Round the Herne

  My reading (a first draft, I will re-record this as an audio when my throat has recovered) of Lovecraft's short story "He" (1925). The way he describes New York in this story, as a place made very alien to him, is largely how I feel when making very infrequent visits to London. The idea of a metropolis being built over formerly sacred (or unhallowed) sites is a familiar one and this keys in with ideas I have been exploring in Folklore Studies - the academic examination of folktales. One particular idea has been drawing my attention, that of ostension. Aside from its more regular meaning (of presenting something to the attention of others), in folklore terms ostension is how either reality imitates folklore (such as when people try and do something they have heard about in a folktale or urban myth - like going down the sewers to hunt alligators) or when they deliberately create a new tale such as starting rumours about some dilapidated house being haunted and then others...

This is another in the series of meandering druidic philosophical reflections (for once not in the kitchen), this time contemplating the nature of language and what we understand by the truth of words. A brief bit of Wittgenstein (but not so much as to make your brain bleed). I'll probably follow up on this at some stage in the future, and see where the musings on linguistic determinism go to.

The English language has many curiosities, which sometimes interact with psychological theory. How we describe our own or define other people's identities is one of those areas. English does not tend to distinguish between enduring and transient states when it comes to matters of identity. I am ginger. I have always been ginger and, whilst it's possible I might one day be grey-haired or bald, the rest of my body will be decidedly ginger. Given the attitudes of wider society to us red-heads, my hair colour has become very much part of my sense of self. It's more than a mere hue, defines me far more than does my eye colour. I am middle-aged. My sense of age is, sadly, also a part of my identity. I wish it wasn't, but that's a separate issue. Despite what some people might tell you, I wasn't always middle-aged. Once upon a time I was young! If I keep on drawing breath one day I will be old, maybe even ancient. To define someone by their age using the same languag...

The meaning of life is a topic that has taxed the greatest (and the least able) minds since the dawn of human existence. It was brought to mind again recently in a discussion with a friend who suggested that having a meaning to one’s life was vital to good mental health. Numerous psychologists, philosophers and scholars agree both a sense of purpose, and the degree of spiritual reflection that precedes finding a purpose, are highly beneficial. It is better to have a sense of why you are here than to merely trudge from day to day in a largely pointless routine. In fact, many have argued that just having a purpose in itself is actually far more important than the exact nature of the purpose. One of the key questions in the matter of meaning is the source of that meaning and what is actually more than a linguistic nicety ~ do we discover the meaning of our lives, or create it? That is to say, is the meaning already determined (whether by a god, Wyrd, karma or anything  else) and ...

A life long devotee of Doctor Who, I have watched the final episode ('The Name of the Doctor') twice now and have all sorts of ideas whizzing round the Space-Time Continuum that passes for my mind. I am making concerted efforts not to give away any spoilers lest my reader not have seen it yet, however I was quite struck by a throwaway line towards the end of the episode in which the Doctor states that a name is a promise, a commitment (talking about choosing to call himself Doctor, rather than whatever name he was born with). Whilst there was quite a lot of Christian imagery in the show during Russell T Davies' reign (rather odd, considering he is an atheist), there has been and remains a certain amount of pagan imagery in the show ~ the living sun in '42' for example, and if 'Love and Monsters' wasn't based on a pagan moot then I don't know what it was based on. In many ancient cultures it was common for people to be given (or sometimes chose fo...

Teaching both literacy and psychology sometimes brings collisions of thought. In English emotions are treated as abstract nouns, states of being in and of themselves... which may possibly be an accurate assessment of emotions as internalised experiences. However, would it be more constructive to consider emotions as verbs, that is to say actions? The English are stereotypically stilted in their expression of emotions, and maybe in part this is because of how we conceive of emotions in the first place. It's all well and good saying you love someone, but does this express itself through loving action? What do you actually do to make your love more than just a word in your head? If an emotion never leaves the realm of the abstract, is it really worth much of anything? Clearly a mental state may develop over a long period of time before culminating in action ~ probably few rapists go out and commit their crimes after a mere 5 minutes of considering them. Most have likely indulged in v...