Social

Mainstream culture has tried to airbrush guilt out of everyday life. It’s the ultimate social faux pas, it seems, to make someone feel guilty—How dare you judge me! Or maybe it’s the penultimate faux pas, because what’s even worse than making someone feel guilty inside is to shame them in front of others.

“Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light” (Hellen Keller).

Plato may have been one of the first to think this way, but in modern sociology it was Walter Lippmann who made history with the idea that people do not have access to reality in all its complexity, but operate on images of that reality that they construct for themselves.

Want to start the new school year on the right foot? Here are some back-to-school tips that will help make that transition from holidays to school a lot easier.

"The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts." (C. S. Lewis)

When 29-year-old Danish midfielder Christian Eriksen suddenly collapsed while playing against Finland at the 2020 European Football Championship, some professional players were provoked to protest against the overloaded competitive schedules of many footballers.

I believe that the illusion of free time seen as a different world, separated from everyday active life, must be replaced by the image of proactive free time– just like a day of work that satisfies us.

When it comes to purchasing food, price often guides our decision-making. We tend to believe that anything more expensive is also of higher quality. This perception can be true, but only to a certain extent.

“…the world was not worthy of them…” (Hebrews 11:38)

Arguments must be convincing and, in order to convince, they must be valid—the minimum requirement of persuasion.

Would you rather “achieve great things or be happy?” That question was asked in a YouGov survey (United States): 81 per cent said they would rather be happy; 13 per cent wanted to achieve great things; 6 per cent were uncertain.

There have always been people who relish a debate—though all too often, even when the subject hardly matters, the whole exercise amounts to little more than intellectual gymnastics in a thimble and scholarly squabbles over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

"I'm 14 years old — and I'm sick and tired of social media." (Riley Jackson)

A smooth sea never gave a skilled sailor, said Franklin D. Roosevelt, suggesting that without hardship, challenges and even failures, we cannot become our best selves.

"In the Trinity Term of 1929, I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England," testified C.S. Lewis in his book, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. Today’s article, however, is about another book from the same author, Mere Christianity.