I've been reading your blog since Hanif Kureishi mentioned you in one of his posts while you were still in the hospital. I have found your essays to be incredibly moving, instructive (as in, I've learned a lot), thoughtful, and deeply meaningful. Your stories have made me infuriated on your behalf numerous times, but have also led me to cheering your victories — even the ones you said were small. At the time I started following you, I was going through my own health issues and could commiserate with frustrations related to medical situations; more than that, since my entire career has been related to working with people with disabilities, you have had me thinking deeply about society's attitudes towards "able bodies vs. disabled bodies."
Your last few posts have moved me to happy tears. You write so beautifully about where you've been and where you are now in thinking about how your life has changed so dramatically. It's rare to read such honesty and clarity about acquiring a severe disability like this. Your own wonderful intellect and gifts of expression have provided me with so much to think about and share with my students and I thank you. I am more appreciative than you know.
This reminds me that I meant to comment on the post w/the Gauguin hypothetical, but didn't want to get into the weeds of free will with a philosopher, lol. But I'm very much of a mind that temperaments and dispositions, too, are accidents of fate; and so the choices we make are downstream of that randomness. A more-circumspect version of you may have made the right judgment calls that fateful day in Scotland, but he may also have deprived himself of some truly awesome experiences prior to that out of caution. Who/what decided how inherently risk-taking and adventure-seeking you'd be?
Similarly, who/what decided that you'd have the temperament to lean in to getting the kind of academic tutelage that helped you flourish? Sure, we build our own characters and make our own decisions to no small extent, and we owe it to ourselves to shore up various "deficiencies", but a lot of how we are (cognitively, emotionally) is handed to us, not unlike talent for painting or philosophy, no? (I should also note that I think some of this is cultural; I come from a "don't impose on people" culture, which in some unfortunate default ways translates to "don't ask for help".)
One option in response is to despair: to conclude that we don’t really have any freedom, and we’re just self deceiving meatbags shoved around by forces way beyond our comprehension, let alone control.
I prefer the response that says that things like the voluntary, and responsibility for who and what we are, are by their nature superficial concepts. But that’s okay, that’s all we need them to be, and it’s a mistake to want them to be more than that. (this is what Nietzsche meant when he said the Greeks were superficial, about things like the voluntary, out of profundity.)
It connects up to the reasons for thinking that we shouldn’t put too much weight on the concept of personal identity, or think that we have a definite and fixed notion of who and what we are.
Thank you for this inspiring? essay...we all need a touch of perspective when bemoaning some circumstance of our life we story as unfair/ unwarrented/unwelcome.....
There is a Derren Brown documentary called ‘The System’ that follows the fortunes of a single mum betting on the horses. Brown, the arch-manipulator, claims to have developed a methodology that will always pick the winner. You can’t argue with the results. Like Charlie Sheen, his prodigy keeps on winning, every race. The pool of money grows. It’s incredible; the universe in alignment. Then in the final race the system fails her. The camera pans back and Brown’s deception is revealed: An army of people, each one betting on a different horse. The documentary followed the person with the winning streak. We weren’t shown the unlucky ones who fell at earlier hurdles. Such is life. We remember those strings of coincidences that either brought good fortune, or that pulled us back from the brink. We don’t see our experience in the broader context of our species – all those people who endured similar, but who were less fortunate.
Probably the event that definitively changed the direction of my life was the death of my grandfather when I was 17. Post-war, he left the air force and hopped onto the lower rungs of the Shell oil company. When he retired he was on the board of directors. I used to visit him and my grandmother on Saturday afternoons. I was around the age of fifteen when he started mentioning a business school in America. He wanted me to go there; to follow in his footsteps. He died relatively young – 69. I loved that man and I still do, despite his flaws. If he had survived another five years I would have followed his plan for me. I got good results at school – I left with 5 A Levels – but I was ill-suited to academia. Despite this, I would have attended business school. In time I would have entered the corporate world. I would probably have married. I would have had kids. I think I would have been miserable. I have never done well in structured environments. I get on with hardly anyone.
There were other turning points where I came out on top either because I didn’t give a fuck, and that was the right call, or I wouldn’t give in.
I was at an arms market in Yemen. It was on the way to Marib, which is perennially volatile. This was in 1998. I had borrowed a Kalashnikov and I was using it to carefully pick off plastic mineral water bottles that I had filled with dirt. I became aware of some general unrest in my vicinity. I stopped firing. When I turned around there was a young man, standing a way off, staring down the sights of his gun which was aimed at me. It was so hot that I couldn’t transition my thoughts to this new level of threat. I stared at him dumbly. He would have seen a white man in his early-twenties, wearing a panama with an ostentatious paisley band, a crumpled paper poppy over his heart, holding a rifle in one hand by the grip, with the barrel pointing towards the ground. By and by, the man lowered his gun. It occurred to me later that if I had reacted with sudden movement, or somehow escalated the situation, then it might have gone a different way. I was spared not through good judgement, but by my limited range of function in extreme temperatures. The Sun did all the work. If it had been colder it is likely I would have been killed.
Many years later, on 27th December, 2019, at around 3am, I inhaled the first bite of a sandwich. There was a moment when I realised that I couldn’t breath. I was remarkably calm. I slammed my abdomen against the side of the kitchen table clearing the obstruction on the second attempt. Afterwards I sat down and finished the sandwich. Two days later, with no warning, I suffered a mental breakdown. I think it was the delayed realisation that my life had hung on a split second decision and on my ability to see that decision through, where there was surely a massive element of luck involved. For months I couldn’t bring myself to eat solid food. I lived on soup and cream cheese. Eventually I had some cognitive behavioural therapy, over the phone because of the lockdown.
I used to visit a friend at Blundeston prison. He pointed out a couple of guys who had killed with a single punch or with what you might call minimal violence. If I had kids – boys – this is something I would tell them. Your ego will lead you down cul-de-sacs.
I like the emphasis on randomness. I come from a mid-sized city in upper Minnesota and now I live next to a mid-sized city in the middle of nowhere Japan. People will often ask me how I managed to end up here of all places. It’s almost entirely by chance, I think. Life is a tiny bit of conscious direction attempted in a vast universe of just random shit happening.
Similarly to Felice, I was going to say that maybe it's not only the fact of philosophy being a relatively disability-friendly career to return to, but the rigorous meaning-making training of philosophy being a fitted toolkit for such a scenario as you find yourself in. I'm really happy that your life is turning back to meaningful progress again after the dark times
Hi Paul. I’ve followed you since your article appeared in The Guardian. Please, do the world a favour, write a novel, I could read your words all day long, you have a gift. I shall wait patiently.
A week ago I heard you on that high-profile ideas podcast talking about Adam Smith. It was a terrific listen. (My grandfather, David Raphael, was a philosopher who wrote about Adam Smith). I looked you up but didn’t find this blog. Then today I followed a link to your writing about Alex Honnold, and learned about your situation. Your writing and podcasts are brilliant and I’m a new fan of your work. It’s making a meaningful difference to people’s lives so: keep on keeping on.
Thank you again for your gripping and thought provoking piece.
You write that you see the universe as directionless and that meaning to life is subjective. I was wondering what you think of panpsychism? I'm drawn to it because it's something l intuitively felt was true before ever even hearing of it. Maybe l'm fooling myself to imagine that our lives do have meaning in an objective sense. Especially since my Parkinson's diagnosis diagnosis 5 years ago, l suppose l've searched for meaning.
But we embody the universe reflecting on itself, don't we? And the cosmological constants seem to show design, or at least an aim in allowing intelligent life to develop. I've also started to think that love (for want of a better word) is the propelling force.
I hope this doesn't sound too crazy, but it's pretty crazy to be here at all, right?
I'm also an escapee of a shit hole northern English town so l thought I'd ask.
I haven't actually, but I will add it to my list. (When the films being shown at the cinema by my house go back to being rubbish, I will resume Sunday Afternoon Films On The TV at my house.)
I've subscribed and read many of your essays, always wondering what compels me to open up and read each essay. . After reading today's, I am able to identify and put a name to what I've always felt for you....love.
I've been reading your blog since Hanif Kureishi mentioned you in one of his posts while you were still in the hospital. I have found your essays to be incredibly moving, instructive (as in, I've learned a lot), thoughtful, and deeply meaningful. Your stories have made me infuriated on your behalf numerous times, but have also led me to cheering your victories — even the ones you said were small. At the time I started following you, I was going through my own health issues and could commiserate with frustrations related to medical situations; more than that, since my entire career has been related to working with people with disabilities, you have had me thinking deeply about society's attitudes towards "able bodies vs. disabled bodies."
Your last few posts have moved me to happy tears. You write so beautifully about where you've been and where you are now in thinking about how your life has changed so dramatically. It's rare to read such honesty and clarity about acquiring a severe disability like this. Your own wonderful intellect and gifts of expression have provided me with so much to think about and share with my students and I thank you. I am more appreciative than you know.
This reminds me that I meant to comment on the post w/the Gauguin hypothetical, but didn't want to get into the weeds of free will with a philosopher, lol. But I'm very much of a mind that temperaments and dispositions, too, are accidents of fate; and so the choices we make are downstream of that randomness. A more-circumspect version of you may have made the right judgment calls that fateful day in Scotland, but he may also have deprived himself of some truly awesome experiences prior to that out of caution. Who/what decided how inherently risk-taking and adventure-seeking you'd be?
Similarly, who/what decided that you'd have the temperament to lean in to getting the kind of academic tutelage that helped you flourish? Sure, we build our own characters and make our own decisions to no small extent, and we owe it to ourselves to shore up various "deficiencies", but a lot of how we are (cognitively, emotionally) is handed to us, not unlike talent for painting or philosophy, no? (I should also note that I think some of this is cultural; I come from a "don't impose on people" culture, which in some unfortunate default ways translates to "don't ask for help".)
I think that just has to be right.
One option in response is to despair: to conclude that we don’t really have any freedom, and we’re just self deceiving meatbags shoved around by forces way beyond our comprehension, let alone control.
I prefer the response that says that things like the voluntary, and responsibility for who and what we are, are by their nature superficial concepts. But that’s okay, that’s all we need them to be, and it’s a mistake to want them to be more than that. (this is what Nietzsche meant when he said the Greeks were superficial, about things like the voluntary, out of profundity.)
It connects up to the reasons for thinking that we shouldn’t put too much weight on the concept of personal identity, or think that we have a definite and fixed notion of who and what we are.
Thank you for this inspiring? essay...we all need a touch of perspective when bemoaning some circumstance of our life we story as unfair/ unwarrented/unwelcome.....
There is a Derren Brown documentary called ‘The System’ that follows the fortunes of a single mum betting on the horses. Brown, the arch-manipulator, claims to have developed a methodology that will always pick the winner. You can’t argue with the results. Like Charlie Sheen, his prodigy keeps on winning, every race. The pool of money grows. It’s incredible; the universe in alignment. Then in the final race the system fails her. The camera pans back and Brown’s deception is revealed: An army of people, each one betting on a different horse. The documentary followed the person with the winning streak. We weren’t shown the unlucky ones who fell at earlier hurdles. Such is life. We remember those strings of coincidences that either brought good fortune, or that pulled us back from the brink. We don’t see our experience in the broader context of our species – all those people who endured similar, but who were less fortunate.
Probably the event that definitively changed the direction of my life was the death of my grandfather when I was 17. Post-war, he left the air force and hopped onto the lower rungs of the Shell oil company. When he retired he was on the board of directors. I used to visit him and my grandmother on Saturday afternoons. I was around the age of fifteen when he started mentioning a business school in America. He wanted me to go there; to follow in his footsteps. He died relatively young – 69. I loved that man and I still do, despite his flaws. If he had survived another five years I would have followed his plan for me. I got good results at school – I left with 5 A Levels – but I was ill-suited to academia. Despite this, I would have attended business school. In time I would have entered the corporate world. I would probably have married. I would have had kids. I think I would have been miserable. I have never done well in structured environments. I get on with hardly anyone.
There were other turning points where I came out on top either because I didn’t give a fuck, and that was the right call, or I wouldn’t give in.
I was at an arms market in Yemen. It was on the way to Marib, which is perennially volatile. This was in 1998. I had borrowed a Kalashnikov and I was using it to carefully pick off plastic mineral water bottles that I had filled with dirt. I became aware of some general unrest in my vicinity. I stopped firing. When I turned around there was a young man, standing a way off, staring down the sights of his gun which was aimed at me. It was so hot that I couldn’t transition my thoughts to this new level of threat. I stared at him dumbly. He would have seen a white man in his early-twenties, wearing a panama with an ostentatious paisley band, a crumpled paper poppy over his heart, holding a rifle in one hand by the grip, with the barrel pointing towards the ground. By and by, the man lowered his gun. It occurred to me later that if I had reacted with sudden movement, or somehow escalated the situation, then it might have gone a different way. I was spared not through good judgement, but by my limited range of function in extreme temperatures. The Sun did all the work. If it had been colder it is likely I would have been killed.
Many years later, on 27th December, 2019, at around 3am, I inhaled the first bite of a sandwich. There was a moment when I realised that I couldn’t breath. I was remarkably calm. I slammed my abdomen against the side of the kitchen table clearing the obstruction on the second attempt. Afterwards I sat down and finished the sandwich. Two days later, with no warning, I suffered a mental breakdown. I think it was the delayed realisation that my life had hung on a split second decision and on my ability to see that decision through, where there was surely a massive element of luck involved. For months I couldn’t bring myself to eat solid food. I lived on soup and cream cheese. Eventually I had some cognitive behavioural therapy, over the phone because of the lockdown.
I used to visit a friend at Blundeston prison. He pointed out a couple of guys who had killed with a single punch or with what you might call minimal violence. If I had kids – boys – this is something I would tell them. Your ego will lead you down cul-de-sacs.
I like the emphasis on randomness. I come from a mid-sized city in upper Minnesota and now I live next to a mid-sized city in the middle of nowhere Japan. People will often ask me how I managed to end up here of all places. It’s almost entirely by chance, I think. Life is a tiny bit of conscious direction attempted in a vast universe of just random shit happening.
Similarly to Felice, I was going to say that maybe it's not only the fact of philosophy being a relatively disability-friendly career to return to, but the rigorous meaning-making training of philosophy being a fitted toolkit for such a scenario as you find yourself in. I'm really happy that your life is turning back to meaningful progress again after the dark times
Hi Paul. I’ve followed you since your article appeared in The Guardian. Please, do the world a favour, write a novel, I could read your words all day long, you have a gift. I shall wait patiently.
A week ago I heard you on that high-profile ideas podcast talking about Adam Smith. It was a terrific listen. (My grandfather, David Raphael, was a philosopher who wrote about Adam Smith). I looked you up but didn’t find this blog. Then today I followed a link to your writing about Alex Honnold, and learned about your situation. Your writing and podcasts are brilliant and I’m a new fan of your work. It’s making a meaningful difference to people’s lives so: keep on keeping on.
As it happens, i was (re)reading your grandfather's book last week! Also, his edition of The theory of moral sentiments is practically my Bible!
I’ll pass this on to my mother, she’ll be delighted to hear it.
Great, Paul, and so glad for the progress getting out of the dark cave. I love your observations of your own life history.
Dear Paul
Thank you again for your gripping and thought provoking piece.
You write that you see the universe as directionless and that meaning to life is subjective. I was wondering what you think of panpsychism? I'm drawn to it because it's something l intuitively felt was true before ever even hearing of it. Maybe l'm fooling myself to imagine that our lives do have meaning in an objective sense. Especially since my Parkinson's diagnosis diagnosis 5 years ago, l suppose l've searched for meaning.
But we embody the universe reflecting on itself, don't we? And the cosmological constants seem to show design, or at least an aim in allowing intelligent life to develop. I've also started to think that love (for want of a better word) is the propelling force.
I hope this doesn't sound too crazy, but it's pretty crazy to be here at all, right?
I'm also an escapee of a shit hole northern English town so l thought I'd ask.
Love and admiration, Sarah X
I think this is my fave one yet ya know. Probz because of the BI reference of course.
Just to be clear, all life is still suffering
That basks in nothingness?
Well, I suppose you would say that, but you're suffering under the weight of the stars
Everything is truly relative. I've followed you since I saw an article in The Guardian. I'm always looking for the next. Thank you.
You ever see Match Point? Similar themes to this wonderful essay.
I haven't actually, but I will add it to my list. (When the films being shown at the cinema by my house go back to being rubbish, I will resume Sunday Afternoon Films On The TV at my house.)
Thanks for making me smile, Paul.
Beautiful.
Oh this is very good.
The Chinese proverb for this is “an old man loses a horse” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_old_man_lost_his_horse
https://youtu.be/QRpeNjkDNX4?si=Kl260gilH6TbbAVD&t=102
I've subscribed and read many of your essays, always wondering what compels me to open up and read each essay. . After reading today's, I am able to identify and put a name to what I've always felt for you....love.
Its a great feeling. Thanks for writing.
Oh my goodness, Vickie, you captured exactly what I was feeling as I read this, my eyes welling up.