Author: stevendouglasblog

Born in 1954. Chequered career including Lecturer in English, Social Worker and Lecturer in Social Work. Had breaks related to mental health that also meant I worked in social care. Now retired.

Visualize your future and step towards it: Looking around to see the limits of motivational techniques

December 17, 2025

Look again at the strange and impossible meme above. It tries to visualise the rationale of the motivational technique in which you ‘visualise your future and step towards it’. In theory, visualising where you want to be makes you more likely to visualise and practice the things you do to make that future possible. Hence, … More Visualize your future and step towards it: Looking around to see the limits of motivational techniques

Keeping the flame alive: The demise of the Socratic idea of learning?

December 16, 2025

According to Socrates, at least as adherents of his definition of learning argue, learning is only tangentially about the acquisition of objects of learning – call them what you will, but here ‘skills and lessons‘ – that are the emergent by-products of a process that is never completed. Hence we ‘kindle the flame of learning’, … More Keeping the flame alive: The demise of the Socratic idea of learning?

The only city you could continue to want to visit, and not yet have found a way to go there, is one of which you lack any realistic current knowledge but of the need your visit will fulfill in your imagination. For Dick Whittington, that city was not London but a city paved with gold. Satan, as imagined by Milton, wishes for a community of all and every demon, and because these demons believed, the city of Pandemonium was built as they convened and communed in it.

December 15, 2025

Why not start with versifying of my own: But that is not the city, said DickAnd looked away to one not built,Its roads with gold inlaid so thick, Building, gilding his inner guiltThat he knew would rule that cityAs mayor, without love nor pity. Meanwhile, in Hell, Satan’s fine gilded hornA Trump of doom did … More The only city you could continue to want to visit, and not yet have found a way to go there, is one of which you lack any realistic current knowledge but of the need your visit will fulfill in your imagination. For Dick Whittington, that city was not London but a city paved with gold. Satan, as imagined by Milton, wishes for a community of all and every demon, and because these demons believed, the city of Pandemonium was built as they convened and communed in it.

This is a blog on the queer delight of forbidden knowledge, recovered from an imagined Hell, and other underground space, in Olivia Laing (2025) ‘The Silver Book’.

December 14, 2025

In a cold Italian winter with frost on the windowpanes, Nicholas Wade, art student and former rent boy, and perhaps a murderer, burrows into a ‘red brocade’ in Danilo Donato’s hotel room making it seem a ‘scarlet cave, the same colour as the inside of an eyelid’. As Nicholas flips over, ‘presenting himself for consumption’, … More This is a blog on the queer delight of forbidden knowledge, recovered from an imagined Hell, and other underground space, in Olivia Laing (2025) ‘The Silver Book’.

Would a good judge (of character or anything else) be necessarily a good – or even just – person?

December 13, 2025

To be good at judging the character of others clearly indicates some skill, knowledge and values (developed to a high standard) in the activity of ‘judging’ – and in this case of ‘judging character’). But what loaded words these are! Being, for instance, a ‘judgmental’ person is rarely seen as the quality of a good … More Would a good judge (of character or anything else) be necessarily a good – or even just – person?

An Addendum to my first version of this: My friend Ann says I Recited ‘The Collar’

December 12, 2025

The Folk Hall at New Earswick. My first go at this prompt related to a vague memory of the recitation of a speech from Measure for Measure (see it at this link). Since then, my friend, Ann, who has been my friend since we both went to Wooldale Primary School, has reminded me of much … More An Addendum to my first version of this: My friend Ann says I Recited ‘The Collar’

Ian McEwan states in his novel’s title a concern with ‘What We Can Know’. Clearly, this concern with the nature and limits of knowledge is central to the conduct of history including predictive history, biography and the study of the art or even counterfactual forms of those things. However, the epigram of this novel, taken from the biographer Richard Holmes, implies that biography embodies ‘human truths poised between fact and fiction’ themselves which requires the question of ‘what we can know’ but also goes on to ask ‘what we can believe, and finally what we can love’.

December 11, 2025

Ian McEwan states in his novel’s title a concern with What We Can Know. Clearly, this concern with the nature and limits of knowledge is central to the conduct of history including predictive history, biography and the study of the art or even counterfactual forms of those things. However, the epigram of this novel, taken … More Ian McEwan states in his novel’s title a concern with ‘What We Can Know’. Clearly, this concern with the nature and limits of knowledge is central to the conduct of history including predictive history, biography and the study of the art or even counterfactual forms of those things. However, the epigram of this novel, taken from the biographer Richard Holmes, implies that biography embodies ‘human truths poised between fact and fiction’ themselves which requires the question of ‘what we can know’ but also goes on to ask ‘what we can believe, and finally what we can love’.

Events have no agency in them. Responses to events do have such agency.

December 7, 2025

Apologies for another nit-picking response but this question embeds a very poor assumption that events are a cause of well-being or ill-being, the former being positive the latter negative. It is an assumption built into that facile tool in developmental psychology, the Life-Events Inventory. Here is a description of it, followed by a brief history … More Events have no agency in them. Responses to events do have such agency.

“It’s not wholly unlike seeing people talk about Faerie”. ‘Do you ever see wild animals?’ is a question trapped in the net of  binaries. This blog takes as its case study Amal El-Mohtar’s ‘The River Has Roots’.

December 6, 2025

“It’s not wholly unlike seeing people talk about Faerie”. [1] ‘Do you ever see wild animals?’ is a question trapped in the net of binaries. This blog takes as its case study Amal El-Mohtar (2025) ‘The River Has Roots’, London, Arcadia, Quercus Books. ‘Wild animals’ possibly don’t exist except as the ‘other’ to two norms … More “It’s not wholly unlike seeing people talk about Faerie”. ‘Do you ever see wild animals?’ is a question trapped in the net of  binaries. This blog takes as its case study Amal El-Mohtar’s ‘The River Has Roots’.

The fever of seeking recognition is at least one of the characteristics in the origin of the social, or aristocratic, vampire in literary myth. We could all do less fame-seeking! A case study based on John William Polidori’s life and writing, OR …

December 5, 2025

The fever of seeking recognition is at least one of the characteristics in the origin of the social, or aristocratic, vampire in literary myth. We could all do fame-seeking! A case study based on John William Polidori’s life and writing, [OR], ‘He watched him; and the very impossibility of forming an idea of the character … More The fever of seeking recognition is at least one of the characteristics in the origin of the social, or aristocratic, vampire in literary myth. We could all do less fame-seeking! A case study based on John William Polidori’s life and writing, OR …

Five things at which I’m good; You’re asking me!

December 4, 2025

Five things at which I’m good; You’re asking meTo raise my self-esteem, to fly a flagThat speaks of five skills that could claim to beThe sum of my accomplishment, the bag In which my goods, being tied up firmlyCan be cast in the balance that will weighAgainst hydra-headed infirmity, That stands on stilts to be … More Five things at which I’m good; You’re asking me!