Paul Bloom recently wrote a book called Against Empathy, and some of his friends say they are embarrassed to read it in public. Isn’t empathy something only a psychopath would object to? Isn’t empathy a force for good? Are not people are urged to express greater empathy in everyday life, and children are being taught to …
For those of us who value freedom, the last few years have been a terrible time. Nationalism and authoritarianism are ascendant, and liberalism is in retreat. The latter used to be seen as the philosophy of the future in the post-Soviet era, but is now increasingly viewed as the preserve of wealthy multinational elites, who …
Continue reading ‘British politics is in a post-liberal era.’ »
Germany’s Constitutional Court has refused to ban the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party. A bid to get it outlawed was rejected by the court in 2003; and now a new bid – launched after a series of racist murders in recent years was found to be the work of a neo-Nazi terror cell, and backed by …
Continue reading ‘Should German judges ban the neo-Nazi National Democratic party?’ »
Researchers studied e-waste generation over five years in 12 Asian countries including China, which saw the amount of e-waste it produced more than double. From 2010 to 2015, the volume of electronic waste generated in East and South-East Asia rose 63 per cent, according to a report from the United Nations University. The rise is …
In her book called Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, Hannah Arendt wrote the following about Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Franco: “In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached a point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and nothing was true….The totalitarian mass leaders …
