Is trying enough?
A culture which doesn’t prize trying in itself only encourages people not to try hard enough. And when writers do that, the result is almost always trying, in the worst sense of the word.
ReadTag: Ethics
The vegan carnivore?
The chef Richard McGeown has faced bigger culinary challenges in his distinguished career than frying a meat patty in a little sunflower oil and butter. But this time the eyes and cameras of hundreds of journalists in the room were fixed on the 5oz (140g) pink disc sizzling in his pan, one that had been five years and €250,000 in the making. This was the world’s first proper portion of cultured meat, a beef burger created by Mark Post, professor of physiology, and his team at Maastricht University in the Netherlands…
ReadIs philosophy therapeutic?
“There is no profit in philosophy when it doesn’t expel the sufferings of the mind,” claimed Epicurus. Some 2,300 years later, plenty of people still agree, most notably Alain de Botton, who in 2000 splashed this quote on the back cover of his book The Consolations of Philosophy. But when I hear this line trotted out, far from soothing my psyche, it provokes a dangerous surge in my blood pressure.
ReadSummer Nights
SUMMER NIGHTS – BBC RADIO 4, 23 AUGUST. Discussing “Do We Fear Boredom?” with host Giles Fraser, Naomi Alderman, Camila[…]
ReadIs gratification better delayed?
Delayed gratification is a Janus-faced virtue, used both as a tactic by hedonists to maximise pleasure and a strategy by ascetics to minimise it…
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