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A Mundane Comedy is Dominic Kelleher's new book, which will be published in mid 2024. The introduction is available here and further extracts will appear on this site and on social media in the coming months.

The 52:52:52 project, launching on this site and on social media in mid 2024, will help you address 52 issues with 52 responses over 52 weeks.

This site addresses what's changing, at the personal, organisational and societal levels. You'll learn about key changes across more than 150 elements of life, from ageing and time, through nature and animals, to kindness and love...and much more besides, which will help you better prepare for related change in your own life.

Compassion

On Music
Music
Halcyon In Kal… 12 April 2024

 

Indigenous peoples who have never even listened to the radio can nonetheless pick up on happy, sad, and fearful emotions in Western music. A studied suggested that the expression of emotions is a basic feature of Western music, whereas in other musical traditions, music has traditionally more often been appreciated for other qualities, such as group coordination in rituals.

What's Changing? - Empathy

Empathy

 

Please see below selected recent empathy-related change.

 

See also:

 

January 2024

  • A study in Nature showed that AMIE, a Google chatbot, diagnosed heart and lung conditions more accurately than doctors in online healthcare. More surprisingly, the chatbot seemed to also rank higher on empathy - a trait considered beyond AI’s reach. 

 

September 2023

On Others

Others

 

For me the purpose of life is to know other people…is to discover what life is. Who inhabits the world? What is it to be human? What can I give to the world which it doesn’t have…a gift for tolerating my presence in this world..…and unless I know the people, I can’t know what it does not have - Theodore Zeldin

 

Imagining seeing how everybody else lives, just for one day.  Life In A Day was a historic global experiment to create a user-generated feature film shot in a single day, July 24 2010.

On Xenophilia

blog image

 

During dark days of worsening refugee crises and increasing populism, can we still imagine reaching a state of "xenophilia"...overcoming our "homophily", i.e. the love of that which is like us, and reaching the love of that which is different?

Indeed, if we're ever going to care enough about conflict, genocide, poverty, hunger etc. enough to act on them properly, then we need to try much harder to avoid conflict with people we might not yet fully understand.

 

 

On Human Nature
Human Nature
Halcyon In Kal… 1 April 2022

 

"There are two great forces of human nature......self-interest and caring for others", according to Bill Gates.

If true, then:

(1) What is the approximate balance between the two today - in individuals, organisations and societies?  How much time do we really spend thinking about and then acting on other people's needs?

(2) How can we start an open and ongoing debate about what the balance should be - next year, in 2030 etc? If we don't do this, then how can individuals really know how to lead a "good" life, can organisations know what their wider responsibilities really are and can societies really know how to develop fair policies for all?

EDG: Enhanced Ageing

Ageing

 

This paper is an evolving examination of issues around, and responses to, the challenge or improving the lives of and caring for elders, on the emotional, mental, physical, practical, spiritual levels.

 

Pre 2018