In the ‘2020 Vision’ Daily Paradoxes, Behaviour sits top of the list of current needs. Everyone thinks that they know what good behavior is. By our definition, they don’t. Of course, most of the people we meet and see are polite, up to their own standards. They don’t use unacceptably bad language. They are not…
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It’s a happy coincidence, and a delightful omen, that ‘The Year of Vision’ is to be 2020. The first two decades of the 21st Century have been remarkable for their technological progress and political regress. While invention stimulates creative disruption, political fomentation of the street protest sort stimulates division and lack of cooperation. Leaders have…
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For all the wondrous things that we humans have made with our brains, we give thanks. For education, research, science, discovery, moral standards, kindness, we give thanks. For construction, transport, energy-production, water harvesting, health, we give thanks. For food, drinks, air, friendship, views, beauty, art, sports, music, loving, we give thanks. For joys, skills, efforts,…
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We are near the time when we all take a break, eat, drink and be merry.And why not? A volatile world has battered us for twelve months.Now we need to sit back and think. This and the next two Daily Paradox articles will endeavour to help you do that. Today we ask you five questions.…
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The values that I have are pretty old fashioned by the standards of when you read this in the future. Because of a disrupted early childhood they came to me later in life than they did to most people – perhaps all the more trenchantly for that, who knows? They are common sense values, owing…
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I don’t like Boris Johnson, just in case any of you were in doubt about that. I don’t like his example to my great grandchildren. I don’t like his lying. I abhor the lifestyle he enables the media to print about him. He comes a close second to Trump in my dislike of today’s international…
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In my youth I was taught prudence and generosity with money. It left me careful but kindly, a pretty good mix for wartime (WWII) and postwar Britain. Everyone got fed up with that philosophy at the start of the 1960s. The Advertising Agents were later depicted as Madmen. They were – and so was the…
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Reporting in the New York Times, David Epstein tells us about the work of Angela Duckworth, a psychologist who conducted extremely useful research into the business of quitting. Her work, originally with the Army, was intended to predict who, among the freshmen intake, would drop out and who would stay. The regime through which they…
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A fine old negotiation that turned out to be, didn’t it? Brexit, I’m talking about. Not heard? I expect you have. Perhaps you preferred to turn a blind ear. Understandable if you did. Anyway, the long and short of it is that for all the time spent negotiating with the EU, the tables have been…
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To know that you have as much as a fleeting thought in common with Michelangelo is to lift your spirit above the clouds to the sunshine of eternity. For me – a creator of a very much humbler level than the Maestro – to learn that he worked until he dropped at 89 is magic.…
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