Choices of nourishment

How would you prefer to nourish your intellectual curiosity today?

It is Sunday. As I take the first sip from my morning coffee, I think anything is possible, I am full of optimism. 

Then comes the usual torrent of news on your phone, gradually sucking out of my energy, grinding and feeding bit by bit on my livelihood. 

I need delicacies to joyfully satisfy my curiosity, to rejuvenate myself. I don’t want to nibble on peanuts for hours.

Blogging again?

It’s been over a year I didn’t write anything. It could be the covid-19 pandemic, its grinding pace that put our souls to eternal winter sleep.

I knew writing habit has therapeutic quality. Choosing the right words reflected upon ourselves is too a conversation. 

I don’t know if I can regain my writing habit. We’ll see.

A pandemic we had to have

Like the eternal winter in C.S. Lewis classic “The lion, the witch and the wardrobe” we are locked into a never ending hibernation.

In the cosie safety of our homes, we live like beavers, coffee  mug in one hand, iPhone in the other, and a dystopian drama on Netflix.

On the upside, for its survivors Covid-19 gave humanity endless opportunities for reflection.

Suddenly boring suburbia seemed attractive. The local coffee shop, everyday walks in the nature, the clean air, things we had but did not notice much, appeared as healing sanctuaries.

Long spoiled by post-war prosperity, the pandemic tested our evolutionary capacity to deal with sudden ordeals. We unlocked tools in our dusty survival toolkit. We started to cook, sew socks (and masks), and consume less.

We began to appreciate what we have rather than whining on what we don’t.

This was a pandemic we had to have.

American dream

A hamburger Christmas decoration. Everything bad about Americanness in one package. Can you bastardise, mock and humiliate centuries old pagan tradition better than this? A revolting object, so absurd, as if made by Charlie in the Chocolate Factory and spit out of a machine by accident, as if we are involuntarily pulled into a bad dream. 

Witcraft

I am reading Witcraft by Jonathan Ree. The book covers the history of philosophy in English language from 15th century to this date.

Ree mixes contemporary English with old versions of words. Such playful style makes reading all very interesting and entertaining, at the same time helps the reader realise the historical context better.

The following extract is a good example of mixed English prose, let’s read.

In 1547 a graduate of the Oxford Arts course called William Baldwyn published a Treatise of Morall Philosophye, contayning the Sayinges of the wyse . It proved popular, but its title was misleading: Baldwyn’s Treatise was essentially a history of philosophy–the first in the English language–describing the ‘lyves and wittye answers’ of dozens of pagan philosophers. 

Philosophy was of course the work of ‘unbelevyng gentiles’, and ‘not to be compared with the most holy scryptures’, but according to Baldwyn it was ‘not utterly to bee despised’. It had its uses ‘as an handemayden, to perswade such thinges as scripture dothe commaunde’, and when we realized that ‘these heathen persons’ had managed to lead virtuous lives without knowing Jesus, we would be impelled to ‘amende ours, & folowe the good doctrine they have taught us’.

It is interesting to note that the 16th century author William Baldwyn portrays pagan philosophers in antiquity ‘unbelieving gentiles,’ because they lived without knowing Jesus, yet he admits they led virtuous (moral) lives.

Baldwyn dangerously sails in the wrong direction and violates religions’ selling pitch, “without Jesus (religion) you can’t be moral.” But those philosophers were so virtuous ‘we should amend ours (ours what, religion?) and follow their good doctrine they have taught us’.