JOHN PEEL

I will miss having someone like John Peel around. I actually didn't hear his show that often, but was always aware of how unusual he was in the media. A real music fan, and a hero of radio. As radio fades into the past, I can't imagine anyone being in a similar niche again. The thing was that he didn't follow received opinion or "believe the hype". He played the music he liked, and refused to be stale and predictable. So, as a "grumpy old man", he broke the mould.

As an unsigned musician, I am made painfully aware, again and again, of how no one gives your material half an ear; no one cares a great deal about what you've laboured over - it couldn't possibly be in the same league as someone sponsored by a corporation, so why bother?

We planned to send our new demo to John Peel because he really did make the time to listen - and all the tributes tonight are testament to that.

NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND

I have just finished Notes from Underground, and I am genuinely puzzled by something. What did Dostoyevsky have in mind by going to such lengths to describe the main hero/anti-hero?

When the Underground man makes his "sympathetic" speech to Liza the prostitute, only what we know of him from the first part of the novel reminds us that he is not in earnest. I'm tempted, however, to think D was attempting to show the character groping towards redemption here. Is this naive of me? If the speech is supposed to be seen as entirely utterly mailicious and false, why does the Underground man give Liza his address? Only so that he can torture her more?

It is hard for me to imagine anyone so consumed by shame, bitterness and sadism that they could resist the final offer of love from Liza.

But my main question is about what D was trying to do in dedicating a whole novel to such a detailed portrait of someone so beyond redemption. Was he portraying this uniquely ruthless inconsistent character as a bleak comment on human nature in general or as a critical statement about the "Russian man"? i.e. it is a call to spiritual awakening. Only the latter seems to fit in with D's political conservatism, yet the relentlessly bleak tone would seem to suggest it's far from being a spiritual tract.

I read online that some critics have seen it as a dark reply to Rousseau's solitary walker.

OLD WORLD CITY/ SLOW TOURISM

Just walking along to the music cellar last night was as exciting as being in the place itself. Walking under an old clock, through dimly lit streets. Catching a thrill from the just-turned-Autumn air. Feeling very alert and prowly like a wild animal in new surroundings.

An unusually high number of people here seem to have deformities (rickets?) so it makes me conscious of how wonderful it is to be able to stride along. This is also because I got into some tortured thought process (because of a slightly sore back) at lunchtime that I might be going down with MS! No idea why. But for a few days afterwards, you feel differently about walking.

In the cellar, there is the kind of slightly shabby wooden decor that reminds me of an old cinema ad where people got holed up to dance the night away when there was a hurricane blowing ouside. I feel more at ease than I have for years in club-type environments, which I generally don’t enjoy that much. But it wasn't set in stone and maybe I'm a different person.

Maybe I was playing at being someone different when I was in the UK? I know that every time I open my mouth to launch an opinion, especially of the “generally, I don’t…” variety, I am forging an identity rather than describing anything. So much of our behaviour is just reacting to what others expect.

Now it's the weekend I should really be doing some more sightseeing. But why rush it? I love this slow tourism. It means that a metro station can be enjoyed as much as an art gallery, even more perhaps, because of the atmospherics.

DATAFACTORY

The Office for Statistical Management and Moderation has an awesome reputation for data manip and that’s why Crabdale was proud to join them after the last lot had pulled the wires from his chickenbone frame.

You can find it in one of the cratered back streets, a slightly scabby but not unattractive turn of the 20th Century building, with a courtyard open to the sky and enormous double doors like sentries. You can see by its magnificent pillars that it had originally been some elegant urban apartments, but you wouldn’t guess it has also been a base for the Purification of Youth movement; an interrogation centre in the dark years; and then a sound recording studio during the years of hope, where, tutored by long-suffering orchestrators of genius, a stream of untidy musicians converted their half-baked ideas into ephemeral jingles, used occasionally to promote gadgets but usually as soundtracks to poisonous adolescent vision quests.

This was all before it was purchased by DataFactory and thus entered its loftiest, though tattiest, period, in the service of Hibernia. Which is the greater good, arching above us all, in case you were wondering. (Don’t. There are more dark years ahead, more detention centres, and none of it must be hastened into existence by your unruly thoughts.)

DataFactory is a private consortium whose owners, whoever they are, do very well; not a credit from the public purse is intentionally lavished if it’s in any way possible to claw it back. The moderators all use reconstructed keyboards, grey with finger-grime and the data storage devices crash daily because of the amount of meaningless junk stuffed into their limited capacities. There are still typewriters on the go, the whirring and crashing of which can now be read by data-sticks as text. Ranks of drones are jammed into their individual stalls, often walled in, either racking their brains or dreaming uncontrollably, which occasionally results in an excited shudder. (It’s all right. No one is looking.)

They conduct interviews using beaten-up tape recorders held together by sellotape, and afterwards everyone strains so hard to separate the dialogue from the hiss that you would think there was something worth hearing. And, for relief, most drones go once or twice a day to the other stalls, which are tiny and stink like a farm.

The line manager is Lentil, a man in whose soul there isn't enough light material for any spark of humour to catch. He has protruding eyes and a wispy beard. He is thin and stalks round the office like a heron. No one knows exactly what he does. Crabdale, by contrast, scurries round trying to deal with the piles of paper on his desk and weights on his mind, both accumulating. He takes pills for today's hectic lifestyles and hopes they'll prevent the spreading of the dry patches on his palms.

Nothing is ever mended or brought to completion here. It is a continual striving for an improved state of affairs no fool would dare spell out in any detail. For he would be howled down, and after the howling was over, everyone would sit awake in the early hours and grip their sheets.

OLD WORLD CITY (2)

Beautiful, beautiful city and today is only the second cloudy one since I got here. And a warm (top floor), very central flat near the Parliament building and near work. So I've landed on my feet. The pay is, well, lamentable but a lot better than many professional Hungarians get. So, although I've had to tighten my belt, it's with a good grace. I may also be tightening it literally soon. Can't find all my usual ingredients, so I'm having to eat a bit less! So tempting to ditch my semi-veggie ways and have all the different sausages with the cheese and strange dark breads... it'd be easy peasy to eat that kind of Germanic breakfast every morning.

Things I'm looking forward to: "having a bath in a Cathedral" (the Gelert thermal baths) and playing chess in outdoor thermal baths on a cold winter day.

WAKING UP IN AN OLD WORLD CITY

When I lived in London, I'd been there so long I ceased to notice my surroundings anymore, and walking round the city was one long tuning out session. A day here in Budapest is different, a feast of impressions. I'm suddenly more awake to details and textures.

The first thing you notice is the decorated buildings in the centre. Carved on the facades of many of them are historical and mythological figures - the guide-book probably knows their identities; lions' heads and art nouveau motifs. The poster-covered pillars on the wide pavements and streetlamps suspended awkwardly between shabby buildings are distinctively European, and make it easy to imagine another era.

Taking the Metro is more fun too: it's a kind of looking-glass world where the different space and layouts of stations and all the indecipherable ads crowd out any sense of the familiar. (Plus it's cheap, clean and regular, so my frame of mind is altogether different.)

On a trip to Tesco's for marmite, I passed some Communist-era blocks of flats, the peeling walls of which, lit up by the Saturday morning sun, looked as bright and bleak as the surface of the moon.

TALKING ABOUT MINDS


We understand our own minds, and, by making analogies, those of others, through a process of interpreting mental events and symbols. This is akin to the process of understanding a novel.

Facts, on the other hand, must be falsifiable. On this view, we cannot make factual statements about the mind.

When we talk about thoughts, desires, motivations, emotions, ideas, what exactly are we referring to? Are these actually invisible entities, or are we merely making deductions based on people’s outward behaviour?

Behaviourists say the latter.

We can all agree that there are behavioural implications of statements about mental events. If we say, “George hates travelling by tube” and yet notice that he appears to be full of glee as he makes the descent on to the Northern Line, clearly the statement is false or something remains to be said. He might, for example, be feigning joy in order to impress a friend with his positive attitude.

But these kind of statements are not merely about behaviour.

“Listening to that music made me think of a vast expanse of water…”; “I realised that Nietzsche’s moral views were the most radical I’d ever heard”; “She couldn’t believe her ears”. It is stretching a point too far to try and explain these mental events solely in terms of people’s actions.

Something is going on internally. But where? We can search and we won’t find that vast expanse of water or the realisation about Nietzsche. What we find are obviously neurons and electrical signals. A die-hard materialist would say that each mental event maps exactly on to a physical configuration of the brain, and is nothing other than that. They are analogous with the operation of software within a computer; we can talk successfully about people’s minds just as we can make coherent statements and predictions about the internal workings of a computer. This does not require specialist knowledge of, respectively, neurology or programming.

And yet there is still a mystery: irreducible first-hand experience, “raw feels” as it is sometimes called. For states of consciousness, there is such a thing as what it is like to have them. (See Thomas Nagel’s What it is like to be a bat.) Most people would say that this does not apply to computers. This is surely the most characteristic feature of human consciousness, without which we would be utterly different beings.

The problem is this. Given the radically subjective nature of consciousness, how can anything we say about people’s minds be true, false or reliable in any way? And if we are, by implication, only talking nonsense, how is it that for years all the "ill-informed" gossip, speculation and literature about behaviour, dispositions and character have generally been so good at interpreting and making predictions about the world? What explains the success of psychology and the social sciences?

This is a mystery beyond science.

REPLY TO PUSKAS: THE BOUNDARIES OF LOGIC

Who on earth still believes that rigorous, scientific thinking can be applied to religion, psychology, morality and aesthetics in the same way as it can be used to, for instance, predict the flight path of a missile?

“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Wittgenstein.

Wittgenstein thought, rightly in my opinion, that our well-defined concepts were too limited to operate properly in the non-concrete world. Nevertheless, he grudgingly admired our efforts to break out of the linguistic “cage” and further understand the world. I agree with him, but I think the silence he advocated is for philosophy students only.

Our deepest motivations as individuals, and the madness of crowds, are driven by deeply irrational forces. We embark upon most of our actions literally before we know what we are doing, that is, before the area of the brain to do with conscious decision-making registers any electrical activity. The times when we pause, ponder and weigh up alternatives are the exceptions.

This is unconscious behaviour. How do we understand it? Through speculative thought; poetry and other literature; and yes, even “pseudo-science”.

To dismiss discourse about the unconscious out of hand as woolly thinking just because it is difficult to talk about with our recently evolved and limited logic is to miss out on sharing with others what are vast, and probably the most interesting, areas of human experience.

In reply to Puskas's comment on www.lovetosaydada.blogspot.com, I would say that Jung's speculation about a collective unconscious should be taken in the same spirit as anyone might talk about, for instance, a politician's underlying motivations or a friend's erratic behaviour. It is more akin to criticising a novel than doing a bit of neuroscience.

RELIGION & THE REBEL

Here’s a thought from Douglas Coupland in Life After God: “As long as there is a wilderness, I know there is a larger part of myself that I can always visit, vast tracts of territory lying dormant, craving exploration and providing sanctity.”

It’s clearly a spiritual thought, but God is absent or at best unnecessary.

Religion and spirituality are different, and this isn’t just splitting hairs. Take two polar opposites: Gandhi and the Rev Ian Paisley, both of whom are examples of people who follow/ed a religion. Gandhi is physically dead, but appears to have been spiritually very much alive. As for Ian, you can draw your own conclusions.

The etymology of the two words is different. Religion comes from the Latin religio, meaning respect for divine power. (Some authors, both ancient and modern, have even taken a more unsympathetic stance and traced the word to religare, to bind fast.) Even if we reject the latter contentious definition, religion has connotations of social control. It is something that happens when a group of people subscribe to a collective myth, and will almost certainly involve liturgies, rituals, and some kind of moral code. There will probably be such a thing as what it is to be a member of this belief system, or an outsider, and membership may involve some kind of initiation and/or vows. I cannot think of a religion which does not meet all of these criteria. So it’s a good enough working definition.

The modern sense of "recognition of, obedience to, and worship of a higher, unseen power" is from 1535, according to an online etymological dictionary. (my italics)

Spirituality on the other hand derives from the Latin spiritus "soul, courage, vigor, breath," related to spirare "to breathe." We have the related English words "spirited", “inspired” and also its near synonym “ehthused” from en-theos, full of god.

The key is that one concept is social and the other is something to do with solitude.

There is a concomitant difference in the locus of power. On the one hand, there is deference to some higher Authority “out there”; on the other, self-empowerment through attention – in the first place - to the most vital process in human life: breathing.

We can see in Jeanne d'Arc, for example, that there is often an overlap between the spiritual and religious aspects of someone's life but the sine qua non of spiritual experience is that something is going on internally and while some idea of God may be present, it need not intrude. The experience itself is more fundamental than the (necessarily public) linguistic concepts that may be used to frame it afterwards.

If we move on a little from the words, it’s clear how in any conceivable civilisation, religion, because of its tendency towards conformity, will have a very specific appeal to the worst sort of people, those whose success depends on controlling the belief-system of society. Hence the real-world manifestations: the Spanish Inquisition, the religious right in the US, and militant Islam. Among plenty of others.

Spirituality is more readily associated with mystics, poets, children and dreamers. Because the spiritually adept have found so much energy, and “inspiration” from this process, it’s no accident that they can end up as the founders of great religions, especially if they start talking about cosmology and/or morals. But I know plenty of spiritual atheists. It's not a contradiction in terms.

(The title of this blog comes from a Colin Wilson book which I haven't actually read, but I suspect it covers the same sort of ground.)

FEAR AND PARALYSIS

I recently decided to change my job, and horizons. Because there’s a 3-month notice period at my college, I had to leave here before I had started the majority of my applications. The reactions I got were so positive:

“I can’t believe you’re leaving a public sector job!”

“I don’t understand.”

“I wouldn’t like to be in that jungle.”

“It’s your funeral.”

And (this is a voice quaking with disbelief): “It’s MADNESS!”


Here’s the response of a very good friend of mine:

Always staying in your comfort zone

Giving up on developing yourself and moving forward for any reason

Believing that because you are good at one thing, and that will do

Fearing any kind of change

Being static and feeling that everything outside of your static circle is 'a jungle'

Huddling with other fearful people in the static circle

Giving up:

THIS IS THE TRUE MADNESS.


“If the diver always thought of the shark, he would never lay hands on the pearl” Sa’di.

A WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING

Now – as always – it’s time for non-violence. You might think that all religions preached non-violence. Christ, for example, advocated it.

Yet his approach was a radical one, hence his rejection by his people as an irrelevant voice in their struggle to throw off the Roman yoke.

Listen to Yahweh: “Thou shalt smite them and utterly destroy them.” Deuteronomy 7.2

“slay man and woman, infant and suckling” 1 Samuel 15.3

Listen to the Prophet: “Smite their necks, then, when you have made wide slaughter among them” Surah Muhammad 47.4

“If they turn their backs, take them, and slay them wherever you find them” Surah al-Nisa 4.89

This desert god is a warrior god who defends his people against all comers. And the war goes on.

ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE DHARMA

I really want to be a Buddhist. I think I'll be able to slip into the Dharma naturally - it's going to be fun. It feels like coming home. The only thing is I don't know how on earth I'll be able to give up alcohol after all this time we've been together, but I'm going to set a date for this.

The fundamental ideas of Buddhism are the closest approximation to "the truth" that mankind is going to get; the first paradox here is that there is no static truth - at all. Scientific "laws" may be a candidate (I'm not qualified to say) but anyone who tries to give definitive judgements on human nature or how to live will be challenged (or even howled down) immediately by an army of exceptions.

Buddhism is a way to come to terms with - and get through - this Dionysian reality, rather than having to fortify oneself or even struggle against it. The whole Dharma (teaching, lifestyle) begins and ends with a recognition of constant change.

Seeing this for what it is, it becomes clear that we cannot be happy by trying to shore up our defences against change. This is the essence of non-attachment to things, money, people, ideas, none of which are constant.

I used to think that non-attachment was rather distancing, and that Buddhism was a cold-hearted, passionless approach to life. On the contrary. The fruit of mindfulness and non-attachment is a deep reservoir of compassion. This chimes with me, certainly as something to aspire to.

The best thing is to find that, although the ideas come with strange Pali labels attached, many of them are things I've suspected for half my life.

THE SUNSHINE PLAYROOM: IN PRAISE OF PSYCHEDELIA

Sunshine came softly through Donovan’s window; John Lennon lay in the back of a newspaper taxi with his head in the clouds and was gone; Syd Barrett tried to explain his cat; Ray Davies watched the world from his window.

I’ve never forgotten how these tracks made me sit up and listen when I first heard them. This kind of “fairytale psychedelia” is, for me, the unmatched pinnacle of all pop music, even though I was not alive when most of it came out. It’s incredible to think that these songs were all done within a few short years, between 1965 and 1971. (The Battle of Evermore on Led Zeppelin IV and Echoes on Pink Floyd’s Meddle surely belong in the same category, though you can sense the magic fading just a little.)

What makes psychedelia, and British psychedelia in particular, so good and so worth returning to with a good pair of headphones?

First off, it’s just amusing how a lot of – often, not always - working-class lads were inspired by the Beatles or LSD or whatever to cast off all the macho strutting they’d carefully learned in their teens and revisit their childhoods. On this inner journey, they created a distinctive kind of music-hall pop music devoid of the kind of self-conscious “attitude” that makes a lot of other music so derivative and dull. It’s as if they were playing to audiences from other planets; well, perhaps they were.

Britpop tried, and failed, to recreate this in the 90s, precisely because it was so full of ironic references to the 60s template. (Actually, I’m sure there’s some dance/ambient music in the 90s that has the same kind of experimental, joyous flavour. Screamadelica is one obvious example.)

The songs are full of surreal imagery - Lennon’s is effortlessly evocative; others just as strikingly inept: (“An elephant’s eye was staring at me from a bubblegum tree”… a different prescription, perhaps?) Into these landscapes come characters from all kinds of half-remembered storybook versions of England: Sgt Pepper, the Hurdy Gurdy Man, the Gnome, Mr Small The Watch Repairer, Mr Fantasy, etc.

“Across the stream with wooden shoes / Bells to tell the king the news / A thousand misty riders Climb / Higher once upon a time

Wondering and dreaming… the words had different meanings.”

It makes you wonder what it was in the LSD-fuelled experiences of British musicians that propelled them back to the nursery. Perhaps it was merely the influence from Dylan’s Mr Tambourine Man and the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, or was it a sentimental grasping for security in the middle of an unpredictable psychedelic trip? Or disillusionment and a sense of powerlessness on the verge of an adulthood where all these exuberantly breaking dreams would surely be extinguished?

The records are so inventive in the way they play with sound. Like kids in a toyshop, the musicians and engineers pushed their meagre equipment to the absolute limits in search of newer and stranger sounds, proving that, in this case, less is more. The sonic palette on many of the late 60s albums is unrivalled to this day in terms of its glowing colour; use of the stereo spectrum and sound effects (which Pink Floyd developed further in the 70s); and the sheer capacity to surprise. On Flaming (Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Pink Floyd, 1967) a toy keyboard, acoustic guitar, bells and a few percussion instruments are used to create a startlingly magical effect, even though the arrangements are simple and the playing is almost clumsy. On the same album, listen to how the vocals come in from the left-field (literally) and are deepened by echoes and sudden bursts of harmony. The producer who created these soundscapes for Syd Barrett's songs was Norman Smith, who'd previously been the Beatles' engineer and is the unsung hero of British psychedelia. Both this album and Sgt Pepper were recorded using, as far as I know, a 4-track desk. 128-track is routine these days.

The sheer joy that the musicians had making this music is unmissable, and irresistable. It’s so clear that they were in control, giving free expression to their imaginations, and in league with the studio engineers, rather than being dictated to by them under pressure from the demands of record companies and markets.

That’s why the music is still being reissued and remastered, selling more copies today than when it was made. It’s not all good, of course, and beware: there are absolutely no undiscovered gems left at the bottom of the barrel.


Start with:
Matilda Mother and Flaming (Piper at the Gates of Dawn) – Pink Floyd, 1967
The rest of that album
Sgt Pepper & Magical Mystery Tour

The only compilation of psychedelic obscurities I can honestly recommend is Acid Drops, Space Dust & Flying Saucers – MOJO magazine

TOP TIP

Ha ha ha. "Look fab on the beach" says the banner on my mailbox. (And in magazines like Men's Health.) Er, bit late, isn't it? Hold your stomach in. Keep doing it and it'll look fab on the beach by 2005.

UNSIGNED, IMPERFECT, IRREPARABLE - YEAH!

Went to the studio yesterday to record No Comfort (song below, written at the time of the original Gulf War - when I could write good songs) and a couple of others. It's because I need an "unplugged" demo to try and play a gig before I leave this version of Babylon for another one.

Now, with unsigned musicians, especially this one, studio versions are never as good as live ones. I played and sang competently, but somehow the songs just didn't sound as good as a few weeks ago in the garden. This is because, instead of being relaxed, warmed up, and in the middle of an environment of dog-barks, sunshine and apple trees, you find yourself in a stuffy windowless cellar, head encased in large headphones, confronted by a state of the art mic that's going to reveal every breath or hastily sung note, and paying an hourly rate for the privilege that's a lot more than you'd charge for your own services. And then someone tells you "taping", and that's the starting gun.

And you're off! Don't mess up whatever you do don't mess up especially if you're near the end here comes that difficult note just made it here comes the bit I have to sing sensitively no no try to think of the meaning of the words not your singing style damn damn was that flat or not and i think i strangled that last word no no that was no good. "Can we do that again. John?" This repeats until finally you get a version you can live with. But somehow it lacks something you can't put your finger on...

For a signed musician, it's a different story. Except for the really exceptional talents, musicians who can really PLAY, the studio versions outshine live performances, technically at least. (If you don't believe me, check out almost any live album.) That's because, if someone else is footing the bill, you have time to edit out every breath, sing ten different versions than cut and paste so that every word is the best you've ever sung it, retune flat notes using a computer, and end up with something that's... well, literally faultless if a bit soul-less.

When some people complain that pop isn't as good as it used to be, it may ironically be the perfection that grates on them. If you're in that category, what could be better than hearing a warts-and-all unsigned musician, live? With dog-barks and apple trees.

NO COMFORT AT NIGHT - song lyrics

Tell me the times when we died in our minds for a slogan
Tell me the times when the spirit’s eclipsed by a cause
This is why there is no comfort at night
This is the reason why we fire
Tracer trails through the barbed wire
This is the reason for all of the wars…

Tell me the times when we lacked the conviction to move
Towards an adventure, afraid of what we had to lose
This is why there is no comfort at night
This is the reason why we fire
Tracer trails through the barbed wire
This is the reason for all of the wars

By the landlocked pools
Sailing little boats
Keeping the old captain afloat

Tell me the times we forgot to tie up loose ends
Let them fray and unravel a tale of inseparable friends
This is why there is no comfort at night
This is the reason why we fire
Tracer trails through the barbed wire
This is the reason for all of the wars

By the landlocked pools
Sailing little boats
Keeping the old captain afloat
By the landlocked pools
Sailing little boats
Keeping the old captain afloat

HOW DO YOU TAKE YOUR HAPPINESS: WEAK OR STRONG?

Bertrand Russell in his History of Western philosophy interprets Epicureanism as a philosophy which was based on the avoidance of fear.

Because religion and death were seen as such great sources of fear, Epicurus denied Providence and immortality, and this became a “gospel of liberation”. Seen in this light, it’s in tune with modern humanism. Russell’s critique, however, portrays the philosophy as rather lacking in spirit, “a valetudinarian’s philosophy, designed to suit a world in which adventurous happiness had become scarcely possible.” (Epicurus suffered from ill health throughout his life.)

Back to square one then. (See 21-02-04 and understand how far the dementia has got!) Nietzsche says plunge in and accept life in all its pleasure and pain. Epicurus, by contrast, turns away and recommends a quiet life. The Buddha would question the whole enterprise of pursuing a worldly happiness that’s inevitably fleeting, and yet the foundations of the religion and its practices are based on the avoidance of suffering, and the "goal" - though Buddhists would never describe it as such - is a state of awakened calm and bliss.

I suspect that there’s nothing to choose between them! Whether people hunt down their happiness for years, paddle contentedly in the shallows or just forget about it is, ultimately, a choice that is deeply personal - and irrational.

ACCORDING TO EPICURUS...

My own small edition of the West's most famous research into happiness is in a friend's loft, where it has lain since 1997, along with most of my possessions. Every so often I do get a craving to surround myself again with all those wonderful books, but it quickly goes away.

So I've had make do with the web quotations below. From what I can remember, Epicurus advocated a life governed by calm reason, and talked a lot about tending his garden! There is much in common with Buddhism, that other great happiness-focused tradition, but without the total dissolution of the ego, so hard to attain without a severe asceticism, and so contrary to our culture-bound idea of ourselves as discrete individuals. So, although he lacks a wide readership today, perhaps studying his ideas may provide some insight into our modern condition.

As I've said before, it's EXPERIENCE, Stoopid:

"Not what we have but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance."

And lower expectations:

"Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you have now was once among the things you only hoped for."

And freedom:

"A free life cannot acquire many possessions, because this is not easy to do without servility to mobs and monarchs."

And friends:

"Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship."

Independence (basic financial security):

"The man least dependent on the morrow goes to greet the morrow more cheerfully."

This could also be read as advocating less attachment to the consequences of our actions, a commonplace Eastern teaching. Finally, there is independence of mind:

"I have never desired to please the rabble. what pleased them, I did not learn; and what I knew was far from their understanding."

ALAIN DE BOTTON'S LIST

"Mankind is perpetually the victim of a pointless and futile martyrdom, fretting life away in fruitless worries through failure to realise what limit is set to acquisition and the growth of genuine pleasure." Lucretius, quoted in The Consolations of Philosophy.

"Happiness may be difficult to attain. The obstacles are not primarily financial." from The Consolations of Philosophy.

Alain de B's acquisition list begs the question (about acquisition), but only for an extreme Buddhist, so it's as good a place to start as any:

1. some form of shelter
2. friends
3. a garden, "to avoid superiors, patronisation, infighting and competition". Of course, it is mightily hard to obtain one in London, but per se, a plot of earth may be 'owned' in some sense, or occupied, or just there to surround you! Even here.
4. time to think/read/meditate
5. er, he finishes with a joking desire for a reincarnation of a Madonna by Bellini. He's gently suggesting that the desire for a soul-mate might remain in any romantic heart, and OK, he has a point. But he's bending the rules! (And how many of today's Bellini's Madonna lookalikes would be interested in Alain without his lucrative book deals?)

What does Buddha say? What would Puskas do? What about Jesus, Nietzsche, Proust and all the great names that have graced this little group of blogs? And what about you? This is my suggestion box. Drop in your lists. They've got to be practical, and honestly drawn from the peaks of your experience.

HOW CAN WE BE HAPPY?

In a book called The Progress Paradox, Gregg Easterbrook points out that despite our average quality of life having risen on a number of different indices, we are less happy than we once were. (By "we", I mean a very crudely sampled average person on an average salary in a developed country.)

Why is this? And why were people in Ghana, where I lived for a couple of years, generally happy and optimistic even though they had so little?

Is it the lack of God, time, generosity of spirit? A poor diet? Too many unfulfilled expectations? What is it that we lack? What do you think?