the meaningoflifeMagazine in association with 'the

school of life'

photography by sam jackson

edited by 2i's london

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t h e m e a n i n go fl i f e

t h e m e a n i n go fl i f e

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"Let's suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream you wanted to dream, and that you could for example have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time, or any length of time you wanted to have, and you would naturally, as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfil all your wishes.

You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive, and after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each you would say, "Wow, that was pretty great, but now lets, umm, lets have a surprise, lets have a dream which isn't under control, where something is going to happen to me that I don't know what it's going to be.

And, well, you would do that and come out of that and say, "Wow, that was a close shave wasn't it?"

And then you would get more and more adventurous and you would make further and further gambles as to what you dream, and finally you would dream where you are now.

You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living within today."

Alan Watts

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B l a c k I m p l i e sW h i t e

S e l fI m p l i e sO t h e r

D e a t h I m p l i e s L i f e

C o n te n t s

4 black implies white6 Contents7 Contributors8 Editors Note12 God?16 Hope20 to be free22 Contrarian View of Cool26 The Power of Moonlight34 Worth It?35 Questions38 Let Us Prey39 end

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Helen in Samuel Smith pubCarnaby Street, Central LondonTaken by Sam Jackson, 2012

Thankst o

Giles Fraser GuardianMark Vernon School of LifeNick Southgate School of LifeChristine Jackson GrandmaJames Attlee jamesattlee.comRhiannon Herold studentSam Olomo student & ChristianJulia Kotulova Design student, UALMariana Joseph ActorLizzy Burden studentSam jackson student

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E d i t o r sn o t e s

This publication has been put together in accordance with ‘The School of Life’ who put together questions, lectures and teachings on life itself. But what is and how do we see or describe ‘Life’ and what is its meaning.

My favourite quote about the Meaning of life is from Novalis, a German poet from the Romantic era, who stated that “Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life”.

The word artist can be described as many things the most common being interpreted as simply a ‘man with a paintbrush’, however, one could argue that an artist is a person who is engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities.

Does this then mean that the meaning of life comes through the true passion that one exerts through ones true calling? A surfer finds it surfing? A writer finds it writing plays? And a painter finding it at the end of his brush.

One thing is for sure though. No matter how many books you read or how many times someone tells you the answer to the ‘big question’... No body ever really knows in the end!

Sam JacksonJackson.samuel@hotmail.co.uk

A collection of writings and photographs depicting the meaning of life.

Put together by Sam Jackson

E d i t o r sn o t e s

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t e a c hm e

t e a c hm e

Helen, Lizzy and Jon at barbiequeBermondsey, South London

Taken by Sam Jackson. 2012

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g o d ?g o d ?g o d ?g o d ?g o d ?

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g o d ?g o d ?g o d ?g o d ?g o d ?

When I was younger I worked for a while on a hospital psychiatric ward as an orderly. I distinctly remember this lovely former headmistress who was gripped by the unusual fear that her body was hollow and full of urine. She would sleep sitting up because she believed that if she lay flat the urine would flow up into her throat and she would drown. Any inclination towards the horizontal and she would begin to cough and splutter.

One afternoon, much taken with youthful confidence, I decided to reason her out of her bizarre belief system. She was clearly a clever woman, knowledgeable about the world, and could complete the Times crossword in under an hour. So I sat beside her bed and tried to explain why these fears couldn’t possibly be true. I got absolutely nowhere. Every question had a reasoned response. Her whole world-view seemed entirely consistent. There was no way of breaking it down. It was rigid and impenetrable. And therein lay her ultimate and utter madness.

In a celebrated essay on Russian literature, Isaiah Berlin famously borrowed a quotation from the Greek poet Archilochus to distinguish two very different sorts of thinkers: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” The fox, like Berlin himself, can commit to a plurality of values, even when they are incommensurable.

The hedgehog wants to subsume all reality under a single idea or principle. Speaking for myself, I fear hedgehogs, whatever the brand of reality they want to sign up to. Yet hedgehogs, and certainly clever ones, are well defended by their consistency. By contrast, foxes are in the awkward and vulnerable position of contradicting themselves. I love the church. I hate the church. I believe in God. I don’t believe in God. I do it all the time. And I am totally unrepentant. It seems to me that one of the marks of sanity is that one can live with most contradiction.

Arguing with people about religion, as I often do, especially with fundamentalists of either the pro- or anti- camp, can feel a lot like arguing with the headmistress. It’s a battle of world-views each of which reckons its truth is to be revealed in its internal coherence. Much effort is thus placed on avoiding contradiction. And arguments all seem to be about reaching that “ah hah” moment when an opponent has discovered a contradiction in the other person’s position. Well, so what? Only the mad never contradict themselves.

This week I have been reading Dostoyevsky again. And one of the most exciting things about his writing is the way he manages to portray A and not A at the same time. The Brothers Karamazov contains a devastating critique of faith and an astonishing defence of it.

Perhaps it is the privilege of the novelist not to have to abide by the law of non-contradiction. For the commitment of the novelist is to recognise the world as a bigger place. And this requires the articulation of many different, divergent, contradictory voices. It is a consequence of having an entirely non-defensive attitude towards the world. Herein lies a very different approach to truth: that it begins with absolute truthfulness.

The reason most of us don’t take this path is that we are fearful. We huddle together for ideological warmth, preferring the safety of party-mindedness to exposure to the chill winds of contradiction. This is especially true of politicians and newspaper columnists. Yet thinking is always crippled by false certainty. Dostoyevsky shows us that stupid is the price we pay for wisdom.knows in the end!

Giles FraserThe Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk

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Licenced Sex and Book shopSoho, London

Taken by Sam Jackson. 2012

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O ?O ?O ?O ?O

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w i s h f u lt h i n k i n g

w i s h f u lt h i n k i n g

B l a n d o p t i m i s m

B l a n d o p t i m i s m

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H O P E

H O P E

H O P E

H O P E

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B l a n d o p t i m i s m

B l a n d o p t i m i s m

Mirror BallRoyal Vauxhall Tavern, LondonTaken By Sam Jackson. 2012

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What is hope? In his autobiography, Miracles of Life, the writer J.G. Ballard offers an arresting case in point, which I think gets to the heart of the matter.

He tells of the apparently most hopeless moment in his life. He, his wife and young children are on holiday. It is a happy time. Then, suddenly his wife becomes ill. It’s appendicitis and though requiring surgery, should be routine, low risk, uneventful. Only, it doesn’t turn out like that. She doesn’t recover and dies.

He is left bereft and with the responsibility of raising his children. Some friends, he reports, thought the situation hopeless. ‘Many people (who should have known better) openly told me that a mother’s loss was irreplaceable and the children would be affected for ever.’ Some friends. And yet, he refuses their despair. ‘From the start,’ he writes, ‘I was determined to keep my family together.’

It’s worth reflecting on that sentence. It speaks volumes about hope. For one thing, there is the use of the word ‘determined.’ Hope is a decision, a form of courage, a commitment. The same notion of hopeful determination is implicit in Ballard’s reference to ‘from the start.’ If he is living with the end of his wife’s life, he is also brave enough to see it as a new beginning. ‘While there’s life there’s hope,’ as the proverb wisely has it.

This notion of hope as a form of courage is wholly unlike the way the word is deployed in common parlance. ‘I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow,’ we say. It’s a travesty of the verb. We might all vow never to use it in that way again! For there is nothing determined or courageous or committed about wishing what might happen with the weather. In fact, you can’t hope anything about the weather in hope’s true sense. Instead, at best, you might be optimistic it won’t rain at all tomorrow.

Vclav Havel summed up the distinction: ‘Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.’ Hope as moral bravery. But that’s not all.

What’s also striking about Ballard is that his hope is not rose-tinted. It’s steely hard. ‘Alcohol was a close friend and confident in the early days,’ he confesses. The death of his wife was agonising, and sometimes the pain was too much to bear. Booze was a necessary anaesthetic. That speaks of the grittiness of hope. For, in truth, hope is informed and strengthened by such realism. It can stare reality in the face, and stare it down. It can cope with the worst that might happen, and can survive to yearn for better.

So hope is neither bland optimism nor wishful thinking. Neither is it the same as the certainty that something will go well, but is rather a stance taken towards something or someone like Ballard towards his children that is worth committing to, regardless of what happens. Hope comes from the guts. Hence, hope against hope is powerful enough to change the world.

Mark Vernonwww.markvernon.com

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Festival Goer,Sziget festival,

Budapest, Hungry.

Taken by Sam Jackson.

2012

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C o n t r a r i a nv i e w o f

c o o l

C o n t r a r i a nv i e w o f

c o o l23

Laura, Jordan and LiamEating Burgers,Royal Vauxhall TavernTaken By Sam Jackson. 2012

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w h a ti sc o o la f t e r a l l

Cameras and WalletsBermondsey, South London

Taken By Sam Jackson. 2012

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w h a ti sc o o la f t e r a l l

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t h e p o w e ro fm o o n l i g h t

t h e p o w e ro fm o o n l i g h t

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Self Portrait,In the dark.Taken by Sam Jackson. 2012

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For those of us who live in an urban setting, moonlight, starlight and darkness itself are increasingly rare commodities. What do we lose by living in a man-built environment of perpetual day? This excerpt from my book ‘Nocturne: A Journey in Search of Moonlight’ reveals the powerful psychological effect the night sky can have on us, beyond the city’s outer limits.

The writer and pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry crash-landed in the Sahara more than once, and narrowly escaped dying of thirst before being rescued by passing Bedouin tribesmen. On the occasion of one such unscheduled landing, a moonlit night spent beneath the canopy of the sky brought a new understanding of his relationship to the planet that was to inform much of his subsequent writing.

“Forced down once more in a landscape of deep sand, I was waiting for the dawn. The golden hills offered up their luminous slopes to the moon, and others rose up in the shadow to its frontier with the light. In this deserted factory of darkness and moonlight there reigned the peace of work in abeyance and the silence of a trap, and I fell asleep within it”

Waking in the middle of the night, opening his eyes on the sky, ‘that hatchery of stars’, with no physical object by which to ascertain a sense of distance or scale, he experienced intense vertigo, until he was reassured by the sensation of gravity pinning him to the sand dune on which he lay.

I felt the earth propping up my back, sustaining me, lifting me, carrying me within nocturnal space. I found myself adhering to the planet, held by a force like the force that pins you to a wagon on a curve, and I found joy in this excellent rampart, this solidity, this security, as I sensed beneath my body the curved deck of my ship.

For Saint-Exupéry, the ‘deserted factory of darkness and moonlight’ he found waiting for him when he came down in the desert produced an insight as powerful as any prophetic vision. As a European, he had to fall from the sky to discover it. For Moses and Muhammed, along with countless other prophets, the desert was an accessible resource, part of their native landscape, a place of serenity and solitude.

From the beginning of time, we seem to have felt the need to measure ourselves against something infinitely vast, whether it be the wilderness, the ocean or the darkness. This in built impulse remains, although we are hemmed in on every side. For this reason alone, a walk beneath the night sky is at least therapeutic, and perhaps essential.

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Chips,Brighton,Taken by Sam Jackson. 2012

c h i p sa nyo n e ?

c h i p sa nyo n e ?

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The question of the meaning of life points at one deems to be the central element. Whether it be social, economic, religious, love or family, the extent to which these are fulfilled I thus believe to be an achievement of life itself. Therefore, when looked at closer an underlying element of happiness and content in reality is suggestive to the true meaning of life, and hence is it simply the route to which one chooses to take to achieve his that differs.

For me, my emphasis lies in nonmaterial constraints, the way in which my life is surrounded by people whom care, and I can care for in return, gives me an element of vitality that thus enables me to fulfil life, entities and establish a existence that is ‘worth living’.

Rhiannon Herold, Student, London

w o rt hi t ?

35There is no one answer to the meaning of life as each person has their own thoughts and feelings as to why we are here and how our lives fit into the world.

When we are young, fit and full of energy, we feel indestructible - able to conquer any obstacles that life throws at us, we are full of optimism, the world is going to be our oyster.

Gradually as a need for money and stability enters our life, the constraints of work have to be undertaken and our freedom is curtailed. If we enjoy our work all well and good, however, if you do not then questions arise. Is this all that life has to offer? Is this why I am on this earth? Every body has to come to their own conclusion. Every body is different.

Marriage and children bring more questions - should we bring children into the world? If we do have children, how do we want them to behave and live? The responsibility of children is always a heavy one.

And then with old age and the realization that life is nearly over - the question of have I lived a good life? Do I have any regrets? Have I left the world a better place for everyone?

Life is full of questions.Christine Jackson, Grandma

q u e st i o n s

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s h o u l dw ep r a y

s h o u l dw ep r a y

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“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

For me, the most important lesson in life is empathy. When I was half-asleep in last period on a Tuesday, nursed into a doze by the dulcet tones of Mrs Haslam’s finest rendition of To Kill A Mockingbird, I reckon Atticus Finch managed to penetrate my conscience more deeply than at the time I realised. I don’t believe in God, but I do believe in people. And I think only from understanding other people, as this fine protagonist taught, can we forge relationships with them. Then we can learn from their perspectives, love, be loved, and be happy.

I say I don’t believe in God. But I pray, regularly. That’s because I believe “God” lives in nature, in everything and everyone. So I thank “Him” when things are going swell. And if it seems everyone on this particular day seems to have magnificently perfected the art of being a cunt, I ask “Him” to have a look if there’s anything “He” can do. The thing is, “He” can’t fix everything because “He” has a lot of people’s wish lists on “His” plate. So I think of ways to meet “Him” half way, and make sure I have been on my best behaviour, seeing as I’m calling in a massive favour.

Simply through this act of contemplation, I use my brain to get closer to where I want to be. So in my experience, praying works. Call it praying, meditation or whatever takes your fancy - perhaps you don’t need a metaphorical hand-holder to put you at ease with those five minutes before bed - but as far as I can see, it’s the common denominator of all religions, along with treating people how you’d want to be treated.

And by praying, I get to know the person with whom it matters most that I cultivate a good relationship: myself.

Lizzy Burden, Cambridge Student38

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Thanks to the school of life for providing blogs and writings.The meaning of life magazine.