A lecture a day keeps intellectual dissatisfaction away. (Catchy.)
I’ve been to some great lectures recently. My pocket diary is black with titles and times, and luckily most of them are in the evening so I can get to just about every one I want to see. On Monday night I went to the Oxford Union to hear John Kay (FT journalist) talk about the financial crisis. I heard shouting down St Michael’s but walked past it and down the little lane to the Union entrance I knew, to find two policemen barring the gate. They told me to go to the St Michael’s entrance, so I went back and had to push my way past crowds of protesters yelling their heads off. This told me that it wasn’t just John Kay, FT journalist, speaking at the Union that night.
Sure enough, Danny Ayalon, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, was speaking in the debate chamber. No-one was checking whether I was a Union member, so I decided to go to the debate chamber rather than upstairs to the economic discussion. I was just about to go in when a massive Palestinian protester, brandishing a flag, stood up and started shouting at Ayalon. I couldn't hear it all, but definitely caught the phrase "war criminal". The security guards gave him 30 seconds to say his piece, then hustled him out. What with the roar of the protesters from outside (calculated to completely drown out the speaker inside - when Shimon Peres came last year you apparently couldn’t hear a WORD he said) and the screaming man in my path, I decided to go upstairs after all. (Actually, I've just seen this piece on the Times Online if you want to read about it: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7022010.ece )
It was a very illuminating talk actually - the roots of the financial crisis traced from the 1980s through to today, the peaks, troughs, repetitions of mistakes, and driving greed articulated in a way that made it easy to see why the world is in the state it’s in financially. No good news on the horizon either - Kay’s opinion is that public anger against the banks and lending institutions will rise to such a pitch that far-right-wing political parties will exploit it and we’ll all end up as good little fascists. (Apparently in recent European elections, a quarter of the votes went to “ridiculous extremist” parties. We’ll see.)
The Union, and the line of people waiting to get in:
Angry protesters (can't see much).
Much more peaceful looking the other way, towards Cornmarket.
Then on Tuesday I went to the CSL Society to hear a talk about Owen Barfield, one of the Inklings and one of CSL’s best friends, by his grandson. It was mainly a talk about his life and conversion to anthroposophy, which I’m very interested in, particularly because CSL detested it so much. I keep reading in CSL’s Collected Letters about Barfield’s novels, which CSL is reading and enjoying, and being frustrated because few of them were published. But Barfield jnr has been issuing or re-issuing them, and I bought Night Operation, an Aldous-Huxley-like novella, and The Rose on the Ash Heap, a stand-alone allegory from his very long unpublished novel English People, and am loving both. I'm getting used to being around great scholars - Michael Ward and Walter Hooper were both there.
Last night I went to a talk at Rhodes House (home of the Rhodes Scholarship, and a stupendous building it is) by the head of the committee organising the ‘Sorry’ day events in Australia a couple of years ago, and lobbying for a formal apology. It taught me some things I didn’t know about Australia - more about the history of the Stolen Generations, the ongoing entrenched racism - and made me prouder than ever of NZ’s efforts to uphold the Treaty and compensate Maori.
And what I’ve been thinking about all this week is just how precious a thing a mind is. We all get one, and with differing capacity we all get to choose what we use it for for the rest of our lives. We can use it all up on mindless TV, as so many do, or we can use it for the betterment of others and our own satisfaction.
I have always considered myself not as smart as most people I know, am always wishing I knew more, and understood more. But that kind of thinking gets you nowhere. This year I have discovered that the more I put into my brain, the more it holds. The more I try, the more I understand. The wider I cast my intellectual net, the more it catches. I live in a city where an MA is like a high-school diploma; the basic level of education. I don’t understand a lot of what I hear and read, but that’s OK. I just have to grasp what I can, and keep pushing the boundaries of my understanding. I’ve been thinking and reading about so many things - politics, economics, social structure, inequality, racism, the plight of refugees - and all this has widened my boundaries immeasurably. But the greatest mind-expanding endeavour of this year for me has been what CH Spurgeon articulated thus, in 1855 (ellipses mine):
“The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can ever engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father. ... It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity. Other subjects we can compass and grapple with; in them we feel a kind of self-content, and go our way with the thought, "Behold I am wise." But when we come to this master-science, finding that our plumb-line cannot sound its depth, and that our eagle eye cannot see its height, we turn away with the thought, that vain man would be wise, but he is like a wild ass's colt; and with the solemn exclamation, "I am but of yesterday, and know nothing." No subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind, than thoughts of God. ...
But while the subject humbles the mind it also expands it. ... Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity. ... There is, in contemplating Christ, a balm for every wound; in musing on the Father, there is a quietus for every grief; and in the influence of the Holy Ghost, there is a balsam for every sore. Would you lose your sorrows? Would you drown your cares? Then go, plunge yourself in the Godhead's deepest sea; be lost in his immensity; and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated.”
“Refreshed and invigorated” is exactly how I feel about this - my study of the Bible and reading theology has enlarged my world perspective immensely, given me hope that there is more here than I can ever learn, more intellectual beauty and truth to mine than I can ever reach. I used to be scared by the immensity of the Bible - what there was to learn and understand was so vast. Now that I realise I can never grasp it all, there’s such joy in every bit of knowledge, every new idea.
When I think about how intellectually starving I was during 2007-2008 especially, how I was longing for something to think about beyond the daily round, I feel like I am a totally different person. I was wondering last week how on earth I was going to return to brash young Auckland; not to walk down an 800 year-old cobbled street soaked in the history of intellectual endeavour, not to pop in to an Oxfam bookshop holding an unbelievable range of books, not to go to a lecture any day of the week on something I’d never considered before... But now I know that I have to take it with me. I may not find a lecture a day in Auckland, but books are universal, and I know reams of people smarter than me from whom I can learn. As long as I keep trying, I suppose that’s all that matters.
Sure enough, Danny Ayalon, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, was speaking in the debate chamber. No-one was checking whether I was a Union member, so I decided to go to the debate chamber rather than upstairs to the economic discussion. I was just about to go in when a massive Palestinian protester, brandishing a flag, stood up and started shouting at Ayalon. I couldn't hear it all, but definitely caught the phrase "war criminal". The security guards gave him 30 seconds to say his piece, then hustled him out. What with the roar of the protesters from outside (calculated to completely drown out the speaker inside - when Shimon Peres came last year you apparently couldn’t hear a WORD he said) and the screaming man in my path, I decided to go upstairs after all. (Actually, I've just seen this piece on the Times Online if you want to read about it: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7022010.ece )
It was a very illuminating talk actually - the roots of the financial crisis traced from the 1980s through to today, the peaks, troughs, repetitions of mistakes, and driving greed articulated in a way that made it easy to see why the world is in the state it’s in financially. No good news on the horizon either - Kay’s opinion is that public anger against the banks and lending institutions will rise to such a pitch that far-right-wing political parties will exploit it and we’ll all end up as good little fascists. (Apparently in recent European elections, a quarter of the votes went to “ridiculous extremist” parties. We’ll see.)
The Union, and the line of people waiting to get in:
Angry protesters (can't see much).
Much more peaceful looking the other way, towards Cornmarket.
Then on Tuesday I went to the CSL Society to hear a talk about Owen Barfield, one of the Inklings and one of CSL’s best friends, by his grandson. It was mainly a talk about his life and conversion to anthroposophy, which I’m very interested in, particularly because CSL detested it so much. I keep reading in CSL’s Collected Letters about Barfield’s novels, which CSL is reading and enjoying, and being frustrated because few of them were published. But Barfield jnr has been issuing or re-issuing them, and I bought Night Operation, an Aldous-Huxley-like novella, and The Rose on the Ash Heap, a stand-alone allegory from his very long unpublished novel English People, and am loving both. I'm getting used to being around great scholars - Michael Ward and Walter Hooper were both there.
Last night I went to a talk at Rhodes House (home of the Rhodes Scholarship, and a stupendous building it is) by the head of the committee organising the ‘Sorry’ day events in Australia a couple of years ago, and lobbying for a formal apology. It taught me some things I didn’t know about Australia - more about the history of the Stolen Generations, the ongoing entrenched racism - and made me prouder than ever of NZ’s efforts to uphold the Treaty and compensate Maori.
And what I’ve been thinking about all this week is just how precious a thing a mind is. We all get one, and with differing capacity we all get to choose what we use it for for the rest of our lives. We can use it all up on mindless TV, as so many do, or we can use it for the betterment of others and our own satisfaction.
I have always considered myself not as smart as most people I know, am always wishing I knew more, and understood more. But that kind of thinking gets you nowhere. This year I have discovered that the more I put into my brain, the more it holds. The more I try, the more I understand. The wider I cast my intellectual net, the more it catches. I live in a city where an MA is like a high-school diploma; the basic level of education. I don’t understand a lot of what I hear and read, but that’s OK. I just have to grasp what I can, and keep pushing the boundaries of my understanding. I’ve been thinking and reading about so many things - politics, economics, social structure, inequality, racism, the plight of refugees - and all this has widened my boundaries immeasurably. But the greatest mind-expanding endeavour of this year for me has been what CH Spurgeon articulated thus, in 1855 (ellipses mine):
“The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can ever engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father. ... It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity. Other subjects we can compass and grapple with; in them we feel a kind of self-content, and go our way with the thought, "Behold I am wise." But when we come to this master-science, finding that our plumb-line cannot sound its depth, and that our eagle eye cannot see its height, we turn away with the thought, that vain man would be wise, but he is like a wild ass's colt; and with the solemn exclamation, "I am but of yesterday, and know nothing." No subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind, than thoughts of God. ...
But while the subject humbles the mind it also expands it. ... Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity. ... There is, in contemplating Christ, a balm for every wound; in musing on the Father, there is a quietus for every grief; and in the influence of the Holy Ghost, there is a balsam for every sore. Would you lose your sorrows? Would you drown your cares? Then go, plunge yourself in the Godhead's deepest sea; be lost in his immensity; and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated.”
“Refreshed and invigorated” is exactly how I feel about this - my study of the Bible and reading theology has enlarged my world perspective immensely, given me hope that there is more here than I can ever learn, more intellectual beauty and truth to mine than I can ever reach. I used to be scared by the immensity of the Bible - what there was to learn and understand was so vast. Now that I realise I can never grasp it all, there’s such joy in every bit of knowledge, every new idea.
When I think about how intellectually starving I was during 2007-2008 especially, how I was longing for something to think about beyond the daily round, I feel like I am a totally different person. I was wondering last week how on earth I was going to return to brash young Auckland; not to walk down an 800 year-old cobbled street soaked in the history of intellectual endeavour, not to pop in to an Oxfam bookshop holding an unbelievable range of books, not to go to a lecture any day of the week on something I’d never considered before... But now I know that I have to take it with me. I may not find a lecture a day in Auckland, but books are universal, and I know reams of people smarter than me from whom I can learn. As long as I keep trying, I suppose that’s all that matters.