A quote from Albert Camus
" I shall examine merely the theme of 'the Intention' made fashionable by Husserl and the phenomenologists. I have already alluded to it. Originally Husser's method negates the classic procedure of the reason. Let me repeat. Thinking is not unifying or making the appearance familiar under the guise of a great principle. Thinking is learning all over again how to see, directing one's consciousness, making of every image a privileged place. In other words, phenomenology declines to explain the world, it wants to be merely a description of actual experience. "
(Albert Camus - The Myth of Sisyphus, page 44)
This is one model of thinking. I think it is good to know many models of thinking. This one is in line with the "Show, Don't Tell!" principle...................
Finding Neverland
Watching Finding Neverland is like having a soft, warm conversation about how imagination can change your life. Unfortunately, not "really" your life, but how you see your life. Sometimes, it is the only thing that matters.
It also tells you how close imagination and writing is. By implication, how close writing and life is. It is a pity that most people are not as close to their own life as they think they are. What about you?
Status Anxiety - Alain De Botton
I have just finished reading the book by Alain De Botton, who has written several books combining popular, daily problem with more philosophical touch. In a way this is a good example of writing exercise since it makes us think more deeply about our daily life. When written on pages, the daily, unobserved things will seem different and not-so-usual!
De Botton organizes the books into 5 causes and 5 solution of status anxiety, namely: lovelessness, snobbery, expectation, meritocracy and dependence as the five causes; philosophy, art, politics, christianity, and bohemia as the solutions. The book is full of anecdotes from many interesting sources. The combination of important and interesting sources into a meaningful, orderly written text is the strength of the book. Although I am not very very impressed with the solution he proposes, I still found many good ideas in it.
A quote from the book:
"However unpleasant anxieties about status may be, it is difficult to imagine a good life entirely free of them, for a fear that one might fail and disgrace oneself in the eyes of others is only a natural consequence of having ambitions, a preference for one set of outcomes over another and a respect for individuals besides oneself. Status anxiety is the price we pay for acknowledging a public difference between a successful and an unsuccessful life.
Yet, though our need for status may be fixed, we retain a choice of where to fulfill the need, we are free to ensure that our worries about being disgraced will arise principally in relation to a public whose methods or judgement we both understand and respect. Status anxiety could be defined as problematic only in so far as it is inspired by values that we follow because we are fearful and preternaturally obedient, because we have been anaesthetized into believing that they are natural, perhaps God-given, because those around us are in thrall to them or because we have grown too imaginatively timid to conceive of alternatives. "
See how I stress on the "imaginatively timid" phrase. Look around you, and you will find this a lot!
