Blog | sta-serial

Mar 29, 2023

Chapter 48. THE END (in one sense, anyway)

Sometime early in 1599 (and it is a shame the exact date is not known, because a global holiday should be celebrated on that day, with...

Mar 29, 2023

Chapter 47. Insect and cosmos

‘Life unexamined is not worth living.’ So, I have had a go at it, with more, I trust, of Chaucer’s grateful happiness than Dante’s...

Mar 21, 2023

Chapter 46. Religion and Cats

Many people have found that solid reality has led them to a religious faith. ‘I begin through the grass once again to be bound to the...

Mar 21, 2023

Chapter 45. From Virginia Woolf to Krishna

‘What a discovery that would be – a system that did not shut out,’ writes Virginia Woolf in her diary. Perhaps I can cheekily suggest...

Mar 15, 2023

Chapter 44. Kred-dhehl

There is one very simple, very useful question I ask all my clients about their gardens: ‘What is it for?’ It is, surprisingly, a...

Mar 15, 2023

Chapter 43. The Lee Shore

In Moby-Dick, as soon as the Pequod has set sail ‘and blindly plunged like fate into the lone Atlantic’, Ishmael pauses for a...

Mar 7, 2023

Chapter 42. Pollyanna Pangloss

I am aware that I may sound like Miss Pollyanna Pangloss, finding ‘truth’ in oak trees and centipedes, and cooing over woodlice and...

Mar 7, 2023

Chapter 41. A View from the Bath

I am lying in the bath on an unhurried morning reading a poetry anthology. It is a good bath; it is a good anthology too but I’m not in...

Mar 2, 2023

Chapter 40. STA Gets Political

STA is initially a personal rather than a public philosophy. However politically, economically and technologically interconnected we...

Mar 2, 2023

Chapter 39. Nearing home - a recap

We are nearing the home straight – ten chapters to go. So, to recap, in case, in this deluge of words, you have lost your bearings (or...

Feb 22, 2023

Chapter 38. STA in Daily Life

How does STA – an acceptance of the seemingly real facts I have listed about us and the world, and the ‘natural duties’ which I claim...

Feb 22, 2023

Chapter 37. Words, words, words

I am making the rather large claim that Praise, Love, Creativity and Haecceity are our ‘Natural Duties’ because they are the behaviour of...

Feb 15, 2023

Chapter 36. Haecceity (final part - free from names)

‘Each person has his own gift from God – one person has one kind of gift and the next person has a different one.’ St Paul is clear, if a...

Feb 15, 2023

Chapter 35. Haecceity (part II - Jung or Milton Keynes?)

It is through our haecceity that we praise, love and create. It is the mode in which we perform those natural duties. Each will...

Feb 7, 2023

Chapter 34. Haecceity (and a bold woodlouse)

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each...

Feb 7, 2023

Chapter 33. Creativity (final part incl. Cézanne & Paddington)

Acculturation appears in other guises too. Ancient Greek literary criticism spoke of mimesis – the attempt by an artist to represent...

Jan 31, 2023

Chapter 32. Creativity (part IV - the enemies of art)

If, as I claim, creativity is our birthright, what goes wrong? I think there are two main obstacles, the individual and the social –...

Jan 31, 2023

Chapter 31. Creativity (part III - Art against Gloom)

In the bleak early years of World War Two, getting middle-aged and fat, seeing the European civilisation he adored tearing itself to...

Jan 25, 2023

Chapter 30. Creativity (part II - spider silk and Mrs Illingsworth)

These two cultural artefacts – the shimmering silk cape and the Harvest Thanksgiving invitation – superficially very different, are both...

Jan 25, 2023

Chapter 29. Creativity

But without a parable spake he not unto them. (Mark 4.34) Once before a time, a something suddenly emerged out of the prevailing...