“All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.” Samuel Johnson

To so many people, travel is seen as a method of running away. Of avoiding reality and shunning our societal and moral responsibilities. In short, it’s merely a self-indulgent, short-term endeavour that’ll eventually come to an end. And with that end, we’ll return to ‘reality’ with a sharp kick, to sadly set off exactly where we left off a few months earlier. In the words of Elizabeth Drew, “Too often travel, instead of broadening the mind, merely lengthens the conversation.”

Now, although this may be a fair assessment of many backpackers and travellers the world over, it’s a long-shot from truly explaining the rationale and motivation behind much wandering vagabondism.

For so many poor lost souls out there, the country they grow up in is too small a pond to enable one to truly appreciate what needs to be appreciated. The restrictions set forth by individual cultures can all too easily close the mind off to alternative, and more positive thought modes.  As D. Runes once said; “People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home”.

The Island Mentality

I’ve lived in Britain my whole life, and despite it’s well known multi-cultural side and slightly cosmopolitan air, it’s still extremely restrictive when it comes to experiencing anything entirely different.

The protestant work-ethic is widespread. Capitalism and materialism are rife. Life is often based on work. The social side of life is far more alcohol oriented than other cultures I’ve experienced.

The values mentioned are so steadfastly engrained in most citizens here that it’s hard to not be influenced by these ideas. And so for anyone who feels like they need to assess which of these values suits their own character, and which they should attempt to shun in order to lead a better life, the most logical step seems to be to actually and literally step out of that culture to view it from a more objective stance; away from the huge influence that comes from being within that culture.

It’s only from this more objective stance of one’s home culture that we can effectively compare it to others. Then we can more justifiably show why certain parts of different cultures are suited more to our character than others.

Without this, it seems that for those of us who want to challenge the norms of our society, we will constantly be asking ourselves the worst question in the English language; ‘what if…?’.

Is Travel the only option?

Other than travel though, is there any other way of looking more deeply at the real values that others hold? Do we have to travel to ask these questions properly? The obvious alternative is simply to read. To listen to what others have discovered about the questions that interest you. But this is something I’ve been doing for the past three years as a Philosophy undergrad, and the results are far from ideal.

Reading has its uses, don’t get me wrong. But it seems there can be no one set of principles that encompasses the variety of people in a single society. For thousands of years, from Aristotle to Kant to Mill, great minds have been trying to figure out these answers to no avail.

This is why I’ve little hope in finding that special self-help book on a Waterstones bookshelf that’ll suddenly enlighten me as how best to live, or in which direction I should be heading.

And even if I did magically and miraculously find that perfect ‘guide to life’, reading it simply wouldn’t be enough. We cannot be without first doing. Reading the instructions isn’t enough to build the set of drawers. So yes, reading and talking and thinking are fantastic ways to help fill in gaps in our knowledge, and plant the seeds of new ideas that may germinate or slowly fade away, but without acting and doing, this reading and talking and thinking is all pointless.

It seems, therefore, that reading cannot be an equal substitute to actually getting out there and experiencing new things ourselves. Why let someone else do the discovery?

What could be better or more life-affirming than exploring the questions, cultures and lifestyles ourselves?

To try to solve these mysteries from any kind of closed box, such as the Island Mentality, is bound to limit how widespread and open our thinking can be, and so seems to be to shoot oneself in the foot if you’re interested in questioning these norms.

And so, to the question ‘Is travel the Answer?’, at this moment in time, I’d have to say yes, yes it is. Even if only for a short time and around relatively similar cultures. For unless it’s tried, as said earlier, the solitary, depressing question left reverberating will simply be; ‘What if…?’

You have everything but one thing: madness.  A man needs a little madness or else – he never dares cut the rope and be free.

Today’s just been ‘one of those days’. Dark, grey, ominous clouds outside. Constant, fine drizzle and pedestrians sauntering miserably through crestfallen streets.

You know what I mean. Those days that make you want to sit and wallow in your own self-pity, huddled in a duvet longing for some rays of light to penetrate the sky. Any rays. Please. PLEASE! Even if it’s just one or two…

Problem is, you see, I live in Southport. 70% of the bloody time it’s ‘one of those days’. But today I snapped. I’d had enough. So I took matters into my own hands.

What did I do? That’s right. I turned to my bookshelf, as you do. And just before I gave up my search for something interesting to read to return to my wallowing, an old book by Richard Branson caught my eye.

I didn’t pull it down to read. I just spied the title; Screw it, Let’s do it!’.

Hmm. Wise words Dick. Very wise words.

There must be something, anything, I could apply this motto to today. There must be some kind of goal I can just get to work on. Screw everything else!

…Of course! My jogging had slipped behind a bit recently. It’s not something I’ve been doing for long, but at the back of my mind I’ve always wanted to say I’ve run 10km. It’s not much to most runners out there, but it’s an achievement, right?

Did I have any obstacles? Of course! Who doesn’t?

• I hadn’t really run at all for a couple of weeks
• I’d never run close to 10km before
• The weather was miserable. Wind, driving rain. Hell
• And I’d got a sore back from sleeping funny the night before

But as the motto goes, Screw it, Let’s do it.

So I did.

I whacked on the shorts and my finest pair of trainers. Twisted in the earphones, and pressed play to the Forrest Gump sound track (no joke!), and started running.

My mind made a pact with my body that if it quitted; if it gave in to pain, I would out-rightly disown it. I would toss it into the gutter like an empty coke can. No matter how loudly my legs were yelling at me to stop, I wouldn’t listen.

I’d just keep going until the 10km was done. No point putting something off I could ‘probably’ achieve right now, I guess.

Well, in the end, there was no need to worry. There was no need to slowly build up to the 10km mark. There was no need to wait for good weather. I just put my mind to it, and didn’t stop until it was done. And after 7km, I even started to enjoy it! I even considered carrying on, but thought the heaviness of my legs might’ve been a sign to cop out graciously.

The lesson? Just get on with things.

It doesn’t matter how difficult they might seem, or how high they’ve been put on that pedestal for us to just gaze at longingly and wish, just wish, we had the patience to climb up to them.

Things are rarely as hard as we or others make them out to be. And It’s surprising just what the mind and body is capable of if we simply don’t give it any other choice.

So yea, this miserable, crestfallen day did, in the end (and once I’d decided to forget about all that negativity), allow me to achieve something I’d wanted to do for months.

And guess what… I might even do it again!

Just not quite yet. I reek. I need a shower. And a lie down..

In the beginning, The Beatles played Rock ‘n’ Roll. This music wasn’t recorded, and mostly comprised of covers. When the band started to become more popular, primarily in Liverpool, they wanted more, but their manager told them in order to truly succeed, they’d have to clean up their image; stop eating on stage, stop swearing, stop smoking. John said ‘it was a choice of making it or still eating chicken on stage’, as ‘guitar bands’ were ‘out’.

From then on, their pop songs were based heavily on Buddy Holly (rock ‘n’ roll) and the Everly Brothers (rock ‘n’ roll influenced by country). In a sense, pop did not exist as it does now. The Beatles defined it. Granted they weren’t putting much effort into writing complex songs or lyrics. They merely wanted to succeed. The point is that the songs they wrote were revolutionary; even their pop songs. They were bringing rock and roll down a peg or two and supplying it to the masses. And thus ‘pop’ as we now know it, was born.

Yes, The Beatles were a group of boys, girls loved them, and they wrote popular songs. But this is where the similarity with boy bands ends. Of course, boy bands occasionally write their own songs, some even play their own instruments. Most are choreographed. Almost all are manufactured. But the point is that they do not enter a new genre of music. They stick with what’s known. They stay in the realm of pop, and don’t venture outside of it. They don’t create anything new or revolutionary, and this is the point at issue.

If Take That picked up guitars, stopped dancing, and started eating chicken on stage, they would remain a boy band so long as they stuck within the strict barriers of ‘pop’ that were set out largely by The Beatles. Once they venture out of these barriers, they would no longer be a boy band. They would become a band; a rock band; a country band. But not a boy band.

This is why bands such as Mcfly, Busted, Backstreet Boys, Boyzone, Take That and Westlife are all obviously boy bands. They don’t create anything new. What makes The Beatles so controversial is that hey were obviously revolutionary even in their early pop days. They were a prototype for boy bands, but not an actual boy band, for they were not sticking to the musical rules.

At the beginning of their success, The Beatles were not sticking within the walls of pop, they were building the box! They were being revolutionary, and so cannot be counted as a boy band. This is the differentiating factor.

Could we count modern punk bands as boy bands because they’re not doing anything ‘new’? I wouldn’t say so. Boy bands are only in the realm of pop, and are non-revolutionary.

Thus, The Beatles were a rock band that turned into pop band then later returned to being a rock band.

They were never a boy band.

Private capitalism does not work. It is not certain that Socialism is in all ways superior to capitalism, but it is certain that unlike capitalism, it can solve the problems of production and consumption. At normal times a capitalist economy can never consume all that it produces, so there is always a wasted surplus (wheat burned in furnaces, herrings dumped back into the sea etc. etc.) and always unemployment. In the time of war, on the other hand, it has difficulty producing all that it needs, because nothing is produced unless someone sees his way to making a profit out of it.

In a socialist economy, these problems do not exist, for production is only limited by the amount of labour and raw materials. Money, for internal purposes, ceases to be a mysterious, all powerful thing and becomes a sort of coupon.

It must be noted that ‘common ownership of the means of production’ is no longer a sufficient definition for Socialism; approximate equality of income (it need be no more than approximate), political democracy, and abolition of hereditary priviledge, especially in education. These are the necessary safe-guards against the reappearance of a class-system.

However, centralized ownership has very little meaning unless the mass of the people are living roughly on an equal level, and have some kind of control over the government. ‘The State’ may come to mean no more than a self-elected political party, and oligarchy and privilege can return based on merit, rather than money.

So what is fascism? It is a form of capitalism that borrows from Socialism just such features as will make it sufficient for war purposes. Everyone is in effect a State employee, though the salaries vary very greatly.

Socialism aims, ultimately, at a world-state of free and equal human beings. It takes the equality of human rights for granted. Nazism assumed just the opposite. But such fascism works because it is a planned system geared to a definite purpose without allowing any private interest. British capitalism, on the other hand, does not work because it is a competitive system in which private profit is the main objective; all the forces are pulling in opposing directions.

It doesn’t work because right at the end of 1939 the British dealers were tumbling over one another in their eagerness to sell Germany tin, rubber, copper and shellac- and this in the clear, certain knowledge that war was going to break out in a week or two. It was about as sensible as selling somebody a razorblade to cut your throat with. But it was ‘good business’. So while England was fighting for her life, businesses must fight for profit.

When this was realised, the professional optimists realised something was wrong, and so it was left to them to convince people that a planned economy might be better than a free-for-all in which the worst man wins. Luckily, this task will never again be quite so ghastly as it was during and following WWII.

Since then there has been blood, new men, new ideas- in the true sense of the word, a revolution. To retreat a second, England is a family with the wrong members in control. Almost entirely were we governed by the right, and by people who stepped into the position of command by right of birth. Few, if any of these people were consciously treacherous, some of them were not even fools, but as a class they were quite incapable of leading us to victory. It was like a tea-party of ghosts. But so long as the moneyed classes remained in control, we could not develop any but a defensive strategy.

Even the rationing system was arranged so that it hit the poor all the time, while the people with over £2000 a year were practically unaffected by it.

Note that revolution does not mean red flags and street fighting, it means fundamental shift of power. And luckily, British governments do, broadly speaking, represent the will of the people, and if we alter out structure from below we shall get the government we need.

Right through our national life we have got to fight against privilege, against the notion that a half witted public-schoolboy is better for command than an intelligent mechanic. The Britain that is only just beneath the surface, in the factories and the newspaper offices, in the aeroplanes and the submarines, has got to take charge of its own destiny.

People will want some kind of proof that a better life is ahead for themselves and their children. The one sure earnest of that is that when they are taxed and overworked they shall see that the rich are being hit even harder. And if the rich squeal audibly, so much the better.

Unfortunately, there is only one Socialist party that has ever seriously mattered, the (old)Labour Party. It has never been able to achieve any major change because it has never possessed a genuinely independent policy. What’s worse, the standard of living of the trade-union workers, whom the Labour Party represented depended indirectly on the sweating of Indian coolies.

Al alternative was the English Socialist movement. But, after twenty years of stagnation and unemployment, it was unable to produce a version of socialism which the mass people could even find desirable. The Labour Party stood for a timid reformism, the Marxists were looking at the modern works through nineteenth-century spectacles. Both ignored agriculture, and both antagonized the middle classes. The suffocating stupidity of left wing propaganda had frightened away whole classes of necessary people, factory managers, airmen, naval officers, farmers, white-collar workers, shopkeepers, policemen. All of these people had been taught to think of Socialism as something which menaced their livelihood, or something seditious, alien, ‘anti-British’ as they would have called it. Only the intellectually, the least useful section of the middle-class, gravitated toward the movement.

A Socialist movement which can swing the mass of people behind it, drive the pro-Fascists (New Labour, Conservatives) out of position of control, wipe out the grosser injustices and let the working class see that they have something to fight for, win over the middle classes instead of antagonizing them, produce a workable policy instead of a mixture of humbug and Utopianism, bring patriotism and intelligence into partnership- for the first time, a movement of such a kind is now possible.

It is time for the people to define their aims.

Recommended points are;

1. Nationalization of land, mines, railways, banks, and major industries
2. Limitation of income, on such a scale that the highest tax-free income in Britain does not exceed the lowest by more than ten to one
3. Reform of the educational system along democratic lines

We should hope for the rise of something that has never existed before, a specifically British Socialism movement.

It will not be doctrinaire, nor even logical. It will group itself round the old Labour Party and its mass following will be in the trade unions, but it will draw into it most of the middle class and many of the younger bourgeoisie. It will disestablish the Church, but will not persecure religion.

It will show a power of assimilating the past which will shock foreign observers and sometimes make them doubt whether any revolution has happened.

Laissez-faire capitalism is dead.

Nothing ever stands still. We must add to our heritage or lose it, we must grow greater or grow less, we must go forward or backward.

I believe that we shall go forward.

Note: rhetoric is in jest!

Largely influenced by George Orwell’s ‘The Lion and the Unicorn.

Read time: 12 minutes.

Post based on Thomas Nagel’s paper, The Absurd, in the book ‘Mortal Questions’.

Abstract

What makes life absurd? Can we escape this view? and if not, does it matter? This is a continuation to my last post, why so many people think the western work ethic is right. For those of us who realise that this work ethic is fatally flawed, we often think it’s because such work is absurd and pointless. This post explores this idea further, and suggests why the idea of absurdity is in fact a good thing.

What makes life absurd?

Human life is full of effort, plans, calculations, success and failure: we pursue our lives, with varying degrees of sloth and energy. It would be different if we could not step back and reflect on the process, but human beings do not act solely on impulse. They are prudent, they reflect. They ask whether what they are doing is worthwhile.

They spend enormous quantities of energy, risk, and calculation on the details: His appearance, his health, his sex life, his emotional honesty, his social utility, his self-knowledge, the quality of ties with family, colleagues and friends. Leading a human life is a full-time occupation.

Yet humans have the special capacity to step back and survey themselves, and the lives to which they are committed, with that detached amazement which comes from watching an ant struggle up a heap of sand. And the view is at once sobering and comical.

We step back to find that the whole system of justification and criticism, which controls our choices and supports our claims to rationality, rests on responses and habits we never question. These things we do or want without reason are the starting points of our scepticism. We see ourselves from outside, and all the contingency and specificity of our aims and pursuits become clear. Yet, it does not disengage us from life.

And there lies our absurdity; not in the fact that such an external view can be taken of us, but the fact that we ourselves can take that view, without ceasing to be the persons whose ultimate concerns are so coolly regarded.

Why can’t we escape this view?

Absurdity results because what we take seriously is something small and insignificant and individual. Those seeking to supply their lives with meaning usually envision a role or function in something larger than themselves. People come to feel, when they are part of something bigger, that it is part of them too.  They worry less about what is particular to them.

But a role in some larger enterprise cannot confer significance unless that enterprise is itself significant. So, any such larger purpose can be put into doubt in the same way that the aims of an individual life can be, and for the same reasons. It is as difficult to find ultimate justification there as to find it earlier, among the details of the individual life.

If there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism and despair.

If we can step back from the purposes of individual life and doubt their point, we can step back also from the progress of human history, or of science, or the success of a society, or the kingdom, power and glory of God, and put all these things into question in the same way. What seems to confer meaning, justification, significance, does so in virtue of the fact that we need no more reasons after a certain point. If we continue to need reasons, the meaning and justification soon breaks down.

Consequently, the absurdity of our situation derives not from a collision between our expectations and the world, but from a collision within ourselves. The absurdity comes from the operation of us, not from the external world.

So why does this view not change our attitudes and actions?

This backward, external step is not supposed to give us an understanding of what is really important. We never, in the course of these reflections, abandon the ordinary standards that guide our lives. We merely observe them in operation and recognise that if they are called into question we can justify them only by reference to themselves, uselessly.

We adhere to them because of the way we are put together. What seems to us important or valuable or serious would not seem so if we were differently constituted. And so, we return to our familiar convictions with a certain irony and resignation.

Absurdity results because what we take seriously is something small and insignificant and individual.

For once we have taken the backward step to an abstract view of our whole system of beliefs and justification, and seen that it only works by taking the world for granted, we cannot shed our ordinary responses, for if we could, it would leave us with no means of conceiving a reality of any kind. Philosophical scepticism does not cause us to abandon our ordinary beliefs, but it lends them a peculiar flavour.

We are left to return to our lives with our seriousness laced with irony. Not that irony enables us to escape the absurd. It is useless to mutter: ‘life is meaningless; life is meaningless…’ as an accompaniment  to everything we do. In continuing to live and work and strive, we take ourselves seriously in action no matter what we say.

What sustains us in belief and action, is not reason or justification, but something more basic than these. For if we tried to rely entirely on reason, and pressed it hard, out lives and beliefs would collapse.

Can we avoid the absurdity of life?

Given that the transcendental step is natural to us humans, can we avoid absurdity by refusing to take that step and remaining entirely within our sublunar lives?

The only way to avoid the relevant self-consciousness would be either never to attain it or to forget it- neither of which can be achieved by the will. If someone simply allowed his individual animal nature to drift and respond to impulse, without making the pursuit of its needs a central conscious aim, then we might, at considerable cost, achieve a life that was less absurd. It would not be a meaningful life either, of course. But it would not involve the engagement of a transcendent awareness, and that is the main condition  of absurdity.

Is thinking of life as absurd a problem?

I would argue that absurdity is one of the most human things about us; a manifestation of our most advanced and interesting characteristics. It is only possible because we possess a certain kind of insight- the capacity to transcend ourselves in thought.

It results from the ability to understand our human limitations. It need not be a matter for agony, not need it evoke a defiant contempt of fate that allows us to feel brave or proud.

If there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism and despair.

Read time 7 minutes

Solomon Asch set out to study social influences and how social forces affect a person’s opinions and attitudes when he began his conformity study in the 1950’s (Hock, 2005). Asch noted that participants in these past studies often changed their differing opinions to those of the majorities, when confronted with opposing views (Asch, 1955).

These tests on how others can effect our judgement without altering our knowledge about the situation, it turns out, show that we’ll often side with majority even if we quite strongly believe they’re wrong. Asch said “That we have found the tendency to conformity in our society so strong…is a matter of concern. It raises questions about…the values that guide our conduct.” (Asch 1955).

Not only does this suggest at frighting thoughts of how a jury panel may be wrongly influenced, it also harks at how religion may have developed. But more interestingly, to me, is how this natural, in-built, most likely evolutionary disposition to side with the majority has effected our view on the typical way to live life, wherever that may be. The typical work/life balance. The status-quo of the western 9-5.  

It’s been drilled into most of us that to work, to build a career, to undersell our time, to suffer the trials and tribulations of ‘full time’ employment is the right thing to do. It’s just what everyone else does. It’s a necessity. We don’t have a choice. It’s a given that we’ll have to work 40 hour weeks to support ourselves and our family. If we don’t like it, tough. It’s just the way of the world. It’s what we’ve always done in order to keep the world turning.

We’re suffocated by it.

Where does this thought come from? Asch’s study shows that the influence of the majority on our judgement of the world is great. Our opinions and values are shunned and shoved from side to side with the majority, just as a boat left unchallenged with flow in the direction of the river. Does this make the majority right? Of course not. What the majority chooses is by no means necessarily good for me, just as the direction of the river is in no way necessarily good for the boat. It could well be heading for a tumbling death over a great waterfall.

Simply put, the flow of the majority can easily force us onto paths we otherwise wouldn’t choose. Paths whose destination is stress, tears, anger, and disappointment. Destinations we all too often reach when habitually following the masses. The point is that the general will is usually completely different from ones individual will, and this is where much unhappiness arises.

Work rivals religion for the #1 spot in mind control techniques.

As human beings, the general will says we should work hard to help the majority; to be a socialist as it were.. But ever since the industrial revolution, the highly publicised, but misguided idea that the more economically successful a country is, the higher standard of living its citizens will have has had a huge impact on people’s mindsets.

In reality there is an equilibrium to be found between a country’s economic prosperity and the happiness and well-being of its citizens, but the media, politicians, our bosses, hell, even our parents, pass on this message from one generation to the next; that to be happy we have to earn money. That the only way to achieve this monetary based happiness is to work hard. Not only will this let us have a good life, we’ll even be contributing to society.  But labouring can only contribute to society up to a point. Beyond that point, it becomes saturated and starts to take away from society. Welcome to today’s world.

To not submit to work like we’re so often preached to is said to be selfish and socially damaging. Work is good for us and society. It must be, otherwise, why would everyone do it?

What’s really going on here though, is the exploitation of the conservatism within us. Naturally, we shun vast change and revel in structure and norms. But this simply isn’t going to lead us to the life we really want. By conservatively sticking to the norms, most of us are fated to the waterfall, and the only way to escape the monotonous lies of the mediocre is to abolish the fear of being a minority.

For when we look around us, the truly happy, the truly successful, and the truly accomplished are all a minority. They’ve escaped the shackles of norms and taken the courage to do things differently. To make their own rules and values. To make their own reality.

This topic sprung up in a philosophy seminar I had last week, and with the coincidence of Scott Young writing something about this just a couple of days ago, it got the old brain juices flowing.

As I read him, Scott believes there’s an ideal city for us. Our character may suit the romanticism of Paris more than the hustle and bustle of Tokyo. Each city holds different things for each of us, with the challenge being to find the city that suits us most fully, in order for us to reach the peak of enjoyment and satisfaction in life.

I want to go against this idea though. Consider London, believed be fast paced, exciting and vibrant. Who would suit this kind of place more than a fast paced, vibrant person, you may ask. But it must be remembered that all the places mentioned in this debate are colossal in size, and so it’s simply too quick to say that one place is unsuitable for certain characters, yet perfect for others. Labelling a city with just one characteristic is like saying all Christians are homophobic, or no Caucasians can dance.

Take me for instance. I consider myself a pretty laid back person as I hate hustle and bustle. I don’t like going to night clubs; I much prefer quieter, more relaxed places, where I can just sit and ‘chill out’; this is my cup of tea. So, according to Scott, London simply isn’t for me.

But I think it could be for me. London is so big, and so leviathan in so many ways, that although it might be difficult, I could, given the effort, find the ideal area for me. When I was in London just a couple of months ago, I was shown around Brick Lane; a completely chilled out, quiet and bohemian area of London. Perfect. And what’s more; I managed to find this place in the middle of one of the most fast paced cities on the planet.

This is not just an exception to the rule that Scott seems to be advocating. Any large city is floating in the same boat; New York. Sydney, Toyko, Chicago, Manchester, Berlin, Paris. The common denominator in all these places is that they are so extensive that they attract people of infinite characters. There are areas in each of these cities that can satisfy any desire, whim, want, craving and itch.

I’m not denying any in way that each city will indeed shape our lives in different ways, but this need not cloud our judgement on where we choose to be. Other things being equal, Berlin would spoil me with bohemian areas and quaint cafes, and so looks perfect on paper. But so too can areas of London, and New York. In all of these locations my life will be pushed in a similar direction; toward the live music and literary culture, toward a more social realm. There are areas in New York I could enjoy riding my bike just as much as I could in the cycle oriented Amsterdam. At the same time, there are areas of all these cities that would push me a completely opposite direction.

So, it seems that although some cities may suit us more than others, the major factor seems to be where within those cities we choose to be. Many of us would be equally happy in an area of Beijing as we would in an area of Madrid. They key is to find the area, and the kind of area that suits us most. In this sense we can be truly happy and exultant in almost any large, developed city (provided we’re a city kind of person), and we need not feel that relationships with friends and families are preventing us from leading the ideal life we could have if only we lived in that perfect city, for, fortunately, this ideal city doesn’t exist.

For all that, over the past few weeks, I have, despite delay, indulged myself in researching and practising speed-reading. This is where certain reading habits are developed to dramatically increase reading speeds (mine has increased by 79%) almost immediately. And through developing this disposition, reading rates should continue to increase with practice.

As I’ve been reading more about this, I’ve come across masses of rules and different techniques to incorporate into speed-reading. But, being the tardy, unindustrious student I am,  I didn’t want to overload myself, and so chose the four most common (and hopefully most effective) to work on.

1. Read with a marker; follow where you’re up to on the page with a marker (your finger, hand, or ruler, for example). This helps to keep your eye focused and highlights to your brain the words that you’re reading.
2. Increase Perceptual Expansion; Basically in this sentence, you would ideally start reading at ‘sentence’ and stop reading around about ‘stop’. This cuts out approximately 30% of the words you need to read. That’s not to say you’re ignoring those peripheral words. With practice you’ll still take them in and comprehend the sentence in its entirety.
3. Stop Subvocalizing; This is where you say the words in your head as you read them. This means that you can never really read faster than you talk, yet your brain is still working slower that it potentially could. This is often misunderstood. You will still hear something, some kind of bumbling mumble in your head as your brain picks out important words. The point is that you’re not subvocalizing every word, enabling you to read at a much faster rate.
4. Practice; the more you practice, the faster you’ll read and the more you’ll take in and remember. When I first started, I wasn’t really comprehending much information, but today I bought a used copy of A Year In Provence, and am flying through it while knowing exactly what’s going on. This won’t come straight away and does take a bit of time, but with a bit of patience a noticeable difference will be seen within a couple of days, if not less.

I’ve been trying this out for a week now, and have noticed massive improvements already. Initially I recorded my reading speed at 291 words per minute. Today when I timed myself, I was at 521; an increase of just over 79%! The aim’s to get to around 700, which is almost 2 pages per minute on an average sized book.

Granted, this technique isn’t to be bestowed on any of the scholarly reading I’m usually drowning under. When all’s said and done, that’s not technically reading, is it? It’s studying. But for all those books that are honoured enough to have a place on my list, this should lighten the load and power me through those thousands of pages. Besides, developing a skill like this is sure to help me with all those further tasks; learning French, learning about politics and WW2 and all and everything else that springs up.

Though a little late for me now, B pointed me in the direction of Study Hacks. This is by far the most useful study blog I’ve found, and allegedly the most popular on the net, so I’m surely not lacking good company. There are a few posts that I sorely wish I’d read in my first year to avoid hours of stress and agitation with my subject. But Hey Ho. C’est la vie.

Are Passions Serendipitously Discovered or Painstakingly Constructed?

How to Build a Knowledge Vault

The Danger of Deep Procrastination

Luckily, after almost three years of studying philosophy at university I’ve kind of mastered my organisational and time management troubles and woes, but procrastination has continually haunted me, and does so to this day. Thankfully, I’m getting bored of the repetitiveness and tediousness of Facebook, which has been my arch-enemy ever since first year, and email checking has been less of a problem since I bought my new G2, which enables me to check my emails as I’m walking around or sat on the bus. In turn, I’m not sat spending my days pressing ‘refresh’ over and over again, and because of this, I’ve found that over the past few months I’ve become a lot more productive and motivated.

That’s not to say I’ve mastered procrastination in any substantial sense. It’s still my major flaw. Tidying rooms, sorting through notes. Reading fiction when I should be reading for my course. But at least it’s become productive procrastination, for which I am eternally grateful. Only now, I need more links like those above. To help me fight the ever increasing temptation to drift from my work and and become productive in some area of life that simply isn’t important (like having a tidy room, or reading Tom Hodkinson).

My only problem now is that my long search for posts to help me cease procrastination has become my procrastination. God help me.

Sooner or later then, we decided to ramble over to Covent Garden for some greedy gluttony, and found ourselves in a cosy but packed basement restaurant for a drink and a divvied-up plate of warming carbonara, garlic bread and a chat (note; not the deep philosophical kind of chats people seem to have on New Years Eve, but a chat all the same). After a couple of hours, when 11pm rang round, we set off back toward the river in the hope that we’d reach the promised land (somewhere where we could see the fireworks).

By now though, the sheer number of people in London was titanic (with a pretty large proportion being police officers). And when we finally arrived at Trafalgar square, all roads toward Parliament and the river had been closed off as they were saturated sardine-style with simple minded folk like me who just want to see some gunpowder exploding in the sky.

With few options left, we settled down in Trafalgar square for the half an hour or so before the bell tolled 12. But shortly after we eventually found somewhere where we could see the fireworks on the TV screens like everyone else in the country, a gaping hole instantly appeared in the crowd where one unfortunate soul was on the floor. Upon further poirot-like inspection on my behalf, it turns out the guy had had his face slashed with a small knife! Obviously, I’d never seen anything like this before, but understandably, he stumbled up and was unsure as to whether to fight or fly. Luckily for him, and everyone else, he stumbled into the crowd and disappeared into the last remnants of 2009. I only hope he found someone to help him soon after.

When the ‘time’ did finally arrive, I wouldn’t say I was ‘disappointed’, but the close, communal, pleasant, affable atmosphere I was expecting simply didn’t arrive. I don’t know what I was expecting. Some orgy of joy and well-wishing between everyone? Thousands of people holding hands and singing Old Lang Syne? Of course not. But the relaxed aura and the well-wishing ambience, I guess, was replaced by an air of slight unease. With so many people of so many races, cultures, and religions packed into a small area, there’s always going to be an air of restiveness, but that did, I’m sad to say, make this one thing on the list that wasn’t quite as gratifying as I was hoping.

Lesson learned? A good New Years Eve isn’t directed by where you are, but by who you are with. A lesson, I expect, to be echoed through many things on my list.