The Philosopher’s Attic

I have been a tweeter (= user of the twitter service to post quick messages of your everyday life about what you are doing, listening to, writing, reading etc.) for quite a while now and while the micro blogging idea is still fresh and a good thing from where I am standing, twitter has failed to live up to it’s own success. After the first hype about a year ago, the people still kept coming. With right, the service was simplistic and easy to use even through text message from a mobile phone or your IM service. The service however always had notorious bandwidth problems that made you lose tweets, replies etc. and resulted in nasty downtimes. A problem that still isn’t solved yet. (How hard can it be with the exposition they have?) And lately tech bloggers have complained about their complete refusal to open the API for more extensive use. And as usual when someone refuses to evolve, someone else will pick up the job.
For the more extensive use such as quickly sharing your latest pictures on flickr or the latest bookmarks you made on delicious. a new site and service called friendfeed quickly gained a lot of members and switchers from twitter. Again the service is simple, straightforward and does what people would like the most. Quickly offer a look at what their up to during the day for their friends to comment on or simply follow from a distance. (I won’t go into the philosophical side of that phenomenon yet.)

The newest and actually nicest playing kid on the block however is Plurk. And even if the name is slightly odd sounding to Francophone ears (we have an expression in familiar language: ‘to feel blurgh or blerg’ for not feeling too well) , it is without any doubt the funniest way to microblog. The comments are organised, the building of a small community with you at the centre is quick and easy, bringing RL communities together in a fun way.

So join me and plurk away

What do we actually aim for?

In life, in work, in our inspirations, our… end products? Our interactions, our contacts, our friendships, our helping and our longing?

Depending on your occupation, your passions or your likings the answer to everyone of those parts of a question can be varied and different… and ultimately meaningless to anybody else than yourself.

Of course we convince ourselves that this is not a basic truth and that whatever we’re doing ultimately holds some kind of sense, use or meaning for people around us, society or the greater good. Sand in your eyes, my friends…

This becomes a most apparently fact when whatever you are doing and whatever sense you convey upon it, is not met, acknowledged or even picked up upon by the people you aimed it at in the first place.

I’d have some problems to call myself a poet or even a writer (even a philosopher for that matter) outside of any reference of convenience for the action that I am doing at the moment. It’s linked to the conflictual relation I entertain with my passions and whatever I create. For reasons of simplicity however, let’s say I’m a poet.

As such I aim at people’s emotions. Like, dislike, love, hate, accept, concurring, disagreeing etc. are all emotions I try to bring up. The picture of the reader’s soul as a violin on which you try to strike the right cord or at least a certain cord springs to mind.

From that follows as a matter of logic that if if I don’t manage to strike that cord, I failed the ultimate goal. If poetry cannot bring out emotion big or small, then it’s lukewarm, dispassionate… and in the end meaningless.

It’s the worst thing that can happen to anything artistic is being met with indifference.

For the poet or the writer, the actor or the painter, it’s the end of all things.

In the end, when all is said and done, and if we are not lying in our own pocket, then it shouldn’t matter. If we are right in stating that ultimately we do it for art’s purpose, for some hgiher meaning, then the appreciation of anybody around us should not matter one single second.

And yet it does, doesn’t it?

Appreciation or at least reaction is just one of those things the human being depends on. Not because we’re weak, or fishing for compliments to bolster our own being.
But because we’re ultimately social beings. A reaction to you and your being and the things you put out there, is a way of simply stating ‘I see you and hear you’, add to that the ‘I don’t agree’ or the ‘I love it’ and there you have the whole spectrum of human interaction. It’s part of who we are.

So let’s stop kidding ourselves and simply confess that the reaction does matter.

If there is no reaction to be had, the world would be governed by silence.

On rainy, cold mornings like today, I just love J. Liebig and the guys over at Bass Brewery for giving us the unmistakable spread on toast that anyone not being a Brit or having grown up in British Culture treats with contempt and even disgust: Marmite.
Hot tea, Marmite on bread or toast can actually get rid of all gloomy thoughts, curses to the heavens for their perfect timing on releasing the floods a bit early this year, exactly on the day I am supposed to go to an Open-Air to listen to Muse…

Marmite Pages:
Marmite Story Page
Marmite soldiers
Wikipedia on Marmite
BBC on Marmite
Everything on Marmite

Well, well, things have been a bit strange lately and I do apologise for not getting back to my regular posting rhythm as I intended to do, but my fatigue level was through the roof… I suppose two years of running around Switzerland for your healthy relationship, several years of running around Europe for your smashing career and ten months of wedding preparation (… again involving a lot of running around all over Switzerland …) will do that to you.
When all of that slows down in matter of a single day (aka Wedding Day), I think it is wise to listen to your body telling you (rather screaming at you with neuralgia, headaches, laryngitis and other minor health issues) that enough is actually enough.
So I have been taking it really slow these last few weeks. Sleeping a lot, reading a lot and limiting my internet time in favour of my husband and me settling in here in Geneva.

I still do have a lot to say - fear not ! - and writing ideas are sprouting out of my mind just as the sunflowers on my window sill. Granted, they don’t look as good at the moment, but with a bit of tender care and loving they might just be enough to tempt me into something foolish… such as a podcast on medieval prejudices, the History of University or some other far fetched pill out of the “Dangerous Drugs” cabinet…

I hope the ones that will read this (if there really still are such daring persons around the net) will find it in their heart to forgive my too long silence and that they will check back in to see how things are moving on in my part of the world.

Quelques mots, puisqu’il faut des mots, car il faut des mots, aussi.

Mendiant de toi, j’ai laissé résonner en moi tes mots;

Mendiant de toi, j’ai empli mon coeur de ton regard;

Mendiant de toi, j’ai enfin été comblé.

Il ne m’est de lumière que celle qui émane de toi,

Il ne m’est d’ombre que celle de ta silhouette.

La poussière de nos rêves nous a transformé,

L’un à l’autre la confiance nous a donné,

C’est le début de toute chose.

(c) JL, 2005.

The stress level has been picking up steadily and I have been busy making my wedding invitations (all on my own), printing and posting them to the four corners of the world. But apart fighting with the Swiss Postal Service (which lost a contract that I was supposed to sign in order to start a new job), figuring out how all the rest of the wedding is best organised - or how to get all the things I still need… - things are good and fine.
Easter has come and gone and helped me a lot in “recalibrating” some of the chatter in my head. I went to Rome for a week and got back safely… although Roma Ciampino Airport settings have made me doubt it for several tense moments… and now I’m preparing a lecture that I accepted to give in Freiburg im Breisgau (Germany), trying to find my bridal shoes (the things we do), a date for my gown fitting and the legal wedding which will take place on May 11th…
So, blogging about serious philosophical questions sort of falls down on my to do list, but I promise to do better in the future once the worst stressors are rid of. Promise. I’ll leave with a great picture from the eternal city: Rome.

While I was talking to the phone to a very dear friend I hadn’t talked with for quite a while now, she said something simple, but interesting to me: you don’t need to have all the answers. (I’m leaving out the almost-yelling bit and the mild swearing that accompanied the rant for obvious reasons )

It sound like an easy thing to say and understand, some might consider it trivial even. As a ‘philosopher’ however we are trained to work everything out. It’s what we do, it’s our job, our work, our ultimate goal and our method to cope with the world.

As long as a problem can be well formulated, analyzed, dissected, taken apart and put back together again, we’re happy. Once we’re done dissecting a problem, an obstacle, a tricky situation or a spat, we think that the better part of a problem is already solved. That the rest is only cosmetics. Finding solutions is what we do and it does play tricks on us. It leads us to believe that naming a problem is part of the solution. That we virtually have all the answers.

The trouble here is not hubris, because a philosophical person would claim to have all the answers to all the questions. But, they would probably say that once you’ve named the problem, you’ve done the greatest step to solving it.
That’s all very good when dealing with theories about matter and intellect or formal logic, but when it comes to life, human beings tend to not be that rational at all.
It’s the well known discrepancy (hey, another big word to be added to the list…) between knowing that smoking is bad, but not stopping anyway. It’s the same discrepancy that leads to utter craziness in economical decision and game theory btw.
The fact that we can analyze why we’re feeling the way we do or why X annoys the hell out of us, does not necessarily mean that we can keep it from annoying us.
That’s probably the answer why so many academics have undiagnosed psychological disorders or problems: they think they can figure it all out by themselves. They think that knowing why they feel the way they do, solves their problem.

Accepting that we don’t need to have all the answers or solutions, that’s probably the real solution.