I was always surprised as a teenager and beginning to think about politics in the West, how people voted for things that were of particular moment to them. It seemed to me strange to vote for a leader of a country based narrowly of the benefits that would accrue to oneself from any particular candidate….
Friendships
I read a story many years ago about two writers, one of whom had something like a log cabin the woods. A getaway. He invited another writer for the weekend and the two men apparently spent three days together without saying a word to each other. The whole weekend may never have been recorded for…
Where Antagonism Stops
There is an old Indian fable of a maharajah and his chief adviser sitting playing chess. The maharajah asks his advisor about the deployment of the army to defeat the neighbouring maharajah. Instead of replying directly as to tactics the advisor asks him what he will do if he wins in a battle. The maharajah…
The Greatest Challenge
The fear of everyone on this planet is facing a situation in which one is impotent, with no answer, no solution to the problem one faces. It is this need to overcome obstacles that has propelled the growth of our brains and guided our reason – even if most of the problems had to do…
The Battles Of Life
Fantasy has always been about the struggle of good over evil. Great stories of all cultures are about justice fighting injustice, religions are about the right path versus the wrong path for living. This dichotomy reflects the division in the experience of people that there are decisions to be made in our existence and that…
Marius
In Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables there is an uprising of the young, forming barricades to protest at the state and Marius the young naive stands with his young political friends who all die. These uprising apparently were frequent following the revolution and even today the French are quite happy to march and burn things in…
The Oldest Revolution In The World
There is a website ( http://www.endoftheinternet.com/ ) which states that it is the end of the Internet. It is a kind of in-joke for all those people on the Net and who understand how the Net works. It is also just a joke to share with everyone, rather than being a joke site, it is…
Pilgrim’s Progress
I remember reading Bunyon’s Pilgrim’s Progress and finding it quite interesting despite, or maybe because of, the obvious Christian theme. For much the same reason I was glued to watching the Mahabharata which was so different because it was staged for a different culture. And again another great saga Monkey, showing how the Chinese thought…
Kiribati
For those who don’t know Kiribati is an island in a series of islands the capital of which is Tuvalu in the pacific. There are many islands in the pacific that will disappear as sea levels rise but I first came across Kiribati in much happier days in the early nineteen nineties when researching for…
What Is It To Know?
I have on my shelf here two large compendia of flowers, giving all the information about names, growing conditions, forms and propagation. I don’t have similar works on the cellular structure, chemical make up and evolutionary history 0f individual plants, but there are lots of detailed books on the subject. Every time we find out…