Listening to Wendy Beckett's Desert Island Discs, I wondered to myself if this was a good life. It wasn't, indeed isn't, a bad life. As she said herself, she has led a very sheltered life with little opportunity for sin. Most of us, even without religious faith, would admire the lives of nuns who nurse and work in the community. We might have mixed views about those who teach, given what they teach. The problem is - can we admire a life of contemplation ? I do admire a life of scholarship even if it seems useless to others. I think of George Boole whose work on algebraic logic seemed of little importance at the time but became the basis of all computer science. (Actually, checking him up, I see he didn't live a life of pure scholarship at all, but you know what I mean.)
I'm not getting at nuns in particular. I have to question the life of the political activist. Of course many campaign for social improvements and some get elected and carry them out, but a lot of us spend a lot of time getting our opinions on every subject straightened out and I was recently confronted by the following poster online:
Here endeth the thought for the day.
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