Assorted Notes

WEDNESDAY, 2 APRIL 2014

I am currently reading the book, Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell, published in 1959. It tells the story of the middle-class Bridge family of Kansas City in the 1920s and 1930s, mostly from the perspective of the eponymous Mrs Bridge.

Mrs Bridge’s life revolves around her children and her social life. The social environment in which she moves is described as “unity, sameness, consensus, centeredness”.

Not much dramatic ever happens in her life, although she is sometimes faced with uncomfortable issues such as class consciousness. She also recalls that her one friend once asked her if she also sometimes feels like she is hollowed out and empty on the inside. She remembers this on the day she learns that the same friend killed herself.

According to Wikipedia, the book did not quite garner the attention it perhaps deserved:

By 1962, when critic Michael Robbins proclaimed that Mrs. Bridge answered the question asked by writer and social critic, “what kind of people we are producing, what kinds of lives we are leading”, the novel was already out of print: readers of College Composition and Communication were urged to write the publishers in hopes of getting the book reprinted. In 1982, when both Bridge books were republished [Mr. Bridge followed in 1969], Brooks Landon, in The Iowa Review, commented that “Connell seems to have become one of those writers we know to respect but may not have read”.

One of Mrs Bridge’s confrontations with class consciousness takes place one day in a bookstore while browsing through a book titled, The Theory of the Leisure Class, an actual 1899 book by Thorstein Veblen. The book is described as social criticism about the habits and lifestyle of financially comfortable members of the middle and upper-middle class. It focusses on what is called conspicuous consumption:

Conspicuous consumption is the spending of money on and the acquiring of luxury goods and services to publicly display economic power—either the buyer’s income or the buyer’s accumulated wealth. Sociologically, to the conspicuous consumer, such a public display of discretionary economic power is a means either of attaining or of maintaining a given social status.

Moreover, invidious consumption, a more specialized sociologic term, denotes the deliberate conspicuous consumption of goods and services intended to provoke the envy of other people, as a means of displaying the buyer’s superior socio-economic status.

The article continues:

In the 19th century, the term conspicuous consumption was introduced by the economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929), in the book The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions (1899), to describe the behavioural characteristics of the nouveau riche (new rich) social class who emerged as a result of the accumulation of capital wealth during the Second Industrial Revolution (ca. 1860–1914). In that social and historical context, the term “conspicuous consumption” was narrowly applied to describe the men, women, and families of the upper class who applied their great wealth as a means of publicly manifesting their social power and prestige, be it real or perceived.

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WEDNESDAY, 15 JANUARY 2014

Advice to foreigners if they want to enjoy a comfortable time in a foreign country:

1. Take it easy – no one likes a nervous foreigner.

2. Try to avoid offending the locals. Your behaviour and actions don’t have to be immaculate (see point 1), but it would go a long way if you make an effort to learn some basic dos and don’ts regarding the local culture.

FRIDAY, 21 FEBRUARY 2014

15:15

Caught one of those feelings again that hit you out of the blue: “What am I supposed to do?”

At first I wanted to say, “The answer is probably to make money …”

Then I remembered: Make life worth living for yourself. That is your first priority, your first task, your first responsibility.

20:53

Ask yourself: What have I done today to make my life worth living?

SUNDAY, 23 FEBRUARY 2014

11:37

We tend to get upset every time we’re alerted to injustice, or every time we think someone is disrespectful or unreasonably rude to us.

Ask yourself: “Can I do something about it?”

If not, what good does it do to get upset? You just knock your own wind out, and none of the people you blame for the injustice or the bad behaviour gives a damn about how you feel.

Can you indeed do something about it?

Then do something about it without delay.

And if you can indeed do something about it, and you are doing it, then why bother working yourself up about it as well?

13:06

To know who you are is not the ultimate goal.

To know who you are allows you to belong somewhere, to be part of something bigger than yourself.

To be part of something bigger than yourself and to feel you belong somewhere are also not the ultimate goal.

The ultimate goal is to believe your life is worth living.

To feel you belong somewhere is conducive to believing your life is worth living.

To have a functioning identity (to “know who you are”), is conducive to feeling you belong somewhere.

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SATURDAY, 7 DECEMBER 2013

A few hours ago I spent NT$1,900 on a guide that teaches people how to speculate on prices in UK horse races. As I read through the PDF, I learned a few things I didn’t know. Still, I kept waiting for the NT$30,000 a week secrets – things that only the author and the lucky buyers of the manual will know.

As I said, a few things learned, but no secrets. Just like there were no secrets in the spread betting guide I bought in July. Just like there are no secrets in the approach of the respected Ian Erskine to buying and selling prices on soccer matches.

And yet, people make money with these activities, year in and year out.

For months I tested what Chris Elliott teaches in his “Trading FX for Profit” manual – no secrets but some good ideas and a few bits of advice. The ideas work. Not every single time, but if you approach it with discipline and a calm mind, and you close your position when you must (win or lose), you make money, you pay rent, you buy food, and you go on vacation. Like the man explains in his manual. And you do so without knowing any secrets.

What is the difference then between people who make money in this way and people who continue scratching the bottom of the barrel? And what do you have to do to become part of the first group?

A good place to start is to figure out exactly what you want to do, where and for how long every day. Then you would have to learn some basic principles – by reading articles, working through training manuals, watching videos, and learning from your own experience. Things that are not going to develop overnight but which you definitely would have to work on include a positive attitude, emotional resilience, and discipline. Adjustments also need to be made to the environment where you work to make it conducive to success. Then, when you are ready, apply what you have learned as often as possible.

The alternative is to continue searching for secret knowledge that you reckon only a select group of people has the privilege of knowing. I have a faint suspicion, though, that you’re going to search for a long time, and you might just be scratching the bottom of the barrel for a long time, too.

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TUESDAY, 15 OCTOBER 2013

Christian: Follower of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

This Christian thinks it is ridiculous that anything has to be confessed, that there should be displays of faith with ritualistic recitations of doctrines, that recognition should be given to God in public and in private, to “his” name, what “he” is, and so on.

He will ask: “Do you mean I have to gather with other people and confess that I believe I must love my neighbour? Why would I want to do that? No, I’ll just love my neighbour. That’s what Jesus taught.” This person will also agree with the idea that Jesus is not an insecure teenager whose identity should be confirmed as often as possible by people who “love” him.

The Jesus whose teachings are followed by the Christian in my mind’s eye will most probably not think much of ritualistic congregations filled with emotional displays. Chances are he will only be impressed if you actually love your fellow human beings, give them a blanket when they are cold, give them shelter when they are homeless, and so on.

The follower of Jesus as I think of him will also not attach much value to the identity label of “Christian”. He will simply say you can call him what you want. All that matters to him is to love his fellow human being as he does himself.

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What is the Christian religion? Is there something like a true Christian? What were Jesus’ true intentions, and what were the intentions of early church leaders like Peter and Paul?

I don’t think there is any doubt that church leaders in the decades after Jesus’ death were aware that they had a religion to administer and lead.

MONDAY, 2 DECEMBER 2013

I was thinking of something tonight – giving people the space to be as human as you allow yourself to be, and the next moment I was testing and trying words and phrases to explain my position regarding religion.

It came down to this: In my early twenties I got the overwhelming impression that the Christian religion with which I grew up and to which I had become increasingly attached in the first two decades of my life was man-made. To put it differently, in my opinion the Christian religion is steeped to the bone in teachings that show a human hand – or, in the words of a renowned German philosopher: “[It is] human, all too human.”

Important to explain what I mean by steeped to the bone: Once you start cutting away doctrines of the Christian religion that seem, after careful consideration, to be just too human to be “divine”, there will not be enough left of the patient for it to survive.

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