Saturday, April 11, 2009

Here and There

Downloading from the Internet

I am no better than anyone else, I am as venal as the next person, but I do wish that everyone at least had the honesty to recognise that, at a moral level, there is no difference between illegally downloading music (or whatever) from the web and stealing. No amount of special pleading can gainsay that.

America’s Achilles Heel

The fact that the USA has contributed so much to the comfort and happiness of nations should not blind us to the fact that, first the Americans and then the rest of the world have been induced to consume more and more. I don’t make any claim to originality when I say that this obsession with consumerism will come to be seen as America’s least attractive characteristic, to be set against its extraordinary generosity and decency.

This and other points are developed in an extraordinarily perceptive article by  Anand Giridharadas in Friday’s issue of the IHT.

No comments:

Post a Comment

A Few Late Chrysanthedads

No one person's experience of dementia is quite the same as another's, but the account given below, within the confines of a shortis...