The world turned upside-down

Ibn 'Arabi refers to The Reality, meaning (as far as I can tell) that God is objectively real and implying that our subjective states are just that - their reality is partial and dependent on something larger.

In our post-Enlightenment world we tend to view the world the other way up, as though our subjective beliefs were the touchstone of reality. We see, as St Paul says, 'through a glass darkly.' Or as Xenophanes has it, 'Only the gods see things as they are, but for us it is a woven web of guesses' (cited in Popper, The World of Parmenides). We are so habituated to seeing the world as it were upside-down that we take materialist explanations (chemical changes in the brain etc.) as more real than the experiences themselves. We think we are phenomenologists but our post-Enlightenment discourse is full of mechanistic hypothesis.

It is difficult to think outside the materialist paradigm. If we met something greater than ourselves we would reduce that to a chemical change in the brain, even though we know that experience forms and reforms the brain through neural plasticity. Causation works in both directions. Delusions and hallucinations occur, but not everything that we experience is illusory. Sometimes we don't know which way is up.

For this reason we don't understand Parmenides. His Way of Truth is his approach to reality, and his Way of Illusion (a reputedly large work now mostly lost) described what we would think of as science.

Does that mean we should abandon science? Assuredly not, because that which belongs in the material realm can correctly be dealt with by the methods of the material realm. Fantastical notions are still subject to appropriate demolition.

Some thoughts about pedantry

Pedants enjoy deprecating 'bad' uses of English. I am myself one such, acutely aware of 'correct' and 'incorrect' language.

I was brought up, for example, to believe that the word 'deprecate' meant to curse or abominate, and that 'deprecate' was often wrongly used when 'depreciate,' to belittle, was intended. I had a vision of cursing with bell, book and candle.

Now, however, the Oxford Dictionary, while acknowledging that the origin of 'deprecate' is from roots meaning 'to pray against,' states that it means 'to express disapproval of' or 'to depreciate.' Another piece of pedantry dies, like dried seaweed on the shore of usage.

As has always been the case, language mutates and diverges. An early English king had to send an interpreter to accompany a mission to Northumbria. Reality TV, Facebook and the fact that English is no longer the official language of just one island mean that we have the conditions in which the only things holding the English language together are precisely the media in which all its variations are expressed.

Might I recommend David Crystal's very entertaining The Stories of English? Some patterns of speech deprecated in their time are now normal even for pedants, and the earlier preferred alternatives sound stilted or odd.

Crystal argues that in Chaucer no single regional accent had more prestige than another. The precedence of Received Pronunciation I think has to do with political and commercial power being centred in the South East of England, the dominance of the Midlands during the Industrial Revolution not having lasted long enough to make more northern accents associated with power and success. Needless to say there are many regional dialects such as in the Caribbean that have never had prestige despite having their own poets.

It is worth remembering that Chaucer was himself establishing an underdog language (English) as an acceptable vehicle for serious literature, and Robert Burns tried to do the same for Scots English.

The function of language is to convey meaning. If it does so unambiguously then one can argue that it has done its job. If Shakespeare bent the rules it was probably because he was looking for a particular effect on the ear, and that has to do with the music of language. Some scholars have suggested that early pre-humans might have sung rather than spoken, and it is also the case that we hear repeated spoken phrases as music, so the effect of language is both to convey meaning and to convey a feeling.

If we are looking for quality in language then we need to look beyond what happens to be fashionably 'correct' in our small corner of the vast English-speaking world. Rather we need to write and speak for clarity, and for the all the techniques of rhythm, assonance and rhetoric that make language a pleasure to read and to hear.

Meanwhile the majestically protean English language ebbs and flows leaving us mere pedants behind like bleached driftwood in the littoral zone.

Random awesomeness elsewhere

https://www.treasure-prizes.com/

Since I have been silent for a while and have nothing much useful to say right at this minute I thought I'd direct your attention to some random awesomeness that I discovered by chance on the web. There you go. Genius.

On the mild depression that accompanies mild illness and how to fix it

This morning the author of The Inflamed Mind, Edward Bullmore, was interviewed on Radio 4 about his book, just out this month. He says that it may be not merely that one is depressed because of the effects of being ill, but that inflammation as such can cause depression. That at any rate was my understanding from the interview.

Bullmore described having 'flu and feeling, as he put it, 'blue' - so far so ordinary - but then speculated upon whether it is the inflammatory process rather than just the symptoms which cause that low mood. Apparently 30 per cent of depressed people have raised inflammatory markers when tested.

Of course as stated on the programme, association does not prove causation, but it's an interesting idea which could lead to new therapeutic interventions.

For myself, I recall feeling unaccountably depressed one day, one of those times when everything seems grey and pointless. The things that usually stirred me to enthusiasm gave me no joy or any desire to do them. In the words of Shakespeare, 'How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!' (Hamlet Act I scene 2, 129-34)

Then I realised that I was coming down with a cold or some-such mild viral illness. I told myself that it was my body that was ill and that I was not depressed at all. That I did not feel like doing the things I normally enjoy was merely that my body needed to rest. All I had to do was accept the situation and understand the needs of my body. By re-framing the situation in this way I was immediately free of the depressed mood.

Now of course I am not claiming that this approach will cure severe depression. It may be, as others have said before, that depression is a sign that there is something not right, something needing to be fixed, and that might be something deep, long-lasting, emotional, and not easy to remedy. Even so there may be merit in treating depression as a signal that something needs to change, rather than only a condition to be suffered.

'Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them?' (Hamlet Act III scene 1)

The mermaid frontispiece for Sir Henry Herring's account of St Doris Island

Mermaid at St Doris Island, showing Drake's Golden Hinde, flying fish and a sea monster

The print is now available! Read on to see it.

You may remember the above sketch by Martin Dace for the frontispiece of Sir Henry Herring's book, 'Seynt Doris Ilande,' subtitled 'Seynt Doris, an Iland in ye Westerne Indies, its Historie Geographie & divers Marvells founde therein together with a Description of its Aboriginall Salvages, set down in all Veritie by Henry Herring, Earl of a Bit of Cornwall and not the Other Bit, who went with Francis Drake, Kt. in the XXI year of the reine of Her Glorious Majestie Queen Elizabeth whom God preserve. Printed and sold at St. Doris-by-the-Fishmonger Churchyard, London MDLXXXXIX.'

(Takes breath.)

The sketch is of course an attempt at a modern reconstruction of the original. I have the book somewhere but unfortunately it is in a box or perhaps a cupboard somewhere, and as frequently happens with things I put in a safe place I've no idea how to find it. Martin did the sketch from the description in my novel, 'A Mermaid in the Bath,' as follows:

'The frontispiece facing the title page showed a woodcut, primitive and wonderful, of a volcanic island fringed with palm trees, in the distance a little ship much like Drake's Golden Hinde and dominating the foreground a triumphantly naked mermaid.'

I am happy to report that not only is this pretty close to my memory of the original, but also that it has now been fully realised as a lino print. Here it is:

The mermaid at St Doris Island, together with Drake's Golden Hinde , a sea monster and four flying fish

This is now available as a limited edition print on Japanese Kitakata paper (buff coloured) or Shoji (white) from Martin Dace's Etsy store.

Persistance and endurance

Ausdauer and Durchhalten as far as I know mean persistence and endurance - but they sound more impressive in German for some reason. We sometimes lose what we might have gained by giving up too soon.

I wonder if this is what happens to some of those film stars who get married half a dozen times (and no doubt this happens to other people who are not famous so we don't know about them). In that first falling in love, or perhaps in the slower development of a relationship that grows on us more gradually, we see everything beautiful and wonderful about the other person. With more time certain things we used to overlook start to irritate. Perhaps when they irritate or even exasperate enough we start thinking that we should move on, look elsewhere. This is the point at which to apply Ausdauer und Durchhalten. 

It does sometimes happen that a situation is beyond redemption and it is better for all concerned to move on. But first one must consider what in the situation might be redeemable, and what efforts one must make oneself. Thinking about what changes the other person must make will not achieve anything useful. And endurance and persistence can sometimes lead to surprising results. Just as a couple who have been through a difficult external situation together become closer to each other, so it can happen if they successfully negotiate difficulties in a relationship.

In other areas of life, too, success usually depends more on persistence than anything else. Why am I not a very rich successful business person? Because I am not fixated on those goals enough, I do not put the necessary effort into those things. Not because there is anything fundamental in my nature preventing it other than the lack of sufficient desire.

Not to worry: decide what you really want (that's the hard part) then go for it. And like a child learning to play a musical instrument, don't get put off because you cannot play Beethoven after your first lesson.

Mermaid at St Doris Island - work in progress

Mermaid at St Doris Island - work in progress

Here is the current state of the latest mermaid linocut. Apart from a few wavy wiggles the sky will be more-or-less white. In the background you can see the volcano on St Doris Island and on the other side is Drake's Golden Hinde at anchor, as described in Sir Henry Herring's book, S. Doris Iland and the Divers Marvells therein, as quoted in A Mermaid in the Bath by Milton Marmalade.