Philosophy

Caring for each other in a time of lockdown…

Philip Orr on June 6, 2020, 7:00 am

| Readers 666

The global crisis wrought by the Coronavirus has made us aware of some of the most important things in life: good health, effective healthcare, supportive relationships, and wise governance. Self-isolation and fear have shown us just how much we depend on companionship for strength and well-being, while our dependence on the dedication of those who care for us when we are sick, frail, or aged has never been more evident. Perhaps it is time to invoke the wisdom of the …

The Opioids of the People

Gerry Lynch on June 11, 2018, 8:00 am

| Readers 1051

The United States government has launched a new anti-opioid campaign featuring true stories of people so desperate that they inflicted gruesome injuries on themselves to get another prescription. Such stories have already been more effectively told in poetry. The epidemic’s most searing skald is William Brewer, a son of Oceana, West Virginia, a post-industrial town so gripped by addiction that it is nicknamed Oxyana. We were so hungry; Tom’s hand on the table looked like warm bread. I crushed it …

“Perhaps it’s time to rethink toughness or at least detach it from hardness…”

Mick Fealty on September 3, 2016, 9:47 am

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Alex Kane talks about the role of Omerta in Sinn Fein’s success. It’s a pejorative description (in common usage) which ties the party to the Tony Soprano end of politics. So, the reasoning goes, there is no hope of clarity on the McKay-Bryson affair because everyone will stand to and keep quiet. But there’s another side to success in politics, and that’s an anchor in a shared common purpose. It applies to most successful political parties, Sinn Fein and the DUP …

Friday Thread: “If we take man as he really is, we make him worse.”

Mick Fealty on January 24, 2014, 2:37 pm

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Here Viktor Frankl cites a survey [h/t Ciaran] which comes to the following conclusions about American students: 60% said that they wanted to make a lot of money; and 78% said that finding a meaning and purpose in the world was important to them. He then goes on to illustrate a great insight from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: If we take man as he really is, we make him worse. But if are seen to be idealists and overestimating, overrating …

Archimedes’ bellyache

Pete Baker on October 27, 2011, 3:13 pm

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Having been subjected to X-ray fluorescence, and then some multispectral imaging, the 13th Century Archimedes Palimpsest may have finally revealed its last secret – “that Archimedes, working in the third century BC, considered the concept of actual infinity, something thought to have only been developed in the 19th century, and anticipated calculus.” The Palimpsest, constructed in the 13th Century mostly from an erased 10th Century copy of works by Archimedes, is currently the subject of an exhibition at Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum where …