Halcyon In Kaleidoscope

These pages highlight our founder Dominic's subjective views on the ever-changing range and scope of issues that Halcyon focuses on.

This is less a blog than a set of irregularly updated and often fragmentary views - on ideas and values, places and people - evolving over time into mini essais which pay humble homage to the peerless founder of the genre.

The kaleidoscope is Halcyon's prime metaphor, encouraging us to embrace change and to view issues through an ever-moving series of lenses.

Is it possible to appreciate fully Dante’s work without understanding the man himself and the society in which he lived? A recent book attempted to shed new light on what some have called the greatest of all European poems.

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In spite of spectacular strides in science and technology, and still unlimited ones to come, something basic is missing. There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually. We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers - Martin Luther King

This evolving paper will examine the overall Ethical Development Goals (EDGs) that Halcyon is developing to complement the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Introduction

The EDGs are inspired by the SDGs, officially known as ‘Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’, an intergovernmental set of aspiration Goals with 169 targets.

I was first attracted by Camus, "prince of the absurd" when I was 16.  Camus still fascinates me, now well beyond what would have been his 100th birthday, and close to 60 years after his premature death in a car crash in Burgundy (it's said that he was found with an unused train ticket in his pocket - he'd planned to go by rail to Paris to rejoin his wife and children, but had accepted at the last minute the offer of a lift from his publisher).

For the 500-year anniversary of Hieronymus Bosch‘s death, the MOTI Museum in Holland commissioned a modern re-interpretation of the Dutch painter’s famous medieval painting, “The Garden of Earthly Delights”.

Slowness as a movement is about the idea that to be fast, you first have to be slow and get things right.

The seeming acceleration of just about every facet of modern life seems to be such that if you blink you miss something.

A growing number of people are deciding to opt out, downshift or otherwise "go with the slow" in order to take back their time.  There is even a growing slow food movement and a renewed interest in handcraft movements.

As the pioneer of Cubism, godfather to the Surrealists, and creator of the enduring anti-war painting Guernica, Picasso produced thousands of paintings in his lifetime, not to mention his sculptures, ceramics, stage designs, poetry and plays. A recent BBC Forum discussion looked at Picasso’s life and work.

Three of Picasso's many interpretations of Las Meninas by Velasquez stare down from our walls. This short video helps the non-expert interpret Picasso's works.

In 2015, the millennium development goals (MDGs) – launched in 2000 to make global progress on poverty, education, health, hunger and the environment – expired. UN member states are finalising the sustainable development goals (SDGs) that will replace them, so the Guardian analysed what the SDGs aim to achieve, how they differ from the MDGs and assessed whether the MDGs made much progress.

Imagine that we could build "start-up countries" and escape limiting, outdated forms of governance that hold people back. "Seasteading", according to its advocates, has the promise to do this, creating new "spaces for human freedom".

Halcyon's 52:52:52 campaign will launch in the second half of 2018 and will feature 52 fast-changing issues and 52 possible responses, over 52 weeks.

Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism

Michel de Montaigne's Essais help us better frame and address the fundamental question: "how to live?"

Asserting that money must connect to your soul, activist Lynne Twist sought the truth of her relationship with “scarcity” and “sufficiency” in a series of encounters with people at the extremes of poverty, wealth, fame and anonymity. She found inspiration and resistance in the scenarios she shares from her 50 years as a global activist and a fundraiser for the Hunger Project.

In the 1840s Henry David Thoreau swapped his busy schedule in Concord, Massachusetts, for a wooden hut he built himself near Walden Pond. We had the privilege to visit Walden in July 2012; it exceeded expectations in its tranquility and beauty - and the swim in the pond itself was unforgettable.

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The period around and following the Spring Equinox, celebrated in Christianity as Easter, or in pagan circles as Ostara, one of the eight main feast days on the Wheel of the Year, is usually a hopeful time.

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• Experience winter’s end and spring’s dawn in northern Greenland

T.S. Eliot died over 50 years ago now. His legacy remains profound and his poetry moves me deeply.

In 2016 I had the privilege of visiting his final resting place, East Coker.

I listen to the peerless Little Gidding at least once a quarter, sometimes more often, and almost every line entrances, as if peering through a veil at something once known, but half-forgotten because not looked-for.

Imbolc, imbolc, the light will soon return, warm the Earth this winter's night and let the candles burn.

A time of purification (hence spring cleaning), this is a hopeful time of year, with the days drawing out and even the mornings slowly lightening. Later this month, the first snowdrop and crocus should visit, suggesting that Spring is not far behind.

The Ego Trick looked at the 'bundle theory' of the self, and argued that we don't have a permanent essential self, but instead are a bundle of thoughts, sensations and impulses.

Meanwhile, a Harvard clinical psychologist and Tibetan Buddhist scholar, examined the nature of awareness and self.