The Philosopher Justice

  If we could  better understand  what is at the heart of human nature than agreement about how to collectively move forward as a species becomes a possibility.  I believe that the heart of what makes us human is very simple, in fact, so simple that it is mostly taken for granted and ignored. We can talk about the  superior intelligence of humans, compared to other animals,  but we don’t really know how or why that intelligence developed.  Was it because we had to cope with bigger group size, as British Anthropologist  Robin Dunbar argues?   Was the development of language the driver in brain size? It appears from evidence of ancient skulls that the evolutionary rate of growth in the size of the hominin brain started accelerating  around the time that stone tools and weapons were first developed, approximately two and a half million years ago, well before humans are said to have developed language. Skeletal evidence reveals that anato...

  I’m fascinated with the image of the wizard from JRR Tolkien's   Lord of the Rings.   In this exceptional work of fantasy the fictional characters Gandalf and Saruman are members of an ancient order of wizards having the magical power to create new realities by casting spells.   We like to imagine that this power would reside in individuals, but in fact, words do have the power to create reality, but only if they are uttered  within a background of collective human agreement. That’s what is missing from the wonderful image of the wizard - the background.  And that is as it should be in a mythical or poetic account, because what forms the background is not commonly noticed, and besides, magic is fun and mysterious. Everything humans do is done against  a cultural background.  This background was created by successive agreements among and between many many groups of people.  That does not mean that when I decide to do something new...