Sysiphos At Work - Peer Raben
"Love is all a matter of timing: It's no good meeting the right person too soon ...or too late"
Saturday, September 21, 2019
The Beauty of the Ordinary -Pico Iyer- NYT , The Stone .
"Every year the autumn reminds me that progress doesn’t move in a straight line and that I’m not necessarily wiser than I was last year — or 30 years ago," writes Pico Iyer. "Every year, autumn sings the same tune, but to a different audience."
The Beauty of the Ordinary
NARA, Japan — Falling in love is the easiest thing in the world. But staying in love, we all know, can be one of the hardest. How do we keep the glow, the sense of unending discovery, alive once we’ve pledged ourselves to familiarity? And how to sustain the sense of anticipation that deliciously quickened the honeymoon? Put differently, how might we be enchanted by discovery’s opposite — routine — and find in constancy a stimulation as rich as novelty provides? The story of every marriage, perhaps, is the story of what happens after the endless summer ends.
“To learn something new,” the wise explorer John Burroughs noted, “take the path that you took yesterday.” A knowing friend in New York sent me that line when he heard that I’d spent 26 years in the same anonymous suburb in western Japan, most of that time traveling no farther than my size 8 feet can carry me. I’d arrived in Kyoto, from Midtown Manhattan, just out of my 20s and alight with everything this wildly unfathomable place could teach me. I never dreamed that I’d come to find delight in everything that is everyday and seemingly without interest in my faraway neighborhood, nothing special.
Of course this has something to do with the eye of the beholder and the passing years: When we’re young, we want to stand out, to leave our mark on the world, to be exceptional. As the seasons pass, we come to find that it’s everything that’s not extraordinary in us — our ability to tend to a family, to keep ill health at bay, to hit a Ping-Pong ball — and even in the world around us, that may be most memorable.
It’s certainly what is unremarkable in us that allows us to keep going to the office, to find common ground with our neighbors, to have something to write about. Growing up, I thought a writer was obliged to write from strength and show off all the things that he could do with more authority than almost anyone else; as autumn draws on, I begin to think that anyone’s strength is only what unites her or him to everyone else in shared experience, and often vulnerability.
But something other than that took me to Japan. Unlike in Britain, where I was born, and the United States, where I grew up, the citizens of my adopted home have been encouraged by their distinctive traditional culture to be quiet, to remain invisible, to try to look and sound like everyone else. The one thing others don’t much need, they know, is the loud impress of personality. Since I’d been trained to babble, I thought, when choosing to move to Japan, that it might be a good thing to go somewhere where I could learn to listen. Since I’d been encouraged at school to try to be an individual, it didn’t seem a terrible thing to learn to be quite typical. Becoming myself, I realized, might not involve anything more than becoming more like everyone around me.
When I met the woman who would become my wife in a Kyoto temple three weeks after I arrived in 1987, of course it was everything that I assumed to be distinctive, unique, even foreign in her that pulled me, much as she was surely drawn by the foreignness in me. But as we pass into a deeper season in our lives, we come to see that the season’s special lesson is to cherish everything because it cannot last; from Vermont to Beijing, people relish autumn days precisely because they’re reminders of how much we cannot afford to take for granted, and how much there is to celebrate right now, this shining late September afternoon.
I could have learned this anywhere, no doubt, but in Japan the seasons are treated with the sort of passion and reverence usually associated with religion. Every time the cherries begin to blossom, people flock into the parks because, in 10 days or so, the frothing pink flowers will be gone; and every time the maple leaves blaze in late November, my Japanese friends and family throng into temple gardens in much the same spirit that people of any faith may gather in temples or cathedrals. To be joined in a congregation; to be reminded of something larger than ourselves, keeping us in place; to catch moments of light in a season of mounting darkness.
I love the sunshine when I visit my mother in Southern California, but I can’t say I love the fact that February and August are growing interchangeable. It’s the end of things, Japan has taught me, that gives them their savor and their beauty. And it’s the fact that my wife — and I — are always changing, even as we’re shedding leaves and hair, that confers an urgency on my feelings toward her. Every year the autumn reminds me that progress doesn’t move in a straight line and that I’m not necessarily wiser than I was last year — or 30 years ago. Every year, autumn sings the same tune, but to a different audience.
My first year in Japan, I wrote a book about my enraptured discovery of a love, a life and a culture that I hoped would be mine forever. My publishers brought out my celebration of springtime romance in autumn. Now, 28 years on, I’m more enamored of the fall, if only because it has spring inside it, and memories, and the acute awareness that almost nothing lasts forever. Every day in autumn — a cyclical sense of things reminds us — brings us a little bit closer to the spring.
Pico Iyer is the author of “Autumn Light” and, most recently, “A Beginner’s Guide to Japan.”
Now in print: “The Stone Reader: Modern Philosophy in 133 Arguments” and “Modern Ethics in 77 Arguments,” with essays from the series, edited by Peter Catapano and Simon Critchley, published by Liveright Books.
Wednesday, September 18, 2019
When you are lonely or in darkness - Hafiz Al Shirazi -
When you are lonely or in darkness
- Hafiz Al Shirazi -
*
One day the sun admitted,
*
One day the sun admitted,
I am just a shadow.
I wish I could show you
The Infinite Incandescence
That has cast my brilliant image!
I wish I could show you,
When you are lonely or in darkness,
The astonishing Light
Of your own Being!
Monday, September 16, 2019
I Dreamt I was a Butterfly - Zhuangzi
I Dreamt I was a Butterfly
- Zhuangzi -
Once upon a time, I, Zhuangzi, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly.
I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Zhuangzi.
Soon I awakened, and there I was, veritably myself again.
Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.
Thursday, September 12, 2019
Some Rumi Poems, Collected from Friends Emails of 2011...
Some Rumi Poems, Collected from Friends Emails of 2011...
^^^
Sadness to me is the happiest time,
When a shining city rises from the ruins of my drunken mind.
Those times when I'm silent and still as the earth,
The thunder of my roar is heard across the universe.
*
I will break the cycle of pain and remedy,
Break the cycle of kind and cruel.
You saw me repent, and how sincerely --
Watch too when I break repentance's rule.
*
Like a sculptor, if necessary,
carve a friend out of stone.
Realize that your inner sight is blind
and try to see a treasure in everyone
*
My heart is so small
It's almost invisible.
How can You place
such big sorrows in it ?
"Look",He answered ,
" your eyes are even smaller ,
yet they behold the world"
*
Even when you tear its petals off one after another,
the rose keeps laughing and doesn't bend in pain.
"Why should I be afflicted because of a thorn?
It is the thorn which taught me how to laugh."
Whatever you lost through fate,
be certain that it saved you from pain.
*
You, who make all my hardship easy
And the garden, trees, flowers, drunk with your gifts;
The rose is drunk, the thorn is lost in dream;
Pour one more cup, they'll join in your wine's stream.
*
You could string a hundred endless days together,
My soul would find no comfort from this pain.
You laugh at my tale ? You may be educated
But you haven't learned to love till you're insane.
*
Throw greed, jealousy, hatred out of your heart.
Evil thoughts and temper - let them go.
Deny this and you lose, so cut your losses.
Own this and your profits quickly grow.
*
You do bad deeds and hope to get back good
Though bad deserves bad only in return.
God is merciful and kind, but even so,
If you plant barley, wheat won't grow.
*
He is king who knows you, whatever you wear.
Cry out without a sound and he will hear.
Who doesn't speak to peddle self with words?
Who knows the truth in silence, him I serve.
*
I've lost, then found, my thoughts a hundred times,
Drinking till when? from my admirers' cup.
At work, or idle, I get nothing done.
We'll see where all this finally ends up.
*
I would shake the dust from my coat, and rise
If I realized my own perfection.
I would rush to the sky, empty and light;
My head would be high as the ninth heaven.
*
At times we are hidden, at times revealed;
We are Muslims, Christians, Jews; of any race.
Our hearts are shaped like any human heart,
But every day we wear a different face.
*
Through Love all that is bitter will be sweet
Through Love all that is copper will be gold.
Through Love all dregs will turn to purest wine
Through Love all pain will turn to medicine.
Through Love the dead will all become alive.
Through Love the king will turn into a slave!
**
Sunday, September 8, 2019
Even Physicists Don’t Understand Quantum Mechanics. By Sean Carroll
Even Physicists Don’t Understand Quantum Mechanics. By Sean Carroll
“I think I can safely say that nobody really understands quantum mechanics,” observed the physicist and Nobel laureate Richard Feynman. That’s not surprising, as far as it goes. Science makes progress by confronting our lack of understanding, and quantum mechanics has a reputation for being especially mysterious.
What’s surprising is that physicists seem to be O.K. with not understanding the most important theory they have.
Quantum mechanics, assembled gradually by a group of brilliant minds over the first decades of the 20th century, is an incredibly successful theory. We need it to account for how atoms decay, why stars shine, how transistors and lasers work and, for that matter, why tables and chairs are solid rather than immediately collapsing onto the floor.
Scientists can use quantum mechanics with perfect confidence. But it’s a black box. We can set up a physical situation, and make predictions about what will happen next that are verified to spectacular accuracy. What we don’t do is claim to understand quantum mechanics. Physicists don’t understand their own theory any better than a typical smartphone user understands what’s going on inside the device.
There are two problems. One is that quantum mechanics, as it is enshrined in textbooks, seems to require separate rules for how quantum objects behave when we’re not looking at them, and how they behave when they are being observed. When we’re not looking, they exist in “superpositions” of different possibilities, such as being at any one of various locations in space. But when we look, they suddenly snap into just a single location, and that’s where we see them. We can’t predict exactly what that location will be; the best we can do is calculate the probability of different outcomes.
The whole thing is preposterous. Why are observations special? What counts as an “observation,” anyway? When exactly does it happen? Does it need to be performed by a person? Is consciousness somehow involved in the basic rules of reality? Together these questions are known as the “measurement problem” of quantum theory.
The other problem is that we don’t agree on what it is that quantum theory actually describes, even when we’re not performing measurements. We describe a quantum object such as an electron in terms of a “wave function,” which collects the superposition of all the possible measurement outcomes into a single mathematical object. When they’re not being observed, wave functions evolve according to a famous equation written down by Erwin Schrödinger.
But what is the wave function? Is it a complete and comprehensive representation of the world? Or do we need additional physical quantities to fully capture reality, as Albert Einstein and others suspected? Or does the wave function have no direct connection with reality at all, merely characterizing our personal ignorance about what we will eventually measure in our experiments?
Until physicists definitively answer these questions, they can’t really be said to understand quantum mechanics — thus Feynman’s lament. Which is bad, because quantum mechanics is the most fundamental theory we have, sitting squarely at the center of every serious attempt to formulate deep laws of nature. If nobody understands quantum mechanics, nobody understands the universe.
You would naturally think, then, that understanding quantum mechanics would be the absolute highest priority among physicists worldwide. Investigating the foundations of quantum theory should be a glamour specialty within the field, attracting the brightest minds, highest salaries and most prestigious prizes. Physicists, you might imagine, would stop at nothing until they truly understood quantum mechanics.
The reality is exactly backward. Few modern physics departments have researchers working to understand the foundations of quantum theory. On the contrary, students who demonstrate an interest in the topic are gently but firmly — maybe not so gently — steered away, sometimes with an admonishment to “Shut up and calculate!” Professors who become interested might see their grant money drying up, as their colleagues bemoan that they have lost interest in serious work.
This has been the case since the 1930s, when physicists collectively decided that what mattered was not understanding quantum mechanics itself; what mattered was using a set of ad hoc quantum rules to construct models of particles and materials. The former enterprise came to be thought of as vaguely philosophical and disreputable. One is reminded of Aesop’s fox, who decided that the grapes he couldn’t reach were probably sour, and he didn’t want them anyway. Physicists brought up in the modern system will look into your eyes and explain with all sincerity that they’re not really interested in understanding how nature really works; they just want to successfully predict the outcomes of experiments.
This attitude can be traced to the dawn of modern quantum theory. In the 1920s there was a series of famous debates between Einstein and Niels Bohr, one of the founders of quantum theory. Einstein argued that contemporary versions of quantum theory didn’t rise to the level of a complete physical theory, and that we should try to dig more deeply. But Bohr felt otherwise, insisting that everything was in fine shape. Much more academically collaborative and rhetorically persuasive than Einstein, Bohr scored a decisive victory, at least in the public-relations battle.
Not everyone was happy that Bohr’s view prevailed, but these people typically found themselves shunned by or estranged from the field. In the 1950s the physicist David Bohm, egged on by Einstein, proposed an ingenious way of augmenting traditional quantum theory in order to solve the measurement problem. Werner Heisenberg, one of the pioneers of quantum mechanics, responded by labeling the theory “a superfluous ideological superstructure,” and Bohm’s former mentor Robert Oppenheimer huffed, “If we cannot disprove Bohm, then we must agree to ignore him.”
Around the same time, a graduate student named Hugh Everett invented the “many-worlds” theory, another attempt to solve the measurement problem, only to be ridiculed by Bohr’s defenders. Everett didn’t even try to stay in academia, turning to defense analysis after he graduated.
A more recent solution to the measurement problem, proposed by the physicists Giancarlo Ghirardi, Alberto Rimini and Tulio Weber, is unknown to most physicists.
These ideas are not simply woolly-headed “interpretations” of quantum mechanics. They are legitimately distinct physical theories, with potentially new experimental consequences. But they have been neglected by most scientists. For years, the leading journal in physics had an explicit policy that papers on the foundations of quantum mechanics were to be rejected out of hand.
Of course there are an infinite number of questions that scientists could choose to worry about, and one must prioritize somehow. Over the course of the 20th century, physicists decided that it was more important to put quantum mechanics to work than to understand how it works. And to be fair, part of their rationale was that it was hard to actually see a way forward. What were the experiments one could do that might illuminate the measurement problem?
The situation might be changing, albeit gradually. The current generation of philosophers of physics takes quantum mechanics very seriously, and they have done crucially important work in bringing conceptual clarity to the field. Empirically minded physicists have realized that the phenomenon of measurement can be directly probed by sufficiently subtle experiments. And the advance of technology has brought questions about quantum computers and quantum information to the forefront of the field. Together, these trends might make it once again respectable to think about the foundations of quantum theory, as it briefly was in Einstein and Bohr’s day.
Meanwhile, it turns out that how reality works might actually matter. Our best attempts to understand fundamental physics have reached something of an impasse, stymied by a paucity of surprising new experimental results. Scientists discovered the Higgs boson in 2012, but that had been predicted in 1964. Gravitational waves were triumphantly observed in 2015, but they had been predicted a hundred years before. It’s hard to make progress when the data just keep confirming the theories we have, rather than pointing toward new ones.
The problem is that, despite the success of our current theories at fitting the data, they can’t be the final answer, because they are internally inconsistent. Gravity, in particular, doesn’t fit into the framework of quantum mechanics like our other theories do. It’s possible — maybe even perfectly reasonable — to imagine that our inability to understand quantum mechanics itself is standing in the way.
After almost a century of pretending that understanding quantum mechanics isn’t a crucial task for physicists, we need to take this challenge seriously.
Sean Carroll (@seanmcarroll) is a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology and the author of the forthcoming book “Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime,” from which this essay is adapted.
Tuesday, September 3, 2019
Should Work Be Passion, or Duty? By Firmin DeBrabander -The Stone , NYT -
Should Work Be Passion, or Duty?
It’s worth noting on a national holiday extolling the value and dignity of labor that Americans are uniquely obsessed with work. Could any other nation come up with a product like Soylent, a meal substitute, not for the elderly, the poor or the malnourished, but for software engineers, Wall Street brokers, tech entrepreneurs and others who don’t want to be diverted from their work by the time consuming intricacies of a meal? Could you imagine the French conceiving such a thing?
While other wealthy nations have shortened the workweek, given their citizens more free time and schemed to make their lives more pleasant, stress-free and enjoyable, the United States offers a curious paradox: Though the standard of living has risen, and creature comforts are more readily and easily available — and though technological innovations have made it easier to work efficiently — people work more, not less.
Why is this?
One theory is that Americans have come to expect work to be a source of meaning in their lives. Our “conception of work has shifted from jobs to careers, to callings,” explains Derek Thompson, in a recent article in The Atlantic. There is a growing expectation, if not insistence, that work is to be your passion, your obsession — a veritable religion that Thompson dubs “Workism.” This is especially pronounced among the upper classes — precisely those people who do not need to obsess over work, at least for material concerns.
A recent study of priorities among young people found that achieving one’s career passion ranks highest of all — more than making money or getting married. Finding a fulfilling job is almost three times more important than having a family, teenagers in the study reported.
It is daunting to contemplate. Most people are certainly guaranteed to fail in this pursuit. Even people who love their jobs will report they must do thankless tasks from time to time. Few, if any, experience nonstop bliss, where sheer passion sustains them through long hours on the job.
Whether or not you accept the work as worship analogy — perhaps “meaning” and “fulfillment” in this context are really just the usual raw ambition disguised as virtue — there is plenty of evidence that our high-octane work culture has serious consequences. It is at least partly responsible for high levels of burnout among millennials. Many young people report having lost the ability to enjoy free time; they have fewer hobbies. Americans overall today engage in fewer extracurricular social activities than they did in previous generations. More time spent on the job or at the office means less time with family — and with children who crave our attention. There are also links between long work hours and increased consumption, and a larger carbon footprint.
It seems clear that we need a new approach to work, a different motivation for selecting and performing one’s job, and making space for it in life. We might begin by rejecting the notion that work should consume our lives, define and give meaning to them, and seeing it rather as an opportunity to fulfill something larger, namely our duty.
In a well-known essay called “On the Tranquility of the Mind,” the first-century Stoic philosopher Seneca offers advice to his friend Serenus, a Roman official who complains that his high post is not fulfilling because it does not allow for glory. Serenus does not see the impact of his grand position, and finds it hard to do his job. He constantly casts about looking for something more captivating and consequential, where his renown may be secured — to no avail. Ultimately, he complains to Seneca, he feels seasick from it all; he is unsettled, unmoored, empty.
Seneca’s advice to Serenus is to focus on doing his duty. He must perform the job he is best disposed and able to perform, as determined by his nature, and the needs of those around him. And he must forget about glory or thrill or personal fulfillment — at least in the near term. If he performs his duty, Seneca explains, fulfillment will come as a matter of course.
When the Stoics invoke duty, they have something special in mind. Yes, it involves performing your obligations, but there is more to it. For one thing, the Stoics see duty everywhere — or rather, they see life as a collection of duties, including but not limited to your job.
Duty is rooted in self understanding. What are you able to do well, the Stoics ask? What service is required? Throw yourself into that. Each of us has undeniable talents and abilities, whether they are physical, emotional or intellectual. More controversially, your natural makeup and disposition suggest there are things you should not do — you will never do them well, and they will offer perennial frustration. Hopefully, or ideally, your natural abilities will be cultivated and deployed most effectively and fruitfully. This makes for joy.
In essence, Seneca calls for a change of focus: Instead of straining to discover your one true passion, and devote your life and soul to it, study yourself and the needs of those around you. Frankly assess what you can do, how you are best equipped to serve, and work. Also: identify the several jobs you are called to do — inside and outside the home — and do them well.
Seneca also urges Serenus to avoid pinning his hopes on perceived results; we may not see any. Too often, we throw up our hands in despair when we think our efforts have no impact. Too often, we misjudge the nature and standard of success. But human perception is prone to error, philosophers have long pointed out. We are often ill equipped to measure, much less detect the fruits of our labor. We must, Seneca says, “just act” — just do your duty, and think of little else.
To illustrate, Seneca tells the story of the ill-fated Julius Canus, who was condemned to death by the emperor Caligula. In prison, Canus played a game of draughts while awaiting his execution. When the centurion came to lead him to his doom, “he counted the pieces and said to his companion, ‘Mind you don’t pretend you won after I’m dead,’ then with a nod to the centurion he added ‘You will testify that I was one piece ahead.’ Do you suppose that Canus played a game at that board?”
Life is a game, or a play, the Stoics contend, where we have roles to act out. These are our duties. I, for example, am a professor, sometimes a writer; but also a father, a husband, and son; a colleague, citizen, neighbor and friend. There are certain things I must do in these roles. There are expectations of me and duties to perform beyond my career, as stipulated by my nature and place in society, and they require my attention. And my duties will change with time and age.
Play the role you are given, Seneca urges. Play it seriously, and diligently. But recognize that it is only a role, one among many — and not of your design or choice. When you see your duties as various roles you must play, and your life as a collection of these roles, this will alleviate the urgency and anxiety that burden any given task — including, or especially, your career.
Work can be therapeutic, Seneca contends, when we take our will and wants out of the equation, and devote ourselves instead to the job at hand — and recognize that we have many callings. There is not only one path to fulfillment, but many.
In America, we fancy ourselves eminently free. We tell our children they can be anything they want, that they can achieve their grandest dreams. We mean this as encouragement, but Seneca would say it is secretly oppressive. In truth, we can’t be anything we want, nor should we try, because dreams are imprecise, and wants are insatiable. It is far better to focus on what we can do, where we can help. Our duties are a surer guide in life — and we are happier for embracing them.
Firmin DeBrabander is professor of philosophy at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and the author of “Do Guns Make us Free?” and is at work on a book on the loss of privacy.
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