Under a boar skin

I need to start this one with some context. I grew up vegetarian, spent a while as an omnivore, reverted to vegetarianism nearly 2 years ago. I don’t think I have a problem about other people eating meat, and I most definitely believe that if you are going to kill an animal for food, it’s far more ethical to use the rest of it as well for whatever you can, rather than throw anything away.

I was at an event yesterday. One of the food stalls was selling wild boar, venison and rabbit as sausages and burgers for consumption in situ. I didn’t get very close, but that seemed ok. Lots of stalls had tooled leatherwork. It was gorgeous stuff, a great deal of labour and artistry had clearly gone into it. That I could appreciate, and leather itself is beautiful. It’s such a versatile, useful product and I had always liked it, but yesterday it made me uncomfortable. For the first time I can remember, I felt acutely aware that what I was seeing was someone else’s skin.

Then I found the boar. There were two of them, and the skins were close to complete – head skin and trotters still there. Even flat and without eyes, they very definitely had faces. I love boar. They inspire me. Very dead, very flat, those skins still carried, for me, such an acute sense of their having been a real, vital, living creature. I wanted to touch them, but didn’t, because I knew if I had done, I would very likely have wept.

When you get an anonymous bit of meat in a bun, it’s just food, it’s very easy not to think about it. Usually when you see leather, it’s just a bit – all very impersonal, nothing suggestive of the original creature, just a different kind of fabric. Whole skins are much more obviously individuals. Their former existence as living, breathing, feeling things is harder to ignore. Last week I spent some time with domesticated pigs, looking at them thinking, “I cannot look at you and see food.” I’m not offering this as any kind of judgement about people who can – that’s their business – this is just an observation about what I’m experiencing.

Sometimes I look at wood, and think about the tree it came from. Plants are people too.

To use other living things, we apparently have to view them as separate from us, and lesser. However we do it, we have some justification – need, want, lack of suitable alternatives, our own nature, their nature… What happens if your druidry brings you to a point of seeing all things as equal and all life as sacred? How do you then continue to eat? Is the only answer to become a fruitarian, taking that which does not kill the plant, using only things that are windfalls or have already been used by others? That would be difficult, if not impossible to do. All living causes death to other things, if you’re a mammal.

The answer I’m coming round to looks a lot more like relationship. It’s the anonymity of the animal, and for that matter tree products, that troubles me most. We don’t see them as individuals, they are just products. If your shoes had been made out of Henry, and lunch was Alice, and Bessy’s milk was for tea, and you’d got George on the wall over the fireplace… it would be a very different scenario. They would never be products. They would be individuals who had lived alongside you, died for you, and who would still be with you. And in that sort of scenario, I would still very likely be fighting not to cry over boar skins, but I could ask for their names and stories. I think I would like that way better.

Freedom

This time a year ago I made a momentous, life altering decision. I took my child and fled from a situation that was causing us both colossal fear and anxiety. A year on it seems like a good time to take stock, and to celebrate the freedom I have.

None of us are entirely free. The constraints of living alongside others, the calls of duty, responsibility and the limits of budget mean we all have to compromise on what we do. How much we compromise, and the point at which we should say ‘enough’ are well worth pausing to reflect on. Freedom is a precious thing, a soulful, vital aspect of being alive. The basic freedom to live without fear of harm, is widely recognised as a human right. Yet even in the UK there are plenty of people in constant fear and real danger thanks to the behaviour of others. The freedom to be your own person, and make your own choices is so important, and so easily compromised.

I’m not free from fear. I woke very early this morning, anxious. This is not unusual for me. But these days what I get is more like been chewed on, rather than torn apart. None of the threats are so immediate. My child is not free from fear either, but he feels safe enough to run off and play. This time a year ago, he was just clinging to me and afraid to be out of line of sight. We have made a lot of progress. I still find it hard to ask for help or admit when I’m struggling. If anyone around me becomes irritated I become anxious. But these days that situation doesn’t lead to anger or being told off.

I have learned in this last year that freedom is not very straightforward at all. It does not occur at the moment when the prison door flies open, or the slave’s shackles are taken off. The metaphorical and literal prison doors and the shackles stay on, inside your head. Being unfree and knowing it is far less of a problem than having been indoctrinated into a state of compliance. When the latter happens, the loss of freedom is as much between your ears as anywhere else, and that takes a long time to fix. I am learning, slowly, to think for myself, to want things on my own account even when they aren’t wholly convenient to others. Those basic, basic rights to self determination and to not feeling afraid are going to be hard won, but ye gods are they worth fighting for. Every day is to some degree a fight towards my own sense of personhood, and my ability to be free.

Issues of budget and normal restrictions aside… I can eat as I please. I can sleep undisturbed. I can say ‘no’ without having to be fearful of the consequences. I can make decisions for myself. I can choose what I wear, and I can make that choice for any reason without needing to justify it. I can be happy without fearing some kind of backlash (although I still don’t entirely trust that, but I’m getting better.) I can take time to rest.

I’m not even slightly interested in the kind of sick ‘liberty’ that enables people to do whatever they want to whomever they want without restriction. I don’t want any freedom that costs some other person unfairly. But there are very basic freedoms that we all need in order to feel whole, to feel like people. Stripped of the right to self determine, stripped of control over your own body or mind, is a terrible thing to endure. I have that freedom back now, but I am all too aware that far too many people do not have those same basic things. Not just the victims of terrible regimes in distant countries, but people whose own families, employers, and partners have made slaves of them. The sex trafficked, the abused children, the beaten women, the illegal immigrants in work gangs… there are so many for whom loss of freedom can be a step on the way to loss of life.

Cherish the freedom you have. Do not let anyone tell you they have the right to take away your own freedom to think and feel as you choose. Freedom is the most essential, precious thing and can be stripped away all too easily. Until we are all free, any freedom held individually is partial. There is a great deal of work to be done.

Druid Ethics

One of the responses to my Daily Devotions post raised the issue of being guided through the day by your ethics (thanks Bish for the prompt there!). What are druid ethics? Are they simply the ethics held by individual druids, or are there going to be values held in common? I’m tempted to say it’s usually going to be a bit of both. Perhaps the defining quality of druid ethics is that we collectively think we should be ethical, and we take individual responsibility for figuring out what that means, one moment to the next.

Where the common ground lies, is in the things we value. Environmental protection, peace, good relationship, community, beauty, truth, and justice are all things that druids prize. So ethical behaviour, is behaviour that supports those ideas and manifests them in the world. Where it gets complicated, is in how we understand ‘best’. A good example of this lies around food. Some druids are vegans because their ethical stance demands a life that does not feed upon the lives of animals. Some druids are vegetarians because that best reflects their ethics and beliefs. However, other druids prioritise local sourcing, or producing their own food in which case they may be omnivorous. It can be argued that mixed farming is more sustainable than only growing plants. In England, we have moors and meadows that have evolved alongside thousands of years of animal husbandry. To step away from that would be to damage a whole eco system. There are no simple, clear, right answers. There are however plenty of answers we can agree on – food waste is abominable. Over packaging is not a good thing. We should not be paying slave wages to producers in developing countries. Artisan foodmakers are preferable to big factories turning out insipid and banal edible foodstuffs. Whatever our precise ethics, the druidry underpinning it will push us towards trying to find sustainable, fair, healthy, creative ways of feeding ourselves and our tribes.

We can apply the same ideas to any aspect of our lives. How we shop, how we travel, how we speak to those around us, how express our emotions, what we expect of others, how we run our households, raise our children, interact with our neighbours. Every moment is an opportunity to explore and express our ethics. Which calls for high levels of awareness. For me the most interesting issues arise around conflict and error. When everything runs smoothly, it’s easy to express your ethical intentions. But what happens when you misjudge? Or when your strongly held ethical convictions do not sit at all well with the strongly held ethical position of the next druid (that food example being a classic). You can be passionate without being a fundamentalist. You can argue and discuss without attacking another person. If we are serious about peace as an ideal, then what we do around our other beliefs must be guided by this at all times.

For me, what enables this most, is doubt. Of all the values I hold as a druid, doubt is perhaps the one that serves me best. I am never oversure about anything. I do not believe I have any kind of monopoly on truth, or wisdom. I know what my own experiences have taught me, but I don’t imagine that will all hold true for all people in all situations. There’s always the possibility for something else. I hold my doubt very closely. And with it, I am open to hearing what other people think. I am willing to be proved wrong, to be talked round, or shown a different perspective. That doesn’t mean my position is infinitely malleable or that I have no opinions of my own. More that I recognise everything I hold as opinion. I’m conscious that this century’s indisputable ‘fact’ is next century’s laughable mistake. I do what I can from the position of what I know, very aware that I can be wrong, and that situations change, and that nothing is certain. Most ethical positions seem to be based on a certainty of knowing what is best, not only for yourself, but for everything else. The more work I do with my own doubt, the more I appreciate what it has to teach me. I can’t say it’s the best way of exploring, but at the moment I think it’s a very powerful tool to have in your hands.

Daily Devotions

My most excellent friend Ness recently asked on facebook what any of us Druidy folk do in terms of daily devotions. Do we spend specific time on our Druidry, is it an all the time thing, or what? It was a very interesting conversation, and I love that places like facebook can be used for meaningful exchanges. Unshockingly there was a mix of answers.

I think where there is consensus is, that whatever you do, your spiritual path should feature in your daily life. Druidry is not a hobby, just for the holidays, or something to dust off for festivals. The necessity of dealing with non-druids, jobs, food sources, transport etc means that we can’t spend all our time poncing round in robes, hugging trees and thinking deep thoughts. That may be as well. I don’t think Druidry should be an escape from life as everyone else is living it. Not that those things don’t need challenging, but we won’t tackle them purely by absenting ourselves.

What does daily practice for me involve? I thought I’d offer it, and then if others want to share in the comments, that would be excellent and we can pass round some inspiration.

I have two times in the day when I reliably stop. On waking, and before sleep there is quiet time – sometimes as much as an hour. First thing in the morning I contemplate, work out the priorities for the day, compose blogs in my head, clear my head, ground myself, meditate on images from dreams, listen to the dawn chorus. In the evening before sleep I am more likely to be offering prayers, seeking guidance, creating thought forms to carry with me. Mornings are philosophical, evenings are reflective, mostly.

In any given day I will spend time outside, walking, working, cycling. I’m sat outside typing this, as Tom takes our boat along the canal. I look at the sky, listen to birds, spend time with plants. I’ll have some part of my skin on the ground at some point. It’s a very immediate way of communing with nature. I live in nature. It’s my habitat. Even when we’re moored up in the middle of Gloucester, there’s still sky, water, birds, fish, plants. The natural world works round the human constructs and is always there.

The other given for daily practice is the seeking of and working with inspiration. Awen is central to my life because my Druidry is inherently bardic. That can mean reading, observation, listening to music, seeking out the words of people who particularly inspire me. Kicking around an idea with Tom. On the creative side, rare is the day when I don’t write something. Often I will sing, or play music, or dance. I make things – sewing, cooking, tangling stuff together. I’m interested in living more creatively so there’s always elements of looking for that, too.

Service in terms of volunteering, teaching, ritual celebrant work, and other more overt ‘being a Druid’ things happen when they happen. I seek the opportunities for volunteering, but the rest of it finds me. So they seldom feature every day. This last year I’ve had very little formal druidry – not much ritual or working as a celebrant for others. I’ve learned that these aspects do not define my sense of self as Druid, but that I like and currently miss them, so I’ll be working to remedy that. The obvious displays of druidness can be very affirming, but they aren’t part of regular life. I don’t do ritual on my own, in any recognisable way, nor do I want to. It’s the quieter stuff that calls most strongly, the way in which I can colour every aspect of my daily life with my beliefs. How I speak, how I act, what I choose to do. That might stand exploring in more detail.

Housework for Druids

Every aspect of how we live can be, should be even, a manifestation of our beliefs. So, what are the Druid issues when it comes to housework?

I’ll start with the reasons to treat housework as an important, worthwhile thing.

1)      Respecting our own space is an extension of self respect.

2)      By caring for the house we are honouring the spirits of place.

3)      Work undertaken around the house also cares for our tribe (assuming we have one).

4)      We can create beautiful, sustaining, inspiring spaces for ourselves and others, pouring bardic creativity into our homes.

5)      All work done mindfully has a value, we should not devalue any work just because it is not directly paid for.

 

On the flip side, there are reasons to be wary of housework.

1)      Is your home as shiny as houses in TV commercials? Do you feel pressured to make it that way? That’s about pressure to buy products, and needs resisting.

2)      What are you cleaning your home with? All products, even the green ones, represent consumption and use of resources. Reduced cleaning can be the greener option.

3)      How much time and energy goes into housework, and what else might it be used for instead?

4)      Over-identification with under-valued work can be very bad for your sense of self and can affect how others perceive you. While there’s much to said for re-valuing domestic work, that’s a revolution that hasn’t happened yet.

 

As with most things, there are no rights or wrongs here. It’s very easy to be ‘too green to clean’ or to view it as someone else’s job. It’s also very easy to feel people will judge you on the appearance of your home – especially true for women – and that no matter what else you do, an imperfect house will condemn you to all who see it.

You can pour heart and soul into anything and get positive effects. You can bring grace and beauty to any activity. How you judge the results and value of this is very personal. A lovingly maintained home, where people can rest, play and work together happily, is a remarkable thing to have. Whether the uber-tidy and ultra-clean shiny house in the style of the adverts, actually gives you that, I shall leave you to ponder.

Beyond tolerance

Having contemplated the limits of tolerance, I thought it might be productive to ask what we do when we hit those boundaries. When we find someone else intolerable, it’s easy to give ourselves justifications for anger. We can clench fists and work up a good helping of moral indignation, and then decide that things ought to be done and this should not be allowed to continue. We can decide that based on our own opinions, we have the right to take action and challenge the behaviour of another. There will be times when this is both justified and necessary. There are also plenty of times when it isn’t. There was an incident years ago when an angry mob, wound up by tabloid reporting, decided to do something about a paediatrician in their area, not having grasped this is a wholly different title to paedophile. When we lash out in anger, even if we feel total justified at the time, we can still make horrible, irreversible mistakes. If we respond with aggression, because we feel entitled to do so, what are doing? Do we really feel everyone is entitled to act unpleasantly if they find something else intolerable? The greater the outrage we feel, the more natural it seems to want to respond with something decisive. A little justice perhaps. An eye for an eye. There are plenty of men who think infidelity is a valid justification for murder. There are people who think blasphemy justifies murder. There are people who think being raped is the fault of the woman and that it would then be reasonable to stone her to death for infidelity. We can recognise there are things that should not be tolerated, but as soon as we use our own intolerance to justify violence, cruelty or oppression, we have ceased to act honourably. How then can we tackle unacceptable situations and behaviour? Whatever the precise methods we go for, I think the broadest answer must be ‘with compassion.’ That doesn’t mean letting abuse go unchecked and crime ignored, but it does mean drawing breath, stepping back, considering bigger pictures and root causes as well as the anger of the moment. I have a friend who works in prisons teaching basic literacy and maths to inmates. That says a lot about the circumstances of many people who get on the wrong side of the law. Studies show poor nutrition contributes to crime and antisocial behaviour. Abusers may well have been victims as children. Locking people up and making more restrictive laws does not solve much. People who are happy with their lot in life do not tend to become terrorists. That doesn’t mean placating everyone either. It doesn’t mean everyone has to have their own way in all things for fear of what they might otherwise do. What underpins every society is individual relationships between people. Relationships between different groups of people. Relationships between organisations. Relationships with the state. Failures in these beget problems. Where there is inequality of opportunity and education, where the system is stacked against the poor, where there is abuse of power, corruption, oppression and institutionalised cruelty, there are going to be social problems. And equally a culture that looks the other way, allows certain groups of people to break laws, does not hold people accountable for their actions and so forth will also foster disrespect and crime. If we want to vent anger and point fingers, it’s not enough to think about individual wrongs. We need to look out our whole society, its beliefs, methods, institutions, the things it tells people, the pressures it exerts, the actions it condones. Society is made up of every individual within it, and each of us is affected by what everyone else does. So you can’t think about answers purely on the individual scale, or purely on a political scale either. At the limits of tolerance, we need to find the motives, to demand real justice and make real changes. We are so far from being a fair society, it’s little wonder we have so much to get angry about, and compared to some of the world, we English speaking nations are models of social justice and democracy. And we aren’t even close to what that should mean.

The limits of tolerance

On the whole I think there’s a lot to be said for a ‘live and let live’ outlook. I prefer to think the best of people unless I have a very good reason to do otherwise. I don’t imagine everyone should think, eat, act, dress or believe exactly the way I do. But there is a line that can be crossed here. A point at which tolerance ceases to be honourable. It’s very easy for tolerance to become indifference, and mean turning a blind eye to the immoral, unacceptable and downright evil.
There are things it’s easy to point at and say we should not tolerate. Child abuse. Murder. War. Lying. Cheating. Anything dishonourable. For most of those (the exception for me being child abuse) it’s possible to think of scenarios where they would be acceptable. Lying is dishonourable, unless Ann Frank is in the attic and Hitler is at the front door. Life would be so much easier if there were clear cut lines about everything. I think much of the potency of honourable living stems from the sheer difficulty of doing so. And some of that has to do with how challenging it is to even figure out what an honourable course of action would be in any given circumstance.
Where do we draw the lines for tolerance? How accepting should we be? The only real measure we have for deciding if we find something objectionable, is our own subjective, emotional response to it. Our culture, personal history and beliefs will colour that.
I think if you encounter something you don’t like the first question to ask is, why? Be as precise as you can about what bothers you. The more you question yourself at this stage, the easier it is to work on the issue. It’s easy to identify a group of people who seem to personify something we don’t like – foreigners, teenagers, the poor, the rich, the religious, the non-believers, and ascribe characteristics. Most people reading this blog will be conscious of prejudice and guard against it in their own thoughts. But, there is a world of difference between saying ‘all teenagers are evil’ and ‘bored teenagers who have no self esteem can behave in ways I really don’t like.’ The more precise we are, the better. Sometimes, in the process of scrutiny we can find what makes us feel intolerant has far more to do with our own feelings, things we dislike about ourselves even, than anything external.
What harm does it cause? If no one, and nothing is suffering as a consequence, then it really doesn’t matter. And at the same time, if you look hard enough, pretty much every human behaviour can be construed as harmful if you can get to it from the right angle. Especially when beliefs get in the mix. Think of the fear of social and family breakdown that homosexuality seems to inspire in some people. Plenty of intolerance has to do with fear. So if you aren’t sure if it is fair to judge someone else, ask what, if anything, you are afraid their behaviour means, or could lead to. Ask what kind of judgements you are making about their right to choose, and the willingness of any perceived victims.
When is it ok to judge someone else? When would it be dishonourable to accept an action, statement or belief? How tolerant should we be, for example, of intolerant faiths and political stances that would, if given power, supress the very tolerance that allows it currently to continue? How much should we be guided by the fear of causing offence?
One of the hardest challenges facing a liberal society, is how to deal with illiberal elements within it. To force liberal values onto others makes a nonsense of the very values liberals cherish. And equally, to empower those who will use that to disempower us, is madness. If we want to embrace everyone, understand everyone, make room for every perspective, how do we do that without the most aggressive voices coming to dominate? How do we do that without giving a big, fat, useful platform to the people who most want to make everyone else conform to their view?
What can’t you tolerate, and why? It’s informative to make a list. Aside from physical abuses, I think the thing I’m least tolerant of is dogma and assertions of certainty where there can only be opinion. My personal feeling is that if people could reliably discriminate between facts and interpretations, facts and beliefs, facts and emotions… the world would be a much better place and most of these other tolerance issues could safely be left to evaporate.
What can’t you tolerate? Please do comment.

Stripped Down

About this time a year ago my life fell apart. In the months that followed I lost my home, community, sense of self, my health suffered. Those of you who have been following my adventures through the process of being stripped will already have some sense of the gory details. It’s not been pretty. There were times when I wondered if I’d come through this with anything at all, or if I would be stripped down to absolute non-existence.

A year on and my perspective on much of this process has changed too. I have a very keen sense of what is essential to me – my husband and child, my own creativity, my own emotional life. Fear of losing my man and my lad nearly crippled me more times than I count, but it isn’t going to happen. There may be institutions technically capable of that, but it doesn’t mean they will. One of the things I have learned in this last year is that reality is not inherently hostile. It is not out to punish me.

Every knock back, every loss has resulted in me learning how to get back onto my feet, or knees at least, and get moving again. Shuffling, lurching, sometimes crawling, but still moving. I did not give up. That gives me some measure of my own strength, and armed with that knowledge I am also a lot less fearful than I used to be.

I’ve also learned a lot about what has endured despite the setbacks. The many relationships that held true despite the distances involved, the people who did not give up on me, or let me down. The communities that I still belong to even if I’m not an active participant at the moment. Some of things that seemed lost turned out to be temporarily mislaid.

There are things I regret, people I wish I saw more often, lives, communities and activities I would like to still be participating in and can’t. There are opportunities that have gone and times that will never come again and I can’t help but grieve those. But there are new places to be and new things to be doing – there always are.

Finally, there are the truly lost things that are never going to come back, and that’s something I am starting to celebrate. I have lost my sense of deserving mistreatment. I no longer expect to be punished, put down, knocked back and otherwise demoralised by anyone with the power to influence my life. I don’t see authority as inherently dangerous to me any more. In the last year, doctors, police, solicitors, social workers, judges, teachers and other folk with clout and experience, have treated me with kindness. I am no longer afraid of not being heard. I am no longer afraid of being blamed for things I have no control over. I have learned I can ask for help and that most people are not offended by this. I have learned that generally speaking it is fine to say ‘no’ or to be unable, to disagree with others, and to want things just for me.

It’s strange, because it was when I started to emerge from the nightmare that I fell apart. Somehow, through very hard years I managed to keep running and hold together the semblance of being functional. But I was desperately unhappy. I have fallen apart, and that’s allowed me the space to rebuild, to create a new sense of self and to totally change how I relate to the rest of reality. The prospect of falling apart was terrifying, but the result has been healing. And when I fell, there were friends and family there to help me. There was all kinds of support from all sorts of official sorts of people. The system turned out to be a friend.

I don’t imagine this is the end of the journey. There is bound to be more to unpick, figure out and remake, but I’ve come to a point where it’s far more about going forward now, rather than looking back.

Laughter Power

Laughter is magic, medicine, self-defence and power. Perhaps this is why satire was considered the provenance of ancient Druids. But no matter what form the humour takes, being able to laugh is a potent thing.

There is a theory (I think it harks all the way back to Freud) that we laugh to cover fear and social embarrassment. Perhaps so. Laughter can diffuse embarrassment, or heighten it, depending on how it’s used. To be lost in laughter is to be beyond fear. Laughter can take us into a strange, out of control place, children go so easily from there to tears. Adults in extremis can too. Sometimes there isn’t much difference between the two, for both are cathartic.

If we can see the ridiculous in something, then is has far less power over us. J.K Rowling was onto something with her spells to get rid of certain unpleasant entities. If you can look your fear in the face and find some way of laughing at it, you will not be overwhelmed by it. When it comes to dealing with other people, laughter takes away the power to intimidate.

I remember a violent girl at school who started hitting one of the geekier boys. He laughed at her, kept laughing through the blows. She became increasingly confused, angry and finally distressed. In the end she gave up. She’d hurt him physically, but had lost because nothing she did could defeat his laughter. That’s not an easy thing to pull off.

When we believe others are more powerful than us, and we take them seriously, then we give them far more scope to do us harm. If we can laugh at their insane ideas, laugh at their assumptions, we will not be ruled by them.

Just the act of laughing makes a person feel better. It is a release, it warms us on the insides. Laughter helps with bodily healing. Oh for a better memory that could quote you studies and statistics, but it does. Unhappy people take a lot longer to get well after illness. Comedy should be available on prescription. Sharing laughter affirms bonds of community, reassures us that we belong. We are on the inside of the joke, and therefore on the inside of the group. That can mean some people pick on others, creating an outsider to joke about so that group cohesion can be held. I’ve had people try and build relationships with me around ridiculing someone else, and it’s nothing I like or would encourage. Relationships and communities that depend on laughing at someone else have no integrity or durability. It is better to be able to laugh at yourself, and at the sheer ludicrousness of life. The best kind of laughter does not reduce anyone else.

Laugh with your friends. Laugh at your enemies because nothing will reduce them in the same way. Laughter is power. The person who still knows how to laugh has not been defeated and if you can keep your sense of humour, you can keep everything else in perspective.

According to Woody Allen, comedy is tragedy plus timing.

According to my tutors at college, way back when, comedy is the hardest thing to explain. There’s a wonderful mystery to laughter, a glorious loss of control and a sense of freedom that comes with it. There are so many reasons to be able to joke and giggle in rituals, to be able to break down into laughter, bubble over with mirth and bask in the chaotic mayhem of the ludicrous. Sometimes, to be able to take things seriously it is vital not to take them seriously at all.

Philosophy without history

Generally speaking, if you dive into philosophy as a subject, what you get is a history lesson about who thought what, when. Compare and contrast different ways of understanding the world. I’ve stuck my nose in a few such books over the years and mostly they depress me. In much the same way that literature courses teach you about the history of fiction, philosophy tends to throw you at the thinking of others.

Now, compare this with maths. Can you imagine sitting in a maths class and being told all about who came up with what equations, when, who disagreed with them, who got in there with some totally unworkable theories about calculating the circumference of a circle and so forth? Of course not. When you study maths, you learn little or nothing about the history of maths, and everything about how to do it right now. The sciences all tend this way, which is a shame because a little more attention to the history of science as a subject would make clearer how flawed, subjective and politically motivated it can be.

Going through school, I found that art and music as subjects struck a decent balance between doing the thing and learning about grand masters who had previously done it a lot better than you could ever hope to do. So why is it that we teach some subjects with a view to being able to do them, and others with the intention of making sure people know all about the other people who did them?

I can say from experience that a degree in English literature gives you very few of the tools you need to write a novel. About the most useful one I picked up, was how to do research.

Philosophy, as a subject, is all about asking questions. Why are we here? What is life for? How do we live well? As well as a whole host of others. These are questions philosophers keep coming back to because there is no way of establishing a definite right answer. Philosophy is all about the things we cannot define, pin down or be certain about, and as a consequence takes us into areas of doubt that have huge significance for how we understand ourselves and how we live our lives.

What would happen if we started teaching philosophy to school children? Not in terms of Descartes thought this and Plato said that… but in terms of flagging up those big questions and inviting people to think about the answers. Throw in the wise words from history, by all means, but make people think for themselves! I would love to see philosophy taught as a practical subject, a ‘how to think and question’ topic, as much hands on as any pottery class. What I’m most interested in is not historical philosophy, but how each of us crafts the individual philosophy that guides us in life. So many people seem to do that unconsciously, not knowing there even could be an alternative.

Your homework for today, with all due reference to Douglas Adams, what is the ultimate question about life, the universe, and everything?