It’s not just the improbability, if not impossibility, of reaching a conclusion that makes many dismissive of theoretical questions. There’s also a sense of vanity about the whole enterprise. Isn’t the very definition of hubris unduly solemn adults pretending that they can even begin to fathom the deepest mysteries of existence? From this perspective, much theology looks like blasphemy – “For who has known the mind of the Lord?” as the Bible puts it…
ReadOf course, we can adapt and borrow any particular Stoic methods that work. But that no more makes you a Stoic than practising meditation makes you a Buddhist. Like any philosophical position, Stoicism itself stands or falls – or more likely limps along – on the soundness of its arguments, not its effect on our psychological wellbeing.
ReadHeraclitus is famous for one simple and powerful aphorism: you cannot step into the same river twice. Everything is in flux, nothing remains the same. And what was originally an observation about nature has now become an imperative. We must innovate. The technological revolution is without end. If it’s not new and improved, it’s old and obsolete.
ReadIt takes great illusions of personal potency to deny the role that luck plays at many key junctures in life, and in history. Nonetheless, few look hard enough to see that luck lurks in pretty much every nook and cranny of our existence…
ReadTwo pieces commissioned by the New Zealand Food and Drink Council, published at Food Navigator Asia. The first is on the comparative price of milk and sugary sodas (14 October), the second on regulation as a tool to reduce alcohol consumption (21 October). I had complete editorial control of both pieces.
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