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I am going to quit white sugar. I am going to learn to play the guitar. I am going to lose 10kgs. Sounds familiar? Traditionally the period of transition into the New Year is celebrated with such resolutions. Gym memberships surge in the first week of January, as do the crowds at gyms…only to taper off in the next few months, if not weeks.
We live in a world of lasers, particle accelerators, satellite image transmission, mainframe computers and microchips, and many other things so unique to this era.
At the same time, however, we live with our desires, passions, defects and virtues, with our universal and timeless fears, typical of every human being and of all times.
And it is quite true that each period has its exclusive fear. As the Nordics feared that the skies -when the skies were the Heavens – would fall on their head, or as medieval man feared to cross the forests at night, or sail the oceans for fear of witches, dragons and abysses, so does today’s troubled pacifist fear that some madman will press the red button.
We know that the duration of time varies in accordance with the inner state with which we measure it. For this reason, neither in the life of human beings nor in their historical life as a whole, can we avoid this sensation of uncontrollable speed. Partly because everything happens without intervals that allow us to breathe; and partly because the number of events that are happening all over the world exceeds our capacity for assimilation;
Perhaps, we can learn more if we ask ourselves: Is discipline something that comes from outside? Or from our own will and choices? And where does the joy come? This article examines Discipline and its accompanying Joy from various perspectives.
The year was 65 AD, a little less than a hundred years after the assassination of Julius Caesar and the foundation of the Roman Empire. Musonius Rufus, the foremost Stoic philosopher of his times, known by some as the “Roman Socrates”, was accused by emperor Nero to have participated in a conspiracy against him, and was exiled to a tiny and desolate Greek island called Gyaros.
Gyaros was considered a terrible place to be. Fifty years earlier the then emperor Tiberius, who wasn’t known for his charitable nature, refused to send a traitor to exile there, saying it was too harsh and devoid of human culture.
Often we find ourselves at the crossroads of various opportunities in life. We celebrate the privilege of having options, and experience a sense of freedom in the ability to choose from among so many possibilities. We feel we are in control of our lives, and decide to retain this freedom as far as possible, without having to commit to any one of the options. Before long, however, we are torn between the many options, each one more alluring than the next. And an inner battle looms, to retain as many options as possible, until the last possible minute.
We speak of difficult jobs, difficult subjects, difficult psychological situations, difficult actions or circumstances, difficult people, difficult times… The list would be endless and we won’t even attempt in such a limited space to complete it or offer a solution for each of these cases. Instead, we would like to focus on the inner attitude of a person who has to face difficulty.
I was in Marseilles, in France, last December. I was presenting a special photographic exhibition about “Paradoxes” at the opening of a congress organized by the International Institute Hermes, for the 2400 year anniversary of the Academy of Plato.
Throughout the ages nature has time and again instilled a sense of awe and wonder within human beings; at her unparalleled beauty, at her mysterious methodology and her enigmatic laws that govern the universe.
The ancient Greek philosophers, specifically the Pre-Socratic philosophers are said to have lived their lives with a deep sense of this mystery. Their deeply rooted understanding of the laws of the universe contributed to their aligning their lives with the path of nature. Plato, as well as the Stoics who followed later, believed all of nature to be an expression of the One – the Divine.
Does my mind exist outside of me? Who am I really, if not my mind? Many of us have experienced the predicament of almost having a face-off within ourselves, as if there were two people debating within us; one of whom we eventually align with. Sometimes, we’re even surprised to find that our mind seems to have a mind of its own! “I don’t know what came over me,” we say puzzled, “how could I have behaved so out of character?”
We sometimes ask ourselves: what is life? What does it mean, for a philosopher, to live?
The special mode of existence that has been afflicting the human being over the last few centuries has made us forget certain simple but important values, while their place has been taken by meaningless elements. This is why it is so difficult to define what life is.
It goes without saying that life is much more than having a body and trying to satisfy all its fleeting desires, controlling it very little and ineffectively, and most of the time ending up as its slave.
In my younger years, I would often wonder about the idea of enlightenment. There has been a fascination about how I could ever reach a point where my mind would merge into, or become united with, the Cosmic Mind; to acquire, to realise, or to experience, what some might call, the ultimate Truth.
But I was advised: Spiritually elevating yourself is about dropping ideas about the self… it is not about adding or acquiring. On the contrary, it is about knowing what you are NOT. Hence the only way ahead is to Know Thyself. If you seek sincerely, look deeply at your personality’s filters,
The Movie The Matrix, released in 1999, and its two sequels (Reloaded and Revolutions), released in 2003, have together been an international phenomena. The first movie in particular, was known as a modern version of Plato’s Myth of the Cave, and the two subsequent parts are of the same universe – the real world and the cave – although further away from Plato’s text. When The Matrix Revolutions was released, it seemed that the dice were rolled. A cycle was complete, and the sun was rising on a world where the cards had been dealt and the rules had apparently changed.
It is not easy to define youth. Even if we do a lot of research, we will find that different authors throughout time have not been able to agree on an exact definition. Moreover, the concept of youth is so rich and varied in its meanings, so flexible and extraordinary, that it is impossible to find an objective, concrete and synthetic way of defining it.
As philosophers, we have enormous faith in youth and great hope in that future world that we speak about so often and of which we say so many things. We think that, deep down, none of us have ever stopped being young and, for one reason or another, have never stopped having certain anxieties either and, even though those anxieties may be more or less youthful, their roots are to be found in the same problems and in similar circumstances.
As a street photographer I have the opportunity to travel worldwide, to present exhibitions, to present various photography workshops, and of course to take new photographs.
From those travels there is a photograph I have always presented in my last few workshops. I use it to illustrate a “dynamic composition”, which is a composition with a lot of visual elements, allowing a dynamic lecture of the photograph. This particular photograph is not an outstanding example of such a composition, but I use it to explain an ethical concept, and to initiate a dialog with the workshop participants about whether or not it is necessary for the photographer to be involved in a situation