Can We Be Happy?

The autumn equinox marks the point where – here in the northern hemisphere – having been held briefly in balance, the days begin to shorten and the nights extend as we commence the journey into winter. It’s a time where…

Read More

Why We Should Read Fewer Books

“Outside of a dog,” wrote Marx, “a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.” (That’s Groucho, not Karl, by the way). But who has time to read these days? We’re all too…

Read More

Why Do We Need to Work?

“Have you had a productive day?” someone recently asked me, and for some reason it suddenly struck me just how embedded into our lives the notion of productivity is. What am I? A dairy cow? As if a day that…

Read More

Why I’m a Luddite – and You Should Be Too

Your dad is a Luddite, perhaps, or maybe your mum; your gran, almost certainly. Like the sweet old Italian Nonna bewildered and amazed by Google’s home assistant, older generations often show less facility and more reluctance when adopting technology into…

Read More

Can You Live Forever?

I read the other day that Microsoft has plans to “resurrect” people from their “social data”. This resurrection would draw on such things as “images, voice data, social media posts, electronic messages, and written letters”, which would all be used…

Read More

A Brief History of Hell

There is an interesting little connection between the Greek philosopher Aristotle’s account of the various reasons for immoral behaviour, and the Christian notion of Hell. Firstly, according to Aristotle, a moral action must be deliberately chosen, involving conscious knowledge of…

Read More