The suggestion is that we don’t need hope at all. All we need is a purpose for our action, a purpose that need not be conceived of as a hope. When people plan to, try to, aim to, work to, they are taking steps to achieve a desired goal. But when someone says they merely hope to, nine times out of ten what that tells you is that they have not yet set about doing what needs to be done to realise that hope.
ReadDo you want to pay less tax? It’s totally legal. Faced with such an offer, I doubt many of us would turn round and say, “No, thank you.” Jimmy Carr didn’t when his financial adviser put exactly this suggestion to him. Yet, according to David Cameron, Carr was “morally wrong”, and public opinion agrees. So it seems that the vast majority would both pay less tax if they could and condemn Carr for doing exactly that.
ReadLooking for good, wise political leadership from the Dalai Lama, or any other religious leader, is like looking for the next Jimi Hendrix on Britain’s Got Talent: you might just succeed, but you’d be a fool to expect it.
ReadRELIGION IN ENGLAND Here is a podcast of a fifteen minute presentation I gave on religion in ordinary life in[…]
ReadVideo of my TEDxObserver talk
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