The Mainstreaming of Libertarian Theories of Social Darwinism and Apartheid by Nafeez Ahmed (the gist) (Byline Times 14th October 2022) The fundamental intention behind so-called ‘Trussonomics’ was to make the rich richer, in the absurd belief that wealth will ‘trickle-down’ to inspire economic growth. What’s really going on however is that current ‘Conservatism’ is secretly […]
A PERSONAL JOURNEY My early inner life was a gift to myself alone – always on my own. Father off in India somehow defending the freedom of UK, as they say about foreign escapades nowadays; mother consumed by worry for my sister who was starting the awful disease from which she eventually died in 2005. […]
What constitutes a real, live human being is more of a mystery than ever these days, and men – each one of whom is a valuable, unique experiment on the part of nature – are shot down wholesale. If, however, we were not something more than unique human beings and each man jack of us […]
Anonymous article from Socialist Worker 18th September 2022 Politicians and the media drove the mourning for the queen. And those that dared to protest against the monarchy faced arrest. But nobody actually drove people on to the streets to join the long queues to view the queen’s coffin. And nobody lost their job if they […]
“We talk too much,” he said with unwonted seriousness. “Clever talk is of no value whatsoever. One merely gets further and further away from oneself and that is a crime. One should be able to crawl right into oneself like a tortoise.” Hermann Hesse: Demian On the 19th August 2022 I followed the local doctor’s […]
It’s well worth taking some time to… ponder the idea that we consist not just of one single ‘I’ but of a large number of ‘I’s that constantly compete for attention. For example, the reader may well now be in Reading-these-words-I but also feeling the urge to get into Wondering-what-the-first sentence-means-for-them-I while being dominated by […]
What a strange problem now that after so many thousand years I should still wander to & fro, spiritually unsatisfied… Notebooks May-June 1887 In the 1987 Symposium booklet entitled Richard Jefferies: a Spirit Illumined, John Pearson wrote an excellent essay called Bevis: A Natural Education in Time and Space in which he traces an […]
I woke this morning (15th April 2022) to the sound of all the chaffinches in the world exchanging pleasantries across the dyke, over the fields and through the forest, and it occurred to me that a model I’ve used to inform my own life would work very well as a way of thinking about Jefferies, […]
In The Psychology of Religious Mysticism (1925) James Leuba refers to twenty-six definitions of mysticism including ‘anything marvellous or weird… beyond human reason’ which may well be the standard definition when we’re faced with something which escapes understanding. For his purposes, Leuba settles on a neat uncluttered definition which appeals to me because it can […]
In his introduction to the OUP After London (1980) John Fowles wrote ‘…Some of his more starry-eyed later worshippers have forgotten that he enjoyed hunting and killing for much of his life…’ I once had a neighbour who owned a cat and a dog both of whom he obtained from a rescue centre; they were […]
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