Blake proclaimed, “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” As a young man, I used to dream that in my old age I would reach that palace. Of course, I stopped expecting anything like it years ago. In place of wisdom, the best I could hope for was bits and pieces of acquired common sense.
In that frame of mind, the idea of this website came to me. I would gather together things I had discovered, plus ideas that had come to me and stayed with me over the years. Events in my life, and people I have known, would come into it, but it would not be about me.
My aim has been to summon my thoughts when my mind is clearest—when I take into account as much as I can of what I know.
For a motto, I could have adopted the one proposed by Ralph Miliband to C Wright Mills, and carved on Mills’ gravestone. “I have tried to be objective. I do not claim to be detached.” Unfortunately, I think that the ‘objective/subjective’ distinction is one of the thought-tools we can do without. Like Ruskin, writing in 1856, I consider this pair of words to be “two of the most objectionable words that were ever coined by the troublesomeness of metaphysicians.” So my motto has been simply, “I have tried to be fair. I do not claim to be detached.”
I also wanted it to be fun. I would hate to drag my visitors into what Sartre calls le monde sĂ©rieux (straight-faced pretence of wisdom). What I do take seriously, instead, is D H Lawrence’s advice: “If it’s never any fun/Don’t do it.”