meethapani

Turning Thoughts into Action Social media allows a platform for ordinary people to express their opinions. Many go further and share the actions they have taken usually in the social sector such as the Robin Hood Army or Roti Bank, Fixit, and Transparent Hands However, it is also true that shelves of university libraries, and research centres are filled with amazing studies and reports and inventions that rarely cross over into the world of policy makers or manufacturers. A lot of intellectual activity becomes an end in itself. In his paper, From Thought to Action, Jonathan Dancy asks can theoretical reasoning lead to action? Or does it only create a set of beliefs and intentions? Even if action    is not the intended result of thoughtful reasoning, at the very least it needs to be shared outside the inner circle with the aim to inspire action. Philosophy and art are expected to play a quieter role as influencers, rarely expected to turn their observations i...

“The Beautiful Sorrow of Things” I like movies with happy endings. Sadness sends me into a panic, as if I will never get out from under the weight of it all. Yet I have to admit there is an arresting beauty in sadness. Tragedy, sadness, melancholia, anxiety, and even ugliness has generated some exquisite art, music, films and theatre over the centuries. Sometimes tragic events are shown with objectivity such as the Death of Marat by David, sometimes the internal angst of the artist comes through with stunning effect such as Van Gogh’s Starry Night – the view from the window of him room in the mental asylum. In his essay ‘Atrabilious Reflections upon Melancholy’ (1823), Hartley Coleridge (son of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge) praised melancholy as a more refined state of mind than happiness: “Melancholy is the only Muse. She is Thalia and Melpomene. She inspired Milton and Michael Angelo, and Swift and Hogarth. All men of genius are melancholy – and none more so than...