AUTONOMY

Whether any kind of real autonomy exists remains a matter of faith. Believing that it does is of crucial importance to how a life is lived. Belief in the possibility of creating opportunities and making genuine choices could be the difference between a good life lived and a bad one. This makes the matter of free will more a religious issue than a scientific one.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PROBLEMS

Take a problem, any problem. The why of it is always thought to be important. I’m not sure that it necessarily is. It probably is if you want to change the situation and I suppose if you have a problem then you probably would want to change it. Asking why may be a part of the solution. But not always. Problems are solved when the why is little understood and sometimes the why is well understood but the problem remains intractable. So by this, why may be an integral part of the psychology of dealing with problems. But as a contribution to solutions it may be well exaggerated in terms of its actual success.

HANDY & NIETZSCHE

Charles Handy quotes Nietzsche saying that those who have a WHY can endure any HOW. This might seem to urge persistence in pursuit of a cause; that if you believe in something enough you can endure the attendant adversity. Yet later Handy talks of ‘via negativa’ which is about knowing when to throw in the towel, when to move on, when to say enough is enough. Problem is, no one can tell you exactly when that is. It has to be instinctive. I imagine Nietzsche to be the type who was in at the end. I suspect Handy by contrast would probably take an easier route.

CLIVE JAMES

In an essay commenting on contemporary values he said we have to find our way out of isolation and in so doing find ourselves. He believes it is only in the community outside that individuality is to be had. In other words who we are is determined by our context as much as anything else.

PROTEST MUSIC

The journalist Stanley Crouch said of Ellington that he was both ethnic and inclusive; that there was a welcoming quality to his music and that this was associated with the highest form of civilisation. I contrast this with rap and hip-hop with seems to me exclusive and essentially the voice of anger from urban America. I suppose the hip-hoppers would dub Ellington a sell-out to white society but to me there is no doubt that his spirit of inclusivity represents one of music’s superior functions i.e. an ability to transcend conflict and division. Using it as a vehicle of redress or protest is not historically specific to black Americans but it does reduce the art-form to a lesser role I think.