Innehållsförteckning för Issue 47 - March/May 2025 från New Philosopher

“In nature everything is connected, everything is interwoven, everything changes with everything, everything merges from one into another.”– Gotthold Lessing In an age defined by digital immediacy and physical distance, the question of how we connect, and what it means to us, seems more relevant than ever. We text more than we talk; scroll more than we see; ‘lol’ more than we laugh. Despite our fragmented experiences, the human need to belong – to be part of something greater than our own existence – nags at us; urges us to make an effort to form meaningful, enduring connections. But connection is not merely emotional or social; it is the cornerstone of how we understand ourselves and the world around us. Aristotle touched on this when he wrote in Politics, “He…

“We are made for togetherness. We are made for community. We are made for a life of connection.”– Desmond Tutu The human body is made up of four key elements – hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen – as are most living things, including plants, animals, fungi, and even bacteria. These elements are the building blocks of life, found in amino acids, DNA, and energy sources such as fats. But our biological connection goes beyond just the living world here on Earth: we are also connected to the cosmos. Long before Earth existed, many of the atoms in our bodies – like oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen – were forged in the blazing furnaces of stars and cast into space through stellar winds, planetary nebulae (gas and dust ejected by a dying…

The 20th-century English poet Philip Larkin wrote about mortality with terrible eloquence. His last great poem, 1977’s Aubade, dismisses with contempt the “specious stuff ” that claims: No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel. Larkin knew that nothingness is precisely what we fear: No sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with... To live is to be linked to a living world, as one tiny part of its totality. To die is to be disconnected – cut off forever from love and life. Life is connection. We are linked to every creature that has ever lived, just as our continued existence is wholly dependent upon other living things. But we are also connected to one…

My mother’s pot plants know they are loved. It’s why they grow to such extraordinary size, and flower way beyond their anthesis. Or that’s my theory anyway. Sunlight and regular watering cannot entirely explain the rich lush foliage and scarlet red petals of her poinsettia (Christmas plant) flooding out of its tiny clay pot. I like to think that my mother’s admiring gaze is not lost on her pot plants. They suck it in, so to speak, just like the water she gives them. They know they are loved and cared for, and this knowledge moves them to greatness. Walking past my mother’s pot plants, you can’t shake the sense that they are showing off. Of course, modern scientists would ridicule my observations as a delusion, or just plain absurd.…

Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, PhD, MPH, is a sociologist and physician who conducts research in the areas of social networks and biosocial science. He directs the Human Nature Lab. His current research is mainly focused on the social, mathematical, and biological rules governing how social networks form (“connection”), and the social and biological implications of how they operate to influence thoughts, feelings, and behaviours (“contagion”). The author of four books and over 200 articles, Christakis was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 2006 and was made a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2010 and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017. Zan Boag: To begin with, I suppose the best place…

If fuel were fireThen agent and action would be one.If fire were different from fuel,Then it could arise without fuel.It would be forever aflame;Flames could be ignited without a cause.Its beginning would be meaningless.In that case, it would be without any action. Since it would not depend on anotherIgnition would be without a cause.If it were eternally in flames,Starting it would be meaningless.So, if one thinks thatThat which is burning is the fuel.If it is just this, How is this fuel being burned? If they are different, and if one not yet connected isn’tconnected,The not yet burned will not be burned.…

Kenneth J. Gergen, PhD, is a founding member, President of the Taos Institute and Chair of the Board, and the Mustin Professor of Psychology at Swarthmore College. He has been the recipient of two Fulbright research fellowships. Gergen has published over 300 articles in journals, magazines and books, and his major books include Toward Transformation in Social Knowledge, The Saturated Self, Realities and Relationships, and An Invitation to Social Construction. Gergen has served as the President of two divisions of the American Psychological Association, the Division on Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, and on Psychology and the Arts. He has served on the editorial board of 35 journals, and as the Associate Editor of The American Psychologist and Theory and Psychology. Zan Boag: You’ve discussed the effect of technology on…

Of all our natural resources water has become the most precious. By far the greater part of the earth’s surface is covered by its enveloping seas, yet in the midst of this plenty we are in want. By a strange paradox, most of the earth’s abundant water is not usable for agriculture, industry, or human consumption because of its heavy load of sea salts, and so most of the world’s population is either experiencing or is threatened with critical shortages. In an age when man has forgotten his origins and is blind even to his most essential needs for survival, water along with other resources has become the victim of his indifference. The problem of water pollution by pesticides can be understood only in context, as part of the whole…

Wants, choices and purposes have their locus in single beings; behaviour which manifests desire, intent and resolution proceeds from them in their singularity. But only intellectual laziness leads us to conclude that since the form of thought and decision is individual, their content, their subject-matter, is also something purely personal. Even if “consciousness” were the wholly private matter that the individualistic tradition in philosophy and psychology supposes it to be, it would still be true that consciousness is of objects, not of itself. Association in the sense of connection and combination is a “law” of everything known to exist. Singular things act, but they act together. Nothing has been discovered which acts in entire isolation. The action of everything is along with the action of other things. The “along with”…

Nicholas A. Christakis Nicholas A. Christakis is a sociologist and physician who conducts research in the areas of social networks and biosocial science. He directs the Human Nature Lab. The author of four books and over 200 articles, Christakis was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 2006 and was made a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2010 and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017. Kenneth Gergen Kenneth J. Gergen is a founding member, President of the Taos Institute and Chair of the Board, and the Mustin Professor of Psychology at Swarthmore College. Gergen also serves as an Honorary Professor at the University of Buenos Aires. Gergen has published over 300 articles…

In this high-speed internet era, we can connect to almost endless participants in the world, suggesting that we are better connected than ever before. But when roughly half, if not more, of internet traffic comes from bots, this connection comes at a cost: scammers, phishers, trolls, sock puppets, hackers, spammers, click farmers, to name a few. Bots (short for robots) are software programs that run automated tasks over the internet. Bots are not new – they have existed since the advent of the internet, many undertaking repetitive tasks such as cleaning databases or auto-deleting suspected spam. Chatbots can answer product questions on websites, recommend movies, track your pizza order, but they can also flood comment sections; inflate likes, follows, and views on social media; misleading us into believing that the…

“No man is an island, entire of itself ” declares the seventeenth century English poet John Donne; “every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” If these words have become a cliché, it’s perhaps because we’ve needed to hear them over and over again. The ideal of living in a completely self-sufficient way, whether emotionally or even physically, has attracted people (especially westerners) for centuries. We just can’t seem to shake the idea of sloughing off our entanglements with others to go live off the grid – whether by literally running away into the wilderness, or more figuratively, by making ourselves invulnerable to deep connection with others. Philosophers in particular are often guilty of writing as if we humans are independent atoms of free will…

‘Dunbar’s number’ is the notion that there exists a cognitive limit on human groups of about 150 individuals. This because ‘[t]o maintain group cohesion, individuals must be able to meet their own requirements, as well as coordinate their behaviour with other individuals in the group. They must also be able to defuse the direct and indirect conflicts that are generated by foraging in the same space’. According to the hypothesis, since the neocortex is commonly believed to play a crucial role in handling social relationships, its size should set an upper limit on the number of stable social relationships that primate brains can keep track of and maintain. The number 150 was established by extrapolating a regression line describing the relationship between group size and relative neocortex size in primates,…

“I think we all need connection. Don’t we?” – Jean-Luc Picard “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” Martin Luther King Jr. “Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time. Connection between individuals and their beliefs can spark societal transformation.” Ruth Bader Ginsburg “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.” John Donne “My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.” Desmond Tutu “I am not free as long as one person is chained, the connection between us is unbroken.” Audre Lorde “I get by with a little help from my friends.” John Lennon “A hidden connection is stronger than an obvious one.”…

noun: 1. Something that connects two facts, ideas, etc.; 2. The act of connecting or the state of being connected; 3. A point, especially in an electrical system, where two parts connect; 4. A train, bus or plane at a station or an airport that a passenger can take soon after getting off another in order to continue their journey; 5. A means of travelling to another place; 6. A person or an organisation that you know and that can help or advise you in your social or professional life; 7. People who are your relatives, but not members of your close family. Origin: late Middle English: from Latin connexio(n-), from connectere, from con- ‘together’ + nectere ‘bind’. The spelling -ct (18th century) is from connect, on the pattern of…

In 1842, after a series of military defeats through the course of the First Opium War, the Chinese Qing dynasty signed the Nanjing Treaty with Great Britain, ceding, among other things, the island of Hong Kong to the British. The treaty itself was signed on the HMS Cornwallis, one of the British gunboats sitting in the Yangtze river, ready to bombard Nanjing city. The symbolism was rich: it was thanks to superior military technology, as represented by the Cornwallis, that the British were able to compel the Chinese to sign what came to be known as the first of the ‘unequal treaties’. Chinese defeat in the Opium Wars (a second war was fought, and won, by the British and the French in 1860) sparked a national crisis. For centuries, the…

The Writer Aldous Huxley 1894 – 1963 Live together We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies – all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes. The Essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803 – 1882 Solitude What I must do is…

The Saturated Self Kenneth Gergen A state of multiphrenia This syndrome may be termed multiphrenia, generally referring to the splitting of the individual into a multiplicity of self-investments. This condition is partly an outcome of self-population, but partly a result of the populated self ’s efforts to exploit the potentials of the technologies of relationship. In this sense, there is a cyclical spiralling toward a state of multiphrenia... It would be a mistake to view this multiphrenic condition as a form of illness, for it is often suffused with a sense of expansiveness and adventure. Someday there may indeed be nothing to distinguish multiphrenia from simply ‘normal living’. Connected Nicholas Christakis Our friends’ friends’ friends Most of us are already aware of the direct effect we have on our friends…

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For hundreds of years, the sciences and the arts have been separated, with very little overlap. Scientists pursue the truth by means of experiment, observation, and reason, with scant need for the subjective and ornamental qualities of art. Artists, on the other hand, remain cloistered in their studios, or libraries, lest their imaginative sensibilities be dulled by the analytical mindset of science. British physicist and novelist C.P. Snow described it as the two cultures: “Literary intellectuals at one pole – at the other scientists, and as the most representative, the physical scientists. Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension.” Since the scientific revolution, the idea that specialisation is essential to success has gained traction. Universities are segregated into disciplines, with academics remunerated and celebrated by uncovering truths that few…

Smoke Signals Date introduced: c. 200 BCE Connection method: Visual, long-distance signalling using puffs of smoke Reach: Limited to line-of-sight; used along the Great Wall of China Users: Military personnel, tribespeople Printing Press Date introduced: 1440 Connection method: Mass communication through printed books and pamphlets Reach: Europe-wide within decades Users: General public, scholars, clergy Postal Systems Date introduced: 1653 (France) Connection method: Written correspondence via national systems Reach: Nationwide and eventually global; daily mail delivery in many nations by late 1800s Users: General public Telephone Date introduced: 1876 Connection method: Voice communication over wires Reach: Local and international Users: Households and businesses Carrier Pigeons Date introduced: c. 1150 CE Connection method: Messages tied to trained homing pigeons Reach: Up to 1,000 km Users: Military (e.g., WWI), merchants, nobility Coffee houses…

I’ve recently become aware that my friendship group is shrinking. And not by design. It’s that classic middle-aged, caught-between-two-poles dilemma that is to blame. Between caring for an elderly parent and a young adult (living at home, in keeping with the latest late-to-launch trend) and simultaneously working full time, I simply haven’t the headspace – or perhaps more accurately, the heartspace – to nurture the friendship group I once maintained with ease. Instead, I find that I make time for a small number of close friends in whose lives I feel both bound up and invested, putting quality before quantity. Yet nurturing even this reduced friendship circle takes more conscious effort than before. I have to remember to check in. To find space in my diary. To commit. Amid the…

It’s wedding season in the US, which means that a lot of money will be spent on venues, decorations, flowers, appetisers, alcohol, photographers, and gifts. Toasts will be made, champagne-induced laughter will drown out small talk, and middle-aged bodies will take over the dance floor, shaking off anxieties induced by this chaotic world. Third cousins will reconnect over vats of pasta and nasturtium-filled salads. Instagram reels will be created, gossip will be spread, and, after midnight, all of Cinderella’s horses will turn back into mice and sink into large beds, their ears still ringing with party music. This year, I’ve got three weddings in my family, and I am skipping them all. To be fair, my niece is having an “intimate” wedding, which I am grateful not to be invited…

Philosophers have always interacted with one another. The cut and thrust of argument lies at its heart and that usually requires questioning, argument, counter-argument, assessing the impact of new evidence, imagining challenging thought experiments, and so on. At their best, philosophers test their ideas to destruction by allowing others to criticise them and responding to those criticisms. They try to do that to their own arguments too, of course, but the easiest way to come up with the strongest arguments against your position is to seek out those who disagree with you. That involves connecting with other thinkers. It also involves forming networks with people you trust and want to interact with. Historically this sort of interaction has occurred face-to-face in philosophical conversation. We have a sense of what that…

Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods; even rich men and those in possession of office and of dominating power are thought to need friends most of all; for what is the use of such prosperity without the opportunity of beneficence, which is exercised chiefly and in its most laudable form towards friends? Or how can prosperity be guarded and preserved without friends? The greater it is, the more exposed is it to risk. And in poverty and in other misfortunes men think friends are the only refuge. It helps the young, too, to keep from error; it aids older people by ministering to their needs and supplementing the activities that are failing from weakness; those in the prime of life it stimulates…

What does it take to build life-giving relationships? If popular advice is any indication, relationships are about loyalty, unconditional love, and never giving up on the people you care about. “Blood is thicker than water,” we’re told. “Real friends don’t walk away.” And we internalise these mantras – sometimes to our own detriment. But what happens when a relationship depletes us more than it nourishes us? When the person who’s supposed to support us constantly belittles us, makes us question our reality, or abuses us? Many of us are reluctant to name these dynamics for what they are: toxic. We’d rather believe that if we just try harder – communicate better, stay patient, love deeper – the relationship will improve. Sometimes it does. But often, it doesn’t. Yet flourishing –…

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Four oxen were in the habit of grazing together in a field. A lion came upon them, but he could not attack them because they kept together and were strong in their unity. Whenever the lion approached, they would turn and face him together, and his power was no match for their collective strength. However, the oxen began to quarrel among themselves and went their separate ways. One by one, the lion attacked them, and without their strength in numbers, the oxen were defeated.…

What is your demon? Misanthropy. Luckily I am also an introvert so I can mostly keep it obscured from view. What is the most important part of your education? Definitely philosophy. I discovered it quite by accident at university and never looked back. Which thinker has had the greatest influence on your life? Andrea Dworkin. I think I had become so caught up in the abstracted calm of philosophy that the experience of reading her was really shocking and disruptive, but in a good way. It reminded me that there are many different ways to make a point. The question you’d most like to ask others? Consider the current social justice cause you’re most committed to: can you accurately state your opponents’ criticism? And do you have a satisfactory rejoinder?…