Good deeds and bad

One of the main attractions of psychology is that it is nearly all about putting old fine wines into new jazzy bottles.  The downside is that sometimes the flavour is lost in the process (and sometimes the spirit, too).  But that’s all right because, once having identified the vintage, you can always go out and [...]

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Choices

Just one of the pleasures of being officially retired is that one has the leisure to do pretty much what one likes.  Retirement is a time to be aware of all the things one has not yet done ; all those things that one would have done if only there had been the time.  But [...]

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Democracy right or wrong

It’s always risky to question the form of government that happens to be in place at a particular time. For example, if anybody had been rash enough to propose a liberal democracy at any time up to the eighteenth century, then a short stay in the Tower would have been the law’s reply. But are [...]

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What is poetry?

Nobody has ever defined, for general use, what poetry is.  As was noted in very early writings, a word cannot be defined except for the purposes of a narrow technical discussion.  As Plato said, “Don’t tell me what a word means ; tell me how you use it.”  Dr. Johnson was to come to realize [...]

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