I have often told my readers how important I believe myths and parables are to our understanding of the world. Unfortunately we sometimes suffer greatly when these pointers to the truth are taken literally. (I recently came across a clue as to why parables are so popular. According to research quoted by David Di Salvo […]

To most of us the climate signals are rather confusing. Whilst the press has often provided stories of shrinking ice-caps with commentary from global warming alarmists insisting this is evidence that increasing level of atmospheric CO2 , the same folk seem rather bewildered by the record cold conditions now blanketing North America. If the truth […]

Our democracy seems to me to be floundering. Our politicians seem too keen to embrace populist issues without sufficient concern for the long-term. Serious reform which underpinned our economic success in the late twentieth century seems now impossible because voters can’t be convinced to make short-term sacrifices in order to access long-term benefits. Our two […]

I celebrate myself, and I sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good as belongs to you. Walt Whitman, (American poet and humanist.)   In some sense man is a microcosm of the universe; therefore what man is, is a clue to the universe. David Bohm, […]

The Universe is both mysterious and awesome (and I use “awesome” with its classical meaning and not in the debased way it is used colloquially today). As we have seen in past essays humankind has two principal instruments with which it attempts to fathom the Universe, viz. Logos which relies on our faculty of reason, […]

When I was a teenager in a State High School in a regional town, I only knew one person in the classes that preceded mine that had gone to University. I knew quite a few who had gone to be trained as teachers at Teachers Training College. In those days Universities did not train teachers. […]

In my last essay I tried to make the case that delaying gratification was essentially good for us. Foregoing an immediate pleasure helped build our moral fibre, improving our resilience and ultimately our satisfaction with life. [Psychologists call our ability to delay gratification in this way our intertemporal utility function. I have often wondered whether […]

I seldom watch TV, but whenever I have recently, it seems I get bombarded with ads cajoling me to take out short term loans. The ads usually portray someone, seemingly not very well-off, who just must have something (appliance, laptop, building renovation or repair) immediately. No doubt the targeted customers have little economic literacy and […]

The title of this essay provides a useful question for leaders to ask. Knowing what employees want out of work encourages leaders to either help employees be fulfilled or filter out those employees whose expectations are unrealistic or are counter to the ambitions of the organisation. Let us start with the assumption that all human […]

We know from our studies of human beings that behaviour is fashioned by the consequences that follow from the behaviour. If the consequences are negative we are less likely to repeat the behaviour but if the consequences are positive the behaviour is reinforced and more likely to be repeated. In their great little book Declare Yourself: […]