Petite Philosophy

Few places in the world are as therapeutic as our own bed; our bed deserves to be recognised as the supreme location of mental reorganisation and consolation. Were we unable to travel any distance beyond its limits, we would still have a world of reassurance at our fingertips. A bed does not – of course – carry any overt glamour. We don’t earn respect or interest for revealing that we have, once again, spent the weekend, or even the whole holidays, sleeping and reflecting under the duvet. A bed lacks the grandeur of the desert or the edifying ancientness of a past civilisation. And yet it may, at points, be exactly what we need to dampen our mania or make sense of our sadness. A bed offers ideal conditions in which to think. It can be hard do so properly at a desk. The mind may release its better thoughts only when we are horizontal and are under little pressure to produce very much. It is then that our wilder, odder, more valuable ideas dare to make themselves felt – and we should be ...

  PHILOSOPHY Although we may refrain from stating it op enly — out of politeness or fear — we may readily think that one of the disasters of the modern world is the preoccupation with freedom of expression. Of course, in principle, it is a wonderful notion: but its practical consequence is that insane, infuriated assertion swamps accurate and deep reflection. Ironically, one of the people we should (gently) blame for this was the most intelligent figure of the 18th century: François-Marie Arouet, called Zozo by his family and closest friends, but better known to the world by his nom de plume, Voltaire.  Born in Paris in 1694, his family were very minor nobles and he was supposed to become a lawyer but he became obsessed with poetry and philosophy. From the start of his writing career Voltaire found himself in conflict with the authorities: they believed in bowing to tradition, he was a devotee of reason, logic and evidence.   The Dictionary was published in Geneva in...

 PSYCHOTHERAPY    In ancient Greek, the word ‘trauma’ means a physical wound. Psychotherapy is built around the idea that every childhood involves an inevitable degree of emotional wounding. Nothing particularly sinister need have happened for us to have ended up traumatised in ways that harm our chances of finding satisfaction in adult life. Young children are vulnerable around very ordinary things: parents squabble or are distracted; it’s terrifying if they get angry; the child can have intense fears of abandonment and helplessness, even when they are objectively safe. Without being a monster, a parent might be fussily over-protective or highly controlling, rather dismissive or just not very interested. The child’s fragile, immature self can become distorted and damaged by these very normal experiences that occur long before they can be processed or properly understood. In his Outline of Psychoanalysis, Freud defines childhood trauma as ‘an inability to deal with early ...

PERSPECTIVE  We couldn’t survive here long on our own, but the empty, vast spaces are inviting to the mind. Our own lives and concerns are on a tiny scale by comparison. Things that have up until now been looming so large (what’s gone wrong with the Singapore office, a colleague’s cold behaviour, the disagreement about patio furniture) is cut perfectly down in size. Local, immediate sorrows are reduced; none of our troubles, disappointments or hopes has very much significance for a time. Everything that happens to us, or that we do, is of no consequence from the point of view of the boundless desert. We are granted a perspective within which our own concerns are mercifully irrelevant. This Article Is From The School Of Life