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An audio version of this talk can be found at my podcast, Talks and Thoughts, available via podcast feeds. There is a link between rising levels of mental-ill health and political disillusionment. Feeling cut off is not just an economic and psychological problem, but is a symptom of a wider alienation arising from modern consciousness.… Continue reading Cut off in the literal age. Owen Barfield & Carl Jung on alienation and political disillusionment

An audio version of this talk is at my podcast, Talks and Thoughts, available via podcast feeds. William Blake lived during the period in which the modern world was born. A prophet, he detected the tendencies that now powerfully shape our age. The love of abstraction was high on his list of troubles. Such generalisations… Continue reading To Generalise is to be an Idiot. William Blake on politics, disillusionment and abstraction

An audio version of this talk can be found at my podcast, Dante’s Divine Comedy, available via podcast feeds. Dante lived through a period of almost total social collapse. Civil war and city-state terror, practiced by the church as much as secular powers, drove him into exile for the last 20 years of his life.… Continue reading Dante and civilisational decline. Another dispatch on disillusionment in politics

An audio version of this discussion is at my podcast, Talks and Thoughts, available via podcast feeds. The new movie Freud’s Last Session is well worth a watch, particularly if either man is of interest. The issues you might expect are aired between them, not least belief in God. But also the more shadowy sides… Continue reading God, sexuality & the psyche. CS Lewis and Sigmund Freud tabletalk. Thoughts on Freud’s Last Session

An audio version of this talk is at my podcast, Talks and Thoughts, available via podcast feeds. I’ve been thinking about politics and disillusionment that seems most characteristic of now, in the West at least, and thinking about the prepolitcal – what politics needs to work well. I’ve thought about Plato on beauty and Aristotle… Continue reading The kingdom within. A thought on Jesus and politics

An audio version of this conversation is at my podcast, Talks and Thoughts, available via podcast feeds. At school, we learn that being alive is to possess certain functions, from respiration to reproduction. But what is life and why can the word “life” be used more widely than referring only to biological life? In the… Continue reading The fullness of life. A conversation with Rupert Sheldrake

An audio version of this talk is at my podcast, Talks and Thoughts, available via podcast feeds. Disillusionment with politics is probably the most obvious feature of the current mood. This is, in part, because politics has collapsed onto anxiety about material improvement and lost sight of much more. In a secular society in which… Continue reading Ethics and the failure of politics, or why ethics is part of the problem. A dispatch from Athens

An audio version of this talk is at my podcast, Talks and Thoughts, available via podcast feeds. Disillusionment with politics is probably the most obvious feature of the current mood. This is, in part, because politics has collapsed onto anxiety about material improvement and lost sight of much more. In a secular society in which… Continue reading Beauty and the failure of politics. An election dispatch from ancient Athens

This talk was given at the Project Love event in London on May 9th, 2024. One of the greatest works of love in the western tradition is Dante’s Divine Comedy. The poem is carefully designed. At the central point of its 14,233 lines – at line 7,116 – is the word “amor”. The poem literally… Continue reading Designing for love. A talk for Project Love

This conversation is also available as a podcast via by my podcast Talks and Thoughts. Einstein remarked that there was physics before Maxwell and physics after Maxwell, the difference being the introduction of field theory. So what difference did fields make and, more to the point, what are they? In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon… Continue reading Force Fields. Behind the fog of maths. A conversation with Rupert Sheldrake