#Yes this is also inspired by the Feynman book

[salvadorbonaparte]

I need a maths textbook for adults like me who were utterly failed by the education system from the start but want to learn some maths anyway. Like a textbook going over all the basics from the ground up in easy to understand, non-judgemental language with lots of examples and explanations why and how things work.

[soospiritualjourney]

Ego is the enemy by Ryan Holiday

(1) Demosthenes once said that virtue begins with understanding and is fulfilled by courage. We must begin by seeing ourselves and the world in a new way for the first time. Then we must fight to be different and fight to stay different—that’s the hard part. I’m not saying you should repress or crush every ounce of ego in your life—or that doing so is even possible. These are just reminders, moral stories to encourage our better impulses.

(2) The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool- RICHARD FEYNMAN

(3) If ego is the voice that tells us we’re better than we really are, we can say ego inhibits true success by preventing a direct and honest connection to the world around us. One of the early members of Alcoholics Anonymous defined ego as “a conscious separation from.” From what? Everything.

(4) The ways this separation manifests itself negatively are immense: We can’t work with other people if we’ve put up walls. We can’t improve the world if we don’t understand it or ourselves. We can’t take or receive feedback if we are incapable of or uninterested in hearing from outside sources. We can’t recognize opportunities—or create them—if instead of seeing what is in front of us, we live inside our own fantasy. Without an accurate accounting of our own abilities compared to others, what we have is not confidence but delusion. How are we supposed to reach, motivate, or lead other people if we can’t relate to their needs—because we’ve lost touch with our own?

(5) The performance artist Marina Abramović puts it directly: “If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity.”

(6) Just one thing keeps ego around—comfort. Pursuing great work—whether it is in sports or art or business—is often terrifying. Ego soothes that fear. It’s a salve to that insecurity. Replacing the rational and aware parts of our psyche with bluster and self-absorption, ego tells us what we want to hear, when we want to hear it.

But it is a short-term fix with a long-term consequence.

(7) The aim of that structure is simple: to help you suppress ego early before bad habits take hold, to replace the temptations of ego with humility and discipline when we experience success, and to cultivate strength and fortitude so that when fate turns against you, you’re not wrecked by failure. In short, it will help us be:

* Humble in our aspirations

* Gracious in our success

* Resilient in our failures

(8) The Quaker William Penn observed, “Buildings that lie so exposed to the weather need a good foundation.”

(9) When we remove ego, we’re left with what is real. What replaces ego is humility, yes—but rock-hard humility and confidence. Whereas ego is artificial, this type of confidence can hold weight. Ego is stolen. Confidence is earned. Ego is self-anointed, its swagger is artifice. One is girding yourself, the other gaslighting. It’s the difference between potent and poisonous.

(10) Isocrates - “Practice self-control,” he said, warning Demonicus not to fall under the sway of “temper, pleasure, and pain.” And “abhor flatterers as you would deceivers; for both, if trusted, injure those who trust them.” “Be affable in your relations with those who approach you, and never haughty; for the pride of the arrogant even slaves can hardly endure” and “Be slow in deliberation, but be prompt to carry out your resolves” and that the “best thing which we have in ourselves is good judgment.” Constantly train your intellect, he told him, “for the greatest thing in the smallest compass is a sound mind in a human body.”

Shakespeare

This above all: to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Farewell. My blessing season this in thee!

Where Isocrates and Shakespeare wished us to be self-contained, self-motivated, and ruled by principle, most of us have been trained to do the opposite. Our cultural values almost try to make us dependent on validation, entitled, and ruled by our emotions. For a generation, parents and teachers have focused on building up everyone’s self-esteem. From there, the themes of our gurus and public figures have been almost exclusively aimed at inspiring, encouraging, and assuring us that we can do whatever we set our minds to. In reality, this makes us weak.

(11) In this phase, you must practice seeing yourself with a little distance, cultivating the ability to get out of your own head. Detachment is a sort of natural ego antidote. It’s easy to be emotionally invested and infatuated with your own work. Any and every narcissist can do that. What is rare is not raw talent, skill, or even confidence, but humility, diligence, and self-awareness.

(12) For your work to have truth in it, it must come from truth. If you want to be more than a flash in the pan, you must be prepared to focus on the long term.

It’s a temptation that exists for everyone—for talk and hype to replace action.

(13) Doing great work is a struggle. It’s draining, it’s demoralizing, it’s frightening—not always, but it can feel that way when we’re deep in the middle of it. We talk to fill the void and the uncertainty.

(14) “A man is worked upon by what he works on,” Frederick Douglass once said. He would know. He’d been a slave, and he saw what it did to everyone involved, including the slaveholders themselves. Once a free man, he saw that the choices people made, about their careers and their lives, had the same effect. What you choose to do with your time and what you choose to do for money works on you. The egocentric path requires, as Boyd knew, many compromises.

(15) To become great and to stay great, they must all know what came before, what is going on now, and what comes next. They must internalize the fundamentals of their domain and what surrounds them, without ossifying or becoming stuck in time.

In our endeavors, we will face complex problems, often in situations we’ve never faced before. Opportunities are not usually deep, virgin pools that require courage and boldness to dive into, but instead are obscured, dusted over, blocked by various forms of resistance. What is really called for in these circumstances is clarity, deliberateness, and methodological determination.

(16) Passion typically masks a weakness. Its breathlessness and impetuousness and franticness are poor substitutes for discipline, for mastery, for strength and purpose and perseverance.

(17) “Whom the gods wish to destroy,” Cyril Connolly famously said, “they first call promising.”

(18) Only you know the race you’re running. That is, unless your ego decides the only way you have value is if you’re better than, have more than, everyone everywhere. More urgently, each one of us has a unique potential and purpose; that means that we’re the only ones who can evaluate and set the terms of our lives. Far too often, we look at other people and make their approval the standard we feel compelled to meet, and as a result, squander our very potential and purpose.

(19) According to Seneca, the Greek word euthymia is one we should think of often: it is the sense of our own path and how to stay on it without getting distracted by all the others that intersect it. In other words, it’s not about beating the other guy. It’s not about having more than the others. It’s about being what you are, and being as good as possible at it, without succumbing to all the things that draw you away from it. It’s about going where you set out to go. About accomplishing the most that you’re capable of in what you choose. That’s it. No more and no less. (By the way, euthymia means “tranquillity” in English.)

(20) It is not enough to have great qualities; we should also have the management of them.

—LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

(21) Feel unprotected against the elements or forces or surroundings. Remind yourself how pointless it is to rage and fight and try to one-up those around you. Go and put yourself in touch with the infinite, and end your conscious separation from the world. Reconcile yourself a bit better with the realities of life. Realize how much came before you, and how only wisps of it remain.

(22) Let the feeling carry you as long as you can. Then when you start to feel better or bigger than, go and do it again.

(23) The historian Shelby Foote observed that “power doesn’t so much corrupt; that’s too simple. It fragments, closes options, mesmerizes.” That’s what ego does. It clouds the mind precisely when it needs to be clear. Sobriety is a counterbalance, a hangover cure—or better, a prevention method.

(24) As Plutarch finely expressed, “The future bears down upon each one of us with all the hazards of the unknown.” The only way out is through.

(25) According to Greene, there are two types of time in our lives: dead time, when people are passive and waiting, and alive time, when people are learning and acting and utilizing every second. Every moment of failure, every moment or situation that we did not deliberately choose or control, presents this choice: Alive time. Dead time.

That’s what so many of us do when we fail or get ourselves into trouble. Lacking the ability to examine ourselves, we reinvest our energy into exactly the patterns of behavior that caused our problems to begin with.

In life, we all get stuck with dead time. Its occurrence isn’t in our control. Its use, on the other hand, is.

(26) As Booker T. Washington most famously put it, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” Make use of what’s around you. Don’t let stubbornness make a bad situation worse.

(27) A dangerous attitude because when someone works on a project—whether it’s a book or a business or otherwise—at a certain point, that thing leaves their hands and enters the realm of the world. It is judged, received, and acted on by other people. It stops being something he controls and it depends on them.

(28) There was an unusual encounter between Alexander the Great and the famous Cynic philosopher Diogenes. Allegedly, Alexander approached Diogenes, who was lying down, enjoying the summer air, and stood over him and asked what he, the most powerful man in the world, might be able to do for this notoriously poor man. Diogenes could have asked for anything. What he requested was epic: “Stop blocking my sun.” Even two thousand years later we can feel exactly where in the solar plexus that must have hit Alexander, a man who always wanted to prove how important he was. As the author Robert Louis Stevenson later observed about this meeting, “It is a sore thing to have labored along and scaled arduous hilltops, and when all is done, find humanity indifferent to your achievement.”

(29) This is why we can’t let externals determine whether something was worth it or not. It’s on us.The world is, after all, indifferent to what we humans “want.” If we persist in wanting, in needing, we are simply setting ourselves up for resentment or worse. Doing the work is enough.

(30) Duris dura franguntur. Hard things are broken by hard things.

The bigger the ego the harder the fall.

(31) Hemingway had his own rock-bottom realizations as a young man. The understanding he took from them is expressed timelessly in his book A Farewell to Arms. He wrote, “The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills.”

(32) The world can show you the truth, but no one can force you to accept it.

(33) “Everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed,” reads John 3:20.

(34) In the end, the only way you can appreciate your progress is to stand on the edge of the hole you dug for yourself, look down inside it, and smile fondly at the bloody claw prints that marked your journey up the walls.

(35) It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character.

—MARCUS AURELIUS

(36) The problem is that when we get our identity tied up in our work, we worry that any kind of failure will then say something bad about us as a person. It’s a fear of taking responsibility, of admitting that we might have messed up. It’s the sunk cost fallacy. And so we throw good money and good life after bad and end up making everything so much worse.

(37) Ego kills what we love. Sometimes, it comes close to killing us too.

(38) “Act with fortitude and honor,” he wrote to a distraught friend in serious financial and legal trouble of the man’s own making. “If you cannot reasonably hope for a favorable extrication, do not plunge deeper. Have the courage to make a full stop.” - Alexander Hamilton

(39) Because you will lose in life. It’s a fact. A doctor has to call time of death at some point. They just do.

Ego says we’re the immovable object, the unstoppable force. This delusion causes the problems. It meets failure and adversity with rule breaking—betting everything on some crazy scheme; doubling down on behind-the-scenes machinations or unlikely Hail Marys—even though that’s what got you to this pain point in the first place.

(40) “He who fears death will never do anything worthy of a living man,” Seneca once said. Alter that: He who will do anything to avoid failure will almost certainly do something worthy of a failure.

The only real failure is abandoning your principles. Killing what you love because you can’t bear to part from it is selfish and stupid. If your reputation can’t absorb a few blows, it wasn’t worth anything in the first place.

(41) And why should we feel anger at the world?

As if the world would notice!

—EURIPIDES

[quadrantmodelquotes]

Quadrant Books 2013

So we have a duality, science and religion. People say that these are opposites. They're not opposites. Science and religion go hand in hand. They're very interlinked. Science often is trying to prove things in religion. The person who came up with the Big Bang Theory was a priest. Religion follows science. And science is not objective like people want to believe. Kuhn points out that there are underlying belief and value systems that determine which scientific theories are created and which one's survive. Yes experiments and observational evidence influence science, but people have underlying assumptions and beliefs that influence data and influence the experiments and the nature of the experiments that are done.

Richard Feynman’s teacher, John Wheeler, was a Quaker. Quakers are unitarians. Wheeler’s Unitarian beliefs inspired him to believe that all of the electrons in the Universe were really one electron going back and forth through backwards and forwards through time. This belief by Wheeler, emerging from his religious inclinations, helped to spur new ideas and concepts that Feynman discovered in the realm of particle physics and quantum chromodynamics.

I forget his name, but there is a famous Christain physicist who believes that at the end of the Universe, there will be a sort of phase transition of the Universe wherein everything will freeze into a sort of infinite moment. He argues this is the heaven that the Bible speaks of, and says that if humans can make it to that time, they will reach eternal life and heaven. Teillhard de Chardin is a Christian priest who uses notions of science to argue that there will be a sort of omega point enriching of the noosphere, through the world wide web and other technologies, and this is the heaven that the Bible refers to. Science and religion are in constant conflict and dialogue.

Some scientists, known as ancient alien proponents, say that the mythologies of cultures are literally accurate, but the gods and supreme beings the cultures were referring to were aliens. Newton spent more time trying to decipher the Bible and alchemy than working on physics.

Religious people believe that the planets go around the Sun because science has demonstrated it. Although there are some flat earthers, most religious people subscribe to the idea that the Earth circles the planet. But it is argued by historians of religion that the Catholic Church did not deny Galileo’s beliefs because of the Bible per se, but because the Ptolemaic system was more accurate than Galileos. That was because Galileo thought the planets moved in circular orbits. Only after Kepler recognized the planets orbits are elliptical and that system was recognized to be more accurate than Ptolemy’s system, did the idea that the Earth circled the planets become accepted. Incidentally, planets take four orbital modes, that are congruent with the four conic sections. The four orbital trajectories of planets are circular, elliptical, hyperbolic, and parabolic.

Four Conic Sections and Planetary Orbital Trajectories

Religion and science are always very related with each other and in constant debate and interaction. Remember, science is first quadrant oriented. The idealist quadrant, the NF first quadrant. NFs are very articulate and very smart. Well scientists, they seem very articulate, very smart. Science is characterized as related with intelligence. Art, the third quadrant is not seen as corresponding as much to intelligence. The third quadrant is characterized as more bad and dumb. But also, sometimes NFs can be inaccessible, and what they talk about, the mystical stuff, people can’t follow. They are flowery with their language and not that good at explaining. Scientists do the same thing. They make things seem so complicated by giving things very difficult wordings, like the upside down top quark, and people look at this and are immediately turned off. Because they say wow I cannot understand this at all. This stuff must be so complex. The universe is so complex. It's the way that it's worded. It's not complex. It seems co

[art-of-manliness]

Podcast #318: The Joys of Hiking

One of my favorite things to do in life is to find and hike a trail out in the wilds. I love how a good trail gently leads you through nature. You don’t have to think much about where you’re going, so it gives you time to think about other things. It’s great for chewing on deep issues and getting new insights, but it also causes you to take the trail for granted. For example, I sometimes forget that a group of people blazed the trail I’m enjoying and that another group continues to maintain it without any fanfare. My guest today decided to stop taking trails for granted and to explore them in-depth — both literally and metaphorically — after his own hike on the Appalachian Trail. His name is Robert Moor and he’s the author of the book On Trails: An Exploration. Today on the show, Robert shares why he decided to hike the entire Appalachian Trail after he graduated from college and why that experience led him to diving into the deeper meaning of trails. We then discuss why following a trail is so existentially satisfying and how trails are embedded in human thought and communication and provide us with a sense of place and orientation in our lives. We end our conversation talking about the idealistic origins of the Appalachian Trail, the movement to extend the Appalachian Trail to Morocco, yes Morocco, and what a perpetual hiker named Nimblewill Nomad can teach us about the limits of freedom. If you’re a hiker, you’re going to love this show. If you’re not a hiker, it’s going to inspire you to find a trail this weekend and become one. Show Highlights * Why Robert wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail (AT) * How Robert’s experience on the AT led him to exploring trails in-depth * How trail-making is a form of communication in the animal world * The ways that animals go about making and following trails * Why did humans start making trails? * How trails provide meaning and coherence * How trail-making (and road-making) has changed over generations * Why hiking on a trail is so soothing * The unsung heroes of the folks who blaze and maintain our hiking trails * What makes for a good trail? * Hiking in the US & Europe versus other parts of the world * How mountains, forests, and wilderness in general were seen in popular culture before the Romantic Era * The origin story of the Appalachian Trail, and long backpacking trails in general * The International Appalachian Trail project * Hiking (and the strenuous life) as the antidote to the problems of civilization and modernity * Masculinity’s tie to the wilderness * Nimblewill Nomad’s story — what we can learn from a man who has spent his entire life walking/hiking Resources/People/Articles Mentioned in Podcast * The Appalachian Trail * 565-million-year-old fossilized trails * Richard Feynman’s studies on ant trails * 6 Reminders on Hiking Etiquette * Cars — the Story of Route 66 scene * Taking Care of Your Feet on a Hike * 5 Unexpected Skills Needed for a Backpacking Adventure * Underestimating a Hike * Benton MacKaye * The Long Trail * International Appalachian Trail * A Call for a New Strenuous Age * Nimblewill Nomad — permanent hiker On Trails was an absolute joy to read. Robert does a great job navigating readers through time and space to capture the power of trails in our lives. Ever since I’ve read the book, I’m much more thoughtful about the trails that I find myself on. Connect With Robert Moor Robert’s website Robert on Twitter Listen to the Podcast! (And don’t forget to leave us a review!) Listen to the episode on a separate page. Download this episode. Subscribe to the podcast in the media player of your choice. Podcast Sponsors Squarespace. Start your free trial today at Squarespace.com and enter code “manliness” at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase. Blue Apron. Blue Apron delivers all the fresh ingredients and chef-created recipes needed so you can cook meals at home like a pro. Get your first three meals FREE by visiting blueapron.com/MANLINESS. Read the Transcript Coming soon! The post Podcast #318: The Joys of Hiking appeared first on The Art of Manliness. http://dlvr.it/PRwbdZ

[makingscipub]

Comments on qualitative methods in the humanities and social sciences

I while ago Chris Toumey (Toumey@mailbox.sc.edu) wrote a guest post for this blog, announcing his new book on nanotech and the humanities. A reader had a question that Chris didn’t have time to answer at the time. This post is an answer to that question.

***

Regarding my book on nanotechnology, Nanotech and the Humanities, a friendly astrophysicist asked whether persons in Science & Technology Studies [STS] did not have research methods. The short answer is yes, we do have research methods, but ours tend to be very different from those of hypothesis-testing experiments in the natural sciences. While persons in STS sometimes conduct hypothesis-testing experiments, our research is grounded more in the humanities. In fact I appreciate the relationship in German education and scholarship between the Geisteswissenschaften and the Naturwissenschaften. Both are considered equally valid, even though they have different methods for discovering and developing knowledge. With that in mind, here is my appreciation of the research methods of the humanities, including my home discipline of cultural anthropology.

A historical perspective

First, we often assemble a historical perspective. This addresses three questions. How does a historical situation affect a form of policy, behavior, or understanding? This can include a good biography which shows how unique historical circumstances shape a person’s values and actions. If some persons in the past were very influential for instigating changes, especially in science and technology, we want to know why and how the contemporaneous conditions in which they lived contributed to shaping their contributions to change.

A historical perspective also explains how and why things change.

The third benefit of a historical perspective is to separate the inevitable from the contingent. Often when we are accustomed to the consequences of a past event, we might think that those consequences were inevitable. But a good historical perspective often shows that they were not.

In my work on nanotechnology, my favorite example of this is Cyrus Mody’s social history of the invention and adoption of the STM and the AFM. There the author describes certain special conditions at IBM which enabled Binnig and Rohrer to invent the STM. Furthermore, IBM and Bell Labs once had a corporate culture in which they supported numerous post-docs, and the post-docs had considerable intellectual freedom. They became the principal advocates for adopting and using that instrument. Subsequently, after the AFM was invented, a small number of scientists in California began to use the AFM in ambient conditions, which was previously considered bad science. Corporate culture has changed since the 1980’s, so that one might see that the invention and the adaptation of the STM and the AFM benefited from unique conditions. Those events were not inevitable. They were contingent. And if someone believes that the invention of the STM was inevitable, they should become familiar with the earlier invention of the topographiner, and its unfortunate demise.

Or consider the case of Picasso and other cubists who were inspired by Metzger, Cezanne, and others. The earlier artists hoped to use two-dimensional paintings to present multiple perspectives which were not limited to the three classical parameters of length, width, and depth. Picasso, Braque, and others learned from them, and then invented cubism to realize those hopes. One might say that there would not have been twentieth-century cubism without its late-nineteenth-century predecessors.

Comparative case studies

Secondly, we try to make good use of comparative case studies. These sometimes involve quantitative methods, but not necessarily, because many comparisons amount to apples-and-oranges. In nanotechnology, for example, one might say that physicists see nanotech one way, and chemists see it a different way. And within chemistry, scientists in organic chemistry may think differently from scientists in inorganic chemistry.

There are also comparisons between national scientific cultures. Consider Medicine and Culture, by Lynne Payer. This author was a medical journalist, originally from the States, who worked in Europe. When she had a certain medical condition, she discovered that the diagnosis was more or less the same in France, West Germany, the U.K., and the States. But the therapeutic strategies differed among the four nations. This was not because one country was more scientific than another, but because the four medical cultures had different values and different philosophies of medicine and science.

An ethnographic approach

Also in qualitative research methods, we often make good use of ethnographic practices, e.g., face-to-face interviews, focus groups, and participant observation. In the latter practice, the ethnographer participates in the life of the people that she or he is studying, and so has a close-up view of their behavior and the values which guide their behavior. This is extremely valuable for understanding other cultures. Ethnographic work sometimes uses quantitative analysis, but not necessarily.

Thick description

The fourth foundation stone of qualitative methods is called thick description. Events, behavior, values and other considerations are described in great detail so as to capture and present all the nuance and context which helps one understand what is going on. When thick description is done well, it reads like a good novel. Except that it is non-fiction. This is too much for some readers to appreciate: it lacks the spare logic of problem-hypothesis-experiment-conclusion. But when it is necessary to understand human events, behavior, and the values which guide them, thick description is the way to capture the nuances and context which connect those phenomena of human behavior.

The work of Clifford Geertz is the gold standard for thick description, but one can find this approach in many parts of the humanities. In my own case, I explored the question of whether Richard Feynman’s 1959 talk, “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”, was the origin of nanotechnology. My paper required a great deal of nuance and interpretation, and I could not answer that question without writing thick description.

Mixing methods

I should also say that qualitative research methods can sometimes articulate with quantitative research methods. In the social sciences, there are historical, comparative, and ethnographic methods, plus thick description, which can help the quantitative social sciences, e.g., sociology, political science, and economics, to formulate testable hypotheses about human behavior. When the two approaches are synthesized, this is social science at its best.

And finally

Finally, it should be mentioned that not all science is quantitative hypothesis-testing.

Stephen Jay Gould’s 1986 paper, “Evolution and the Triumph of Homology”, explains that one ordinarily imagines that “science” consists of hypothesis-testing experiments, based on the well-established understanding of the Scientific Method. But Gould then reminds the reader that there are the historical sciences, e.g., paleontology and historical geology, co-existing with experimental sciences. The historical sciences have different research methods, and different standards. Those standards, according to Gould, are anatomical homologies [especially the forelimb homology of mammal skeletons], seriation [i.e., patterns in which organisms undergo observable changes, usually from simple to complex], and vestigial structures.

This last standard indicates that anatomical parts which are anomalous in the present, e.g., the human appendix or the panda’s “thumb”, are evidence that conditions in the past were different. And these standards of the historical sciences do not necessarily answer to quantitative hypothesis-testing because the scientists cannot go back into the past to manipulate variables. It is satisfying indeed when hypothesis-testing science contributes to the historical sciences, but that is not their primary method.

Considering that our friend who asked about research methods in the humanities is an astrophysicist, I would like to mention that some of the work of astrophysics may seem more like the historical sciences than the experimental sciences: there are limits to which astrophysicists can manipulate an independent variable in outer space for the purpose of discovering how that affects a dependent variable. If there is an anomaly in the orbit of a planet or asteroid, then this can lead to a hypothesis that there is another body which causes the anomaly. And that hypothesis can be tested. But when the age or distance of a star is derived from its position on the red shift, then this is a form of seriation, or a style of reasoning very close to seriation.

Because there are limits to which astrophysicists can manipulate an independent variable in outer space for the purpose of discovering how that affects a dependent variable, it must be recognized that dating a star by using its red-shift position is much closer to the historical sciences than to the experimental sciences.

I hope this helps.

The post Comments on qualitative methods in the humanities and social sciences appeared first on Making Science Public.

via Making Science Public http://bit.ly/2L7ORhs

[dianamjackson]

Use the Force Luke (2015)

This was a piece I wrote in 2015 during one of my break-ups with visual art (specifically drawing). We got back together again after this, then broke up again. Now it looks like we regard each other as long-ago lovers might: ‘you’re beautiful and lovely but I’ve moved on, thank you.’ I always recall how Duchamp quit art and took up chess, or how Carrie Fisher’s husband left her for a man... Drawing will always be in my life, albeit in a smaller role. But this piece isn’t about drawing or art -- it’s about waking up and realising you’ve been wrong about something (or someone), even when it seemed, for all intents and purposes, so right. It’s about having the courage to accept the way things are. (Italicised text not in quotation marks constitutes my 2018 responses.) ‘Luke, you switched off your targeting computer. What's wrong?’

‘Nothing. I’m all right.’

And indeed, I am all right too. Why? Because last Monday, on the 6th of July 2015, at around lunch time -- I quit art.*

There are many reasons for this and they have recently become impossible to ignore. The main one being:

“I’m just not that into you.”

Imagine your whole life you’ve been told you are straight. You acted straight, felt ‘straight enough’ and had heterosexual relationships. Sometimes you even quite liked it. Then one fine day, clear as a bell, the fantastical insight, quite without warning, alights upon your head: you’re gay.

That’s what I feel like now. I don’t know that I’m gay, but I know I’m not straight.

*Well, quit the pursuit of art as a career fine artist in the conventional sense. There are other ways of ‘being artistic’.

It was truly a lightbulb moment, just like in the movies. ‘Ah! This weight I’ve been carrying around -- I don’t have to! It was self-imposed, a chore all along. Bubbling under the surface always was I do not want to be a fine artist. I do not want to be an artist. I don’t feel like an artist. I mustn’t be an artist… These people are artists. Am I like them? In my life thus far, great things have happened when I’ve ‘let go’, when I’ve stopped trying feverishly to attain something -- particularly goals I’ve set myself. I thought that was the way to achieve things -- set goals. What I didn’t know was how powerfully something could take possession of me from the outside, without me controlling it.

Over the years I’d managed to find a peace and inspiration in visual art like a gay man can in a relationship with a woman. A disquieting pebble in my shoe whose persistent rubbing I’d gotten used to. Pride was resident in the boast “I’ve been at this for 28 years!” How can I ignore a thing with such pedigree? But The Thing isn’t about time spent; it isn’t quantitative. Say I have spent my entire life in bad habits -- is that an excuse to continue them? If I flatten a tyre do I get out and flatten the other three?

Doing art is boring. For me. Sitting in a room all day and into the night -- even if accompanied by a functional heater and Wagner -- sinking deeper into a miasma of pointless and circular introspection about my life and how it’s going, the validity of what I’m doing and my relationships with others as I laboriously render a 5cm square of paper -- let me tell you now dear reader -- the answer is a foaming, blazing, sparks-flying-out-of-my-ass No.

Yes, I draw very well. I can copy things I see because I can judge relative size and position of shapes, and relative colours and their intensities. I can draw steady lines 1/8th of a millimetre thick or less because I have SHARP PENCILS, a STEADY HAND and FINE FINE MOTOR SKILLS.

I’m an excellent copyist. I can imitate anything -- painting styles, real-life objects, your signature, your accent, your walk, even your voice. Copying has a certain thrill, for sure. “Yep, I can do that too.” A fleeting and superficial pride attends these feats. Then come the cheap requests: “Can you draw a photorealistic drawing of my dog/my girlfriend/my parents/my face?” “No.” “I’ll even pay you!” (Gee, how nice!) “No.” People ask me would I like to be an artist full-time. No! That would be horrible. Or just boring, which is a soft kind of horrible, but horrible all the same. It would be like being an invalid, or under house-arrest. No.

Aptitude is a mysterious thing. I have good taste, a fairly broad range of interests and I am curious. I like colourful and shiny things because I am human and geared to like these things. But all these, even combined with technical ability, are not sufficient. I always recall what my illustration teacher said to me when I was 14: ‘Your technical ability is at Year 12 level. Now all you need is something to say.’

Art doesn’t make sense to me and perhaps that’s what held me in its thrall -- I’m drawn to things I don’t understand because they’re a challenge. But the fact that there are no answers at the end, nothing to discover -- frustrates and depresses me. It leaves me cold. What’s the point of playing a game if there’s no consensus on what constitutes winning? It is still true that I’m drawn to things I don’t understand. However, I now disagree that there is “nothing to discover” in art. On the contrary -- it is indistinct enough to include almost any interpretation. Instead, perhaps it is its lack of precision that frustrates me -- I find writing is much better at nailing concepts. Art’s openness is hence both its strength and weakness. I was enamoured of science at the time of writing this piece; confirmation bias was certainly at work.

To Feynman, philosophy was stupid. To me, art is stupid. This is uncharitable and myopic, but in a certain sense I do believe it. Art is ‘dumb philosophy’, and philosophy is ‘dumb science.’ I’m not the first person to advance this idea. Amazingly, the hierarchy has for me flipped: at the bottom is science, which is just a procedure; then philosophy, which grapples with concepts; then art is at the top. Art’s preeminence is due to the fact that it doesn’t try to be philosophy (contra Danto; if art tries to be philosophy, it’s just philosophy). Art is its own project; it doesn’t give a fuck about anything else.

I refuse to spend my life troubling my head over something I feel obliged to do mostly because other people think I should. Did I ever stop to consider my true feelings on the matter? Curiously, no.

A trip to Europe or an art show that appeals to me usually engenders a furious period of inspired production. I want to ‘do’ the buildings and spaces that I saw -- capture them, own them, possess them. But this is the consumer’s passion, the gatherer's, not the artist’s. And I do them because I can. I don’t care about innovating in art; I just like making pretty things that soothe my eyes. I'm a jeweller; a confectioner; a traditionalist. An enthusiastic cake-decorator, a polisher and tinkerer. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve attended exhibitions in the past several years, and when I do it’s often only because a friend wants to. I am not part of any artistic community, and I hardly ever buy art books (certainly no instructional ones). Art theory I don’t mind, and generally my choices are non-fiction -- philosophy or science. Perhaps I think art can tell me nothing that I don’t already know or feel; or at least that there are other disciplines and activities far more qualified to do those things.

I spent my entire design degree trying to figure out what design was. What is this thing? Why is it? How does it fit in the disciplinary landscape? How is it possible to judge designs when the assessment criteria is so unclear? Perplexing things are like this -- they make sense to other people. My classmates seemed to melt so easily into what needed to be done. I also felt different because of the importance they placed on personal style -- I was always merely practical and thought such effort misdirected. So while they got off on paper stocks, central alignment and thick-rimmed glasses, my head spun from the Boudrillard, Barthes and Žižek that eventually led me to academic philosophy.

Little signs along the way hinted at it -- an early and enduring love of vehicles and machines, a lack of respect for the ‘anything goes’ attitude in high school studio arts, confusion in my first degree, an impatience with teaching art and much of my cohort, a frustration with the general character of my peers in experimental art and music circles, a persistent fascination with science, taking a job in dentistry, the conspicuous lack of artists among my closest friends and a preponderance of scientists, software engineers and psychologists. There aren’t even any architects among my close friends. Most conversations with 'artists' remind me of Zappa's recordings of stoned hippies talking gibberish on Lumpy Gravy.

And the boredom. Oh the boredom. Only retrospectively do I realise how deep my boredom was, and all the troublesome and potentially damaging things I did to try and alleviate or ignore it. In Hungarian there is a perfect saying -- pihent agyu -- meaning those whose minds are ‘overly rested’, which translates roughly to ‘idle hands are the devil’s plaything.’ Boredom, pride, lack of courage to assert my true inclinations and desires -- such deadly sins muddied my time.

This is one of the most significant realisations of my life, and it has taken me this obscenely long to acknowledge it in full. One can set out so obviously in a particular direction, for so long, and for all intents and purposes look set for success in it. Everything can seem perfect: the tables are laid and the ribbons hung, the champagne poured. But patterns and intuition must be heeded -- the tiny, persistent voice that tickles closest to my heart -- even if it means the whole party must be packed up. The truth is often uncomfortable, but it's true.

One needs to truly love the thing one sacrifices for -- it has to fill the spirit in a way almost nothing else can. It’s a compulsion so strong and lasting that all else is employed in its service. Then it is worth it. It has to be what one wakes up for, the thing that is so thrilling that spare moments are spent on it and one’s person is filled with an almost embarrassingly unguarded glee when the loved thing is spoken of. Did I have these for art? No. It was more that odious thing that I owe to friends and family who are so impressed by my abilities and, in the case of parents, facilitated them.

I feel empowered; awoken. I’m taking up the oars and steering across the lake, headed for the unknown. It’s been easy to be passive, letting myself be tossed this way and that by the currents of outside opinion and counsel. It’s been easy to retreat from hard work out of fear and laziness. But these will no longer do.

I wash my hands of you, flickering cave pictures. I place you in a little boat laden with flowers and candles and push you out into the blue. May you be pampered and stroked and coddled by those you truly thrill.

May this be a lesson to any person trapped in the visions -- however convincing -- that others have concocted for them.

May this be a lesson about the perils of lacking the courage to face the uncomfortable, the surprising, or the merely inconvenient, truth. © Diana Szabo 2015-18.