Borrowing ideas from antiquity for better living

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

That was W B Yeats’ expression of yearning to get away from the grey pavements of the city to a quiet place in Ireland for solitude and peace. Melodious to read but very impractical!

Another literary figure – D H Lawrence – with wife Frieda sought to get away from it all to a farm to live in harmony with others. His was a dream utopia, facilitated in November 1921 by an invitation from Mabel Dodge Sterne, wealthy society hostess and arts patron, to take residence in a large property she owned in Taos, New Mexico. He invited friends to live in peace and harmony but only Dorothy Brett agreed, and so the three went to Taos in 1924. The Kiowa Ranch, 20 miles from Taos, was offered to the Lawrences as a gift. He refused but Frieda accepted, gifting Mabel in return the manuscript of Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers. The Utopia did not last long and the Lawrences left the ranch and settled down in Italy after he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He died in 1930 and was buried in Vence cemetery in the Cote d’Azur region. Frieda insisted his body be exhumed, cremated and the ashes interred in their ranch close to ‘Lawrence’s Tree’- a large pine under which two of his novels were written. Both poets advocated going back to basics in living and thus to life as it was led earlier. Many are those who wish to return to quieter places, whether it be the village of birth or country. Among them are Sri Lankans who went overseas for study and/or jobs, settled down in their adopted countries, but yearned to return to their mother land and did return on retirement to live here. Most are happy as there is no place like your country of birth and upbringing for old age. And it was back to habits and customs and food eaten by our people for generations.

Back to before 500 years

That, in a way, is what is advocated by Paul Skallas, 36 year old tech lawyer and writer ‘who has picked up antiquity’s torch’. Ezra Marcus’ article in the New York Times of June 17, titled ‘The Lindy way of living’ tells us all about Skallas’ proposal. His idea is that we should be gleaning more wisdom from antiquity. It is a result of the pandemic, and thus my interest since I wrote about Languishing and the antidote of focusing on some project or undertaking to get over resultant lockdown malaise.

Skallas’ Lindy effect is what he advocates as a sure fire way to better living, and lives. Basically it is going back to practices and ways of living beyond 500 years. To my calculation that is go back to 1500 AD and backwards. He does not speak much on new technologies and techniques, but I suppose he means use them if absolutely necessary and not just because they are available, Travel has to be modernized but need the skies get so crowded with airplanes? Are Facebook etc really necessary? Robots? No! He does not list these in his article, but I extrapolate from what I read. The term Lindy Effect is traced to historian Albert Goldman who used to spend hours in a café named Lindy in Broadway.

Skallas acknowledges his ideas are borrowed from the philosophy of Nassim Nickolas Taleb (61), who is a Lebanese-American essayist, mathematical statistician and risk analyst, concerned with problems of randomness, probability and uncertainty. Taleb pronounced this truth: “the older someone is, the less years that person has to live.” Obvious. Maybe he meant, make the most of the years left.

Lindy Effect ways of living (with my comments)

First concern is Food. Skallas says “Your body gets stronger through stresess and it gets stronger through lack of food,” He points out that the Greeks never ate breakfast and so can you. Thai and other East Asian nuns take only one fairly full meal a day. I knew nuns who ate fruit and drank tea early morning, then had a good lunch of rice, noodles or whatever at around 11.00 am and thereafter only drinks, mostly fruit juices.

The ancients did recognize the efficacy of starving sometimes. The Muslims observe their month of severe reduction of food intake and the Hindus fast for many reasons. I was at a seminar overseas sharing a room with a lovely Indian woman. One day Rohini said she was not taking meals as it was her day to starve on behalf of her mother-in-law. That was absurd to me. I bought her some fruit and insisted she break her fast 7.00 in the evening for which she was very grateful. She forewent three meals at which we participants would share much fellowship.

The Buddhist Sangha starve every day of being in robes, taking only liquids after noon and that too not ‘meal resembling’. When the Australian ten preceptor, Ayya Vayama, spent a few days with me she refused even thin soup at night though I promised her it would be minus any pieces of vegetable. Only plain tea or kothamalli, she said. Sil observers are supposed to be in sil for 24 hours and starve at night. It turns out hard for lay people but if you skip dinner or even a ‘bite’ as we term a snack, you are all the better for it physically, and of course psychologically.

According to Skallas, tea is in and coffee out because the origin of coffee is 400 years whereas tea would have been a beverage, especially in China of long ago. Cigarettes are out but tobacco is in.

Walking

is a full Lindy and strongly advocated; not a concentrated walk from A to B but a stroll when the mind is allowed to roam freely. We know our ancients went on foot on their businesses, not in carts or on the backs of animals, thus the ambalamas – resting places – scattered all over And they carried their meal for the day, probably wrapped in banana leaf.

Sex, dancing and music, even night clubs are permitted due to their age. What about dating and adultery? OK as even the Bible carries stories of such – King Solomon. Sports whether single activities or in teams will certainly be advocated. Didn’t the Olympics Games originate in Greece in 776 BC?

Skallas says, “The only effective judge of things is time.”

He considers the present pandemic Deep Lindy and says people wore masks from 500 years ago. “The pandemic opened people’s eyes to worldview by evoking ancient, world-historical dangers that many had felt insulated from. I think before this pandemic hit, we were in a time when we said we are untouchable. Then scarcity and what is the stuff you need in this life?”

We may label this another fad or fancy. I selected this topic to write on since two weeks ago I wrote on medication and the benefits of starving at night. So, if there is useful stuff in what Skallas advocates, we should adopt and follow them. No harm done. Eating sparsely and walking of course are advocated by experts in the field too.