Tag: dailyprompt

‘Fictile worlds’: a business in the interests of pretensive human well-being aimed at consumers we know to be the ‘most fingent plastic of creatures’.

January 2, 2025

The choice of vocabulary to describe the world we are always trying to shape around us and our needs – either in societies, groups or as individuals – is sometimes the most urgent issue in those worlds. This may be because our chief business as meaning-makers and users of meaning is to get things done … More ‘Fictile worlds’: a business in the interests of pretensive human well-being aimed at consumers we know to be the ‘most fingent plastic of creatures’.

What are youthful attachments worth? In my ‘salad days’ I knew no ‘meat’. And now I am a pescatarian.

January 1, 2025

Young people are portrayed in literature, as inordinately fond of things they can’t quite digest or understand. In another blog I mentioned the summary given by Mr Venus, the aged taxidermist in Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend, seeing off a young man who checks the change too carefully (for old men’s teeth substituted for the … More What are youthful attachments worth? In my ‘salad days’ I knew no ‘meat’. And now I am a pescatarian.

Is thinking differently, doing something differently? Or is thought a means of doing nothing? ‘We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves’ says George Eliot magisterially with perhaps this issue in mind. If we are born thus, the emergence of independent moral understanding is painful as a result, for in that emergence we begin to know the otherness of others beneath the barriers set by our thick skins. (Cue George Eliot’s ‘Middlemarch’ from the end of Book 1, Chapter XXI).

December 29, 2024

Is thinking differently, doing something differently? Or is thought a means of doing nothing? Can thinking become its own object rather an an eternally self-reflecting subject seeing itself repeated infinitely in a Hall of Mirrors. A Yayoi Kusama Infinity Mirror Room. ‘We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an … More Is thinking differently, doing something differently? Or is thought a means of doing nothing? ‘We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves’ says George Eliot magisterially with perhaps this issue in mind. If we are born thus, the emergence of independent moral understanding is painful as a result, for in that emergence we begin to know the otherness of others beneath the barriers set by our thick skins. (Cue George Eliot’s ‘Middlemarch’ from the end of Book 1, Chapter XXI).

“If there were no time there would still be some / Sometimes, …. / :Cocooned in comfort where there’s no splendour”.

December 27, 2024

If there were no time there would still be someSometimes, wherein we would find time containedIn some special relationship with us:Cocooned in comfort where there’s no splendour. It does not surprise me that when I think of time I type some plangent iambic pentameters like those I typed above with echoes of the moment in … More “If there were no time there would still be some / Sometimes, …. / :Cocooned in comfort where there’s no splendour”.

“O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us / To see oursels as others see us! / “:

December 26, 2024

The ‘gift’ is a complicated notion. It is considered as a possession by natural right, whose possession carries with it no obligation to the giver and yet is seen as something that could not be ours without someone have gifted it in the first place. A ‘gifted’ person may possess some quality or talent that … More “O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us / To see oursels as others see us! / “:

What Socrates ought to have said: ‘The unchallenged life is not worth living’.

December 23, 2024

The only thing that is usually certain about the many quotations attributed to Socrates is that he probably never said them. Both of the main sources of Socrates’ sayings in Plato and Zenophon are unreliable. It is clear that neither were as interested in Socrates per se, as in using him to promote their own … More What Socrates ought to have said: ‘The unchallenged life is not worth living’.

Relationships of Causation or Correlation: Some playful ‘statistical rigour’ about event categories and their impacts on oneself.

December 21, 2024

This prompt ties itself up in knots. It is the nature of WordPress prompts, so to do, in order perhaps to draw ouf variants in response, or, in the worst case scenario, because they rely on assumptions about commonsense definitions of complex words. First of all, they nearly always invoke indeterminate categories, such as ‘impact,’ … More Relationships of Causation or Correlation: Some playful ‘statistical rigour’ about event categories and their impacts on oneself.

The ‘happiness Tsar’: the ideology of well-being despite every circumstance.

December 12, 2024

Photo by Rick Pushinsky of Richard Layard: the ‘happiness Tsar’ under the Tony Blair regime from Annie Maccoby Berglof article in ‘The Financial Times’ ( September 12 2014) available at: https://www.ft.com/content/b1d0b140-3386-11e4-85f1-00144feabdc0 We hear much less of ‘happiness’ since the termination of the Blair-Brown government but perhaps it will return under Keir Starmer, who needs an ideology to … More The ‘happiness Tsar’: the ideology of well-being despite every circumstance.

‘Ecce Homo!’ To ‘have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part, …’. He changed me.

December 9, 2024

Caravaggio’s Ecce Homo (1605) available via: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecce_homo Let Wikipedia have the first word of explanation of my choice of title: Ecce homo! (this links to the full Wikipedia article). And let this happen before I justify, as a non-believer and atheist, the choice of the Christian tradition (and in particular, that of the High Anglican … More ‘Ecce Homo!’ To ‘have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part, …’. He changed me.

“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show”. 

December 8, 2024

“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show”. (Charles Dickens: the first sentence of David Copperfield (1849-50)). Visualizing the future self and the use of memories of past visualisations when that future presents itself. I have always … More “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show”. 

Expectations, illusions and realities. The issue of the ‘first day’ at something.

December 4, 2024

The Indeed website is an online job search and career placement service, describing itself as the ‘#1’ of its kind. About this I can’t comment on, although their own description is below (part of it at least): Detail of: https://www.indeed.com/about However, I noticed that it raises the issue of the first day at a new … More Expectations, illusions and realities. The issue of the ‘first day’ at something.