I am walking down a busy sidewalk and I badly need to pee. I remember that at the end of that narrow alley on the right there is a public toilet. I rush. When I get there I am reminded that to unlock the toilet gate you need a 10 baht coin. I don't have any. There is no one around who can give me change.
My nearly exploding bladder is enhancing my resourcefulness: I have an unexpected idea. I remember seeing a nice lady with a radiant smile squatting on the floor at the alley entrance, begging the passersby for some spare baht. Hadn't I been distracted by my body needs I would have already dropped a coin in her bowl. I grab a 20b note out of my pocket. For most people this note is worth double a 10b coin. And that, of course, includes the lady with the lovely smile. However, I want to pee now, and I need the 10b coin, which I don't currently possess, and that makes it priceless for me, no matter what's worth for you or anyone else.
Modern slavery is not imposed,
no weapons needed, nor nets or chains,
the enslavers operate like fishermen:
they drop a bait that the slave will bite:
it could be an iPhone, a BMW or a penthouse,
the slaves will wake up at 6am,
suffocate for hours in the morning traffic,
sacrifice their eyes for the sake of a report,
arrive home late more sleepy than hungry,
wake up at dawn more drowsy than horny,
watch TV programs that promote mental numbness,
scroll over fake posts that help them feel real.
All we know about Socrates was handed down to us by his pupil Plato - one of the most important western philosophers - as we have already seen when talking about the Symposium.
In this book Plato tells us about the end of Socrates' life: his trial, his imprisonment and his death by poisoning (not really a suicide, as this was actually the court sentence).
Socrates typical argumentative method is exemplified in four different sections.
A man and a woman enter a bar.
What made them a pair is no longer there,
yet something remains, or is born anew
out of the ashes of that vanished bond.
They sit at the counter, the barman draws near,
he doesn't know who, only what and how.
He breaks the ice twice, it's ice of two types:
one needs a tool, the other a joke.
De profundis is a letter that Wilde wrote to his former friend Bosie while serving his sentence at Reading jail.
It's a long, beautiful and very sorrowful text where the author tries to explain the sequence of events that lead to his imprisonment, what his friend's responsibilities were and what mistakes he himself made (mostly out of weakness and kindness, in his opinion).
The author of this book is an American writer of Burmese descent. His grandfather was a colleague and close friend of the heroes of Burmese independence and the Secretary-general of the UN from 1962 to 1971. Aung San Suu Kyi, the National League for Democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was a frequent guest at his family's house in New York, before the 1988 uprising.
Another book against traditional morals by F.W. Nietzsche. This means a book against traditional religions and philosophy, as they have put forward a supposedly "real" world, accessible through reason or faith, as opposed to the "false" world offered by the senses.
This is a mystification. Morals tend to inhibit passion in order to avoid all possible negative consequences. The mistake lies in trying to extirpate passions rather then spiritualize them. Morals should help human life by removing any obstacles to happiness and free expression of natural instincts. Yet, they do exactly the opposite: they oppose life, instincts and the senses.
