Sudelbücher

Love Karma

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 12:29:40 -0700

Love is like karma. You’ll keep coming back to the same love life if you don’t evolve with every relationship. We become jaded by love because we don’t learn in it and thereby keep recreating the same problems in our relationships. We don’t understand that love is our opportunity to transform to something new. And something new, does not, by definition, love the same way. If love doesn’t make you a new man, then you didn’t love deep enough.

"Why do I once again turn to writing? Beloved, one mustn’t ask such a clear question, For the..."

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 19:28:59 -0700

“

Why do I once again turn to writing?
Beloved, one mustn’t ask such a clear question,
For the truth is, I have nothing to tell you,
All the same, your dear hands will touch this note.

[quote above from The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe]

Young Werther’s inquiry as to why one writes a love letter reveals a paradoxical dimension inherent in any amorous correspondence: a letter is like a signifier that can convey an amorous message even though it may be empty or say nothing at all. It is the instrument of a tactile extension just as it transmits the language of devotion. Roland Barthes, distinguishes, in fact, between two forms of love notes: there is the amorous correspondence, where one seeks to “defend positions, insure conquests, [and thereby] articulate the image of the Other in various points that the letter will try to touch,” and there is the love letter proper, where one is purely affectionate, engaging the Other in a “relationship, not a correspondence.” The enterprise of writing amorously can thus be “both empty (encoded) and expressive (laden with a yearning to express one’s desire).” A note sent to the object of one’s affections is a deliberate extension of one’s language, an attempt to touch the Other (“as if my words were fingers”) despite the message conveyed: the irreducible “I love you.” In a letter, words need say nothing at all, “save that it is to you that I tell this nothing” and, paradoxically, it is via this “nothing” that one overcomes the Other’s absence.

”

- From The Josephine Baker House: For Loos’s Pleasure by Fares el-Dahdah

"Even after all this time The sun never says to the earth, “You owe me.” Look what happens with a..."

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 06:35:12 -0800

“Even after all this time
The sun never says to the earth,
“You owe me.”
Look what happens
with a little love like that.
It lights up the whole sky.”

- Hafiz

"The third quality that is needed for a scientist to become a public icon is wisdom. Besides being a..."

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 09:51:06 -0800

““The third quality that is needed for a scientist to become a public icon is wisdom. Besides being a famous joker and a famous genius, Feynman was also a wise human being whose answers to serious questions made sense. To me and to hundreds of other students who came to him for advice, he spoke truth. Like Einstein and Hawking, he had come through times of great suffering, nursing Arline through her illness and watching her die, and emerged stronger. Behind his enormous zest and enjoyment of life was an awareness of tragedy, a knowledge that our time on earth is short and precarious. The public made him into an icon because he was not only a great scientist and a great clown but also a great human being and a guide in time of trouble. Other Feynman books have portrayed him as a scientific wizard and as a storyteller. This collection of letters shows us for the first time the son caring for his father and mother, the father caring for his wife and children, the teacher caring for his students, the writer replying to people throughout the world who wrote to him about their problems and received his full and undivided attention.””

- Freeman Dyson, in “Wise Man”, New York Review of Books (20 October 2005) via rednude

"When I was younger I dated older women because they knew what love is. Now that I’m older I..."

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 09:17:18 -0800

“When I was younger I dated older women because they knew what love is. Now that I’m older I date women young enough to have not forgotten it.”

"Not enough! - It is not enough to prove something, one also has to seduce or elevate people to it...."

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 01:07:15 -0800

“Not enough! - It is not enough to prove something, one also has to seduce or elevate people to it. That is why the man of knowledge should learn how to speak his wisdom: and often in such a way that it sounds like folly!”

- Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak, section 330

"‎Sometimes people beg me to certify their understanding of the dharma. As long as you have to ask..."

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 00:56:52 -0800

“‎Sometimes people beg me to certify their understanding of the dharma. As long as you have to ask others for their approval, you’re not authentic. Still there are some who believe they’ve got satori because someone else gave them a certificate for it. If you’re already there, why ask others for directions?
You’ve heard that wine makes people drunk, and now you’re pretending your drunk and believe that you’ve really drunk wine. That’s also one of these forms of ‘satori’.”

- Kodo Sawaki, from The Zen Teaching of “Homeless” Kodo

"People ask what are my intentions with my films— my aims. It is a difficult and dangerous question,..."

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 10:07:46 -0800

“People ask what are my intentions with my films— my aims. It is a difficult and dangerous question, and I usually give an evasive answer: I try to tell the truth about the human condition, the truth as I see it. This answer seems to satisfy everyone, but it is not quite correct. I prefer to describe what I would like my aim to be. There is an old story of how the cathedral of Chartres was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Then thousands of people came from all points of the compass, like a giant procession of ants, and together they began to rebuild the cathedral on its old site. They worked until the building was completed— master builders, artists, labourers, clowns, noblemen, priests, burghers. But they all remained anonymous, and no one knows to this day who built the cathedral of Chartres.  Regardless of my own beliefs and my own doubts, which are unimportant in this connection, it is my opinion that art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, generating and degenerating itself. In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God. He lived and died without being more or less important than other artisans; ‘eternal values,’ ‘immortality’ and ‘masterpiece’ were terms not applicable in his case. The ability to create was a gift. In such a world flourished invulnerable assurance and natural humility. Today the individual has become the highest form and the greatest bane of artistic creation.  The smallest wound or pain of the ego is examined under a microscope as if it were of eternal importance. The artist considers his isolation, his subjectivity, his individualism almost holy. Thus we finally gather in one large pen, where we stand and bleat about our loneliness without listening to each other and without realizing that we are smothering each other to death. The individualists stare into each other’s eyes and yet deny the existence of each other.  We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster’s whim and the purest ideal. Thus if I am asked what I would like the general purpose of my films to be, I would reply that I want to be one of the artists in the cathedral on the great plain. I want to make a dragon’s head, an angel, a devil— or perhaps a saint— out of stone. It does not matter which; it is the sense of satisfaction that counts.  Regardless of whether I believe or not, whether I am a Christian or not, I would play my part in the collective building of the cathedral.”

- Ingmar Bergman

Exceptional.

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 23:19:38 -0700

Exceptional.

"At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Hesse registered himself as a volunteer with the..."

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 14:12:01 -0700

“At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Hesse registered himself as a volunteer with the Imperial army, saying that he could not sit inactively by a warm fireplace while other young authors were dying on the front. He was however, found unfit for combat duty, but was assigned to service involving the care of war prisoners. In September 1914, Hesse wrote an essay entitled “O Friends, Not These Tones” (“O Freunde, nicht diese Töne”), which was published in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, on November 3. In this essay he appealed to German intellectuals not to fall for patriotism. He called for subdued voices and a recognition of Europe’s common heritage. What followed from this, Hesse later indicated, was a great turning point in his life: For the first time, he found himself in the middle of a serious political conflict, attacked by the German press, the recipient of hate mail, and distanced from old friends. He did receive continued support from his friend Theodor Heuss, and the French writer Romain Rolland, who visited Hesse in August 1915. In 1917, Hesse wrote to Rolland, “The attempt…to apply love to matters political has failed.””

- Some are born posthumously.

A brilliant depiction of what a 21st century Enlightenment can...

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 00:23:06 -0700

A brilliant depiction of what a 21st century Enlightenment can be.

$50 million found and returned after tsunami

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 13:08:00 -0700

$50 million found and returned after tsunami:

One of the reasons I love Japan: “The equivalent of $50m in cash has been picked up in the disaster area and handed over to the police.” - from the article linked. How much was picked up and returned after Katrina?

Beautiful unscripted thoughts about life, politics, democracy,...

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 12:36:17 -0700

Beautiful unscripted thoughts about life, politics, democracy, possibility and the recent social uprising in Europe of the Indignati by Eduardo Galeano (in Spanish with Greek subtitles).

The Prison-Industrial Complex

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 16:52:16 -0700

The Prison-Industrial Complex:

Correctional officials see danger in prison overcrowding. Others see opportunity. The nearly two million Americans behind bars—the majority of them nonviolent offenders—mean jobs for depressed regions and windfalls for profiteers. An article by Eric Schlosser.

Slavery and Prisons in contemporary America

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 15:52:40 -0700

“You’re not allowed to bring into America anything that’s been made by forced labor or prisons. But in America, you can almost say…that they’ve reinvented the slave trade. They [prisoners in U.S. prisons] produce, for example, 100% of all military helmets, ammunition, belts, bullet proof vests, id tags etc., 93% of domestically produced paints, 36% of home appliances, 21% of home furniture…which allows the United States to compete with workers in Mexico because of course the workers can’t refuse to work for $0.25 an hour…” - from the video.

I’m not so sure whether prisoners don’t have the right to refuse working but needless to say it’s not as if they have a lot of choices in prison. I did some digging and found out the corporation that does this: Unicor. I tried to find out more about the statistics mentioned and discovered that Unicor at some point did produce all military helmets, but they’ve stopped doing so in 2010 after there was a recall of 44,000 defective helmets (source here). I wouldn’t be surprised if the remaining statistics are more or less accurate even though outdated.

Unicor is still around and has a vast number of services that employ prison labor at probably very low hourly rates (see for example this report to congress, albeit also a bit outdated given the last update was in 2007, where you can see it written that “Inmates earn from $0.23 per hour up to a maximum of $1.15 per hour, depending on their proficiency and educational level, among other things” p.6). Unicor even has call-centers where you can enjoy “all the benefits of domestic outsourcing” with “off-shore pricing”. At some point a female prisoner who’s interviewed says:

This has been a wonderful experience for me it has opened up a lot of doors.

(italics added)

A mixture of Freudian and Orwellian irony at its best. You can find the sinister video here.

Needless to say, there is something morally repugnant about this whole enterprise not to mention the fact that America incarcerates a historically unprecedented amount of its own population based on laws inspired more by baseball than reason. Perhaps it is time for Americans, but not just Americans, to remember the words of Hubert H. Humphrey, 38th Vice President of the United States:

“…the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life; the sick, the needy and the handicapped. “

- and if I may add, the imprisoned.

On bodyguards

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 17:25:48 -0700

‎”During the 1973 energy crisis driving was banned on certain weekends. King Olav could have driven legally but wanted to lead by example. So he dressed up in his skiing outfit, and boarded the railway carrying his skis on his shoulder. He was later asked how he dared to go out in public without bodyguards. He replied that “he had 4 million bodyguards” —the population of Norway at the time.” - from Wikipedia.

Regal response. Leaders who need protection from those they’re leading are failing their duties.

"Iki avoids explicitness, eloquence, and verboseness. Implicitness is another axis to be added to the..."

Sun, 04 Sep 2011 23:55:04 -0700

“Iki avoids explicitness, eloquence, and verboseness. Implicitness is another axis to be added to the understanding of iki. The concept of beauty allows narcissism, which may involve the self-asserting statement “I am beautiful.” A narcissist statement does not disqualify someone from being beautiful. In the case of iki, however, the statement “I am iki” is impossible because iki must not be self-asserting and explicit, but rather, inconspicuous and implicit.”

- Yamamoto Yuji, An Aesthetics of Everyday Life: Modernism and a Japanese popular aesthetic ideal, “Iki”.

Pina: A film for Pina Bausch by Wim Wenders

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 09:43:33 -0700

Pina: A film for Pina Bausch by Wim Wenders

Being Fully Human: Formative and Transformative Activities

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 17:31:17 -0700

Being Fully Human: Formative and Transformative Activities:

Activities may be divided into two categories, formative and transformative.

Formative activities are any activities that by themselves leave our perception of the world unchanged. For example, watching a football game. The qualification ‘by themselves’ is inserted to remind the reader that potentially any activity given the right circumstances can become transformative. For example, going to the cinema is usually a formative activity, but there is a possibility that a movie will affect us in such a deep way that it literally transforms the way we view reality.

Formative activities may be pleasurable, but at the end of the activity we remain the same person we were when we started them, and sometimes we even feel a sense of emptiness at the end of the activity. The reason for this emptiness is that man is always trying to find the solution to the problem of existence, and he is trying all these activities with the hope (whether conscious or unconscious) that they will be the solution to his problem. When he realizes that they are not, since he is unchanged at the end of the activity, he feels a vague but nevertheless distinct sense of emptiness. It is the feeling of failure, which increases over the years as all the attempted ‘solutions’ fail to solve the problem of human existence.

As soon as he realizes that each of these formative activities do not solve the problem, he tries to perform them conjunctively with the hope that what one formative activity couldn’t solve many formative activities together would. He goes to work, but his work is boring, and if it is not, just the fact that he has to do it is enough to remove much of the enjoyment of it – but he realizes it is not the solution. He tries to buy things with the money he’s making, and he believes the more he can buy the more he will approach the solution, so he works harder in order to buy them. But as any rich person will tell you, things bought are not the solution; at best they are a temporary alleviation. The excessive amount of work he is required to do makes him idealize ‘rest’ and ‘relaxation’ and he thinks that if he could only not work and ‘relax’ on some beach in an exotic island he will solve the problem, but when he retires on that island he gets bored and realizes it is not the solution. He searches ardently for love, for ‘the one’ person that will be his salvation, but when he finds her and has a family with her, he realizes after a number of years that not only she and their children weren’t the solution, but now he is burdened with even more responsibilities and has to work even harder. He devotes himself to all sorts of hobbies: jogging, basketball, hiking, sky diving, rafting etc. he tries everything in case one of them is the solution. Then he believes he might find the solution by doing all of the above together; when he realizes it is difficult, he believes that if only he could find a golden ‘balance’ between all these activities he would find the solution, he would be happy. But adding zeros does not get you a one in whatever way you add them – it only postpones the realization of the result of a pointless addition. Sad though it might be, this postponement can last a lifetime, and thus, as Thoreau reminds us, people reach the end of their lives and realize they have not lived.

The solution does not lie in formative activities. That doesn’t mean one shouldn’t engage in them, they make up the spice of life, but spices can’t replace a meal. The nourishment of the soul is to be found in transformativeactivities. As I mentioned earlier, the transformative quality of an activity may not be due to the activity itself but the conjunction of many factors simultaneously. However, there are some activities that are transformativethemselves and do not require the simultaneous presence of additional factors. Transformative activities give birth to our inner potential and allow us to do more, think more, feel more – be more. What are some examples of transformative activities? The archetype of a transformative activity isphilosophy. This is for the simple reason that the very aim of philosophy is the transformation of life into the good life, the life worth living. Philosophy as it is practiced in the universities these days has forgotten its real purpose; that the analysis of concepts and the examination of aspects of reality, is done in the service of the good life, and not as an end in itself. Contemporary philosophy has taken the means for the ends. But philosophy is an examination of bothmeans and ends, and its domain is not limited to the crude division of academic departments. Philosophy deals with the totality of life, and the totality of life is not limited to logic and metaphysics but it encapsulates physics, psychology, sociology, biology, literature, history, just to mention a few. That is why specialization is nothing but a reflection of modern times rather than inevitable necessity. A plant cannot ‘specialize’ in gathering water, while being ignorant of how to face the sun. In the same way, a man will not flourish unless he has a thorough knowledge of himself and the world he is living. Only then, can he spread his branches, face the sun, and bear his inner and most beautiful fruits. Only then can he be fully human.

On Friendship

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 18:17:54 -0700

The truest kind of friendship is that which exists between good men, as we have said more than once. For it is agreed that what is good or pleasant absolutely is lovable and desirable absolutely, and what is good or pleasant for a particular person is lovable and desirable for that person.

But friendship between good men rests on both grounds - the good are good and pleasant absolutely, and good and pleasant to each other. And when men wish well to those they love for their own sakes, this goodwill is not an emotion but a fixed disposition. Liking seems to be an emotion, but friendship a disposition; liking may just as much be felt for inanimate objects, but mutual affection is a matter of deliberate choice, and this springs from a fixed disposition. In loving a friend men are loving their own good, as a good man benefits a person whose affection he wins. Each party to a friendship therefore promotes his own good and makes an equal return in goodwill and in the pleasure that he gives. There is a saying, ‘Amity is equality’, and this is most fully realized in the friendships between good men.

Friendship is essentially a partnership. Also a friend is a second self, so that our consciousness of a friend’s existence, when given reality by intercourse with him, makes us more fully conscious of our own existence.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, (emphasis added) excerpt found in The Oxford Book of Friendship, chosen and edited by D.J. Enright and David Rawlinson, Oxford University Press, 1991.

I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with the roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frostwork, but the solidest thing we know.

Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt likeness and unlikeness, that piques each with the presence of power and of consent in the other party. Let me be alone to the end of the world, rather than that my friend should overstep, by a word or a look, his real sympathy. I am equally balked by antagonism and by compliance. Let him not cease an instant to be himself. The only joy I have in his being mine, is that the not mine is mine. I hate, where I looked for a manly furtherance, or at least a manly resistance, to find a mush concession. Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo. The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it. That high office requires great and sublime parts. There must be very two, before there can be very one. Let it be an alliance of two large, formidable natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared, before yet they recognize the deep identity which beneath these disparities unites them.

We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected. Reverence is a great part of it. Treat your friend as a spectacle. Of course he has merits that are not yours, and that you cannot honour, if you must needs hold him close to your person. Stand aside; give those merits room; let them mount and expand. Are you the friend of your friend’s buttons, or of his thought? To a great heart he will still be a stranger in a thousand particulars, that he may come near in the holiest ground. Leave it to girls and boys to regard a friend as property, and to suck a short and all-confounding pleasure, instead of the noblest benefit.

Emerson, ‘Friendship’. (emphasis added), ibid.

Those we ordinarily call friends and amities, are but acquaintances and familiarities, tied together by some occasion or commodities, by means whereof our minds are entertained…If a man urge me to tell wherefore I loved him [his friend Étienne de La Boétie], I feel it cannot be expressed, but by answering: Because it was he, because it was myself. There is beyond all my discourse, and besides what I can particularly report of it, I know not what inexplicable and fatal power, a mean and mediatrix of this indissoluble union. We sought one another before we had seen one another, and by the reports we heard one of another; which wrought a greater violence in us, than the reason of reports may well bear; I think by some secret ordinance of the heavens, we embraced one another by our names. And at our first meeting, which was by chance at a great feast, and solemn meeting of a whole township, we found our selves so surprised, so known, so acquainted, and so combinedly bound together, that from thence forward, nothing was so near unto us as one unto another’s.

Montaigne, ‘Of Friendship’, ibid.

There are few nobler spectacles than the friendship of two great men; and the History of Literature presents nothing comparable to the friendship of Goethe and Schiller. The friendhsip of Montaigne and Étienne de La Boétie was, perhaps, more passionate and entire; but it was the union of two kindred natures, which from the first moment discovered their affinity, not the union of two rivals incessantly contrasted by partisans, and originally disposed to hold aloof from each other. Rivals Goethe and Schiller were, and are; natures in many respects directly antagonistic; chiefs of opposing camps and brought into brotherly union only by what was highest in their natures and their aims.

To look on these great rivals was to see at once their profound dissimilarity. Goethe’s beautiful head had the calm victorious grandeur of the Greek ideal; Schiller’s the earnest beauty of a Christian looking towards the Future. The massive brow, and large-pupilled eyes- like those given by Raphael to the infant Christ, in the matchless Madonna di San Sisto- the strong and well-proportioned features, lined indeed by thought and suffering, yet showing that thought and suffering have troubled, but not vanquished, the strong man - a certain healthy vigour in the brown skin, and an indescribable something which shines out from the face, make Goethe a striking contrast to Schiller, with his eager eyes, narrow brow - tense and intense - his irregular features lined by thought and suffering, and weakened by sickness. The one looks, the other looks out. Both are majestic; but one has the majesty of repose, the other of conflict…

In comparing one to a Greek ideal, the other to a Christian ideal, it has already been implied that one was the representative of Realism, the other of Idealism. Goethe has himself indicated the capital distinction between them: Schiller was animated with the idea of Freedom; Goethe on the contrary, was animated with the idea of Nature. This distinction runs through their works: Schiller always pining for something greater than Nature, wishing to make men Demigods; Goethe always striving to let Nature have free development, and produce the highest forms of Humanity. The Fall of Man was to Schiller the happiest of all events, because thereby men fell away from pure instinct into conscious freedom; with this sense of freedom came the possibility of Morality. To Goethe this seemed paying a price for Morality which was higher than Morality was worth; he preferred the ideal of a condition wherein Morality was unnecessary. Much as he might prize a good police, he prized still more a society in which a police would never be needed…

Having touched upon the points of contrast, it will now be needed to say a word on those points of resemblance which served as the basis of their union…They were both profoundly convinced that Art was no luxury of leisure, no mere amusement to charm the idle, or relax the careworn; but a mighty influence, serious in its aims although pleasurable in its means; a sister to Religion, by whose aid the great world-scheme was wrought into reality…They believed that Culture would raise Humanity to its full powers; and they, as artists, knew no Culture equal to that of Art…

At this time, then, that these two men seemed most opposed to each other, and were opposed in feeling, they were gradually drawing closer and closer in the very lines of their development, and a firm basis was prepared for a solid and enduring union. Goethe was five-and-forty, Schiller five-and-thirty. Goethe had much to give, which Schiller gratefully accepted; and if he could not in return influence the developed mind of his great friend, or add to the vast stores of its knowledge and experience, he could give him that which was even more valuable, sympathy and impulse. He excited Goethe to work. He withdrew him from the engrossing pursuit of science, and restored him once more to poetry. He urged him to finish what was already commenced, and not leave his works all fragments. They worked together with the same purpose and with the same earnestness, and their union is the most glorious episode in the lives of both, and remains as an eternal exemplar of a noble friendship.

G.H. Lewes, Life of Goethe, (emphasis added), 1855, ibid.

All animals have interests. They are interested in satisfying their needs and desires, and in gathering the information required for their well-being. Rational beings have such interests, and use their reason in pursuing them. But they also have ‘interests of reason’: interests which arise from their rationality, and which are in no clear way related to desires, needs and appetites. One of these, according to Kant, is morality. Reason motivates us to do our duty, and all other (‘empirical’) interests are discounted in the process. That is what it means for a decision to be a moral one. The interest in doing right is not an interest of mine, but an interest of reason in me.

Reason also has an interest in the sensuous world. When a cow stands in a field ruminating, and turning her eyes to view the horizon, we can say that she is interested in what is going on (and in particular, in the presence of potential threats to her safety), but not that she is interested in the view. A rational being, by contrast, takes pleasure in the mere sight of something: a sublime landscape, a beautiful animal, an intricate flower, or a work of art. This form of pleasure answers to no empirical interest: I satisfy no bodily appetite or need in contemplating the landscape, nor do I merely scan it for useful information. The interest is disinterested - an interest in the landscape for its own sake, for the very thing that it is (or rather, for the very thing that it appears). Disinterestedness is a mark of an ‘interest of reason’. We cannot refer it to our empirical nature, but only to the reason that transcends empirical nature, and which searches the world for a meaning that is more authoritative and more complete than any that flows from desire. On this account, we should hardly be surprised to discover that the aesthetic is a realm of value. We perceive in the objects of aesthetic interest a meaning beyond the moment - a meaning which also resides in the moment, incarnate, as it were, in a sensory impression. The disinterested observer is haunted by a question: is it right to take pleasure in this? Hence arises the idea of taste. We discriminate between the objects of aesthetic interest, find reasons for and against them, and see in each other’s choice the sign and expression of moral character. A person who needs urgently to cut a rope and therefore takes up the knife that lies beside him, does not, in choosing that instrument, reveal his character. The knife is a means, and it was the best means to hand. The person with no such use for the knife, who nevertheless places it on his desk and endlessly studies it, thereby shows something of himself. Aesthetic interest does not stem from our passing desires: it reveals what we are and what we value. Taste, like style, is the man himself.

The same is true of all experiences and activities in which something is treated not as a means, but as an end in itself. When I work, my activity is generally a means to an end - making money, for example. When I play, however, my activity is an end in itself. Play is not a means to enjoyment; it is the very thing enjoyed. And it provides the archetype of other activities that penetrate and give sense to our adult lives: sport, conversation, socializing, and all that we understand by art. Schiller noticed this, and went so far as to exalt play into the paradigm of intrinsic value. With the useful and the good, he remarked, man is merely in earnest; but with the beautiful he plays. (Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man.)

There is an element of paradoxism in Schiller’s remark. But you can extract from it a thought that is far from paradoxical, namely this: if every activity is a means to an end, then no activity has intrinsic value. The world is then deprived of its sense. If, however, there are activities that we engage in for their own sake, the world is restored to us and we to it. For of these activities we do not ask what they are for; they are sufficient in themselves. Play is one of them; and its association with childhood reminds us of the essential innocence and exhilaration that attends such ‘disinterested’ activities. If work becomes play - so that the worker is fulfilled in his work, regardless of what results from it - then work ceases to be drudgery, and becomes instead ‘the restoration of man to himself’. Those last words are Marx’s, and contain the core of his theory of ‘unalienated labour’ - a theory which derives from Kant, via Schiller and Hegel.

Consider conversation: each utterance calls forth a rejoinder; but in the normal case there is no direction towards which the conversation tends. The participants respond to what they hear with matching remarks, but the conversation proceeds unpredictably and purposelessly, until business interrupts it. Although we gain much information from conversation, this is not its primary purpose. In the normal case, as when people ‘pass the time of day’, conversation is engaged in for its own sake, like play. The same is true of dancing.

These paradigms of the purposeless can be understood only if we take care to distinguish purpose from function. A sociobiologist will insist that play has a function: it is the safest way to explore the world, and to prepare the child for action. But function is not purpose. The child plays in order to play: play is its own purpose. If you make the function into the purpose - playing for the sake of learning, say - then you cease to play. You are now, as Schiller puts it, ‘merely in earnest’. Likewise the urgent person, who converses in order to gain or impart some information, to elicit sympathy or to tell his story, has ceased to converse. Like the Ancient Mariner, he is the death of dialogue.

The same is true of friendship. This too has a function. It binds people together, makes communities strong and durable, brings advantages to those who are joined by it and fortifies them in their endeavours. But make these advantages into your purpose, and the friendship is gone. Friendship is a means to advantage, but only when not treated as a means. The same applies to almost everything worthwhile: education, sport, hiking, fishing, hunting, and art. If we are to live properly, therefore - not merely consuming the world but loving it and valuing it - we must cultivate the art of finding ends where we might have found only means. We must learn when and how to set our interests aside, not out of boredom or disgust, but out of disinterested passion for the thing itself.

Roger Scruton, Modern Culture, Continuum, 2005.