Today I write on tyrannies everywhere: of the short termists, the loud eccentrics, the bad leaders, the racists. Them in particular; so small – why won’t they ever learn?
Our world reverberates with so much energy – much of it anger, much of it love. This is a time for our hearts and our heads and no mistake. I am glad to announce I have conquered my addiction for perma-news. I have not quite discharged myself from the hospital but I have taken the cannula out of my veins and the news does not drip into me every second anymore because I could stand it no more.
Of course, I stay aware, it is part of what our firm does for our clients. But our real job is to try and make sense of the world as it has unfolded, is unfolding and will unfold. Thinking about what to do is a task we all face. We are guided by our government of course and for a long time it has felt as though our choices were not our own to make. ‘Comply don’t choose’ was the order of many long days. But now as we slowly re-emerge into the daylight, blinking, with longer hair and larger waistlines than we would wish, the time for choice is coming back again. And as the fabulous JK Rowling teaches us via Professor Dumbledore: “it is our choices, Harry, that determine who we are, far more than our abilities”. In that she incanted Sartre: “we are our choices”.
So, in this week’s reads of choice, we offer some of the big issues of our moment and some longer reflections on the human impact of what can sometimes seem abstract or far away. It all matters.
Have a good weekend.