The Hidden Pleasures of Life: A New Way of Remembering The Past And Imagining The Future

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHTS! PROTEST: Ignore the horrors around Fyou, amuse yourself, be happy! Make money, work hard, win power! Hide your wrinkles! Are these and their likes the only weapons with which we can defend ourselves against the cruelties of life? Humanity is no longer what it was when these now ancient forms of protection were invented. We know more than we ever did, and have suffered more disappointments than we can remember. We are now free to extricate ourselves from reliance on corrupted versions of ideals that once seemed to radiate only beauty and hope. So I have set out to find others, hidden, unspoken or forgotten, by approaching the history of human experience from a personal angle.

Each of my chapters begins with the voice of a person from a different epoch and civilisation confronting one of the big decisions that everyone has to make, and responding with a story of their own experience. This draws me into a conversation in which I ask what other answers might be available today, what opportunities were missed in the past, and what possibilities have opened up since then. The characters in this book are not heroes to emulate. I have chosen them partly because they have left particularly frank personal testimonies, suggesting that it is sometimes easier to get to know more about the dead - when their private secrets are revealed - than the living - who take so much care to conceal theirs - and partly because they have inspired me with unexpected thoughts about what humans could attempt in the future. They have stimulated me to search in new directions for what life can contain, to become aware of what I have missed, and to distinguish between what humans are and the labels they stick on themselves. History is not just a record of what happened and why it happened, but above all a provocation of the imagination.

**Contents and Sample Pages**