Introduction
This is a short collection of essays where I don’t speak entirely in my own voice!
In other writings I have attempted to find positive things that we can work on individually and collectively, to try to solve the many problems our world faces and to try to make the world a better place. But problems are complex are complex and we might not see solutions any time soon. So, I wonder, what if we were to take very different approaches to my usual positive spin? That’s not to say a total reversal of proposals I’ve written about elsewhere. But perhaps I’d describe it as a more cautious, more cynical, more conservative approach. What if we follow what seem to be current trends through to their logical conclusion? What kind of world would we end up with? How might we respond as individuals if we took a more pessimistic view of life? What if we took the view that human nature is not likely to change any time soon, and as the world’s problems get worse then the less appealing aspects of humanity are likely to win out over the ‘better angels of our nature’?
All this is the ‘distant shore’ I’m trying to explore. It is not an entirely negative journey – not a case of just taking my usual opinions and turning them on their head. There are always some positives in life that can be asserted as long as we think it’s worthwhile being alive at all! So I hope these investigations will be thought-provoking and still somehow inspiring, despite dealing with some difficult issues.
These stories first appeared on the website Booksie.com.
I regard this book as a ‘commons’ and am happy for it to be shared, in any format, on any platform, provided that an acknowledgement is given to the author and links provided back to where I have posted the manuscript.
In this revised edition there has been a substantial change in the essays presented. I refer reader to my other works, listed at the start of the book, for alternative views of many of the issues presented herein. The first essay, Why Write?, is presented here in somewhat modified form.
