Qualia: what is real? The Cartesian Theatre

Rene Descartes
Called ‘the father of modern philosopher, Rene Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, scientist and writer.

In 'Talking to Pharaohs', Descartes talks about our own, personal reality as epitomised by, for example, the things we see: colours and shapes. He goes on to talk about the poverty of language and our inability to define certain things like love.


RLF: Philosophers have said that the term qualia (singular – quale)refers to the introspectively accessible, phenomenal aspects of our mental lives. So that seeing a colour, for instance, possesses qualia. Let’s think about colours and ask ourselves if they are real – for everybody; and if they are real, are they the same for everybody with 20-20 vision.

AN: That would be impossible to ascertain, wouldn’t it?

RLF: I think it would, but we could use conjecture to try to work out the truth of the statement: that colours are not necessarily the same for each person with perfect eyesight.

AN: If I say that grass is green, how can you argue against it? What can you say but agree?

RLF: On the face of it, you are right, but think about it – how do you know that your green is the same as mine?

AN: Because we both agree that grass is the colour we call green.

RLF: There, you’ve hit the nail upon the head.

AN: Have I?

RLF: Yes, just because we say it’s green – the colour of grass, doesn’t mean we see the same colour.

AN: I can’t see that, surely if we have both identified it, it is the same colour.

RLF: Not necessarily. What we identify as the colour green is merely that which reflects light on the same frequency, so that the colour we both agree to call green, is nothing more that a reflection of light waves that is the same for both of us.

AN: And if it is the same, then isn’t it going to be the same colour that we both see?

RLF: What happens to the light emitted from the colour green, after it enters our retina – after we see it?

AN: We identify it as the colour green, do we not?

RLF: Yes, we do, but who or what tells us that?

AN: Our eyesight, linked to our brain by the optical nerve.

RLF: Exactly, so it is the brain that is the identifier – the eye merely receives the image. And it is the brain that tells us what to call it, is it not?

AN: Yes, what’s your point?

RLF: That if your brain tells you to say green, as far as you can tell, that is what it is, and the same goes for me, but, and here I need you to pause before you answer; the two colours we are stimulated to say are both green may not be the same colours we imagine we see. You have no way of telling me what green is or feels like when you see it, and neither have I.

If we can differ on something as fundamental as identifying a common thing like the colour green, then do you not think it is possible to disagree – that might be the wrong word – differ is better; it does not imply right or wrong, rather difference.

AN: I see, and I think I agree with you. What about the shapes of things? Do we see different shapes?

RLF: I think not; shapes have edges, which we can define, point to and describe – we can use our hands to imitate shapes, but not colours, and not feelings either.

Who can say with any certainty that what you feel as pleasure is what I feel; let us start with something simple, like the taste of something sweet, or warm. all we can agree on is that both feel nice: sweetness and warmth, but that too much of either stops being pleasant, and in the case of heat, becomes painful.

We have different tolerance levels for pain, and, presumably for how sweet we can bear something to be. One hurts us, the other merely makes us feel sick, or at least too much sweetness does.

AN: That still doesn’t get us very far, does it?

RLF: No, it doesn’t. We are still unable – language is unable to describe what is felt when tasting sugar, or when feeling warmth. All we can do is say that it is sweet or warm, but little more. Our language will allow us to compare it with something else that is sweet, or with something else that is warm, but that is still a long way from saying what it feels like.

AN: Language lacks a lot then, doesn’t it?

RLF: It does. It is almost as if language intervenes to let us off the hook, as it were; it keeps us from describing our experiences accurately, or in ways that would be intelligible to others.

AN: And so in that respect, we are still in the stage we were when building the Tower of Babel; we cannot make ourselves understood in so many ways.

RLF: And so what we do is offer explanations that have the word ‘like’ in them. So the question, ‘What does sugar taste like?’ getting the answer, ‘It’s sweet.’ does nothing, or would convey nothing to someone who had never had the sense of taste.

In fact, we can barely frame a question that does not elicit the word ‘like’ in the reply. What is sugar? – that does not ask a question about what the taste of sugar; How is sugar? is almost nonsensical to us. We are left with, ‘What does X taste like? - to which we reply ‘It tastes like Y.’ - where Y is a recognizable other thing.

So all we do is compare, thinking we are describing. Poetry can often intervene, but it does so only in ways we can culturally agree upon. Telling someone who has never drunk wine that white is drier than red would make no sense; we first have to start from the same place.
Robert L. Fielding

Competing in excellence

Thomas Hurka
Thomas Hurka is a professor of philosophy working at the University of Toronto, Canada. He is widely published.

In 'Talking to Pharaohs, Professor Hurka deals with what he sees as the futility of competing for goods, and instead urges us to compete in things of real value: discovery and creativity.

RLF: You have said that, ‘in our societies people compete primarily for material goods, which have no intrinsic worth. Without inequality—and without the false values it engenders—they could compete instead in excellence. They could strive to outdo each other in knowledge, discovery, or creative expression. Then their competitiveness, instead of hindering perfection, could spur them on. This is a further argument for distributive equality: By encouraging human competitiveness to aim at true goods, it makes an unattractive trait serve valuable ends.’

Do you really think it is realistic to believe that people will ever compete in excellence, and if they were to, what form would that excellence take? – excellence in what?

TH: To answer that question – your first one, it is surely necessary to look at the way people live their lives now, at this particular point in time. Once we have done that, you may ask your question again, and you may add to it whether you believe in what I do.

RLF: Fair enough, let us make a start; it is true that people compete primarily for material goods, I may say, material wealth. How is that at fault?

TH: Well, before I go on to say how it is at fault, I may first ask you to look where it has led us. Are not the world’s natural resources being used to choke us to death, poison the air we breathe and the water we drink; is not catastrophic climate change a direct consequence of this incessant competition for material well being?

RLF: I must admit that it is, but there are levels of material well being that are vital if a reasonable life is to be lived. Will you agree to that?

TH: I will indeed. We are not able to survive in a wilderness without warmth, security and the basic necessities of life, but we have gone well beyond competing for what is necessary – we compete for goods that we are programmed to desire. In these latter stages of mercantilism, marketing has come to the fore, promoting what is said to be vital but which is nothing of the sort. The best hallmark of a necessity of anything is to look at who benefits the most from it being supplied: produced and sold.

RLF: I am willing to allow that we often do compete for things that are unworthy of our attention and our desire. Now I would like an answer to the second part of my question: if people were to compete in excellence, what form would that excellence take? – excellence in what?

TH: In the physical realm, it is already underway; sportsmen and sportswomen compete against each other in excellence of physique and athletic prowess, do they not? And people like mountaineers compete in the excellence of endurance and technique.

RLF: These are two good examples, but I feel that you mean more than this, more than sports and outdoor pursuits. You spoke of knowledge, discovery, or creative expression, did you not?

What of those qualities, and do we not already compete in some? Are not undergraduates competing against each other when they are sitting their final examinations at university?

TH: You are right, they are. However, if we speak of means and ends, we find that the examinations students sit and pass are means rather than ends – means to a good degree and hopefully to well paid, interesting employment.

RLF: And what is wrong with that?

TH: Nothing at all. Man must live, and to live, he must work, that is obviously true.

RLF: Then you mean, do you, that for any object of study to be worthy of us, and not engender false values, it must be an end in itself.

TH: Yes, I do.

RLF: But how can that be in a world that runs on knowledge – knowledge with some direction, some point?

TH: The gaining of knowledge must have some point, I entirely agree, but the point of knowledge is invariably the acquisition of wealth or power or both, and it is that aspect of gaining knowledge with which I take issue. Why must everything we do have a number put on it – a value in pound notes or dollars or yen – why?

RLF: Most probably for the very good reason that we have no other, at least, few other yardsticks against which to judge anything anyone achieves.

TH: That is certainly true. If it were not so, a book about children indulging in and getting mixed up with wizardry would have much, much less value than a book about the value of knowledge, wouldn’t it? Whereas the reality is that our book about young people learning magic sells like proverbial hot cakes, while the book that would help humanity infinitely further out of the impasse it now finds itself in lies unsold in wharehouses.

RLF: That is rather a simplistic example, if you don’t mind me saying so.

TH: It is and I apologize for it, but have I not made my point, albeit somewhat cheaply? The habit and activity involved in the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake is called a hobby or a pastime – rarely an activity by which a man can live,

RLF: I suppose that we must use a different word; instead of the word, ‘acquisition’, I mean.

TH: Then let us look at something like understanding rather than knowledge.

RLF: How would you differentiate the two?

TH: By saying that we can know something without understanding it – in fact, I would go so far as to say that we usually do not understand much that we know.

RLF: Can you provide examples of what you mean?

TH: Certainly. You know that when things get wet, they cool too, don’t you?

RLF: Of course.

TH: But do you understand why?

RLF: Is it something to do with evaporation – that heat is needed or lost or some such thing? Try me with another.

TH: Very well, why is the sea blue in places and steely grey in others?

RLF: That’s easy. It is that way because it is reflecting what is above it; a bright blue sky will produce a blue sea below it, whereas a grey sky will be reflected in a sea of that same colour.

TH: So you not only know that fact, but you understand it as well. Bravo! Can you see the difference in those two aspects of the same phenomenon – knowing and understanding?

RLF: Yes, I can, but where does that get us?

TH: It gets us further along the road to understanding. We use that understanding to extrapolate and forecast, predict and explain that which we may not in fact actually be aware of fully knowing.

Someone has asked how it is we can learn the grammar of a language with a paucity of information to assist us. I think I have just provided an answer, albeit a partial one. Notice though that in going some of the way to providing an answer, I have illustrated what can be done with even a little understanding.

At university, I was told by one of my professors that his job was not to relinquish facts – answers, if you will, but to facilitate the production of questions in students’ heads – that, he said, was his real function at the university.

Understanding is essentially a creative process, going from what we do know, and moving, by a series of logical steps, a little further across the stream of knowledge until we reach a point on the bank at which we can say, ‘I understand how that works!’ or something like it.

RLF: That is all fine and dandy, but we have few opportunities, most of us, for this. We cannot all be theoretical physicists, you know.

TH: I agree; we cannot. What we can do, however, is take an interest, an active interest in our children’s education, as well as in our own education, for education is something that is a lifelong process, or should be.

RLF: I see that you are being much more practical now; that in fact, most people do stop learning as early as possible. At least they cease to learn as a conscious process, beginning by saying something like this: ‘I would like to find out about X’. – where X is something more fundamental that merely the time of the next bus or the cost of soapflakes.

TH: Precisely put. We are all learning new things every minute of every day. It seems though, that we discard most of what we learn, or at any rate, we discard as much as we can. It is almost as if we do not wish to overload ourselves with too much intellectual baggage.

The human mind is a wonderful thing – it is able to hold information and compute it in convolutions that even the biggest, most powerful computer would baulk at. And yet, we are creatures of habit, only doing what we know, leaving off undone that which is less certain.

RLF: In that there is safety. We must protect ourselves from too much uncertainty.

TH: That may be more important, more relevant to what we are talking about than you think.

There is safety in numbers, is there not? I do not need you to answer, I am merely thinking aloud. There is safety in numbers, and in being conventional. The man who stands out as a scholar is most likely to be one who is scorned for his scholasticism, is he not?

RLF: He is. Such a one is usually marked out as being in want of common sense, and it is only the most enthusiastic who continues in his way of learning in the face of such ridicule.

RLF: Do you mean that humankind has a propensity to value ignorance rather than wisdom?

TH: I think we all pay lip service to praising the wise, while at the same time secretly shunning its products, yes.

We should use the road less traveled, as the poet urges us to, but I fear we invariably favour the road more well trodden to that other, more adventurous one.

I should like to continue this talk at some later date.
Robert L. Fielding

Epictetus: be better than you need to be

The Greek Stoic philosopher, Epictetus, born a slave around 55BCE, gained his freedom, and yet even as a slave he studied Stoic philosophy.
In 'Talking to Pharaohs', he discusses his ideas on achieving the best in life: 'giving it your best shot', in the language of today.

RLF: You said, and I quote, "tentative efforts lead to tentative outcomes. Therefore give yourself fully to your endeavors. Decide to construct your character through excellent actions and determine to pay the price for a worthy goal. The trials you encounter will introduce you to your strengths. Remain steadfast… and one day you will build something that endures; something worthy of your potential." Others have urged us to be better than we need to be – is that the same thing?

Epictetus: Basically, yes. As I have said, tentative efforts lead to tentative outcomes. If you only attempt something half-heartedly, you will only achieve half-hearted success, which, in fact, is not success at all.

RLF: But why do we need to be better than we need to be? Why not do just so much and no more – why not just do enough?

E: You have answered your own question by asking it. You used the expression, ‘just enough’, did you not?

RLF: I did. What of it?

E: The word, ‘just’ often accompanies the word, ‘about’ and so we get the expression, ‘just about’, meaning something like ‘almost there’ or something close to it. The word, ‘just’ in your sense suggests that you are reluctant to go any further, that you see no point in excelling or going any further than you feel you have to.

It is that feeling that must be resisted. Instead, one should always go as far as one can, and in doing that a rswal sense of achievement will come. That is what we should all be aiming for; a sense of having done something worthwhile – something to tell your grandchildren, as the saying goes – something to make your parents proud of you, and something to make you feel self-esteem. It is that self-esteem that we should be aiming for, rather than ‘just enough’!

RLF: What led you to think this way, to behave this way and to live your life this way?

E: I started out in life, not from a wealthy family who could give me the best start in life. On the contrary, I was a slave in ancient Rome. I was owned, no less, by a man by the name of Epaphroditos. However, even as a serf, a bonded slave, I used my time well; I studied all I could: particularly the philosophy of the Stoics, which teaches the values of self-control, fortitude in times of adversity, as well as a detachment from the emotions that distract a person from his or her true path.

One of these, I may call, emotions is an attachment, even an addiction to all things outwardly pleasurable: Hedonism; that is the philosophy that pleasure is the most important pursuit.

Some people, influential people at that, hold that all actions can and should be measured by how much pleasure they produce, and how little pain. A person, a Hedonist, tries to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, and on the face of it, it sounds reasonable enough.

One of my countrymen, a man by the name of Philebus said that enjoyment: pleasure and delight, and all those feelings that are similar: satisfaction, gratification, euphoria and such are the highest good we can aspire to, whereas Plato, another of my countrymen, and a most distinguished one at that, believed there was more to human life on Earth than merely feeling good. Plato thought that wisdom, intelligence and memory, and understanding, mental ability and inspiration – the creative goods, if you will, were of far greater worth than those Philebus mentioned.

The fact that those attributes named by Plato – wisdom, understanding and the rest, lead to values that are higher than mere animalistic pleasure, speaks volumes for their being much more worthwhile. For with wisdom, understanding, and intelligence, which is nothing more than the application of wisdom, man can attain much and achieve more than merely having our belly tickled will ever allow us.

It is from understanding that we increase our knowledge of the world in which we live, and it is from suck knowledge that we come to be able to cure disease and end suffering, which, I am sure you will agree, is a much higher target to aim for than merely enjoying ourselves.

God gave us minds to think with, gave us innate intelligence rather than instinct, which was bestowed to the birds and the beasts. To mankind was given the power of reason, whereby direction in any pursuit became rational; based upon logic: study of the principles and criteria of valid inference and demonstration.

Without the instinctive knowledge given to beasts, man would have been powerless to aim for anything higher than food. But, with his own version of instinct – one that could be applied to all kinds and varieties of situations and circumstance, unlike animal instinct, which only ever applies to a beast’s physical realm and the needs thereof, man could set about taming nature, building a world for himself and his kind, and to aim for ideals loftier than any beast could aspire to.

In practising the sloth of Hedonism, we are showing ourselves to be no greater than animals. On the contrary, we are showing ourselves to be less, much less than any being in the animal kingdom. An animal has no ability to provide excuse for its behaviour; mankind, on the other hand, has those innate abilities that provide us with the power and the ability to reason things out and go beyond the simple cause and effect of hunger and finding food, thirst and the pouring of liquid.

If I now say that all I learnt studying the philosophy of Stoicism provided me with the intent, and the direction to proceed in ways that most thought were above me, can you see that I was well served by my education, self-taught though it was, but no worse for being that, I think.
Robert L. Fielding

Lessons from history: Orwell on Thucydides' language, and history

George Orwell
George Orwell, pen name of Eric Arthur Blair, is one of England’s most well known authors and journalists. He wrote many very well known novels, 1984, ‘Animal Farm’, and ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’ being his most famous.

In 'Talking to Pharaohs', Orwell discusses Thucydides' famous account of the Peloponnesian War and how language was used by the opponents to justify their claims. He mentions his time spent on the Scottish island of Jura, where he wrote '1984' and the influences that made him write it.

RLF: Why did Thucydides write the History of the Peloponnesian War?

George Orwell: It is difficult to say, even from a close reading of it, as M. I. Finley says in his introductory preface to the history, ‘..there is not a sentence in the book that states explicitly what Thucydides thought history was about, why it was worth a lifetime of very hard effort to write a detailed and accurate history of the war, or why that history could lay claim to being a possession for all time.’

And yet he wrote the definitive story of a war that would most probably be forgotten by all but students of history, were it not for Thucydides’ account of it. He did not want for money; a mining venture in Thrace financed all his needs, and with little need to travel, these would have been modest.

RLF: But would anyone have been interested in reading his story of the war?

GO: Most certainly. Stories gave Greeks a feeling of continuity from the distant past right up to their own day; they bolstered their sense of nationhood and were the source of religious and moral teaching.

They listened to Homer and the tragic poets – there was a tradition, let us remember, an oral tradition, if you will, of elders relating stories, and it was from such stories, from their being written down, that rhetoric flourished. We have, for example, Plato, who lived, not in the time of Thucydides, but very shortly after that time, who used the device in his Dialogues – The Republic, and in shorter works such as The Crito, undoubtedly drawing on the traditions I have just mentioned.

Having an imaginary interlocutor, asking relevant questions to elicit opinion and information from a writer was an efficient, and plausible way of informing an audience wholly used to listening to debates or to two men recalling events. Such audiences most probably became much more involved than is the case today. Then, the audience was a vital part of the performance.

It is largely a forgotten art, if I may call it an art, though it should, more properly be termed a device, but it is no less effective for that. At least when everything is clearly articulated, with questions being asked and answers being given, it is reasonably easy to follow lines of argument and such.

This brings me on to an aspect of Thucydides’ work that interests me greatly. I had with me a copy of Thucydides’ work when I went to the island of Jura in the Inner Hebrides, ostensibly to rest or even, I might add, to convalesce, for I had consumption at the time, and though Jura is by no means without dampness, it was, at that time, largely without inhabitants, at least without ones that walked on two legs. Such two-legged ones as there were had the advantage of being winged as well, and so it as an ideal place for me to come, both to try to recover my health, and to think – or should I say, to read, think and write.

I had always achieved what I did by taking those three important steps, as well as editing what I had written, and rewriting too, for few can write something flawless first time, if you get my meaning; I certainly couldn’t.

For me, as it most probably was for Thucydides, writing is similar to walking on a tour of an unknown country; one passes quickly over terrain that is not so very interesting, and dwells on that which is. And dwelling there, one goes more slowly, the better to take in more detail. The writer – if he is like me, stops awhile, puts down his pen, ponders over what he has written, and having thought, continues, more fully understanding what he has seen, what he has experienced, and what he has written.

Yes, writing is not so very different from traveling, in many ways. I came to the island of Jura to be alone with my thoughts, my reading, and my writing, as well as with my illness. There are islands out in that extremity of western Europe that are further from the Scottish mainland, but there are none less inhabited than that one, save those, like Staffa, that are uninhabited, or like Inch Kenneth, that are privately owned and so are not for such as me to choose as a retreat, so to speak.

No, Jura was ideal. Barnhill, the cottage I lived in, is some twenty off miles from the point at which one alights from the nearest island, Islay. Port Askaig, from which the small ferry departs for the island, is reached by road from Port Ellen, or by sea from the relatively teeming port of Oban. Either way, Jura is remote; the landing place at Kennacraig is more than five hours by swift motor car from Glasgow, and one must leave the Clyde very early indeed to sail on the first boat of the day; the nine o’clock ferry to Islay.

Still, I find myself digressing, another not similar action to traveling – one frequently goes out of one’s way to visit something of note. A trip to Mull would not be complete, in my opinion, without an hour’s sail around the island of Staffa, inspiration of Mendelssohn and suggested source of the poetry of Ossian and the story of Celtic myths and their probable, though no means certain origin.

To return to our historian, Thucydides; first of all, Finley tells us, there had never before been a society in which ordinary men, without any either inherited authority or divine sanction, openly debated and decided on matters of such vital importance as war and peace, public finance, or crime and punishment – politics, like philosophy, was invented by the Greeks; political activity was now accepted as a legitimate activity, and even the highest form of social activity.

Thus it was entirely appropriate that our historian wrote at length about what, at the time of writing, was such an important, I may say, such an apocalyptic event as the so called Peloponnesian War.

The word for ‘inquire’ in Greek is ‘historein’ – a sustained inquiry was a ‘historia’, and the man first responsible for such a sustained inquiry was Herodotus. Thucydides paid his predecessor such a compliment as to consider all events prior to the War as being dealt with sufficiently to merit practically no mention of them in his own work. It was as if one of our chief historians, say, AJP Taylor, were to make no mention of anything outlined by one such as Churchill, prior to writing a history of events after the Great War.

Thucydides said, after reading his Herodotus’ Histories, that he (Thucydides) had made a great discovery; that 'it was possible to analyse the moral and political issues of the day by a close study of events, of the concrete day to day experiences of society, without relying on the abstractions of the philosophers on the one hand and the myths of the poets on the other'.

'That only by re-examining the evidence before him, and because the past cannot, so to speak, be cross examined, could an approximation to the truth, only that note, and nothing more, be found; that the real truth about what really happened could never be discovered, or would be yielded by the shrouds of time'.

He came to suggest 'that there was a continuum and development in Greece from the ancient times to his own, arriving at his own sociological theory derived from prolonged meditation about the world in which [he] lived, rather than from a systematic study of history'.

It was this I hoped to emulate on Jura, and which, I hoped, would allow me to write something prophetic, something entirely plausible, from a close observation of events in the Soviet Union; a dystopian novel of the scope and direction of what I did eventually write on that lovely, remote island of Jura; ‘1984’.

The way I reinvented language in my book – calling it Newspeak, was as Thucydides had foretold, I hoped; it was the debasement of language symptomatic of moral breakdown in society. It was that I wished to portray, forced upon an oppressed people by an aggressor so evil that I was inclined to say of the future at the time, that if you wanted a vision, an image, of the future, you were obliged – forced is a better word, I think, to visualize a boot pressing down heavily upon a human neck forever.

If we can learn anything from history, it is this; that such transgressions, and the errors of judgement from which they came, must never be repeated. We have the Histories of Herodotus, and later of Thucydides to indicate when conditions are likely to become similar in present times.
Robert L. Fielding

John Muir - "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."

Sylvia Plath

Mirror
I am silver and exact.
I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see, I swallow immediately.
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislikeI am not cruel, only truthful –The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles.
I have looked at it so long I think it is a part of my heart.
But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake.
A woman bends over me.
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.I am important to her.
She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
Sylvia Plath

The Zuni Creation stories

http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/NAANTH/ZGENMEN.HTM

Silver Birch - Spirit Guide

"The greatest reform that cries out for accomplishment is to redress the disparity between those who have too much and those who have not enough. How can you reach souls to find themselves when their poor, pitiable, emaciated physical bodies are not a fitting temple for the spirit of God to dwell therein? We are not blind to the prime necessities of your physical selves and our mission is to bring to your world those conditions of living which enable body, soul and mind to find the realities necessary for their existence in a state of happiness and well-being.”

Chief Plenty Coups

"Education is your greatest weapon. With education you are the white man's equal, without education you are his victim and so shall remain all of your lives. Study, learn, help one another always. Remember there is only poverty and misery in idleness and dreams - but in work there is self respect and independence."

The Ten Indian Commandments

The Indian Ten Commandments
Treat the Earth and all that dwell therein with respect

Remain close to the Great Spirit

Show great respect for your fellow beings

Work together for the benefit of all Mankind

Give assistance and kindness wherever needed

Do what you know to be right

Look after the well-being of Mind and Body

Dedicate a share of your efforts to the greater Good

Be truthful and honest at all times

Take full responsibility for your actions

Andrew Carnegie - 'The gospel of wealth'

Andrew Carnegie
Once said to be the richest man in the world, Andrew Carnegie came from Scotland. He was an industrialist and philanthropist, and founded the Carnegie Steel Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

In 'Talking to Pharaohs', Carnegie speaks about the nature of wealth and how it should most benefit those who made it.

Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.

RLF: May I ask you your opinion of those that die rich?

AC: You may, Sir. My honest opinion of those that die rich, those that do nothing with the wealth they have accrued in their lifetime, nothing but store it up like so many tons of oats in a barn, for it all to rot, my opinion Sir, is that they die in disgrace.

RLF: Why in disgrace? Surely if a man has made a fortune in his lifetime he should be revered for it when he dies. Are not men like yourself given titles by grateful governments?

AC: They surely are given titles, but I stick to my guns – they die in disgrace if they die rich. Now, I will give you what you so earnestly seem to want, though I warn you may not like my answer or applaud or agree with my reasons.

I made my money in steel, making the material America was founded upon. The steel forged, rolled and cast in my steel mills supports every skyscraper in the land, it provides every foot of railway line across the country, and every wheel of every train that crosses is made by steel from my factories. I am as vital a part of America’s meteoric growth as the land itself. But, let me tell you; it was not I who rolled that steel into railroads or who cast it into wheels, it was the men I paid to do it, the boys who left their classrooms to train as apprentices in my factories; the fitters and turners, the millers and the grinders, welders and boilermakers, platers and inspectors, and let us not forget the so called unskilled who toiled every bits as hard as those skilled workers, but who did it for a fraction of the pay, I will not forget them and nor should they be forgotten. It was those men who worked for me and were paid by me, by the organizations I began.

RLF: But the credit goes to you, does it not? It was Carnegie stamped on every crate, was it not?

AC: It was, but that only means one man can be identified by such means. Organizations like the ones I began grow like rank weeds – flourish and mushroom under their own momentum, that and the marshalling of paper -banknotes and invoices, by my white collar workers as you are wont to call those people who earn their living in offices, pushing pens and hitting typewriter keys eight hours a day.

RLF: But that still goes hardly any way to explaining the reasons why you think men who die rich do so in disgraced. That seems to fly in the face of everything you have just said.

AC: Does it? do you really think so? Let me tell you that the forces of capital, the division of labour, the surplus thus created, provide the wherewithal to make such as I rich. You must know that I attempted to give much of what had been made in my name back to those who made it for me.

RLF: Yes, Sir, I am well aware of your philanthropy through the years you enjoyed being the wealthiest man in the United States of America. Every night, we are treated to talent on display in Carnegie Hall – what of it?

AC: It is not just that hall, magnificent though it is, that bears my name, or gains support from my so called largesse and my philanthropic frame of mind. I had Dunfemline Library and a host of others built to give something back. Nevertheless, the fact is that I have returned most of my wealth from whence it originated – from the people of this great country, back to them.

What need have I of wealth in the afterlife – if such a thing exists. I am no pharaoh needing to surround myself with the trappings of my greatness to succeed in my own life after my mortal one is ended. Enough if something of my name, of the remembrance of my work lives on.

And actually, while I lived, while I flourished like no other before me or since, my own money, all that required my signature to be moved from venture to venture, all worked for those companies it was invested in for me, and it worked for all those who gained their livelihoods from those very same companies.

There is something very leveling and democratic about money, when you think of it. for although my first million dollars changed my material life forever, and I may say, very greatly, my second, third, fourth and so on did very little to alter my own life.\

If those subsequent millions benefited me at all, it was purely psychologically, rather than physically. I was mortal – only in need of food, water, shelter and warmth, as well as those peripheral needs provided by the police, doctors and public libraries. Man does not live by bread alone, to be sure, but the provision of not very much more allows him to live well – too much and he experiences daily the law of diminishing returns, not enough and he starves or dies of cold in a garret.

My millions have always benefited those who made them for me and always will benefit them. Any man who gives nothing back has no claim to greatness. On the contrary, he stands accused of stupidity first, of greed second, and of lack of foresight for all time.
Robert L. Fielding

James Macpherson - the stuff of which myths are made

Thor Heyerdahl

'Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity'