I’m always struck by comments from researchers about how many lives may be “saved” if only we would take their recommended drugs. Trouble is, you see, the total number of lives “saved” will always be zero. Drugs might alter your experience of life, but they won’t make you immortal. As the Onion once famously proclaimed [...]
Archive for the ‘from the living room’ Category
Fear of dying or passion for living?
Posted in books, from the consulting room, from the living room, health, life on May 27, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Where’s everybody going?
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, photography on May 2, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Tokyo Station by night. I’m amazed to watch the constant snaking in and out of the station of the long, long trains they have here in Japan. From the 32nd floor here it looks like a giant train set (if only I had a bank of remote controls!) But as I gaze down on all [...]
Plane view
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, photography on May 1, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
When I turned fifty I celebrated with a flight in a hot air balloon. Standing in that small basket, the intermittent roar and heat of a burner over my head, peering over the edge of the woven cane, entranced by the red earth of the Atlas mountains receding beneath my feet, was the strangest feeling. [...]
A miraculous life
Posted in books, from the living room, from the reading room, life, philosophy on April 19, 2012 | 2 Comments »
When I read this passage from Marilynne Robinson’s new book, I immediately recalled Robert Solomon’s “Joy of Philosophy” (which I reviewed and reflected on here) There is a tendency, considered highly rational, to reason from a narrow set of interests, say survival and procreation, which are supposed to govern our lives, and then to treat [...]
View from Sirius
Posted in from the living room, from the reading room, life, movies, personal growth, philosophy on April 15, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
The view from Sirius……I was exploring the origins of this idea today (it’s actually a French phrase “point de vue de sirius”), and found that someone had helpfully linked it to this clip from the great Dead Poets’ Society (haven’t seen that film in YEARS!) I like it. In French, this idea relates to the [...]
To know someone
Posted in books, from the consulting room, from the living room, from the reading room, health, life on April 13, 2012 | 2 Comments »
Stumbled across a fabulous extract from Marilynne Robinson’s new book. Here’s just one of the paragraphs which hooked me – There is a great difference, in fiction and in life, between knowing someone and knowing aboutsomeone. When a writer knows about his character, he is writing for plot. When he knows his character, he is writing to explore, to feel [...]
The magic of being human
Posted in from the living room, from the reading room, life, psychology on April 12, 2012 | 5 Comments »
There’s been quite a drive to reduce human beings to purposeless, temporary clusters of molecules. I don’t buy into it. For me, to understand what it is to be human involves taking on board consciousness, an inescapable subjective experience of a self, the interconnectedness of a person with others and with the rest of the [...]
There, there, where’s the matter?
Posted in books, from the living room, science, tagged vfs on March 19, 2012 | 1 Comment »
I don’t get the obsession with the physical which underpins materialism. The idea that “truth” is only found in what can be measured, weighed, or touched, seems, inherently to deny the reality of our irreducible subjectivity. Can love be measured? Can passion, beauty, joy? I think it’s some desire for certainty, coupled with a drive [...]
Interesting numbers
Posted in from the living room, movies on March 12, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Is it just boys who are fascinated by numbers? Remember this scene from that great Scottish movie, Gregory’s Girl? Well, you tell me….but here are some numbers I find completely fascinating. In India, an aeon (a Day of Brahma), is 4,320,000,000 days, is followed by a Night of Brahma, which lasts another 4,320,000,000 days. That’s [...]
Learning to trust your feelings
Posted in from the living room, life, psychology, science, tagged vfs on March 4, 2012 | 1 Comment »
When you stop to think about it, there’s an awful lot going on inside your brain that’s nothing to do with thinking. Well, when I say nothing to do with thinking, I don’t exactly mean that….after all, everything is connected to everything else in there. What I mean is that conscious thought and reasoning is [...]
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