Drunken philosophy

Is it just me or are all our virtues social? Can you be “good” alone?  Rarely does one hear of someone going alone to a desert island to “do good”, to “give something back”. Both the ”good neighbour” and ”good samaritan” need people to be good to.

By extension, people who spend a lot of time alone are viewed with suspicion. The more people you explicitly have in your life the more trustworthy you are. Who are you going to let babysit your kid: the Scout leader, teacher and father of five or the guy who lives down the street who “keeps himself to himself”?

The difference between these two is simply that the teacher and Scout leader is an extrovert, the guy “who keeps himself to himself” an introvert. Otherwise put: the second guy needs time alone to process what has happened to him, the first one doesn’t.

In my experience it is these “evil, untrustworthy” introverts who are more interesting, loyal and generous than the “virtuous” extrovert.

I woke up this morning…

…and I felt like this:

 

So I decided to get down to some work. I drank a Diet Coke, switched on my computer and knocked out a pretty good page and started feeling more like this:

 

Smug. But trying to hide it.

Had a coffee. Did some more work. Had a couple of cheese sandwiches. Watched the news on the TV. Time passed and now my mood has sagged. Now I feel pretty much like this:

  

When I’m sleeping and dreaming I feel like this:

God knows about other people. Do Zen buddhists feel like this?:

Will you give me Michael Evis on my friend Ivan?

 

Look at his face. He’s dubious about the call.

My Neighbours

   My neighbours argue every day. They argue so much that they have become good at it. Within minutes of starting, they calmly walk around the house shutting doors and windows so that they may continue at a higher volume and not disturb the neighbourhood. They have aquired highly developed arguing techniques like prioritising: “Don’t bring that up now, we’re not arguing about that now” and stearing the agenda: “Can we move on, I want to talk about the garden now.”

They seem to take some pleasure in all this. I read somewhere that anger produces the same addictive hormone – Dopamine – as being in love. This may go some way to explain why many couples fall in love and then a year or two later, when love has started to wear off, persistently bicker: they are like drug addicts tearing at the medicine cabinet padlock.   

Recently their arguing has calmed down. And as if to celebrate the fact they are “renesting” their home by having their garden landscaped.  Whether this is a final attempt at cementing over the cracks in their relationship or proof of a reblossoming of love only time will tell.

Une liste

I lived in Paris for three and a half years. I’ve been back in London now for almost two so I decided to sit down and make a list of all the things I miss about that extraordinary city. Here it is:

 1. The wine