The Benefits of Melancholy (Tim)

As I write this, I’m listening to the Smiths’ “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”. It’s perfect for an overcast Sunday morning. “Why do I give valuable time to people who don’t care if I live or die?” croons Morrissey, at once sad and ironic. It’s a morbid and amusing mix of self absorbed and self-effacing. It’s certainly melancholy, but is it depressing? Funny how this miserable music is actually making me feel better.

Depression and melancholy are two very different things, and I think recognizing the difference can do us the world of good. Depression is characterized by a loss of interest in life and an overwhelming sense of helplessness. Being told to ‘cheer up’ or ‘snap out of it’ doesn’t help in the least. It is a destructive state in that it harms both the sufferer and his loved ones. Often, clinical intervention is the only option.

By contrast, melancholy is a potentially creative state. It is a state of quiet reflection on the generally tragic nature of life. But where depressive thoughts lead only to a sense of helplessness, melancholy can be constructive, resulting in personal growth and wisdom. It’s okay to sink a little deeper into that black pool of dark thoughts because we may well come out with a little more fortitude and a little more inner strength.

Nowadays, we tend to think that melancholy is only de rigueur for anxious spotty-faced teens with long fringes, but it actually has a long and venerable history. The Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes begins with a line that would make Morrissey proud, “’Meaningless! Meaningless!’ Says the Teacher. ‘Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless!’” This is the author’s conclusion about the futility of human life, “The Race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong...but time and chance happen to them all.” It’s a bit reminiscent of Leonard Cohen, “Everybody knows that the dice are loaded. Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.”

Leonard Cohen

And yet, if you read the whole of Ecclesiastes (or Leonard Cohen for that matter), you’ll see that the author isn’t resigned to depression. He concludes that while life is inscrutable, the best response is not to stay in bed, but go on with your life, to cultivate wisdom and fortitude, and to enjoy what simple pleasures you can.

A big part of this newfound wisdom is the insight that it’s not all about you. You may start off all mopey because you’re the victim of some perceived slight. But, by delving deeper, you may broaden your view a little, and with a little humour, you may come to see how absurd your victim complex is. Perhaps self-absorbed bitterness isn’t the right response in a world full of innocent victims. Sometimes to get to this point, we just need a little melancholy.

So next time you’re feeling a melancholy, it might be a good idea to roll with it. Put on ‘Everybody Hurts’ by REM, or ‘Helpless’ by Neil Young, or anything by Leonard Cohen or The Smiths. Let yourself sink into that melancholy funk for a while and see what wisdom comes up. 

Other posts by Tim Casteling

Old Friends; Equality; Sharper Stones; Free Speech; Advice Free Listening

In Praise of Mediocrity (Tim)

Tim Casteling

'Old Friends', 'Equality', 'Sharper Stones', 'Free Speech', 'Advice Free Listening'

I am the product of excellent schooling during an era when white South Africans were uniquely privileged, so it’s hardly surprising that I know some very ambitious and successful people. What’s surprising is that a few of us are not particularly ambitious, nor are we successful in the conventional sense of the word. What’s more, in the fifteen years that I’ve lived my life as an itinerant English teacher, I’ve met a lot of other unambitious folks, and they are a breath of fresh air.

It’s only human for us evaluate our lives through a critical lens from time to time, and I suspect that many of us feel like we are falling short of some kind of ideal. That’s because now more than ever the media and popular culture are peddling the dogma that we must wring the very last drop of effort out of our lives to ensure that we are the best that we can possibly be. Mere happiness is no longer sufficient; only excellence will suffice.

If that obese 65-year-old woman with one leg can do it, then you had better get off your arse and run a marathon too. If all it takes is hard work, why haven’t you learnt to brew your own beer from raw ingredients, or write your own computer program? Basically the implication is; why are you content with your mediocre life? It may not be that explicit, but the ‘Just do it, Impossible is nothing’ mantra is telling you that the only reason you don’t have a Ferrari in the garage, and six-pack abs is lack of effort. So, by extension, you should feel guilty about it.

By the bizarre standards of our hyper-ambitious age, you should feel guilty about not working overtime, not losing sleep, not sweating blood to achieve ‘exceptional’ goals. You should feel guilty about being merely content. Well, I’m here to tell you that that’s bullshit. What exactly is this ephemeral ‘excellence’ that we’re supposed to be aiming for? How is it better than contentment? Surely the ultimate goal of all our effort is just happiness. 

Survival is good enough

The great lie of advertising is that you need more stuff to be happy, and thanks to an onslaught of likeminded media, even some as benign as TED talks, we’re all infected by the idea that if we can just reach that goal of (fill in the blank), then we’ll be happy. But of course, this is nonsense. Why peg your happiness on some future state when you can be happy in the present? All you have to do is appreciate what you have.

Appreciation v Progress

I’m not saying that goals are pointless, but I do suspect that our grandparents’ generation was happier in many ways because they knew how to be content. They knew when they had enough stuff, and they appreciated the simple pleasure of spending time with family and friends, or just being alone, doing nothing in particular. To those of you who are happy with your lot in life, and are content to keep it that way, I think you have achieved the goal that many ambitious souls are longing for.  To the contented mediocre, I salute you! 

Equality (Tim)

All of us are equal

(Human Rights Part 3; Part 2 - Life, Liberty, & Security; Part 1 - Free Speech) 

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 1 states, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” And then article 2 goes on to make reference to specific criteria for discrimination such as gender and race.

Which brings me to the burning question of our age. Why is there still so much racism in this world?  Why are ‘racial’ categories so hard-coded into our thinking, and why is it so hard for people to accept that race is really just a construct. It’s a man-made category without a firm biological basis. Sceptical? Think you can define racial characteristics? Try this thought experiment. Line up everyone in the whole world and order them from the darkest skin tone to the lightest. Now show me the point where one race ends and another begins.

Of course this is an extreme example, and most people would remind me of the common sense reality that everyone can tell who’s black and who’s white in their real lived experience. Can you, though? During the dark days of Apartheid, every South African had to be classified as black, white, coloured or Asian. Unfortunately for the racist architects of Apartheid, biology isn’t that simple, and it was not uncommon for so-called coloured people to be reclassified as white, or vice-versa based on an arbitrary standard like the infamous pencil test. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pencil_test_(South_Africa)

Ukuguqula lbatyi (the pencil test) 

by Kemang Wa Lehulere

Stories of racial confusion abound. Consider how a person who self-identifies as coloured in South Africa might be called black in America, and vice-versa. How would a Fijian be identified in America? How would an Inuit have been classified under Apartheid? To me the most ridiculous racial category of all is ‘Asian’. That means Russians, Turks, Kazakhs, Mongolians, Japanese, Afghans, Indians and Taiwanese Aborigines are all the same ‘race’.

Clearly, this is absurd, and so the argument in favour of racism is that you would need more fine-grained distinctions. But how much more fine-grained? From an outsider’s perspective, Indian people might look like a unified race, clearly distinct from other Asian peoples like the Chinese. But, from a closer perspective, it could be argued that North Indians (who mostly speak Indo-European languages) are racially distinct from South Indians (who mostly speak Dravidian languages). And so on, ad nauseam.

Finally, there is the argument from genetics. Genetics can prove the reality of race, even when we can’t see it, right? Well, yes and no. One of the most persistent and pernicious racial divisions in the world today is the distinction that is drawn between the black ‘race’ and the white ‘race’. The crux of this binary distinction is that all whites are of European descent and all blacks are of African descent. Unfortunately for the racists, genetics explodes the idea that there is a simple binary distinction between two homogeneous groups. There is no simple binary because there is more genetic diversity within Africa than in the rest of the world combined.

Racism isn’t just lazy thinking that splits humanity into false and superficial categories; it’s also lazy thinking that lumps genetically disparate groups of people into categories which confirm pre-existing biases. And that goes a long way to answering the riddle. Why does racism persist? Ultimately it’s just lazy thinking. And if we want to challenge racism, we all have to give up any kind of lazy stereotyping. We have to treat every individual as an individual and always resist the temptation to split or to lump, because humanity is far too complex, wonderful and beautiful to allow such lazy categorisation.

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Life, Liberty and Security (Tim)

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person

(Human Rights Series Part 2; Part 1 - Free Speech) 

This is article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I think we can all agree that the world is failing at quite spectacularly at this one. According to the ICRC, Syria now has 6.3 million people internally displaced, 5 million living in besieged cities and 4.8 million refugees who have fled the country. As of April the UN estimated the death toll to be at least 400,000.  God knows how many more have died since the Syrian and Russian bombing campaigns accelerated, and the siege of Aleppo started.

When the genocide happened in Rwanda, we all vowed that the world would never let such a thing happen again, and yet we’re watching it right now in Syria. So what went wrong? It’s pretty obvious that the world’s global policeman, in the shape of America, has blown all his goodwill, lost his authority and just flat-out spread himself too thin. Not only that, but by so transparently seeking self-interest in Iraq and other conflicts, Uncle Sam has set a dangerous precedent. Enter Russia and Iran as the self-interested saviours of the Syrian regime, and agents of genocide.

In ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature’, Steven Pinker revived Thomas Hobbes’ idea of keeping the peace by means of a ‘monopoly on the legitimate use of force’.  The Wild West illustrates the principle perfectly. The American West was a great deal more violent and dangerous 100 years ago than it is now because everyone was armed, and everyone had the right to defend himself, which set the scene for vigilantism and unbreakable cycles of revenge killing. Nowadays, the police generally reserve a monopoly on violence, and so the average citizen is much safer.

Thomas Hobbes and Better Angels

To me there is a clear analogy between this and one of the core principles of the United Nations – that no single nation has the right to take unilateral action against any other. Clearly, the UN isn’t keeping the peace as well as it could, and the veto power of the Security Council member states is one of the main reasons why. And yet, in cases where the member states can agree, the UN has had a good deal of success. There have been 71 UN Peacekeeping missions since 1948, with 16 currently in progress. Perhaps the most successful United Nations military intervention thus far was protecting South Korea from invasion by the North in 1953. I wouldn’t be sitting so comfortably in Seoul right now if that hadn’t happened.

So, to draw these threads together, my wish is that individual states would have less power and that the UN would have more power to intervene in conflict situations. To me, giving a disinterested body like the UN a monopoly on the legitimate use of force is only way of ensuring that peacekeeping is exactly that, and not politically motivated like the American action in Iraq, or the Russian involvement in Syria. 

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Free Speech (Tim)

The Debatable Right to Free Speech

(Human Rights Series Part 1) 

The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19 states, “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to… receive and impart information and ideas through any media.” Sounds completely reasonable, until you realise that the first item returned on a Google search ‘Did the holocaust happen?’ is ‘Top 10 reasons why the holocaust didn’t happen’ published on the anti-Semitic, hate speech website Stormfront.org. Is that an opinion which has a right to dissemination through any media and regardless of frontiers?

I find holocaust denial a very compelling case because it’s not just an aberrant opinion; it’s an opinion that makes very specific claims about historical reality. That the Nazis killed six million Jews is an undeniable fact, and to deny it is to make specific claims about reality. If even the most basic research shows that holocaust denial is demonstrably false, why bother to proscribe it? My argument is that even easily falsifiable facts may be more harmful that mere opinions. If you post an article about why you personally hate Jews, it’s obvious to any reader that it’s just your opinion. However, opinions become something a lot more dangerous when they distort facts to try and win converts. It’s facts rather than opinions that need protection sometimes.

Donald Trump told a great many lies in his presidential campaign. Not strongly worded opinions, or political doublespeak, but out and out lies. The most notorious of these lies was the promise to build a border wall and make Mexico pay for it. If he merely expresses the opinion that the US government should make more effort to seal the border with Mexico, that’s his right. The problem is that he made appeal to actual real-world facts. He made a promise to do something which cannot actually be done. You can’t actually force another country to pay for your public works. But the lie is told, the seed is planted in people’s heads and the harm is done. The same might be said about the claims which were pushed by the Leave campaign in Britain.

Fact-Checking the Donald

I don’t really mean to get political, but these events do highlight the fact that increasing numbers of people are being duped by claims that could easily have been falsified.  Fake news is the hot topic of the day, but it’s really just the extreme version of various forms of counterfactual and spurious claims which float freely around the internet. See the anti-vaccination movement for another example. My question is; what should be done about it?  Should these sorts of falsehoods be allowed to survive?

I don’t have an answer. I just want to start the discussion. Maybe governments should start by banning fake news. Maybe politicians should be censured for making claims that are demonstrably false. Does the internet need some kind of watchdog? Or is it simply up to us to educate future generations so that they are less susceptible to BS? Let’s just hope it’s not too late by then.  

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Advice-Free Listening (Tim)

I guess it’s a bit of a truism that women are usually better listeners than men, and that men tend to give more advice, while women give more sympathy. What’s interesting to me is that there may actually be some factual basis for this.

According to a fair amount of reliable research, women tend to score higher on something called ‘agreeableness’ than men do. Now I can sense a bit of scoffing coming on, so let me explain. Agreeableness is reckoned to be one of the ‘big five’ enduring personality traits, and it is just what you would expect it to be - an aggregate of qualities like kindness, warmth, sympathy, cooperation and so on. And women are slightly better at this stuff than men, as evidenced by the way that they listen.

Now lets turn back to that listening thing. I can’t speak for all the other gents out there, so I’ll have to reveal a bit of myself. If I’m honest, a lot of the time when I’m listening, I’m mostly just planning what to say in response. Let’s say that you just told me about how you missed your fight and got stuck in the airport for ten hours. I have three kinds of responses that I can give. I can be sympathetic, analytical or competitive. Sympathetic is obviously the most agreeable thing to be, so I should listen carefully and then say something along the lines of ‘Ag, shame, hey. That must have been terrible.’ Interestingly, I’m most likely to say this to a woman, or a close family member.

Going Nowhere

But if you’re a dude, or if I’m not feeling especially agreeable, then most of the time while you’re describing your ordeal, I’ll be planning one of the following responses. I can get analytical and ask you tons of detail questions as if your role in the conversation is to get the story straight in my mind. ‘Was it a connecting flight? Why was it delayed? Did you try…?’ Sometimes this involves advice, but really what’s happening here is that I’ve missed the bloody point. It doesn’t matter what you should have done, or the mechanics of how it happened. The other thing that I tend to do, especially when I have a beer in my hand is to start preparing my own story of a travel snafu that rivals yours. This usually happens in group situations and generally leads to a free-for-all story-telling contest.

Stuck at the Airport

Was there wifi? Was there electricity?

Turning someone’s complaint into a story telling contest is not exactly sympathetic, but it has its time and place. In a social setting we can all share our stories and we can all gain a little perspective while bonding with our mates. No trouble there. 

The response that really annoys me though, is getting analytical, and putting the onus on the sympathy seeker to get all the details straight and to somehow justify the sympathy that they want from us. Most of the time, the very act of seeking sympathy is justification enough to give it.

Assimilation (Tim)

I want to start by taking issue with the tendency of dominant (i.e. white, western and mostly English) cultures to demand assimilation from other cultures, but not to reciprocate when the shoe is on the other foot. Recently, there has been a lot of hand wringing in Europe about the supposed unwillingness of Muslim immigrants to assimilate into the culture of European countries. Observe France’s battle with the burqa. And, the sentiment is much the same for many in the UK, as evidenced by the tabloid press. They make the superficially reasonable argument, ‘If you want to live in Britain, you should embrace British values.’ 

Tim embracing British Values

However, they seem to have forgotten that when our forefathers were living in foreign lands, they never assimilated at all. In the days of the British Raj, those Brits who lived in India merely transplanted their British culture to a new continent – tealeaves, cricket stumps and all.

You might think that such chauvinistic attitudes are all in the past, but as someone who has lived in an expat bubble for fifteen years, I can tell you that you’d be dead wrong. This is how it works. Fifteen years ago I moved to Taiwan to teach English. I answered an English job advert, my interview was conducted in English, my training was in English and if ever I had a practical problem, the bilingual staff at my school would translate on my behalf. If I didn’t feel like eating Chinese food, I had a range of western fast food to choose from, or if I was feeling picky, I could go to one of several expat-owned restaurants in the area. Since my school was staffed by other foreign English teachers, I could socialise exclusively with them if I felt so inclined. 

I’m happy to say that I didn’t totally isolate myself from Taiwanese culture, and neither did my friends. Most of us enjoyed a mix of Chinese and western food, and we got along great with our Taiwanese co-teachers. In fact, a lot of us dated or married Taiwanese people. In my case, I also chose to study Chinese, and after a couple of years, I could deal with most issues myself. Not a bubble at all, then? In fact, it was a very real bubble – a semi-permeable membrane, through which I allowed only comfortable and familiar elements to pass. I might have spoken reasonably fluent Chinese, but I couldn’t read the newspaper or watch local TV, and that didn’t bother me a bit. My life remained largely westernised and English speaking in substance, with the addition of selected Taiwanese elements. 

This isn’t some kind of Stalinist self-criticism session. In fact, I think it’s okay to live like this. I’m doing the same thing in Korea right now. We all want to stay mostly within our cultural comfort zone, and it’s fine to do so as long as we’re respectful and open-minded. In my years in Asia, I’ve had plenty of opportunity to criticise other cultures, but I’ve just as often been humbled by their brilliance. So, I’d say that wherever you are, you should stay open minded and curious about other cultures. Otherwise, you’re going to miss a great opportunity for learning.

Sharper Stones (Tim)

What’s the point of a luxury yacht? You might think that it’s for traveling to exotic locations in grand style and enjoying all the excitement and gratuitous pleasure that money can buy. Nope. A six-year study by a British academic has found that the super rich mostly just moor their yachts in the sort of places like Cannes or Monaco where they are conspicuously available to be ogled and envied. Apparently the main motivation for making these super-yachts ever bigger and more ostentatious is not for the sake of luxury or convenience out on the high seas, but simply to compete with the yacht in the next berth in Saint-Tropez.

I recently had a reunion with some of my old school friends in London. Now that we’re all in our early forties, we’ve had plenty of time to develop our lives, our careers and our investment portfolios. This is something that my friends have done with relish. They’re all very successful in their respective fields: a computer programmer, a vascular surgeon and a something to do with logistics. They have all been sensible with their money and all own lovely homes and flash cars, and undoubtedly have sensible retirement plans. Maybe I missed the starting gun, but I’m still just an English teacher living in a small rented flat full of cheap furniture, and I don’t really have any assets at all.

Tim(e) in London

Usually, I’m pretty content with what I have because I tend to live for experience more than material wealth. But, just as I expected, when it came time to meet face-to-face with my old mates as a group, I was intimidated by their tangible success. It made me feel slightly inadequate that I hadn’t acquired any of their status, or status symbols. This is a bit embarrassing to admit because shunning materialism and status symbols has always been a core value of mine. Nonetheless, these things have a powerful ability to make a person question the course that his life has taken.

But in the middle of our reunion braai, the old friend who is perhaps the most successful of all suddenly got a faraway look in his eye and said with unexpected gravity, “Isn’t it strange how we’ve all followed such different paths?” And suddenly I knew that the envy goes both ways. As much as I may envy their more tangible success, there are times when they envy my lifestyle. I’m no poster boy for the rock ‘n roll lifestyle, but I do retain a certain mobility that I’m quite proud of – fifteen years an expat, having visited almost twenty countries, living in my third foreign country and learning my second foreign language. Ironically, it might be my lack of material entrapments that is my most enviable quality.

It’s always been human nature to look at the caveman in the next cave and admire his extra sharp stone tools. It seems likely that this instinct is an engine of human progress, spurring us on to bigger and better projects that have ultimately benefited the whole human race. Nonetheless, there are times when we have to recognise this feeling for what it is, and not let it deprive us of the joy and satisfaction we already possess.

Cultural Appropriation (Tim)

On the most basic and general level, cultural appropriation happens when one culture adopts or borrows aspects of another. Since there has been a more or less continuous exchange of cultural artefacts and ideas throughout human history, it’s hard to imagine why this has become a contentious issue in recent times. No one has a problem with the fact that our alphabet has been ‘borrowed’ in successive stages from the ancient Phoenicians, via Greece and then Rome. There are countless examples from tea to tracksuits that don’t upset anyone. The problem arises where the cultural artefact is appropriated by a dominant culture from an oppressed culture, with the result that the benefits of the appropriation accrue only to the dominant culture, or offensive stereotypes about the oppressed culture are perpetuated. Disney’s Pocahontas is a classic example.

The question is; can cultural appropriation be done right? From a South African perspective, the answer is a resounding yes, and the best example would be Johnny Clegg. The way that Clegg has adopted and incorporated aspects of Zulu culture into his art actually gives a near perfect example of how cultural appropriation should be done. Firstly, Clegg has always been enthusiastic and sincere about his embrace of Zulu culture. As a teenager, Clegg crossed the colour bar and became a member of a Zulu dance troupe, while also learning the Zulu folk guitar style known as Maskandi. For his troubles, Clegg was arrested at the age of 15 for violating the Apartheid laws that sought to keep the races separate. At the age of 17 he met Sipho Mchunu, with whom he formed the bilingual and cross-cultural pop group Juluka. Not content to be fluent in Zulu language, dance and music, Clegg dove deeper by studying Anthropology at university. The mere existence of the bi-racial Juluka was enough to irk the Apartheid authorities in the late seventies and early eighties, but Clegg and Mchunu’s music also encoded political messages about human rights, and when they played to audiences at home and abroad, they raised awareness about the injustice of Apartheid.

Sure, Johnny Clegg is a white guy who got famous for singing in Zulu and for doing a Zulu dance routine as part of his stage act. However, in the final analysis, Clegg’s devotion to Zulu culture has been deep and respectful, and the net effect of his work has been to promote respect not only for Zulu culture but also for multiculturalism and human rights for all South Africans. I suspect that the current objection to cultural appropriation often has to do with the mistaken view that it’s a zero-sum game. When I adopt something from your culture, it doesn’t have to mean that there is less available for you. The example of Johnny Clegg shows that if I’m respectful and sincere about borrowing from your culture, we can both benefit.

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Other posts by Tim Casteling

Self-Expression – The Dalai Lama & Desmond Tutu (Tim)

It’s a sad truth of life that when we grow older, we tend to become less spontaneous and less creative as we acquire more social anxiety. A lot of times, we’re so worried about what others think of us that we have no idea how to relax and be ourselves. The generally agreed principle in psychology is that social anxiety has to do with the ego. While the ego is something that we tend to protect and cherish (See Donald Trump), the good news is that long-term meditation works to strip away the ego. And if you want proof of the joy and spontaneity that a lifetime of meditation can bring, just watch these clips of the Dalai Lama goofing around with his chum, Desmond Tutu.

Tim Casteling

Conclusion of a 7 part series on Self-Awareness

(1) Doubt (2) Criticism (3) Discovery (4) Awareness (5) Discipline (6) Compassion

Self-Compassion – Hakuin (Tim)

There are many forms of anxiety, but paradoxical anxiety is my favourite. This is the (highly ironic) anxiety that results from fear of being too anxious. And so it is with the over-eager meditator, who expends a great deal of mental energy on not thinking too much, and thereby…well, you get the picture. In fact, the Zen patriarch, Hakuin seems to have suffered a nervous breakdown on the way to enlightenment. The answer to this paradoxical malady? Go easy on yourself. For example, when you are mediating, and you find your mind wandering, be gentle about re-focusing your thoughts and avoid the temptation to scold yourself. Stupid jerk that I am, I’m not very good at this, either.

Tim Casteling

Part 6 of a 7 part series on Self-Awareness

(1) Doubt (2) Criticism (3) Discovery (4) Awareness (5) Discipline

Hakuin Ekaku

Self-Discipline - Mo Farah (Tim)

The old cliché of meditation is that it’s a blissful state of relaxation. Unfortunately, meditation is not always blissful. It’s a lot more like running the 10,000m; great when you have the fitness, but it takes discipline to get there. To begin with, it’s generally recommended that you start with some form of mindfulness meditation like mindfulness of breathing. All you have to do is pay attention to your breath. When your mind wanders, just bring it back to your breath, again and again. As you do this, you slowly get in the habit of catching your errant mind. Eventually, you find yourself catching negative thoughts all the time. By the principle of neuroplasticity, your brain slowly but surely changes for the better. Or so I’ve read.

Tim Casteling

Part 5 of a 7 part series on Self-Awareness

(1) Doubt (2) Criticism (3) Discovery (4) Awareness

Mo Farah

Self-Awareness – Matthieu Ricard (Tim)

Matthieu Ricard

While self-help and psychedelics may be dismissed as snake oil, the benefits of meditation are increasing well documented by science. Matthieu Ricard is a Tibetan Buddhist monk who has the distinction of being both the “happiest person in the world” and one of the most studied individuals in the history of neuropsychology. Studies on the brains of Ricard and other skilled meditators showed that they were significantly more active in areas related to compassion, conscious attention and happiness, but significantly reduced in their capacity for negative thinking. This is down to the capacity of even the adult brain for growth and change – neuroplasticity. And, as you would have guessed by now, the engine for change in this case is meditation.

Tim Casteling
Part 4 of a 7-part series on Self-Awareness
(1) Self-Doubt (2) Self-Criticism (3) Self-Discovery

Self-Discovery – Syd Barrett (Tim)

Ayahuasca

In moments of weakness, many of us have sneaked a peak at the self-help section in the bookshop. But, while these books might make you feel warm and fuzzy, they are unlikely to challenge any aspect of your being, other than your wallet. On the other extreme, psychotropic substances including peyote, LSD and ayahuasca have been used for spiritual purposes for most of human history. The idea is that these substances can provide a short cut to self-knowledge by breaking down the barriers that protect our false, ego-centred, sense of self. Unfortunately, they can also provide a short cut to psychosis, and the alleged benefits have never been objectively measured anyway.

Syd Barrett

Founder member of the band Pink Floyd

Tim Casteling

Part 3 of a 7-part series on Self-Awareness

(1) Self-Doubt, (2) Self-Criticism

Self-Criticism - Donald Trump (Tim)

Before we start our trip down the trail of self-discovery, a word from the skeptics. There are so many problems in this world, they say. How can we justify the time and effort spent on selfish navel-gazing when we could be doing something constructive? Well, the short answer is that a lack of self-awareness tends to make you a bit of an arsehole. Without a healthy sense of humility and self-criticism, you tend to overstate your own needs and downgrade those of others. You tend to ignore or become defensive about your own flaws while exaggerating those of others. If you’re getting a mental image of Donald Trump, then you’ve got the idea.

Tim Casteling

Part 2 of a 7 part series on self-awareness

(1) Self-Doubt

Self-Doubt - Socrates (Tim)

Socrates

To paraphrase a few online dictionaries, ‘self-awareness’ means that you are conscious of your own independent existence, including your personality and your feelings. Seems simple enough at first glance. In fact, genuine self-awareness is so difficult that true insight into the nature of the self could be said to be the ultimate goal of spiritual practice. And to make matters worse, Buddhism argues that the self has no independent existence anyway. It’s all very confusing, but don’t blame Eastern mysticism. Socrates was famous for saying, “The only thing I know is that I don’t know.” To cut a long story short, radical self-doubt is the only valid starting point for a journey of self-awareness.

Tim Casteling

Part of a 7 part series on Self-Awareness

Taiwan (Tim)

Not to be confused with Thailand, and not a part of China, Taiwan is the China that should have been – a democratic nation of Chinese people who are not afraid to thumb their nose at the bully who glares at them across the Taiwan strait. Taiwan’s free, safe and fascinating society held me in thrall for ten years. Where else can you saunter down to the 7-11 in your pyjamas at 3 o’clock on a Sunday morning to pay your electricity bill and buy a bottle of whiskey? Where else do people stand patiently on the street corner holding little bags of household waste, waiting for the arrival of the rubbish truck whose theme tune is Beethoven’s Fur Elise?

Tim Casteling

Other posts by and with Tim

Old Friends - Encouraging Empathy - The Martyr Complex

South Korea - China 

China (Tim)

I used to live in the People’s Republic of China, which doesn’t belong to the people at all; it belongs to the government, and any Chinese person who disputes that will find himself summarily disappeared. Ironically, the Chinese public generally seem to support their repressive government – partly from fear, and partly from national pride. In fact, human rights (and full access to the Internet) seem to be a low priority for most Chinese, who are more interested in catching up with the developed west. Unfortunately this progress is a double deal with the devil because it’s also leading to the greatest environmental catastrophe in history.

Tim Casteling

Other posts by and with Tim

Old Friends - Encouraging Empathy - The Martyr Complex - South Korea