The real problem with air travel is not the carbon footprint, the hassle of security checks, the tedium of the boarding gate, the soulless sprawl of the hire car lot, or Ryanair’s excessive excess charges and unavoidable fees for allegedly optional extras. The deeper issue is that how we travel reflects and shapes the way we think, and we have become a society of airheads.
ReadGetting close to nature is therefore not a simple matter of removing as much of the human touch as possible. It’s not the quantity of our intervention that counts, but the quality.
ReadThere is a poetic truth in Nietzsche’s final collapse into syphilitic madness. In tears, he flung his arms around a horse he had seen being flogged, both man and beast enduring suffering neither could overcome. In that moment, he showed that we can love the weak without them or us loving their weakness.
ReadPhilosopher Julian Baggini fears that, as we learn more and more about the universe, scientists are becoming increasingly determined to stamp their mark on other disciplines. Here, he challenges theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss over ‘mission creep’ among his peers
ReadOur culture often seems determined to abolish failure, not by improving the way we do things but simply by getting better at finding reasons to see defeats as victories. All manner of things that used to be classified as failures are now recast as something else: an E is a low pass grade; a business bankruptcy an invaluable learning opportunity. Our motto has become, “If at first you don’t succeed, try to pretend you have.” So, paradoxically, we have become both intolerant and too tolerant of failure, accepting its manifestations by refusing to acknowledge it for what it is.
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