We have different conceptions of the self the world over not because selves differ, but because at different times and places people have more or less concern with different aspects of selfhood. They provide different answers to the question “What is the self?” because that apparently singular question in fact contains any number of different ones.
ReadI don’t think there can or should be a going back to the days when spiritual shepherds spoke and human flocks followed. But something needs to do the work today that those five commandments did for centuries. That something needs to transcend our own narrow self-interests and those of our kith and kin. The only credible candidate for that is our common humanity.
ReadBefore we tell people that they should cultivate a winning personality, we have to demonstrate to them that winning is more than just a distant possibility.
ReadTo be truly empowered we need both to better understand the information we are given, and to realise that the biggest abuses of information concern how it is used, not how it is gathered.
ReadIn Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Polonius’s advice to the young prince – “To thine own self be true” – has become a self-help cliché. Yet far from being a glib platitude, these six monosyllables raise profound questions. Being “true to thine own self” is more easily said than done…
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