The Metaphysics of Hangovers

Unfortunately I am chronically hungover today, and there is a slim chance that this may affect both the quality and quantity of my blogging. However, every negative can be turned into a positive by those who mean to prevail. Hangovers offer a unique opportunity for a certain kind of profound philosophising. What other experience offers such insights into the vanity, meaninglessness and suffering of existence? Or into the follies of human behaviour? What other life-event demonstrates so conclusively that joy cannot exist without pain, nor pain without joy? Or forces us to confront our true selves, stripped of the layers pretence and self-deception that are our normal modus vivendi? No other experience even comes close to revealing the fragility of the human condition. To anyone who wants to follow the Delphic Oracle’s command to Know Thyself, the hangover is an indispensable tool.

The English writer Kingsley Amis is often regarded as the world’s greatest Philosopher of Hangovers. He speaks of ‘that vast, vague, awful, shimmering metaphysical superstructure that makes a hangover a fortunately unique route to self-knowledge and self-realisation'. He says that much of the world’s greatest literature has actually been about hangovers, while ostensibly being about something else. One suspects that much of the writing of Poe, Kierkegaard, Dostoyevksy, Sartre, Heidegger, St. Augustine and Pascal was really about hangovers. According to Amis, literature’s greatest attempt to capture the experience of the metaphysical hangover is Kafka's 'The Metamorphosis', in which the hero wakes up to discover that he has been transformed into a man-sized cockroach. I feel a bit like a man-size cockroach myself today.

The Independent: Ireland’s best newspaper

For incisive coverage of the affairs of our small yet great nation, you really can’t beat the Indo. It invariably has its finger on the pulse. The journalists at the Indo miss nothing. I would recommend buying today’s edition. In particular I would draw your attention to page 6 of the Business section. There you will find the Blog Digest, written by a promising, perceptive, quirky young journalist called Marie Boran. And in it you will see the first academic study of my work:

VISITING this blog is a bit like reading the problem pages in the Sunday magazines, except with much more intelligent insight. Writer and cyber counsellor Barrington says he uses philosophical psychology to approach people’s problems, which range from being addicted to Big Brother to a girl with a wandering eye. This blog manages to tread the line between being insightful and sensitive to those seeking advice, while adding a sprinkling of humour and a fair few giggles along the way.

"I have annoying crushes on other men"

A READER WRITES: Thank you for setting up this wonderful site. You truly are talented. I'm wondering if you can offer me some advice. I'm in a long term relationship. I love my partner and wish to spend my life with him. My problem is trivial, I suppose, but I keep getting crushes on other men, in particular my work colleagues. This has always happened to me and the crushes eventually fade but they are an annoyance, I can't seem to stop myself from getting attracted to these men. I have never let it go further than an attraction but sometimes I get sick of constantly being tempted. The feelings are stronger than normal window shopping that other people do, Is this normal?

BB SAYS: Relax! It is perfectly natural to have crushes on other people, even if you are in a long-term relationship. People tend to think that they should not be attracted to other people if they are in a happy long-term relationship, and they feel guilty about it. But it is perfectly normal. Indeed, it would be abnormal if you did not experience such attractions – it would mean that you are repressing your erotic fantasies. The day you stop having crushes is the day you stop living! You have not acted on the temptation, which shows that you are a deeply moral woman, who is capable of really loving her partner.

Healthy people have a real life and a fantasy life, and they are clear about the difference between Fantasy and Reality. What you have with your long-term partner is real. The fact that you have these other crushes shows that you have a lively fantasy-life - and this is healthy. The fact that you have not yet acted on these crushes shows that you draw a clear line between fantasy and reality. Problems start for people when the distinction between fantasy and reality becomes blurred or confused.

For example, you can idealise the men you have crushes on, because you do not have to go out with them month after month, year after year. If you were going out with one of these men, the occasional frustrations and boredom that are involved in having a relationship would start to reassert themselves, and you would eventually start having crushes on other people again. Similarly, if you tried to have a clandestine affair with one of these men, the fantasy would suddenly become a reality, and the reality would likely be very different from the fantasy – squalid, disappointing, and full of regret, pain and guilt.

Women experience a tension between their desire to be with exciting, confident, “dangerous” men, and their desire to be with a stable, reliable man who loves them and cares for them. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to resolve this tension, and each woman must try to work it out for herself as best she can.

Your post suggests that you are a self-aware, well-balanced person. I feel confident that you will make the right decisions.

Do YOU have a problem? Leave an anonymous comment, or send your problem in confidence to brianbarrington@gmail.com

Addicted to Big Brother

A READER WRITES: “i love watching celebrity big brother. does this make me a total dick? I saw the extras christmas special and vowed to never watch it again but it's like a vortex I can't resist hurling myself into. the guilt eats me up every day. when vern leapt into michelles arms and she spun him around my heart leapt! what should i do? what would you do brian barrington?”

BB SAYS: I once knew a woman who used to record the live feed of Big Brother during the night, so that she could watch what had happened the next day! She watched it for hours and hours every day. That was addiction. My impression is that you are not addicted. If you are just watching it for an hour every evening for a couple of weeks, in order to get you through a dark and miserable January, then that is not a major problem.

According to the philosopher Roger Scruton, vicarious experiences (i.e. experiences that are felt or enjoyed through imagined participation in the experience of others) are the enemy of life, the enemy of living a full life. Our media saturated society offers copious opportunities for vicarious experiences and escapism. Examples of vicarious experiences might include: playing computer games; watching professional sports; reading Mills and Boon novels; consuming pornography; reading celebrity magazines; reading superhero comics. These activities offer an escape from real life.

Personally, I think Scruton is being a bit harsh. In moderation vicarious experiences are fine – they can be a good way to relax, especially when life is getting us down. It is when vicarious experiences become excessive, when they start to substitute for real experiences, that you need to be careful that they are not becoming a replacement for the more rewarding, challenging and fulfilling activities that can make you grow as a person.

ART VERSUS FANTASY:

Works of art are, in one sense, also vicarious. But rather than bringing us into a fantasy world, true works of art teach us about reality, and thereby bring us closer to the real. They bring us closer to real life, rather than taking us away from real life. As such, art is challenging, rewarding and fulfilling in a way that many other vicarious experiences are not. Art teaches us how to live. Escapist vicarious experiences help us flee reality into a fantasy world; art brings us closer to reality.

In my opinion, the snobbishness about Big Brother can be a bit much. Big Brother offers the opportunity to watch people and learn about them. People are fascinating. So enjoy watching Big Brother in reasonably small doses - and see if you can learn anything about human psychology while watching.

Reader “increasingly bored by economic recession”

A READER WRITES: “When this whole economic dowturn thing kicked off I felt excited and energised. It was fun for a while. Now the novelty has worn off. It’s the same damn thing every night on the news - this bank has collapsed, that bank has collapsed. I mean Jesus Christ, just how many bloody banks are there out there? Or are the same banks just collapsing over and over again? Frankly, I’m bored with it and I feel that certain elements in our society have been PULLING THE ARSE OUT OF IT. Brian Barrington, please end the recession”.

BB SAYS: I wish I could, Reader, I wish I could. But I fear that ending the recession is beyond even my enormous powers. However, I feel obliged to strike a positive note amongst all this economic doom and gloom: 53% of economists reckon there is a 65% chance that the country will avoid going bankrupt, in which case there is a 72% chance that the recession will only last 12 years. So don't worry, only another 12 years to go …

The mysteries of female sexual psychology

A READER WRITES: "I am 32 years old and have been married to a wonderful man for the past 2 years. Despite being very happy with my husband I am very drawn to meeting other men for clandestine physical relationships. You see I have always loved the thrill of meeting new people and having that physical connection. I suppose the forbidden element adds to the fun. Also there are sexual experiences I want to have that I cannot have with my husband because they would potentially change the way we look at each other. I'm sure a man of your background can understand. In the beginning I thought that doing this once or twice would get it out of my system but it doesn't appear to have been the case. It's like drinking salt water to quench a thirst. So my first question to you is this: Is what I'm doing really wrong and do you think I can 'get it out of my system' and one day be satisfied with a cosy life with my husband.
I've been using gumtree and other websites to find interesting quirky people who stand out from the crowd and can be discreet.
Of course I receive hundreds of replies but can discount the usual 'fancy a shag' brigade.

One of the ways I try to illicit information about prospective partners is to ask them whether they prefer:
1. Bobbing for apples or
2. Pinning the tail on the donkey

I tend to be more attracted to those who opt for number one.
However I don't know what this tells me about the person or indeed what it tells me about me.
So my second question is can you explain this?

Finally my third question is would you fancy meeting up for a coffee in Dublin sometime. You seem like an interesting guy - although I could be wrong - perhaps you could answer my apple or donkey question above while you're at it."

BB SAYS: Very unusual indeed. Most women have very little urge for casual sex with strange men, due to differences in male and female sexual psychology. The root of these differences lies in the fact that a woman might get pregnant. So women have evolved to be much more cautious about sex than men. There is more at stake for them. Women are generally very choosy about whom they sleep with. They frequently want to make sure that the man really loves and cares about them, or that he meets some “minimum standard” – since there is often an oversupply of men who would be happy to have sex with them, if given the opportunity. Hence the saying: “Women need love in order to have sex, men need sex in order to love”. Men are much more into casual sex with random partners. The kind of woman you appear to be exists mostly only in the fantasies of sexually inadequate men. Such women are rarely encountered in the real world. However, even you seem to have criteria and standards – you only want to be with men who prefer bobbing for apples, rather than pining the tail on the donkey. How to explain these seemingly bizarre criteria? I find it hard to explain, since I myself have no interest in either activity. According to experts in sexual selection:

“Females often prefer to mate with males with external ornaments - exaggerated features of morphology. These can plausibly arise because an arbitrary female preference for some aspect of male morphology initially increased by genetic drift”

Your preferences would appear to be the result of an arbitrary female preference. Your behaviour strikes me as an unhealthy addiction – continuing it will not “get it out of your system”.

In response to your third question: I’m afraid I am not at all interesting. If we met up, you would only be disappointed. Furthermore, I am happily married.

Nevertheless, I’m beginning to think that female sexual psychology is much more complex than I previously believed. Earlier we posted a letter from a man who wants to murder someone. A girl replied:

"For some reason I can't stop thinking about this man and his murderous urges. I find him so attractive. Part of me hopes he does kill her and if he does that he gets away with it. Ooh I wonder what's wrong with me but I'm hugely drawn to this person".

Perhaps the man in question comes across as an exciting, dangerous, unpredictable male – and the woman finds him attractive because of this. However, we need to consider the possibility that the man in question is just someone who sits on his toilet and poses as a potential killer in cyberspace, in order to make himself seem more exciting and interesting than he actually is.

The peculiar sexual magnetism of stand-up comedians

A READER WRITES: “On Sunday evening my girlfriend and I attended a comedy show by the up-and-coming comedian David O’Doherty, who is known for his whimsical humour and for his use of novelty keyboards. As the show proceeded, I became aware that Mr. O’Doherty was exercising a strange sexual hold over the female members of the audience. My girlfriend even confessed to me that she found him ‘stunningly attractive’ and another woman wondered aloud whether Mr. O’Doherty was ‘in a long-term relationship or not’. I found this odd, given that Mr O'Doherty is rather scruffy looking. Can you explain?”

BB SAYS: It is, indeed, a strange one. If you look at the singles pages of any publication, people always say that they want their potential partners to have a GSOH. What is the explanation for this? Since I have no sense of humour myself, I have always found this especially perplexing. I rely on my raw, male physical appeal and my handsome features to attract women (see photo at top of this page). But I have noted that men who are far less physically attractive than me often have more success with women.

According to evolutionary psychologists, making people laugh is a way to advertise sexual fitness to potential mates. It is a fitness display. Human beings are highly social animals. In order to succeed in life and attain status, one must have good social skills. Having a good sense of humour indicates a high level of social intelligence. In order to make people laugh, one must be able to set up a mental expectation, and then knock it down. So a good sense of humour requires a keen understanding of human nature. It also requires confidence and energy, and an ability to understand what other people are thinking or feeling. All of these are useful skills in the struggle for social status and power. Social and emotional intelligence is heritable – if a person has social intelligence, he or she is likely to pass it on to any off-spring they may have. For this reason, people find people with a Good Sense of Humour attractive. They think “This person has good genes. I want to have sex with them”.

According to evolutionary psychologists, human beings are social animals who compete with each other to attain power and prestige. Every human society ever analysed has unequal distributions of power and status. As Steven Pinker puts it:

People everywhere strive for a ghostly substance called authority, cachet, dignity, dominance, eminence, esteem, face, position, pre-eminence, prestige, rank, regard, repute, respect, standing, stature, or status.

In social animals like human beings, possessing power and status within one’s group, increases one’s chances of survival and reproduction. It is therefore an adaptive advantage. Pinker continues:

In all societies people recognise a kind of dominance hierarchy, particularly among men. High-ranking men are deferred to, have a greater voice in group decisions, usually have a greater share of the group’s resources, and always have more wives, more lovers, and more affairs with other men’s wives

Power increases a human’s ability to influence affairs to his own advantage. Status is also a fitness indicator to potential mates. By flaunting one’s status, one tries to demonstrate that one has better genes than one’s competitors, and thereby increase one’s attractiveness to potential mates. A display of status advertises biological fitness and is part of sexual selection. Humour is one way of doing this.

But the struggle for status, power and prestige is a zero-sum game that involves winners and losers. As Pinker puts it:

There are only so many hours in the day, and sycophants must choose whom to fawn over, so status is a limited resource. If A has more, B must have less, and they must compete.

Everybody wants to be above average, whether in looks, intelligence, popularity, fame, or wealth. But, by definition, it is not possible for everyone to be above average. Some must win and some must lose. And this is why the struggle for prestige is a zero-sum game. Conflicts of interest are inevitable.

In conclusion, women are attracted to men who are funny, because being funny is one way of indicating status, and women are attracted to high-status males.

“I was quite content with my life until I started reading your wretched blog”

A READER WRITES: “your blog has made me question my very existence. i wake up in the morning, and if it's a weekday i leap from my bed to start the working day. i love my job (even though i am paid well below the average for what i do), i love the people i work with, i love hearing stories about the minutiae of their lives. is there something wrong with me? it seems everyone else hates their job and feels it's dispiriting. please can you help me hate my job so i can be cool like your other readers.”

BB SAYS: Thank you for your wonderfully thought-provoking letter.

It sounds to me like you are currently experiencing what the philosopher Heidegger called Angst or Existential Anxiety. What did Heidegger mean by this?

According to Heidegger, human beings are conformists – we cannot stand being different from the norm. We cannot stand distance from the crowd. We are all zombies who just do what one does. We do what our society and culture expect us to do. Even rebels and “non-conformists”, says Heidegger, are just conforming to society’s idea of what a non-conformist should be. He says “We flee from the crowd as one flees from the crowd”. We go about our everyday lives as if we are sleep-walking - we rarely if ever stop to ask “Why am I doing what I am doing? What is the point of all this? Why am I living my life like this?”

According to Heidegger, when we stop to ask these questions we realise that there is no point to what we are doing, and that there is no reason why human life and society are structured the way they are. We see that human existence is groundless and absurd, that it is devoid of real meaning and significance. At moments like this, we experience guilt, death, dread, and falling – in a word, we experience Angst or Existential Anxiety. This is what you are now experiencing.

How can we respond to this Existential Anxiety? According to Heidegger there are essentially two ways to respond. The first way is to flee back to the crowd. To become a conformist. To try and deny the meaninglessness and insignificance of human life. To embrace what Heidegger calls the “they-self” – our public self, our public role, where we behave “as one does”. This is the inauthentic way to respond to Angst.

But there is another way: the authentic way. To respond authentically involves embracing and accepting one’s Angst rather than fleeing it. It involves taking ownership of one’s Existential Anxiety. It involves facing up to the meaninglessness and absurdity of human existence. According to Heidegger, if you do this you can live an authentic life – you can radically change your way of being in the world. WHAT you do will probably not change very much, but HOW you do it will change radically. You will no longer expect to get any real meaning or significance from what you do. You will embrace the absurdity of it all.

Does this sound depressing? No. According to Heidegger, people who live like this are joyous, alive, playful, spontaneous and free. They see through the bullshit. They often retain an ironic distance from what they are doing, because they know that what they are doing is essentially meaningless and absurd. They embrace what Heidegger calls “the saving power of insignificant things”. They feel no need to always be productive or efficient. Instead, they can enjoy activities that are non-productive and inefficient – activities such as drinking wine with friends, or hiking in the hills, or running, or philosophising. These activities are joyful and free precisely because they are inefficient and non-productive. A person who responds authentically to his or her Angst becomes existentially liberated, and free to respond to his or her situation in new and inventive ways. Such people have taken ownership of their lives – they live authentic lives.

As I re-read your post and deconstruct it, I think I detect a certain level of irony in what you are saying. This suggests to me that you have high levels of authenticity. You are one of life’s free spirits. In short, you are a really cool person, just like everyone who reads this blog.

Do YOU have a problem? Leave an anonymous comment, or send your problem in confidence to brianbarrington@gmail.com

Reader sits on toilet and fantasises about murdering landlady

A READER WRITES: “I like to move my bowels with the roar of a lion first thing every morning. My grandfather taught me that this was the secret to health and happiness and I must say that once new flatmates get used to the twin fulminations of my morning ritual I am usually left alone to enjoy a cleansing half hour. Before the roaring phase I like to read a little Friedrich Nietzsche as I find his work most conducive to getting the peristaltic waves going in my lower colon. So conditioned am I, after all these years, that I can hardly have a successful evacuation without a little Zarathustra to inspire my viscera into action.

After all this reading I have become enamoured with the idea of the Übermensch, a superior man who is beyond the bounds of conventional morality. I believe I fit that mould very well and believe that laws and conventions, which have been created to keep uncultured men in order, should not apply to me. This philosophy has led me to consider murdering a certain individual - an old landlady of mine. A spiteful miserable wretch of a woman, who has never entertained a kind thought in her whole life. This usurious and mean-spirited person holds a number of vulnerable people in her thrall and I believe it would be a service to Irish people if I were to end her life.

I have considered the various laws and religious injunctions against murder but I believe, and Nietzsche would appear to support me, that these should have no hold over me. I should be free to exercise my will to achieve a higher purpose. I am not without a certain cunning and I am pretty sure I could do the deed and not be caught - I find the idea of this challenge utterly irresistible.

So that's my story and I mean every word of it. I'd like to hear your perspective - do you support my position or not? If a man was going to shoot people and you had a choice to shoot him first to stop him - would you do it? I feel my situation is very similar to this question.

BB SAYS: : There is no simple answer to your predicament. I recommend you read Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky. The anti-hero of that novel was in a strangely similar situation to you. He wanted to murder his landlady. He said to himself “What would Napoleon do in my situation? He would not hesitate to do the deed. It is only cowardice that is stopping me”. Then he went ahead and did the deed. I won’t ruin the story by going into what happens next. Suffice to say, things did not work out at all like he expected. Counter-balance your reading of Nietzsche by reading Dostoyevsky. Then you will be able to make an informed and balanced decision concerning whether or not to kill your landlady.

Reader embraces Schopenhauer’s pessimism

A READER WRITES: “You have talked on your site about the pursuit of happiness and even stated that the purpose of the site was to 'help people overcome their problems and to improve their enjoyment of life'. Although this idea sounds very appealing, I would suggest that it is impossible and unattainable. Life in my humble opinion is a horrible, painful journey which, at times, is interrupted by periods of relative calm, which we then refer to or mistake for happiness. Every problem that we have the ability to overcome is quickly replaced by another more perturbing barrier. Happiness is an ideal, a human creation alluded to by philosophers and 'wise men', in order to confuse the masses and to trick them into believing that there is something worth living for. In reality such bogus nonsense only serves to highlight how miserable we really are and therefore should not be referred to as something real or attainable. It should be left on a dusty shelf somewhere along with all of mans other bogus creations, such as Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, Sasquatch and God"

BB SAYS: Thank you for your thoughtful and intelligent post. Many great philosophers agree with you. In particular the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who has been mentioned before on this site, and who is sometimes known as the Philosopher of Pessimism. The ideas in your post are remarkably similar to his. Here is a quote from Schopenhuaer:

“To our amazement we suddenly exist, after having for countless millennia not existed; in a short while we will again not exist, also for countless millennia … That human life must be some kind of mistake is sufficiently proved by the simple observation that man is a compound of needs which are hard to satisfy; that their satisfaction achieves nothing but a painless condition in which he is only given over to boredom; and that boredom is a direct proof that existence is in itself valueless, for boredom is nothing other than the sensation of the emptiness of existence. For if life, in the desire for which our essence and existence consists, possessed in itself a positive value and real content, there would be no such thing as boredom: mere existence would fulfil and satisfy us. As things are, we take no pleasure in existence except when we are striving after something - in which case distance and difficulties make our goal look as if it would satisfy us (an illusion which fades when we reach it). Even sensual pleasure itself consists in a continual striving and ceases as soon as its goal is reached. Whenever we are not involved in one or other of these things but directed back to existence itself we are overtaken by its worthlessness and vanity and this is the sensation called boredom. We shall do best to think of life as a process of disillusionment: since this is, clearly enough, what everything that happens to us is calculated to produce”.

“There is only one inborn erroneous notion - that we exist in order to be happy. So long as we persist in this inborn error ... the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence - hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of disappointment.”

Nevertheless, according to Schopenhauer, wise men and sages can achieve a state of blessedness, by giving up on their attempts to be happy. If you want nothing, then you have everything you want. Life involves suffering; suffering is caused by desire; the extinction of desire is the only means to salvation. This, according to Schopenhauer, is the only way to cope with life. He says that the great ascetics have accomplished this. He also says that the aesthetic experience of great art temporarily lifts us beyond desire. Aesthetic contemplation is a temporary way to escape the pain of existence, by permitting the disinterested contemplation of reality.

Reading great philosophers like Schopenhuaer can help to liberate us from propaganda and myths – by escaping from those myths, we attain salvation - we free ourselves from the false hopes that inevitably lead to despair, and which serve only to increase our suffering and pain. It sounds to me like you are well able to see through the myths that lead us astray, and I am confident that you have the strength within you to approach the blessed state that ascetics speak of.

“Should I buy a home?”

A READER WRITES: “Should I buy a home in Ireland? My mortgage broker is advising that I buy now, as the market has bottomed out. He is offering me a one-bedroom apartment with paper walls, in a remote suburb of Dublin, for 750,000 Euro. According to property developers I know, prices are going to rise dramatically in the months ahead and ‘now is the time to buy’”

BB SAYS: Of course you should buy a home. The purpose of human existence is to own your own house. That is the reason we were put on this earth. If you take out a 35 year mortgage now, you will own your own one-bedroom apartment in 35 years, and the monthly repayments will probably only cost you about 50% of your disposable income. After 35 years, you can take out another mortgage, and if you live for a very long time (say, for four hundred years), you will eventually own a dozen properties – one to live in, and another 11 holiday homes in picturesque corners of the country.

Any fool can see that the property market has now bottomed out. Unemployment is rocketing. Wages are collapsing. The banks are starved of credit. Rents are falling through the floor. Ireland has the highest household and personal debt anywhere in the world. Multi-nationals are fleeing the country in droves. The country is littered with ghost estates and half-built apartment blocks. By conservative estimates, there are only about a couple of hundred thousand unsold properties in the country. The market capitalisation of Irish banks has decreased in the last year by an average of 97% - because they have borrowed money from foreign banks to lend to property developers, so that they could build houses that nobody can afford. When the banks collapse, taxes will need to increase hugely in order to fund the government’s bank guarantee. Emigration is starting again, the country’s population is in decline. There is massive deflation.

So all perceptive observers agree that property prices are now at rock bottom. Ignore “independent, unbiased advice” from economists and other doom-mongers. Instead, listen to property developers and mortgage brokers, because they know what’s really going on.

750,000 for a one bedroom apartment in Dublin is what is known as “a steal at twice the price”. For 750,000 Euro, you could buy a 12-bedroom mansion in the South of France with a swimming pool and 100 acres of olive trees. Or a 4-bed penthouse apartment in the upper East side of New York. But why would you do that when you can get a one bedroom apartment on the outskirts of Dublin for THE EXACT SAME PRICE? The fact that the walls appear to be made of paper should not deter you – the paper walls allow you to follow the intimate lives of your neighbours, which revitalises community life in our fragmented, isolated modern world.

If you don’t buy now, you will never own your own home. Carpe Diem.

“Your blog reminds me of diarrhoea” says misguided Richard Dawkins fan.

FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER WRITES: “Seeing the incredible volume of output on your blog this week, it is as if you've had years of constipation and now suddenly you've had a dose of the runs. Let it flow, let it flow, let it flow”

BB SAYS: Thank you for comparing my website to diarrhoea.

Your moniker appears to be a reference to Richard Dawkins, who uses the example of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to try and expose what he believes to be a fallacious argument sometimes used to defend belief in God. When atheists complain that the existence of God cannot be proven, believers sometimes reply that the existence of God cannot be disproven either, and that one should therefore believe in Him. According to Dawkins, this argument is an example of shifting the burden of proof. The burden of proof exists on the person who claims that a particular entity exists. It is not possible to prove a negative. Suppose I claim that a Flying Spaghetti Monster exists somewhere in outer space. You may object that I cannot prove that such an entity exists. I reply that you cannot disprove the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster either, and that therefore you should believe in It.

However, in my own opinion, Dawkins is guilty of using his own fallacy in this argument: the fallacy of false analogy. A Flying Spaghetti Monster would be a physical, material entity that exists in time and space. It would therefore be possible in principle to empirically verify the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster – by going and looking at it, for example. However, God is supposed to exist beyond time and space, outside of the physical, natural world. God is a supernatural entity, not a natural entity, like the Flying Spaghetti Monster. God transcends the phenomenal world. Because of this, it is not possible to empirically verify the existence of God. God is a fundamentally different type of entity to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. That is why belief in God tends to be based on faith, rather than evidence. When it comes to natural entities like the Flying Spaghetti Monster, we tend to demand empirical evidence for their existence. But for a supernatural entity like God, no such empirical evidence is possible, because God is a fundamentally different kind of entity. The religious virtues are faith, hope and love. The ability to spot an empirically verifiable hypothesis is a scientific virtue, not a religious one.

In any case, the multiverse is a VERY big, peculiar place, and there may well be Flying Spaghetti Monsters out there somewhere. If people want to believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, then I support their right to do so.

Do YOU have a problem? Leave an anonymous comment, or send your problem in confidence to brianbarrington@gmail.com

Metaphysics and Anal Sex: the connection

A READER SAYS: “Dear Brain Barrington, My wife and I have been married for 2 years but a fundamental disagreement threatens to tear our marriage apart. She has developed a radical attachment to the epistemological deductions of Logical Positivism - she cannot abide my interest in Metaphysics and has thrown out a lot of my books. She takes every opportunity to rubbish a priori propositions in front of our friends just to belittle me. This has shaken our relationship to its foundations. As well as this she is insisting that we cut down on anal sex as she says that it's degrading. I don't think we can continue - I can't see a way out but there are children involved and for their sake I want to try - I really do. What would you do Brian Barrington?? Console me with your philosophy.”

BB SAYS: Your relationship appears to suffer from a basic problem of lack of mutual respect. A successful relationship requires compromise. If your wife agrees to become more tolerant of your metaphysical musings, then in return you can agree to become more tolerant of her lack of interest in anal sex.

But it can be very difficult for a relationship to survive basic and important metaphysical disagreements of this sort. I would recommend that you both take a course in Husserl’s Phenomenology – it may provide a philosophical framework that leaves room for both metaphysical speculation and logical positivism – it will permit your wife and you to “bracket” your metaphysical disagreements, and make philosophical progress in other areas.

Regarding your sexual issue: according to Christopher Hitchens “the four most over-rated things in life are champagne, lobster, anal sex and picnics.” Solve your problem by focusing on the other over-rated things in life – bring your wife for a champagne and lobster picnic. If this does not work, consider confronting the probable source of your obsession with anal sex: your repressed homosexuality. Your sublimated homosexual energy may be manifesting itself in your metaphysical flights of fancy. The two problems are likely to be connected.

Gratitude

I would like to thank readers for the exceptional interest they have shown in this website since it was launched. It has been inundated with requests, comments and questions. It may take some time to respond properly, but I promise to respond to all inquiries, either on the site, or privately. I do not wish to rush the response, but to give each query the time it deserves. I would also like to thank readers for their compliments and encouragement (and criticism too!). If you have found the site entertaining or useful, then please tell people you know about it, so that they can participate as well.

All the best, BB

"Perfect Happiness Unachievable"

A READER WRITES: “BB, I'm not sure you are helping society with your blog in that you are raising expectations in people that happiness is achievable. Do you think it is possible to determine if a person is happy or not. Do yo think there is a measurable point where we 'see the light' and become happy. Are you so naive as to think that there is some universal standard of happiness that we can aspire to or if you think there is, have you any suggestions how one might identify when it is reached. If perfect happiness cannot be achieved, then we are in constant pursuit of something that cannot be achieved which can only lead to frustration, or if perfect happiness does exist, then having achieved it we have nothing left to aspire to which also leads to frustration. BB you are sending us on a wild goose chase, I respectfully request to spend some time researching the benefits of Nihilism. Yours Truly. Q”

BB SAYS: Thank you for your comments and pertinent questions. I think our positions are actually much closer than you might think.

Once one accepts that perfect happiness is unachievable, one becomes liberated to enjoy life for what it is, without false hopes. False hopes eventually create despair, when those hopes are not realised. As the philosopher Spinoza says: “Fear cannot exist without hope nor hope without fear”. By conquering hope, one overcomes despair and fear, and achieves a kind of liberation. Perhaps the by-line on this site should read “Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here”.

But even if perfect happiness is not possible, is it possible to increase one’s happiness? You advocate abandoning the quest for “perfect happiness” because doing so will reduce frustration. But surely reducing frustration increases happiness? According to Spinoza, by abandoning hope and delusions, and living in the real world, one can approach a state of blessedness and bliss.

Is it possible to determine if a person is happy or not? One method used by researchers is to ask people if they are happy or not, or to rate their own levels of happiness. People self-report widely varying levels of happiness. Are those reports correct? It’s difficult to know. One is reminded of Woody Allen in his film Hannah and Her Sisters:

Allen: “I can't think. This morning I was so happy. - I don't know what went wrong.”
Friend: “You were miserable this morning.”
Allen: “I was happy, but I just didn't realise I was.”

Shakespeare was not “a minor English poet”, complains reader

A READER WRITES: “You refer to a ‘minor’ English poet who advises us that ‘the course of true love never did run smooth’. I remind you that the poet in question was William Shakespeare. He was the greatest English poet of all time. There was nothing ‘minor’ about him”.

BB SAYS: Thank you for pointing out this correction. Shakespeare was, indeed, not a minor poet. Consider this marvelous quote from Macbeth:

"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

Reader wants to “achieve stuff”.

A READER WRITES: “Your website doesn't exactly inspire me to work harder on my very important documents in my very important job...don't you realise I am trying to achieve stuff here....and your writing only inspires me to go for a walk and look at stuff??”

BB SAYS: If you enjoy frenetic activity and busyness, then that is probably what you should be doing.

But I invite you to consider the thoughts of the French thinker Pascal. He says “nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study. He then feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness. There will immediately arise from the depth of his heart weariness, gloom, sadness, fretfulness, vexation, despair. Since men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.”.

But according to Pascal, the attempt to use activity, distraction and busyness to avoid confronting the truth of our human condition is doomed to fail - “all of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone … Error does not lie in seeking excitement, if people seek it only as a diversion; the evil is that they seek it as if the possession of the objects of their quest would make them really happy. In this respect it is right to call their quest a vain one. He who does not see the vanity of the world is himself very vain.”.

Pascal concludes: “If our condition were truly happy, we not need diversion from thinking of it in order to make ourselves happy. The only thing which consoles us for our miseries is diversion, and yet this is the greatest of our miseries. For it is this which principally hinders us from reflecting upon ourselves and which makes us insensibly ruin ourselves. Without this we should be in a state of weariness, and this weariness would spur us to seek a more solid means of escaping from it. But diversion amuses us, and leads us unconsciously to death.”

NEWSFLASH: Many female readers claim to have boyfriends who are jerks

In a post earlier today, a female reader of this site confessed that she suspects that her boyfriend is a “jerk”. Since then, floods of women have contacted me, saying that they also think that their boyfriends might be jerks. Why are women seemingly so attracted to jerks? One reader provided the below list of reasons. It might help women to understand why they are going out with jerks, or why they are attracted to jerks. The list also might offer tips to help single male readers become jerks, and thereby increase their success with women.

TEN Reasons Women Go Out With Jerks Instead of Nice Guys:

10) More fun to complain about them to your friends.

9) Guys who actually like you just aren't challenging or exciting.

8) When you do date nice guys, they turn into jerks anyway, so why not save time and go for the jerk in the first place?

7) You won't get as emotionally attached to a jerk, so you'll be more in control.

6) All the other women want them, so they must be worth having.

5) Affection means more when it comes from a guy who doesn't normally give it.

4) Guaranteed to cheat on you so someone else can endure his lack of lovemaking skills most of the time.

3) No need to feel guilty for abusing or deceiving them

2) Jerks will actually tell you when they don't like what you're doing instead of getting mad about it six months later.

1) Looking for someone you can't trust, and won't care about too much, but who will abuse you mentally and financially, but you don't know any lawyers?

Reader experiences Schadenfreude when hearing about other people’s problems

A READER WRITES: “why does it make me feel so much better about myself when i read other people's problems? is that the right grammar? people's or peoples'? your readers will probably be judging me on my poor grammar. [readers'?]. anyway. bottom line - churn out more problems the crazier the better. it'll cheer me up because i'm nasty like that.”

BB SAYS: Your grammar is perfectly correct. In any event, grammar is unimportant, as long as your meaning is clear, which it is.

So hearing about other people’s problems makes you feel better? This is perfectly normal, and, indeed, desirable and mentally healthy.

Unhappy people have a tendency to automatically compare themselves with people who are better off than themselves, to people who have fewer problems than they do themselves. People who are worse off are invisible to them. Even if they are objectively in quite a good situation, these type of people can still be desperately unhappy, because they constantly compare themselves with the few people who are better off than they are, while ignoring the huge amount of people who are worse off than they are.

In contrast, happy people have a tendency to automatically compare themselves to people who are worse off than they are, or to people who have more problems than they do. This makes them grateful for what they have, and it keeps their own problems in perspective.

In general, people have a tendency to feel like failures, and to believe that there are legions of normal, balanced, mentally healthy, productive people out there who do not have any problems. In reality this is not the case. In reality EVERYONE is messed up, and EVERYONE feels like a failure, and EVERYONE has problems. But the erroneous belief that there are lots of people out there who do not have many problems is part of the reason that people feel like failures – they are comparing themselves against a mythical standard of “normalcy” that does not in fact exist. If you realise that everyone is a failure, at least in some respects, then it helps you to feel a bit better about your own failings.

Life is difficult. Just getting through the day is a total triumph. If you manage to get through the day, then give yourself a pat on the back, and dare to feel good about yourself, because getting through the day is about all that can be expected from life.

“Work is dispiriting, but also necessary” suggests a reader.

A READER WRITES: “BB, I agree and identify with much of what you say about work being dispiriting and that ambition does not lead to happiness. However, if everyone lived as you suggest (or I, myself, would like to): not working (or at least not working very hard), not focused on achievement, would this necessarily make a better society? After all, we rely on driven types to provide us with things to make our life easier: electricity, roads, medicine etc... And doesn’t our happiness depend, to some degree, on a functioning, rational society (as opposed to, say, an anarchic one)?”

BB SAYS: You make some superb points, and I agree that this is an immensely difficult area. I would invite you to consider the below ideas:

Think about the people you know. What is one of the things that they complain about the most, or that causes them the most agony and misery? Their jobs. They feel imprisoned and trapped in their jobs. They hate it. They sit in traffic for hours everyday, they sit at their desks for hours everyday, they subject themselves to bullying and humiliation from their bosses – and all for nothing.

Here is the big secret of capitalist societies: there is very little work that actually NEEDS to be done. Machines and computers can do most of it. The “work” that actually needs to be done by human beings, could be done without too much fuss or bother. This is why there is unemployment and (more importantly) underemployment or disguised unemployment. It is also why there are so many “jobs” that are not really necessary. The capitalist system manufactures demand for many products and services that people do not really need. The purpose of the system is to create WAGE-SLAVES, in order to keep the masses under control. In advanced capitalist societies, wage-slavery has replaced slavery and serfdom as the chief mechanism for keeping the masses under control. Capitalism is designed to keep most people in a state of DEBT, so that they need to remain in employment and in servitude. As Ambrose Bierce once said “Debt is an ingenious substitute for the slave-driver’s whip”.

Previous revolutions overturned slavery and serfdom. There still needs to be a final revolution to overturn wage-slavery, and eliminate the concept of “employment”, which is inherently an unjust, exploitative, master-slave relationship, that reduces people’s freedom. Although it may be difficult at the moment to see how such revolution or reform could happen, it still needs to happen. In previous eras, people would have had difficulty seeing how slavery or serfdom could be overturned. We need to think in terms of centuries, not decades. As technology improves, the need for work actually decreases – people should have more leisure time, not less leisure time. In a properly organised society, there would be no employment and no corporations. People would still “work”, but on their own terms. They would devote themselves to philosophy, art and genuinely creative pursuits. This may seem idealistic, but I repeat: there was a time when the abolition of slavery and serfdom seemed “idealistic”.

Our main objection should not be to work, invention or creativity. As you point out, these can all be good things. We do not object to people being driven. We do not object to Franklin inventing electricity or Curie inventing penicillin. We do not object to other people making similar inventions in the future. Nor do we object to people doing the things that really need to be done by human beings. Our main objection is to the concept of employment and the concept of the corporation, which cause so much misery and waste. The concept of the Corporation needs to be replaced by the concept of the Co-operative.

On an individual level, how do people respond to the unjust condition of being employed? They rebel in various different ways – either by refusing to work, or by pretending to “work” and engaging in silent rebellion against the forces that oppress them. I hold to the hope that such rebellion and disobedience will eventually create a better future for all of us.

As Oscar Wilde once said: “Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion”.

For more information on wage-slavery, look here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery

Consider the attached analysis from Noam Chomsky, who is currently the world’s most influential intellectual, and who has long been a fierce critic of capitalism, corporations and wage-slavery:

http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Noam%20Chomsky%20on%20Private%20Tyrannies%20--%20Corporations