Looking at trees

Most people don’t spend much time looking at trees. It’s not exactly an exciting activity. Computer screens are more entertaining. Trees don’t normally go anywhere or do anything. They sway sometimes. Depending on the wind.

“The world is changing: I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air.” – Treebeard (Tolkien).

Most people don’t put looking at trees on their bucket list. Then again, maybe they should.

In the film “Being 97” (2020), Herbert Finagrette (1921-2018), philosopher and writer of Heavy Drinking: The Myth of Alcoholism as a Disease (1988), described looking at trees as a, “transcendent experience.”

At 97 years of age Herbert found himself looking around at the world as if he’s been asleep and saying, “Death is a frightening thought.”

No doubt others would share this sentiment, but coming from Dr. Herbert Finagrette it is somewhat ironic given that in the book Death: Philosophical Sounding (1996) Herbert argued that “there is no reason to fear death.”

“What does it mean that I’m going to leave?”

Obviously, as he neared his life expectancy, things started to get real. Herbert changed his mind. “It (death) is something I don’t want to happen,” says Herbert. “Much as I think our life in this world is often a pretty messy affair, I still would like to hang around. I don’t know the basic reason why I should want to or the basic reason why I should be afraid of it.”

But then, ultimately, at 97 years of age, Herbert relaxed and found solace in trees.

“As I sit out now on my deck of the house, I look at the trees blowing in a little breeze and I’ve seen them innumerable times, but somehow, seeing the trees this time is a transcendent experience. I see how marvelous it is and I think to myself, ‘I’ve had these here all along. But have I really appreciated them‘?”

Probably not. But then, that’s probably true for most people who see trees without noticing them.

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

Herbert’s experience with the trees puts one in mind of that song, “What a Wonderful World“, but if someone is uninspired by this wonderful world and afraid of death, aside from looking at trees, can philosophy help?

Of course it can. Let’s begin by stepping away from lugubrious talk. Let’s walk and run with Buster while avoiding boulders and, like a philosopher, let us sing, “Ooh La La” together.

Maybe we could be more Stoic about it? The stoicism of Marcus Aurelius is popular, even today (see: The Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antonius). According to Stoic philosophy the path to happiness is found by accepting the moment as it is and by not allowing yourself to be controlled by desire or fear.

And, as we all know, pretty much everything we do relates to a desire to feel good, comfortable and pain-free, but like our philosophical friend under tree-shade said, long, long ago, “Life is Dukkha.” And what is Dukkha? Dukkha is a Pali word normally translated as meaning suffering, stress or unsatisfactoriness.

Sounds about right, don’t you think? “That’s life!” as they say. You can fulfil a desire but only temporarily because in this life suffering, whether physical, emotional or mental is pretty much unavoidable.

Source

As William de Witt Hyde (1858-1917) observed in The Five Great Philosophies of Life (1924), “gratifications are short; while appetites are long…. When a desire burns unsatisfied, the balance of our time is not pleasurable” (p. 52).

Perhaps, if thinking and acting Stoic isn’t your cup of tea (Stoics are sooo pessimistic, they always prepare for the worst!), what about Absurdism?

Sisyphus rocking it.

Absurdism is “the belief that human beings exist in a purposeless, chaotic universe” (dictionary). Nobel prize winning Absurdist philosopher Albert Camus (1913-1960) said (or wrote), “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life!”

No doubt if Albert Camus were alive—he died at age 44 in a tragic car accident that may have been the handywork of Soviet spies, so the conspiracy goes (Britannica)—he would direct us to the myth of Sisyphus and the joy of struggle.

“The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy,” wrote Albert Camus who also said, “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion!”

Source: “Philosophy in Free Fall” Existential Comics

If Absurdism isn’t your thing, because it is, after all, absurd. Maybe you could be more Epicurean about it? Whereas Stoicism focuses on how to bear pain, Epicureanism focuses on how to gain pleasure, but it isn’t just about getting all the pleasure you can or of making pain not hurt, as De Witt Hyde said, “It is a question of the worth of the things in which we find our pleasure, and the relative values of the things we suffer for” (The Five Great Philosophies of Life, p. 111).

Let’s put it together one after another with succinct advice and a graphic to illustrate:

Stoic advice: As Epictetus said in Discourses, “It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.” Message: Keep an open mind and heart. (There’s always more to it.)

Source: GoComics

Absurdist advice: Embrace the absurdity of life (e.g., don’t take it so serious) and find ways to navigate the world (e.g., humour) without succumbing to despair or nihilism.

Source: Savage Chickens by Doug Savage

Epicurean advice: “Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist” (Epicurus).

Source: Reality Check by Dave Whamond (2009)

So, dear philosopher, with thinking, coping and practice, we can be wise.

We can save the world, our own, by being rational.

We can make the most of life by always working to make it better.

We can enjoy a chaotic and yet, beautiful ride with all those ups and downs, if we always remember and follow this simple advice, namely:

Enjoy wisely.

It’s been a while: Time to enjoy

“A mixture of trees purifies urban air best” (source).

Let’s get right to it.

Cue music (something gentle): Still Corners “The Trip“.

In this blog, a mixture of philosophies has been presented. Rather than one way of thinking, an eclectic approach has been taken. A philosophy of enjoyment mixes philosophies and accepts wise insights from anywhere and everywhere, including:

1) Epicureanism: avoid pain and seek natural and necessary pleasures like food, friends, and shelter,

2) Stoicism: seek virtue, use endurance, self-restraint and willpower to withstand problems, and balance animal nature with human reason,

3) Existentialism: as a free and responsible agent, you develop yourself through willpower,

4) Romanticism: subjectivity, beauty, imagination and emotion are important,

5) Empiricism: what we know comes from sense experience,

6) Rationalism: what we know comes from reason,

7) Religion: peaceful happiness comes through love, egolessness and the golden rule,

8) Science: ideas can be tested,

9) Movies, music, books… all forms of beauty making: “Only connect,” E.M. Forster,

10) Nature: “Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher,” W. Wordsworth.

Like a pie made better with a mixture of select ingredients, so is your philosophy of enjoyment.

An example of a delicious pie made with a mixture of select ingredients (see: A Brief History of the Great British Pie).

And in this pie of philosophies, there are two ways of looking at the world. We can look a the world: 1) The Thinking Way, or, 2) The Not-thinking Way.

Please note: We can pivot between looking at the world the thinking way and the not-thinking way.

1) The Thinking Way: The first way of looking at the world is the ordinary way. It’s how we get things done. It is what most people are used to and why most people look distracted. This is the practical, utilitarian way. It is to see things filtered through yourself. It is to look at the world as it affects you and as you think about it. It is to see the world through the filter of your personality. Your mood, your preferences and your conditioned opinions colour everything.

The danger in the Thinking Way of looking at the world is that you can be so inside your head that you don’t see what’s going on and when you’re in your head like that, you can talk yourself into, or out of, almost anything. You can see, but you don’t. It’s like when you park a car and don’t remember driving. You get home and don’t remember the trip. Why is that? It’s because you were absorbed in thinking and you didn’t see the world. You negotiated down roads, around trees and buildings, but you were a million miles away.

2. The Not-thinking Way: The second way of looking is the opposite of the thinking way. It’s not that your brain isn’t working—it is—it’s just that it is not self-directed and busy. The Not-thinking Way is a stilling of one’s mental chatter to the point of experiencing the world directly, unfiltered by thoughts, fears, memories or desires.

And when you look directly at the world with all of your senses, there is no one narrating. There are no mental movies playing. There is simply: here.

You, and, here: One and the same. Aware.

Just awareness.

The odd thing about looking at the world the not-thinking way is that, when thoughts go quiet, for however brief a time, one starts to feel a happy feeling that must be experienced. To try to describe it is as ineffectual as to describe the colour red to someone who can’t see red.

Suffice it to say that you feel a peaceful easy feeling. When mental chatter fades and you feel yourself in a peaceful, lazy, stillness, and that subtle feeling of happiness bubbles-up, keep in mind that this “bubbly feeling of happiness” will last up until you realize you’re feeling it. When you realize you‘re feeling it, awareness of yourself puts you in the Thinking Way again and then it’s like when Wile E. Coyote realizes he’s defying gravity and with this realization, suddenly plummets.

An example of what happens when you realize that you’re having an inexplicably beautiful feeling because you’ve stopped thinking.

Along with this mixing of philosophies and this pivoting between two ways of looking—the thinking way and the not-thinking way—another thing to remember is that, in life, there are two ways of finding meaning. There is finding: 1) Meaning in Being, and, 2) Meaning in Doing.

1) Meaning in Being: One way of finding meaning is to find meaning in being itself. One finds meaning and living to be the same thing! The meaning of life is to live. Living is the meaning and meaning is found in living. It’s like, if you asked what is the meaning of a flower? Does a flower have a meaning? What’s it mean? What’s its purpose? Is it just biology? It could be said that the meaning or purpose of a flower is to flower. Similarly, it could be said that the meaning or purpose of you is to “you.”

This way of finding meaning in being relates to the not-thinking way of looking and we are advised to live everyday and enjoy it. The counter to this is to find no meaning in life which leads many people to escapism and mind-altering drugs.

Finding Meaning in Being is like going into the field as shown in the golf movie, The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000):

2) Meaning in Doing: The second way of finding meaning is to find meaning in doing, and, if possible, to make a difference in the world before you die. This latter way of finding meaning is illustrated in many movies.

In Fight Club (1999), for example, there’s a scene where a guy (Brad Pitt) puts a gun to another guy’s head and tells this poor guy to follow his dream and become a veterinarian, or else. In this way, a gun is used as a motivation device.

Another example is in the movie Ikiru, or, “To Live” (1952) in which the main character doesn’t realize he hasn’t been living until he gets diagnosed with cancer and then that realization causes his transformation.

Ikiru (1952) Original Trailer

In all of this, in what you pay attention to and in the way you look at the world and find meaning in being or doing or not doing, it is a choice. You choose to be who and what you are.

In the novel, In the Days of the Comet (1906) by H. G. Wells, a comet hits Earth causing “nitrogen of the air,” to “change out of itself” which results in: “The great Change has come for evermore, happiness and beauty are our atmosphere, there is peace on earth and good will to all men.”

People instantly become good, rational and wise because of a change in the air, but it doesn’t have to be that way. We don’t have to be hit by a comet to change. A person can be enlightened simply by deciding to be wise and loving like Mr. Williams did in the movie Living (2022).

In Ethics (1677) the philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) said that you can experience a personal transformation without a comet simply by becoming more rational. The more you are rational—as in, reasonable, logical, intelligent, wise, judicious, clear-eyed and enlightened—the more your mind coincides with the minds of others who are rational and when our minds coincide, we are united; conversely, the more irrational and unwise you are (think Trump and Putin), the more our minds are divided.

To Spinoza, if you can look upon the natural world as a whole with an attitude of love and reverence, you are freed from your particular identity as a historical person with a particular body and you are not just united with your community, you are united with the whole universe.

Now, enjoy yourself being rational because you never know. C’est la vie!