No civilised person is supposed to make bonfires of books. ‘Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings,’ wrote the German poet Heinrich Heine in the century before Nazism. Burning books is a sacrilegious act, and the taboo against it particularly binds writers. So what was I doing in a Somerset field lighting a match under the 32 volumes of the Encyclopædia Britannica?
ReadLike many, I suffer from a mild form of imposter syndrome: the persistent or recurring feeling that one day I will be exposed as an incompetent fraud. I say “suffer” but actually I think some kind of fear of fakery is entirely healthy and appropriate. More often than not, people are where they are by a combination of talent and hard work, aided by a dash of luck and chutzpah. How can we be sure that in our own cases, what ought to be the dashes are not in fact the principal ingredients? …
ReadSo important is trade for human life as we know it that we could credibly define our species as homo cambiens: humans who exchange. There is, however, a competing form of humanity: homo economicus. For homo cambiens, trade is about people and things; for homo economicus, it is only about the maximisation of profit. What homo economicus doesn’t realise, however, is that sustainable profit needs homo cambiens.
ReadBehind the great twin evils of consumerism and individualism – most commonly vilified by individualistic, middle-class consumers – lies a bigger, deeper menace: the culture of entitlement. People have always wanted more, but never have they expected so much.
ReadThe social networking genie is out of the bottle and it is far too mischievous to be tamed. Discretion was hard enough to maintain when it could count on the support of social mores. Now that honesty, openness and sharing are the supreme values, it stands no chance. There is no turning the clock back to the days when the four walls of home contained more secrets than anyone outside could imagine. With denial and cover-up no longer an option, we are going to have to become more forgiving of others and of ourselves.
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