Progress depends on nuance, not blame — “There’s never gonna be change unless we start banning things!” That was the summary of a recent conversation I had with a friend on climate change. As far as my friend can see, the biggest barrier to progress is an overwhelming hoard of deniers and selfish capitalists. Given the desperation…

Your New Year’s resolutions don’t need to be trade-offs. Learn to pay attention and succeed where self-restraint fails. — Before you dive into that new exercise regime or throw out all of that booze or sugary food, step back and take another look at what lead to this. Why set these goals at all? Why resolve to change these habits? It’s easy to run with a simple, superficial understanding…

COVID-19 should be a wake-up call to embrace a preventative, holistic approach to health. — 2020 will go down as a famously terrible year. As the virus spread, the prospect of healthcare workers having to choose who to save and who to let die was so intolerable that the sacrifice of lockdowns became the best of several bad options. Governments around the world had to…

Zero-sum tactics won’t cure the root cause. Systemic change demands a new system of anti-rivalry. — It’s not hard to understand the emergence of an idea like ‘cultural appropriation’ in the context of a rivalrous system. It makes perfect sense. We live in a system driven by scarcity — there’s only so much to go around and each of us has to do what we can…

How I learned to stop aspiring to be happy and be happy now. — Badge of Honour I’ve always been a dreamer. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t have the ambition to emigrate — I wanted to escape the confines of my hometown and home country and forge a new life in the bright, optimistic, and adventure-filled American west. And from the first moments that…

How to choose resilience over fragility, and why it’s so important for happiness. — The idea that everyone has a right not to be offended has risen to prominence in recent years but does it serve our wellbeing? The knee-jerk reaction to this question may be to fight back, to perceive it as an excuse to let offensive behavior slide and betray victims. But…

A friend of mine has been in poor health for a while and recently made the decision, with advice from medical professionals to lose some weight and improve their fitness. Their first goal was to shed some pounds and they came to me to explain their plan to do it…

In the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, we’re getting a real-time demonstration of the how division is fuelled at the expense of progress in contemporary western society. With huge numbers coming out in protest, the news cycle predominantly focusses on rioting and looting, the most explosive and controversial…

Impasse We all know the issue — climate change is one of humanity’s most pressing challenges. Unpredictable and dangerous shifts in weather patterns and rising sea levels are a growing threat to life, prosperity and peace around the globe. Prosperous nations like the US are responsible for outsized carbon footprints, both…