Superstition is very often a word that is pre-loaded with value judgments. In mainstream modern usage, with justification in the use of it by the ancients and in the history of Christianity. Rarly and continuing internal disputes in Christian tradition is larded with name-calling (in which being ‘superstitious’ is a claim made against sects being … More The danger of loaded words in questions.
Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law. Are we not men? Not to suck up Drink; that is the Law. Are we not men? Not to eat Fish or Flesh; that is the Law. Are we not men? Not to claw the Bark of Trees; that is the Law. Are we not men? Not to … More Unfortunately, it has to be the human animal
Meet me in a book store that contains ourselves and the world together and apart. Lets’ go buy books or is it dreams, the painsAnd pleasures of a holiday abroadIn heaven, or is it Hell: where you learnMost about the state of the world or yourOwn soul, where these elements collide nowAnd again, collude or … More Meet me in a book store that contains ourselves and the world together and apart.
The model of behavioural change promoted by Prochaska and DiClemente to describe the usual process of escaping addiction provides the best model of how success occurs and is more durable in nature. It applies to any human behavioural task and suggests that only when serial occurrences of apparent failure in the task occur (failures which … More Lapse and the Upward Spiral of Change, sometimes!
Fighting for a historic third term in government, Tony Blair drove to his constituency in Sedgefield and said that his three-pronged object of political desire remained ‘Education, Education, Education’, without using the by then much mocked word. Here is what he said: Education has been, is and will be the driving mission of a New … More ‘Education, Education, Education’ seemed good rhetoric to Tony Blair, whatever he meant by it. So let’s stay with its advantages as three sustainable objects.
Making a man of yourself – the strain of the 1950s Image from The Science Museum archive: https://coimages.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/58/936/large_2000_0549.jpg (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) We all assume we know what DIY means (without troubling to extend the acronym to the term DO IT YOURSELF). However, it was not always thus as the ‘Brief History of DIY’ page from … More Making a man of yourself for yourself – the strain of the 1950s
Is a day being a mythical version of someone else, worth the crashing out afterwards? “Jackie is just speedin’ away / Thought she was James Dean for a day / Then I guess she had to crash / Valium would have helped that bash”. It feels easier for me to say why not I would … More Is a day being a mythical version of someone else, worth the crashing out afterwards? “Jackie is just speedin’ away / Thought she was James Dean for a day / Then I guess she had to crash / Valium would have helped that bash”.
Imagining yourself giving advice to your own teenage self is a thing more strange than we like to think. It is one of those moments when we see ourself as ‘double’, having two characters in one moment that interact with each other, sometimes in a contest of power and / or authority. There is because … More “And these few precepts in thy memory /Look thou character”. This is not how to be ‘yourself’ – whatever that means!
‘No two corpses are the same’, the surgeon,In forensic and appropriate blankTone, as blank as this verse reversing onItself. ‘They are alike only when sankIn sordid life’. Yet only as a corpseIs a body named a ‘like’, a word likeThat ‘lych’ that names the gated part of t’porchOn which dead bodies rest, or that old … More If I would like to ban a word, it would be a word like ‘like’, like!
Hippocrene source on Mount Helicon By GOFAS – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11613794 Like everyone else I fancy a sip of the Hippocrene. Above is a photograph claiming to be the real source of the river on Mount Helicon, long famed in mythology as the haunt of the Muses – those nymphs responsible for … More Drinking to ‘leave the world unseen’ or drinking ‘life to the lees’
Choose to be around people who make you wonder. ‘How beauteous mankind is! O, brave new world / That has such people in’t’ When one’s untutored eyes are opened the world is full of potential. Is that only because ‘’Tis new to’ us? The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is aiming to bring young people into ‘First Encounters’ with Shakespeare’s drama and spoken poetry. How did they fare with … More Choose to be around people who make you wonder. ‘How beauteous mankind is! O, brave new world / That has such people in’t’ When one’s untutored eyes are opened the world is full of potential. Is that only because ‘’Tis new to’ us?
The phrase ‘walk a mile in another person’s’s shoes is usually interpreted as a call to empathy – an admonition asking you to feel pinching you as they do them, ”the experiences, challenges, thought processes’ of the person’ before you judge them. White cultures often appropriate the wisdom of other cultures but there is no … More To favour walking in another person’s shoes, or mocassins (or whatever) needn’t be in order to empathise with them.
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