My dogears from Michael Foley’s excellent “Life Lessons from Bergson”
Time
“Time” is now the most-used noun in English, whereas many primitive peoples, for instance the Amondawa tribe of the Amazon and the Australian Aborigines do not have a word for it. (p.24)
Chance
The corollary of predictability as comfort is randomness as threat … We would almost rather accept gross injustice than randomness. At least with injustice there is someone to blame. And good fortune is just as rarely recognized. For bad luck, we blame others and for good luck, we take the credit ourselves. (p.32)
Habit & Old Fogyism
Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. (p. 40, from William James’ Psychology: The Briefer Course)
Old Fogyism begins at a younger age than we think. I am almost afraid to say so but I believe that in the majority of human beings it begins at about twenty-five. (p.40, from William James’ Talks to Teachers)
Comedy
It is the function of comedy to repress any separatist tendency, to convert rigidity into plasticity, the readapt the individual to the whole (p. 43, from Bergson’s Le Rire)
Artists
How can the eyes be asked to see more than they see? Our attention may enhance precision, clarify and intensify; but it cannot bring out what was not there in the first place. That is the objection – in my opinion, refuted by experience. In fact for hundreds of years there have been people whose function was precisely to see and make us see what we do not naturally perceive. These are the artists. (p. 49, from Bergson’s La Pensee et le mouvant)
Character and Attention
According to James, our experience of life is nothing other than what we have chosen to pay attention to, and the choice is decisive because experience is character. (p64)
Ripples, Systems and Effects
If everything is connected to everything else then every action propagates its effects for ever, and if feedback loops are the method of propagation then every action also modifies the character of the actor. Many of these nano-modifications are below the level of perception but they eventually add up to a cumulative change that is all too perceptible. One day you may wake up and realize you have become a shithead – or, more likely, your partner wakes up and informs you of this in a loud, outraged tone, en route to the door. (p.75)
[Photo: Edinburgh University]