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Winnicott:
play and
creativity
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Poem: Ordinary
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FOR BARBARA AND ME (60th)
Two times three and add an
“O” To mark the pain, the hurt, the woe Of body ache and time ill spent--
But this is not a poem to lament.
For sometimes there is joy
in age That springs up fresh like garden sage That sparkles wit and verbal
thrust That dances light and mocks this dust.
What me, like the elderly?
That’s not right. I’ve learned to swim, to sing, to play the night. I’ve
learned the moment’s fleeing joy. I may mock; I don’t annoy.
At fifty, I entered the
serious years. I tried to be just, authentic, sincere. I dressed myself up,
I wore a hat. I smiled or frowned at this and that.
Well damn it all, it didn’t
work. Behind my front was always a smirk. Not that I don’t have loves or
hates, Things that matter, heavy weights.
But I’ve gone too far, done
seen too much. The stars that flicker, the life from the sea, Puzzles of
mind and people that haunted me—
The way of the world, the
ebb and flow—Seen it come, seen it go—I know the joy, I know the pain. I
know life is up and down again
And steady is as steady
stays, To work with art our leathery days.
I think, I listen, I kiss, I
touch. I am the sea, the sky, the song. I am the earth. At sixty, now, I
belong.
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AT THE MIRROR (M 60th)
I never thought
that i should see My body quite as
old as thee. My mortal coil
get thin and frail I feel sometimes like I'm in jail.
But when i raise
my eyes each day I have a brand
new act to play It gives me joy
to be alive To work, to
laugh, to think, to strive.
I do the law,
it’s been my life Along with
family, children, wife. Clients,
contracts, precedent, fact Arguments going
forth and back.
The law is the
frame of our human house The wall we build
to practice right The law is a
gossamer of the human heart Torn so easily by
might.
It’s not enough,
it does not suffice To ward off wrong
or clamp down vice. The ugliness of
greed and sin Keeps breaking in
I do the law,
i keep my part I work with
dignity and art I hone my words
within its frame I work for myself, not money or fame
I'm
a lawyer, it's my life. Along with
family, children, wife. I love my work,
but now love more--memories laughter music friends years everfaster days
moreintense
I built a
house, paid off my debt There's still time for me yet Seas to
sail, and much remains I'm at the
beginning, here, now, again.
For
now i
love the human heart, the human hope,
the human breast. I love the human is no less than the human ought.
I'm more
alive
in this human frame. I shall not be without joy again.
LIVE
IN THE PRESENT Ordinarily our
life is always incomplete, because we project all of our hopes, our
aspirations, our attention into the future, telling ourselves that we
will be happy when we attain this goal. We do not live, we hope to live,
we are waiting to live. The Stoics and Epicureans invite us to effect a
total change in our relation to time, to live only in the moment we live
in, the present—to live as well as we can, as if this were the last day,
the last moment, in our relationships to ourselves and those around us.
We can tell ourselves: I apply myself to this action, I will do it as
well as possible. We can tell ourselves: I am here, alive, and
that is enough. We can even add: Here I am, in an immense and
wonderful world. To live in the present is to live as if we were
seeing the world for the first and for the last time. Every present
moment can therefore be a moment of happiness. To do this, we must make
a difficult effort to liberate ourselves from fascination with the
future and with daily routine. ...
Existence must,
first of all, be considered as pure chance, in order to be lived completely
as a unique wonder. We must realize that. inevitably, it occurs only once;
not until then can we celebrate it in its irreplaceability and uniqueness. Hadot,
The Present Alone is our Happiness
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ON
PHILOSOPHY AS A WAY OF LIFE Real logic is not the pure
theory but lived logic, the act of exercising one’s thinking in
the correct way in everyday life, criticizing one’s
representations, not to rush to say a given thing is evil or
good, but to reflect. Genuine ethics is also not ethical theory
but ethics lived in life with other people. Even real physics is
not the theory of physics but a certain attitude toward the
cosmos—seeing things as they are, not from an anthropological
and egoistical point of view, but the perspective of the cosmos
and nature, e.g. that death is a natural phenomenon. This lived
physics is what is meant by cosmic consciousness; it also
consists in becoming aware of the fact that we are a part of the
Whole and must accept the necessary unfolding of the Whole with
which we identify. Hadot The Present Alone is our Happiness
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ON VIRTUAL EDUCATION.
The main
justification for a university campus in an age of telecommunications
and multimedia technology is the occasion it provides for conversation,
personalization, and shared commitment, for the exchange of words among
a community of learners and the development of a personal relationship
between the teacher and the student--a relationship that develops as
much through their physical presence to one another as through their
minds. Studies have shown that children may watch and listen to many
hours of television a day but if they don't actively engage in speech
themselves, they never acquire language. Likewise, a virtual university
that trafficks in what Socrates calls the "shadow" of animate speech may
produce information, mnemonics and compliance, but not the knowledge,
memory and commitment that blossom in the gardens of a real Academy.
--Robert Pogue Harrison, Gardens, An Essay on the Human Condition
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OF MODERN POETRY
The poem of the mind in the act of finding
What will suffice. It has not always had
To find: the scene was set; it repeated what
Was in the script.
Then the theater was changed
To something else. Its past was a souvenir.
It has to be living, to learn the speech of
the place.
It has to face the men of the time and to meet
The women of the time. It has to think about
war
And it has to find what will suffice. It has
To construct a new stage. It has to be on that
stage
And, like the insatiable actor, slowly, and
With meditation, speak words that in the ear,
In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat
Exactly that which it wants to hear; at the
sound
Of which, an invisible audience listens,
Not to the place, but to itself, expressed
In an emotion as of two people, As of
Two emotions becoming one. The actor
A metaphysician in the dark, twanging
An instrument, twanging a wiry string that
gives
Sounds passing through sudden rightness,
wholly
Containing the mind, below which it cannot
descend,
Beyond which it has no will to rise.
It must
Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may
Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman
Combing. The poem of the act of the mind.
--Wallace Stevens, Of Modern Poetry
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DEADLY TRUTHS. I teach three
deadly truths: the sovereignty of becoming over 'being', the
fluidity of all concepts over 'essences' and the lack of any
cardinal difference between man and animal.
--Nietzsche,
Uses and disadvantages of history
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TWO WORLDS (Summer 2008)
Ben Shahn
The laws of physics, which
govern the behavior of atoms and the movements of the stars, govern also
the conduct of rational beings. And yet:
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Being is still
enchanted for us; in a hundred/ Places it remains
a source -- a play of pure/ Powers, which
touches no one, who does not kneel and wonder./ Words still go
softly forth towards the unsayable./ And music, always
new, from palpitating stones/ Builds in useless
space its godly home.
--Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus.
This enchantment--revealed to us in the
constant imitation of sacred things--belongs, not to the world of
physical science, but to the Lebenswelt, which we ourselves
construct through our collusive actions.
---from Roger Scruton, in Sexual Desire, appendix 2:
Intentionality.
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TWO POEMS
Spring
2007
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ADVICE TO THE YOUNG. Wear
sunscreen. Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Don't worry.
Sing. Don't be reckless with other's hearts, or put up with people
who are reckless with yours. Floss. Don't waste your time on
jealousy or envy. Keep your old love letters. Stretch. Don't feel
guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. Get
plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. Don't congratulate
yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Enjoy your body. Use
it. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it.
Dance. Read directions. Do not read beauty magazines. Get to know
your parents. Be nice to your siblings. Understand that friends
come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard
to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle. Live in New York
City once, but leave. Live in Northern California once, but leave.
Travel. Accept inalienable truths. Respect your elders. Don't
expect anyone else to support you. Don't mess too much with your
hair. Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those
who supply it. Trust me on the sunscreen. --from Kurt Vonnegut's
MIT
speech
- TO BE A MAN. For instance?
Well, for instance, what it means to be a man. In a city. In a
century. In a mass. Transformed by science. Under organized power.
Subject to tremendous controls. In a condition caused by
mechanization. After the last failure of radical hope. In a
society that was no community and devalued the person. Owing to
the multiplied power of numbers which made the self negligible.
Which spent billions against foreign enemies but would not pay for
order at home. Which permitted savagery and barbarism in its own
great cities. At the same time, the presence of millions who have
discovered what concerted efforts and thoughts can do. As megatons
of water shape organisms on the ocean floor. As tides polish
stones. As winds hollow cliffs, the beautiful supermachinery
opening a new life for innumerable mankind. Would you deny them
the right to exist? Would you ask them to labor and go hungry
while you yourself enjoyed the old-fashioned Values? You -- you
yourself are a child of the mass and a brother to all the rest. Or
else are ingrate, dilettante, idiot. There, Herzog, thought
Herzog, since you ask for the instance, is the way it runs. --Saul
Bellow, Herzog, 1964
- TO BE A VERY RICH MAN. The
absolute ruler of the Delaware-sized oil fiefdom Brunei, Sultan
Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu'izzaddin Waddaulah, is one of the richest
men in the world. His family home, with 1500 rooms and 250
toilets, is considered the largest residence in the world. Among
his glittering trinkets: a forearm and hand made of solid gold
that the Sultan can use as a chin rest when deep in thought. (Wall
Street Journal, 10.27.05)
- EVOLUTION. What better creation
myth? An unimaginable sweep of time, numberless generations
spawning by infinitesimal steps complex living beauty out of inert
matter, driven on by the blind furies of random mutation, natural
selection, and environmental change, with the tragedy of forms
continually dying, and lately the wonder of minds emerging and
with them morality, love, art, cities--and the unprecedented bonus
of this story happening to be demonstrably true. --in Ian McEwen's
Saturday, 2005
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MILITARY TRAINING. Many are the
mothers and fathers who have seen their troubled or unfocused
children leave home for both boot camp and OCS and return as truly
changed people. The US Marine Corps touts this transformation with
audacity and pride, and its battle history cements the claim.
While each armed service has different criteria for its recruits,
the basic premise is the same: to strip away the
pseudo-individualism that seems so safe for young people and
replace it with an ethos of honor, courage, and commitment to
one's country, to selfless service to fellow service members, and
finally to one's self -- one's new self. --Christopher
Taylor, "Military Leadership."
- MORALITY, NATIONAL EGOTISM AND
WAR: MEXICO (1846) AND IRAQ (2003): All moral ideals can turn from being critically applied
to the self as well as others, to being applied defensively for
the protection of the self, and aggressively for the elevation of
the self, against and over others. No moral ideal, no matter what
the content, is immune to this human inclination. One is almost
tempted to say that more important than the content of a moral
ideal is whether it is applied critically or defensively. What I
am talking about is more than the ubiquitous phenomenon of
hypocrisy, that tribute that vice plays to virtue, that familiar
distance between what is professed and what is actually done. I
mean something further, that the moral ideal becomes a
justification for, even an impetus to, unworthy deeds, including
at the extreme its own Orwellian contradiction. The human
inclination to self-deception and self-exculpation, plain enough
in the lives of individuals, is magnified in collective life--in
the behavior, in particular, of nations. Every nation has a
magnified ego and a minimized conscience. The national egotism is
a compound of the egotism and the idealism of the individuals who
compose it...In "rallying around the flag" the egotism and the
idealism of individual citizens is inextricably combined.
Supporting the nation in righteous battle is a giant extension of
one's own ego, as are--to use a much lower-level analogy--the
cheering and booing of fans at a football game, chanting "We're
number one," booing referees, exulting in touchdowns and
victories, cast down by intercepted passes and defeats, all of it
happening to a kind of expanded self. So it is, vastly multiplied
and made more compelling, in national life, and particularly in
war...along with the accumulation of individual egotisms into a
giant national cheering section, there was also the contribution
to the national egotism of the idealism of individual
citizens--volunteering, risking their lives, dying. The idealism
of individuals, selflessly serving the nation, becomes then a
reinforcement to the egotism of the nation... Because the United
States regarded itself as the bearer and embodiment of Liberty,
popular government, and human rights, it could allow itself not to
be unduly scrupulous about the rights of Indians, or of Mexicans,
not to mention African slaves...These ironic controversions of
national moral ideals were then given supernatural reinforcement.
Already in the Puritan background there were ideas of a "special"
Providence, and the idea that God had extended particular
favors to the United States was by no means missing from the
founding period. Now such ideas exploded, and the final critical
edge that they had had (that God required something difficult from the nation he favored)
faded; almost all that remained was a heavenly endorsement of
American national egotism. --from Wm. L. Miller's Lincoln's
Virtues, Appendix 1.
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LOGICAL PARADOX: At one point,
Don Quixote left Sancho Panza behind as the Governor of the island
of Barataria. His first case involved the use of a bridge leading
from one part of the island to the other part, which held the
capital city. The previous governor had made a law, that whoever
passed from one side to the other, had to take an oath on the
bridge as to what he was going to do on the other side. If he
swore truly, he could pass, but if he lied, he was to be put to
death on the gallows. This worked wonderfully well, confining all
the rogues on the smaller part of the island, for if they declared
their true intentions, they were not be allowed to pass, and if
they lied, they were put to death. But one day a man stood on the
bridge and said, "I am going to die on that gallows over there,
this is my business and no other." The officers did not know what
to do; whether they hanged him, or let him pass, it would seem
they would act wrongly. Sancho Panza at first said they should let
pass the part of the man who told the truth, and put to death the
part that did not; but then it was pointed out to him that
chopping a man in half killed the whole man, and this would make
it impossible for any part of him to go free. In the end he
decided that "when justice is doubtful, incline to mercy," and let
the man cross over, i.e. he set the law aside.
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LIBERALISM: "Socialism wants
to pull down wealth, Liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. Socialism
would destroy private interests--Liberalism would preserve them in
the only way they could justly be preserved, by reconciling them
with public right. Socialism seeks to kill enterprise. Liberalism
seeks to rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and
preference. Socialism assails the maximum pre-eminence of the
individual--Liberalism seeks to build up the minimum standard of the
masses. Socialism attacks capital, Liberalism attacks monopoly."
--Winston Churchill (To which one might add: [Radical] Conservatism
seeks to protect wealth...destroy public
interests...institutionalize privilege and preference...defend the
pre-eminence of the few and lower the minimum standard of the
many...use government to protect capital and support monopoly.)
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ETHICS, CATASTROPHIC RISK AND ECONOMIC THEORY:
Cass Susstein, in "Cost Benefit Analysis and the Environment"
(Ethics 115/2), discusses Richard Posner's application of CBA
to catastrophic risks, including the dangers associated with
particle accelerators, which have the possibility, though it is very
unlikely, of producing a highly compressed object called a strangelet, which has the ability to convert whatever it
encounters into a new form of matter. The physicist Martin Rees: "A
hypothetical strangelet disaster could transform the entire planet
Earth into an inert hyper-dense sphere about one hundred meters
across." Posner says that even though the possibility of such a
disaster is highly improbable, nations should ask if the benefits of
building such accelerators is worth the risk. He is doubtful. The
same article discusses assigning economic values to various events,
so-called WTP or "willingness to pay" estimates. For example, the
EPA values a human life at $6.1 million (aka VSL or
value-of-a-statistical-life), a figure that comes from real-world
markets. A case of chronic bronchitis is valued at $260,000, an
emergency visit to the hospital at $13,400, a specified decrease in
visibility (e.g. due to pollution) at $14 per person. The most
interesting - some would say, absurd - estimate was for a
catastrophe that would destroy the human species: $600 trillion.
(Global warming would be a mere $4 trillion.)
- CHOOSING GOOD OR EVIL: In
the imaging of Judaism, the yetzer hana, or evil impulse, is guided by Satan. It
is held in balance, however, by the yetzer hatov, or good impulse, which drives humanity toward the worthy and
creative use of all things. Maimonides, the great twelfth century
rabbi and philosopher, taught that one who would live rightly
must, within each moment, live as if his or her next action would
set the whole world atilt, spinning toward either the benevolent
yetzer hatov or, most frightening of all, toward the greedy
yetzer hana. --P.A. Tickle, Greed