Tag: mindfulness

Doing Nothing

“Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday. I can’t be sure.” 

These are the opening lines of Albert Camus’s novel The Stranger. If these words seem gruesome, it’s because the reader has an expectation that a ‘normal’ person simply must know when his or her mother died. 

But does it really make any difference if my mother died today or yesterday? 

The Stranger, like so many other books and songs, reminds me of living with the dominant presence of  the Coronavirus. The days become indistinguishable. The virus—or death even—has become an intimate part of all aspects of my life.  

Camus’s story about Meursault, whose mother is dead, might be regarded as absurd. Instead of grieving at his mother’s funeral, Meursault falls in love with a girl. Afterward they go to the beach, where they bathe and make love. The girl wants to marry Meursault, and he tells her that it is of no consequence, but if she really wants to, he will go along with it. 

Today or yesterday, marriage or no marriage: Nothing really matters to Meursault. As if nothing is important. And that is exactly the point: Nothing—or death, to emphasize my point—is important. 

Since mid-march, I’ve been imprisoned—together with my wife and our three children—in our apartment in Barcelona, Spain. As a family, we do many things. Many more or less normal things, like cooking, eating, playing, working, homeschooling, reading, training, and watching a film together daily. 

Listing all these things, I can’t help realizing that I actually do nothing when it comes to fighting the pandemic. Of course, I’ve—we all have—been told that we do good by staying home. 

Still, I wonder: How can doing good feel like doing nothing? 

When I do nothing, I do so to the level that any Buddhistic monk would envy my capacity for non-doing. Non-doing resembles what we refer to when we say that something has presence. Life has presence. The Latin word prae-esseliterally means “to be in front of.” After 41 days (and counting) of imprisonment, I feel like standing more directly in front of life. It’s within reach; I can touch it, smell it—and, at the same time, I am also just being a witness to a crucial part of life, to the doctors, nurses, garbage collectors, and supermarket employees who are doing what the government calls essential work.

So, I wonder some more, whether all this doing nothing is absurd? After all, being a writer is not on the list of essential jobs.

When you write, it’s impossible to distinguish the story from how it is being told, its style, and general mood. The stories being written now will have another rhythm. Perhaps a kind of non-rhythm. For example, while doing nothing, it doesn’t matter what day it is. Presence doesn’t exclude time, but it binds time to a now and here. This is a liberating experience. Most of us are much more here: present.

Maybe that is why I never really did find Meursault’s behavior in The Stranger absurd; rather, it confirmed his capacity of being present with something much more important: death. 

The coronavirus is raising many questions, but one seems to be of great importance: How do we accommodate death? How do we live with the daily presence of death? 

The French essayist Michel de Montaigne said that to philosophize is to learn to die. The idea came from Plato, who saw his mentor Socrates condemned to death because he encouraged young people to think. Socrates could have avoided the punishment, but he chose to drink the poisonous potion of hemlock. 

One way of learning to die is to acknowledge the questions that the end of life confront us with. How can we minimize the estrangement that can arise in our meeting with death? Why does death make so many feel uncomfortable? 

I assume that the answer is not only—as typically proposed—related to the fact that death makes us reflect on whether we manage, or managed, to live sufficiently, whether we were attentive and full of appreciation and gratitude. Death is not what makes life meaningful per se. Quite the contrary, life is what makes life meaningful and worth living. I see the daily presence of death as a test of how well I live with nothing, for example, doing nothing, not being capable of doing anything, or more, accepting my mental or spiritual limitations. 

Doing nothing is for many people—in our current coronavirus—the same as doing good. But is it good in the sense that we come closer to dying without being dead? Perhaps it’s similar to Gandhi’s non-violence philosophy, which was not a resignation, not even the kind of refusal that is found in Melville’s short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and his “I would prefer not to”; rather it was doing non-violence. Nothing can, therefore, be done. 

So, doing nothing should not make people feel inferior or impotent. I don’t. Rather I am grateful to be witness to so many courageous women and men making things work. 

Many years ago, I accepted that I have a need to invent or create ideas, thoughts, or worlds of fiction. I don’t think that words can stop a virus, but perhaps they can heal wounds caused by the virus. Literature and art can challenge, shock, and expand our field of experience. It is difficult to share sorrow without the aid of art. What binds people together in Europe, where I am placed, is not the European Union; political solidarity is almost absent in the region. The borders are closed. Each nation is responsible for their own actions. What connects people are music and relieving words of compassion. Literature is like a string of sentences tying the past to the present, while throwing a lifebuoy of words into the future.

Death can easily steal time, as people stay in front of their screens slurping the corona news 24/7. It can also make time stand still. During these weeks, most people will experience why the French philosopher Henri Bergson defined time as duration. An hour can feel short or very long, even though 60 minutes is 60 minutes. Bergson can teach us that accepting what is real can be both a positive or negative experience, though it doesn’t change what time really is. 

Paying attention to the passing present moment is also a way of qualifying what forms of life we might leave behind when we can leave our apartments. What will I not forget? Which life is really worth living? 

During the crisis, we are confronted with the basics: Life is movement. Something in life moves us, makes us feel alive. Is death part of it? Yes. Love is another pole. It takes courage to accept the presence of death—that is, to be willing to risk everything for nothing. 

The coronavirus makes me become nothing, not feel like nothing. I am impermanent, constantly changing, becoming someone else. I hope that I might be of a kind of use, when and if I am capable of affirming life when it passes through me. Catching life with a word. Actually, becoming nothing makes me think of the British philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch, who once said that “in the moral life the enemy is the fat relentless ego.”

 I believe that this corona-experience is good for my moral formation. 

The morale might be something like: Doing nothing is good, and when I become nothing, I am good. Why? Becoming nothing makes it easier to resonate with all life’s movements. 

First published in The Mindful Word, April 2020

Things Should Not Return to Normal

Spain—the country closed down two weeks ago—Friday, March 13, to be exact. As an uninvited ‘guest,’ the Coronavirus invites all kinds of (perhaps premature) reflections. For instance, are European countries moving in a totalitarian direction?

They are not, I would claim, and for two reasons: Europeans would never allow it, and more importantly, democracies deal with threats like the Coronavirus better.

Although many European citizens are experiencing and will experience various limitations on their individual freedom—you can get a fine for strolling around without a justifiable purpose—democracy is not only about freedom, but also about duty and responsibility. Acting responsibly requires each one of us to be conscious about what we do and why we do it.

The core of democracy is that it teaches us that we should not be concerned only for ourselves. Rather, we are in this together. I have a responsibility not only for my own health, but also for the health of other citizens. In other words, I am responsible for the others’ well-being, as they are for mine.

As a consequence, I find it meaningful to limit my freedom of movement, minimize (physical) social contact and so forth, because I might become a risk for other, more vulnerable citizens.

***

Freedom and responsibility hang together. Our responsibility is the string that ties us together and what actually makes us free. Norms are meaningful—not because they are universal or come from a fictional god; on the contrary, norms are social artifacts made and remade by human beings.

The Danish philosopher K. E. Løgstrup said in The Ethical Demand (1956) that ‘trust is fundamental.’ Each person holds a part of the other’s life in his or her—hopefully clean—hands, and vice versa. By laying oneself open to the others, we accept our shared vulnerability. The ethical demand or obligation doesn’t refer to specific transcendental moral categories, only this basic trust.

“Human life could hardly exist if it were otherwise.” For example, I trust that it is not just my wife, our three children and me who are staying home. I trust that other families are doing the same. Any epidemic or pandemic exposes how well a society acts in a responsible and trustworthy manner. Do we care about one another, or just about our own opportunistic interests?

Trust and responsibility are the exact opposite of egoism. I might go out for a run because I—statistically—am not at risk. I might empty the supermarket, and thereby neglect other citizens’ well-being.

It appears as if trust and responsibility are threatened by the coronavirus. In contrast, I would claim that these fundamental qualities were already threatened by capitalism. Yet, the Coronavirus might reactivate our civic spirit. I see this virus as an invitation to reflect more deeply about our lives.

I think we’d like to remember at least three things. First, the huge amount of inventive and creative ways in which we share our loss and fear. For example, when we reach out to our fellow human beings through singing, clapping and helping. The amount of generosity in Spain (and elsewhere) is touching. Second, we are in this together. Third, we can only prevail if we trust each other.

Trust is what actually brings us together, much more than holding hands. Trust reaches further than our hugs. Trust reaches out to the future. If trust is fundamental, it is because it doesn’t distinguish between the lives worth preserving and those regarded as not worth preserving—at least not beforehand.

Trust, of course, can be broken, but only because it was already there to begin with. Trust, as I see it, is related to the kind of thinking about being interconnected that can be found in mindfulness and ecological thinking. For instance, if I neglect or ignore another person, I also neglect or ignore myself. None of us can exist alone.

***

I believe that the virus will make us remember that we can’t survive without trust and compassion, because we’re all interconnected. We depend on each other. This interdependency is what distinguishes totalitarian regimes from democracies.

Saying this is not the same as giving democratic governments carte blanche. In any democratic society, citizens must critically monitor the actions taken by the government. It’s part of the deal.

In today’s rigid, populistic world of identity politics, we rarely focus on healing the wounds between races, genders and sexual orientations. On the contrary, we often fertilize these, to create enmity and rigid group loyalty. Similarly, sometimes the precautions and arrangements made by politicians can create more panic than calm.

Still, I would contend that the panic is not so much related to the temporary limitations of our individual freedom as it is to how openly and honestly the politicians communicate. It’s obvious that some politicians are corrupted by money and power; they think in terms of voters and elections. Yet, others actually do think. To think is to care for matters beyond our own interests.

Therefore, the best solution is, of course, not a dictatorship but citizenship. In a trusted democracy, when a politician asks citizens to act responsibly (to activate their public spirit), they wash their hands, limit public transportation, keep their distance or stay at home for weeks, as my family does now in Spain (until April 11, as the situation is right now).

When democracy works, politicians don’t have to create new laws, but through honest and thoughtful communication, they can awaken civic spirit.

The civic spirit is not about rights, but about duty, and the silent demands that tie us together. Duty and obligation not only come before rights, they also encourage us to think and act consciously, evaluating whether we need to do a certain thing that may be within our rights.

Do I really need to fulfill my right to mingle, right now, when social contact ought to be minimized? Of course not. This is also why things should not return to ‘normal,’ because many things were abnormal before the Coronavirus: neoliberal greed, resource scarcity, climate destruction, stress, anxiety…

It’s not about our rights, but our shared obligations. Rights tend to reduce everything to a question of being for or against. Life is not that stubbornly simple. No one is for the Coronavirus. In the same vein, no one is for avoiding their grandparents; it is just a necessary and responsible choice.

Civic spirit stresses that the value of our lives is related to what we leave behind—thoughts, behaviours and gestures that enable future citizens to live and act freely.

The Coronavirus puts all of us in a difficult situation. It tests our attitude towards others, and our trust in their maturity and ability to act responsibly. The Coronavirus is not only a catastrophe; it is also an opportunity for us to see ourselves, to relate to the world with more kindness and compassion, and to change our capitalistic forms of life.

The better we act together, the sooner we can start kissing, hugging and drinking together again—like real democratic citizens.

– 26. March 2020

This essay was first publish in The Mindful Word

Efter 14 dages husarrest …

Jeg forudser, at de fleste i løbet af de næste 14 dage vil opleve udgangsforbuddet medføre en frigørende klarhed om eget liv. Coronaen kan fortælle os, at frihed er at være bundet af nogle meningsfulde bånd. Og at disse bånd aldrig er kapitalismens, men kærlighedens, skriver forfatter og filosof Finn Janning i dette debatindlæg.

Læs kronikken i Information.

A mindful philosophy

“The artist is a seer, a becomer,” wrote the philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the psychiatrist Félix Guattari in their book, What Is Philosophy?

I thought of this quote the other day, when a student of mine asked me, “What are you: a meditator or a philosopher?”

I’m not sure whether there is—or has to be—a difference, I told her, “I’m a philosopher who meditates. I guess like a carpenter, schoolteacher or football player sometimes does that, too.”

“So to philosophize is, in a way, to meditate,” she said.

“Yes.”

I’m certain that no one philosophizes without paying attention. The philosopher is a seer, I believe, or to put this in simpler, less romantic terms: To think requires us to be aware of what’s happening inside ourselves as well as outside in society.

Let me share a few thoughts from Deleuze that may show how philosophy is related to mindfulness or meditation. Let’s call it a mindful philosophy.

The writer as artist

The writer as artist has seen something—something that he or she passes on, in a way, that gives the reader enhanced access to this world.

For instance, a novel or a memoir is a communication of experiences that typically involve ethics and knowledge. A novel answers the question of how a person acts, reflects, thinks and feels during certain circumstances. This is why literature can be a way of gaining experiences that make us more mature, as it allows us to experience other forms of life.

Like the philosopher, the writer as artist is a seer and he or she confronts the reader with his or her ethical limitations. Deleuze states that “In the act of writing there’s an attempt to make life something more than personal, to free life from what imprisons it.” (from Negotiations)

To write is to resist

This means, among other things, resisting the urge to follow the dominant fantasies and ideas controlling our lives—just think of status anxiety. And yet, to resist means, first and foremost, to resist death.Report this ad

For this reason, you write to give the unborn a possibility to live freely; that is, to live a healthy life. The writer is affirming life when he or she sets free what lives.

“To affirm is to unburden: not to load life with the weight of higher values, but to create new values which are those of life, which make life light and active,” Deleuze stresses in Nietzsche & Philosophy (italics in original).

To release, set free and create values in life—this is why we want to spend time with certain writers. They extend our boundaries.

Writing and meditation

Now, let me be even more specific. I meditate so that my life can become meditative; that is, so I can let life pass through me while I try to pass on or affirm what lives.

The writer is generous when he or she passes on life. This idea also indicates that to produce art (or think philosophically), there has to be something at stake—a matter of life and death.

“A creator who isn’t grabbed around the throat by a set of impossibilities is no creator,” Deleuze says in Negotiations.

So, just imagine being grabbed by the throat. It’s not necessarily a nice image, but it’s essential. To breathe is to live. It’s basic.

Through meditation or writing (and perhaps other activities, as well), I confirm on a daily basis my intention to affirm what lives, to actualize that which is in the midst of becoming alive. And I do see this as a kind of resistance.

The capacity to pay attention

Today we live in a world in which people exploit themselves in their quest for status, prestige and power. We live in a world in which some repress and discriminate against others due to differences in race, gender, sexual preference and more.

Inequalities are growing. People are scared. The news is fake.

And yet, what I propose is that we, through meditation or philosophy, cultivate our capacity to pay attention to what we don’t want to pass on (for instance, discrimination), but also to what’s worth affirming (such as love and friendship).

Seeing means making contact with what happens and being connected with life. Becoming sensuous is also related to our capacity to be affected, which is crucial to experiencing, but also to experimenting and transforming—creating alternative ways of living, feeling and thinking.

Today, we need to do more than just address inequalities. We need to create lives that are lived beyond any rigid identities, whether we’re speaking of race, gender or some other identifier. It’s here that mindfulness can help people become more sensible and aware.

I don’t wish to claim that we, as artists, meditators or philosophers, are better than others—of course not. We can all learn to “see” and philosophize, with a little help from meditation and maybe some encounters with Kierkegaard along the way.

Once we begin paying attention, we also begin to question things, so it turns out the student questioning me was already ahead of me. That being said, I guess I’m just a student who’s occasionally disguised as a teacher!

First published in The Mindful Word

Tolstoy & marshmallows

In Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, the main character’s mind tends to wander in both time and space. “In court he found his mind wandering; he would be miles away, wondering whether to have plain or moulded cornices with his curtains.”

Mind-wandering

In the 1960s and ’70s, psychologist Walter Mischel’s “Marshmallow Experiment” proved that mind-wandering is, among other things, related to self-control. In these studies, nursery school children were offered a choice between one small reward provided immediately, or a larger reward provided later—one versus a handful of marshmallows. Before the children could receive the larger reward, they had to wait for a short period of time (approximately 15 minutes), during which they were left alone.

Some children couldn’t take their minds off the marshmallow there in front of them; they ate it as quickly as possible. On the other hand, some were good at distracting themselves. Years later, during follow-up studies, the researcher found that in general, the children who showed self-discipline and waited had a higher level of well-being. Here, mind-wandering was positive. Therefore, being able to think about the future might not be as devastating as some self-help gurus claim.

Conversely, in other circumstances, mind-wandering may be considered a waste of time; that is, lacking benefit. Again, this comes down to whether we’re able to distinguish between long-term and short-term rewards and whether we agree on the value of those rewards. For example, in most Western countries, young people are often encouraged to drop the sabbatical year and finish school as quickly as possible, in order to become “real” citizens with jobs. However, for some, a year of travelling, reflection, or doing nothing may help them find their true vocation. The point is, we seldom know the outcome beforehand. Life is an experiment. We don’t formulate questions before we face something that makes us think.

In the “Marshmallow Experiment,” the children knew the consequences, but for many aspects of life, we don’t know. At times, we distract ourselves because we don’t dare face ourselves. To truly know ourselves, we must have the courage to take care of ourselves—stretch our comfort zones. The process of maturing, therefore, requires patience.

Thus, whether mind-wandering is beneficial or not depends on our capacity to distinguish between profit and benefit, with the former belonging to the capitalistic sphere and the latter to the existential realm. The main difference between profit and benefit is that someone else can always carry out activities that produce profit (the definition of economy is the organization of scarcity; that is, competition), whereas what’s beneficial to me depends on my experience of moments I don’t wish to outsource.

The problem with Ivan Ilyich in Leo Tolstoy’s masterful story is that his wandering mind isn’t beneficial to him. His mind wanders because he doesn’t want to live his life, although no one else can do it for him. Not only does Ivan Ilyich neglect living in the present moment, he also seems to be disconnected within himself. He lives as if he doesn’t have faith in life. He lives as if he’s already out of this world: dead.

The man who never seems to live

The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a man who, throughout most parts of his life, never seems to live.

One day, when climbing a stepladder, Ivan Ilyich slips and falls. He passes off the accident as “only a bruise.” Yet, the bruise is the beginning of him becoming aware of his own death, as the bruise turns into an unbearable pain that slowly drags all the energy out of him. In the late stages of his undiagnosed illness, he wonders whether he has actually lived a happy life and whether his present suffering is a result of his careless lifestyle. It becomes apparent that his general lack of trust in life’s events makes him doubtful and insecure. He hasn’t been paying attention to his life.

Tolstoy doesn’t present us with concrete answers to the existential and spiritual questions the story raises regarding how we should live. On the contrary, he shows us that dying an unhappy and unpeaceful death is the result of not living as fully as possible.

Ivan Ilyich simply has too many doubts. Has he been living a life of ignorance, without seeing, knowing, or even being aware that life one day ends? As Tolstoy writes, “All his life the syllogism he had learned from Kiesewetter’s logic—Julius Caesar is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caesar is mortal—had always seemed to him to be true only when applied to Caesar, certainly not to him.”

Like many others, Ilyich forgets or finds it difficult to accept that he, too, is a mortal being. He seems to neglect the fact that he doesn’t own his life, regardless of the amount of material possessions and titles he gathers.

Life passes through us, changing us, and there are no certainties in life except death. All we can do is protect and care for the joyful interactions that we have with life in the best way possible, depending on our circumstances and our capacity to do so.

We learn from overcoming obstacles; for instance, distracting ourselves from the marshmallow. Yet, we can also learn from investigating or unfolding the moment; that is, seeing our own reactions to the marshmallow as the object of our investigation. What are we capable of? Why should we not eat it now? If we hate marshmallows, then eating one is, after all, better than eating five!

A life worth living

Experiencing a happy death is to avoid an ending like that of Ivan Ilyich, who can’t stop wondering whether, “I’ve been wrong in the way I’ve lived my life.”

Has he? Have I? Have you? How can we enhance the likelihood that our deaths will be peaceful and serene, and not be burdened by regret and remorse? How can each of us become more likely to live a life worth living?

These questions are fundamental to Tolstoy’s story and at the heart of all philosophical thinking and practice. The tentative answer is to experience death as part of living. It requires attention (and perhaps, also, a little less self-deception!) to notice that the wrinkles are already there.

We are dying because we are living. Death is never really our death. It comes from the outside, yet it awaits us all.

First published in The Mindful Word

Is this the right way?

Late one August evening in a small provincial town, a woman steps out her front door. In her hand, she holds a slim leather briefcase, probably containing a laptop. When she steps down from the small landing in front of the door, a mild breeze fills the air, gently tousling her long blond tresses. She tries to pull her hair back behind her ears without any luck. From the back pocket of her jeans she pulls out a bandeau and ties those unruly locks into a simple ponytail. Now, with no hair interrupting her vision, she looks first to the right and then to the left before turning around to lock the door behind her. After checking twice that the door really is locked, she rotates to face the street for the second time. 

This time she looks to the left first. Actually, at this point, her whole body shifts as she evaluates the possibility of going in that direction. 

Is this the right way? 

Read the rest of the essay in Terse Journal.

Breathe with Me

This is the culmination of one individual’s therapeutical breath work during burnout and how it became a collective line of breaths in New York.

The writer

The artist

Kig væk

Jo flere informationer, desto sværere bliver det at tage fornuftige beslutninger.

I Weekendavisens sektion Ideer (»Kultur i acceleration«, #27, 5. juli) refereres der til interessante studier foretaget af blandt andet DTU, der handler om, hvordan vi i dagens forjagede kultur har sværere ved at fastholde vores opmærksomhed. Vores nærværende tilstedeværelse bliver mere flygtig og zappende. Hele tiden er vi på jagt efter fristelser og belønninger.

En fælles præmis for studierne, der omtales, er, at opmærksomhed betragtes som en ressource. Dette stemmer glimrende overens med tankerne bag begrebet opmærksomhedsøkonomi, idet økonomi handler om allokeringen af knappe ressourcer. I dag er den knappe ressource vores opmærksomhed. Opmærksomhed er dog ikke kun en ressource, men også en erfaringsskabende kapacitet. Det kan sammenlignes lidt med det at skrive eller at male, som på den ene side er teknikker og en ressource, som kan læres, men som på den anden side også er kapacitet, der kan trænes. Nogle mennesker kan skrive i hånden i meget lang tid, fordi de øver sig dagligt, mens det for andre er en begrænset ressource.

Sagt anderledes: Opmærksomhed er en muskel, der kan trænes. Spørgsmålet er, hvorfor det er værd at træne den?

Den amerikanske filosof William James talte om vigtigheden af opmærksomhed som evnen til frivilligt at bringe et flakkende sind tilbage, hvilket han så som fundamentet for udviklingen af ens dømmekraft, karakter og vilje. Han skrev et sted, »at den uddannelse, som kan forbedre denne kapacitet, ville være en uddannelse par excellence«. En anden amerikaner, Jon Kabat-Zinn der forsker i mindfulness, som netop er en måde at træne opmærksomheden på, har beskrevet opmærksomheden som tosidig eller dobbeltrettet. Den rækker både ud og ind. Det vil sige, at jeg både er opmærksom på det, som sker, samtidig med at jeg også er opmærksom på kvaliteten af min egen opmærksomhed.

Det er især kvaliteten af ens opmærksomhed, der forbindes med erfaringen, mens den udadrettede opmærksomhed ofte ses som en ressource. Tænk blot på folkeskolelæreren, der fortæller sine studerende, at de skal være opmærksomme. På hvad og hvordan? Sådanne spørgsmål forvandler opmærksomhed til et moralsk anliggende.

Den engelske filosof Iris Murdoch forbandt opmærksomhed med kærlighed og mente af samme grund, at opmærksomhed var essentiel for at udvikle vores moralske dømmekraft. I en af hendes bøger talte hun – meget rammende i kontrast til i dag – om »unselfing«, og ikke selfies. Hendes idé var, at for at kunne deltage opmærksomt i livet må vi skubbe vores eget ego til side. Kun på den måde kan vi for alvor erfare det, som sker, og derved tage bedre del i de moralske beslutninger – til glæde for alle.

Murdoch var i høj grad inspireret af en anden filosof, nemlig den franske Simone Weil, der beskrev opmærksomhed som en neutral og direkte kontakt med virkeligheden. Det vil sige, at opmærksomheden som erfaring er uden filter. Den dømmer ikke på forhånd.

Normalt, når vi erfarer livet, sker det gennem et mere eller mindre instrumentelt eller moralsk filter, hvor vi er opmærksomme på noget bestemt, enten for at bekræfte vores antagelser eller fordi vi tror, at det lige netop er dét, som vi mangler. Vi er ifølge Murdoch egoistiske.

Det, som Weil og Murdoch opfordrede os til, var at overkomme denne instrumentelle tankegang for derved at mærke og blive mærket af livet. Det, som studierne fra DTU viser, er – lader det til – at vi i sjældnere grad mærkes af livet, men i stedet mærker os selv, idet vi hele tiden lader vores opmærksomhed flakke derhen, hvor den bekræfter eller underholder os bedst muligt.

Spørgsmålet er derfor, om en forjaget kultur derved, gradvist, gør vores verden mindre og mindre. Og, om vi derved bliver dårligere til at udvikle vores dømmekraft og vilje.

Bragt i Weekendavisen, #29, 19. juli 2019.

Mindfulness og skolen

I medierne kan man til tider læse, at folkeskolens elever er stressede, angste og urolige. Nogle foreslår mindfulness som en løsning på problemet, mens andre mener, at mindfulness ikke er andet end et plaster på en syg præstationskultur.

Jeg er enig i, at præstationskulturen er syg, men uenig i, hvorvidt mindfulness blot er et plaster. Faktisk mener jeg, at mindfulness sagtens kan bidrage til udfoldelsen og vedligeholdelsen af pædagogik baseret på en kærlig tilgang til læring i stedet for absurde præstationsidealer.

Kigger vi nærmere på kritikken af mindfulness, er den ofte ganske paradoksal. Enten er mindfulness for religiøst, eller også er den for lidt i kontakt med den smukke buddhistiske livsfilosofi.

Så hvad er mindfulness i grunden?

Læs resten af kronikken i Information

When life blooms

I’m pleased to announce that my new book, When life blooms – Breathe with Jeppe Hein will be released November 28th.

The publisher writes about the book:

“Danish artist Jeppe Hein soared to the top of the international art scene before the age of 35. His works were showcased at the world’s finest exhibitions and sold for sky-high prices. Then suddenly his body said stop. In 2009 Hein went down with stress.

In this book philosopher Finn Janning follows Jeppe Hein’s development from the tome immediately after his diagnosis with burn out and onward – a period where Hein underwent psychoanalysis and developed and interest in yoga, breathing exercises and spirituality.

Janning shows how spirituality has become more present in Hein’s works, and in the book, he develops an existential philosophy in continuation of the artists spirituality and art.”

I may add:

Although I was commissioned to write this book, I aimed at turning it into a philosophical biography that describes the life of the artist Jeppe Hein. In doing so, I’ve tried to exemplify Gilles Deleuze’s idea that “life is not personal,” that is to say, each life is a case study.

I choose this approach as a way of addressing the narcissism of the artist without making the narrative confronting, or in anyway judgmental.

Instead, I illustrate how Jeppe is formed by the major cultural trends during the last 40 years, such as the growing accelerating and spirituality and social entrepreneurship. He is an artist of his time.

It’s a book that tests and nuances the popularity of today’s spirituality through a philosophical, primarily existential lens.

ENJOY

 

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