour, of sound, touch, temperature, taste….that’s all done by my Self. Similarly, it’s my Self which experiences my thoughts and feelings. Again, maybe thoughts and feelings involve a huge network of cells and chemicals in my body, but it’s my Self which experiences them.

I know that not everyone will agree with that conception of the Self, and I’m neither a philosopher, nor a neuroscientist, but I just want to describe, as clearly as possible, how I envisage the Self.

From that standpoint, I explore the world in which I find myself alive. I turn to Science to help me grasp and understand what is external to my Self. Primarily, that picks out elements from within the flux of reality, and considers them as objects…objects which can be measured and manipulated. I even turn to Science to discover elements which exist within my body, but which, I argue, are “external” to my “Self”. So developments in anatomy, physiology, pathology and so on, help me to comprehend the tissues, organs, cells and chemicals within my body, and, as a doctor, to understand them within the bodies of others. That helps me to make diagnoses and to suggest treatments when people fall ill.

Secondly, I turn to Art, to understand what is “internal” to my Self, to express what is “internal” to my Self, and to communicate with the “selves” of others. It’s through music, poetry, painting, sculpture, storytelling, novels, dance, and so on, that I attempt to show others what I feel, what I experience, what I think, from this unique perspective on the universe which I call my Self. Through Art I channel, and stimulate my creativity, my imagination and my empathy.

Thirdly, I turn to Spirituality to explore the connections between my Self, and the rest of the Universe. Through experiences of awe and wonder, I dissolve the boundaries of my individuality, and step into the Oneness of Reality.

I know these terms, external, internal, and beyond, are simplifications in their own right, but I reckon if I am to know a person, to really get to know and understand another person, then my best chance will emerge by taking a blend of these three approaches – science, art and spirituality. And, I’ll see more clearly that no single one of them can give me a comprehensive understanding.

Does this make sense to you? I’d love to hear your take on all this.

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Science, art and spirituality

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 13, 2024| 2 Comments »

The concept of “and not or” is very important to me. “And” creates and explores connections. I broadens and deepens our experience. Whereas “Or” divides. It splits reality into pieces and asks us to choose. Iain McGilchrist’s superb explanations of how the left and right hemispheres of the brain enable to focus on the world in very different ways has taught me to try to use my whole brain, not just half of it (we, as a civilisation, and, as individuals, have privileged the left hemisphere approach at the expense of a whole brain one, for far too long now)

But there’s another way in which I apply the “and not or” approach, and that’s through the triad of ways in which we humans view and try to understand the world – science, art and spirituality.

Science provides us with ways of discovering what exists objectively. A core feature of science is measurement. The scientific approach allows us to separate out objects from the ongoing flux of reality, measure them, subject them to experiments and, from there, to make predictions which enable us to exert greater control.

Art, on the other hand, provides us with ways of expressing our inner experience, and of sharing those experiences with others. It’s a range of ways of connecting subject to subject. We use art to express and communicate love, beauty, joy, and unique, individual experience of life. We use music, dance, storytelling, visual arts, poetry etc to develop our creativity and to engage with each other subject to subject. These subjective experiences are not measurable.

Thomas Berry says that the universe is not a collection of objects, it’s a community of subjects.

Thirdly, spirituality, is, for me, that sense of being connected to what is greater than me. I experience it through moments of awe. I experience it everyday through what the French call “l’emerveillement du quotidien” – through wonder, amazement and awe.

I need all of these ways of engaging with the world to lead a deep, whole and meaningful life. Science isn’t enough by itself. It can’t help us to connect, subject to subject. Art isn’t enough by itself, it lacks science’s ability to isolate elements in the objective world to better understand and manipulate them. Spirituality isn’t enough in itself but it stokes our humility and our sense of connection with others and with the rest of the planet, even, the universe.

How about you? Do you enjoy all three? Science, Art and Spirituality?

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We are not machines

Posted in Uncategorized on December 12, 2024| Leave a Comment »

We are not machines. We are not even “machine like”. Here’s Iain McGilchrist on this –

Machines are not social beings. They don't have Consciousness, feelings, personality, will or individuality. They have no appreciation of music, dance, poetry, art or nature. They do not fall in love and have no sense of humor and they do not have the ability to change their minds and have none of our capacity to sorrow over the past or project a delighted future and that's not even taking into account the far more complex issues entailed in human consciousness including imagination, morality, creativity, the capacity for Spiritual awe and allegiance to Beauty truth and goodness and in case that should sound the slightest bit rarified I'd like to mention that they don't have bodies either and they do not die. It is true of course that you're amazing we're all amazing but it's precisely because we're not just hugely complicated machines. If we carry on talking like this to the aspiring young we will get no better scientists than we deserve. In reality nothing in the entire universe is like a machine except the few lumps of metal we have made in the last few hundred years.

Iain McGilchrist

From health care to our relationship with the rest of the natural world, this machine metaphor is so damaging.

It de-humanises patients and their doctors. It distances us from the world we live in. And it obliterates wonder and enchantment.

Let machines be machines and let’s refocus on what makes Life so astonishingly different from technology and industry.

Machines, including “AI” machines, are tools. They aren’t a replacement for human beings. They aren’t a replacement for Life.

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Integration/cooperation

Posted in Uncategorized on December 11, 2024| Leave a Comment »

It was pretty late in my career when I came across the concept of “integration” in relation to health, and it took me a wee while to get my head around. It finally clicked when I read Dan Siegel’s “Mindsight” and I read his definition of integration – the creation of mutually beneficial bonds between well-differentiated parts.

Take a moment to let that definition sink in, because it’s pretty beautiful and it captures the key elements of integration – that involves very different entities establishing a relationship which enables each of them to better fulfil their potential.

When I understood this, I immediately thought of the human body. We think of the body as made up of very different parts – highly differentiated cells organised into tissues, organs and systems. We have a heart, a liver, a pair of kidneys, a brain…..and so on, and so on. Are these various organisms in competition with each other? Are they trying to outdo each other and grab most of the nutrition, the oxygen, the energy for themselves, even at the expense of the others? No they are not. They are not in competition. The co-operate. They collaborate. In fact, they are integrated. They are connected and they relate to each other in ways which enable every single organ and tissue in the body to flourish.

If you look at any other living organism you’ll see the same basic strategy – “integration”. If you see a healthy, flourishing ecosystem, you’ll see that it contains a diversity of plants and creatures and they are well “integrated.”

And yet, we have created a global, economic, social system based on competition. A system which creates a handful of winners, and a huge mass of losers. It doesn’t have to be that way. We could, if we wished, create a system where the core value is integration/cooperation instead of competition. Not to say that competition has no place. I think we understand that it does. But we’ve got the emphasis wrong. We need to shift our attention, our imagination, our energy towards integration.

What kind of world could we create if we worked to create human relationships based on integration, care and love, human to non-human creature relationships based on integration rather than dominance, human to planet relationships based on integration instead of exploitation?

A natural world – the way it evolved to be what the universe intended.

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