Was every day of my life to be as busy a day as this

Was every day of my life to be as busy a day as this--and to take up-- Truce.

I will not finish that sentence till I have made an observation upon the strange state of affairs between the reader and myself, just as things stand at present--an observation never applicable before to any one biographical writer since the creation of the world, but to myself--and I believe, will never hold good to any other, until its final destruction-- and therefore, for the very novelty of it alone, it must be worth your worships attending to.

I am this month one whole year older than I was this time twelve-month; and having got, as you perceive, almost into the middle of my third volume (According to the preceding Editions.)--and no farther than to my first day's life--'tis demonstrative that I have three hundred and sixty-four days more life to write just now, than when I first set out; so that instead of advancing, as a common writer, in my work with what I have been doing at it--on the contrary, I am just thrown so many volumes back--was every day of my life to be as busy a day as this--And why not?--and the transactions and opinions of it to take up as much description--And for what reason should they be cut short? as at this rate I should just live 364 times faster than I should write--It must follow, an' please your worships, that the more I write, the more I shall have to write--and consequently, the more your worships read, the more your worships will have to read.

Will this be good for your worships eyes?

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Laurence Sterne, 1760

The Great Valerio

High up above the crowd
The great Valerio is walking
The rope seems hung from cloud to cloud
And time stands still while he is walking
His eye is steady on the target
His foot is sure upon the rope
Alone and peaceful as a mountain
And certain as the mountain slope

We falter at the sight
We stumble in the mire
Fools who think they see the light
Prepare to balance on the wire
But we learn to watch together,
And feed on what we see above
‘Till our hearts turn like the seasons
And we are acrobats of love

How we wonder, how we wonder
Watching far below
We would all be that great hero
The great Valerio

Come all you upstart jugglers
Are you really ready yet?
Who will help the tightrope walker
When he tumbles to the net
So come with me to see Valerio
As he dances through the air
I’m your friend until you use me
And then be sure I won’t be there

How we wonder, how we wonder
Watching far below
We would all be that great hero
The great Valerio

The Great Valerio, Richard Thompson, 1974

What should we make of all this?

What should we make of all this? The probability that there is a secret mental trick that at one stroke will enable the human mind to solve complex problems better is practically zero. It is equally unlikely that our brains have some great cache of unused potential. It such things existed, we would be using them. Nowhere in nature does a creature run around on three legs and drag along a fourth, perfectly functional but unused leg. Out brains function the way that they function and not otherwise. We must make the best of that; there is no magic wand or hidden treasure that will instantly make us deep and powerful thinkers.

Real improvement can be achieved, however, if we understand the demands that problem solving places on us and the errors that we are prone to make when we attempt to meet them. Our brains are not fundamentally flawed; we have simply developed bad habits. When we fail to solve a problem, we fail because we tend to make a small mistake here, a small mistake there, and these mistakes add up. Here we have forgotten to make our goal specific enough. There we have over-generalized. Here we have planned too elaborately, there too sketchily.

The subject of this book is the nature of our thinking when we deal with complex problems. I describe the kinds of mistakes human beings make, the blind alleys they follow down and the detours they take in attempting to cope with such problems. But I am not concerned with thinking alone, for thinking is always rooted in the total process of psychic activity. There is no thinking without emotion. We get angry, for example, when we can't solve a problem, and our anger influences our thinking. Thought is embedded in a context of feeling and affect, thought influences, and is in turn influenced by, that context.

Thought is also always rooted in values and motivations. We ordinarily think not for the sake of thinking but to achieve certain goals based on our system of values. Here possibilities for confusion arise: the conflict between treasured values and measures that are regarded as necessary can produce some curious contortions of thought - "Bombs for Peace!" The original value is twisted into its opposite. Motivations provide equally ambiguous guidelines. There are those who would say that what counts are the intentions behind our thinking, that thought plays only a serving role, helping us achieve our goals but failing to go to the root of the evils in our world. In our political environment, it would seem, we are surrounded on all sides with good intentions. But the nurturing of those good intentions is an utterly undemanding mental exercise, while drafting plans to realize those worthy goals is another matter. Moreover, it is far from clear whether "good intentions plus stupidity" or "evil intentions plus intelligence" have wrought more harm in the world. People with good intentions usually have few qualms about pursuing their goals. As a result, incompetence that would otherwise have remained harmless often becomes dangerous, especially as incompetent people with good intentions rarely suffer the qualms of conscience that sometimes inhibit the doings of competent people with bad intentions. The conviction that our intentions are unquestionably good may sanctify the most questionable means.

The Logic of Failure, Dieter Dörner, 1989, translation Rita and Rob Kimber

Monks, the All is aflame.

"Monks, the All is aflame. What All is aflame? The eye is aflame. Forms are aflame. Consciousness at the eye is aflame. Contact at the eye is aflame. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on contact at the eye — experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain — that too is aflame. Aflame with what? Aflame with the fire of passion, the fire of aversion, the fire of delusion. Aflame, I tell you, with birth, aging & death, with sorrows, lamentations, pains, distresses, & despairs.

"The ear is aflame. Sounds are aflame...

"The nose is aflame. Aromas are aflame...

"The tongue is aflame. Flavors are aflame...

"The body is aflame. Tactile sensations are aflame...

"The intellect is aflame. Ideas are aflame. Consciousness at the intellect is aflame. Contact at the intellect is aflame. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on contact at the intellect — experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain — that too is aflame. Aflame with what? Aflame with the fire of passion, the fire of aversion, the fire of delusion. Aflame, I say, with birth, aging & death, with sorrows, lamentations, pains, distresses, & despairs.

"Seeing thus, the well-instructed disciple of the noble ones grows disenchanted with the eye, disenchanted with forms, disenchanted with consciousness at the eye, disenchanted with contact at the eye. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on contact at the eye, experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain: With that, too, he grows disenchanted.

"He grows disenchanted with the ear...

"He grows disenchanted with the nose...

"He grows disenchanted with the tongue...

"He grows disenchanted with the body...

"He grows disenchanted with the intellect, disenchanted with ideas, disenchanted with consciousness at the intellect, disenchanted with contact at the intellect. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on contact at the intellect, experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain: He grows disenchanted with that too. Disenchanted, he becomes dispassionate. Through dispassion, he is fully released. With full release, there is the knowledge, 'Fully released.' He discerns that 'Birth is ended, the holy life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for this world.'"

The Fire Sermon / Adittapariyaya Sutta, Gotama Buddha, c. 550-450 BCE, translation Thanissaro Bhikkhu

To lie in bed, to give way to the counterforce of an immense fatigue

To lie in bed, to give way to the counterforce of an immense fatigue, to float between dream and waking, to remember the past, to have nothing in your mind, to have everything in your mind, to see the faces bent over you, looking worried, there's my wife, there's her mother. Someone puts a wet cloth to his lips. What's that strange raspy sound? Someone in this room is having trouble breathing.

There are endless passages through which he must walk, until he realizes he no longer has the use of his legs. There are things he has left undone. It is spring and the window is open, there are voices. They ask him many questions. How are you, how do you feel, do you feel better? Surely they don't expect him to answer. He hadn't been able to say, though he meant to say, that he had to piss. He won't tell them the sheet is wet. They might be angry. He wants them to stay as they are now, with their smiling intent faces - her face, his face. They are holding his hands. How warm their hands are. They have taken him in their arms. He hears the crinkling of cloth. That is his wife on his left side. He can feel her bosom. And that is his friend on the other side. He is in his friend's left arm. He hopes he is not too heavy for them. There is a big hollow space inside his chest where the pain used to be.

He has escaped the dungeon of thought. He feels elated. He is climbing. It is a laborious ascent. But now the mountain no longer has to be climbed. He has climbed. By a kind of levitation. He was looking up for so long, and now he can look down from this high place. It is a big panorama. So this is dying, thought the Cavaliere.

The Volcano Lover, Susan Sontag, 1992

Consider what happened in Borneo in the 1950's

Consider what happened in Borneo in the 1950's. Many Dayak villagers had malaria, and the World Health Organization had a solution that was simple and direct. Spraying DDT seemed to work: Mosquitos died, and malaria declined. But then an expanding web of side effects ("consquences you didn't think of," quips biologist Garret Hardin, "the existence of which you will deny as long as possible") started to appear. The roofs of people's houses began to collapse, because the DDT had also killed tiny parasitic wasps that had previously controlled thatch-eating caterpillars. The colonial government issued sheet-metal replacement roofs, but people couldn't sleep when tropical rains turned the tin roofs into drums. Meanwhile, the DDT-poisoned bugs were being eaten by geckoes, which were eaten by cats. The DDT invisibly built up in the food chain and began to kill the cats. Without the cats, the rats multiplied. The World Health Organization, threatened by potential outbreaks of typhus and sylvatic plague, which it had itself created, was obliged to parachute fourteen thousand live cats into Borneo. Thus occurred Operation Cat Drop, one of the odder missions of the British Royal Air Force.

Natural Capitalism, Paul Hawkin, Amory Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins, 2000

The Dilemma of the Discarded Weapons

Author of the Civil War Collector's Encyclopedia F. A. Lord tells us that after the Battle of Gettysburg, 27,574 muskets were recovered from the battlefield. Of these, nearly 90 percent (twenty four thousand) were loaded. Twelve thousand of these loaded muskets were found to be loaded more than once, and six thousand of the multiply loaded weapons had from three to ten rounds loaded in the barrel. One weapons had been loaded twenty-three times. Why, then, were there so many loaded weapons available on the battlefield, and why did at least twelve thousand soldiers misload their weapons in combat?

A loaded weapon was a precious commodity on the black-powder battlefield. During the stand-up, face-to-face, short-range battles of the era a weapon should have been loaded for only a fraction of the time in battle. More than 95 percent of the time was spent in loading the weapon, and less than 5 percent in firing it. If most soldiers were desperately attempting to kill as quickly and efficiently as they could, then 95 percent should have been shot with an empty weapon in their hand and any loaded, cocked, and primed weapon available dropped on the battlefield would have been snatched up from wounded and dead comrades and fired.

There were many who were shot while charging the enemy or were casualties of artillery outside of musket range, and these individuals would never have had an opportunity to fire their weapons, but they hardly represent 95 of all casualties. if there is a desperate need in all soldiers to fire their weapon in combat, then many of these men should have died with an empty weapon. And as the ebb and flow of battle passed over these weapons, many of them should have been picked up and fired at the enemy.

The obvious conclusion is that most soldiers were not trying to kill the enemy. Most of them appear to have not even wanted to fire in the enemy's general direction. As Marshall observed, most soldiers seem to have an inner resistance to firing their weapons in combat. The point here is that the resistance appears to have existed long before Marshall discovered it, and this resistance is the reason for many (if not most) of these multiply loaded weapons.

On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman

Diodorus, a native of central Sicily

Diodorus, a native of central Sicily, had come to Egypt to compile a historical magnum opus. Historians, he knew had been divided by Polybius into two categories: those who immerse themselves in the actuality of events, drawing the material for their works from their own concrete experiences (these alone, said Polybius, being worthy of esteem), and those who take an easier course, seeking out some 'city well supplied with libraries' where they can sit at their desks, consult an atlas, and travel, as Ariosto would have put it, 'with Ptolemy the geographer'. Diodorus was of the latter school. But as Polybius's ideas were much in vogue among the Greek and Roman public, it was as well to display some first-hand experience, and Diodorus accordingly fabricated a series of voyages he had never made. The philosophical proem to his work tells us that the author

has travelled through much of Asia and Europe, undergoing all manner of hardships and dangers, in order to behold in person everything, or as nearly as possible everything, of which this history treats. We are well aware that the majority of historians, including some of the best known, have made numerous geographical errors.

These words of severe reproof were in fact taken verbatim from Polybius. His journey to Egypt was the sole voyage Diodorus had ever made.

The Vanished Library, Luciano Canfora, 1989, translation Martin Ryle

The details of my life are quite inconsequential

Dr. Evil: The details of my life are quite inconsequential.
Therapist: Oh no, please, please, let's hear about your childhood.
Dr Evil: Very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Some times he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy, the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical, summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds, pretty standard really. At the age of 12 I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen, a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum, it's breathtaking, I suggest you try it.
Therapist: You know, we have to stop.

Austin Powers, Mike Myers, 1997

Black Maps

Not the attendance of stones,
nor the applauding wind,
shall let you know
you have arrived,

nor the sea that celebrates
only departures,
nor the mountains,
nor the dying cities.

Nothing will tell you
where you are.
Each moment is a place
you’ve never been.

You can walk
believing you cast
a light around you.
But how will you know?

The present is always dark.
Its maps are black,
rising from nothing,
describing,

in their slow ascent
into themselves,
their own voyage,
its emptiness,

the bleak temperate
necessity of its completion.
As they rise into being
they are like breath.

And if they are studied at all
it is only to find,
too late, what you thought
were concerns of yours

do not exist.
Your house is not marked
on any of them,
nor are your friends,

waiting for you to appear,
nor are your enemies,
listing your faults.
Only you are there,

saying hello
to what you will be,
and the black grass
is holding up the black stars.

Black Maps, Mark Strand, 1968