Quote of the Day: Bertrand Russell on Caution

“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.” ~~Bertrand Russell (English Logician and Philosopher 1872-1970)



Bertrand Russell was not only a man of great intellect, but also a man of great passions and Utopian vision. At seventeen he married his sweetheart Alys Pearsall Smith, despite the objections of his family, but their love did not last. He had passionate and often simultaneous affairs with a number of women, including Lady Ottoline Morrell and the actress Lady Constance Malleson. His most serious lover was Dora Black who traveled with him to Russia and China. When Dora became pregnant Russell divorced Alys and married her. Black was an advocate for women's rights and may have influenced Russell's positions on equity and social justice. She--as did so many of her generation--had realised the extent to which the laws regulating marriage contributed to women's subjugation.

In her view, only parents should be bound by a social contract, and only insofar as their cooperation was required for raising their children. Implicit was her conviction that both men and women were polygamous by nature and should therefore be free, whether married or not, to engage in sexual relationships that were based on mutual love. In this she was as much an early sexual pioneer as in her fight for women's right to information about, and free access to, birth control methods. She regarded these as essential for women to gain control over their own lives, and eventually become fully emancipated.


Black and Russell founded a school in 1927 called Beacon Hill School in which they tried to teach children to leave behind superstitions and irrational views of previous generations. Russell eventually left Black for one of his students after she had two children by one of her lover, Griffin Barry. She went on to write extensively on the right of the individual to be happy.

Russell throughout his life campaigned for human rights, social justice, peace, and nuclear disarmament. His lasting legacy as an advocate for peace is carried on by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation.

(information on Russell and Black excerpted from Wikipedia)

Balancing my Tao with my Te

Interesting morning. I got a call from my big brother, Corwyn, about his Dao de Jing study group. He has been asking me to come for some time now, specifically to meet his friend Taras Balderdash, so I put on my favorite slinky qipao with black boots and joined him at Amatsu Shima.

Today was a larger crowd than is usual I suspect, since Corwyn and Suzanne had to put out extra cushions. Suzanne Logan runs the geisha house on Amatsu for which Corwyn acts as "hogosha" or bodyguard. I have met Suzanne before and am fairly sure she has a deep crush on Cor, just by the way she seems a bit suspicious of any woman with whom he hangs out. The irony here is that Cor really is my brother--in RL as much as in SL. Can't blame Suzanne for being jealous of my relationship with him. It is hard to explain. Even Draven was jealous at first (he saw my picture in Cor's profile and went ballistic once) until he got to know Corwyn and saw there was nothing sexual between us. Thing is, Corwyn like most men (Draven included!) is pretty oblivious to how attractive he is to women and how they see him. He treats Suzanne as the best of friends and ignores her overtures. She, being a tactful woman, doesn't press it.

So here I am at this Daoism discussion group. And Suzanne is putting her spin on the lesson. She has passed out three versions of the text in a notecard reader. She has also copied sections of notes from some other sources and is taking a very western and religious approach to the text. Corwyn's friend Taras is interpreting the text in the metaphysical approach, but with a Chinese religious sensibility. So I take the literal path. Not a good move I think. My first time there and I am arguing with both the established teachers, Taras and Suzanne. But that is me. Open mouth, insert foot, swallow. Then to top it off this was a day for typos. But what day in SL isn't. Hard to look like you might have a clue when you always get your numbers wrong and can't type fast worth a damn.

Thing is, in China, especially in ancient times, that threefold approach would make for a lively discussion. The thing scholars do is sit over tea and argue the multiple approaches to a text. But in China there would be no more than 4 people at the tea house table. Here there were 8 other people in the room, all struggling to get a word in edgewise. Even poor Corwyn had to repeat a comment 3 times before it was acknowledged. After a while I decided to just shut up, but by then the session was almost over.

Corwyn had made his bows and departed early as he had a poetry reading to attend. So, at the end, I made bows to all and made a point of especially thanking Suzanne and Taras, but I suspect by then they were just happy to see me leave. Ah well. I IMed Cor to thank him for inviting me, and he said: "You were great!" Which made me feel better. He after all is the one who is important to me here. And if the others are grateful that his pushy sinologist friend had finally left, well, then I can make them even happier by not returning.

I told Cor I will have him and Taras over for tea some day soon and we can have a civilized discussion of Chinese philosophy. If Taras comes over, I will make an effort not to, as Draven says I do, "keep my foot on the gas." I would actually like to get to know him since anyone who chooses a name like Taras Balderdash clearly has a good sense of humor.

Just one parting question: Does the irony of having a serious discussion of Daoism (or Taoism as popular spelling was today) by Westerners in medieval Japan in a virtual world (wearing a mix of clothing from formal Heian to child Neko to Southern Belle to blue skin to my own sing-song girl mini-skirt) strike anyone else as pretty damn amusing?

Extra-Marital Sex is Condemned by Conservatives? Well, Duh!

I stumbled across this in the FORA playlist (something every thinking person should know about), and while the oppression of active sexuality by the conservative right is not going to come as news to most of you, this video clip is well worth watching. You go Dagmar!

Quote du Jour

"To experience love, we must go inside. When you experience real love you get into a state which is beyond words. You are filled with a joy that goes beyond all emotions. True love is the love of the inner Self." -- Swami Muktananda

A Quote du Jour: Neil Gaiman

"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build all these defenses. You build up a whole suit of armor so that nothing can hurt you. Then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life. You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you."

The Heart

The heart is an amazing organ. The ancient Greeks believed that the heart was the seat of reason and the center of intelligence in the body. The Greek philosopher Aristotle claimed it was the most important organ of the body, the center of all life. The physician Galen believed the heart was the organ most closely related to the soul. The ancient Egyptians also saw the heart as the seat of the soul, but saw it as the center of all emotions and place where wisdom resides as well.

No matter what we know from modern science about the heart as a muscle that pushes blood around the body we still think of the heart as the place where emotion resides. When we fall in love don't we feel the heat of our passion spread out from the center of our hearts? And when we are hurt by love don't we feel the sharpest pain of it in our very hearts like a physical blow? We trust the heart as a source of wisdom, saying things like: "The heart knows," "trust your heart," and "follow your heart." But is it wise? Especially when it seems to control all those feelings surrounding that slipperiest of emotions . . . love.

In the Renaissance, Leonardo DaVinci observed the push and pull of blood through the chambers of the heart and said: "At one and the same time, in one and the same subject, two opposite motions cannot take place, that is, repentance and desire." Maybe Leo had something there . . . can love (desire) survive in the same place that constant hurt, pain, or sorrow (regret/repentance) does?

I suspect love never dies easily. Even though that warm hearted feeling can be driven out from time to time by the pain of heartache, love rarely goes down without a fight. And even though we occasionally repent or regret our relationships with our lovers, our desire to love and to be loved will win out if we let it.

Since heart disease has been on the rise, we have been told to take good care of our physical hearts, to eat healthy and get exercise. I suspect this is good for our emotional hearts as well. And we should watch out equally carefully for our lovers' hearts. We ought to feed each other sweet words not harsh, exercise caution before striking out at each other, and sometimes we need to swallow our own harsh words and apologize, swallow the hurts we've been dealt and forgive.

Leonardo is right that desire and repentance cannot exist simultaneously, but in the heart they must exist side by side. It is the push and pull, the give and take, that keeps the heart pumping. It is finding the balance between joy and pain that will keep love working. I would purposely misquote that infamous line in Love Story as: "Love means always having to say you are sorry." Love means accepting that both you and your lover have faults and that you will be probably be hurt when you love deeply. Love means loving someone through their melancholy funks or despite their bull-in-a-china shop ways. Love means loving the whole package, light and dark, yin and yang.