Hallowed Trees
Hallowed: something that is respected, admired, or considered to be holy. We got a Christmas card last year featuring the Sycamore Gap Tree on Hadrian’s Wall. Now there is a void in the landscape where it used to be. Dubbed the most photographed tree in the UK, it became famous after appearing in the 1991…Read More
Self-Sacrifice, Redemption and The Grail Quest
“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done…” – Sydney Carton, The Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens There are many heroic ways to die: for a cause you believe in, in defence of your country, or going to the aid or rescue of others. Circumstances…Read More
Free Will: Real or Illusion?
“I am a determinist. As such, I do not believe in free will…I am, nevertheless, compelled to act as if freedom of the will existed. If I wish to live in a civilized community, I must act as if man is a responsible being.” – Albert Einstein Free will is a central theme in both…Read More
Body Language: More Powerful Than Words
“The eyes are the windows to the soul” – William Shakespeare Writers of speculative fiction portray mind-reading as a superpower. In the real world, reading others is an inborn ability most humans have. We can’t read their minds, but we pick up cues from their non-verbal messaging. How People Read Each Other When trying to…Read More
When Tribalism Goes Toxic
“We all face a choice. We can choose to press forward with a better model of cooperation and integration. Or we can retreat into a world sharply divided, and ultimately in conflict, along age-old lines of nation and tribe and race and religion.” – Barack Obama The Group Instinct Tribalism is human nature. We are…Read More
All for One and One for All
“We need a spirit of community, a sense that we are all in this together. If we have no sense of community, the American dream will wither.” — William J. Clinton World Gone Viral 2020 has been bizarre. A kind of liminality has descended on the world with two billion people locked down in…Read More
Imagination: The Mother of Invention
“All that is the work of the human hand, the whole world of culture, is distinguished from the natural world because it is the product of human imagination.” – Lev Vgotsky (1836-1934), Soviet Psychologist My first recollection of owning a book goes back to a set of children’s classics I received one Christmas: Gulliver’s Travels,…Read More
Fear of the Dark And Why We Like to Be Scared
“Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows, a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.” – Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” The nights have drawn in, and it’s cold…Read More
The Dark Side of Human Nature
“If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us… But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” – Alexander Solzhenitsyn A…Read More
Hyperactive Agency Detection and the Suspension of Disbelief
“It is wonderful that five thousand years have now elapsed since the creation of the world, and still it is undecided whether or not there has ever been an instance of the spirit of any person appearing after death. All argument is against it; but all belief is for it.” — James Boswell The Magic…Read More
