I recently received an email decrying people who were ‘fixated’ (possibly including this writer?). The writer of the email is a PhD (medical anthropology, London). She did not define what she meant. Except strong disapproval. What might a ‘fixated’ mind be? Why might it be so pathological? Une idée fixe? […]

Clearly the issue of multiculturalism is ultimately about social change. This is together with the capacity to live in a ‘tolerant’ way with other groups that hold diametrically opposing beliefs. . Nigel Pocock .    But what if these groups believe in tyranny, whether of theocracy, materialism, secularism or of any […]

A hybrid―neither fully one, nor the other, but inheriting something from each parent. Yet persuading themselves, out of the necessity of coping, that they are one or the other.   Nigel Pocock   Under Caribbean slavery, the mixed-race people looked ‘upwards’ (ironically so-called), towards the white plantocracy. Today mixed race […]

Three men, three women, in an animated conversation. Three black, three white. The men listening intently, the women talking excitedly. Then: a joke by one of the men, about how the women loved to talk.   Nigel Pocock   Silence fell, as the voice of a Moral Finger of Higher […]