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Chapter 6.
One of the great generalisations we can make about the modern world is that it is, to an extraordinary degree, an ugly world. If we were to show an ancestor from 250 years ago around our cities and suburbs, they would be amazed at our technology, impressed by our wealth,…
For years, we heard much about a need to fly less; now, we’re imagining a world in which people might not fly at all. In the future, children may gather at…
Camus was drawn to his theme because, in his philosophy, we are all - unbeknownst to us - already living through a plague: that is a widespread, silent, invisible disease that…
In a joking tone, some of us occasionally describe ourselves as ‘sun worshippers’. That can mean, that we love to tan, visit an island, go to the beach, read a book,…
One of the strangest but also most intriguing and redemptive things that humans get up to, in almost any culture one cares to study, is occasionally to gather in large groups,…
We’ve got a steady, unfortunate tendency to focus exclusively on what’s bothering us. We brood; we circle endlessly round our worries. We get drawn deeper into the gloomy recesses of our…
In an odd but quietly very important way, works of architecture ‘speak’ to us. Some buildings, streets and even whole cities seem to speak of chaos, aggression or military pride; others…