© Roger M Tagg 2012
Welcome to FROLIO – a new attempt to merge philosophy and the "semantic web" . This website is under continuing development.
For the story behind my Uncle Reg project (from 30 years back!, see the remaining skeleton page on this website.
'Uncle Reg' was meant to be a retired British army officer, based on a number whom I met during my working life as an IT consultant, both in the UK and overseas. He was not a Monty Python type of officer - more a thoughtful, unassuming type who had worked his way up.
Uncle Reg believed in taking responsibility for how one lives one’s life. His absolute bugbear was people who would say “that’s just the way I am” implying that the rest of us should make allowances for them.
It seemed to him a common fallacy that we are “alright as we are” and don’t need to improve. Clearly someone brought up in a dysfunctional, over-authoritarian or over-indulgent family is going to have problems, but such a person may well be aware of it. The bigger problem is with the people who don’t think they have a problem.
Some people, for example, pride themselves on “calling a spade a spade” or “not suffering fools gladly”. They may be obsessive, pushy, spiky, prickly, intolerant, “couldn’t care less” or unable to assert themselves.
The truth is that all of us, when we reach adulthood, are only partly
developed in terms of mental fitness. We often still have many situations to
face that are new to us, and we have to work out a way of dealing with them,
ideally with some help from those around us.
We have to consider both mental and emotional fitness. This means keeping one’s brain, mind, psyche (or whatever) able to thrive in the face of the challenges of living, and to withstand the strains and stresses put on it.
It is different from, but not unrelated to physical fitness. After all, we need both to thrive. We should all be able to put in a “quality” performance living-wise.
Just as we have physical training or “keep fit”, we need a similar approach for our minds. We cannot keep fit without challenges. So we should all regard the mental and emotional challenges we face as a valuable opportunity, rather than an annoyance.
I think this approach is much better than tying ourselves too tightly to an emotional niche, or fashionable bandwagon – i.e. a rut of thinking and reacting that is ready-made and insulates us from challenges.
We can get into this rut if we take too passive an approach to religion – looking all the time for “comfort”. I don’t think we should expect any religion to provide instant answers to all the problems and issues that arise. We are thinking beings and we should expect to use our thinking to work things out.
Mental fitness is also better for our happiness than keeping as drunk as possible for as long as possible, or relying on pills or drugs.
We must realise that mental fitness does not require minimum levels of gifts that each individual has or does not have, like intelligence, formal education, breeding, inspiration, imagination and so on. We are each different in what we have of these. All we can do is exercise what we do have to the full.
Nor should we say that if we do not succeed in business, society or personal relationships we are not mentally fit. Success in these may not be given to us. But this is not a reason to be less mentally fit than we can be – if we are mentally fit, we stand the best chance of coping with whatever life throws at us.
This was a form which Uncle Reg filled out for each of his recruits from time to time - many were National Servicemen.
Instructions: For each coloured row, type in 'x' to JUST ONE of the 5 scoring columns
| Name: | Date: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| Very weak | Weak | Average | Strong | Very strong | ||||
| Basic skills: | ||||||||
| Time management | ||||||||
| Back-up interests | ||||||||
| Patience | ||||||||
| Sense of humour | ||||||||
| Relaxed pace | ||||||||
| Stamina: | ||||||||
| Grit | ||||||||
| Sense of proportion | ||||||||
| Coming to terms with the world | ||||||||
| Can survive on one's own | ||||||||
| Detached from the aggro | ||||||||
| Positiveness: | ||||||||
| Cheerful aspect | ||||||||
| Vision for the future | ||||||||
| Active philosophy | ||||||||
| Bringing the best out in others | ||||||||
| Reliability | ||||||||
| Relation to others: | ||||||||
| Concern, sympathy | ||||||||
| Availability | ||||||||
| Able to communicate one's ideas | ||||||||
| Understanding human nature | ||||||||
| Knowing when to pull back | ||||||||
| Total score today is: |
00.0 |
percent |
How can we actually achieve, or improve, mental fitness? How can we best acquire it in the first place, and how can we maintain it?
What if we are plagued by insecurity or worry? What if our percentage on the Score Sheet is currently bad, or we feel we are struggling to keep our head above water?
As in physical training (which we probably need to do in parallel anyhow), the idea is to set oneself a gradually widening range of “exercises” and mental/emotional tasks. Here are a few examples.
Mental relaxationSome people take the line that they cannot look forward to ever achieving much happiness in life. But as an alternative, they would be satisfied if they could achieve “peace of mind”. This could be a reasonable policy for people who have experienced some really bad misfortune in life, which still plays on their mind.
However it seems that “peace of mind” is a pretty scarce commodity for everyone nowadays. More and more people appear to be going round with a permanent worried look, even if they haven't experienced anything really bad. They can always find some worry that they can talk about.
Is there any hope of escaping from worry and grief, and achieving a somewhat more steady state or equilibrium?
For some people things are so bad that they may need medication to start them off on an upward path. But many who take the pills get addicted to them, and don’t pull themselves out of their rut.
Anyone wanting to pull themselves out of a hole needs to have some plans of where they are heading. However, one plan is not usually enough. One needs a Plan A, a Plan B and maybe a Plan C as well. The person needs to talk these plans through with someone, to make sure they are within reach. For peace of mind, it does seem that one does need some direction.
A line taken by some is to embrace a religion – preferably one than encourages meeting in groups and is contemplative. But it is usually too optimistic to hope that the religion will have simple answers for all one's questions.
Another line is to get involved in some absorbing activity, especially when one is first trying to recover from the worst period. Some people find physical activity the best – trying to hit the ball doesn’t usually leave much time for brooding.
Another idea is to get involved in helping people who have more difficulties than oneself.
To achieve peace of mind, it seems that one needs to have convinced oneself that there is a purpose in our being alive, that someone else does need us just a little, and we can see things that we can do that make some difference, however small.
This is one version of a popular slogan which means “don’t let the bastards grind you down”. But is it a good motto?
In some situations, yes – it is like “Grit” (see the Mental Fitness Score Sheet). If you are struggling for something, competing for advancement, position, contracts etc – or even finding the means to pay the rent or get the next meal – the 'nil carborundum' approach might help you keep going.
You can probably only keep this up for so long. The wear on yourself is hard. If you make a bad move or decision things may get even worse, and you may be tempted to blame someone else or descend into adopting a “look at me, I'm a suffering martyr” approach.
A slightly better approach than just “toughing it out” would be to aim to build yourself a bit of “slack” or “cushion”, rather than aiming to survive “only just”. Then, if things do go bad again, you might be able to stay on track. If they don’t go wrong, you have gained a “window” through which you can see some possibilities for an improved quality of life.
If we ourselves are not in this situation, but are helping others who are, perhaps we should use our efforts to help the other person create this cushion, rather than just averting the immediate disasters.
Index to more of these diatribes
Some of these links may be under construction – or re-construction.
This version updated on 29th January 2012
If you have constructive suggestions or comments, please contact the author rogertag@tpg.com.au .