In parts of Thailand, thanks to a confluence of modern technology and traditional beliefs, a peculiar transport service has emerged. The anthropologist Scott Stonington calls them “spirit ambulances”. Some Thai Buddhists feel morally obliged to preserve the life of an …
The narcissism of liberal gods
By now it’s a cliché that liberalism in the Anglosphere has become a religion, whether or not its adherents know it. But less often remarked is a fact somewhat in tension with this claim: namely, that its worshippers get to …
Public Health & Natural Rights: A Tale of Two Cities
One cannot inject a healthy child from the day of birth and believe in the natural rights of the individual.
If the basic functioning of the nature we as humans are born with is so flawed that we need repeated …
What’s wrong with cannibalism?
“I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti,” whispers Hannibal Lecter, before making that scary teeth-sucking noise. But what makes Lecter our favourite moral monster is not that he eats people; it’s that he gruesomely murders …
How the truth fell into disrepute
Truth is harder to dispose of than some people think. To say that there is no truth is already to have stated one, or at least what you take to be one. Yet the idea of truth is a lot …
Ingmar Bergman’s moral horror show
It’s not exactly headline news if I insist that the Swedish auteur, Ingmar Bergman, was one of the very greatest filmmakers of all time, but when I immersed myself in his films while living alone last winter, they hit me …
Keir Starmer is no saint
Given that Keir Starmer went all in on the personal failings of Boris Johnson, it cannot be unfair that questions now circle about his own personality, and whether it is suited to the office of Prime Minister. “Boring” is the …
Octopus farms are the future
When the Spanish seafood firm Nueva Pescanova recently announced its plan to open the world’s first octopus farm, many animal rights activists (and the wider public) reacted with horror. Taking intelligent creatures from the wild to exploit them for human …
How Covid stole our privacy
As soon as I turn on my phone, it becomes a node in a network, giving me access to the entire world. But it also gives Apple access to information about me and my behaviour; I become another source in …