Creating creativity

Thomas Edison said: “Creativity is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration”. I had to think of it, when I read an article in Scientific American about how to increase your creativity (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=an-easy-way-to-increase-c). Edison’s saying implies that creativity is not just a trait of some persons. Everybody can be creative, even if s/he does not have a special talent for it. I do not want to deny that some persons do have such a talent for creativity in certain fields, a kind of creativity gene by way of speaking, but fundamentally everybody can produce something intrinsically new and something intrinsically special: simply work hard.

There are more factors that stimulate it, however. In my last blog, we saw already one of them: to relax. And if it is hard to do that spontaneously, organise your relaxation: take a holiday or spend a weekend in a totally different setting. But that is not the only thing you can do. The article in Scientific American just mentioned points out that creativity is to a large extent dependent on the situation and the context, and that is something you can influence, too. The question then is, of course, what those situations are. When and where are we more creative?

It sounds a bit contradictory, but sometimes it can be good not to go too much into your subject and not to try to master all details and aspects hoping to be able to combine them to something new. Do just the opposite: take distance. This needs not to be physical distance from the problem solving activity, as in my last blog. You can also try to look at your theme from another perspective, such as by taking another person’s perspective of. Or it can be a matter of doing mentally a few steps back. Try to see the wood and not only the tree. Or just change your physical situation for a while. When I am working on a problem like writing this blog and my mind has become blocked and I don’t know how to go on, I often just leave the room for a moment, for instance for taking a cup of coffee or walking a few minutes in my garden. When I am back, usually the blockade has gone. I do not need to stop thinking about my activity. Just the physical change helps. The psychological theory behind it is that by taking some physical distance, your problem becomes more abstract for you and your more abstract thoughts might make you contemplate other, less striking sides of it. The distance you take doesn’t need to be physical, however. It can also be a virtual distance in time. Studies show that thinking how you would approach the question next year can help as well.

So being creative is not just being a special person. Everyone is intrinsically creative; it is only a matter of how to take it out. In the past I have written several blogs on the zombie (our unconscious part) in us and on the free will. In a certain sense, creativity seems contradictory to our free will. Creativity is a kind of “Aha Erlebnis”, an “aha” moment. It looks as if it happens to us and that we can’t help that it happens. The creativity “theory” as exposed above says something different. Maybe, we are not completely free to be creative. Maybe it is not something we can literally choose to be. But we are free to “create” the circumstances that enhance the chance that we get creative results. Creativity may be an unconscious process, executed by our zombie while we do not have a real say in it, but we can steer our zombie by pampering it and making itself feel comfortable so that it finds something splendid. And isn’t that already quite a lot? For if we could produce creativity at will, we could ask whether it exists, and whether we weren’t more than complicated machines, just executing what has already been programmed, albeit a program as yet unknown to us.

Source: see the link above and the one in my last blog.

Sweeping your mind

People who regularly read my blogs will know that I am often on holiday. Usually I spend two or three holidays abroad, not counting the shorter trips, both within the Netherlands and on the other side of the border. This year I was already a week in France and also one in Hungary and I have been in six countries. And the summer vacation yet has to come. Although my holidays are not long – most last only one or two weeks – when I am back, there is always the same “trouble”: How to adapt again to the daily routine. I think that many other persons have this experience, too. In fact, it doesn’t make much difference whether a holiday was short or long. What counts is that there was a clear break with the daily routine. This makes that also just a weekend away from home in a totally different setting can have the same effect, for example an intensive course or a training camp with people you do not know in another town or somewhere in the countryside. Also then it can take some time to adapt to normal life again.

All this sounds rather negative, as if daily life is the norm. But of course, you go away for the break, for the difference, for what you can learn during the discussion weekend, and so on. And then, as you certainly will have experienced, it often happens that the break gives you a fresh start, and, if you are a thinker like I am, new ideas. This is often explained by the rest and relaxation you got (and isn’t that also the reason that you have your best ideas at the moment you are taking a shower?). But in Psychology Today, which is often a source of inspiration for me, I found another interesting explanation: Doing something different is a good way to clear your mind. For the main difficulty of problem solving can be that you try to do it in the old way. Your mind is often full of old problems with old solutions and what is more obvious than trying to solve new problems with old approaches? Isn’t it so that this often works? For in many cases new problems are not really new, but they are variations on an old theme. But sometimes, a new problem, a new question, is really new, or it is different enough from the old stuff that old answers do not work. If that is the case, we have to clear our mind and sweep away what is old. Throw the old stuff in a corner of your mind, stow it away in a mental cupboard and keep it out of sight. Take distance from prior experiences for they inhibit new ones. But your daily routine often impedes this. So by a break, a holiday (or a shower), your mind will be swept. A holiday and also a short break function like a broom: They sweep away old ideas in your mind so that you can take distance from them. And then, the disturbance of your daily routine that you feel when you are back home is no longer a trouble but it is an asset. For now there is room for something new, for new ideas and for new solutions.

Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/your-brain-work/201205/back-vacation-dont-waste-your-clear-mind-the-small-stuff

The peaceful tenor of books

In his book on nationalism Caspar Hirschi quotes the following story from Johannes Aventinus’ Bavarian Chronicle, written around 1500: “After they [the German tribes] had conquered Athens … they amassed a large numbers of books on the market, piled them up and wanted to have them burned. At this point, a soldier stood up and dissuaded them from it, saying: ‘leave the books to those fools, the Greeks; while they are occupied with them, they all become unfit for war and womanish creatures who cannot defend themselves; it is better and more convenient for us if they are equipped with books and pens than with harness and weapons’ ” (Hirschi, The Origins of Nationalism, 173).

This story has a clear morality, anyway seen from the side of the soldier: Reading is a foolish, naïve activity that is innocent by nature. I think that there is some sense in it: When people are reading, they cannot do something else. Moreover, reading leads to thoughts with an “effeminate” content that make that readers are not prepared to take up arms, also at those moments when their minds are not distracted by it. In other words, reading leads to peace.

If this were true, we would have discovered a new way of making an end to war: Establish libraries and bookshops all over the world, in every corner. Make that people love books and that they spend a big part of their time on them, as readers and as writers. Then we’ll get peace on earth, at last. But alas, reality is more complicated. According to Hirschi, Aventinus had probably taken his story from the East Roman historian Petrus Patricius (c. 500-565). Patricius gives a slightly different version and then he comments: “Had [the soldier] been aware of the virtues of the Athenians and Romans, how renowned they were both in word and in war, he would not have said so” (quoted from Hirschi, 172-3). I am afraid that this remark is nearer to the truth than the implicit morality of Aventinus’ version. Books can have an inherently peaceful tenor, indeed, in spite of what they actually are about, but how often doesn’t it happen that books just stimulate war and violence? Or that they make that people are more prepared to use violence or to go to war, even when this wasn’t the intention of the author? And isn’t it so that there are also many books about the way how to wage war? The thought is so wonderful: reading distracts from war and leads to peace and it would have been so nice, when the soldier who stopped his comrades burning the books on the market of Athens would have been the first to have formulated an effective theory of peace, despite himself. Unfortunately reality is different.

Dangerous ideas (4)

Trying to suppress “dangerous ideas” is of all times. In my last blog I wrote about a recent case. One of the first known cases in history is the process against Socrates. Socrates was sentenced to death among other things because he introduced new gods and had a bad influence on the youth. Galileo had to retract his idea that the earth circles the sun, because it conflicted with the ideas the Roman Catholic Church had about the world order. In 1674 Montaigne’s Essays were placed on the Index, although when Montaigne visited Rome in 1581 and had to show all books in his luggage to the authorities, the Essays passed the censor and he got only a few advices for changing the text here and there (which he didn’t). This raises the question: What is a dangerous idea? For, to take the example of Montaigne, what wasn’t dangerous in 1581, was considered to be so a century later, at least by some (the book was still legally for sale in England, for instance, but not in France).

Actually, the answer to the question is quite complicated. In order to keep it simple, one could agree with Steve Pinker (and many others on the Internet with the same view), who writes: “By ‘dangerous ideas’ I don’t have in mind harmful technologies, like those behind weapons of mass destruction, or evil ideologies, like those of racist, fascist, or other fanatical cults. I have in mind statements of fact or policy that are defended with evidence and argument by serious scientists and thinkers but which are felt to challenge the collective decency of an age.” (quoted from here) But if one would agree with this, why then fight against nazism or a rogue state that wants to have an A-bomb, if the ideas they propagate aren’t dangerous? What then is a good reason for fighting them, if it is not for their ideas? Okay, we could say: because of their consequences. But then I’ll ask: the consequences of what? The consequences of the ideas, of course, that lead to dangerous behaviour. Just for their consequences these ideas are considered dangerous. If the call for democracy and freedom wasn’t dangerous for the Syrian regime, the leading clique wouldn’t shoot down peaceful demonstrators. All this shows that what is seen as dangerous depends on on which side you are.

Nevertheless, there is some – or even much – truth in what Pinker says. Many ideas are or can be seen as dangerous, but when we talk of “dangerous ideas” we usually have something different in our minds: We (implicitly) take the position of the established political order and consider these ideas as subversive and so dangerous for this order. And this can go quite far, as we have seen in my last blog. For even the ideas of widely praised persons, national heroes honoured with special days and statues can still be seen as dangerous, although they are just praised and honoured because of these ideas and their consequences. But it’s so double, for on the one hand authorities (even democratic authorities) still see civil disobedience and nonviolence as dangerous (see the case in my last blog and there are many cases to add), but on the other hand they don’t believe in it (despite the recent success of nonviolent resistance in Tunisia and Egypt and a lot of older cases). For who has ever heard of states that support nonviolent resistance in other countries, while cases of states that support violent resistance in other countries abound? It’s so contradictory: as if an idea can be true and false at the same time.

Dangerous ideas (3)

In future it will be possible to scan your ideas before you enter an aeroplane in order to prevent that you’ll make an attempt. It works only, of course, if you got your intention before you went into the plane and not when you were already there. And it works only if what they “see” in your brain is really a dangerous idea and not something else that looks like it but what is in fact completely innocent or just very positive. But before the big brothers who are watching us have perfected brain scanners far enough, they’ll have to resort to more traditional means and they do. So recently an FBI agent and a Dallas police officer spoke with philosophy and religion professor Adam Briggle of the University of North Texas about specific materials in a syllabus for one of his courses on civil disobedience. In his syllabus Briggle had included an article that supports “monkey wrenching,” an act of sabotaging equipment performed by activists to stop projects they deem damaging to the environment. Briggle himself believed the FBI agent and officer were only seeking information. “They told me they are acting proactively and preventatively to smell out any signs of trouble for any potential eco-terrorist strikes revolving around the gas drilling issue on the Barnett Shale,” Briggle said. But have you ever heard of a chemistry professor being questioned by the security police because s/he explained how to make explosives? It seems that teaching chemistry is of another order than teaching philosophy, certainly if this philosophy is about civil disobedience. Or what to think of a political science professor who treats in his courses what nazism and anarchism stand for?

It’s true, Briggle propagates civil disobedience and he is also an activist. Moreover, he counsels his students to break the law. “Just the unjust laws,” as Briggle said. But in view of this, Briggle does nothing else than what people like Gandhi, King and many others did, who are the heroes of today. But apparently the authorities still see civil disobedience as a kind of continuation of terrorism and violence, and for them it is only a matter of degree. For what other reason would security officers have for interviewing Briggle about his course in civil disobedience and ask him during the interview whether he had heard anything about improvised explosive devices? (They repeatedly said that there is a difference between protesting and violence, indeed, but isn’t this actually a way of expressing that for them there isn’t?) But in fact, security officers and others who see civil disobedience and non-violence as dangerous are right: these are “dangerous” ideas for they might be effective. So there are good reasons to question a philosophy professor, even when he stays within the limits of the law and basically does nothing different than what, say, a chemistry professor does. However, it’s just one step to repression and controlling our minds.

Source and quotations from: http://www.ntdaily.com/?p=64495#comments

Virtual addiction

Once I wrote a blog in which I presented the results of a study by Susan Greenfield that the Internet can make us insensitive to what we do to others. On line we do not see the emotions we arouse in others when we hurt them, and in the long run this can make that we get less empathy with what we do to others, also outside the world of the Internet (see my blog dated April 25, 2011). In this sense the Internet creates first its own virtual world, and then this virtual world can change the real world. But there is more in this world of virtual social relations. I wonder whether it has anything to do with another effect of the Internet: that Internet relationships keep us insatiate. I think that everybody knows the phenomenon, if not from personal experience than from hearsay: people are addicted to Facebook, Twitter or another social network. They use it continuously at home, in the train, at work. When they are using a computer, they have it on the background and they check it every now and then, if not more often. The more “friends” they have the better it is. The essence of how it works in the brain is this: When we connect with people in real life, our brain produces the hormones oxytocin and seratonin in, what we could call, the social connection circuitry in our brain. These hormones are a reward for us and make that we calm down and finally become satisfied, even to that extent that after visiting a conference, for instance, we tend to avoid other people for some time. However, when connecting with people on the Internet, we tend not to get these hormones, with the result that we just want to have more virtual social connections. As a consequence we can become addicted to social network websites. (see David Rock, “Are Our Minds Going the Way of Our Waists?”

So far, so good and if that was all there is, it needn’t to be bad. Why would it? The problem is, however, that things never come alone. And besides that, if we do one thing, we cannot do something else, and as Rock points out, too much social seeking is not good for us. With Facebook or another website on the background when working, there is the risk of constantly being distracted, which will lead to a lesser quality of our work, and a drop of our IQ of, say, 15 points. However, I wonder whether the latter is really what happens: I guess that the score on the IQ test is worse; not the IQ as such (and who knows; maybe the social IQ is increased). But what makes me relate the fact that Internet contacts can make us feel insatiate and therefore addicted to them on the one hand and the possible loss of the feeling of empathy in Internet contacts on the other hand is this, and I think it is worrying: What if both go together? I mean, people become blunt when hurting others on the Internet and they stay insatiate when doing this. Then, eventually, they might become addicted to virtual hurting. But is this typical for the Internet? Isn’t it so that these things also happen in real life? That’s true, but the difference is that in real life generally it is easier to control and stop persons with “bad habits” than lonely agents in a virtual world, especially when everybody has the means of access to this world.

The art of photography

Pinhole camera

In my last blog I told that I take pictures with a pinhole camera. I think that most readers of my blogs don’t know what such a camera is. It is the simplest camera you can imagine. It’s not more than a box with a very small hole in it (the pinhole), which can be opened or closed with a shutter, and with a film or sensor in it (but most pinhole cameras still use film). There are more complicated types, but most pinhole cameras are like this. You can buy it or you make it yourself. In mine you cannot change the diaphragm (size of the pinhole). I open and close the shutter by hand and I use my watch for measuring the time that the shutter must be open for making a photo (which is a matter of several seconds).

Photos taken with a pinhole camera are a bit blurred and also moving people and objects are always vague. So photos taken with a pinhole camera do not meet the standards of a good photo. Why then make such photos in this age of digital cameras that allow you to make technically perfect photos? Well, my reply is another question: Why still make paintings in this age of photography?

I think that my answer has everything to do with what people consider beautiful. Beauty is not an objective experience. It is subjective; and there is no accounting for tastes, as is often said. Yet, there is something objective about beauty. When I have an exhibition of my photos or when I present them on an art market, it’s just these photos taken with my pinhole camera that attract attention. Why? I think because they have a shade of beauty that cannot be imitated by an ordinary digital or analogue camera. Beauty in photos (and beauty in general, but that’s not what I want to talk about here) has nothing to do with technical progress as people often seem to think. Nowadays, with these technically perfect cameras, everybody can make good photos, they say. Is that true? I doubt it. Even making a technically perfect photo with a simple digital pocket camera of good quality still seems to be a problem for many people. And is it the technical quality that makes a good photo a good photo? Then all photos taken by Cartier Bresson could be considered rubbish now, for instance. But they are still considered as top photography. Why? Because what is photographically good is in the eyes and the minds of the makers and the beholders and not in the technical quality (whatever this may mean, for isn’t it so that also the idea that a photo must not be blurred is nothing but a subjective opinion?). Technical progress is not the same as progress as such, let alone that it is implicitly good and beautiful. To take a photographic example, there are many photographers who make photos with digital cameras of top quality and next they use photographic filters (in Photoshop, for instance) to make them look like analogue photos made on film! Why not simply use an analogue camera then? No surprise that today we see a revival of analogue photography. For in the end the art of making a good photo has nothing to do with using the most up to date techniques but everything with choosing the right means for expressing what you want to express. Sometimes simple or old-fashioned means are the best for it. It’s an open door* and everybody knows, it’s true, but many people tend to forget it.

P.S. I have planned to buy a good digital camera, too. They have so many advantages (as they have disadvantages as well).

* Dutch expression for an obvious point.

The art of travelling

Fumay sur Meuse - photo taken with pinhole camera

Montaigne loved travelling, albeit only because it gave him the opportunity to ride his horse. Usually he travelled for practical purposes. For his work (he has been a judge); for political missions in order of the king; for visiting friends; because he had something to do in Paris; and who knows for what other reasons. In 1580 Montaigne decided to make a long journey without a special purpose but only for the pleasure of travelling. The travel would last more than one year and five months and it would bring him to Northern France, then to Basel, Augsburg and Munich, to Florence and to Rome, before he was called back to Bordeaux, where he had been appointed mayor. Montaigne did not travel alone but with a company of friends, his youngest brother and servants, although he was “the leader of the gang”. But it had a big influence on his trip, for had he travelled alone, maybe he would have gone to Krakow in Poland, or to Greece, as he wrote in his diary, or to another place far away. But his fellow travellers were against it. This didn’t imply that he passed only well-trodden paths and visited only famous towns, for Montaigne did not look for tourist attractions that everybody knows. As Stefan Zweig writes in his essay on Montaigne: “when a place is very well known, he preferred to avoid it, because other persons, too many of them, had already seen and described it” (from the French edition: Montaigne, PUF, 1982, p. 105). Even more, he also avoided his compatriots abroad, for he knew them already well. No, when Montaigne travelled, he looked for what was different, for what was unknown to him. And he didn’t do it for rejecting it and for experiencing how superior his own way of life was. On the contrary, he was curious to see how other people lived and what their solutions for the daily problems were, hoping that he could learn from them. So, once he regretted that he did not have taken his cook with him, so that he could learn new recipes.

And why not? When I talk with other people about travelling, they often say: “Have you seen this?”, “Have you been there?”, when I tell them that I have recently been to Nancy or Oslo, or have made a tour through Hungary. They name a certain place or church or way of art that is famous there, if not well-known to “everybody” in the world, and are surprised if I say “No”. What kind of traveller am I, I see them thinking, that I failed to go there? That I failed to see what is “really” valuable? And yes, I must admit that I failed to see it and a lot more. But I did not fail to see what they failed to see: odd and ugly places that are really not worth a visit when you need not to be there, places that really are not “worth the detour”, to quote the words of the Michelin guides. Places where daily life takes place but that are just for that reason interesting to visit. And places beautiful in their simplicity and because they are just there, often full of details, which would make them “worth the detour”, if everybody knew about it. However, do not misunderstand me. I do not say that what others visit and like to see is not worth the visit. What I want to say is that there are also other ways of travelling; ways that are as valuable as looking for the sublime (or lying on the beach, to mention another thing). I am working on a photo project, which is photographing towns along a river with the river with a so-called pinhole camera. Once I followed a part of the Meuse, a river that begins in North-eastern France and ends near Rotterdam in the Netherlands. But when you want to make a picture of a town with the river you must be on the opposite bank in most cases, for most towns are only on one side of the river. And this trip brought me to many little but often beautiful towns, known almost only to its inhabitants, like Schayn, Yvoir, Chooz or Fumay. It brought me to places where a normal tourist would never come, like the industrial area of Herstal near Liege, or in the bush across a town the name of which I have forgotten. And I enjoy it.
(Some photos of the photo project can be seen on http://www.flickr.com/photos/photographybytheway/sets/72157625378290041/)

The art of letter writing

After Stefan Zweig had fled the Nazis, he established himself in Petrópolis in Brazil. Once he complained against his friend Jules Romain that weeks passed by that he didn’t receive any mail. Gradually Zweig had received less and less mail, which was, so Romain, a way the world told him that he wasn’t important any longer.

In those days letter writing was an important way of communicating and the letters you received said something about your personal network and your importance. You could talk with someone if you met him or her in person. Or maybe you could call him or her, but most people didn’t yet have telephones in those days. When talking or calling was not possible or when you didn’t want to do it for some reason, you wrote a letter. I have no statistics, but I wouldn’t be surprised if till not so long ago letter writing was the most important form of communication that was not from face to face. It had been for ages so. Letters were used for personal communication or for expressing ideas; or for both, of course. Therefore they often give a good view of the time that they were written. The letters written by the Roman philosopher and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero are well-known and still worth to be read, for instance. Letters were such an important way of expression that they had developed also into a special literary genre. Epistolary novels are a case in point.

But nothing is eternal and so the art of letter writing is gradually disappearing. People write fewer and fewer letters. Does this mean that people are less in touch with each other and become more isolated? Just the opposite. Today, maybe Zweig wouldn’t have felt himself so isolated and meaningless in Petrópolis that he committed suicide. New ways of “networking” and keeping contact have come into being. First, letters were more and more replaced by phone calls, and then, it’s superfluous to tell it, we got the Internet with its possibilities to send e-mails and with its social network sites. I can write a lot here about this new way of communication and how it has changed the world, but others can do it (and have already done it) better than I can. Yet, for me receiving an e-mail is not the same as receiving a hand-written letter with a stamp. By saying that, I am a bit a hypocrite. For not only do I write more e-mails than I have written old style letters (“snail mail”) ever before, but I write my “snail mail” only exceptionally by hand. Usually I do it with my computer (and people who know me can assure you that I am still a fervent snail-mailer). But, okay, time doesn’t stop and one has to take the best of both sides.

I value a lot the arrival of e-mail and social network sites (and I have “friends” there, too), so you cannot excuse me of not keeping up with the changes, but like Stefan Zweig I receive fewer and fewer letters, and I miss it a bit. The difference is, of course, that Zweig got nothing instead, while I make full use of the new possibilities of the Internet. But receiving a paper letter with a stamp that falls through your letterbox on the doormat is different from getting an electronic version in your e-mail box. It’s a matter of feeling, but then I must say: for me it feels so. It’s true, snail mail contacts were often flimsy, but many Internet contacts are flimsier to a greater extent. And will e-mails ever be valued that way that they will lead to a new literary genre? A kind of digital epistolary novels? Maybe, although nothing like that is known to me so far (I admit, it can be my failing). Yet a first step in that direction has been taken. For what has been just published in the Netherlands? The Philosophy Twitter Canon: the thought of 43 important philosophers comprised in the 140 characters of a tweet for each thinker. Brilliant briefness or superficiality? There is no way back in time.

Running with my mind? No: watch TV!

Regular readers of my blogs will not have failed to notice that I have just published a book entitled Running with my mind (in Dutch). I took the title of the book from one of my blogs that I wrote about a year ago. There I discussed a study by Yue and Cole that showed that you can train your muscles with your mind: Simply think that you train them and they’ll become stronger. What a handy way of improving and maintaining my physical condition, I thought then, especially when the rain is pouring down or when I don’t have much time to go outdoors. I was so impressed by what you can do with your mind – not only performing purely mental activities but also physical activities – that I borrowed the title of this blog for my book. But now I wonder whether it was a good choice. For I had just sent my book to the publisher, when I read a newspaper report with the title “Not dancer does dance”. The essence of the little article was: People who do not dance themselves but who regularly visit dance performances have increased muscle activity while watching. Which muscles become active depends on the type of dance you are used to see. So regular visitors of Indian dance performances have especially a higher activity of the muscles in their hands while ballet watchers have more activity in their arms. Apparently, so the article, you do not need to be an active dancer for having this experience; you only need to be an experienced dance watcher.

Having read this, I thought: Well, when you activate your muscles, so when you move them, it cannot be so that you only move them and that’s it. There’ll certainly be a training effect. Moreover, it is unlikely that this effect will be restricted to Indian dance and ballet watchers. The effect will probably also occur when you regularly watch other physical activities like football matches, cycle races or athletics meetings. People even say that I tend to move my head from left to right and back when I follow a skating race on TV. When I am watching a sport on TV or live that I practise myself, too, I often have the idea that my body is also in the race. But if it is true that there is a training effect in your muscles when you simply watch your favourite sport, why then yet train your muscles by imitating the movement of the muscles in your mind, when the rain is pouring down and you do not want to go outside, or when you want to save time? There’s a much simpler solution: turn your TV on on a sports sender or take a DVD with your favourite sport. Sit down in your chair and watch. Then you do two things at the same time: both watching the race or match that you wanted to see this afternoon anyway and making yourself physically fitter. Yes, at the same time!

When I chose the title for my book, I took it because for me running with your mind was symbolic for the mind’s multi-sidedness. But since I have read this little article, I wonder whether it was a good choice, for that the mind gives you the possibility to run with it is actually quite a superfluous property. We can do without it. Just loll on the sofa, take a beer, and tune in. Your mind can stay passive, certainly when you compare it with what you have to do when you are running with it.

A new book: Thank you very much my dear readers !

Once the window-cleaner, who came to fill his bucket from the tap in my kitchen, asked me: “What are you doing?”, wanting to know what kind of job I had or something like that. Since I don’t have a steady job, I said: “I have written a book”. It was true, for I had just finished my PhD thesis and it had been published by a big publishing house. “Why then do you live here?”, the window-cleaner asked. I didn’t understand, so he explained what he meant. It became clear to me that he thought that when you publish a book, it brings you a lot of money, so you can buy a big expensive house, instead of the simple one where I live. Writing a book seemed to be same to him as writing a million seller. At that moment I was too baffled to give a good answer to such naivety. Now, fifteen years later, my PhD thesis still hasn’t sold more than about 200 copies.

Recently I had to think again of this story. For again I have written a book and it is a special one, for I owe it to you, my dear readers! About five years ago, I started to write these blogs, and as I have told before, I did it for myself. But, unexpectedly, I was praised for it, and I got a prize. Time went on and I continued to be praised by you, and I received and still receive many positive reactions. Then I got an idea: make a book of these blogs. And so I did. Of course, I didn’t put all my blogs in it. Such a book would be too thick, and some blogs are really not worth to be published anew. Therefore I made a selection of about ninety blogs that I considered good enough for a republication and that had a more or less a common theme. But my blogs were in English, and I am a Dutchman. Moreover, from the reactions I got, I knew that I have hardly any Dutch readers. So, I decided to translate the blogs into my native language, hoping to open up a new field of readers. Then I sent the manuscript to a publishing house, which accepted my idea. I found an intriguing title for my book (in fact, the title of one of the blogs) and I made an attractive  photo for the cover that fits the title. And now, since a few days, the book is off the press.

Although most of you, my dear readers, cannot read this book in Dutch – but you have been so lucky to be able to read the originals already since many years – you are the pillars of my book. You are those who have stimulated me to start and finish my book project, and therefore I want to thank you: Thank you a lot my dear readers for your stimulating reactions.

Will this book make me financially rich? I think it will not. However, I do not care. Even if in the end it will come out that the book has cost me more money than I’ll have earned with it, it has given me a richer mind: My writing has filled my mind with many interesting ideas, consciously and unconsciously, and now I know, for instance, that the mind is a many-sided and almost universal instrument. You can do a lot with it, and it makes you who you are. You can even run with it, as I discovered, a fact that for me symbolizes the mind’s multipurposiveness most.

Henk bij de Weg, Running with my mind. Who am I? What do I do? Zoetermeer: Free Musketeers, 2012 (in Dutch: see the picture and link in the left column here on this page).

Learning Italian by listening to operas

During the years I learned twelve languages. I must admit that I forgot some because I stopped investing time in them for keeping them up. Staying fluent in more than five or six languages is quite an effort, when one hasn’t a natural way to practice them, and when one doesn’t have a special talent for languages. I haven’t such a talent, so learning a language is hard work for me and keeping them up, too. Happily I found ways for daily practice for some languages, like reading or writing for my work, watching foreign news programs (which I find very interesting, for it tells you a lot about other countries), writing letters to people all over the world, and so on.
Once I met a Russian journalist on the Internet who asked me to write an article about how I learned all those languages. Actually learning twelve languages is not really extreme in view of the number of languages that some other people have mastered, but for her it was. Happily, I could write the article in English, for my Russian is not that good that I can use it for more than informal letters and for reading; then the journalist translated it for me (here it is: http://www.birzhaplus.ru/kariera/?33528; sorry for those readers who cannot read Russian). In the article I described my language history and I gave also some tips for learning, like those I just mentioned implicitly. But recently I realized that I forgot one tip. As said, I learned twelve languages through the years, but unknowingly I learned also a thirteenth one: Italian. How did I do it? Simply by following another passion: listening to opera music and going to opera performances. Of course, preferably Italian operas (although I must say that Russian and French etc. operas give me also some practice in these languages). That’s not so difficult for isn’t opera Italian in the first place? And so I learned many Italian words: Andiamo (let’s go; how often do the singers say “andiamo”, when they are going to leave from the scene!); ragazzo and – of course – ragazza (boy, respectively girl); piangi (cry! weep!). And you can even learn to count by listening to opera music. For who doesn’t know how many sweethearts Don Giovanni had in Spain? Exactly: mille tre (1003). And since the Italian grammar is not really difficult, thanks to my love (amore) for music (musica) I can make myself a bit understood in Italian, too. Tutte le strade portano a Roma (all roads lead to Rome).
P.S. A little practice in Italian: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYlQ6rs9uZ8

Intuitions as prejudices

Philosophical insights and conclusions are often founded on intuitions, at least partially; even in that degree that some – or maybe many – philosophers think that intuition is one of the main instruments of philosophy, next to conceptual analysis and argumentation. However, as we have seen in my blog dated June 22, 2009, Weinberg, Nichols & Stich have shown in an experiment that epistemic intuitions are not as objective as they were supposed to be, since they differ according to culture and within a culture according to social group (see also my blog last week). Must we not conclude then that at least epistemic intuitions are nothing but a special kind of prejudices? And isn’t it likely then that the same is true for other intuitions? By stating this (for I do state this, because I think that these questions have to be answered affirmatively), I do not want to say that intuitions have to be rejected and that they are of no use in philosophy. I do not say that. It is a prejudice that prejudices are fundamentally false. Prejudices are sometimes false but often they are true. Even more, prejudices can be and often are important and useful guides that lead our actions. Without them we wouldn’t survive, for investigating every new situation we encounter in order to have a founded opinion how to act is simply impossible. And then I ignore that often we just do not have the time to do that, since we have to act now in many cases. Then our prejudices are our action guides and usually they are reliable guides. It is the same for our intuitions. As prejudices they are important and useful in leading our reasoning and often they bring us to the right conclusions. However, this does not need to be so: intuitions are as prejudicial as prejudices are. And if all intuitions were right, how could we explain that they can differ according to social background?

Philosophical and experimental investigation

The way I developed the idea of intention in my last blog is typically philosophical. I formed an intuitive idea of intention in my head and tried to apply it to a certain case: the case of a runner (me) trying to break a world record. Then I applied the idea of intention to another case: me trying to hit the bull’s-eye. Next I concluded that my original conception of intention couldn’t be right. Intention had a wider meaning on a sliding scale. The whole argumentation took place in my head. This is the way many people, including philosophers, think what philosophizing is: a kind of argumentation that is founded exclusively on intuition and conceptual reasoning. But is that true? Is that all that philosophy is? Is there no place for empirical investigation in philosophy?

In fact, my last blog undermines already the view that philosophy is merely conceptual analysis and intuition: There I referred to an article by Sousa and Holbrook, whose conclusion that intention is a multiple concept was founded on empirical investigation. Moreover, what do we mean when we say that we have the intuition that something is true? Does something like intuition exist? As I have once discussed in a blog (dated June 22, 2009) intuitions are not as universal as they are supposed to be. In an experiment Weinberg, Nichols & Stich have shown that epistemic intuitions are not as objective as they were thought to be; they differ according to culture and within a culture according to social group. Philosophical conclusions may be different when drawn by people with different backgrounds. Generally, the so-called “experimental philosophy” has shown that experimental investigations can give interesting and important philosophical insights (see for instance my blog dated Feb. 23, 2009). As a third example I want to mention the present debate on the free will, one of the leading topics in philosophy today. It is just the experimental research by Libet and others that have led to new insights and questions in philosophy about what we mean and what it is about when we talk about free will.

These are only a few cases that show how experimental investigation can be relevant for philosophy. It can be useful in conceptual analysis (the case of intention); it can present valuable insights to be interpreted philosophically (for example that people are blamed for the negative side effects of what they do but not praised for the positive side effects, discussed in my blogs dated Feb. 23, 2009 and later); it can undermine philosophical views (the Cartesian dualism of brain and mind); and so on. The particular field of investigation for philosophy is non-experimental and especially conceptual-analytical. Intuitive insights can also be helpful, indeed. However, this does not imply that there is no role here for experimentation.

Can I intend to break a world record if I cannot break it?

Suppose that I love running. Initially, I ran twice a week. But after some time I did it effortlessly and I started to do it three times a week, then four times a week, and in the end I did it almost every day. I joined an athletics club, I trained a lot and I participated in races and I ran faster and fast. My personal bests became much better through the years and after four years of training I had a personal best of 14'37.8" on the 5,000 m. Not bad but on the other hand only of regional importance and just good enough for participating in the national championships, although I had absolutely no chance to win. Nevertheless I begun to dream: How would it feel to break a world record? I knew, of course, that the present 5,000 m record was about two minutes under my personal best. No chance to beat that time. Yet I continued dreaming and then I decided to start my next 5,000 m in a world record tempo and try to keep this pace up as long as possible and see where I would end. My chances were not bad, I thought: I was in top form and the other runners on the starting list could give me good competition. Can we say now that I had the intention to break the 5,000 m world record?

Once I reasoned that the answer was “no”. The argument was that it was simply impossible for me to break the record, because I should have to break my personal best with more than two minutes. Since I had already a rather long running history, such a thing would be impossible. But why cannot I have the intention to do it despite that?

I became aware of the problem again, when I read Sousa and Holbrook’s article “Folk Concepts of Intentional Action in the Contexts of Amoral and Immoral Luck” (Review of Philosophy and Psychology (2010) 1:351–370). I cannot summarize the article here, but the essence is that they argue that “intention” is a multiple concept that has more than one meaning. A current view says that intention implies the ability to do what one intends; it involves skill. Without having the skill to perform a certain action, one cannot seriously maintain that one has the intention to do it. If one succeeds nevertheless when trying to do the action, it’s by a fluke. For instance, if I take a gun for the first time in my life, point to the bull’s-eye and shoot, it should be mere luck if it is a hit, not because of my intention. Just this example raises doubt to the idea that one cannot say that I had the intention to hit the bull’s-eye, I think. Even if I had never had a gun in my hands before, this does not exclude that I can try to hit the bull’s-eye, and it seems not unreasonably to say then that I had the intention to do that, even though I did not have the skill. The question is solved if one realizes that “intention” may mean here not the same as the skill involving concept.

Now I go back to the case that I tried to break the 5,000 m world record. Cannot I say then that I had the intention to break the world record? It may be weird for me, but how about a person whose personal best is only one second above the world record? Or two seconds? Or 15 seconds? Or half a minute....? Where is the limit? And how about a young gifted runner who just took up running and who may have a good chance of bridging the two minutes gap within a few years? Once I met a runner who seriously though that he could bridge such gaps in a race. Must we say that he did not have the intention to do that, since we cannot imagine having such an intention in his case, because such an intention is unrealistic?

In view of this one can say that “intention” is a multiple concept. It can contain the idea of skill but it does not need to be so. But if this is right, it is a multiple concept on a sliding scale.

Travelling for books

The trip my wife and I made to Nancy had nothing philosophical. Actually we did not go there for the town but for seeing Rossini’s opera “L’Italiana in Algeri”. In terms of the famous Michelin travel guides, the performance was not only worth a detour; it was worth the travel. Once we were there, we did other things, as well; that’s clear. We admired the famous golden gates that give entrance to the central Stanislas Square and we did also some other sightseeing. I must say that we failed to see most of the Art Nouveau, a trend in art that had its origin in Nancy. We saw much of it, of course, but we didn’t give it special attention. Instead we went to the Aquarium Museum. No, not for looking at the strange creatures that live under the level of the sea, although we did do that once we were there. We went there for an exposition of the beautiful pictures that the French photographer Vincent Munier had made of nature and wildlife. But in the end, I couldn’t also refrain from entering a few bookshops. It’s a thing I always do on a holiday abroad. Today you can order books from everywhere in the world on the Internet, but still the best way to buy a book is going to a real shop. Losing your awareness of the world around you when walking along the tables and cases full of interesting (and also not so interesting) books. Looking for stimulants of your mind and for food for new ideas. Seeing and feeling the paper before buying, and reading a bit in the books for judging whether they are really what you are looking for. And for seeing what themes and subjects people elsewhere are interested in.

In fact, it wasn’t so that I started to look for bookshops only after my arrival in Nancy. At home I had already googled where I had to go and where I had the best chances for finding books I would like. When preparing a trip and looking for interesting things in a region or town I am going to visit, bookshops are among the latter. And during the years, I have gathered a range of addresses of bookshops I simply must visit if I am happen to be there, both in the Netherlands and in many towns abroad that I may pass on my trips, on the journey out or on the journey home. Bookshops that are worth a detour and sometimes even the travel. And now I can also add one in Nancy to my list. Does I have to say yet that I didn’t leave the town with empty hands?

The intuition of responsibility

A central theme in the free will debate is the question whether responsibility exists. The idea is that a free will cannot exist, if responsibility does not exist. Therefore it has to be proved that responsibility exists. This is often done with the help of so-called Frankfurt-style cases: a kind of exemplary argumentations first presented by the American philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt. A typical case is this:

“Jones is in a voting booth deliberating whether to vote for the Democratic or for the Republican presidential candidate. Unbeknownst to Jones, a neurosurgeon, Black, has implanted a mechanism in Jones’s brain that allows Black to monitor Jones’s neural states and alter them if need be. Black is a diehard Democrat, and should Black detect neural activity indicating that a Republican choice is forthcoming, Black is prepared to activate his mechanism to ensure that Jones instead votes Democratic. As a matter of fact, Jones chooses on his own to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate, so Black never intervenes.” (adapted from Eric Funkhouser, “Frankfurt Cases and Overdetermination”, http://comp.uark.edu/~efunkho/frankfurt.pdf, p. 3)

In this case, Jones has in fact only one option: to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate. If Jones had wanted to vote Republican, Black would have forced him to vote Democratic. Then it would not have been Jones’s responsibility that he had voted for the Democratic candidate. However, it was Jones’s own choice to vote Democratic; Black did not intervene and so the vote was Jones’s own responsibility. This shows then, so the reasoning is, that responsibility exists in the sense that there are situations in which it is possible. At least that’s what the intuitive argument of Frankfurt and other free will advocates maintains. Now I do not want to doubt that free will exists, but does it follow from this case that responsibility exists? My intuition says no.

Much has already been said about these Frankfurt type cases, so it would suffice for me to refer to the literature. However, as a “good philosopher” I, too, want to give my contribution to the discussion, so take this case: Under international pressure a dictator organizes free elections according to the accepted democratic rules: everybody can stand up, the candidates have free entrance to the media, they can present their programs freely, and so on. The elections are as free as elections can be. However, when the counting of votes starts, the president gives the following instruction to the counters: in case I get the majority and become re-elected, it’s okay, but if one of the other candidates will win, manipulate the votes then that way that I’ll be the winner. And just like Black in the first case succeeded to implant a mechanism in Jones’s brain unbeknownst to Jones, the dictator succeeds to have the instructions applied and to be kept secret. In case the dictator was beaten by another candidate but was re-elected by his manipulation, then we, the onlookers for whom nothing can be kept secret, would call the regime still a dictatorship. However, as it happened, the dictator was re-elected with 90 percent of the votes. Would we conclude now that democracy exists just as some concluded in the Jones-Black case that responsibility exists? Must we call the re-election of the dictator with an overwhelming majority a case of democracy? I don’t think so. My intuition says that it is a cunning way of manipulation by a dictator, just like so many dictators in this world try to govern with a varnish of democracy. And what makes this case fundamentally different from the Jones-Black case for responsibility? If we want to show that responsibility exists, we’ll have to choose for another, if possible less intuitive, explanation. At least, that’s the way I see it.

Free will as a structuring cause of our actions

The definitions and examples of causation in my last blog were an arbitrary selection just for showing that one has to define what cause means in order to be able to answer the question whether there is a free will. Although the selection was not systematic, I think that it makes sense to have a closer look at the chosen instances.

Hempel defined cause as the relevant set of circumstances and events of the phenomenon to be explained. This definition is generally used in the natural sciences. In our case of the free will, we have an action (the phenomenon to be explained), which has to be an effect of one or more natural laws (according to Hempel’s theory) and a relevant set of circumstances and events. The place of the free will will be then among the latter. However, also the free will is a phenomenon to be explained. In a Hempelian approach we have to show then that the free will (= a supposedly free decision) follows from one or more general laws and a set of relevant circumstances and events. In this approach the free will debate must evolve around the question whether there are such laws and if so what the relevant circumstances are that lead to the allegedly free decision. Without further argumentation, I guess it’s not the right approach.

Let me take now the three concrete cases in my last blog. I presented them in order to show that the answer to the question “what causes what?” is often a matter of perspective and, as in the cases presented, often also a matter of social rules. In one case a dog caused an accident because it suddenly crossed the street. However, in the other case it is not the woman crossing the street who caused the accident but the motorist. The difference is in the rule that says that motorists need not to give priority to street crossing dogs but has to do so to people crossing the street on pedestrian crossings. The last instance (the ship that runs onto a rock) is even more complicated since it presents a mixture of social rules (a ship has to follow the prescribed safe channel) and natural facts (unexpected obstacles) and both together (sea maps are supposed to be correct). The upshot to be drawn from these cases is that it is not only important to employ an appropriate definition of “cause”, but also to say what “free will” actually means. Moreover, it is possible that a free will exists from one viewpoint and doesn’t from another one. Or maybe it is so that the free will is not a one-dimensional phenomenon.

How about the idea that a cause is the phenomenon that tipped the balance to produce a certain effect? This type of cause is the same as what Dretske called the triggering cause. In fact, it needs a structuring cause as a background in order to be effective. I think that this combination of triggering cause and structuring cause – so Dretske’s approach – is the best option for explaining what it means to say that we have a free will and for explaining how it works (probably in combination with the idea that the free will is a multidimensional or multifacetal phenomenon). This is so because the combination of triggering and structuring cause fits best the way the human body works. In this blog I can substantiate my point only with an example. I am skating on a lake and the ice is good. It allows me to make perfect gliding strikes: to the left, to the right, and so on. Is it my free will that I make perfect strikes? Yes and no. I have learned how to skate and I know how to make perfect gliding strikes and I can show them to you. But when I am skating there, I look at the landscape, enjoy the skating and give no attention to my strikes. It’s an automatism. But, as said, it’s a learned automatism. It was my free will to learn ice-skating well and to learn to make perfect gliding strikes. Then one can say that by learning to skate I structured my body that way that I can make perfect strikes, on purpose and automatically. It is my free will to skate there on the lake and to make there perfect gliding strikes, if possible. My free will functions sometimes as a structuring cause of my skating perfectly and sometimes as a triggering cause of it, and sometimes it’s a mixture of both. This is just an example, but I guess that if we want to solve the free will problem, we must not only look for a free will that somehow tips the balance of what we do, but we have to realize also that the free will can be and often is something that intentionally structured our body that way that at the right moment the body acts automatically and unconsciously as if we didn’t have such a will.

What makes the free will happen?

Thanks to the recent progress in neuroscience, the question whether man has a free will has become one of the most important philosophical topics. Also here in my blogs, I have talked about it. As so often, philosophers do not agree about the answer nor do they agree about what “free will” means. However, I think that the definition by the Belgian philosopher Jan Verplaetse gives a good description of what it is about, at least for this blog: “The free will is the capacity to decide freely what we do and why and how. With a free will you choose which action you do” (Verplaetse, Zonder vrije wil, 2011, p. 30; italics omitted). What is implicit in this definition – and in other definitions as well – is that the free will can make you something to happen: you can cause something. No wonder then that words like cause, causation and causality are central in the free will discussion. But what do we mean by cause? There is hardly any philosopher in this discussion who will tell you.

Here I do not want to say how we can best define “cause” in relation to the question of the free will. At the moment I have no idea which definition is to be preferred. But not defining “cause” is problematical, for different definitions may lead to different philosophical answers of the free will question. In this blog I want to show only what it means that “cause” can be defined in different ways. I simply give a few definitions and illustrations. I hope that it will be clear then to the reader what my point is.

– According to Carl Hempel, a scientific explanation consists of a set of universal laws of nature, a set of statements that describe a more or less complex relevant set of circumstances and events and a phenomenon that need to be explained. If the explanation is true, we can call the relevant set of circumstances and events the cause of the phenomenon to be explained, so Hempel. Note that the cause need not to be a single event or phenomenon but that it can be quite complex. (Hempel, Aspects of explanation…, 1965, pp. 348-9)

– Roy Bhaskar defines “cause”, following Scriven, as “that factor which, in the circumstances that actually prevailed … ‘tipped the balance of events as to produce the known outcome’ ”. Why did the tower fall down? Because of the gale (but actually it was already about to collapse). (Bhaskar, The possibility of naturalism, 1989, p. 83)

– Fred Dretske distinguishes between structuring causes and triggering causes. For instance, take a thermostat. When the temperature drops the thermostat turns the furnace on. Then we call the drop of temperature the triggering cause of turning the furnace on. The whole mechanism of the thermostat that is constructed that way that it can turn the furnace on is the structuring cause. (Dretske, Explaining Behavior, 1988).

– A dog crosses suddenly a street because it sees another dog at the other side. In order not to hit the dog, a motorist has to brake hard, goes into a skid and collides with another car. Then we say that the dog caused the accident (and the owner of the dog is responsible for the accident, because he did not hold the dog on the lead).

– A woman crosses a road on a pedestrian crossing. A motorist sees her too late and in order not to hit the woman, he has to brake hard, goes into a skid and collides with another car. Then we say that the motorist caused the accident (and he will be held responsible for it, too).

– A captain of a ship gives order to hug the shore for the pleasure of the passengers, outside the normal and safe course along the coast. The ship runs onto a rock and sinks. What was the cause of the accident? The captain? The steersman? The inaccurate sea map? The rock? … ?

These definitions and cases have been arbitrarily chosen. They are just illustrations of the problem. Nothing more than that. The instances make clear that we cannot simply say that there is or isn’t a free will that (sometimes) causes or makes what we do without saying what this causing or making means.

The inevitability of thinking

In my last blog I talked about an adage on the ceiling of Montaigne’s study in the tower of his castle. It said that actually thinking is painful and so unpleasant, and it suggested that it is better to avoid it. One can wonder what brought the thinker Montaigne to have an adage there that is so contradictory to his person. One can only guess about his reasons, but there are some indications in his Essays that can help to get an idea why it appealed to him.

That thinking is painful and so unpleasant is not obvious. Everybody does it most of the time and what would man be without thinking? What supposedly Sophocles wanted to express with the statement, and apparently Montaigne with him, is that it is consciously thinking or rather consciously thinking about a certain problem that is painful and so unpleasant, and it is so because of the effort it takes. If this is right, the adage raises many questions. Why, for instance, should something that takes much effort be painful and therefore be unpleasant? Many people enjoy running as a sport, and although it can hurt in a certain sense they do not stop with it but they just consider it a pleasant activity. And so it is with consciously thinking about problems, too. Not always, of course, but in many cases, especially when it is thinking about philosophical puzzles (which are often not only puzzles but usually have a clear relevance for society). Thinking can be an effort and it can cause headaches, but we are looking forward to the possible solution and to the joy it will give to us. As I concluded in my last blog: Maybe thinking sometimes hurts, but often it’s a pleasure, too.

However, the problem with problem solving is that it often has no end. When we think to have solved one, we discover new problems that follow, and which we want to solve, too. Or we think to have found a good solution but then we start to doubt. Or, otherwise, we are contented with it, but then we want more. We are never satisfied with what we have. Maybe that’s why Montaigne had Sophocles’ remark written on his ceiling. Anyway, he agrees with Lucretius who says: “While that which we desire is wanting, it seems to surpass all the rest; then, when we have got it, we want something else; ‘tis ever the same thirst” (Lucretius, iii. 1095). Our thinking never stops, for once we think it will stop, it leads to new thinking. It’s like a relay race without an end: once a thought comes to an end, it has to pass the baton of thinking to the next thought. “Whatever it is that falls into our knowledge and possession, we find that it satisfies not, and we still pant after things to come and unknown, inasmuch as those present do not suffice for us; not that, in my judgment, they have not in them wherewith to do it, but because we seize them with an unruly and immoderate haste”. (Montaigne, Essays I, 53). And this endlessly and restlessly going on can be hurting; it’s true.

Montaigne was aware of this, and it seems that it caused in him (and in us, too) a longing for a simple life where everything is uncomplicated. As if simple is better. Actually it is a looking for a kind of Arcadia, a kind of paradise where everything goes smoothly and where real problems are absent. But is that the solution of our problems of life? I think it’s not. In the end people will become bored when they have no problems to solve. It will be quite annoying and it will lead to psychological stress. Then there is only one solution: do something; create problems or at least puzzles in the philosophical sense and start thinking how to solve them.

The pain of thinking

Montaigne is famous for his Essays. One of the striking things in this work is that it is full of quotations, mainly from classical authors. What not so many people know is that Montaigne had collected such quotations on the ceiling of the room in the tower of his castle where he wrote his essays. I was reminded of this when I saw a little booklet on the Internet, titled Montaigne’s Adages, compiled and translated by the Dutch historian René Willemsen (Rotterdam: Ad. Donker, 2011). Some years ago, I had visited Montaigne’s study, and I had seen the adages on the beams of the ceiling. Then I could cast only a quick look at them, but the visit had made me curious to know more about the maxims, so I could not resist buying the book.

Immediatedly after having received it through the post, I glanced a bit through the book and one of the first adages that caught my attention was this one: “Nothing is more pleasant in life than thinking about nothing, for not thinking doesn’t hurt”. According to Willemsen’s explanation it was from Sophocles’ tragedy “Ajax”. Because Montaigne had had put this adage on his ceiling, I suppose that he endorsed what it wants to express, although that doesn’t need to be so, of course. Anyway, when I read the quotation, I thought there was much truth in it and that I could agree with it. But I continued thinking and I began to doubt. Gradually my doubts increased. It was not so much that the adage said “Nothing is more pleasant in life…” that was the problem. Even after I had changed it into “One of the most pleasant things in life is thinking about nothing, for not thinking doesn’t hurt”, and then into “The more one’s thinking is reduced, the better it is, for the less one will be hurt by one’s thinking”, my doubts could not be stopped. It’s true, I remembered my tours on my race bike and my running in the wood, and that I had told my readers that these activities make me forget my day-to-day worries. And surely, cycling like a zombie (in the philosophical sense) on the roads around my little town makes me high in a certain sense (but my regular readers will certainly not have forgotten that it also increases the chance of getting an accident). But what made me reject Sophocles’ thought in the end was the question whether it was really so unpleasant for Montaigne to write his essays. Did he really write them à contrecoeur, so reluctantly, and with pain in his heart? Did Montaigne really shut himself in his tower in order to spend hours of hurting himself there by thinking what to write? I do not belief so. And even if it’s true, it will certainly be impossible to fool my readers that I wrote all my blogs of this website while I suffered doing so; that almost each Monday I spend two or three hours voluntarily, without any compulsion by others, in my study and behave like a self-punisher. Nobody would believe that and moreover it’s not true. What is true is that writing my blogs can require much effort (and the same will certainly have been true for Montaigne and his Essays). For some people that may be the same as pain, but for the thinker self it seldom is. I do not want to say that thinking never hurts, but at most we can maintain this: Maybe thinking sometimes hurts, but often it’s a pleasure, too.

The illusion of authenticity

We are our customs, at least in a certain sense and at least for a part. We have seen it in my blog last week. Customs belong to those things that make us the persons we are. It is not only so that the customs we encounter already immediately after our birth “force” us to follow them. Usually we have the feeling that they really belong to us and that they are right. We support them so that they continue to exist. We have interiorized these customs and we believe in them. Once this is so, we can say that our following certain customs is authentic.

Customs (especially those we call “traditions”) are often typical for certain cultures. Maybe we understand why certain customs in other cultures exist and what they mean, but they are not part of us; we haven’t interiorized them. For instance, I, as a Dutchman, believe in St. Nicholas but not in Santa Claus. For me, St. Nicholas needs to be respected; Santa Claus is just a man in special clothes.

Many people in Western countries have a feeling that they miss authenticity. They have a feeling or they think that what they do does not come from themselves, but that many things they do are enforced on them by the circumstances or by other people around them; that they do what they do because they are expected to do so, although they do not want to do it; or because they are in the rat race; and for a lot of other reasons. I do not want to say that they are unhappy, but there is a feeling of superficiality and a feeling of missing something that is described as authenticity. So, what do they do, if they have the money for it? Travelling, and especially travelling to other cultures, looking for something that is “real”. Therefore more and more “corners of the world” are discovered and uncovered by them [For those living in these “corners of the world”: forgive me the expression, for in fact, it is quite colonial; but so Western people often think]. Or do more and more “corners of the world” lose their “innocence” in this modern age?

One of the “corners of the world” flooded by Western tourists is the Dogon Valley in Mali and one of the authentic traditions there is a dance of death, which is performed every twelve years. What is more to be wished for a Western authenticity seeker? Especially if s/he can order the dance for 60 euros from the village chief, three times a day, if s/he likes. And as soon as the tourist and his/her group have left, the chief calls the next village with his cell phone: “Take your masks, they are coming!” And what do they do with the money earned? Buying what they need to live and investing, of course, and making holidays to Europe for feeling the culture of their customers.

(Source: One World, Dec. 2011; pp. 16-17)

The customs we are

Customs play an important role in life. They are not simply like branches on a path that we throw away, when we think that someone can stumble over them. Or like cars we stop for, when we want to cross a road. Customs are not accidental but they guide our lives, they can give our stream of activities a certain rhythm and function as reasons for what we do. They are threads in life and help us get hold of what we do. So the Christian holidays, a kind of social customs, are for many people reasons to go church and for them they are highlights of the year. For others the vacations around these feast-days are reasons for making short trips or longer travels. Together with the yearly summer vacation – in fact also a kind of custom – these fixed points of attention guide or maybe even determine the recurrent cycle of life. For some this cycle may have a spiritual meaning, for others the meaning may be worldly when it determines, for instance, the planning of their outings and trips.

Customs as such can be reasons for what we do that need no further explanation. A Christian does not need to explain why s/he attends church on Christmas Day. Just the fact that it is Christmas is a sufficient reason. Or once we know that a person loves playing tennis, s/he doesn’t need to explain that s/he is going to play with friends every Sunday morning. It’s enough to say: on Sunday mornings I cannot visit you, for then I play with my tennis friends. For many things we do there is no need to explain them, when they are customs or even habits. It is a sufficient reason for acting, which does not imply, of course, that customs or habits cannot change.

However, customs, and habits, too, are not simply things we regularly do, nor are they only reasons for our actions, like branches that we throw away because someone might stumble over them (with the implication that we are free to do it or not, as we like). In a certain sense we are our customs and habits. Once we have them, they are part of our identities, not only in the sense that we can remember how we followed them during a big part of our lives but also that they continuously make us act in a certain way and that we become quite annoyed, to say the least, or even mentally disordered in the worst case, if we are obstructed doing them. And the same so for “passive customs”: things people are supposed to do to us and ideas and thoughts that automatically pop up in us, because they are related to our habits and customs, although they may seem ridiculous to others. So, I feel a bit annoyed when guests on the birthday party of my wife forget to congratulate me, for in the Netherlands it is a custom to congratulate not only the person whose birthday it is but also her or his partner and relatives. And when, during the weeks before St. Nicholas’ Eve (December 5) I see a man dressed like a bishop, I – unlike foreigners – do not see someone who plays St. Nicholas but someone who is St. Nicholas, since I – as a Dutchman – have been educated in this tradition. And so it could happen that last month somewhere here in the Netherlands, a man dressed and made up as St. Nicholas stopped his car, walked to the middle of the crossing and begun to regulate the traffic like a police man, just for fun. And everybody obeyed, and probably nobody got the idea that the man was a joker. For the Dutch he was St. Nicholas and what this saintly man says or does is right, anyhow, for so this tradition has made him.

Of old customs

Somewhere in the beginning of his essay “Of ancient customs” Montaigne says that sometimes customs rapidly change and that what once was a custom often is ridiculed some time later. Especially in fashion this is the case: “When they wore the busk of their doublets up as high as their breasts, they stiffly maintained that they were in their proper place; some years after it was slipped down betwixt their thighs, and then they could laugh at the former fashion as uneasy and intolerable.” Therefore Montaigne wants to show that some customs are already old, while others aren’t “to the end that, bearing in mind this continual variation of human things, we may have our judgment more clearly and firmly settled.” Then Montaigne gives a range of customs in antiquity, some of them different, some of them the same as in his days.

I do not want to list here, like Montaigne, old customs and compare them with modern ones in order to put what we do into perspective. What actually surprises me is that some things we do are already so old, albeit that they may have got other coats during the years. When I write this, it is just after Christmas, a feast full of traditions. On this day we remember the birth of Christ. But is Christmas really on the 25th of December because Christ was born on this day? In fact the day was chosen, because the adherents of the Mithras religion commemorated the birth of their god on this date. Moreover, many other peoples in the world had (and still have) midwinter celebrations about this time of the year. A lot of Christmas customs apparently go back to such much older pre-Christian traditions. And, although it is not typically a midwinter tradition, didn’t the Romans already give presents on the Saturnalia (Dec. 17)?

Not only such more or less “official” customs, so traditions, have a long history. Also many of our habitual actions that actually everybody does have a long past. I mean just the normal daily routines. Montaigne mentions, for instance, a simple thing like “to eat fruit ... after dinner” in antiquity; and where I had written “…”, Montaigne wrote “as we do”. “We”, 21st-century wo/men, still often do the same. But in fact, I realized how old some of our daily habits and customs are not just when I read Montaigne’s essay, but when I encountered lately a newspaper article about a recent archeological discovery that showed that “when Europe still was inhabited by Neanderthal man, in Africa people had already completely equipped bedrooms”. And it is not Neanderthal man, but this homo sapiens in Africa who is our ancestor. Already our forbears in Southern Africa 77.000 years ago had bedrooms and beds. Of course, their beds were not the same as ours with mattresses, sheets and blankets but they were made of saw sedge, which is still used for making beds here and there today, though. But what made this article made me aware of is that one of the things I do every day is already very, very old, at least 77.000 years: making up my bed. Many things we do have changed through the ages, but some seem to stay forever.

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Michel de Montaigne, “Of ancient customs”, Essays, Book I, essay 49. I use the Gutenberg translation: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm#2HCH0049