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Well-being
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tjj
tjj
3606 posts

Edited Feb 09, 2017, 10:57
Re: Well-being
Feb 09, 2017, 00:39
I feel it beholden on me to respond to your post about Richard Jefferies - given the Old House at Coate is very close to where I live and I'm happy to promote its current use as a museum dedicated to nature side RJ's work. He clearly was his happiest roaming the Wiltshire countryside as a boy and young man but suspect would be hard pressed to find that spring again these days (probably buried under the M4). Although he died young, his life in London understandably was not so idyllic - apparently he often stood in front of the Royal Exchange and watched the flow of Victorian commercial life pass by - he wrote ...

"all these men and women that pass through are driven on by the push of accumulated circumstances; they cannot stay, they must go …. Where will be these millions of to-day in a hundred years? But, further than that, let us ask, Where then will be the sum and outcome of their labour? … There will not be any sum or outcome or result of this ceaseless labour and movement; it vanishes in the moment that it is done, and in a hundred years nothing will be there, for nothing is there now."

He was wrong was he not. We live with the legacy of the industrious Victorians and also the materialism of late 20th century. Would he have hated the dual carriageway outside his home and the speed of everything - perhaps not, if he lived today would he have owned a car? An imponderable!

Although you were not addressing me directly I have to take issue with your first paragraph (this is a discussion forum) - of course no one would ever be able to prove "Jesus is sitting on the right hand of God" etc. Its nonsense, or at best metaphorical. And while speaking of inspired art, you forgot to mention all the atrocities that were done in name of religion over the centuries - and are still being done in the name of religion.

The bit about the spring was nice though.
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