Tag: time

Philosophy Now’s Question Of The Month

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In the earliest days of this daily thing I’m doing, this experiment shall we say, I made suggestions for things I would write about. One suggestion was to answer a question from a magazine I subscribe to and don’t read enough of, Philosophy Now. It involves an evil and confusing question roughly every two issues which means four months and I think I may have answered one at some point on here although I think I didn’t give much of a shit to make it decent as I knew I had missed the deadline for entering. This one though I’m going to enter. I’ll still write it on here in my usual half arsed and rushed way first though just aware that I’ll be sending it in too.

Does History Progress? If so, to what?

Time certainly progresses. I feel slightly older today than I did yesterday. Of this I am fairly sure, or at least I have convinced myself of this truth. In that case yesterday is now history and the day before yesterday is older history. Yesterday though, the day before wasn’t as old as it is now. However is that history progressing, it still feels the same now as it did yesterday just a little fuzzier. Perhaps it’s evolving but that’s my memory that’s evolving not necessarily history itself.

What is history though if not just a series of memories. Even the version we write down only captures one take on events and that is open to interpretation. What happens when this version loses it’s appeal, the fashions of the modern age deciding they don’t like the historical narrative and give an event a new one. Surely then it has progressed to something new. Again it has evolved, but does that mean it has progressed. We must looked then at our understanding of the meaning of progress. To advance, to go forward. These are positive notions surely but histories changes don’t always feel positive, advanced or even evolved sometimes. What happens when they go sideways or backwards. Hitler made changes to the history of his country while he was in power, did they progress? For him they did, but now history would suggest otherwise.

So history can make subjective progress? Again that’s a version of an event. Objective history on the other hand cannot, but then we can’t say there is such a thing as objective history. It is only ever a story and someone must always be around to tell that story. So subjectively history progresses, but to what? I guess that depends on whatever the subject decides they want it to. Or we just accept it will always change into an infinite amount of possibilities and the change itself can subjectively be called progress. Not in the moving forward sense of course but in the something other than it was five minutes ago sense.

And that is my answer. I find them quite challenging if that’s not clear by now. I’m sure the one I did before was a little bit of a ramble with too many rhetorical questions too. I suspect rhetorical questions are not always a good thing, or at least too many of them. The other approach is to make it dry and over explain but you’ve only got a maximum of four hundred words and the other answers people tend to send in are not formed in that way. Like everything it is simply practise, everything is always practise.

A Night In The Life Of Lockdown Pizzas

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Kick off is at five and I can see people outside at the door trying to get in. I used to have it closed but unlocked in the half hour before I began and as I did my prep but it soon became evident that people were keen on disturbing me in search of cake, pies and bread. As I’m more concerned with wanting to do my prep than help them not wait half an hour, the door is now locked. I avoid their pleading, desperate and starved eyes. I chop tomatoes. I realise everything else is still plentiful from last night. Pizza base count – only twenty. It’s Wednesday, twenty is probably enough. Prep done. Time to make eye contact and make the shrugged sorry shoulder gesture, spin my hand with pointed finger to signify the turning of something – in this instance time – and hold up five fingers for five o’clock. I wonder if they’ll come back in five minutes instead.

First person through the door decides to make a bad joke about getting a receipt just to check I didn’t put £300 through instead of £3 before waiting uncomfortably for the receipt. I decide not to put her out of her misery and tell her there’s a £45 contactless limit. It’s not because shes distrustful she wants me to know as she laughs nervously. I realised I haven’t cut any mushrooms and don’t have many pizza bases pre-passatered, perhaps starring at hungry customers trapped outside was not the best use of my time. I’m starting to feel a little heartburn from the sliver of walnut cake I just had, working in a bakery is not good for my health. First pizza takeaway sale and it’s two double cheeseburgers. I was vegan once.

My mate has just turned up with some official Lockdown Pizzas merchandise. It’s only taken four months and we close in less than three weeks but I’m now proudly sporting a red T-shirt with Lockdown Pizzas in black on the back and a black hoody with the same on the back but in red. They’ve put a space in Lock down but at least it’s spelt right. This might not be a co-operative or upholding any of the ideals I like to still believe I hold but it’s always good to be sporting the red and black. The fact these colours hide most of the likely ingredients I’ll cover myself in is simply a bonus.

…

That didn’t quite go to plan. I was hoping to have time to write a quick paragraph of each hour but the night turned out pretty busy and as it’s just me heroically working away, I barely got a chance to think let alone write anything. I’m sure there were all sorts of witty observations all throughout the night but they’re now lost in the ether of nothingness and non-existence. Unless time isn’t linear of course which would mean they’re happening now and always, both of which concepts wouldn’t exist either surely. I digress.

I messed up two orders tonight. One I realised I had done so as I put the pizzas in the boxes, vocalising my realisation as it came to me with an “Oh fuck” which was followed by me looking at the man and his asking quite intuitively whether I had forgotten the chips. He was fine about it, he could see how busy I was. The other time was right at the end I was probably about fifteen minutes late but they were fine about it too as they could also see how busy I was. People can be alright sometimes. It’s quite refreshing for this not to be a piece complaining about or making fun of customers as would be expected. Coincidentally with tonight being a night I attempted a running commentary, we actually sold out for the first time. Usually I have loads of bases in reserve but a mixture of me being slow to remind the guy in the bakery who makes them and him being slow to make them meant tonight was a special night. Amusingly the only person I had to turn away though was the actual guy who makes the bases as he thought he would pop in for one on his break. He says he’ll make one hundred for me tomorrow.

We have less than three weeks left and it will be the end of this little experiment. I’m alway keen on trying new things and now that I have a tshirt, hoody and scooter – which was only ever used a handful of times – I’ll probably have to come back next year and do it again. Saying that, this holiday I’m planning can’t come soon enough. There will be a lot of sleeping.

The Inquisitive Child

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It would be appealing in the moment to say an important lesson had been learnt today. In a way one was but perhaps not the obvious and straightforward one. You see, I did something silly. Although that’s one way of looking at it. The other is that today I discovered something new which makes it a great move all round. If you’ve been following this blog you’ll have heard me refer to all sorts of different jobs I do, one minute I’m working in a bakery, the next I’m renovating a house, and then I’m making pizzas; I may have mentioned others but I forget, anyway the point is that yesterday while stripping wallpaper in the flat next door I discovered a CD-ROM. For younger folk this is a something that was commonly used in a previous decade to put files on computers before we all got fast internet. It turns out putting random CDs into computers is not necessarily the best idea. My laptop stopped working and then wouldn’t load up properly. The lesson learnt then would be not to put random CDs into computers. It’s a bit like telling a curious child not to taste everything they see just incase it has a new exciting flavour.

In moments like this though I prefer to focus on the favourable positive elements of a story and the lessons learnt. Did I learn never to put random CDs into my laptop again? Well in a way yes, but seeing as I’m typing this now there must have been a happy ending. You see I managed to open up the back of my laptop, take out the drive and manually remove the CD. My computer then loaded up perfectly and seemingly all is back to normal. But it’s not normal because I have the added satisfaction of fixing a problem and of learning something new. Is that the lesson learnt? Well again kind of but that’s hardly a lesson in the metaphorical sense. My favourite type. So I learnt not to taste random things I find, but I didn’t really because I’ll probably taste them again. And that’s what’s important. The inquisitive mind should never be caged. Why would you not want to know what was hidden inside something random you find. I’ve found some cool stuff in my life. Maybe it’s a sign I lack contentment but that urge to discover that takes me on adventures to foreign lands also seems to make me see what’s on random CDs I find under old carpets. To recognise there is discovery in every little thing. Maybe understanding that leads to more contentment in a way. Who knows, except time. Time knows everything.

Forever the child tasting new discoveries. I hope that never changes.

What Is Your Price?

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How much would it cost for you to….? Is a game played by adolescents and usually not a very pleasant one. Does everything have a price though? That is the question. I heard our time being discussed in this way once; to work out if your job or whatever it is that takes up you time was worth it. You must put figures on the various things you do so let’s say part of your job required climbing in drains or hurting kittens, what would you need to be paid to do that. You then throw in whether the time away from home is sufficiently recompensed, how much would it cost for you to not get home until after you children have gone to bed for example. In that case you are being asked to put a value on an element of raising the children. Do the benefits outweigh the costs. Ultimately that is how it equates to everything, do the financial benefits of climbing in drains outweigh the grim costs of stinking of shit. Something like that though we can get used to but can we put enough of a cost on never seeing our families and growing distant from our wives.

You can take it a step further. A fracking company wants to come into your community and hydraulically frack for natural gases. Now you know that will potentially cause damage to the local water and risk earthquakes, what cost would you put on those inconveniences. How about they offer you two hundred thousand pound, thats a decent sum of money, would it be suitable recompense for risking your water being polluted to the point you can’t even shower in it? It’s possible you may just use a fraction of that money to buy a rain water catcher and use that for showers, problem solved. How about if this company also pollutes the river which you use to catch your fish to survive on. What kind of price can you put on that? Is there a price to having one of your few sources of food and water damaged, life changing irreversibly. Does that price change when you have children and realise they’re not going to be able to catch the fish to survive off. At least you have cash in the short term, but really if it affects your whole existence then was that worth it.

If you had asked someone prior to the industrial revolution when work was less regimented and you did what was required while also having a higher level of self-sufficiency all round; whether they would sacrifice their time and freedom for the benefits the industrial revolution has created, there is no guarantee they would accept it. What is the price you put on you time. We work forty hours per week, if not more but for what. We may gain from many things but we also lose out on many others, all these things we have put or had a price put on for us. What price would you put on the continued destruction of this earth, and would it change if that was in regards to what price you put on that for the suffering of your children. If there is a price for anything then surely there is a price for that too. Can we really put a price on progress when it isn’t clear that we even know what it is.

Bureaucracy

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A bureaucratic nightmare is a phrase that you may not have said yourself but will have certainly heard said by someone else in a usually less than positive moment. Bureaucracy is one of those things that we all just love to hate. We spend three days filling out a one hundred page form to apply for a foot test or a visa to a foreign land, and bemoan the complete and utter waste of our time. At least you can enter those foreign lands I hear someone saying. Anyway when four months later we receive back a notification that we forgot to fill in Section 17 Subsection P which can be found by following the link printed at the bottom of the last page and will now have to pay a fine of four hundred and forty-nine pounds or be banned from ever filling out forms again, we forget about the waste of time, rejoice and decide now is the moment to finally tear down the state. We’ve all been there.

I’m going to Ireland for Christmas, how lovely. The dog will be coming along and it appears that despite Ireland being rabies free, she needs an up to date rabies jab if she wants to come with us. I can confirm she wants to go. Fair enough I hear you say. What I don’t understand is why she needs these things. I can understand requiring them coming from mainland Europe as this is an island and it is about keeping various diseases out, such as rabies in this case. However I don’t need any pet documentation to go to Northern Ireland, which while still being part of the UK is also coincidentally still part of the island of Ireland. I suspect very few people within the island of Ireland give much of a shit about taking their pet passports, or even getting one if they’re going back and forth over the border so what really is the point.

It makes zero logical and practical sense as it can be circumvented so easily which means it must be down to some political bureaucratic nonsense. This will be some EU law or regulation cooperative states abide by and I dare say this could be an easy moment to rant about the EU if I was that way inclined. That though would miss the point, this is more symptomatic of State, governance and institutional power. Regulations protect and eat away at liberties in different often polarised ways but we’re dealing here with the ultimate trip – time and money, and what they mean for power – bureaucracies most honoured of friends.