Published on
6 April 2021
Western liberalism prides itself on having achieved very largely a ‘meritocracy’. Like – in a different way – the Greek conception of an aristocracy, a meritocracy allows for rule by the best and brightest. Today’s meritocracy came in partly in rejection of the corruption of Europe’s old aristocratic ruling élite seen operating in the ancien […]
Published on
30 April 2020
Posted in Culture, Philosophy, Social Commentary, Understanding Science
There is the most extraordinary thing in the air at present whereby we simultaneously seek to understand the brain as a computer, and the computer as a brain. Though no one actually seeks directly to equate the two items in question the very attempt seems self-defeating, since the metaphor by which we try to deepen […]
Published on
5 March 2020
Posted in Big Society, Education, Human Life, Philosophy, Social Commentary, Virtue
Facebook has given new meaning to the saying, ‘Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit’. Social media has brought with it great benefits, but one of the biggest problems associated by many with them is that there seems to have come about post hoc if not propter hoc a diminution in understanding of […]
Published on
27 January 2020
Posted in Christianity, Culture, Music & Art, Philosophy
Oscar Wilde, introducing The Picture of Dorian Gray gave what seemed a damning critique of art: ‘All art is quite useless’. Perhaps he was right. Art is certainly not useful in any conventional sense. It does not help us catch our prey, cure diseases, or find the ideal spouse. Despite this ‘uselessness’ art is – […]
Published on
17 April 2019
Last week, Sir Roger Scruton was sacked from his role as Chairman of the ‘Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission’ following an interview that he gave to the New Statesman. Scruton’s appointment in November had caused considerable controversy, so perhaps his deposition from his unpaid position might be seen in retrospect as all but inevitable. Nevertheless, […]
Published on
9 February 2017
Our last blog post started by describing 2016 as an atypical year. That year is now over – and it truly was exceptional in various respects. It seems pertinent to reflect with a little hindsight on what happened in the twelve months to 31 December last. Politically, socially, culturally – and even locally here at […]
Published on
9 June 2016
The recent killing of a gorilla at a zoo in Cincinnati has provoked a wildly disproportionate social-media reaction. In some widely viewed footage of the occurrence, a four-year-old boy falls into the gorilla’s enclosure and is subsequently grabbed and dragged through water by the animal. Alarmed by understandably loud shouting from the boy’s mother and […]
Published on
28 October 2013
‘We don’t do God’ said Alastair Campbell. In an increasingly secularised world the idea that religion might play any constructive role in public life is ever more considered a relic of the past. Religious institutions are considered at best well-meaning repositories of old thoughts in beautiful buildings the like of which we shall simply not […]