One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day.  Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel.  None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch.  And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones.  And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

-Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident

the art of losing's not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Of course you've changed, you've changed, your mind's been rearranged

Every Summer, the same thing happens: the structure lent to my life by school crumbles apart and friendships are suddenly exposed to the harsh light of our human failings - laziness, selfishness, fear, disinterest. We strive to believe the lies we tell each other - "I miss you", "I can't wait to be with you", and the like -, but these are shown to be a sham by our lack of actual effort to share and communicate with each other. 

It is my fault as well, I am not a hopeless victim of circumstances beyond my control: I know I tend to live very much inside my own head, and that I often choose to stay home reading something interesting instead of going out (mostly, this is a passive choice of not inviting people to go out, not an active choice of refusing invitations). And then, of course, friendship requires effort. It must be nourished and fed, otherwise it dies away in a surprising short time.

And then there is that sickening little jolt when you are walking up the stairs in the dark, expecting another step where there isn't any, and you feel, for a milisecond, that you're doomed. Poof! Your friends? Gone. Strangers with the same physical appearance - often not even that - have taken their place, and look at you through bleary eyes, and new tonalities fill their voices as they talk of the distant land of their lives.

You can just picture them, at that moment, following the small steps of some sterotypical existence which fits their social position and apparent disposition. Sure, you wish them happiness, but in an empty way which is not at all like the personal, shared fever of the "once upon a time" of that particular friendship.

Maybe the issue here is that, in our personal relationships, we tend to suppose others - and yourself - will stay the same, so that you can carry on sharing indefinitely. It is part of our ever-present desire for immortality. But life is not a museum, and people will always be swerved in different directions by diverging pressures, and make different choices. In this way, they will take different shapes: the "self" is not fixed, it is simply the sum total of experiences and genetic background. 

I suppose it is a good thing that the Summer gives us a chance to get some perspective on our relationships, to analyze other people's behaviour and to decide if we want to let them go or cling to them. The lack of the artificial constraints of school life gives freedom to make these important choices. This year, as school is gone for good, the perspective I get is particularly unclouded; and I know that, from now on, all the friendships I have made will require even more effort to stay alive.

Still, it does not fill me with joy to be disappointed, to find faults which I cannot overlook and which stop me from trusting, and even make me question if I ever knew them. I don't like losing people; but it is unavoidable. 

Idler Wheel's Lyrics

As I have been listening more or less on loop to Fiona Apple's The Idler Wheel... (you can read some of my thoughts on it here), and I always connect to music through the lyrics, here are 10 favourite lines from this album (in no particular order):

• "He makes my heart a cinemascope screen showing the dancing bird of paradise" Hot Knife
• "While you were watchin' someone else I stared at you and cut myself" Valentine
• "I guess I just must be a daredevil I don't feel anything until I smash it up" Daredevil
• "I can love the same man and the same bed and the same city but not in the same room it's a pity" Left Alone
• "How can I ask anyone to love me when all I do is beg to be left alone?" - Left Alone
• "I ran out of white dove feathers to soak up the hot piss that comes through your mouth every time you address me" - Regret
• "The pain comes in like a second skeleton trying to fit beneath the skin I can't fit the feelings in" Every Single Night
• "My breast's gonna bust open/ The rib is the shell and the heart is the yolk/ I just made a meal for us both to choke on" Every Single Night

Freedom and Rationality

Imagine a world where there is no poverty; imagine a world where all people are free to satisfy their desires; imagine a world where society is organized in such a way that all people are satisfied at all times. Does it make you uneasy? It will if you read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, one of the prime examples of one of my favourite literary genres - dystopian fiction (other brilliant examples are George Orwell's 1984, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, and Lois Lowry's The Giver, which is good for younger readers as well).

A dystopia is, to put it bluntly, an utopia gone wrong. In this type of fiction, the reader is confronted with a world which incorporates many features humans have strived to achieve throughout the ages, and shown the consequences (ranging from unpleasant to revolting) of the application of those ideals. The vision of human nature is generally quite bleak - these are not hopeful books. Their appeal - which is great, in my opinion - comes from giving us, in a distorted mirror, an image of our own society and of its failings, while stimulating our imagination, human empathy and rationality. These books clear your view of the world and lead you into philosophical reflection, for you are forced to think about what exactly is wrong with the society portrayed, about what makes us human, and about your own set of values, in a courageous way, by following a trail of thought to its last consequences (which is what the authors of these books do: they take a set of ideals and picture what a society based on them would look like).

Brave New World is based on full, perfect State control of individuals based on the use of scientific knowledge and industrial power (the writing style is very evocative of this reality, with a strong use of scientific language and decidedly unspiritual words in the modernist descriptions). Actually, I would say that there aren't individuals in this society, only member of a social class, conditioned and trained to perform a specific role. Everyone is happy - their each and every desire is satisfied in their social condition, for they were conditioned to desire only what they would get. If we take a naive definition of freedom as "lack of obstacles to do what you want", this society provides perfect freedom. But, intuitively, one feels that what is portrayed is the opposite of freedom, and that this world is not one of human beings. So, two connected questions ask themselves:

1. If freedom is not "lack of obstacles to do what you want", then what is it?
2. What makes us human?

These two themes are beautifully explored in Martin Hollis's Invitation to Philosophy (one of the books in my Philosophy reading list). 

About Brave New World, he says:

...the system engineers people with just the wants which it suits the system to satisfy. But, if freedom really is just the power to satisfy wants in a stable and lasting manner, (...) Brave New World may well be more efficient at preventing unsatisfied desires and, hence, be more free. For, by the test proposed [freedom=lack of obstacles to get what yo want], a happy slave is freer than a frustrated citizen.

To avoid this result, one must insist that there is something amiss with the wants of the happy slave. They are coherent, well-ordered, realistic and satisfiable. So why is the slave not free? The answer has to be that there is a test of freedom independent of their present wants and their achievement. Curiously, happy slaves are unfree because they could not satisfy wants which they do not have.

It appears, then, that freedom may be seen as the power to do what you would ideally want to do - freedom has a moral content, which suggests that there are wants which are essential to freedom, i.e., that freedom is not an isolated ethical value and is thus part of a wider model of humanity (Hollis calls this a positive idea of freedom). This leaves us in a difficult position: freedom and humanity imply each other, but what are they exactly, and how can they be reached? To answer, we need to determine what are the wants required for freedom, or, in other words, the values on which humanity is based. This means we are now searching for universal ethical foundations or principles. 


This is no easy task - in fact, it may prove to be impossible. First of all, there may be no such thing as universal ethical principles: we know our ethical judgements to be deeply influenced by our social, cultural and historical context, and it is possible that it actually determines all our ethical system. Though I don't deny the influence of the context we live in, I personally believe there are universal (human) values: these are based on the essential human ability to feel empathy, that is, to imagine we are in a different person's place and how we would feel in their situation. This is still rather vague, but it is a starting point, a kind of "ethical axiom" on which we can hope to build a system which leads to a solid understanding of the concepts of freedom and humanity.


We can restate this 'principle of empathy' in a different way: the desire to get close/connect to other human beings in a basic human want. It is obvious that the characters that populate Brave New World are lacking in this aspect: their desire for immediate (and easily available) pleasure makes it impossible for them to build deeper relationships, which take dedication, and always include pain (at the very least, when they end). We can say that their inability to look ahead and to endure unpleasantness - their lack of self-discipline - is their downfall, keeping them from emphasizing with others. And where does this feature come from? It is precisely from their conditioning, in other words, from their context (which is, in Brave New World, even more aggressively permeating than in our own society). For the good of society at large - a consumer society - people are stimulated to consume feverishly, and thus to have nothing lasting, including their relationships.


A new question appears: we now start to wonder if we aren't as conditioned as these characters in our own society. Are our thoughts, and therefore our lives, truly ours? Or are they the unavoidable result of outside factors? This is a re-statement of the ever-lasting problem of free will. This is not a closed question: actually, I doubt it is answerable. I won't go into it at depth now, so I will just connect it to a point I have already made: one of the most chilling features of those who populate Brave New World is their inability to stand back from present desires, precisely because that means their minds aren't active in choosing the path to follow, so they are not free to decide. The mind is active to the extent it builds a web of belief, that is, it constructs a view of the world taking input from the inner and outer senses. I we are to have free will, therefore, the mind needs to take an active role in dealing with this input.


These observations all lead in the same direction: by acknowledging that the mind plays an active role, we find that the ability to 'step out' of ourselves by using our imagination is essential to humanity. In this context, freedom can be reached by rationality, that is, by the ability to analyze a situation and decide what to do using the insight gained by 'stepping out' of the present moment. By learning and thinking, we free ourselves; if we want to keep free in a society which constantly appeals to immediate pleasure, we must keep questioning and searching and probing deeper into reality. 

Food for Thought

Yesterday evening I went to a great lecture at the Champalimaud Foundation, where a brilliant team of neuroscientists organises regular events for a lay audience. They never fail do be illuminating, and I always leave feeling inspired to think more, and in a different way, about our brains and about the world - after all, one of the great advantages of studying basic sciences (as one of the speakers mentioned yesterday) is their power as a source of analogies. 

Yesterday's event was on food and on our complex relationship with it, which is based on our biology (we need food to survive, and our organisms are wired, due to natural selection, to keep the right balance of nutrients), but goes far beyond it, including psychological, social, economical and cultural factors. There were three amazing speakers (after the introduction): 

• Carlos Ribeiro, a researcher at the Chamapliamud Neuroscience Program who studies how neuronal systems respond to metabolic needs to ensure survival and reproduction; 
• Paulo Morais, a chef who takes inspiration from Japanese food;
• Stephen Simpson, a researcher at the University of Sydney whose work on modelling nutrition has deep implications in a wide variety of areas (such as ecology and human health). 

One of the things which, in my opinion, make these events so extraordinary is the fact that there always are several speakers from different areas: it really helps you get a wide perspective on the topic, and get to new ideas by connecting the different perspectives presented. 

Carlos Ribeiro spoke of his work: using fruit flies, his lab group studies the mechanisms that determine what animals choose to eat. It turns out that fruit flies - and it was suggested that we may extrapolate these results - choose according to their nutrient requirements at the moment: if they are on a protein-rich diet, they will choose carbohydrates (in humans, this would be the "there's always space for dessert"effect); on the other hand, if they lack protein, they will choose to eat food that contains it. This suggests that flies have a protein-detection gene. Another interesting aspect they are studying is the relation between mating and food choices in female flies: mated flies tend to choose protein-rich food and virgins prefer carbohydrates (insert cheap pun here if you want...). Much the same way, this suggest there is a "mating-gene". Based on these observations, they use genetics to identify how flies make these choices and what parts of their brains are involved. He spoke with passion and clarity, giving the audience insight on how research is done (both on the methods used and on motivation and way of thinking).

Paulo Morais spoke of his career as a culinary chef. I really liked getting to know the variety of factors which affect his decisions while cooking - it really is an art! His presentation showed how food is about much more than satiety and taste. 

Stephen Simpson told a tale of cannibalism, ageing, obesity and death - it sounds like a gory horror film, but it was a gripping exploration of revolutionary research in nutrition, very persuading and engaging, clearly thought-out and based on solid evidence. Continuing with the initial theme Carlos Ribeiro had introduced (namely, protein vs carbohydrates), he introduced his thesis - the proportion of protein is a/the determining factor in a diet (diet = what we eat, not some absurd attempt at weight loss by, say, eating only onions), much more so than counting calories. When we don't get enough protein, we over-eat carbohydrates and fat because our organism is searching for protein, which is our only source of nitrogen (and therefore essential), thus storing up fat. He showed a lot of evidence in favour of this conclusion, in different species of animals and also in humans, and explained the way the experimental studies were set up. He also exposed connections between protein intake and fertility and lifespan.

In my opinion, the only thing that was lacking was the presence of someone ho approached food from the perspective of economics and social science, because it is obvious our relation with food is an example of relations with consumer goods in a capitalist society, and both hunger and obesity are caused by economical circumstances. On the other hand, the event would have been by far too long!

Afterwards, there was delicious - and free! - pita bread, chocolate and drinks. It was truly an inspiring evening, and it left me with a lot of food for thought. The next Ar event - on mind tricks/magicians - is on the 5th of July, and I will definitely be there!

If you want to read more about this topic, I recommend checking the following links:

Appetisers for Food for Thought

Sweets for Dessert after Food for Thought

Why Our Food is Making Us Fat

This Is Not a Test

My Maths exam is tomorrow. I am so bored of sitting around doing past papers all day long that I am actually glad to do it so that it will all be over! At the same time, I am a bit nervous: I want to do justice to the huge progress I have made in Maths during the past three years. I have a tendency to take exams too personally, I think... which is why I like listening to the song This Is Not A Test before exams - it is a great feel-good song that reminds me that I am not being judged as a person in an exam. More generally, it reminds me to stop stressing over getting to goals, and to take the present in more (it doesn't do to never be where you are physically...).

(I also appreciate the irony of the fact that yes, it IS a test that I am going to sit tomorrow - so listening to this song also leaves me with a smug little self-contented smile)

For those of you who tried but didn't make it
Settle down, it's never what you think
The summit doesn't differ from the deep dark valley 
And the valley doesn't differ from the kitchen sink


For those of you who thought you'd be forgotten
The friends you've made will try their best to make it so
Think of all the beauty that you've left behind you
You can take it if you want it and then let it go

In the meantime, let's just listen to the song a few times and think of how free we will be once it's over. Besides, aren't She & Him an absolutely adorable duo? 

Their songs are all very simple, sweet and uplifting. Hipster fluff, I suppose; but I like them. Zooey Deschanel is, incidentally, one of my favourite pop figures: she's terribly pretty (those blue eyes!), has a great fashion style, and she both acts and sings! It helps that 500 Days of Summer is one of my favourite romantic comedies.

So, She & Him: a musical suggestion to help you feel chirpy and laid-back.

Rookie, or power to teenage girls!

I have recently started reading Rookie (thanks to Anahita's recommendation), and it has been a fabulous form of procrastination - I have lost far too much time reading its numerous articles on a wide variety of topics, so now I have to justify myself by explaining just how awesome this magazine is.

First of all, it is the project of a fifteen year old girl (yes, fifteen, you read that right) called Tavi Gevison - a smart, cultured, witty fifteen year old who is neither smug or condescending, and is pretty much the epitome of cool. There is a bubbly excitement and sincerity to all the articles, whether they are about real life situations, advice or pop culture, that makes you feel like you are talking to friends who you admire; aesthetically, it is also a triumph of coolness.

I am generally not a fan of girls magazines - actually, I look down on most of them, for they choose to talk to women as if our only interests were make-up, shoes and clothes, vacuous celebrities and getting a boyfriend (most of all getting a boyfriend, which should apparently be every self-respecting girl's single, desperate goal in life). It is a prime example of misogyny in the media: the image of women promoted by these magazines is one of frailty (in all levels) and submission to male authority, all under a cover of pseudo girl-power.

On the contrary, Rookie takes a truly empowering and inspiring line. It does include style tips and eye candy, but as part of a broader palette of self-expression, and giving centre stage to diversity (the models aren't all stick-thin, there are a variety of different styles on display, and the focus on how you ant to look, not how you should look). The same applies to the real-life advice given, which, in my opinion, is very positive and relevant to teenage girls' lives. As for the cultural sections, they truly set this magazine apart: they are often quite long and in-depth, showing engaged personal perspectives, and lead you to tons of quirky/fun/interesting/thought-provoking material.

The result? Teenage girls shown as interesting, diverse, socially and culturally engaged individuals. Prettiness, insecurities, personal discoveries, all play a part - after all, feminism must, in my opinion, be about women of all ages being able to express themselves freely - but it is made clear that women have so much more to give than that. Rookie makes this point brilliantly, and it is an excellent magazine of girl empowerment.

My Philosophy Reading List

Now that I have done the Portuguese exam and there's only the Maths one to go (on Thursday), it is time to start thinking of other, more interesting things.

A few months ago, I was sent a reading list for Philosophy, which I found tremendously exciting. I had never been sent a Reading List before, and it made me feel I was stepping into a bright future of discussion and learning. Besides, I was very glad to have an excuse to buy (and read) more philosophy books.

This is the list:

• A.J. Ayer The Central Questions of Philosophy (Penguin)
• Simon Blackburn Think (Oxford University Press)
• Martin Hollis Invitation to Philosophy (Blackwell)
• Thomas Nagel What Does It All Mean? (Oxford University Press)
• Bertrand Russell The Problems of Philosophy (Oxford University Press)
• Roger Scruton An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Philosophy (Duckworth)
• Peter Singer How Are We to Live? (Prometheus)
• Gottlob Frege Foundations of Arithmetic (Blackwell)
• Mark Sainsbury Logical Forms (Blackwell), especially Chapter 1
• Douglas Hofstadter Gödel, Escher, Bach (Penguin)
• Stuart Shapiro Thinking About Mathematics (Oxford University Press)
• AW Moore The Infinite (Routledge)

I have already read a few of them  (slowly and carefully: taking notes, re-reading harder passages, extracting the main concepts, trying to draw connections between different authors' ideas, making up my own mind, building my own arguments...) and I will read the rest throughout the summer.

To help me take some more from the texts (you can always take more from books!), I will start a sort of blog series of reflections inspired by each of the books. This may include summarizing ideas, reviewing and comparing them, exposing arguments, or whatever I feel inspired to do and think helpful in preparing me for University. My aim is also to show how beautiful and fascinating the open questions and non-dogmatic, fiercely rational approach of philosophy are, so that hopefully you will also feel motivated to read some of these (or others) and to think philosophically.

The role of exams in education

Studying for exams leaves me feeling intellectually drained, unable to entertain myself through my usual inner monologue formed by an endless succession of speculative questions connected to each other. That aimless mental wondering - strolling along wise ideas of past thinkers, suddenly finding insight in a strong turn of phrase, jumping from one idea to another by deduction, induction and analogy, sprinting wildly to a different area of knowledge, pausing to breathe and draw conclusions, climbing by supporting myself in my set of axioms and mental framework, reaching some new formulation of an idea that seems breathtaking and then dissolves into thin air, leaving an exhilarating dizziness - is one of my greatest playful joys, but it is at the moment impossible. The thought of exams, always at the back of my mind, acts like a straight jacket on my imagination and reasoning. I have to format my mind to certain types of question and straight, narrow, dim mental pathways, the ones required in exams. I force-feed myself revision topics and past papers.

Why? I can't really justify my own behaviour. I know time would be better spent exploring new, challenging ideas than drumming into myself things I already know, but I have a sense of duty in relation to school that acts as a brake on my mental energy. I wish I could be less of a perfectionist/ masochist in my relation to what I still perceive to be my job - actually, in relation to everything. On the other hand, this drive to succeed in whatever, even if rationally I know that pursuit is not important (connected to feelings of guilt if I don't), helps me reach goals that later make me proud and happy.

I hope that, in the following years, my work will be exciting and demanding, so that I feel an appetite for studying that is connected with increasing my knowledge of the world, instead of just being about performing according to expectations. I like liking to study, because I believe it is fundamental in gaining true understanding of reality, but this type of close-minded training is just a tedious wait for the moment when our work will be measured against standards of conventionality.

I am not against exams. I think that it is important for fairness that there is a way of levelling students nation-wide based on the same standards. Some people argue that, since we have different natural abilities, it is unfair to measure everyone in the same way. In my opinion, this doesn't hold: someone who is unable to do a somersault (like me) is simply not on the same level as an Olympic gymnast, even if the difference is due to natural ability. The abolition of exams wouldn't abolish differences between people, it would just lead to pretending they don't exist. But they do, and we must know what each individual is able to do (and how does his or her performance compare to others' in the same group) to choose people for specific roles they will take in society. 

What I do support is that the roles taken by people should not be determined by where they are born and how much money their parents have: fairness is based in giving equal opportunities to all, which implies a much, much bigger state investment in the education of people from disadvantaged backgrounds, and (of course!) a marked redistribution of income. I have no ideological objections to differences in natural features - actually, I believe a diverse society is healthier and produces more, because new ideas are usually the result of the confront of different perspectives. 

To put it clear: I think there should be exams. However, they are just a measuring instrument amongst others: they should never be seen as the ultimate goal of education. Maybe I am just a hopeless romantic, but I strongly feel that knowledge, an ability to think critically, to express yourself and to participate in the world are the point of education, and that its ultimate goal is giving freedom (and responsibility) to individuals, so that each is able to pursue happiness and contribute to society. 

This should never be forgotten, but unfortunately there is at the moment a tendency to see education as a path to exams, which are, in themselves, absolutely sterile. Consequently, both students and teachers become alienated and lose motivation. Obviously, this effect is biggest in students who had, due to social circumstances, less motivation to begin with. Therefore, in these circumstances, exams are an indirect factor of social exclusion. 

The general conclusion is that exams are important in evaluating people fairly, but that they should never be at the core of education - people and knowledge should, with the goal of producing a fair society of free individuals. In practical terms, this means less time should be spent in training students for exams by doing past papers or learning irrelevant details on specific topics; instead, students should be encouraged to fully understand what they are studying, to probe deeper, to ask questions and to look for answers in an independent and creative way.

The personal conclusion? I need to improve my ability to relax and put things in perspective, so that I can use my time in a more productive and healthier way. My priorities shouldn't be determined by an education policy with which I disagree.

I just want to feel everything

Fiona Apple's The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than The Driver of The Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do - the title is a metaphor on the importance of things that go unnoticed in our own lives - is one of my new musical addictions.

Similarly to the rest of Fiona Apple's music, it is a brilliant, uniquely powerful expurgation of the ugly, petty feelings that so often take control of our relationships and progressively tear us apart. It is stunning in its biting, raw nakedness: listening to it seems to awaken all your senses and stimulate the feelings we so strive to keep under control. 

I love her thick, feverish voice, dripping with sarcasm and rage, the unconventional violence in the piano, the primitive beats in the background. The lyrics are filled with strong, often sexual or disturbing imagery, violent self-awareness and a corrosive sense of humour - they are an hallucinated punch straight on your face. At the same time, it feels like you are finding power to fight against everything you hate, and to finally, finally embody your own self (that undefined, contradictory construct) in the face of the whole world. Strength and vulnerability annihilate each other in a glorious cathartic explosion.

Check out the surreal video to Every Single Night:

Every single night
I endure the flight
Of little wings of white-flamed
Butterflies in my brain
These ideas of mine
Percolate the mind
Trickle down the spine
Swarm the belly, swelling to a blaze
That's when the pain comes in
Like a second skeleton
Trying to fit beneath the skin
I can't fit the feelings in
Every single night's alight with my brain

(...)

I just want to feel everything

You can listen to the full album here - what are you waiting for to start obsessing over Fiona Apple?