Thomas Hobbes

“It’s all about relationships”

2019-10-14T14:19:34+01:00November 11th, 2018|behaviour|

Every now and then I come across the argument that the success or failure of a teacher is due to the quality of their relationships with students. Poor behaviour? Ineffective lessons? "It's all about relationships."* Most people are incapable of maintaining much more than 50 relationships and the number of people we actively care about tends to be far fewer. Most of the people we encounter we know slightly if at all. How then do we contend with the Hobbesian idea that the natural human condition is a "war of all against all"? Why don't we just take what we want from [...]

The consequences of freedom

2017-03-26T21:38:23+01:00March 23rd, 2017|behaviour|

Aye, fight and you may die. Run, and you'll live... at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin' to trade all the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take... OUR FREEDOM! Mel Gibson Freedom is one of the most popular tropes in modern thinking. We yearn for it and yet feel constantly thwarted. Like Macbeth we are "cabin'd, cribbed, confin'd, bound in to saucy doubts and fears." Wouldn't it be [...]

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