Sublime

3 Wanting

Christianity

In his book Tricks of the Mind, legendary British magician Derren Brown dissects a simple coin illusion based on the justification principle.

We are, each of us, a product of the stories we tell ourselves.

make as realistic an impact on the memory as we can create.

I am reminded of Noam Chomsky’s words: ‘The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.’2

I am going to draw on some of my favourite thinking from the last two millennia, most of which will come from a time when philosophers – literally ‘lovers of wisdom’ – were concerned with how we might best live.

To whom are we drawn – the person who lets us know how fascinating he is, or the person who lets us know how fascinating we are? To

The Epicureans and Stoics