On good intentions and past lives
Last week I managed to stick more or less to my good intention to cut back on excessive overtime. Not giving in to real or perceived peer pressure is the hardest part. However his first week I have been able to stand my ground, and as a result I have been putting the children to bed and playing chess with M. in the evenings a lot more than before. The chess playing may actually turn into a source of embarrassment for me before long, given the quick progress M. is making and the poor player I have always been.
Another reason why I try to cut back on overtime is to see if I can actually reserve time for studying in the evenings and weekends. In spite of the worklaod I read quite a bit here, certainly a lot more than in Brussels or Lith, and I am now seriously considering using that time for going back to university, through distance learning. The Center for Financial and Management Studies at London University offers a MSc program in Public Policy and Management that looks interesting and extremely relevant to my present line of work. It’s becoming ever clearer that good (financial) governance is the condition sine qua non for any way out of the misery developing countries are confronted with. This is especially true of our host country, where the rot of corruption, nepotism and incompetence has been eating away at the fabric of society for decades. The poor management of their public finances will probably even disqualify them for budgetary aid from most major donors in the near future, including us, which would send them into a terrible downward spiral. So the need for better governance is obvious, and so is the need for solid expertise on governance, especially financial governance.
Public Policy and Management is a long haul away from my original academic interests, and if I ever won the lottery I would probably return, sooner or later, to studying utterly useless ancient languages and their literatures for the rest of my days. But my present job has been an eye-opener in that I have developed a sincere interest, have even grown passionate, about governance issues. (Well, OK, I also long to be studying again, just for the pleasure of it. I’ve always been bookish; I guess that taking up an extremely practical study like this, with a very heavy economic component, is a good way to satisfy this need and to make myself useful at the same time.)
Not that it will be easy: as a humble classical philologist, I don’t think I can claim to be particularly gifted in such hard-core subjects as economics, accountancy, budgeting, etc.. (The latter is a euphemism that will cause roaring laughter among friends and relatives who know me well…), and it will be very hard work for me. It won’t be cheap either: 11.000 euros, blimey, for about two years of study, not including travel expenses for exams etcetera. But what makes me hesitate the most is the investment of time that is required, about 20 hours a week for a series of seven intensive 2-month courses spread over 2-3 years. A. is supportive of the idea, though of course with some reservations as to possible intrusions on family life. My boss (sober again…) was quite positive and supportive, and so are some other people whose advice I asked.
On a different note: I recently said that my only hang-up with Buddhism was my incapacity to believe in reincarnation, even though this does not upset my belief in the usefulness of leading an ethical life. Soon after, I started to read a general academic introduction on Buddhism, which mentioned in its discussion of reincarnation the work of a professor Ian Stevenson, a medical doctor and psychiatrist, on cases ‘suggestive of reincarnation’. I have purchased two of his books and a book by a sympathetic but critical journalist, Tom Shroder, who followed Stevenson on two of his travels to Lebanon and India. After reading the latter book and a preliminary perusal of the other two, I haven’t suddenly become a 100% believer, but I guess it is only a matter of intellectual honesty to at least suspend my judgment on the matter. Over four decades, Stevenson has collected about 2500 (!) cases of children in different parts of the world speaking in detail of previous lives. He was able to track down details about the life of the claimed previous personalities, and in hundreds of cases the children had birthmarks that could be linked to the reported death of the previous personality. He argues that rebirth is probably the best hypothesis to explain such phenomena. Food for thought, to say the least.
I briefly brought up the matter of possible native beliefs in reincarnation in the country with a native person of our host country at a lunch we attended today. He explained to me that that there are over 150 different ethnic groups in this country, and that even within and the same ethnic group there are varieties. He thought there were indeed also beliefs. There are also interesting food taboos among some groups, such as a taboo on eating … chicken (first time I have ever heard of it). And then there’s the omnipresent belief in sorcery and witchcraft, on which I am collecting a file of newspaper clippings which is already growing quite fat. We are sitting on an anthropological goldmine here; I really should do something with it. Perhaps I will tell you one day about a few salient cases in this blog.
Another reason why I try to cut back on overtime is to see if I can actually reserve time for studying in the evenings and weekends. In spite of the worklaod I read quite a bit here, certainly a lot more than in Brussels or Lith, and I am now seriously considering using that time for going back to university, through distance learning. The Center for Financial and Management Studies at London University offers a MSc program in Public Policy and Management that looks interesting and extremely relevant to my present line of work. It’s becoming ever clearer that good (financial) governance is the condition sine qua non for any way out of the misery developing countries are confronted with. This is especially true of our host country, where the rot of corruption, nepotism and incompetence has been eating away at the fabric of society for decades. The poor management of their public finances will probably even disqualify them for budgetary aid from most major donors in the near future, including us, which would send them into a terrible downward spiral. So the need for better governance is obvious, and so is the need for solid expertise on governance, especially financial governance.
Public Policy and Management is a long haul away from my original academic interests, and if I ever won the lottery I would probably return, sooner or later, to studying utterly useless ancient languages and their literatures for the rest of my days. But my present job has been an eye-opener in that I have developed a sincere interest, have even grown passionate, about governance issues. (Well, OK, I also long to be studying again, just for the pleasure of it. I’ve always been bookish; I guess that taking up an extremely practical study like this, with a very heavy economic component, is a good way to satisfy this need and to make myself useful at the same time.)
Not that it will be easy: as a humble classical philologist, I don’t think I can claim to be particularly gifted in such hard-core subjects as economics, accountancy, budgeting, etc.. (The latter is a euphemism that will cause roaring laughter among friends and relatives who know me well…), and it will be very hard work for me. It won’t be cheap either: 11.000 euros, blimey, for about two years of study, not including travel expenses for exams etcetera. But what makes me hesitate the most is the investment of time that is required, about 20 hours a week for a series of seven intensive 2-month courses spread over 2-3 years. A. is supportive of the idea, though of course with some reservations as to possible intrusions on family life. My boss (sober again…) was quite positive and supportive, and so are some other people whose advice I asked.
On a different note: I recently said that my only hang-up with Buddhism was my incapacity to believe in reincarnation, even though this does not upset my belief in the usefulness of leading an ethical life. Soon after, I started to read a general academic introduction on Buddhism, which mentioned in its discussion of reincarnation the work of a professor Ian Stevenson, a medical doctor and psychiatrist, on cases ‘suggestive of reincarnation’. I have purchased two of his books and a book by a sympathetic but critical journalist, Tom Shroder, who followed Stevenson on two of his travels to Lebanon and India. After reading the latter book and a preliminary perusal of the other two, I haven’t suddenly become a 100% believer, but I guess it is only a matter of intellectual honesty to at least suspend my judgment on the matter. Over four decades, Stevenson has collected about 2500 (!) cases of children in different parts of the world speaking in detail of previous lives. He was able to track down details about the life of the claimed previous personalities, and in hundreds of cases the children had birthmarks that could be linked to the reported death of the previous personality. He argues that rebirth is probably the best hypothesis to explain such phenomena. Food for thought, to say the least.
I briefly brought up the matter of possible native beliefs in reincarnation in the country with a native person of our host country at a lunch we attended today. He explained to me that that there are over 150 different ethnic groups in this country, and that even within and the same ethnic group there are varieties. He thought there were indeed also beliefs. There are also interesting food taboos among some groups, such as a taboo on eating … chicken (first time I have ever heard of it). And then there’s the omnipresent belief in sorcery and witchcraft, on which I am collecting a file of newspaper clippings which is already growing quite fat. We are sitting on an anthropological goldmine here; I really should do something with it. Perhaps I will tell you one day about a few salient cases in this blog.
posted by Emilian at Monday, January 16, 2006
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home