Monthly Archives: February 2023

Arts, Mental Health, Psychology

Habit forming: Start small

THERE WILL BE OBSTACLES

SOMETIMES the problem isn’t that you don’t have enough drive to do something but that you have too much. It’s easy to put all your time into starting something new and then burn out, letting the project drop by the wayside because you are tired or want to reclaim some of your time. Or, you may feel overwhelmed by all the things you want to do and not know where to start.

Start small while you are forming your new routine so you are better able to sustain it. Complete one task and stop while you are still excited or have the energy to do more. Your excitement will fuel your motivation, which will in turn keep you returning to your activity and assist in the forming of a habit.

Michael Phelps, the great US Olympian, said: “There will be obstacles. There will be doubters. There will be mistakes. But with hard work, there are no limits.”

No day spent in pursuit of my dream is a day wasted.

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Arts, Philosophy

Philosophy: Purposes in nature

TELEOLOGY

Intro: According to Aristotle, everything that exists has a final cause, or purpose – what in Greek is called a telos. In other words, everything in nature exists to fulfil a goal.

EXPLAINING things in terms of their purposes was not unusual among classical Greek philosophers, but today it stands at odds with our modern, scientific understanding of the world. To our modern eyes it is quite normal to describe a man-made object, such as a tool, in terms of its function or purpose. A hammer, for example, exists for the purpose of pounding in nails. But this is an extrinsic purpose, one that is imposed upon it from the outside. What Aristotle proposed was that everything, including everything in the natural world, has an intrinsic purpose: that is, each thing exists in order to achieve its own ends – its internal purpose. For example, a seed’s purpose is to germinate and become a plant, and trees exist in order to produce fruit.

For Aristotle, it is not only living things that exist for a purpose. Rain falls in order to moisten the ground and enable plants to grow. It is the rain’s telos to water the earth, and the plants’ telos to grow. Their purpose or goal is the reason they have come into being.

More in line with our modern thinking is the Atomists’ assertion that natural things do not have an intrinsic purpose or “final cause”: instead, their existence is the cause of other things. Rain does not fall in order to water the plants; rather, the plants use the moisture that happens to have been provided by the rainfall.

. The Unfolding World

For Aristotle, the essential property of a seed is its ability to grow. That is also its intrinsic purpose: it exists to become a plant, which, in turn, exists in order to produce seeds. Living things are therefore characterised by their tendency to move or change, and to reproduce. And, since all terrestrial things are imperfect and impermanent, beings not only grow, but also eventually perish and decay.

. Causation

Aristotle’s theory of causation is based on his idea that everything has four causes. What we usually think of as a cause – that which makes a thing happen – is what Aristotle calls an “efficient cause”. For example, a person who pushes a rock downhill is the efficient cause of the rock’s movement. The purpose, or “final cause”, of its movement – why it goes downwards instead of up or sideways – is that it is seeking the centre of the Earth. The final cause of the action of pushing the rock is to see how far it will roll. The rock’s movement is also determined by formal and material causes.

Efficient Cause – in this example, the efficient cause is the person who pushes the rock. The rock moves because of the person’s actions.

Material Cause – This is the rock’s physical composition. The rock is made of earth, and so, because earthy things seek the centre of the Earth, it moves downwards.

Formal Cause – The shape of the rock’s trajectory is determined by the landscape. The rock’s rolling and bouncing are caused by the slopes and bumps of the hill.

Final Cause – The rock comes to rest when it reaches the closest it can get to the centre of the Earth – the bottom of the hill.

THE UNMOVED MOVER

Aristotle’s universe had no beginning, but he believed that something must have set the heavenly bodies in motion, since everything is caused by something else. However, this raises two questions: What caused that cause, and what moved the mover of the Universe? Aristotle proposed the idea of a first cause, an “unmoved mover”, responsible for all the motion in the universe.

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Britain, China, Defence, Government, National Security, United States

The Chinese spy balloon: we cannot dismiss the storms

NATIONAL SECURITY: DEFENCE

Tobias Ellwood, Chairman of the Commons Defence Select Committee, has written on the need to thwart China and Russia’s mission to splinter our world into two. He was writing following the shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon by a US fighter jet off the coast of North Carolina.

Mr Elwood asks us to consider if it was the other way around had a US balloon gone into Chinese airspace. The Beijing regime would not have hesitated in shooting it down.

For too long, Ellwood says, America has dithered. With the West preoccupied with helping Ukraine, the diplomatic stand-off that has ensued between Washington and Beijing comes at a time when there is significantly more choreography occurring between the leaders of China and Russia.

Having enjoyed decades of relative peace, those two countries are fully aware that the West has become complacent and have lost its appetite to defend fledgling democracies such as in Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Libya and Yemen.

It is no coincidence, either, that ahead of the invasion of Ukraine almost a year ago, Russia began its immediate military build-up not long after America and NATO retreated from Afghanistan.

Mr Ellwood asserts that together, China and Russia are not just openly pioneering a more authoritarian approach to governance, but are also encouraging other countries to follow suit, as they hope to see not just America but the entire West weakened.

China’s balloon over Montana should prompt another pivotal moment in history: a realisation that a China-Russia axis is looking ever more likely, and that we in the West are ill-prepared for the looming geo-strategic threats that the next decade will throw at us.

During his commentary, Ellwood says that the incident reminds him of what happened in October 1957, when millions of Americans looked to the skies in unprecedented panic after the Soviet Union launched the world’s first satellite.

The feat was awesome. It lapped the world every 98 minutes, and was assumed to be peering down with sinister aims.

While Vladimir Putin poses the single largest threat to European security as he leverages Russia’s ability to endure hardship and drag out the Ukraine conflict, China’s President Xi poses a greater geopolitical challenge as he competes with America for global economic and technological dominance. Since gaining office in 2013, he has expanded the Chinese military to become the largest in the world and used Covid as an excuse to build the most advanced domestic surveillance system.

Xi is now starting to flex his muscles. China has taken clusters of rocks deep in international waters south of neighbouring Taiwan and turned them into military fortresses. All illegal under international maritime law – but unimpeded by the West.

Ellwood’s view that this is no time for strategic ambiguity is well stated. We need a clear plan, he says, to check both Russia and China’s destabilising agendas. We must accept that they are bent on a mission to see our world splinter into two spheres of dangerously competing influence. We urgently need to craft a strategy which influences Beijing’s behaviour, rather than one which prompts a reaction each time Xi pushes the envelope further.

Without a coherent approach, the risk of sudden escalation is increasingly likely.

TOUGH QUESTIONS

OF COURSE, all this raises some tough questions for the UK, too. We helped design the post-war security architecture, much of which still functions today.

Our efforts and actions earned us a permanent seat at the UN Security Council created in 1945. Nearly eight decades later, the world has changed. Do we still deserve this seat? And do we still want it?

If the answer is “Yes” – which our actions in Ukraine suggest – we must urgently upgrade our foreign policy, defence posture and international statecraft not only to justify our place at the table, but to anticipate what is coming over the horizon.

It may have been just a weather balloon – but the storms it forecasted are not so easily dismissed.

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