All Articles
Why you should NOT stop looking for the right answer
Right answers can be hard to find, and hard to understand when we find them. But does that mean we should give up altogether?
We disagree on everything. So let’s keep talking.
How can we look at the same world, the same problems, the same events and come to such totally different conclusions about them? Are we even seeing the same thing? And how can we ever resolve our disagreements?
Cracking the Black Mirror: will we even notice when technology takes over?
Honestly, could you go a day, even an afternoon, without your phone? Is whatever you're reading this on is taking control of your life? If you hesitated answering either of those questions, this one is for you!
Stop moaning about homelessness, you’re ruining my Christmas!
It's the most wonderful time of the year. Or is it? It has become fashionable to moan about the forced jollity and consumerism of Christmas, but isn't that just as much a capitulation to the marketers' dreams? What if Christmas, perhaps...means a little bit more?
7% of people think it’s okay to kill you
A recent survey found that six of the Bible’s ten commandments are still considered ‘important principles to live by’ by more than half the population. That’s not bad for a bunch of rules laid down 3,500 years ago. But which ones didn’t make the cut, and why is that a problem?
Why don’t we trust anyone?
The primary way we understand someone to be trustworthy is not by what they say, but how they live. We’ve all met people who might claim to be whiter than white, but when you dig beneath the surface and see into the nooks and crannies of their life, they’re just as imperfect as the rest of us. So simply claiming to be trustworthy isn’t enough — we need to see it in someone’s behaviour.
Is mindfulness the answer?
In the past few years, the study and practice of mindfulness has exploded in Western culture. Originally deriving from Buddhism, it’s now utilised as a form of treatment for both mental and physical illness. But does it really possess the answer to the problems we face in life?
The modern myth of open-mindedness
The very same attitude that makes us first to cry, ‘That’s neither fair nor true, because it’s just a social construct!’ is itself a social construction, a product of specific cultural conditioning. Relativism cancels itself out. Still, we often assume present norms are innately right because we’re entrenched; we haven’t known any other reality. It’s an easy trap to fall into, but the spell breaks when we realise the norm itself is always shifting.
What’s wrong with the world? I am
On a near daily basis, we find ourselves confronted with news of violence, conflict, suffering and death on a global scale. We’ve seen bombings in Brussels, shootings in Paris, car bombs in Ankara and countless atrocities across the Middle East and Africa. I find myself only half-digesting the facts of one horrific act, when, before long, news emerges of some other tragic loss of life in another part of the world....and so, we are faced with the great unsaid question: ‘What will fix it?