LISTEN. Holidays are finally over, if we don't count the spousal birthday next week (which incidentally coincides with William James's birthday). Time to push past the self-indulgent seasonal comfort zone of sitting around the figurative yule log, reading randomly, binging the Twilight Zone etc. Time to actually get things done. Pound out those syllabi, for starters. Comfort comes with a cost, as my old mentor said.
Dr. Gupta on Sunday Morning promoted his book (“Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age”) and said you should do something every day that pushes you out of your comfort zone, to optimize brain health. “Do something that scares you every day… do something different, learn a new skill.” William James said a similar thing, “do every day or two something for no other reason that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.” His way of putting it sounds more self-abnegating in a Victorian kind of way, but the principle is sound.
And do the little, trivial, slightly-discomfiting things like varying your routes and taking the stairs instead of the elevator. I always used to do that, heading to my 3d-floor classes in the Business and Aerospace Building for instance. Haven't had occasion to do that lately, of course.)
Work your heart, to instruct your brain. "When you move it’s like you’re signaling to the brain I want to be here... try and moderately move throughout the day…” And: eat berries (and less red meat), sleep better, and be kind. Walk briskly with a friend, talk about your troubles to build intimacy and establish firm connection.
How about walking with two 4-legged friends, occasionally thinking about your problems but also your good fortune in being here to worry about your brain and your life at all?
One of the problems I'll ponder during our brisk dogwalk this morning is what to finally think about Richard Rorty. I’ve never got entirely sorted out on how I feel about his neo-pragmatism, though I think I've probably treated him too dismissively at times in the past.
I’ve been re-reading Philosophy and Social Hope and Achieving Our Country. He has a cringe-inducing injudicious way of saying things that, in the almost-post-Trump era, sound (as James said of FCS Schiller’s claims about the plasticity of the world) "butt-end-foremost." For instance, “No organism, human or non-human, is ever more or less in touch with reality than any other organism. The very idea of ‘being out of touch with reality’ presupposes the un-Darwinian, Cartesian picture of a mind which somehow swings free of the causal forces exerted on the body.”
Yes, but...
And yet, I do resonate to his anti-Platonism and his entirely Jamesian sense that our best amelioratve efforts may yet run aground. Nothing in Reality guarantees their success. Still, I take him to be saying, we must hold our heads up and fight the good fight with confident cheer. The comfortable alternative is debilitating and possibly even dementia-making. More on this soon, as I anticipate Rorty's relevance in at least three courses (including Democracy in America) looming now on the approaching semester's horizon.
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