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Posted on May 9, 2023 Leave a Comment
There was a time in our lives when we craved complexity. We wanted the novelty of new experiences, the excitement of busy destinations, and the charm of well-meaning but unnecessarily convoluted people. We once believed the recipe to happiness consisted in combining as many flavours and textures as possible. Perhaps we are more boring now; […]
Posted on May 7, 2023 Leave a Comment
More than detailed attempts to trace a path from the present to the future, plans can function as psychological buffers, insulating us from the interminable flux of life. If life is a raging river, plans are stepping stones we hope will take us to the safe ground on the other side. First we’ll finish school, […]
Posted on April 20, 2023 Leave a Comment
‘Not speaking and speaking are both human ways of being in the world’ explains Paul Goodman in his altogether wonderful but sadly out of print work, Speaking and Language.: A Defence of Poetry But, continues Goodman, ‘there are grades of each’. Just as there is speech to hold a family together, a sophist’s speech to […]
Posted on April 15, 2023 Leave a Comment
The process of ageing is both invisible and inexorable. The day to day changes – of hair slowly greying, skin gradually wrinkling – become apparent only across a lifetime. It is often quite striking (and even emotionally destabilising) to see photos of our younger selves and begin to grasp the physical and psychological gulf growing […]
Posted on March 7, 2023 Leave a Comment
You’re laying on the grass feeling the warmth of the sun on your skin. Nearby bees hum happily. You take hold of a daisy, clasping its delicate stem between your fingers, plucking it asunder before placing it upon the pages of your open book. You sit in admiration. Only the most thoughtful deity could have […]
Posted on November 16, 2022 Leave a Comment
When done well, philosophy does two things: it shows how two similar things are actually rather different, and it shows how two different things are actually rather similar. This is an essay about the second class of philosophy. We generally think of cooking, gardening, dancing, painting, building, parenting, and writing as having nothing in common. […]
Posted on September 5, 2022 Leave a Comment
I Like the dog chasing its own tail, Ouroboros has forgotten a part belonging to himself. There is a split, a splinter separating the head (mind) and tail (body), and this split manifests in many diverse yet similar ways. Think of our chemically enhanced foods which stimulate the mind but malnourish the body, or cigarettes […]
Posted on April 17, 2022 Leave a Comment
It was a warm summer evening as King Darius and Abtin, his scribe, were walking the winding paths of the palace gardens. Surveying his beautifully manicured gardens, the king leant forward to breathe in the perfume of particularly striking Chrysanthemum. At this point, Abtin felt a whisper of ice cold air run up his spine. […]
Posted on April 8, 2022 Leave a Comment
To live virtuously, we need look no further than the garden, for it is the most steadfast and honest of teachers. Through the act of gardening, we learn humility, patience, kindness, empathy, and commitment; and likewise receive an antidote to the vices of arrogance, impatience, selfishness and hubris. I Kneeling down in prayer in front […]
Posted on March 17, 2022 Leave a Comment
Seen for what it is, small talk is imprisonment of false bonhomie and an utter failure of communication. But, seen for what it could be, small talk is an opportunity to step beyond the banal and into the deepest and most intimate realms of another’s mind. But such an imperative can be overwhelmingly intimidating. As […]
Proper Candor 