You Can't Have One Without the Other

What I want to tell my partly-pacifist family:

You can't have love without hate.

You cannot selectively shut emotions down.

You either connect to life that is in front of you and all its reality — which will expose you to the full spectrum of emotions which match the full spectrum and nuance of things you will encounter — or you mute it all at once.

You cannot love things and protect them without hating and sometimes fighting things that hurt them. So living with love means you will be living with hate too.

Practically, it means you will spend some of your time caring, and some of your time fighting and protecting.

Sardines and Mansions

You can sleep like sardines in a room with people whose character you love and trust — you are bonded by much more than comfort and wealth. You actually take comfort and emotional nourishment from each other's presence. But you will not want to spend time, even in a

The Price of Connection and the Price of Functionality

An open heart is the highest possible bar for behaviours that lead to connection. If you ask yourself, "what would need to be true for me to open my heart to this person?" — then you have the price of connection. And it isn't perfection. Surplus is

A Formulation of Five Principles

A formulation of five key, rather widely-accepted, principles of human emotional life, expressed in the simplest form I can, are: 1. Do not abandon. 2. Do not exploit weakness — protect it. 3. Do not betray. 4. Do not control. And: 5. Be honest. If you realise any of these things

Getting It Wrong

One of the key principles of maths when you are learning it is that you will get it wrong. Very often. There is nothing "moral" about this. If you have never been taught it properly — working up from ground principles to the more complex ones that stack on

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Sardines and Mansions

The Price of Connection and the Price of Functionality

A Formulation of Five Principles

Getting It Wrong