Should we live in hope?
We can and should anticipate getting what we want. But desire and expectation riding in tandem is different from them becoming fused, part of the same blend of belief and emotion called hope.
ReadTag: Ethics
Do we have too many things?
A whole generation is growing up consuming a lot which it does not think of as stuff at all. But they are still consuming, more than ever. And although experiences may not be things, they are being bought and sold, acquired as memories and treated as commodities. If the transition we are seeing is from ownership to consumption, it may not take us very far in the direction of post-materialism after all.
ReadHow important is friendship?
A man is judged by the company he keeps, but it’s not always clear what the verdict will be when he chooses to retain a friend who behaves abominably. Consorting with rogues is hardly the hallmark of an honourable gent but, at the same time, someone who doesn’t stand by his pals when the chips are down is not considered much of a mate. So what’s a true friend to do?
ReadShould we nurture our inner child?
Growing up brings a sense of perspective and with it an escape from the infantile solipsism that makes children see themselves at the centre of time and space. It might seem odd, then, that many people have come to see this progression as a kind of degeneration and have advocated a return to childlike simplicity…
ReadWe want it all. And we want it now.
Seventy-five years ago, the tinkling of a spoon in a cup signalled the dawn of a new cultural epoch. After seven years of research at a laboratory in Switzerland, the scientist Max Morgenthaler had perfected the technique of spray-drying liquid coffee into a soluble powder. And so on 1 April 1938, the world’s first instant coffee, Nescafé, was launched and from then on instantaneity came to permeate almost every aspect of our lives…
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