The commercial self
It’s an ancient human law and it makes us do extraordinary things. Author Tom Wolfe calls it serial immortality; it’s that unnamed force that sees the…
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Dying for your beliefs
Not all arguments are created equal. Many aren’t even arguments at all. Even utterances that appear to be advancing a rational argument might prove to be…
Do you really know yourself?
“Know thyself,” said the philosophers. No problem, said the rest of us. Self-help, self-esteem, self-fulfillment, inner self, outer self – we’ve got the self covered. With…
You are not who you think you are
You are not who you think you are. Philosophers, from the Buddha to David Hume to Derek Parfit, have been telling us that for centuries. There…
Losing ourselves to technology
Millie’s vision became blurred and then she lost consciousness. Stressed and overworked, she took two weeks off, booked herself into a retreat, and slowly regained a…
Invest in your masterpiece – yourself
Love yourself. Believe in yourself. And your dreams will come true. A few decades ago, psychologists began documenting the appearance of a new personality that was…
Factory Earth
The family is worried. Suggestions are passed between siblings, and aunts and uncles are eager to set things right. What about doing this job? Has he…
Dirty thoughts on civilised leisure
By Damon Young “I work, God how I work... I have reduced it to a method and exalted it to a mania.” Meet Leonard Woolf: husband…
Work less, live more
Why do we work so much? Why do we even work at all? For a great chunk of human history it was a simple matter of…
Prosperity paradox
Picture for a moment a world where technological innovation and industrial automation have finally brought us an era of unprecedented material prosperity. Picture it powered by…
Happiness is hard to find
I have been happy. I hope to be happy again. But I am yet to feel something I’d call “happiness”. As a noun, it suggests something…
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Pleasure spots
By George Orwell Some months ago I cut out of a shiny magazine some paragraphs written by a female journalist and describing the pleasure resort of…
The value of boycott
In July 1846, the American writer Henry David Thoreau went to prison for refusing to pay his poll tax. He couldn’t abide the thought that his…
Superhero of the mind
To see a person taking in the wonders of the sky is a rare sight when all but a few are staring at their smartphone. What…
The project of being alive
It’s not the first time that a movie has been shown to a vegetative audience but for some reason the idea of plants watching movies seems…
You are your life, and nothing else
Existentialist philosophers teach us that we alone are responsible for creating a meaningful life in an absurd and unfair world. Standing on a cliff, a sense…
The ladder of true understanding
How well do you understand the world? Do you think you’ve got a good grasp of reality or not? Greek philosopher Plato famously offered a theory…
