Petite Philosophy

  A Job Fixation is a determination to secure a particular kind of job that, for one reason or another, turns out not to be a promising or realistic option. It may be that the job is difficult to attain, it may require long years of preparation, or it might be in an industry that has become precarious and therefore denies us good long-term prospects. We call it a fixation – rather than simply an interest – to signal that the focus on the job is problematic because we have an overwhelming sense that our future lies with this one occupation and this occupation alone, while facing a major obstacle in turning our idea into a reality.  The solution to such fixations lies in coming to understand more closely what we are really interested in: the more accurately and precisely we fathom what we really care about, the more we stand to discover that our interests exist in a far broader range of occupations than we have until now been entertaining. It is our lack of understanding of what...

  Guanyin is a saintly female figure in East Asian Buddhism strongly associated with mercy, compassion and kindness. She occupies a similar role within Buddhism as the Virgin Mary within Catholicism. There are shrines and temples to her all over China; one, in the province of Hainan, has a 108-metre statue of her (it’s the fourth-largest statue anywhere in the world). Guanyin’s popularity speaks of the extent to which the needs of childhood endure within us. She is, in the noblest sense, ‘mummy’. Across China, adults allow themselves to be weak in her presence. Her gaze has a habit of making people cry – for the moment one breaks down isn't so much when things are hard as when one finally encounters kindness and a chance to admit to sorrows one has been harbouring in silence for too long. Guanyin doesn’t judge. She understands that you are tired, that you have been betrayed, that things aren’t easy, that you are fed up: she has a measure of the difficulties involved in trying to le...

  In the late 4th century, as the immense Roman Empire was collapsing, the leading philosopher of the age, St. Augustine, became deeply interested in possible explanations for the evident tragic disorder of the human world. One central idea he developed was what he legendarily termed Peccatum Originale: original sin. Augustine proposed that human nature is inherently damaged and tainted because, in the Garden of Eden, Eve, the mother of all people, sinned against God by eating an apple from the Tree of Knowledge. Her guilt was then passed down to her descendants and now all earthly human endeavours are bound to fail because they are the work of a corrupt and faulty human spirit. This odd idea might not be literally true, of course. However, as a metaphor for why the world is in a mess, it has a beguiling poetic truth, as relevant to atheists as believers. We should perhaps not expect too much from the human race, Augustine implies. We have been somewhat doomed from the outset. And ...

  Nowadays, we don’t much believe in luck – or what in earlier ages was known as Fortune. We would think it extremely suspicious if someone explained that they had been sacked, but added that this was simply the result of ‘bad luck’. We would think it equally strange if someone said they had made many millions, but ascribed their triumph to mere ‘good luck’. We resist the notion that luck can play a significant role as much in our failures as in our successes. Luck presents a substantial offence against modern ideals of control, strategy and foresight. We understand ourselves to be – for better and for worse – the authors of our own destinies. Modern civilisation itself could be viewed as a gigantic protest against the role of chance in human affairs. Science, insurance, medicine and public education take up arms against luck, and have won enormous battles against it; so many, in fact, that it has grown devilishly tempting to believe that we may have vanquished chance altogether. H...

  Most of us are, to some extent, ugly. We should accept with Stoic good grace that personal appearance is simply one of the least democratic parts of life. We tend to misunderstand how common ugliness is, in part because the images in the media always highlight the pretty ones. In truth, beauty is as rare as mass murder. The problem is that we tend to think there are far more murders than there are. Thanks to the media, it can feel as if everyone is knifing everyone else. We recognise symptoms of panic when the frequency of a bad thing is exaggerated. We don’t yet recognise a similar hysteria when the frequency of a good thing gets exaggerated. Fortunately, not everyone minds ugliness. The reason is simple. People learn about love from their parents; our elders provide the template for affection that comes into force when children grow up. Fortunately for the ugly, many parents who are kind and loving are also peculiar in looks. Many people, even very attractive ones, therefore gr...

  Mettā is a word which, in the Indian language of Pali, means benevolence, kindness or tenderness. It is one of the most important ideas in Buddhism. Buddhism recommends a daily ritual meditation to foster this attitude (what is known as mettā bhāvanā). The meditation begins with a call to think very carefully every morning of a particular individual with whom one tends to get irritated or to whom one feels aggressive or cold and – in place of one’s normal hostile impulses – to rehearse kindly messages like ‘I hope you will find peace’ or ‘I wish you to be free from suffering’. This practice can be extended outwards ultimately to include pretty much everyone on Earth. The background assumption is that our feelings towards people are not fixed and unalterable, but are open to deliberate change and improvement. Compassion is a learnable skill – and we need to direct it as much towards those we love as those we are tempted to dismiss and detest. This article is from the school of lif...