Reasons to be cheerful in dark times, books and culture of the year, and highlights from my 2022 writings.
For me, the holiday season has become less Christmas and more Yule as the years have passed. The winter solstice in the northern hemisphere falls today, 21 December. It’s worth celebrating as the time when the days begin to lengthen again and we can look forward to the regrowth of spring and the rejuvenation of life. Although the coldest months are (probably) yet to come, the gradually lengthening days make them more tolerable as they point towards warmer days to come.
Metaphorically, this has been a very dark year and although it’s not obvious the next one will be any brighter, this isn’t the time to remind ourselves of all the ways the world seems to be going to hell in a handcart. It seems more in keeping with the spirit of the season to dwell on the potential lights at the end of the tunnel. So in place of three wise men bringing material gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, here is one not-so-wise man’s presents of three sources of optimism as we head into 2023.
Headlines like “new cure for cancer” tend to overpromise and ultimately disappoint. Yet gradually, medicine does advance. This year, progress has been made in treatment of type 2 diabetes, dementia, high cholesterol, heart disease and many more. In every case, progress will be slow and there probably won’t be a single moment when a ground-breaking new cure rolls out. This makes it easy to miss how, over the medium to long term, improvements can be vast. In my lifetime, for example, cancer has gone from usually being an almost certain death sentence to a disease that is often fully treatable. With every passing year, your odds of surviving cancers of all kinds improve, even as some remain especially deadly. There is no reason to believe that this long-term progress will end. Even if some of these improvements come too late for many of us, generations to come will suffer much less from serious disease than ours has.
The prospects for climate change look as bad as ever, as it becomes painfully clear than the world has moved too slowly, too late. Still, green technologies are developing at such a pace that even without coordinated intergovernmental action, it will soon become cheaper and more efficient to use climate-friendly energies, farming methods and consumers goods than the alternatives. A future without fossil fuels will not be one which compromises living standards, but one which improves them. We must hope that the ingenuity which has brought that prospect will also give us the tools to slow or even reverse greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the effects of climate change.
Geopolitically, 2022 has not been an encouraging year. But the defiance of protestors in Iran and the people of Ukraine keeps alive the optimistic view that tyranny cannot prevail forever. The human spirit can be subdued but not defeated. Terrible years may yet lie ahead in eastern Europe, the Middle east, swathes of Africa, in China and Korean peninsula. World peace may remain an unachievable goal. But maybe we can find sound reasons to believe that even as far too many suffer and die at the hands of tyrants, those who survive can keep the flame of life and hope burning bright.
None of these three bright hopes is without its shadow side. But neither is any midwinter festival. Pagan rites acknowledged the harshness of winter and the turning of the cycle of life and death. Even Christmas is only pure joy in the fantasy world of advertising.The birth of the baby in the crib is followed by Herod’s massacre of the innocents and the Christ himself awaits the suffering of the cross. Hope is necessary because we cannot expect the future to be only bright; hope is possible because it will not be entirely bleak either.
Picks of the year
Books
I reviewed a lot of books this year and although many were good, when they are so many other things worth reading, there were few I’d recommend wholeheartedly. Nothing equals last year’s two highlights, Being You by Anil Seth, of which I write “If you only read one book about consciousness, it must be his,” and Helgoland by Carlo Rovelli, of which I could have written, if you only read one book about quantum physics, it must be his.
My 2022 choice would be The Ceiling Outside, in which Noga Arikha combined her philosophical interests in selfhood with reflections on her mothers dementia. The result is a “quiet but insistent call is for us to see ourselves and others holistically and not to separate out our subjective, social and biological dimensions.”
Also well worth reading is Intact by Clare Chambers, a “defence of the unmodified body. At the very least, check out my interview with her for Bristol Ideas.
If you’re looking for erudite diversion and are interested in food, A History of the World in One Meal by the Norwegian writer and chef Andreas Viestad would make a good holiday read.
You’ll note all the links are to my affiliate bookshop at uk.bookshop.org. Buy for here and 10% supports independent bookshops and 10% an independent philosopher and writer. You need – nay, must – not buy from Amazon ever again.
Audio
I’ve raved about more podcast series than books this year, many from the BBC. Gabriel Gatehouse’s The Coming Storm explains why QAnon and the Capitol Hill reflect wider, more worrying trends in American society. Marianna Spring’s War on Truth, ‘Stories from the information war over Ukraine’ is deeply disturbing. Vicky Baker’s Fake Psychic ‘investigates the stranger-than-fiction story of Lamar Keene, a renowned psychic who confessed to being part of an underground network he called the “psychic mafia”.’ Oliver Bullough’s How to Steal a Trillion shows that Britain has become an oligarch’s paradise by design, not accident. The Compass‘s mini series on ‘Green Energy: Some Inconvenient Truths’ is laudably measured. The terrific Nolan Investigates series on trans rights gets into factual and historical details to explain why the issue is not a simple matter of trans supporters v transphobes. And there is Misha Glenny’s The Scramble for Rare Earths, which among other things shows why electric cars are not without their own environmental problems.
The Economist put out a fascinating 8-part podcast, The Prince: Searching for Xi Jinping. And the New Books in Philosophy podcast is always worth selectively listening to.
Video
The Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country (2018) tells the tale of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh relocating his ashram from India to Oregon in 1981 and pissing off the 40 residents of a small retirement town in the process.
Iranian cinema continues to produce gems. It’s an encouraging sign of a deep-rooted humanistic culture that we can only hope is more enduring than the country’s current theocracy. Panah Panahi’s Hit the Road is a typically understated family road trip film which is both gently comedic and a rich portrait of ordinary Iranian life in extraordinary times. Asghar Farhadi’s new film A Hero is his best since A Separation. Talking of which, when watching it you might want to separate thoughts that the director may be a plagiarist.
Series three of the HBO adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s Naples Quartet, My Brilliant Friend flirts with misanthropy, yet manages to come down on the side of the humane.
The second series of Stephen Marchant’s brilliant comedy drama The Outlaws is, like the first, funny, tense but also an astute study in moral psychology and ambiguity.
After Love (2021) is an affecting film about a British Muslim convert who suddenly finds herself a widow, only to soon suffer an even greater shock.
The concert/documentary film Summer of Soul has fantastic music and tells a great story and important social history. After this, you’ll be wanting to call Woodstock the white Harlem Cultural Festival.
Other
Good, clear and reliable information about food and its production is hard to come by. Researching a book I’m working on I’ve been impressed by Table, ‘a global platform for knowledge synthesis, for reflective, critical thinking and for inclusive dialogue on debates about the future of food.’ Check out its explainers, publications, podcast and newsletter.
I loved this brutally honest article tearing into the ‘what we can learn from the dying’ genre. The headline sums it up brilliantly: ‘What I’ve Learned From Having Cancer Is Nothing. Nothing useful for you, anyway.’
Photo of the year is this remarkable and moving picture of a dying gorilla in the arms of the ranger who saved her as she clung to her own dead mother 14 years before.
Finally, in How Santa Claus Stole Christmas ‘Christopher Frayling explores how Hollywood helped to create the modern global Christmas’, but actually goes further to show how so much of our ‘traditional’ Christmas has its roots in commerce.
My own writing
Perhaps the most personally satisfying article of the year was my long essay dissecting the idea of authenticity for the Manaa platform. As is often the case, what most interests me gets read the least.
I’ve written a few pieces trying to explore the complexities of our relationship to other animals and our moral responsibilities to them. There is this essay for New Humanist on the moral significance of animal sentience, this shorter piece responding to the kicking of a cat by footballer Kurt Zouma, and the Meat and murder microphilosophy newsletter.
My primer on free will for Psyche went down well. I was chuffed when Patricia Churchland tweeted a link to it saying “Baggini is soooo good on this,” which provoked another tweeter to say “Considering how much has been written on this topic, it’s striking to see how @JulianBaggini can summarize it so succinctly!”
My most heat-generating pieces was this Guradian article, just out, asking “Has organic food passed its sell-by date?” It seems many people could barely get behind the headline and critical comments to notice that the answer was a qualified “no”.
My pick of the Microphilosophy newsletters are On moral discomfort, Why you shouldn’t be a Stoic, the recent The broken hallelujah and the personal story of the year in This must not stand!
Finally, I have continued to try to cut through the rage and hatred in the trans rights debate. I put out a three-part podcast discussion about it and wrote two previous Microphilosophies on the subject, all of which are here. Supporters can also listen to the unedited interview with the UK’s first trans philosopher, Sophie Grace Chappell.
Coming up in 2023
I have a new book out, How to Think Like a Philosopher: Twelve Key Principles for More Humane, Balanced, and Rational Thinking. I wanted to call it How to Think Like a Philosopher (and when not to), but no one else at the publisher thought it was a good idea! I’ve got some terrific endorsements, which I stress are from people I have met but are not friends I have ever met socially. I’ll just shamelessly pick one: ’Nobody thinks about thinking like Julian Baggini … Brilliant,’ said Anil Seth. You can pre-order here.
There will be some related speaking events, including in Bristol late February and the Hay festival in May.
Thank to everyone for your interest in my work over the year, especially to paid supporters, who now have access to 45 exclusive articles, podcasts and even a book. They are also able to come to most-monthly online philosophy discussions which I host, of which there will be one more before the year is out. I’m now offering free lifetime membership to everyone who has been a supporter for two years or more. Sign up from £5 a month.
That’s it for 2022. You can sign up below to receive these Microphilosophy newsletters direct to your inbox. Until next year, if nothing prevents.