General

There are, indeed, many ways of addressing the issue of human happiness, and even in the work of one particular thinker one encounters more than one set of concepts to do so. In my previous posting, I looked at Martin Heidegger’s notion of the existential structure of being-human (thrownness, projection and falling) in relation to […]

Many South Africans believe that leaving the country or sticking it out under a cloud of despair are the only options available to us. Fortunately there are those who believe that we can achieve far better, through peaceful means, operating within the systems of our great country. Carl Martin Kriel (38), born in Johannesburg and […]

Despite their relatively small community in South Africa, and indeed their minority status in a lot of places around the world, the Jews have made a big mark. Hostile to outsiders, lavish in giving advantages to its own kind and filled with a persecution complex (all of which, it may be argued, have at least […]

My previous posting elicited a number of responses that, directly or indirectly, questioned the meaning of human happiness and fulfilment. At the outset of a discussion of these one has to admit, as the song goes, that “happiness is … different things to different people”, but far from resolving the issue via an affirmation of […]

An article on BBC News online caught my eye. It dealt with the bias that women face worldwide. In a UN-commissioned report the findings were that women are discriminated against in almost every country around the world. The report was compiled by Fareda Banda, a Zimbabwean-born law professor based in London. In itself this was […]

I don’t know whether that was a baptism by fire or merely an avalanche, but let’s just say that my post in which I listed 10 places I’d sooner live than have a green card has left me feeling kind of dumped on. Quite right too: when you stick your neck out, you’ve got to […]

“When the people lead, the leaders will follow.” How often has this statement been proven true? Remember the French Revolution, the breakdown of the USSR, the fall of apartheid in South Africa. Is this beginning to unfold again in Zimbabwe? In each case, people were faced with what appeared to be huge and insurmountable problems […]

The separation of church and state in an ever-changing society will always be a complicated matter, and has been ever since the idea was new. It remains one of the most universally accepted principles in a democratic system. Accepting, as we do in Europe, the pluralist and multicultural character of the European society today, the […]

With the blatant racial discrimination that has hit our beloved rainbow nation lately, I feel compelled to explore possible solutions to this age-old racial-superiority point of contention where some feel that it is their right to be held in a higher status than other racial groups. Plainly, it sickens me to know that there are […]

I have no feelings one way or the other about Sir Paul McCartney. By the time I was born the whole narcotics-induced hysteria around The Beatles had died down somewhat and I only read about it retrospectively. As a matter of fact, I have no feelings about any other Beatle or any of those other […]

A number of recent events in the United Kingdom, as well as the United States of America, seem to suggest that a generally high level of material prosperity does not necessarily go hand in hand with human happiness, but, more disturbingly, that at least sometimes it seems to produce conditions that actually undermine happiness among […]

For those of us who form part of the chattering classes and have never set foot in a rural village — except perhaps to take tourist pictures — South Africa can be a very confusing and perplexing place. I have wondered for a long time, for example, why so few poor and black South Africans […]