One often sees luxury housing developments advertised as ‘exclusive’. The positive implication of this has always puzzled me. Exclusive means someone is excluded: it inspires me to ask who is excluded. And yet when I ask, those around me don’t seem to hear my question as a pointed criticism, as …
What to do in a situation when one side is being violated? It seems straightforward to chose the victim’s side – but how many of us do that? Do we look for excuses to not chose the victim’s side – he seems so nice, surely that story is not true…. …
[Originally posted on the Quaker Council for European Affairs blog: qceablog.wordpress.com] One of the decisions this week at the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) has been related to the killings of journalists, police, and Jewish people in a kosher supermarket in Paris. Therecommendation (to the Committee of Ministers) asks resources to be allocated to hate …
I am suffering a bit from familiar foibles. You know what I mean: those foibles in other people and cultures – always easier to spot than one’s own. They make me grumpy – or, maybe I am already grumpy and therefore I notice how people in one country talk rather …
The newspaper announced it today: trees affect their environment. I am amazed that this is news – are there people who still don’t know this simple fact. We don’t need the media to announce it to us – just walk into a forest in winter and feel how it is …
I have been traveling again, and noticing the individualism inherent in the US. It hits very hard after reading The Spirit Level by Wilkinson and Pickett, which shows over and over how societies (in different parts of the world) with greater inequality have greater public problems: from crime to obesity, poorer …
I have been getting ready to analyze data for some social research. Although it sounds boring, entering the data is actually an opportunity to see an overview of the responses to questions. And comments sometimes strike me as amazing. One example is the large number of people who report making …
Watching an announcement on the news today of a lowering in interest rates, the relief is palpable. ‘Back to normal.’ We can forget the crisis, people think, the worst is over, now back to regular life. But it is not so. ‘Regular life’ involves chewing up and breaking down – …
I haven’t posted in some time, even though my travels have continued (through northern Europe now). I haven’t really stopped, although I do know I will be settling in a new city, in a few months’ time. so, I am still traveling, but with a different feeling as I am …
Sometimes the Internet makes one’s work in delving through books much lighter than it would otherwise be. I was recently directed to this gem of a point of view from Martin Luther King, from a speech in 1967 in an address to the American Psychological Association: ”… I am sure …