“You should have stayed at university and become a philosopher,” my Dad told me one day. This wasn’t quite as random as it might sound. We’d had dinner a few weeks earlier and he had told me that he had seen there was going to be a documentary about Wittgenstein on TV. Knowing that I […]
Sitting at the Mouth of the Cave Read More »
After so many U-turns, we can extend the Prime Minister the charity of precision. Having already committed 15 or 16, the marginal political benefit of pinning another one on him is low and we can, if history is any guide, be confident another will be on its way shortly. Thus, I don’t think we need
The Centre Isn’t Holding Read More »
I hate updating my website. It is a chore. So, I put it off, depriving the literal handful of bots who visit it on a good day access to the latest flowering of my thought. It is not because it is hard – it is one of those off-the-shelf freebies which even idiots can master
Life is like a jailer. As it wanders down the block, large ring of keys jangling on its hip, you never entirely know which cell it is going to unlock, and which memory will emerge, blinking, into the light. Just writing down three numbers the other day instantly shaved decades off my age. For the
Relax. Only a week to go. The Winter Olympics will come to and end, and we will have another four peaceful years in which curling is something some people do to their hair. But perhaps not this time. For it has been an uncommonly good Winter Olympics for team GB. A first gold on snow
The Skeleton Theory of Politics Read More »
What do you want? I don’t mean that in a rude way, like a librarian disturbed from their crossword puzzle, but more generally. What are your desires? I’ll wait. And I’ll probably have to wait for a while. You have many. Even if we set aside the ones you’ll never tell anyone… At the most
What a week in British politics. And it’s only Wednesday. The Chief of Staff left on Sunday, the Chief of Comms on Monday and there are reports the Cabinet Secretary is on his way out. The leader in Scotland launched a missile, only to see it boomerang and explode right in front of him. Even
Why We Get Bad Politicians Read More »
I have a strange relationship with the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. I am no longer a Stoic and whenever I pick it up, I get the impression that, were there to be some odd kink in the space-time continuum, and I met the Emperor, I would not have particularly liked him. There is a sort
The philosopher John Rawls developed the idea of the veil of ignorance – that we should design society so that we would choose to live in it, even if we did not know what position we would hold. What was meant as a political thought experiment can, I think, be turned into a historical parlour
Can You Love a Bare Tree? Read More »
I meditated well this morning. I do sometimes. As I should. I’ve been practicing for nearly 14 years. You would have thought I had got my head round it by now. After all, it only took me 13 years to knock off school. But meditation, it turns out, is harder than readin’, ‘writin’ and ‘rithmetic.
The Illusion of Control Read More »
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