h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Nice to catch up on some good news.. Remark about Nobel Prizes is interesting..

I started writing something last week entitled "Economics as if people really mattered": and, starting a mental re-drafting, I was musing the last couple of days on Plato and his society of three metals-

Was his base copper or bronze? Anyway the next two were Silver and Gold. In a post-Marxist Age we perhaps naturally to see this in terms of a "classist analysis"-Lower, Middle Upper. But Ancient Greeks probably understood better than we do that Gold owes much of its stature to the working of Supply and Demand- and not because of its intrinsic qualities- compared with Copper or Silver. None of them very functional like iron/steel.

The Greeks, however, had to live with reality and not mere accepted structural systems and self-perpetuating classes-castes as in the Modern Age.

Gold, like exceptional talent/ intelligence, is rare and exceptional, which is probably why Gold became treated as a material only to be used for very special things, much as the Phoenicians persuaded Kings and "Demi-Gods" that purple dye was the reserve of Kings. Ptolemy's version of "King Rhampsinitus and the Thief", however, shows how, in an Egypt of Pharoah's and Kings, someone could be snatched from obscurity to high office because of a "golden mind" and the action of abrbitrary government. The World was still comparatively young and needed to take full advantage of human potential, rather than the potential of Nature that could be harnessed by Science and Technology.

So for Plato almost certainly a great mind like that of his master Sophacles was "pure gold"- and such a life, like that of another City-State "great master", Michelangelo, can be "agony and ecstacy"..

Being a person of great and original vision is both a blessing and a curse. It means that you can never truly belong in the reality of almost all other people. You are by definition seen as "eccentric"- that is not rotating in the same orbit or groove as other people.

The Biblical story of Joseph reflects the trials and tribulations that a "special one" may have to endure. He may end up being sentenced to commit suicide as Socrates was. In fact surely Plato had Socrates in mind when he wrote that anyone who was purely good would not be able to survive in the real world, and I suspect that it was later Christian scribes copying out "The Republic" who added the detailed description of "the purely good man" being despised, scourged and finally crucified.

But old English wisdom argues urges "to yourself be true". In a purple passage on Love Dick Sheppard wrote that "Love may see what is to come, before it comes to be." And ideas are often before their time.


Hence there can be no time limit and no retirement age for those who have a greater vision of what human beings can achieve with their life. Nobel Prizes, however, often seem to be awarded retrospectively when many years of further thought have proved a "master-piece" that has opened up whole new areas of thought or development.

Cass

The age they gave of 48 was when the discoveries were made. I know that it can be a decade or two from that moment untill they actually recieve the Nobel prize. There are just some sciences where you are generally considered to be quite unlikely to make any big discoveries once you reach middle age. Mathematicians are considered over the hill when they are 25. So seeing this means that perhaps if I was to go for a Phd I wouldn't be too old yet to do anything of worth.

Xanatic

Certainly carry on for it may be the last steps of "the thought adventure" that finally brings you to the place where you "see the light" and can share it with the world, when and if the world is ever ready.

This is what I feel has happened to me in the last few weeks- The final coming together of my work in all fields since about 1956. Newton's prism in reverse experiment when all the colours of the spectrum are resolved back into one miracle of white light?

It may mean that finally others will be able to see the value of all that I have written, composed, taught and lived. At times I have called it an Odyssey and I have been told often enough on the net that I am going a very roundabout way to take people nowhere.

But regarding age- the first steps are often crucial, rather like the first few minutes of a blast off to space.

Childhood and adolescence are really the years of upward thrust, and Jesus was very wise in saying that people have to be "like children". We all need to keep that sense of wonder, energy, timelessness, and infinite possibilities, and apply it to all the "baggage" that we acquire over the years and which too often we allow to weigh us down.

I was writing yesterday that Kenneth Clark in his Civilization series declared that the Civilizations of Greece and Rome collapsed from exhaustion. But most commonly people declare that they "feel exhausted" when in fact they are enervated, unmotivated, daunted by the challenges that they can see, or made listless by a life without challenge.

Hence Ancient Rome must have been debilitated in its two crucial walled regions.(a) The garrisons all along the frontiers knew mostly the intense boredom and trivia of perpetual defensive posture, just as Tommies in the trenches often came to fear the boredom more than the battle and death. And (b) within the walls of Rome itself the citizens reaped the rewards of Empire with slaves to work for them and a diet of "bread and circuses" to help them to waste their time and ultimately their lives.

One might make parallels with the "Anglo-Saxon Plantation Europe" created after 1945. We have lived under the umbrella of the Nuclear Deterrent reducing the need for any widespread combat readiness, and we have come to expect to be taken care of from the cradle to the grave.

Cass

Cass

So I just lost my job today. Sudden budget cuts, and since me, the guy who started with me and the guy they hired last week(!) were the last to be hired, they let us go. The contract was a crappy one with one days notice, so I'm not even working tommorow. Just as things were looking up.

Xanatic

Sorry to read that.. especially as I am struggling hard to cope with today. But perhaps a few weeks or is it even months of earning has at least put you in a better position than you were when I joined this thread.. and perhaps it has helped you to a clearer idea of what ideally you would like to do with your life..Just today I am feeling rather tired of mine.

Cass

I have some idea of what I would like to do. Sadly it relied on getting some money saved up, which this job would have enabled me to do. I'm not sure what options I have now.

Xanatic

But perhaps you have enough to really make a case for some kind of backing,loan, sponsorship or patronage.. Your situation seemed so desperate before that you might have looked like a really risky "horse to back".

What I always tell myself about all the things I write [that no-one will publish], is that self-publishing may be good for the vanity- but I can print off my own book if all I want is a printed copy of what I have written. One has to believe that people somewhere somehow will publish things that enough other people are prepared to read for the manuscript to take on the life of a book.

But I write in the "downs", having really felt fired up by what I have been writing over the last few weeks.. and now facing the prospect of more failure to achieve that "take on- take off".

Cass

I'm not sure what they would back me for. I think I will probably take what money I have and use it to get out of town, to a new place. If I'm going to be starving and homeless, I at least want it to be in a new, more interesting town.

Or you might just use the money to have and not be homeless and starving, though in a boring town. Remember that time when you had two job offers at the same time? What was it then that made you so popular? You see, if it was your animal magnetism, your mojo, then certainly you still have that and could use it again? And if it was just good luck, well, then you gotta keep on trying.

Either way, just hang in there. Be active. Write applications. Write apps, if you can. Polish door knobs. Charm old ladies as you help them cross the street. Charm *young* ladies as you help them cross the street. Be out there. Become a taxi driver. Become a screw driver rather than a screw. (And don't ever use slanted metaphors...)

Y. - keeping fingers crossed (and sucked on by baby daughter)

I just found out the university in Transsylvania has a geology department. Perhaps I should have done an erasmus year there, that would have been really cool. Though they probably have a lot less bats and coffins than I expect. Still, with a name like "Universitatea Babes" there must be other advantages to it.

Xanatic

There you go.. There is usually a market for new blood somewhere or other. There may be life in Rock yet..And you may have the small stake required already . On the other hand you can always say "No fangs" ...The British supposed humourist "Saki" [Hector Munro] wrote some quirky short-stories set in Transsylvania.

Cass

I'm open to suggestions.

Good lord, Xanatic, you've been getting advice and
guiding your life based on feedback here for more
than a decade. Wasn't it you who started this thread
back in 2002? (And a very successful and ongoing topic
it has been.)

Since then you have been all over Europe, worked in bars,
gotten educated, gotten laid...

Whatever would you do without us?


~~jwf~