Photografica » philosophy

The Wind and the Sun

djaef — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 05:10:29 +0000

Image courtesy http://www.flickr.com/photos/katmary/

I came across this little story watching one of the best episodes of Mad Men I’ve ever seen (Series 4, Episode 8). It impressed me so much I’ve transcribed it, and printed it out and stuck it to my fridge.
Now a blog could be seen in some ways as a virtual fridge, so I’m gonna stick it here as well, since there’s not much activity on here at the moment.

I hope you appreciate the sentiment, and that it’s as much as an epiphany for you as it was for me.

The Wind & The Sun

“Aesop has a fable about the wind and the sun.
The wind and the sun had this competition to see if they could get a traveller’s coat off.
So the wind blows fiercely on him, but the traveller just pulls his coat tighter.
But the sun shines down on him, warmer and warmer, and the traveller just takes it off.”

“And the moral is?”

“Kindness, gentleness and persuasion wins where force fails.”

The acceleration of almost everything

djaef — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 12:46:53 +0000

I remember a book of the same name. I never read it, as I was too busy… (boom boom)

But I’m feeling the sentiment of late. There never seems to be enough time. Everything has to be done in a hurry. Or in my case, there is not enough time allocated (read money) for me to do the things I need to do. Hence the hurry. If I have 26 hours to do a job that takes 40, corners are going to be cut. Or I’m going to be working for free. Unfortunately, it tends to be the second one…

It extends to my kids. They don’t know how to relax. They are bored as soon as they are not being entertained. We work with this all the time, trying to get them to read, to play, to do anything other than tv and computers. Those two we limit, almost ruthlessly. In fact we don’t even have a tv. But of course we have a computer, and entertainment is never far away. The removal of the TV helps, but other things crowd in for space instead. We don’t have gaming consoles either. We do have a PlayStation 2, which is suitably antiquated and we only have a few games, and this if also limited. But still there’s a feeling that we are all living life at a frantic pace, without the time for peace or relaxation.

And as mentioned, it’s not just my kids. I find it hard to slow down myself. I’m in the groove. I’ve been running fast for so long, I am wondering if I would know what to do if I was to go somewhere without internet access and something to research or prepare or administer.

But then I think of books, and a crack opens in my mind. That’s what I’d like to do to slow down. Long walks, good long books (literary novels), music, a good glass of wine, a long chat. All these things are what I crave. But how to pay for the slow life, when I barely get by living the fast life?

I wonder how many feel like me. I’m sure there’s a relatively high percentage of discontent amongst the citizens of modern life. How could there not? But who has figured out the art of slowing down? I read the blogs, the books. I’ve done Ekhardt Tolle. I get it. I really do. But how do I get it? How do I pay for it?

Photography seems like a powerful current, one that will pull me along as long as I let it. It’s fun, it’s creative, it’s awesome, but it’s so… fast. It’s so… computer based. It’s so… digital. I remember when I was 21 and I was thinking of moving to Perth and going to University to study horticulture. I imagine life might have been very different. Not neccesarily better. I’m smarter than that. There is no greener grass in retrospect. Perth is in a drought. But perhaps the signs are there. I need a week off. To unwind. To relax. Take that walk, read that book. Turn that bloody computer …

what is important?

djaef — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 10:26:46 +0000

I saw this photo on the web tonight (click for a larger version), and it arrested my thoughts immediately. I have had a really shitty day, but when I looked at this image of the Sombrero Galaxy, 28 million light years away (1 light year is roughly 10 trillion kilometres and we are talking 28 million here), all my trivialities vanished for one tiny little moment. Then of course ego reasserted its authority and got its grubby little hold back on me . But for that split second… Wow.

For what it’s worth, I am an atheist. I don’t believe at all in any sort of God, particularly the organised religious type, with long robes and a wicked sense of vengeance. Yahweh, Allah, God, they all seem to me to be unoriginal caricatures of the worst kind. (at least the Hindus have a great sense of creativity with Ganesh and the pantheon of deity in India) But I do appreciate living in a society that allows me to have my opinion. I don’t seek to unduly influence others, only to hold my own views in peace and talk of them if I wish. I do however believe in the incredible awesomeness of the cosmos. Carl Sagan is one of my heroes.

I’m also a photographer, a writer, a husband, a father, a computer geek and a cricket fanatic and a political tragic. So what. Is that important? Are my views at all important? I think not. Certainly no more important than yours. Of course I like to have a platform to air them, but considering the anonymity of said platform, I think a little self importance is forgivable. I am safe in the knowledge that very few people will ever even read this.

But for those that do (and for myself), what is important? Is politics? Is cricket? Is it important whether people take photos with a Nikon or a Canon camera? Is my annoyance over the mess my daughter left on the bathroom floor important? When I look at this photo, the list of what’s important suddenly gets very, very small.

In one sense, nothing is important at all. A sense of nihilism overcomes me momentarily. I see the universe teeming with life in both space and time, and all of a sudden our puny human endeavor mean nothing at all. That fits with my atheism as well. But it’s not a black dark feeling at all. Instead it becomes a celebration of life. It magnifies the importance of our small and puny lives if only because that’s all we have. It reminds me that I get a heartbeat to live my puny little life and that I’d be a fool to waste it. Which, of course, is precisely what I’m doing. Why? Well, for a start, I’ve been wasting my life for so long now it seems like human nature. Maybe it’s not, maybe it’s just me. But in any case, photos like this stop me up, make me realise what I’m doing; that I’m pissing it all away, that my kids are growing up and I’m not taking enough notice, that my wife is growing apart from me and I’m letting her slide. It makes me realise I’m letting the nihilism take over my life instead of letting the vast emptiness and meaninglessness of the cosmos inspire me to live in the now and enjoy and appreciate the beauty and joy of what I have.

When all is said and done, will I be remembered for what I said or what I did? I fear the fact that I am a man of words suggests that I am not a man of action. Time will tell. I fear that I will realise all too late that I blew it. Ahh, but then again. That split second of recognition when I saw this photo – this is the realisation that I am blowing it. I still have a chance. I have a lovely, caring wife. I have two beautiful children. I have my health. I have an awful lot to be grateful for. Yet I am a conceited, selfish, negative, cynical waste of a man much of the time. Maybe 80%. The other 20% I am a caring, loving, open, sympathetic human amazed by humanity and the depths of our love and capable of the most amazing and creative things. I just need to turn 20 into 80.

Words don’t mean much. Navel gazing is pretentious and self indulgent. Yet this is my blog and I will navel gaze about what the bloody hell I wish to. And today it’s the incredible Sombrero Galaxy and how through the amazing power of images, I have been made aware of something deeply important; critical even.

What’s important is love and beauty, caring and empathy, striving and trying, not giving up, being open to life, and the relationships I have with my fellow sentient beings while I am alive here on Planet Earth. Being in the now and turning that 20 around to 80. In the end my life is deeply insignificant, but to me… well, to me it’s ridiculously important and I need to start living it instead of just surviving it.

OK, sermon over. Go away and get on with your insignificant little lives.

*(any religious comments will be summarily dealt with;) )

The wonders of the Cosmos

djaef — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 01:14:39 +0000

Barred spiral galaxy NGC 6217 (NASA/ESA/Hubble SM4 ERO)

Space just blows my mind. The thing is the scale. It’s just incomprehensible. We think in terms of kilometers, whether it’s hundreds or millions. But out there, kilometers is meaningless. Light years is the standard measurement, and even then we can be talking about millions of light years…

Take this galaxy here, an image from the Hubble telescope. To get to this scale of the universe, we first have a solar system which is the immediate vicinity around a star and any of its orbiting bodies. A galaxy is a collection of stars (and their accompanying solar systems). But a galaxy has millions of stars. Millions. Each star is like our sun. The closest star to our sun is if I can remember rightly Alpha Centuri and it’s about 4 or 5 light years away? Not sure on the detail here, but it doesn’t really matter. The scale is already incomprehensible and we’re still inside our own galaxy the Milky Way. This picture is of a completely different galaxy altogether. And there are countless galaxies in the cosmos. Countless. Is that starting to sink in?

Sometimes when you look up in the sky you are seeing single stars. At other times however what you’re seeing are complete galaxies. The Smaller and Larger Magellanic clouds are an example of this. Once you get out in deep space like the Hubble Telescope has, then zillions of galaxies appear, with vast space between them. How vast the cosmos is, as I said, is totally incomprehensible to our tiny brains.

One thing is certain to me. The cosmos is teeming with life, and we are but one tiny planet among untold billions of planets. We just can’t see them. The scale is too big. We can’t pierce the veil of space that is hiding all the other untold billions of solar systems out there.

Sometimes a fragment of understanding comes to me. The scale of it fleetingly dawns on me and then is gone. I can’t hang on to it. It’s just too mind blowing. And the only other thing that comes close to being as mindblowing as the outer direction of the cosmos, is that it goes just as far in the other direction. Whole universes must exist in the microscopic worlds that we also can’t see. Thinking about it in that light, scale is eveything. We all exist together, just in different scales of size and time. Isn’t it amazing to be alive and considering these things.