Day: July 21, 2021

Esoteric, Literature, Philosophy, PsychologyLeave a comment

Everything could have been so different

Fernando Kaskais

Your life is far more arbitrary than you might think. by Jonny Thomson  Jorge Borges’ story, The Library of Babel, asks us to imagine all the books that could be written using a random shuffling of 25 characters. Daniel Dennett argues that, in some ways, the genetic makeup of all life is similar but with only four characters. The history of the universe is only one possible way our story could have gone. Much of our reality is simply arbitrary. Imagine all the lives you didn’t live. A life where you never met your partner. Where you never had a brother … Continue reading Everything could have been so different

Europe, Future, Health, HistoryLeave a comment

Plagues and empires

Fernando Kaskais

What can the decline of the Roman Empire and the end of European feudalism tell us about COVID-19 and the future of the West? John Rapley is a political economist at the University of Cambridge, as well as a senior fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study. His latest book is Twilight of the Money Gods: Economics as a Religion and How it all Went Wrong (2017). He lives in London and Johannesburg. Edited bySam Haselby Early in 2020, after a mysterious coronavirus emerged out of China and then raced across the globe, a quiet new year took a screeching turn. … Continue reading Plagues and empires