Life in all its fullness

My reading and reflecting on Philosophy led me to see that We think in three different waysOur actions matter more than our thoughts For anything that has an impact on the world the only way to accurately measure and understand that impact is by using objective thinking.  However deciding ‘what matters’ involves all three kinds of thinking. It involves value judgments, and valuing is a process of weighing up alternatives and feeling which is more important. This leads to a hierarchy of...

Have I changed or has the world? I'm not a person who seeks out conflict; indeed, one of my values is 'harmony'. I like people to get on with each other and I like to think I can build a good rapport with nearly anyone. However I also value authenticity even more. I feel uncomfortable pretending to agree with something I don't agree with, and I have the sort of mind that chews away at things that don't feel right. In the 1980s, which wasn't that long ago (though my children would disagree), it...

Some things I thought and did when I was 18 are best forgotten, but there are others that have kept me in good stead in the intervening years. I had the fantastic experience of living and working as a teacher for a year in rural South West Kenya, thanks to the inspired organisation Project Trust. We hoped to be useful to the communities who hosted us but it was made very clear that the main benefit would be to ourselves. We weren't sent out to change the world but to learn and get a different...

My ideal reader is ... you. Ok, that may not quite be true if you're boiling with rage and wanting to burn me and everything I've written at the stake for heresy. If thinking is for everyone, then my ideal reader could be anyone. It doesn't matter where they live, what they look like, or how they live their lives. They do at least need to be a little bit open-minded otherwise they are not going to engage with what's here at all. When I've shared some of the ideas here the reactions I get do...