“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” (Lord Acton) The second half of Acton’s comment is so striking that it’s easy to overlook the first part: any power […]
Topic: ‘my life’
Contributions which incorporate events in my own life
A sad fact about power
The three economic classes
In Chaucer’s day, there were just two recognised classes: the nobility (which included the higher clergy) and the common people (who were simply defined by being not-noble). You will come […]
‘Mental health’
Between school and Oxford, I borrowed a recently published book from the local library:Â The Myth of Mental Illness, by Thomas Szasz. It has achieved some fame over the years, and […]
‘Sex’ and ‘gender’
I have included sex as a driving force in human life among my “demon drivers.” This is about ‘sex’ (and therefore ‘gender’) as a classification. President Trump recently declared, “there are […]
Shoreham incident
In 1955, on a long summer holiday in England, my father rented a house in Shoreham, on the Sussex coast. This was when I met Brighton and Eastbourne, and fell […]
What are ’emotions’?
A human being without an emotional life would be a strange sort of creature. But what is an ’emotion’? Let me give you a few examples. Loneliness, reverence, depression, boredom. […]
20° C
I remember a sunrise. In Benghazi airport, to which, instead of Cairo, we had flown to from Khartoum—because of the Suez crisis. Outside, waiting for the flight to Rome, I […]