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Monthly Archives

February 2008

Mysteries

The Case of the Bottlenecked Bicyclist

by Dr. Mark Dillof February 29, 2008October 12, 2018
written by Dr. Mark Dillof
The Case of the Bottlenecked Bicyclist
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In my previous blog posting, I offered an example, from my own life, of what the philosopher Martin Buber calls a sign. We must remember that a sign is not an objective occurrence that holds the same meaning for everyone. When the Thou of the universe speaks, according to Buber, it is for your ears only. I mention all of this in the hope that you will become more attuned to the signs that are desperately seeking to speak to you.
bicycle.jpg
I shall now offer another example. I’ll preface my remarks by saying that a few years ago I had been very concerned with the question of how to be more effective with my philosophical counseling. I found that my clients would often reach a certain point in their self-development and then become stuck. I pondered why this was so, and what could I do to help them to become unstuck. The answer, if it was a sign from above, took the form of a rather odd incident. Once again, it involved an encounter with the feminine, only this time not in the form of an old newspaper photograph, but of an actual woman on a bicycle. I suspect that Sophia, the goddess of wisdom, can transfigure herself into just the right incarnation, as a teaching device. I wouldn’t put it past her. And so here is what happened…

A few summers ago, on a Saturday afternoon. I was taking a leisurely walk to a neighborhood cafe that was hosting a music festival. I was almost there, when I heard a woman bicyclist, in her young thirties, with bleach-blond hair, calling to me for help, from the across the street. I crossed the street, whereupon she showed me that she could not ride her bicycle home because a plastic bottle of Pepsi had gotten wedged between the front wheel and the frame of the bicycle. I asked her how it had gotten there. She explained that she had been riding with a small plastic bag of groceries, which included the plastic bottle, hanging over handle bar of the bicycle and when the bag hit the wheel, the bottle miraculously got lodged there, bringing the wheel and the bicycle to a standstill. I then tried to dislodge the soda bottle. I pulled and tugged for a few minutes, but it was absolutely stuck. The problem was that I couldn’t get a good grip on it, for only the tapered side with the cap protruded, and only a few of inches.

Then eureka! The solution dawned on me. I asked her permission to turn the knob of the bottle, emptying the contents. She agreed. I opened it and the soda quickly sprayed out like a fire hydrant. It was then very easy to dislodge the deflated bottle. She was relieved and thanked me. At that moment she took out from her shopping bag another bottle of Pepsi. For a moment it seemed like she was going to offer me some, but instead she took a swig before placing the bottle back into her shopping bag. She then lit herself a cigarette.

She expressed to me a combination of perplexity and astonishment that she had not arrived at the solution to the bottle problem herself, for she certainly seemed intelligent enough. As we talked, I too became perplexed over why the solution hadn’t occurred to her. At that moment, I knew that I was entering into a mystery. Here, again, was what Buber called a “sign,” this time taking the form of a rather odd incident. What, though, was the Thou saying to me?

I previously stated that I had been concerned with the problem of counseling. How could I help people who were stuck? Here, then, was the answer to my question. I can only express what I saw as an extended metaphor: What retards us on our journey through life is our attachment to the mother. I do not mean “mother” in the literal sense. I mean it in the way that the psychologist C.G. Jung meant it, as a symbol, or an archetype, for a certain reality that we we seek. The mother symbolizes life as sweet, easy, no work, a free ride. The sweet soft drink, that the bicyclist was carrying home with her, symbolized her attachment to the mother archetype.

The cosmic irony of the situation was that the very thing that she hoped would make her journey through life an easy one (symbolized by the bottle of soda), was what prevented her from getting anywhere in life, quite literally. The reason why the solution did not occur to her was that giving up mother (symbolized by letting the soda pour on to the concrete) was the very thing she was unwilling to do.

And so that brings us to the question of why people are stuck. Not everyone is stuck for the reason I suggested, but a great many are. Quite often, the mother wears the aspect of comfort and security. A man or a woman cannot leave a job they hate because the corporation for which they work promises to take care of them. A company like IBM then becomes “Big Mama.” On a more universal level, the mother symbolizes those habits, routines, and ways of seeing life that we know are long outmoded and which feel very confining, but which we cannot abandon. We cannot abandon them because they feel comfortable and secure, as is the realm of the mother.

I realized that to help my clients get anywhere in life, I would need to encourage them to throw away away their bottles, whether they be baby bottles, soda bottles, or liquor bottles. It would mean for them, symbolically speaking, to kiss mom goodbye and leave home. Again, I am speaking symbolically, not about one’s real mother, but about the mother archetype. As to how I have finally been able to help my clients to leave home is another story.

February 29, 2008October 12, 2018 3 comments
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Mysteries

The Case of the Blown Newspaper

by Dr. Mark Dillof February 29, 2008October 20, 2018
written by Dr. Mark Dillof
The Case of the Blown Newspaper
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There is a force in the universe — whether we call it God, the light of truth, or by some other name — that is continually trying to communicate with each of us. Whatever it may be, it does not speak English. Rather, it communicates through signs. At least, that is the term that the philosopher Martin Buber used. Buber did not offer examples, but I would say that a sign could be, for example, a haunting dream, a message on the side of a bus that communicates far more than it was intended to, the look of a child, or a wrong turn down an unfamiliar street. I shall offer here an example of a sign, from my own life.

It was about twenty years ago, around 1988, on a windy day either in late February or early March, that I took my car into a service station to be repaired. It was located on one of Binghamton’s oddest looking dead-end streets, inhabited by a newspaper recycling business, a motorcycle shop, a plate glass repair, a Howard Johnson’s restaurant, and other such commercial ventures that looked like they hadn’t changed the slightest in the last fifty years. Rather than calling a friend or a taxi, I decided to get some exercise and walk home. Perhaps, it was the setting sun over the odd looking landscape, but I was beginning to get a feeling of being alone, unknown and unrecognized. Whatever fame that I had sought, over the years, had eluded me, and I felt “in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes.”

To return home, I had to cross Route 17. There is a long and narrow pedestrian bridge that crosses over that highway. I got about halfway across the bridge when I saw a sheet from an old newspaper. I can’t remember whether it was from the Daily News, the Post, or the Herald Tribune, but I do remember that it was from the early 1960s. How could a paper from that long ago could have gotten there, and why hadn’t the elements destroyed it by now? I conjectured that, somehow, it must have blown there from the newspaper recycling plant. Why, though, would it take them about 25 years to recycle a newspaper? Maybe it had accidentally fallen behind one of the recycling machines, and hid there. I still have no idea.

I picked up the folded sheet of newspaper and started reading it. On the inside was a Broadway gossip column, perhaps by Earl Wilson or some other journalist popular back then. It had a photo of a beautiful Latin singer and dancer. The article said that this rising star would be performing at the Copacabana or some similar venue.

As I read through the article about the singer, I was knocked over by a wave of emotion, which I can best describe as a sublime sense of life’s transiency. Whoever the beautiful Latin singer was, she was now in her fifties, and her nightclub appearances had probably long been forgotten. It put the painful sense of my own obscurity into perspective, for everything is eventually blown hither and yon by the winds of time. The feeling, though, was not heavy or depressing, but sublime and liberating. And so, Buber is right — there are signs that are heaven-sent and the wind had blown one to me, in the form of an old newspaper. And, in an act of grace, the wind then blown away my sadness and regret.

Part Two, of the Case of the Blown Newspaper

I shall preface my remarks by stating that a revery, or daydream, can sometimes be even more powerful and insight-laden than a dream. Reveries are very brief, and so we are most apt to forget them, which is unfortunate. In any case, I had completely forgotten about discovering the old newspaper, on the bridge, for over twenty years had elapsed. But only last year, which was 2007, something occurred that evoked that memory.

I was slated to offer a few non-credit seminars, at a local community college. Along with courses on yoga, PowerPoint, and Chinese cooking, were my popular philosophy seminars. The dean of the college was sure that they would be a big hit and so, on the page where my seminars were listed, she included a large photo of me. A lot of people in town received the course catalogue and saw the philosophy seminars, and my photo. I received a goodly number of compliments about the photo, along with promises that they would surely be attending the fascinating seminars. Yes, I had achieved minor celebrity status, very minor as it turned out.

Two days before the seminars were to run, I received a telephone call from the dean’s secretary. All three courses were being canceled, due to inadequate enrollment. Ah, another disappointment! Tired, I lied down on my couch. As I was drifting off, I had a reverie, which lasted perhaps a second, but was intense enough to make me jump up from the couch. I saw myself on the very bridge that I had crossed some twenty years back, on my way home from the auto-repair shop. In the reverie, I was halfway across the bridge, when I picked up a very old community college course catalogue, with yellowed, crumbling pages. On it, I saw my photo, along with the blurbs of the seminars that I had been slated to teach! The sublime feeling returned, only it was more powerful this time, for I was not viewing the photo of the Latin singer, but a photo of myself. I remembered, then, that no matter how successful I become in my teaching and counseling, everything that I accomplish is still subject to mutability and decay, and may end up like papers scattered to oblivion by the wind.

That insight has not diminished my efforts, for no one can foresee from whence and to where the wind may scatter the seeds of spiritual renewal. Thus did the wind blow through my soul, rekindling my inner fire.

“Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophesy! O, wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
— Percy Bysshe Shelley

“The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.” — Bob Dylan

February 29, 2008October 20, 2018 0 comment
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MysteriesObsessions & Compulsions

The Mystery of Bobby Fischer’s Madness

by Dr. Mark Dillof February 29, 2008October 12, 2018
written by Dr. Mark Dillof
The Mystery of Bobby Fischer’s Madness
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The chess champion Gary Kasparov recently wrote an interesting book entitled “How Life Imitates Chess.” Yes, life does imitate chess, but the real appeal of chess lies in how very different it is from life. To understand that difference is to understand Bobby Fisher. Edward Rothstein, of the NY Times, provides us with a clue in that regard: “But there is still something about Mr. Fischer’s craziness that is closely connected with the essential nature of chess…The world itself, with its more messy human interactions, its complicated histories, its emotional conflicts, can be put aside, and attention focused on an intricate bounded cosmos.” The real world is, indeed, messy and chess, by contrast, has a logical purity, clarity and lucidity. What, though, is the connection between Bobby Fisher’s longing for logical clarity, as embodied in chess, and his paranoia?

Paranoia is, essentially, a desperate effort to make sense of what is unintelligible. It is an attempt to find meaning and coherence in a world in which, in the language of Yeats, “things fall apart; the center cannot hold.” Consider conspiracy theories, which are the stock and trade of the paranoid. It is, for example, absurd to think that a lone gunman, a worthless loser, can have a major effect on the course of history. It is absurd, because it defies logic that a small cause can produce a gigantic effect. But that is precisely what happened when Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President Kennedy. The paranoid cannot accept the absurdity and so conceives a conspiracy theory of gigantic proportions to give meaning to an event, where meaning is lacking. When Fisher’s world was confined to chess tournaments, it was the Russians who he accused of cheating at chess and thus conspiring to defeat him. When Fisher’s world extended beyond the chessboard, he accused the Jews. He remained a conspiracy theorist throughout.

How very different, then, chess is from life. Generals, who fight real battles, are acquainted with “the fog of war,” for in war one is surrounded by a great many uncertainties and surprises. Most often, the victor is the side who makes the least blunders. In the game of chess, by contrast, everything is clearly laid out on the chessboard. Life really imitates poker far more than it imitates chess, for in poker you do not know what cards your opponents are holding. Nor do you know what cards you will draw. But chance, luck, and contingency are absent from the game of chess. That has been chess’ universal appeal, and it certainly was that for Bobby Fisher who, in flight from this messy affair called life, became addicted to chess.

Brian M.Carney, in an article in the “Wall Street Journal,” noted that Fisher, from early on, nurtured a sense of grievance. Indeed, the essential narrative of paranoids is that they have a just grievance. That narrative is accompanied by feelings of self-pity, anger, and bitterness. No narrative is more baleful to the development of character and morality. (It is, by the way, the predominant mood of radical Islamics.) The sense of grievance was the poison that increasingly polluted Fisher’s soul.

As to whether Bobby Fisher was clinically paranoid is anyone’s guess. It is clear, though, that his way of seeing the world was indicative of what the historian Richard Hofstadter called the “paranoid style.” That, alas, was both the source of Fisher’s power as well as his downfall. When he saw his enemy to be the Soviet Union, he became supercharged for battle, for a Manichean worldview is key to the paranoid style. After all, life is most often full of messy moral ambiguities. It is a relief to the paranoid to see the world in black and white, like the pieces on the chessboard. (Of course, the Russians have always acted politically to lend credence to the saying “Sometimes paranoids are right.”)

But for Fisher to have to defend his chess title was not congruent with his paranoid narrative. After all, the other side of paranoia is delusions of grandeur. When a person knows himself to be the greatest — and with some justification, for Fisher was an incredible chess player — he has nothing to gain, but everything to lose. Thus Fisher refused to defend his title, in 1975, against Anatoly Karpov, and lost it by default. That proved to be the beginning of…

 

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February 29, 2008October 12, 2018 0 comment
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MysteriesObsessions & Compulsions

The Mystery of Mountain Climbing

by Dr. Mark Dillof February 29, 2008October 12, 2018
written by Dr. Mark Dillof
The Mystery of Mountain Climbing
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My thoughts on mountain climbing were sparked by the recent death of a brave man, Sir Edmund Hillary. Along with his Sherpa, or guide, Tenzing Norgay, he was the first to make it to the top of Mount Everest. With all the discussion and encomium, there wasn’t any analysis of why anyone would want to climb Everest or any mountain, for that matter.

An earlier and fatal attempt to climb Everest had been made, in 1924, by George Mallory. When asked, a year prior to his ascent, why he wished to climb to the top of that mountain, Mallory famously said, “Because it is there.” It is apparent, then, that he had no idea as to his motivation, and neither do other mountain climbers. Some have suggested that it is the desire for fame that prompts a person to climb mountains, but that explanation is lacking, for many people have risked life and limb seeking to climb previously climbed mountain, knowing full well that it would gain them no fame.

What, then, is the explanation to this mystery? I believe it was the great scholar of comparative religion, Mircea Eliade, who suggested that to reach the peak of the mountain is, symbolically speaking, to stand at the connecting point between heaven and earth, between the sacred and the profane. We find this symbolism in the Bible. God speaks to Moses when he is at the top of Mount Sinai. Standing at the peak, one has connected, in one’s very being, these two great polarities of human existence.

Reaching the peak is, therefore, a symbolic surrogate for having found meaning in one’s life. After all, meaning is that which links our everyday activities to eternal values. Meaning, in other words, connects earth and heaven. So great is the longing to make that connection, that symbolic images of making that connection appear.

 

Standing at the top of the mountain is one such image. For symbolism to have its power it must operate unconsciously, which it does. Standing at the top of a mountain is a symbolic image of the state of being, or reality, that we wish to attain. There are many other such images. Do you have a symbolic image of true reality? Is it flying? Diving? Is it walking at the bottom of the sea?

February 29, 2008October 12, 2018 0 comment
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MysteriesThe Zeitgeist

Premier Post: Greetings and Welcome! What’s in a name?

by Dr. Mark Dillof February 29, 2008October 12, 2018
written by Dr. Mark Dillof
Premier Post: Greetings and Welcome! What’s in a name?
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Deeper questions.com is my second effort to invite people into the depths, via the web. My previous website was called ”the philosophy clinic.com.” It took me eight years to realize that it was not a very appealing name. There may be a handful of intellectuals for whom “philosophy” has a cachet, but, in the United States, at least, the word is most often associated with abstruse and irrelevant bull, and often rightly so. Or else it evokes memories of discussions about Plato or Descartes, in a college classroom. But college philosophy is about the history of philosophy; it is not philosophy itself. It’s just as well, for the real thing is powerful and dangerous. Indeed, I had considered calling this website “dangerous questions.com,” but I didn’t want to scare everybody off, at least not just yet.

And, so, what’s in a name? Apropos, is the name change of J.K.Rowling’s first Harry Potter book. In Britain, it was titled “The Philosopher’s Stone. When it came to the States, the publisher shrewdly changed it to “The Sorcerer’s Stone.” That new age ideas, like sorcery, are more appealing than philosophy says something about the zeitgeist: it is anti-reason. The present age believes that the route to true knowledge is through feelings, intuition, will, magic, drugs, or other non-rational means. Some would trace the devaluation of reason and analysis back to the 1960’s, to the youth counterculture. Other scholars trace it roots to 19th Century romanticism (The Reason, the Understanding and Time, by Arthur O. Lovejoy.) And still other scholars tract it back to the anti-Platonic nominalism of the Middle Ages (Ideas have Consequences, by Richard Weaver). I might add that those who, seeing the limits of reason, recommend other ways of knowing, are among philosophy’s profoundest thinkers. Schopenhauer would be an example. In any case, the question here is the sense that the word “philosophy” has for most people today. It is not a very positive one. Alas, Athena, the goddess of wisdom, needs to hire a PR firm.

I’ve abandoned the name “the philosophy clinic” for a second reason. It was misleading. It suggested that I am offering people a new philosophy. On the contrary, I simply help them to delve deeper. After all, a philosopher does not answer people’s questions. On the contrary, he questions their answers. The process leads to deeper questions; thus the name of the website.

Whether we realize it or not, we are perplexed by life’s fundamental enigmas. We are surrounded by clues, which we neither recognize nor understand. This blog, the discussion board, and all else on this website, will be devoted to uncovering and interpreting those clues.

February 29, 2008October 12, 2018 0 comment
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About Me

About Me

Mark Dillof has been a philosophical counselor for over twenty years. You can learn more about his work, by going to his other website, www.deeperquestions.com.

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