How to be Human

Thank goodness yesterday evening was fine with no rain - quite a queue (much bigger audience than I anticipated) to See Ruby Wax at the Emmanuel Centre in  Marsham Street Westminster (near Channel 4 HQ) in  centre of London talk about her paperback edition of How to Be Human - (The Manual) - it was a very good venue for such a presentation.

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Ruby signing the book

Ruby was presenting was quite a revelation. The paperback edition of her recent book on the topic has just come out – a copy of the book was given to attendees, so I’ve another book to read!

 Ruby had two great collaborators for the book  a Buddhist monk and a Neuroscientist,  Gelong (which actually means A fully ordained Buddhist monastic type ) Thubten and Dr Ash Ranpura - the three  seemed to have a really good chemistry between them.

Gelong & Ash - A Buddhist Monk and a neuro-scientist 

Gelong Thubiten seems to have paid his dues,  is the son of actress Indira Joshi who played the mother in The Kumars at No 42 and he was originally  set for the life of an actor but went a different way.

Dr Ash Ranpura has over 25 years in his chosen field,  I listened to Dr Ash here and he comes across as an engaging individual.

The area the book covers  at of real interest to me  (I read the intro' in the book ahead of the talk) – some stuff I took from the presentation  is the idea of 2 brains (almost like a management and board of directors)  and is I think along the track of work done by Economist Daniel Kahneman).


 Also the idea that we can train ourselves using mindfulness and that in turn manifests as a physical change in the brain, it doesn't seem unreasonable and leads us back into the physical.

Of course the topic then raises so many more questions,  I would have liked to know if the authors had thought about diet as a factor in 'Mindfulness' but forgot to ask.

 After the presentation when I got home I decided to follow up - Ruby's mention of  her time on ‘Who Do You think you are?’ I felt it’d be worthwhile to find out about her family (here it is) - one of the things in the programme that I found most surprising is how Austria was such a centre for Jews until as late as 1938.

London last night

Ruby I think uses humour (perhaps sometimes too much) and bravado as a shield and there were times that it seems to me she retreated behind it during the talk but it does seem that folk are more comfortable talking about ‘feelings’ these days one person in the audience pre-fixed her question to Ruby with ‘I’m a recovering alcoholic’ which seemed brave to me ( I recently heard a gang of people presumably fresh from an AA meeting talking about this at the Bus-Stop but this was within the group).

 Also I am reminded  that people who use the term ‘Nazi’ (as they chanted at Anna Soubry MP) might not think about what they are saying or quite how much of a concern Antisemitism (and other racist use of language) is within organisations.

 [Expect more when I've got further with the book]