Tag: dailyprompt

The limits of telelogical thinking with or without the concept of personal agency.

August 21, 2025

How do you plan your goals? Let’s unpack the question today, for it is culture-defining. Behind it lie three assumptions about modern humanity: That human beings follow rational ends or purposes – things they normally call ‘goals’, and that these goals are self-defined. That human beings constitute the main agency of achieving goals by planning … More The limits of telelogical thinking with or without the concept of personal agency.

Art is a great motivator and a comprehensive one: my London trip today.

August 20, 2025

The answer must be that art motivates me. Here I am testing ideas and prejudices about the supposed rivalries between great artists! This might be the reason that I am here anticipating a trip to London today (20th August 2025) to look again at Jenny Saville at the National Portrait Gallery and to see a … More Art is a great motivator and a comprehensive one: my London trip today.

Somehow twilight at evening draws us to favour it. Why? After all it promises us nothing but the night, unless we hope to make the next day the first of the ‘rest of our life’!

August 18, 2025

Somehow twilight at evening draws us to favour it. Why? After all it promises us nothing but the night, unless we hope to make the next day the first of the ‘rest of our life’! When I was a student at University College London, I used to find myself walking through Russell Square to and … More Somehow twilight at evening draws us to favour it. Why? After all it promises us nothing but the night, unless we hope to make the next day the first of the ‘rest of our life’!

If I use the verb ‘to write’, do I really mean that what I write must or should endure

August 17, 2025

The best known quatrain of Persian Poetry, in stolid Victorian translation is that from what The Poetry Foundation calls the ‘Rubáiyát, his collection of hundreds of quatrains (or rubais), was first translated from Farsi into English in 1859 by Edward Fitzgerald’, attributed to Omar Khayyam. There are versions on versions of the quatrains translated, not least by Fitzgerald . … More If I use the verb ‘to write’, do I really mean that what I write must or should endure

Look not for ‘beauty’ but ‘precarity, structural fragmentation or decay, fragility  and ephemerality’. This blog is based on a visit to the National Galleries of Scotland’s exhibition ‘Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years’ on the 11th August 2025.

August 13, 2025

It is almost compulsory to describe the effect of art as achieved ‘beauty’. We use ‘beauty’ too often in this respect. The words that come to me as I reflect on an attempt to reconnect with the art of Andy Goldsworthy are precarity, structural fragmentation or decay, fragility  and ephemerality, so how has his lasted … More Look not for ‘beauty’ but ‘precarity, structural fragmentation or decay, fragility  and ephemerality’. This blog is based on a visit to the National Galleries of Scotland’s exhibition ‘Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years’ on the 11th August 2025.

The last two deadly sins ought to be called (1) ‘defending my right to positivity’, and (2) ‘colonising the world with this replacement for ethical action’.

August 9, 2025

I should have worn out my dislike of “positive psychology” by now, but for me, it reeks of everything that is wrong with the core belief  of the capitalist global North and West in ‘His Majesty the Ego’, as Freud calls the object of the narcissistically derived self, that central ‘I’ that feels itself the … More The last two deadly sins ought to be called (1) ‘defending my right to positivity’, and (2) ‘colonising the world with this replacement for ethical action’.

To carry is a moral task (not least because it demands nuanced and mature ethical grasp). Let’s hope I can be worthy of it in my remaining years.

August 6, 2025

The word ‘carry’ derives originally from the idea not on the personal capacity to bear something along with you on a journey but on the use of a ‘vehicle’ (‘from Latin “carrum” originally “two-wheeled Celtic war chariot), although the Celtic use itself bears the more difficult to reconcile association of “run”. Maybe the later etymology makes it … More To carry is a moral task (not least because it demands nuanced and mature ethical grasp). Let’s hope I can be worthy of it in my remaining years.

An alternate universe is, for me, sitting in a cinema that is entirely empty but for your presence, waiting to see the end of a film that keeps freezing at the same place. Getting to see ‘The Hidden Master: George Platt Lynes’ less alternatively at home on DVD.

August 4, 2025

The Electra suite of the Tyneside cinema at 1.10 p.m. on Friday 25th July The events of Friday 25th July are a fitting image of an ‘alternate universe’, so I’ll describe those. I had planned to see a new film, one just released in the UK at least,Sam Sahid’s biographical and art documentary of the … More An alternate universe is, for me, sitting in a cinema that is entirely empty but for your presence, waiting to see the end of a film that keeps freezing at the same place. Getting to see ‘The Hidden Master: George Platt Lynes’ less alternatively at home on DVD.

‘There’s this underlying belief that if you’re a social worker, you should just handle the pressure. If you can’t, then maybe you’re not cut out for the job’. So says a front-line UK social worker of her own profession in the magazine ‘Community Care’. Can you continue to admire such a profession?

August 3, 2025

A recent article (July 2025) in Community Care magazine instanced the stories of three social workers, whose view of the support they received from within their practice setting as a social worker forms the basis of their stories. The stories vary but are anyway all instructive if read carefully. Note here my care in not … More ‘There’s this underlying belief that if you’re a social worker, you should just handle the pressure. If you can’t, then maybe you’re not cut out for the job’. So says a front-line UK social worker of her own profession in the magazine ‘Community Care’. Can you continue to admire such a profession?

Being curious about questions you never thought you’d ask! A way of preparing to see a new play: seeing James Graham’s ‘Make It Happen’ at The Festival Theatre Edinburgh on the 9 August 2025, 2.30 p.m.

August 1, 2025

Being curious about questions you never thought you’d ask! Can the ghost of an eighteenth-century Scottish liberal moral philosopher save capitalism from its own contradictions and from the reputation cast back on him by neoliberal followers from Margaret Thatcher to Fred ‘The Shred’ Goodwin, the notorious Chief Executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland and … More Being curious about questions you never thought you’d ask! A way of preparing to see a new play: seeing James Graham’s ‘Make It Happen’ at The Festival Theatre Edinburgh on the 9 August 2025, 2.30 p.m.