There is a sense in which everything that we have done cannot be undone. If you have loved, then it will always be true that you have loved. No achievement can be taken away once it has been achieved. Good things never really end, we just come to the end of them.
ReadWhen we are faced with any limit it is tempting to look for something that overcomes it: when there is no cure, even snake oil becomes tempting. Sadly, the supplements to reason are just as useless.
Read‘A problem shared is a problem halved’ is not a maxim that finds much favour in global politics. Governments earn their mandates, democratic or not, by acting in the interests of their citizens, not those of foreigners. Efforts to counter this parochialism with more universal, benevolent principles have had extremely limited effect…
ReadThere is a great deal of truth in the idea that we all tend to gain from co-operation, which perhaps helps explain why this belief has survived the widespread secularisation of society. Nor does the mere fact that goodness tends to pay prove our motivations are always fundamentally selfish: compassion and kindness can still be sincere, even if they are repaid with interest.
ReadWe should always try to avoid reducing individual human beings to impersonal units of welfare, a dehumanisation which is utilitarianism at its worst. One way of doing this is simply to ask: if it were our lives or interests that were being sacrificed, should we accept it, however reluctantly?
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