In February 1943, Erwin Schrödinger, quantum physicist and Nobel laureate (sharing his prize with Paul Dirac and Werner Heisenberg), gave a series of lectures at Trinity College Dublin, which later turned into his book “What is life? ” This work has been highly influential for a generation of molecular biologists such as Francis Crick, one of the discoverers of DNA.

“What Is Life”?

Less known perhaps is the fact that during his whole life Schrödinger was an ardent reader of philosophy from the East and West. From the 1950s on, when Schrödinger ceased to activelywork on the physics of his time, he focused more on wider philosophical and ethical issues related to science. Back then, his conferences always ended with what he jokingly called the “second Schrödinger equation”: “Atman = Brahman”, the Indian doctrine of identity .

Atman Is Brahman

In 1925, just a few months before Schrödinger discovered the most basic equation of quantum mechanics, he wrote down the first sketches of the ideas that he would later develop more thoroughly in “Mind and Matter”. Already then, his thoughts on technical matters were inspired by what he took to be greater metaphysical (religious) questions. Early on, Schrödinger expressed the conviction that metaphysics does not come after physics, but inevitably precedes it. Metaphysics is not a deductive affair but a speculative one.

“Mind And Matter”

One such speculative assumption (which can neither be proven nor disproven) is the one that there exists an external (mind-independent) world. Another one is the assumption that there exist separate minds. For both claims, we cannot get any empirical evidence: how could we step out of our own experience to check them? But both create insurmountable problems. The first creates the problem of how to think about the relation between these two types of realities (mind-matter). Why does it appear (according to our best science) that we live in a purely physical world devoid of qualities?

The Mind-Matter Problem

The second speculative assumption creates the problem of how to think about the relation between different minds (mind-mind). Why and how are we different from each other? Schrödinger believed that there is an elegant way to dissolve both of these problems by starting with an alternative metaphysical assumption. He did not endorse traditional Western views that go under the names of reductive materialism and subjective idealism, but he found inspiration in non-Western, particularly Indian philosophies.

The Mind-Mind Problem

The “second Schrödinger equation” refers to an old staple of Indian philosophy according to which the self (“Atman”) is identical to the ultimate reality of the universe (“Brahman”), which forms a central part of the teachings of the Advaita Vedânta. Schrödinger was quick to add that this “self” must not be conflated with the individual self but rather refers to a cosmic, universal entity of which individual selves are mere aspects.

Schrödinger’s “Second Equation”

A metaphor that Schrödinger liked to invoke to illustrate this idea is the one of a crystal that creates a multitude of colors (individual selves) by refracting light (the cosmic self that is equal to the essence of the universe). We are all but aspects of one single mind that forms the essence of reality. He also referred to this as the doctrine of identity. Accordingly, a non-dual form of consciousness, which must not be conflated with any of its single aspects, grounds the refutation of the (merely apparent) distinction into separate selves that inhabit a single world.

The Spectrum Metaphor Of The One Mind

Schrödinger drew remarkable consequences from this. For example, he believed that any man is the same as any other man that lived before him. In his early essay “Seek for the Road”, he writes about looking into the mountains before him. Thousands of years ago, other men similarly enjoyed this view. But why should one assume that oneself is distinct from these previous men? Is there any scientific fact that could distinguish your experience from another man’s? What makes you you and not someone else?

There Aren’t Separate Selves That Inhabit A Single World 

Similarly, as John Wheeler once assumed that there is really only one electron in the universe, Schrödinger assumed that there really is only one mind. Schrödinger thought this is supported by “the empirical fact that consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular. Not only has none of us ever experienced more than one consciousness, but there is also no trace of circumstantial evidence of this ever happening anywhere in the world.”

There Really Is One Mind

In the contemporary scientific study of consciousness, many scholars try to circumvent the question of how and why matter gives rise to conscious experience by asking why there seems to be a hard problem in the first place (when there is in fact none): consciousness is an illusionary story that some physical systems equipped with brains tell themselves. While Schrödinger was far from accepting an illusionary stance about the reality of consciousness, in a very similar vein he asks why it seems as if there were a multiplicity of minds, where there is just one mind (the “Atman=Brahman”).

There Only *Seems* To Be A Multiplicity Of Minds. Why?

The existence of many separate minds is an illusionary story that confused individuals would tell themselves. Thinking otherwise leads to the false belief that we are in some sense fundamentally isolated, rather than realizing that we are always connected with other beings (and ultimately also with what we now call non-living matter). Unlike in the hard problem case, there is no empirical evidence to suggest our initial belief is real.

We Only *Seem* To Be Fundamentally Isolated. Why?

An important characteristic of the way Schrödinger approached metaphysical and philosophical teachings was his prudence to uphold a rational and scientific methodology. The “doctrine of identity” cannot be adopted uncritically. We need to incorporate the doctrine into our best science, not throw our best science overboard. In other words, we should adopt a new metaphysics but keep with the scientific method.

Adopt Metaphysics While Keeping With The Scientific Method

Our scientific theories need “a bit of blood transfusion from Eastern thought … [but] transfusions always need great precaution to prevent clotting. We do not wish to lose the logical precision that our scientific thought has reached, and that is unparalleled anywhere at any epoch.”

What Schrödinger sought, what he would have appreciated the most, is a scientific approach to studying consciousness with mathematical precision. An important constraint following from the doctrine of identity for any such theory of consciousness would be that it, in its very basic structure, acknowledges that individual conscious beings are (i) aspects of a higher, unifying agent (rather than being disconnected individuals), and (ii) that the entire collection of such beings constitutes the ultimate nature of reality (rather than being just one among many things-electrons, rocks, or brains.)

Aspects And Constituents

Schrödinger desired a radically monist-theory that acknowledges the reality of consciousness. Given the current theoretical landscape in the study of consciousness, the “theory of conscious agents” seems to fit best with these requirements. It aims for a precise, crisp formulation of what consciousness does, and it proposes that any combination of two or more conscious agents is itself another agent.

The Theory Of Conscious Agents

The theory also seems to be compatible with the idea that the entire collection of agents constitutes the nature of reality, though this requires the theory to come up with a model of how the physical world can arise (and be nothing apart) from this collection.How could this be so? Schrödinger relied on a couple of arguments that have been raised previously in philosophy (e.g. by Kant) but his position boils down to this: what we call the physical world is the result of a process that Schrödinger called “objectivation”, i.e. the transformation of the one self-world (Atman=Brahman).

The Physical World And The One-Self World

Objectivation’s result is something that can be readily conceptualized and objectively studied, hence something that is fully void of subjective qualities. In the theory of conscious agents this amounts to the creation of “interfaces”. Such interfaces simplify what is going on in order to allow you to act efficiently. Good interfaces hide complexity. They do not let you see reality as it is but only as it is useful to you. What you call the “physical world” is merely a highly-simplified representation of non-dual consciousness.

Objectivation And Interfaces

This physical world also appears to harbor a multitude of subjects directed at it. It is the very same process of objectivation, which led to the false impression of an autonomous physical world, that also leads to the fallacy of assuming different forms of consciousness inhabiting different bodies. The quick fix of adding mental properties to a non-mental world would not be able to really solve the problems mentioned earlier. Do we need to label them with a tag saying “individual x”? But then, why are you you and not someone else? How to combine one set of subjects into a higher one?

The False Impression Of An Autonomous “Physical World”

But those problems can be circumvented by never giving in to the metaphysical assumption of the existence of one physical world that is opposed to many separated selves in the first place. According to the theory of conscious agents, the idea of fundamentally separated selves is a useful fiction that arises only if we conflate what we see on the interface with the true reality of non-dual consciousness.

The Idea Of Separate Selves Is (A Useful) Fiction

The theory of conscious agents proposes an interesting answer to Schrödinger’s questions. Why does it appear that we are living in a physical world without qualities? Why and how are we different from each other? Because the dynamics of conscious agents results in the creation of interfaces that hide the true character of reality. We are the same, yet we can appear as different.

Good Interfaces Hide And Simplify

From one perspective all agents combine into a single one which equals a (single) world. From a different perspective, this single agent is equal to a network of distinct agents that all inhabit their own worlds. Which perspective we choose, depends on what we want to explain.

Perspective Is Everything

Although I think that life may be the result of an accident, I do not think that of consciousness.

The task is not to see what has never been seen before, but to think what has never been thought before about what you see everyday.

“The total number of minds in the universe is one.”
— Erwin Schrödinger

Most assume that matter is fundamental, and that consciousness arises out of the complexity of matter. But Nobel Prize winning quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger does not share that assumption. For him, the universe contains a single mind, writes Robert Prentner and Donald D. Hoffman.

philosophy

Philosophy

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

Schrödinger And The Conscious Universe

Catastrophising is the mental habit in which you overestimate the chances of something bad happening and exaggerate the potential negative consequences of that scenario. You apply for a dream job and immediately start visualising a rejection. You wait for a response from a friend, but when you don't receive an immediate response, you start imagining all the ways you might have offended the person. You might assume a bad headache means you have brain cancer.

Catastrophising

Research shows catastrophising can pose a serious threat to mental health. Psychoanalysis, developed by Sigmund Freud and others in the first half of the 20th Century, tackled mental illness by trying to uncover suppressed fears and desires resulting from early childhood events. But by the middle of the century, psychotherapists such as Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck started looking for alternative ways to guide people through their distress. They focused on people’s conscious thought processes that were distorted and could lead to distress.

From Sigmund Freud to Aaron Beck

<ul><li>Personality traits like neuroticism may explain why some people experience catastrophic thinking more than others.</li><li>We may also have learnt our thinking style from family members.</li><li>Our current context may also play a role. For example, feelings of stress and insecurity mean small triggers could tip you into negative thinking.</li></ul>

Why some people experience catastrophic thinking 

It is possible to break the negative thought cycles.  <ul><li>Recognise when your mind is going down a psychological black hole. You might notice that you are feeling anxious about an interview. If your next thought is that you won't make it, you could question the basis for your assumptions.</li><li>If you try to take the viewpoint of an objective observer, you could recognise that failure is a possibility, not a certainty, and that you can take proactive steps to improve your chances.</li></ul>The aim is to develop a more balanced view of the situation based on the evidence at hand.

Breaking the cycle 

Expecting the very worst to happen in any given situation can harm mental health. How do we stop these toxic-thinking spirals?

mentalhealth

Mental Health

Catastrophising: How toxic thinking leads you down dark paths

Each of us discovered a great mind at one point whose writing captures exactly what we think or have been trying to think but couldn't find the right words for.  Yet, the powerful influence of this great mind is so potentially overwhelming that it threatens our ability to think for ourselves. What was supposed to help expand your mind may have closed it.

Thinking for yourself

The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer placed the highest value on thinking for yourself. If we lose the ability for independent thought, then we miss out on a key opportunity to become our authentic, original selves. If we don't think for ourselves, we will also not know what we should do, as opposed to what we are told to do. Schopenhauer was surprisingly critical of the value of reading. He states that reading too much will cause us to fail to think for ourselves, yet, he was exceptionally well read.

Reading and the value of thinking for yourself

Schopenhauer was very clear: ‘Reading is a mere surrogate for one’s own thinking.'Two main problems concerned him:<ul><li>Opportunity cost. When you're reading, you could be thinking for yourself. This is only a problem if the kind of thinking you do while reading is significantly different from the kind you do when you are not reading. </li><li>Originality. Reading inserts foreign thoughts into our own, which never really belong to us.</li></ul>

Don’t use reading as a substitute for thinking

Apart from originality, authenticity and ownership are the primary intellectual virtues that come from thinking for yourself Thinking for yourself enables a special kind of spontaneity, variety and responsiveness to your surroundings.  Thinking for yourself does not force one specific thought on the mind, like reading. Reading has already been organised according to the mind of the author, whereas our own experiences demand that we impose some order on it ourselves.

Thinking for yourself will make your thoughts your own

The ultimate result of thinking for yourself is what Schopenhauer calls ‘the maturity of knowledge’, which is a state of total organic integration between thoughts and experiences. This maturity does not have to do with the power of one's intellect but the organisation of its contents.  Thinking is, at the least, looking at things for yourself. It avoids putting a foreign concept between the mind and the world, otherwise the two will not make contact. Schopenhauer ensured that anything he found in books was assimilated only if he could connect it to experience.

The maturity of knowledge

Schopenhauer was never totally against reading. Seeing the world from someone else's perspective brings our attention to things we simply wouldn't have noticed. Schopenhauer’s real point is that reading is best when it is accompanied by thinking for yourself. It's better to read a little and read it well than to read a lot but do it poorly. When you do read, you don't have to agree with the writers.

Combine your reading with thinking for yourself

Schopenhauer admits that reading is a better way of engaging with another person's mind because the writer's works may be richer in content than his company, the result and fruit of all his thinking and studying.  <ul><li>When Schopenhauer quotes from the authors he read, it is because he takes courage from them, but not content.</li><li>He stresses that this still does not mean we can import literary qualities into our own writing simply by reading them.  Reading shapes us for writing by teaching us the use we can make of our own natural gifts.</li></ul>

Read for company and encouragement in your thinking

Use the limits of reading by starting from where your writers left off.  Allow your favourite authors to inspire you to look at the world differently.

Allow beautiful writing to entice you to think for yourself

Thinking for yourself does not mean you keep it all in your head.   Your original thoughts demand to be put in an external form. It could take the form of writing, a conversation, or even in forms of expression such as visual or musical arts.

Write as a form of thinking

Schopenhauer and Proust can help you find inspiration from your favourite writers while also retaining an independent mind

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Problem Solving

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Product & Design

How to think for yourself | Psyche Guides

Everyone wants advanced knowledge. But it’s typically the basics that matter most.Most math is arithmetic, not algebra. Running a business is largely a matter of keeping revenues above costs. Good writing is the product of clear ideas and clean sentences.All skills break down into elemental components–coding has commands, painting has brushstrokes, comedy has jokes. Mastery of the performance results from mastery of the parts.

We Always Forget The Basics

We ignore the basics, not because they’re hidden, but because they’re so obvious. We don’t think about how to tie our shoes, drive a car, compose an email or complete routine tasks. Thoughtlessness saves effort but inhibits improvement. Bringing attention back to the basics doesn’t come automatically. We adjust our habits only when they fail to deliver results.

Overlooking The Fundamentals

One way to return to the basics is to change the environment. Skiing down a more difficult slope reveals technique errors not noticeable on groomed runs. Writing for an editor receives pushback you won’t get in your diary. Talking on the phone in a foreign language reveals mistakes you could avoid with body language in person.Another strategy is to change your goals. When you set a different standard for what you want to produce, your actions must adapt.Finally, you can find room for improvement by observing and analyzing your work after the fact, like rereading your old code.

Returning To The Basics

Our minds operate with a tight mental bottleneck. We can’t simultaneously apply our full bandwidth to performing a skill and also monitor it for improvement. So separate these tasks–examine your mistakes when you’re not in the middle of making them.

The Bottom Line

education

Learning & Education

You’re Never Too Good for the Basics - Scott H Young

Don’t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.

Solitude is impracticable, and society fatal. We must keep our head in the one, and our hands in the other. The conditions are met, if we keep our independence, yet do not lose our sympathy.

Few substances are found pure in nature. Those constitutions which can bear in open day the rough dealing of the world must be of that mean and average structure such as iron and salt, atmospheric air, and water. But there are metals, like potassium and sodium, which, to be kept pure, must be kept under naptha. Such are the talents determined on some specialty, which a culminating civilization fosters in the heart of great cities and in royal chambers.

Nature protects her own work. To the culture of the world an Archimedes, a Newton is indispensable; so she guards them by a certain aridity. If these had been good fellows, fond of dancing, port, and clubs, we should have had no “Theory of the Sphere” and no “Principia”. They had that necessity of isolation which genius feels. Each must stand on his glass tripod if he would keep his electricity.

We have known many fine geniuses with that imperfection that they cannot do anything useful, not so much as write one clean sentence. ‘Tis worse, and tragic, that no man is fit for society who has fine traits. At a distance he is admired, but bring him hand to hand, he is a cripple. One protects himself by solitude, and one by courtesy, and one by an acid, worldly manner, each concealing how he can the thinness of his skin and his incapacity for strict association.

We pray to be conventional. But the wary Heaven takes care you shall not be, if there is anything good in you.

But the necessity of solitude is deeper than we have said, and is organic. I have seen many a philosopher whose world is large enough for only one person. He affects to be a good companion; but we are still surprising his secret, that he means and needs to impose his system on all the rest. The determination of each is from all the others, like that of each tree up into free space.

Dear heart! take it sadly home to thee,– there is no cooperation. We begin with friendships, and all our youth is a reconnoitering and recruiting of the holy fraternity they shall combine for the salvation of men. But so the remoter stars seem a nebula of united light, yet there is no group which a telescope will not resolve; and the dearest friends are separated by impassable gulfs.

But [man’s] banishment to [a desert’s] rocks and echoes no metaphysics can make right or tolerable. This result is so against nature, such a half-view, that it must be corrected by a common sense and experience […] A man must be clothed with society, or we shall feel a certain bareness and poverty, as of a displaced and unfurnished member. He is to be dressed in arts and institutions, as well as in body garments. Now and then a man exquisitely made can live alone,and must; but coop up most men and you undo them.

On the discrepancy between what we say and what we do, and between what we are under the skin and what we are out of it.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

loveandrelationships

Love & Relationships

books

Books

artsandculture

Society, Arts & Culture

Society and Solitude and Other Essays

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.

He who knows all the answers has not been asked all the questions.

The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

If you make a mistake and do not correct it, this is called a mistake.

Study the past if you would define the future.

Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.

Respect yourself and others will respect you.

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

Wisdom Quotes

<ul><li>The knowledge of what is mine and what is not mine, what I can and cannot do</li><li>I must die. But must I die bawling? </li><li>I must be put in chains – but moaning and groaning too? </li><li>I must be exiled; but is there anything to keep me from going with a smile, calm and self-composed?</li></ul>

Concerning what is in our power and what is not (1)

<ul><li>Man, the rational animal, can put up with anything except what seems to him irrational; whatever is rational is tolerable</li><li>Physical hardships are not intolerable by nature. The Spartans, for instance, gladly submit to being whipped because they are taught that it is done for good reason</li><li>But what about being hanged – isn’t that intolerable? Well, people frequently go and hang themselves, whenever they judge that it is a reasonable course of action.</li></ul>

Concerning what is in our power and what is not (2)

<ul><li>Why should I worry about what happens if I am armed with the virtue of fortitude? Nothing can trouble or upset me, or even seem annoying</li><li>Bring on whatever difficulties you like, Zeus; I have resources and a constitution that you gave me by means of which I can do myself credit whatever happens.</li></ul>

On Providence 

<ul><li>Whenever we do something wrong, then, from now on we will not blame anything except the opinion on which it’s based; and we will try to root out wrong opinions with more determination than we remove tumours or infections from the body</li><li>By the same token, we will acknowledge opinion as the source of our good behaviour too</li><li>And we, not externals, are the masters of our judgements</li></ul>

We are master of our own judgement

<ul><li>Philosophy does not claim to secure for us anything outside our control. Otherwise it would be taking on matters that do not concern it. For as wood is the material of the carpenter, and marble that of the sculptor, so the subject matter of the art of life is the life of the self.</li><li>Nothing important comes into being overnight; even grapes or figs need time to ripen. If you say that you want a fig now, I will tell you to be patient. First, you must allow the tree to flower, then put forth fruit; then you have to wait until the fruit is ripe. </li></ul>

What philosophy professes

Selected writings of philosopher Epictetus 

Contains The Discourses/Fragments/Enchiridion 'I must die. But must I die bawling?' Epictetus, a Greek Stoic and freed slave, ran a thriving philosophy school in Nicopolis in the early second century AD. His animated discussions were celebrated for their rhetorical wizardry and were written down by Arrian, his most famous pupil. The Discourses argue that happiness lies in learning to perceive exactly what is in our power to change and what is not, and in embracing our fate to live in harmony with god and nature. In this personal, practical guide to the ethics of Stoicism and moral self-improvement, Epictetus tackles questions of freedom and imprisonment, illness and fear, family, friendship and love. Translated and Edited with an Introduction by Robert Dobbin

Contains The Discourses/Fragments/Enchiridion 'I must die. But must I die bawling?' Epictetus, a Greek Stoic and freed slave, ran a thriving philosophy school in Nicopolis in the early second century AD. His animated discussions were celebrated for their rhetorical wizardry and were written down by Arrian, his most famous pupil. The Discourses argue that happiness lies in learning to perceive exactly what is in our power to change and what is not, and in embracing our fate to live in harmony with god and nature. In this personal, practical guide to the ethics of Stoicism and moral self-improvement, Epictetus tackles questions of freedom and imprisonment, illness and fear, family, friendship and love. Translated and Edited with an Introduction by Robert Dobbin

Epictetus

Discourses and Selected Writings

“Power dwells with cheerfulness,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. Though we often think of cheerfulness as the opposite of power, as an insincere urge to liven things up, Emerson knew it to be a resource of the self, a tool for shaping our emotional lives that can help to relocate us in the social world and link us to community. At the present time, as we confront wave after wave of bad news sweeping the planet, cheerfulness is worth our consideration.

Power Dwells With Cheerfulness

With cheerfulness, we see a rise in emotional energy, a sudden uptick in mood. It is fleeting or ephemeral, in that it comes and goes. But we can control it. We can “cheer up”, just as we can “calm down”. As the English philosopher Robert Burton put it in The Anatomy Of Melancholy (1621): “expect a little … Cheer up.” Burton’s advice to “expect a little” reminds us that cheerfulness is a modest power. But, as Emerson knew, it is a power all the same.

Cheerfulness Is A Modest Power, But A Power All The Same. 

Perhaps it is because of the modesty of cheerfulness that philosophers have largely overlooked it. They tend to focus on more dramatic emotions such as anger and melancholy, viewing human emotional life as a battleground of unconscious drives or overwhelming passions. The classic example of the man ruled by passion is the Greek hero Achilles. Overcome by his wrath toward Agamemnon, Achilles refused to join his fellow Greeks in the war against Troy, thereby betraying his own duty as Greece’s greatest warrior. Unlike wrath, cheerfulness is largely elective. We can manage it.

Cheerfulness Is Largely Elective: We Choose It; We Can Manage It

It is no accident that the English philosopher Robert Burton mentions cheerfulness in a book about melancholy. In much writing about emotion, cheerfulness is presented as the antidote to the dark emotions of the melancholic. Medical thinkers up into the 19th century assumed that the human body was governed by the circulation of fluids, or humours. Melancholy, for example, arose from an excess of black bile, while certain stimulants were understood to counter melancholy and generate cheerfulness. Other doctors argued that it was possible to stimulate cheer chemically.

The Relationship Of Cheerfulness And Melancholy

Medical thought and practice aside, it is clear that cheerfulness is deeply linked to the body, and, in particular, the face. Indeed, it begins in the face and moves inward. As the French writer Germaine de Staël pointed out at the beginning of the 19th century, when you take on a cheerful expression, no matter what the state of your soul, your cheerfulness moves into the self: “the facial expression penetrates, bit by bit, what one experiences.” The interior of the self is changed by the power of cheer.

The Relationship Of Cheerfulness And The Body

This trajectory of cheerfulness through the self is linked to the history of the word “cheer” itself. “Cheer” comes from an Old French word that means, simply, “face”. The term comes into English and spreads through medieval culture in the 14th century. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1387-1400), for example, people are depicted as having a “piteous cheer” or a “sober cheer”. “Cheer” is an expression, but also a body part. It lies at the intersection of our emotions and physiognomy.

The Relationship Of “Cheer” And Face

In the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation sparked intense debate over the meaning of spiritual community. At the same moment, when the Bible begins to be widely translated into vernacular languages, the simple noun “cheer” expands to encompass the adjective “cheerful”and, eventually, around 1530, includes the more abstract idea of “cheerful-ness”. which turns the local expression of the face into an abstract noun, something that can circulate as an emotional quality of the self.

From Face To Expression, To Mood, To Emotional Quality

In the Geneva Bible (1560), from Saint Paul’s “Second Letter to the Corinthians” we learn that to participate in the Christian community you must practise caritas , or love. “As every man wisheth in his heart,” says Paul, “so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity, for God loveth a cheerful giver.” God loveth a cheerful giver. These words resonated widely across the early modern world, linking cheer – and the face – to the practice of caritas, a social and religious activity.

God Loves The Cheerful Giver (ἱλαρὸν γὰρ δότην ἀγαπᾷ ὁ Θεός)

Commentators on the Bible struggled to grasp the meaning of Saint Paul’s famous phrase. Erasmus of Rotterdam, the greatest intellectual of the day, linked the cheerful body to community, saying: ‘let thy thankful gift be increased and doubled with a merry look and cheerfulness.’ Giving is good. But giving cheerfully is even better, and your intentions may be seen through your ‘merry look’. Conversely, if you are not cheerful (with no merry look), you may not be a true Christian.

Do You Have A Cheerful Self If You Have A Cheerless Face?

The suspicion that to be cheerless maybe meant to be unchristian was held by John Calvin, the great Protestant reformer. He suggested that stingy or reluctant participation in the charitable Christian community is the mark of Catholics, whom he saw as decadent and fearful of papal authority, whereas good Christians give cheerfully, with a glad visage. A bit later, the poet and preacher John Donne extended this idea, noting in a sermon that God gives his holy word to us, “not in a sour, and sullen, and angry, and unacceptable way, but cheerfully”.

Cheerfulness, True Faith And True Face

Modern readers might be struck in these early accounts by the extent to which cheerfulness is much more than the superficial performance of the upbeat colleague or the annoying salesman. A social quality, it shapes and defines a particular moral community. It emerges between people, binding them together. No wonder doctors sought to generate cheerfulness through chemical means.

Cheerfulness (Re)Locates Us Socially And (Re)Links Us Communally

During the European Enlightenment, as the great religious debates of the early modern period begin to wane in Europe, the theological dimension of cheerfulness falls away. Yet its essential social dimension remains, as the characteristic of enlightened gatherings. The 18th-century Scottish philosopher David Hume notes that cheerfulness is a force that is larger than the individual. The individual doesn’t perform cheer, as Calvin had suggested; instead, it envelops him.

Cheerfulness Envelops

Anyone who has ever passed an evening with “serious melancholy people”, Hume points out, can surely acknowledge that, when a good-humoured or gay person enters the room, “cheerfulness carries great merit with it, and naturally conciliates the good will of mankind … others enter into the same humour, and catch the sentiment, by a contagion or natural sympathy.” Cheerfulness is now a “contagion”. Elsewhere, Hume uses the metaphor of the flame to describe how cheerfulness might set a company alight.

Cheerfulness Sets Alight

If cheerfulness is healthy and social, even morally upright, we can understand why the philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson understands it as a kind of power. Cheerfulness can condition our mood, but it also inflects our social being. It is essential to a healthy society. Whoever can control and harness it will possess a rare resource for shaping her emotional life and those of her fellows. For Emerson, the first great moral philosopher of the Americas, cheerfulness informs a well-lived life.

Cheerfulness Informs A Well-Lived Life

In his essay “Shakespeare, or the Poet”, Emerson asserts that poetic genius requires two things. First, the ability of the poet to see natural phenomena as moral phenomena – that is, to turn things in the world into metaphors of our inner lives. The poet turns things into signs that convey “a certain mute commentary on human life”. No less important is a second trait: the poet’s “cheerfulness, without which no man can be a poet – for beauty is his aim.” The poet’s cheerfulness involves his ability to see the beauty of the world, to see things “for the lovely light that sparkles from them”.

“Without Cheerfulness No Man Can Be A Poet”

Emerson’s celebration of the cheerful sensibility brings the social vision of the moralist together with the creativity of the poet. He suggests not only that cheerfulness links people together in communities, but that he who controls cheerfulness can remake the world. Cheerfulness is a psychological and emotional force, originating in vision and sensibility.

Cheerfulness: Vision And Creativity

The turn of the 20th century saw a proliferation of what the philosopher William James called “mind-cure” movements – that is, approaches to living that assumed the influence of mental states on everyday productivity and social interaction. These movements swept cheerfulness along with them. The turn of the century “inspirational” writer Orison Swett Marden, who founded SUCCESS magazine, placed cheerfulness at the centre of his thought. Being upbeat, he claimed in his many titles, has advantages that are both personal and professional. It will make you happy – and it will make you money.

Cheerfulness: Happiness And Money

About the same time as Marden, the Boy Scouts of America published its first handbook, combining advice about such practical skills as how to build a fire in the woods, with moral encouragement toward a better life. The development of the self is governed by a “Scout Law”, consisting of 12 virtues. The 8th of these is cheerfulness. Here is how the Scouts define it: “Another scout virtue is cheerfulness. As the scout law intimates, he must never go about with a sulky air. He must always be bright and smiling… A bright face and a cheery word spread like sunshine from one to another.”

Cheerfulness: A Bright Face And A Cheery Word

Actions seem to follow feeling, but really actions and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not. Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there.

A cheery mood, we might think, is a terribly self-absorbed response to serious times. But history tells us otherwise.

A cheery mood, you might think, is a terribly self-absorbed response to serious times. But history tells us otherwise

communication

Communication

On The Surprising History Of Cheerfulness And Its Subtle Power

Have you ever heard the true meaning of Data Singularity? Don’t look to the other sides, just look at here.

It’s like defining something. A definition is never complete, just contextual.When we define something, it must involve all the possibilities that exist.Example: what is philosophy? Love of wisdom? Contextually correct but not 100% correct. How?Defining what philosophy is, in a perfect way, must be clarified 100%.

Imperfect Definition

That means, philosophy is:<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">loving wisdom,</li><li class="ql-align-justify">doesn’t mean eating lunch,</li><li class="ql-align-justify">doesn’t mean singing children’s songs,</li><li class="ql-align-justify">doesn’t mean chewing gum,</li><li class="ql-align-justify">doesn’t mean drinking coffee,</li><li class="ql-align-justify">doesn’t this & that, … blah blah blah.</li></ul>That’s how it should define something perfectly. All possibilities must be ascertained.If so, then we can never define precisely? Yes!

Perfect Definition

Similarly when someone claims that his reasoning system is complete? It can’t be?That any reasoning formula that has been successfully programmed into a computer to be able to simulate artificial intelligence to match humans? Again, it can’t be. Helping humans? Yes it’s possible, but conquer human? Nope.Because the reasoning formula of any logical system is like defining reality in a narrow way. So only have a limited point of view.

Narrowing Point of View

Then, how can artificial intelligence be able to dynamically approach human analysis? HOW MUCH MORE FORMULA IS NEEDED? OR IS THERE A SINGLE FORMULA?THERE IS NO SINGLE FORMULA! So how many formulas do you need? IT NEEDS AS MANY DIMENSIONS OF TRUTH & DETAILS. WHAT? ️Yes, it takes trillions trillions trillions of logical systems beyond all of them.Beyond Aristotelian logic, induced logic, what else? Beyond symbolic logic? Beyond “Sequent Calculus” Logic? Beyond what’s more? Beyond Boolean logic, Venn diagram logic, tautology? YES, YES & YES!

One or Trillion Formulas

Then how can we do it? If viewed from the singularity, there is indeed a single system, namely the axiomatic system, but how many axioms involved? As many facts as there are. What does that mean?Every axiomatic truth is actually a logical system. So how many items of the reasoning formula are there? As many as axiomatic truth about anything that exist - happening.SO WHAT KIND OF THE SIMPLE LANGUAGE, PATTERNS OR THE MOST ADVANCED REASONING SYSTEM CAN WE USE? HEHEHE …

Quanta Logical System

DATA SINGULARITYHave you ever heard the true meaning of Data Singularity? Don’t look to the other sides, just look at here. [[MORE]]Imperfect DefinitionIt’s like defining something. A definition is...

DATA SINGULARITY

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