Physical immortality: Lent 2021, Day 26

Feeling better than yesterday (in all honesty, nothing too bad), but still not 100%. A mild case of osłabienie (temperature oscillating between 37.0 C and  35.9 C), vague muscle fatigue and tiredness. Blood pressure normal (111/80). Worst I've felt in over two years, which makes me grateful for my general health. Time to take it easy. For the first time in many months, no walk, no exercises; same today. Rest is in order. Such a minor thing yet can't pin down the cause (viral? Bacterial? Something else? Old age creeping up?)

A time, then, to think about mortality. We've all experienced death at second-hand, loss of loved ones, famous people - but we've never experienced it personally! 

But... what if death is something that will never happen to you? Consider this thought experiment: in ten or 15 years' time, science comes up with a cheap, accessible genetic treatment that stops ageing. Something to do with telomerase, for example. 

[Impossible? Consider the lobster. Now, lobsters don't slow down, weaken or lose fertility with age. Their longevity may be due to telomerase, an enzyme that repairs sections of DNA sequences at the ends of chromosome - telomeres. Telomerase is expressed by most vertebrates during embryonic stages, but is absent from adult stages of life. Unlike most vertebrates, lobsters express telomerase as adults through most tissue. Ultimately, lobsters' lives are limited by their growth and their exoskeletons, which need to be moulted; with age and size it requires more energy. And consider the Greenland shark, Somniosus microcephalus. Individual sharks have been proven to live up to 500 years, the longest known lifespan of any vertebrate species. Science is busy unravelling the mysteries of longevity and ageing; my guess is that the life sciences and healthcare will experience a boom rivalling that of IT over the past four decades and the drive to halt ageing will be at the forefront of that boom.]

So - let's say that a DNA-based anti-ageing drug is developed and brought to market. You take it, and your body ceases to age, and barring physical accidents, you can carry on living for ever. You'd be part of the very first generation that has conquered death. You have become immortal. Not so hot if you're 80-plus, but for children born after that time, they'd reach adulthood and stop ageing with their physical bodies in optimal shape, but with a brain that can continue to learn for centuries, acquiring ever-greater knowledge and wisdom. There would be many new social and economic issues for humanity to deal with in such a scenario, but huge new opportunities too.

Interstellar exploration - a trip to the nearest star system, even travelling at a tenth of the speed of sound, would take 40 years - what's that when you're lifespan is 900 years or more? Incidentally, 'Oumuamua, the first interstellar object detected passing through our solar system in 2017 has been conjectured by Prof Avi Loeb, chair of Harvard University's Department of Astronomy, to be a product of alien technology, on the basis of its size and shape (a cigar-shaped object, up to 1,000m long, 110m average diameter), the fact that it was ten times shinier than any asteroid or comet ever seen before, and its path and acceleration, which the sun's gravity and outgassing alone could not explain. Not a bad place to be spending a small part of your life as you reach out to other worlds...

All this dreaming! I think humanity will get there, but it will take a lot longer. We will have to have evolved away from the brute anger and ignorance and ego that mires our species at present; tens of thousands of years to mature into a higher form of humanity, vastly wiser and far more knowledgeable than we are at present; at that point in our future, we will be ready for physical immortality - and interstellar space travel.

All Things Must Pass, written by George Harrison, came to mind as I looked over the 'this time x years ago' section below. Though human existence is indeed transient, the song radiates hope against fatalism. A new day always dawns, even though all things must pass. 

This time last year:
Teetering on the Edge of Chaos

This time three years ago:
Jeziorki viaduct takes shape

This time eight years ago:
Goodness gracious!

This time nine years ago:
Muddy feet

This time 11 years ago:
Secrets of success

This time 12 years ago:
S2 works move ahead

Faith and knowledge: Lent 2021, Day 25

In a materialist, rationalist world, is there any place for faith - or does everything need to be scientifically proved?

I know that the world is round. I have proof, I've seen it with my own eyes, watching the world's largest container ship appear from over the horizon. Likewise, I know that a water molecule consists of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. I learnt that at school. I have no proof, other than every single source of information that I may care to peruse, telling me that water is not, say, a mixture of phlogiston and aqueous ether. My knowledge regarding the make-up of water, however, is a matter of knowledge, and not just belief. The mind boggles at the sub-atomic level and at the galactic level; it is extremely difficult to get one's head around strong atomic force or a black hole. Science has moved on beyond the scope of our imagination. The scientific method, the demand for proof, the rigorous process of peer review, the repeatability of observations and experiment, sees to it that a hypothesis is either verified, becoming a fact, or is dismissed.

Belief in a supreme deity is a faith; there is no proof one way or the other. Before the Enlightenment, the antithesis of faith wasn't demonstrable knowledge, but idolatry - the worship of an image or person as if they were God. Similarly, rejecting a supreme deity is also a faith, one way or another, the scientific method can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God.

If one accepts both science and one's religion in equal parts on the basis of the warrant of authority, one is missing something - the personal, subjective feeling, intuition. Do you feel God - or not?

To me, it is trying to define what I instinctively feel; a sense of a greater meaning, a sense of purpose and direction. Yet it is important not to let wishful thinking or ideology bend my instinctive, intuitive feeling.

I was directed today to a fascinating article by engineer-psychologist, Duncan Riach, who claims that there's no such thing as consciousness. Wow. Either this is an inflammatory provocation, or Mr Riach is a philosophical zombie, who not having consciousness himself, accuses others of also lacking it. One way or another, it is his belief; it is a matter of his faith, given, as he says, that there's no evidence for consciousness. "The problem I have," writes Mr Riach, "is that there’s not only no evidence for it, but what people seem to be referring to as consciousness is explainable as an effect no more unusual, no less materialistically explainable, than water flowing downhill."

On the other hand, there was a piece (that I didn't bother reading) by some Evangelical Christian from Texas claiming that humans and dinosaurs coexisted in history; this too is a manifestation of faith, albeit one that flies in the face of all scientific evidence.

I've been feeling a bit poorly today - not Covid, I don't think, no fever, headaches or sore throat/cough, just a general achiness and under-the-weatherness that I can't attribute to anything. No walk today, no exercises, a couple of daytime naps. I hope to be back in sorts tomorrow.

This time last year:
Religion and feeling good

This time three years ago:
Perivale Triptych

This time 10 years ago:
Cycling and recycling

This time 11 years ago:
Winter still holding out in the forest

This time 12 years ago:
Little car, huge price

This time 13 years ago:
Old school Łódź

Reconciling science and spirituality: Lent 2021, Day 24

Once again, my brother Marek points me the way in my Lenten questings. Today, he mentioned the work of the cognitive psychologist Donald D. Hoffman, who has propounded a revolutionary solution to the hard problem of consciousness - namely that consciousness causes brain activity, rather than brain activity causing conscious experience. Science has yet to explain consciousness. Prof Hoffman proposes that consciousness in fact creates all objects and all the properties of the physical world that we experience through our senses.

Prof Hoffman's concept of Conscious Realism is described as a monism which holds that consciousness is the primary reality and the physical world emerges from that - not the other way around. The objective world consists of conscious agents (such as you and I); our experiences do not stem from physical particles and fields; they are constructs of our consciousness. "Consciousness," posits Prof Hoffman, "is fundamental."

Wow! That's quite something, even in a post-Newtonian world of quantum mechanics.

Let's do a little thought exercise. Let's imagine that science has proved that consciousness is indeed a fundamental property of matter, along with mass and energy. And let's go a step further - science has proved for certain that your consciousness will continue to exist after your bodily demise.

Would that change the way you perceive God? Would you still need a God? Would there be a purpose for faith?

Partly, it's a question of definition, and language. You can frame your definitions using the language of physicists - the rational approach, based on empirical measurement. Or you can use the language of philosophy - seeking to understand the truth. Or you can use religious language, of a Supreme Divinity, a guiding force. To talk about the same thing - the Universe around us. All things visible and invisible. God in All, All in God.

I think the answer boils down to purpose. Assuming consciousness has always been around in the Universe, but at lower levels and rising all the while... why has there been this evolution from simple to complex? What drives this evolution? Is it purely emergent, or does it have an aim? And if so, what is the ultimate evolution of consciousness? Its ultimate destination? A consciousness that is total, Universal understanding? Omniscience? Need there be a goal?

It may well be that attempting to reconcile science and spirituality is a futile exercise after all, one that merely boils down to putting labels on emergent truths. It may well be that the two labels disappear over time, and the distinction between natural/supernatural, physical/metaphysical, becomes redundant.

In the meanwhile, we should constantly be seeking, thinking, discussing.

This time last year:
The metaphysical journey as I see it

This time four years ago:
Spirit of Age, spirit of Place

This time five years ago:
The crux of the matter

This time seven years ago:
10,000 steps is a lot for one day

This time eight years ago:
Bary mleczne - Warsaw's cheap eateries

This time 10 years ago:
Old Town, another prospect

This time 11 years ago:
W-wa Śródmieście - commuters' staging post

This time 12 years ago:
Filthy ul. Poloneza

This time 13 years ago:
A sight that heralds the coming of spring

Near-death experiences - do they tell us anything about the afterlife? Lent 2021, Day 23

Prompted by an article emailed to me by my brother about the work of psychiatrist Bruce Greyson [read it here], I'd like to examine near-death experiences (NDEs) as a biological and spiritual phenomenon.

These are commonly, though by no means universally reported by people who had been at or near clinical death. Both my mother and father-in-law claimed to have experienced something like this. My mother, who had suffered what was to be her first heart attack at the age of 58, talked about facing a strong light source and feeling of calm, but then the image of her garden on a sunny spring day brought out in her a powerful desire to be there, with her family, and this thought found her returning to consciousness.

[Before going further - coincidences hold the thing together. The night before getting my brother's email with the link, I was looking for a book from my childhood, about the World Land Speed Record. I remembered that electric-powered cars held the record for quite some time before petrol-engined cars became predominant, and wanted confirmation. I found the book, next to a translation into Polish of a book about reincarnation by a Raymond Moody. Turns out that Dr Moody, a psychologist and doctor of philosophy, had worked with Dr Greyson and was mentioned in the linked article. Not just that, but the same day, I got an email from the Bratislava office of credit-rating agency, Moody's, wanting to join the chamber. My brother's wife coincidentally, works for Moody's London office.]*

The reports mentioned in the article square with similar experiences I have read about over the decades, so I am not astonished by them. It's quite clear to me that, despite the scepticism that surrounds the subject, near-death experiences are quite common, though not universal. Prof Greyson's long-term research suggests that it is about one person in five brought back from clinical death or near-clinical death has a recollection on such a phenomenon occurring. The question is not whether they happen or not, but rather what they mean.

It may well be that NDEs are a phenomenon that has evolved in the human brain to sweeten the moment of demise - and that it has absolutely nothing to do with going to Heaven or being about to reincarnate; the spiritual dimension being something that science cannot ascribe to it.

Are NDEs related, as the more sceptical neuroscientists looking at the phenomenon claim, related to REM sleep? Memories of dreams, like NDEs, are stored in the brain for many years suggesting that it's a brain thing rather than a heaven thing. Wouldn't necessarily disagree - science and spirituality can coexit! Reading through the descriptions of NDEs reported to Prof Greyson, it's clear that they are related but qualitatively different to the regular experience encountered when falling asleep. The moments of passing from one state to the other fascinate me; I try to observe what's happening in my mind as it processes the day's events on the cusp of sleep. I find myself contemplating some issue, trying to unravel it, and then discovering that, though familiar to me, it did not actually happen. At this stage, with this going on, I fall asleep. This is the subconscious seeping into the conscious; it feels real - but isn't connected to reality. Or is it seeping from a parallel universe? Trying to think about this phenomenon too analytically at the time may bring me back to the fully wakeful state - otherwise, I just drop off into sleep quickly.  

Back to dreams, back to REM sleep. A dream I had about 15 years ago (now I can see the value of keeping them all in a daily diary!) involves me hovering above a body in a hospital bed in the wee small hours; the hospital, 1950s modern, spacious, bright; a nurse is standing by the foot of the bed, looking at her chart as she does her rounds. She is thinking - "Mr. Martin - you will not make it to the morning." I am about ten feet above this scene and reading her thoughts, and thinking that it's rather indiscreet and insensitive of her to think this in my presence. Floating higher, outside the night-time hospital, I can see a long, low (two, three-story building), white tiled, big windows, set among a forest of pine and silver birch, the hospital grounds illuminated by lights from corridor windows. I wake up. It all seemed familiar, fitting.

Was I Mr. Martin in a past life? Is is as simple as that? Was I recalling his death?

Halfway through Lent! Another 23 days to go.

* Spooky moody postscript... When my brother read this post, he was listening to a song by... The Moody Blues. The song, Tuesday Afternoon, was triggered by a song on a CD that Moni sent him, Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek - Kürk. Marek noticed the similarity and put on the Moody Blues - and then read this post!

This time last year:
Build your own religion - choosing your rites and rituals

This time three years ago:
From the origins of conscious life to us and beyond

This time six years ago:
Underground connection, Świętokrzyska

This time nine years ago:
Nikkor 45mm f2.8 pancake lens tested

This time 10 years ago:
Old Town, another prospect

This time 11 years ago:
W-wa Śródmieście - commuters' staging post

This time 12 years ago:
Filthy ul. Poloneza

This time 13 years ago:
A sight that heralds the coming of spring

Muscle memory, mindfulness and metaphysics: Lent 2021, Day 22

How much of our lives are lived on autopilot? We all know that feeling of 'motorway hypnosis' when we've covered mile after mile without being able to remember any of it. "Have we already passed Junction 15?" We may not consciously remember, but the subconscious mind is processing all the information needed to drive safely - keeping distance from the car in front, using the rear-view mirrors, signalling before a manoeuvre. Yet the landscape flashes past, with only the occasional moment of  recognition - an unusual vehicle, an accident in the opposite lane, a distant church spire.

It's easy for our lives to become long stretches of motorway, the days passing us like featureless junctions, our movements, our responses merely automatic, practiced, subconscious.

Last summer, I wrote about muscle memory and I how I have taught myself good practice in remembering not to forget. In particular, I mentioned the coffee machine in the kitchen, how I have learnt to instinctively switch it off properly at the mains behind the machine, rather than just stop the hot water flow - that way I know I've not left home with it on all day long. That 'mind hack' worked well until the New Year when I began doing squats while the coffee was pouring (so as not to waste time). Thirty squats while the mug filled up, quite a challenge for the morning! Racing to do all 30 before the coffee overflows, my instinct is to stop the flow by swiping the silver lever to the left, rather than to use the practiced move of the hand round the back of the machine. Three times I left the machine on to boil away! Fortunately due to working from home, it was noticed before too long. Things change, automatic routines, muscle memory, needs an update. Standing up from the last squat - switch machine off at the back!

Latterly, I found that because my peripheral vision is getting weaker, I sometimes brush the door-frame with my shoulder. Again, I quickly noticed this and put a mental workaround in place to stop this from becoming commonplace. Observation, conscious appraisal of situation, worked into muscle memory.

My mother's favourite Latin saying, quidquid agis, prudenter agas, et respice finem, ("Whatever you do, do it it prudently, with the outcome in mind") continues to grow in wisdom from year to year. Literally whatever you do - from jumping over a small obstacle to planning a conference, you should think its consequences through, and do it mindfully.

I last mentioned this saying in December after successfully overcoming a sprained ankle without having to rest up for several day (and indeed not even desisting from walking over uneven ground at night). I did so by thinking about what I was doing, and by considering every step I was taking when the going got rough.

It's a useful exercise, a useful habit to get into. The conscious brain should be in the driving seat, observing, overseeing the instinctive brain.

All well and good when it comes to the physical aspects of living. But what about the metaphysical? The spiritual?

Can we prevent random harm from befalling us by being mindful of those risks over which we have no control?

I believe we can. 

This is a controversial belief, but it becomes less controversial with each passing year that I survive. There is a reason - but often that reason is not made manifest to us at the time. And there are conditions. Just two. Firstly, one must feel gratitude for surviving each passing day, gratitude for moments of joy; and complacency needs to be recognised as a danger ("because yesterday was good, today's good and tomorrow will also be good" - not necessarily!). Be grateful, be on your guard; above all be mindful.

This time last year:
Choosing the music for your religion

This time two years ago:
Photo round-up of the week

This time three years ago:
Do the laws of nature govern or describe our universe?

This time eight years ago:
A selfless faith

Where are you really from? Lent 2021: Day 21

It was Brexit that divided society into 'citizens of somewhere' and 'citizens of nowhere'. The former have deeply established roots in a given community; the others are migrants - said by Brexiteers to be rootless nomads, settlers from elsewhere. Before then, urban Britain had somehow got used to newcomers moving in from other countries and other continents, while rural England was largely unaware of the phenomenon. Whilst most English cities voted to remain in the EU, small-town and rural England (and Wales) voted to Take Back Control, because they didn't like strangers talking  foreign in the High Street.

My son was born in West London to parents who themselves were born in England and whose four grandparents were all British citizens. He moved back to Ealing after completing his postgraduate studies in Paris and before that, 20 years living and studying in Poland. When applying for a UK National Insurance number, he was asked "...but where are you really from?"

A good question, and one with a metaphysical dimension. And it's the metaphysical dimension alone that I wish to pursue in this Lenten post.

Sensitivity to spirit of place is important to who we really are. Those qualia - those subjective conscious experiences that are at the heart of what it is to being ourselves - are often triggered by being at a certain place at a certain time. You catch yourself being suddenly aware of the flavour, the atmosphere, the klimat. It's unique. It could not be elsewhere. And that moment of intense sensation of being there can often come back to you, in flashbacks and in dreams. Geographically, such moments root you.

Now, if you are a well-travelled citizen of nowhere, who has had many an exotic holiday, trekking along mountain ridges, splashing in the ocean's surf, hiking through the jungle to visit a hidden temple, who has worked in the great financial hubs of the planet, those moments can come from all over the world. The citizen of somewhere, however, has stronger connections. 

Probably the place that most frequently appears in my dreams is Paddington Station, with its vaulted glass roof, cast-iron and Victorian brick arches, ramps and tunnels, platforms and kiosks. Sometimes this dream station is located in London, sometimes its in Wiltshire or Warsaw. But it is recognisably Paddington - the station I commuted through for many years while working in Central London. However - it's not today's Paddington Station. In my dreams it is darker, eerier; full of soot, smoke, grime and steam - it predates my childhood. Then there are the flashbacks to place - particular places that I find it harder to pin down; but the sensation is so familiar; again, they predate my childhood.

I have written much about this phenomenon and how it has shaped my spiritual worldview; the question you should ask yourself is whether you too have such experiences that might point to a past conscious existence. Some I have spoken to feel an affiliation with early 19th century Paris, colonial East Africa, Sweden under King Gustavus Adolphus, the Deep South, the Basque country, the British Raj in India or Ancient Greece. But such discussions are rare; they are always with mindful people.

Takes you back? Where?

I don't know how the physics or indeed metaphysics behind this phenomenon works. Easier to explain are atavistic memories - ones with a possible genetic vector. One such I experienced was the intense sensation I felt one summer's day as I cycled along the road from Grójec to Mogielnica, never having been there before - cresting a low hill just before Mogielnica, an apple orchard to my left, I felt a sense of this place being strongly familiar. Year later, I would find out that my paternal grandmother was born around here, her family had a farm in these very parts. Or the time one late winter/early spring day on Wimbledon Common, South-West London, a broad sandy track between banks of leafless silver birches used for horse-riding - I felt the lie of the land reminded me of the Kresy in prewar Eastern Poland that my mother's family came from - having never been there myself.

Far harder to explain the America flashbacks that I have had since earliest childhood and continue to have to this day; they are familiar and comforting.

I hope that over time, my nightly dream diaries will offer enough quantitative data as to places about which I dream (even hybrid places, or ones improbably located) to take some educated guesses.

A consciousness anchored in spirit of place has a better recall of the thread of time passing through our biological lives; we have so much to discover about our purpose and our journey along the infinitely long road from Zero to One.

This time last year:
Buildings and the sense of the Mystical

This time two years ago:
Face to face with Schrodinger's Cat

This time six years ago:
Opening of Line 2 of Warsaw's Metro

This time eight years ago:
A selfless faith

This time nine years ago:
Ul. Profesorska after the remont

This time ten years ago:
Lent kicks off again, for the 20th year in a row for me

This time 11 years ago:
Halfway through Lent

This time 13 years ago:
Spring much closer

Who are you - no really... who are you? Lent 2021, Day 20

I see my body as a vehicle for my consciousness. It moves me around, it contains and sustains my brain, which is where my consciousness resides. 

Imagine sitting in a stationary car with full 'privacy glass' - blacked out all round, so people can't see who's in the driving seat. From the outside, all they can see is the car. They can see if it's new or old, sporty or sedate, baseline or top-of-the-range, standard or customised. They can't see the driver. They know nothing about the driver.

But once the car starts moving, they can make inferences from the behaviour of the driver. Are you a reckless speed freak, or a safe, considerate driver? Are you a boorish road-hog, intolerant of other road users? Or are you courteous and anticipatory? Can't tell while that car's stationary...

It's similar with the way people judge people.

Its instinct. Before the conscious brain has had time to make an assessment, the instinctive brain has made a fight-or-flight decision as to whether that person who's just come into view is a potential threat or potential prey. It is an authority figure, to whom deference should be shown, or a sucker who can be taken for a ride? In the crowded city, your primitive brain is doing this all the time. This initial instinctive judgment is made in a split second, based on appearance alone. Facial appearance, body size, clothing. And so it's easy to judge oneself by appearance.

Everyone has a self-image of themselves. As with health, this has its ups and its down. As one ages, it becomes more of a struggle to accept that reflection in the mirror as really 'you'. It often catches me unaware - I'm wandering around, lost in my own thoughts, when I catch sight of myself in the plate-glass window of a shop front. "That bald old bloke with the grey beard is me? When did that happen?" Lockdown has meant less of this, as there's not a plate-glass window to be seen in Jeziorki nor in Jakubowizna, plus I'm fully masked in winter and wear a woolly hat. I have become the Eyes Without A Face. A consciousness moving about the face of the earth. Observing, judging, calculating, unconsciously as well as consciously. Instinct and intellect - and above those, the subjective conscious experiences, the qualia, which give you (and only you) the true flavour of what it's like to be you.

Switching off images of your external appearance, staying away from mirrors, you become more yourself than how you are perceived by others. This is a blessing of solitude; you become unconcerned by their judgments; you can be yourself.

But if you really want to know who you are - look to your dreams.

 "Dreams don't lie," writes Dr Mark Belchner in his book The Dream Frontier. "Our dreams are not concerned with disguise and censorship. They are our most honest communications, perhaps the only human communication in which we cannot lie. We can lie about our dreams, but not in our dreams." 

When you dream, you get the raw truth about yourself from yourself. When I dream, I have no physical characteristics; I am neither big nor small, young nor old; I am ageless. That's the real me, as I am, not as I am seen externally. This is my conscious soul, detached; observing the world, pondering its meaning, its absurdities, its delights, its frustrations, its ever-changing demeanour. 

Materialism sets a high store on external appearance; multi-billion dollar industries are based on it. (And yes, that includes the automotive industry; cars are the ultimate form of clothing.) Yet the primacy of the subjective conscious experience suggests that Truth lies elsewhere.

A balance needs to be struck; consideration for the fact that others instinctively judge external appearances should be balanced against a vain desire to show off. Understand your biology, then rise above it. Strip away the ego, and the mortal body - and you are left with the consciousness - which I believe to be immortal. It was, it is, it will be.

This time last year:
Find your own holy places

This time two years ago:
An introduction to quantum physics

This time three years ago:
Right and wrong in science and philosophy

This time five years ago:

Free thinking at the Second Vatican Council

This time seven years ago:
Getting ul. Karczunkowska ready for Biedronka opening

This time eight years ago: 

God's own risk

This time nine years ago:
A third of the way through Lent

This time ten years ago:
Balancing surfeit and shortage

This time 11 years ago:
Congruent consciousness

This time 13 years ago:
Intimations of spring

Pleasure - put it off, or have it now? Lent 2021, day 19

Lent is a time of self-denial. As with many other established religions, the notion of fasting plays an important role in Christianity. Coming at a time of year associated with neither harvests nor plenty, Lent also had a social-control function - keep gluttony in check when the granaries are running low. Our supermarkets, groaning with produce from the Southern Hemisphere in late winter, have made that history, so now the main purpose of Lent is spiritual - a chance to exercise the will not to do something.

Yet deferring gratification can make sense. If you are constantly spending money on small, unnecessary things while the big important purchases recede into the distance because you can't save for them, you have a problem. The problem is exacerbated by the materialist culture that surrounds us - 'buy now, pay later'. Do so and the debt piles up, while the consumer remains ever dissatisfied, uncomfortable.

"We want the world, and we want it NOW!" yelled Jim Morrison in When The Music's Over (1967). The boomer generation, fed on the idea of conspicuous consumption, changing cars every three or four years, keeping up with the Joneses, launched an assault on Planet Earth's resources unprecedented in human history in terms of scale and scope. The Doors song shows the dichotomy at the heart of materialist society - Morrison was concerned about its effects on the environment:

What have they done to the earth, yeah
What have they done to our fair sister?

Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her
Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn and
Tied her with fences and dragged her down

Driven by omnipresent advertising, we have been encouraged to buy, buy, buy in order to make us happier. And so a seasonal stop - a counter to the excesses leading up to Christmas - is in order.

Exercising self-denial is hugely beneficial. Begin by cutting out things that are essentially bad for you, and do so successfully for the duration of Lent, and you can cut them out of your life over time. Confectionary, cakes, biscuits, sugar, salt snacks, fizzy drinks, have all largely disappeared from my diet for good over the past 30 years. Physical exercise - once a Lent-only thing - has become a year-round habit. Similarly with buying consumer goods. Take a pause in Lent, scale back, consider - what can be repaired? What can be borrowed or hired? What can be bought secondhand? Only if it can't should we buy new. Wait until Easter, delay that gratification.

Why?

Appreciation. Heightened sense of joy at having waited. I am anticipating my first glass of cold beer - with single-malt whisky chaser- at the now-traditional time of a second past midnight on Easter Sunday. A time to savour intoxication, having 'saved up for it' for 46 days. Savour mindfully. Each sip, each swallow, the warming effect as the alcohol courses around the bloodstream. To be enjoyed responsibly. And then a good night's sleep.

Self-denial is the the mirror opposite of procrastination avoidance. "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today"/"You'll enjoy it more after a period of abstinence".  This balance needs to be struck.

Learning to differentiate between joy and pleasure is vitally important to a happy life. Earning money by doing a stressful job then spending it unthinkingly on pleasure is not a good way of living. Better to earn less by doing something you want to do, and spend money mindfully and focus on moments of true joy - deeply spiritual moments, lost in metaphysical wonder, rather than on short-term gratification.

This time last year:
Dreams and the Afterlife

This time three years ago:
Free Will and Quantum Mechanics

This time four years ago:
Good thinking captured - the importance of jotting it down

This time five years ago:
Spirit of place and our own spirituality

This time six years ago:
Poland's road death toll falls but remains too high

This time nine years ago:
My photos turned into beautiful watercolours

This time ten years ago:
Silver birches and blue skies

This time 12 years ago:
Jeziorki's wetlands in late winter (2009)

This time 13 years ago:
Jeziorki's wetlands in late winter (2008)