It wasn’t about my eyes. — Last month I had eye surgery. We (wife and I) live in Chile. The ophthalmologist who performed the surgery had the reputation of being the best eye surgeon in the country. How I knew eye surgery was inevitable: that telltale thin white cloud that had gradually blanketed the vision in…

Would it change your priorities? — Recently the question was sprung on me, “Suppose you learned you had just six months to live.” As I’ve found such queries useful in the past when I wanted to focus my priorities and actually finish something I’d started, I paid attention. The question is serious, not frivolous. None of…

The first major utilitarians were Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill (there are hints of the philosophy in David Hume’s ethical writings). Bentham was more of a reformer who wanted to improve workers’ lot in the emerging industrial economy of Great Britain. He realized that couching calls for reform in…

Do you really know them? — You’ve all heard the John Donne phrase, “No man is an island.” A friend of mine disputes this. He asserts the contrary: “Everyone is an island.” What does he mean? Our inquiry here has two starting points: (1) We (in the West, anyway***) are existentially isolated persons — even if…

The reason comes from the healthiest instincts of the free enterpriser…. — Just for kicks, let’s try a thought experiment. It’ll rely on simple arithmetic and answer one question: to earn a billion dollars in a year, how much would you have to earn, on average, in an hour. I’ll assume a standard workweek, full-time (40 hours) work. …

How would you respond? Could you control your response? — Lately we’ve had a number of fires in the region where my wife and I make our home: Bío-Bío, in south-central Chile, near the city of Concepción. Scuttlebutt has it that the fires are being set, although no culprits have been caught. …

Advice from the quiet past, relevant to our stormy present. — Stoicism reduces to a few suggestions: easy to write, difficult to practice. (1) Determine to be calm. (2) Observe what is happening around you. (3) Focus on what you can control. (4) Do the right thing. “The first rule,” advises Marcus Aurelius, “is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second…

Because if time can’t be managed, nothing else can be managed. — Marcus Aurelius once observed, “Most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time and more tranquility. Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?’” Excellent advice! And never more relevant than now! It’s often said, we live in an attention…

Because I’ll never buy a lottery ticket. Here’s why…. — Sean Kernan’s article on the story of Tonda Dickerson, the waitress who won $10M on a lottery ticket a customer left her as a tip and then saw her life fall apart, got me thinking. What began as a comment intended for his page quickly grew too long. …