Hope is a funny thing. A wish that things will happen to improve the situation.
The spiritual practitioners of the East regard desire, a wish, wanting, as the enemy of happiness. The root of all unhappiness is the wish that things were not as they are.
The religious of the West regard hope as the essential core of their beliefs. Without the hope of eternal life in the bliss of Heaven religion would basically boil down to a set of moral rules and a statement about how the universe started.
Optimistic people have been shown to be happier and more successful in all sorts of facets of life, from career to relationships. It seems to me that optimistic people are those with an attitude of non-specific hope.
People also greatly over-estimate the effects of a changing environment on their happiness. Over time there is a truly amazing return to a sort of standard amount of happiness for people. Win the lottery and in a year you will probably be no happier than you are now. Become paralyzed in a car accident and in a year you will probably be no less happy than you are now. This makes sense evolutionarily because the survival and reproductive rates of the depressed and blissfully happy are substantially reduced. There are only two solid ways to improve happiness; having close, positive relationships with friends and relations, and through altering the internal aspects of our experience, changing the brain.
Hope then, is a mixed bag. Hope seems to be generally a good thing, as long as it isn't dashed, and as long as it doesn't preclude appreciating what is going on now. Ideally one should have a clear head about one's present situation, appreciating the good things and not dwelling on the bad. A general feeling that things are all right and will probably get better. Hope for specific things is more dangerous, and so should be confined to those things for which there is a good chance that it will happen, and for those things that are not disasters should they not happen.
At the moment I am hopeful. I think there is a better than 50% chance of a change in my environment that I believe will make life better for me. However, I am trying to "do hope" in the best possible manner. I am concentrating to an extent on there really not being much wrong with my present situation. I am not expecting the changes to happen, I will be pleased if they do. I do not expect these changes to "fix" everything in my life. I am trying to create an internal environment in which there can be no bad outcome, only differing amounts of good outcomes.
Finally I have a strange, irrational attitude with regard to this hope. I have the idea that if I tell people about what I am hoping to happen, it won't happen. There is a part of me believing in a jinx. There is another part of me that knows that is nonsense. Still, I haven't told you, have I?
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Le Tour de France
I'm assuming that all of you know that le Tour de France is a big bicycle race that happens in France. It is probable that most of you don't know a lot more than that.
I first watched le Tour as an exchange student in Orleans, staying in an unfamiliar environment where around me people spoke incomprehensibly. I hadn't asked to go, and would not if I had been given a chance. it probably helped my french, particularly my accent, something I have never used in the intervening years. The exchange was in July, the month of le Tour, and in France le Tour is on television every day. At the time there would have been no other chance for me to have seen it. It was a magnificent race, two frenchmen (Bernard Hinault a three time winner, and Laurent Fignon a twenty-three year old) battling through amazing scenery, climbing mountains and hurtling past chateaux. It was something very different, a sporting event that covered an entire country, that took place in the country, passing by locals who simply stepped out of their houses to see the greatest sporting event that their country has to offer.
It was impossible for me to watch le Tour again, living in the UK until 1988 and then in the USA, until in 1999 an obscure cable network called the Outside Life Network acquired the rights to broadcast le Tour in the USA. I am not sure which year after that I started watching, probably in the July of 2002, just a few months after starting to date my darling wife as she had the decadent luxury of cable.
Since that year we have both watched le Tour each year, each stage on each day for a three week period. It is an annual event, a shared experience, and something we treasure. How can this be? A bike race in France.
The first thing to realize about le Tour de France is that it takes place in France, a beautiful country. The route is different each year and, while the constraints of a bicycle race still apply, the organizers plan things to show as many beautiful parts of France as possible. One day you might have a race start in a fortified medieval town square, pass along a wooded river valley, and then climb up through stunning mountains to an alpine ski resort. The race is covered by cameras on motorcycles (many of them) and helicopters following the race. Every half hour or so a chateau, or monastery, or field of daffodils, or plateau, or ancient church will be lovingly photographed. The announcers are given a little piece of information on each sight. So, regularly you will get a helicopter circling le Abbeye de Fingumbergh built in 1438 and burned in the hundred years war housing the famed statue of St, Sassifras, then back to the race. Something like this:
The race is a moving advertisement for France. It is beautiful.
The second thing about the race is that it renders competition down to its most basic form, who can take the most pain. To begin, the Tour this year is a total of 3,497 kilometers in length in 21 stages over 23 days. That's an average of 166km, or 104 miles a day. There are serious bicyclists who train through a year in order to complete a single "centurion" 100 miles in a day. A professional cyclist once suggested that each Tour completed takes a year off your life, simply from the stress of the event on your body. Tis is one of the very few sports in the world where the main goal of a substantial portion of the best 200 athletes in the world is to finish. The overall race is largely determined in two places, in individual time trials where you ride as fast as your body can possibly take for about an hour, or in long stages climbing multiple mountains. To win le Tour you have to be able to climb giant mountains and hurtle along at an average speed of 30 miles an hour, for an hour, on a bicycle, and you must never have an off day. When the winner has crossed the finish line there are people whose job is to catch them, so that they don't fall off the bicycle. If watching people do something amazing, as hard as they can, interests you then le Tour has bags and bags of it.
The third thing about le Tour is that it is extremely complicated. A relatively simple complication is that there are races within races. For a start each day is a stage, and the winner of a Tour de France stage has won something with which they can be proud for the rest of their lives. Winning a stage in le Tour de France for cyclists is like saying you climbed Everest for mountain climbers. It can be the crowning achievement of a career of intense effort and dedication. Every day people compete for the most glorious achievement of their lives.
Then there are different competitions within the race. There is the race for being the best mountain climber. A race for being the best sprinter. An award each day for being the most aggressive rider. A race for the best young rider. Obviously there is the race for who completes the whole thing in the shortest time, the overall winner. Each of these races has their own jersey to be worn by whoever is winning that competition at the time, the polka dot for the mountains, green for the sprints, white for the young rider, a red number for the most aggressive, and le Maillot Jaune, the yellow jersey, for the overall race leader. This isn't simply seeing who gets over the line the fastest at the end of the third week. Every single day there are at least four (five, see below) races happening, in the same race.
The fourth thing about bicycle riding you have to understand is that aerodynamics really matter. A rider closely following another rider uses about 30% less energy to go the same speed. Someone riding within a large group will use even less than this. This entirely alters the strategy, since cycling is mostly about who can have the most available effort during the race. So, it makes no sense at all for someone who wants to win the race to simply go as fast as they can. everyone else will simply line up behind them, coast along using less effort and then beat them at the end. This is half of the reason that cycling is actually a team sport. Le Tour de France is contested by teams of nine riders. Most of these riders are there simply to help one guy win (these are called domestiques) and they do that by cutting the wind in front of that rider, bringing him food and water, taking care of him. There are other riders trying for the other competitions and people to help those riders.
In almost every day of racing a relatively small group of riders (called the breakaway), most of them going for that single crowning achievement of a stage win, will break off from the main group (called le peloton which rides together in a huge group to reduce the effort) and ride for 100km or more trying to keep away. Usually these riders are all from different teams, but must work together in order to stay away from the main group. However, if they manage to stay away each of them will be trying their own attempt and method to win the stage. It is a game of cooperation and ultimate betrayal, all while pushing themselves to such a limit that they finish tens of minutes behind everyone the next day.
However, usually the breakaway fails, and the massed might of all the other teams sweep up the glorious, but ultimately futile, effort. It is perhaps the most ominous sight in sport.
Then there is the commonality of experience in riding a bicycle along a road. There has been only one exception to the rule that everyone I have known has ridden a bicycle down the street. There are very few of us who haven't felt the gasping breathe, the pain in the chest, the effort to make the bike go up that hill, to work, as fast as possible. We know what these guys feel, and that forms a connection. There is a deep empathic understanding of a man on his bicycle exhausted but determined to drag his aching body up that hill. It is almost impossible not to will on a stranger in latex in a foreign land making that desperate break for freedom against the screaming of his body.
Cycling is dangerous. You can fall off your bike and hit the ground, which hurts like a son of a bitch. Professional cyclists do this pretty regularly at about thirty miles an hour. They are in groups of riders of more than a hundred, and so if someone crashes in front of you it can go very badly. Most of them get back on the bike and keep going, knowing that they will have that road rash going up mountains for the next two weeks. Often they break collar bones.
Finally, there are descents. After going up mountains it is necessary to go down them. In a professional bike race it is necessary to go down them very quickly indeed. This is filmed by people on motorcycles, who often can't even keep up. You get to see things like this:
I first watched le Tour as an exchange student in Orleans, staying in an unfamiliar environment where around me people spoke incomprehensibly. I hadn't asked to go, and would not if I had been given a chance. it probably helped my french, particularly my accent, something I have never used in the intervening years. The exchange was in July, the month of le Tour, and in France le Tour is on television every day. At the time there would have been no other chance for me to have seen it. It was a magnificent race, two frenchmen (Bernard Hinault a three time winner, and Laurent Fignon a twenty-three year old) battling through amazing scenery, climbing mountains and hurtling past chateaux. It was something very different, a sporting event that covered an entire country, that took place in the country, passing by locals who simply stepped out of their houses to see the greatest sporting event that their country has to offer.
Since that year we have both watched le Tour each year, each stage on each day for a three week period. It is an annual event, a shared experience, and something we treasure. How can this be? A bike race in France.
The first thing to realize about le Tour de France is that it takes place in France, a beautiful country. The route is different each year and, while the constraints of a bicycle race still apply, the organizers plan things to show as many beautiful parts of France as possible. One day you might have a race start in a fortified medieval town square, pass along a wooded river valley, and then climb up through stunning mountains to an alpine ski resort. The race is covered by cameras on motorcycles (many of them) and helicopters following the race. Every half hour or so a chateau, or monastery, or field of daffodils, or plateau, or ancient church will be lovingly photographed. The announcers are given a little piece of information on each sight. So, regularly you will get a helicopter circling le Abbeye de Fingumbergh built in 1438 and burned in the hundred years war housing the famed statue of St, Sassifras, then back to the race. Something like this:
The second thing about the race is that it renders competition down to its most basic form, who can take the most pain. To begin, the Tour this year is a total of 3,497 kilometers in length in 21 stages over 23 days. That's an average of 166km, or 104 miles a day. There are serious bicyclists who train through a year in order to complete a single "centurion" 100 miles in a day. A professional cyclist once suggested that each Tour completed takes a year off your life, simply from the stress of the event on your body. Tis is one of the very few sports in the world where the main goal of a substantial portion of the best 200 athletes in the world is to finish. The overall race is largely determined in two places, in individual time trials where you ride as fast as your body can possibly take for about an hour, or in long stages climbing multiple mountains. To win le Tour you have to be able to climb giant mountains and hurtle along at an average speed of 30 miles an hour, for an hour, on a bicycle, and you must never have an off day. When the winner has crossed the finish line there are people whose job is to catch them, so that they don't fall off the bicycle. If watching people do something amazing, as hard as they can, interests you then le Tour has bags and bags of it.
Then there are different competitions within the race. There is the race for being the best mountain climber. A race for being the best sprinter. An award each day for being the most aggressive rider. A race for the best young rider. Obviously there is the race for who completes the whole thing in the shortest time, the overall winner. Each of these races has their own jersey to be worn by whoever is winning that competition at the time, the polka dot for the mountains, green for the sprints, white for the young rider, a red number for the most aggressive, and le Maillot Jaune, the yellow jersey, for the overall race leader. This isn't simply seeing who gets over the line the fastest at the end of the third week. Every single day there are at least four (five, see below) races happening, in the same race.
The fourth thing about bicycle riding you have to understand is that aerodynamics really matter. A rider closely following another rider uses about 30% less energy to go the same speed. Someone riding within a large group will use even less than this. This entirely alters the strategy, since cycling is mostly about who can have the most available effort during the race. So, it makes no sense at all for someone who wants to win the race to simply go as fast as they can. everyone else will simply line up behind them, coast along using less effort and then beat them at the end. This is half of the reason that cycling is actually a team sport. Le Tour de France is contested by teams of nine riders. Most of these riders are there simply to help one guy win (these are called domestiques) and they do that by cutting the wind in front of that rider, bringing him food and water, taking care of him. There are other riders trying for the other competitions and people to help those riders.
In almost every day of racing a relatively small group of riders (called the breakaway), most of them going for that single crowning achievement of a stage win, will break off from the main group (called le peloton which rides together in a huge group to reduce the effort) and ride for 100km or more trying to keep away. Usually these riders are all from different teams, but must work together in order to stay away from the main group. However, if they manage to stay away each of them will be trying their own attempt and method to win the stage. It is a game of cooperation and ultimate betrayal, all while pushing themselves to such a limit that they finish tens of minutes behind everyone the next day.
Then there is the commonality of experience in riding a bicycle along a road. There has been only one exception to the rule that everyone I have known has ridden a bicycle down the street. There are very few of us who haven't felt the gasping breathe, the pain in the chest, the effort to make the bike go up that hill, to work, as fast as possible. We know what these guys feel, and that forms a connection. There is a deep empathic understanding of a man on his bicycle exhausted but determined to drag his aching body up that hill. It is almost impossible not to will on a stranger in latex in a foreign land making that desperate break for freedom against the screaming of his body.
Cycling is dangerous. You can fall off your bike and hit the ground, which hurts like a son of a bitch. Professional cyclists do this pretty regularly at about thirty miles an hour. They are in groups of riders of more than a hundred, and so if someone crashes in front of you it can go very badly. Most of them get back on the bike and keep going, knowing that they will have that road rash going up mountains for the next two weeks. Often they break collar bones.
Finally, there are descents. After going up mountains it is necessary to go down them. In a professional bike race it is necessary to go down them very quickly indeed. This is filmed by people on motorcycles, who often can't even keep up. You get to see things like this:
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
The Rabab.
For those wondering what the rabab is and what it sounds like.
It is played in a region that stretches from Afghanistan, through northern Pakistan into Kashmir, largely coincident with the language of pashto, spoken by the Pashtun. A land of hills and mountains, dusty and dry to the north-west, lush and green in Kashmir, thought by some to be the original Garden of Eden.
Chapter 8
The road was arrow straight. It appeared as if from nowhere from the rippling air towards the east, beneath an infinite sky of faded blue and above the immense expanse of sun-bleached grass. It passed by, a thing of grit and dust, colourless, dry as death. It vanished to the west in another heat haze. In all directions there was nothing but the sky, grass and heat. Walking along the road it felt as if one was simply walking through the same moment hour upon hour, perhaps eternally living the same moment of heat, dust, and sun.
Alyami stopped walking. He looked around, squinting at the sky, scanning the grass, his shoulders bent and weary. He sat down and pulled out his beloved rabab, spent a moment in the tuning song, and then wistfully rang notes from its strings, searching for his feelings within the music.
Dust is dust, the dust upon my feet.
Sun is sun, the sun upon my face.
Sweat is sweat, the sweat upon my skin.
Heat is heat, the heat upon it all.
The past is passed, passed beyond my eyes.
Loss is loss, the loss upon my heart.
Tears are tears, the tears all run dry.
Ache is ache, the aching of my back.
Now is now, the now that always is.
Truth is truth, the truth that will not change.
Love is love, the love that is not here.
Hope is hope, the hope that....
Alyami broke off. He carefully put his rabab back into its bag and rose to his feet. He took a skin of water, shook it to judge how much water he had left. A mouthful and then back into the pack. He looked around, squinting at the sky, scanning the grass, his shoulders bent and weary. Alyami started walking.
Alyami stopped walking. He looked around, squinting at the sky, scanning the grass, his shoulders bent and weary. He sat down and pulled out his beloved rabab, spent a moment in the tuning song, and then wistfully rang notes from its strings, searching for his feelings within the music.
Dust is dust, the dust upon my feet.
Sun is sun, the sun upon my face.
Sweat is sweat, the sweat upon my skin.
Heat is heat, the heat upon it all.
The past is passed, passed beyond my eyes.
Loss is loss, the loss upon my heart.
Tears are tears, the tears all run dry.
Ache is ache, the aching of my back.
Now is now, the now that always is.
Truth is truth, the truth that will not change.
Love is love, the love that is not here.
Hope is hope, the hope that....
Alyami broke off. He carefully put his rabab back into its bag and rose to his feet. He took a skin of water, shook it to judge how much water he had left. A mouthful and then back into the pack. He looked around, squinting at the sky, scanning the grass, his shoulders bent and weary. Alyami started walking.
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Panic!
Did you know that if right wing people contribute lots of money to elections democracy is dead?
Did you know that there are certain chemicals that are present in your drinking water that can alter your mind or poison you?
Did you know that there are organized groups within the USA who are dedicated to the overthrow of the government to replace it with a fascist/theocratic/communist state?
Are you aware that environmental pressures can reduce human populations to less than 10,000 individuals on the entire planet?
Do these things terrify you?
Have you considered looking things up?
Seriously, go look things up. Obama has more money than Romney, there's chlorine in drinking water, there's the KKK, and the US Communist Party, genetic studies show that the entire (modern) human race went through a bottleneck of less than 10,000 people tens of thousands of years ago.
Not one of those things will affect you in any manner at any time.
Just please take the time to fucking find things out before being a propaganda tool without a mind of your own.
Did you know that there are certain chemicals that are present in your drinking water that can alter your mind or poison you?
Did you know that there are organized groups within the USA who are dedicated to the overthrow of the government to replace it with a fascist/theocratic/communist state?
Are you aware that environmental pressures can reduce human populations to less than 10,000 individuals on the entire planet?
Do these things terrify you?
Have you considered looking things up?
Seriously, go look things up. Obama has more money than Romney, there's chlorine in drinking water, there's the KKK, and the US Communist Party, genetic studies show that the entire (modern) human race went through a bottleneck of less than 10,000 people tens of thousands of years ago.
Not one of those things will affect you in any manner at any time.
Just please take the time to fucking find things out before being a propaganda tool without a mind of your own.
Sunday, June 3, 2012
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