There is a small minority, for example, that believes that bad weather comes from bad thoughts. This is a rather mystical approach to the question, for it implies that thoughts can be translated directly into events in the physical world. According to them, when you think a dark or pessimistic thought, it produces a cloud …
The Euthanasia Clinics are not the only way to buy your own death, however. There are the Assassination Clubs as well, and these have been growing in popularity. A person who wants to die, but is too afraid to go through with it himself, joins the Assassination Club in his census zone for a relatively …
So many of us have become like children again. It’s not that we make an effort, you understand, or that anyone is really conscious of it. But when hope disappears, when you find that you have given up hoping for the possibility of hope, you tend to fill the empty spaces with dreams, little childlike …
There is one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest-whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories- comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer. And …
Waste, in fact, confronts us with the same value propositions as anything else. The price we put on it-what we will trade to have it, or have it go away-is a function of its attendant benefits or costs. A bagful of two-rupee plastic bottles is more valuable to an Indian child who hasn´t eaten today …
Cuando se lucha contra monstruos hay que tener cuidado de no convertirse en mostruo uno mismo. Si hundes demasiado tiempo tu mirada en el abismo, el abismo acaba por penetrar en ti.
Whenever we present our arguments to other people we usually make out that our logic is such that everyone must agree with us. (‘Be reasonable. See it my way.’) After all, our private logic is always logical to us. This is why no politician is ever a liar. In your logic and my logic he …
‘You’re moving away from the real world.’ ‘What real world? There is no real world, is there?’ She said patiently, ‘Yes, the world of ordinary people and the shit they have to deal with-unemployment, bad housing, boredom. Soon you won’t understand anything about the essential stuff.’ Hanif Kureishi, “The Buddha of Suburbia”.
People seem to have a psychological need for images that convey gripping, scary, upsetting ideas. It does not really matter what images succeed in stimulating us to feel these emotions, as the great variety of horror films shows. Our cultural heritage has conditionated us to think that the crucifixion is especially emblematic, because the corpse’s …
Freshening cloths and other feminine hygiene products have little interest for Sissel Tolaas, but she admits that living in a un-deodorised body is unsettling. “What is the body without the smell of mango? You don’t know,” she says. “And before mango, it was lemon, and before that, rose. People are so used to fictions, that …