When you are young prolonging life seems a great idea. But when you get old things seem a bit different. Emily aged 85 went into hospital. Her home is a nursing care home. She cannot support her own weight and needs a hoist and wheelchair to get her to the toilet and dining room. She … Continue reading Prolonging life — How far should we go?
The British live in a curiously tolerant country – one which allows a range of values, views about life, and philosophical and political beliefs. But one thing for which people are not tolerant is intolerance! The public see anyone as discriminatory, moralistic and rejecting who shows intolerance of diversity. And so to criticise the sex … Continue reading Just how tolerant should I try to be?
You can put junk into your body, or into your mind. Or neither …. Short video by Off The LeftEye [youtube_sc url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNzfeeXvUc0]
Don’t we hope for clean air to breathe, unspoilt land for human habitation, water courses teeming with healthy nature, fairness in public discourse and decision-making showing respect and care, untarnished by greed, and unsullied by envy? Just as there is impurity around about us is there not also impurity in our individual thinking?
Okay so you seldom shout at your teenage son to keep his bedroom tidy. In fact you don’t voice explosive anger, never mind verbal abuse or a threat of violence to get your own way. But perhaps without even realising it, do you sometimes use less obvious methods of manipulation?
Do your attempts at influencing others amount to trying to make them think, act, or feel the way you do? How do you assess the way you manage other people in your life? Do you get your own way too often?
The financial crisis has resulted in loss of jobs and personal savings, and huge damage to business confidence. To get greater economic growth some want to encourage the profit motive and reduce regulation by government. But it is precisely the failures of international financial regulation that had led directly to the crisis. Here are some suggestions about what you can do to tackle the problem.
If doing bad things is caused by environmental circumstances rather than individual moral choice, then surely an eternal punishment after death would be unjust? And if you balk at the idea of evil then you may dismiss the idea of hell.
Historians have written about the rise of Nazi Germany and wondered how a civilized country could have become ruled by criminals trying to conquer Europe. How did well-intentioned educated people become so captivated by Hitler’s magnetism that they could accept secret police, concentration camps, slave labour, and nonsensical rhetoric of Aryan heroism and anti-Semitism? If … Continue reading Sell your soul – Could you do it?
Anders Behring Breivik murdered dozens of people in cold blood in Norway as a horrendous way of protesting about Islamic immigration. How should we respond? By reiterating democratic liberal values in favour of multiculturalism? Or seeing a warning sign about a society’s limits to tolerance of what is alien?
Society as a whole tends to take polarised views of sexual permissiveness. Emotive language is used by those on both sides of the debate – one side being labelled as narrow-minded, prudish and moralistic and the other as being decadent, indecent, and exhibitionist.
Those with a more balanced perspective use more moderate language. They ask …