Falling in love with a house or a car or a pair of shoes, it was a dead end. You save your love for the things that can love you back.

Solving the following riddle will reveal the awful secret behind the universe, assuming you do not go utterly mad in the attempt. If you already happen to know the awful secret behind the universe, feel free to skip ahead.

Individuals understood in relational terms cannot be conceived as fully separate from their communities. Others in one's community may already be a part of the self. This conception of the person as overlapping in identity with others has normative implications for what constitutes the good of the individual and how that good relates to the good of others. One's relationship with others can form a part of one's good as an individual, such that one can have a compelling interest in the welfare of these others and in one's relationship with them.

We depend for so much on those we love that of course we want them to have desirable personal qualities and to believe that we do too. But if we pin our love for another, and theirs for us, based on personal qualities, it confers an unacceptable conditionality and substitutability on love: we don't want to be exchanged for a better model of whatever our lovers deem to be desirable, so there is a strong tendency to want: to be loved for no reason at all, simply be loved.

War is about remaking the world to suit the whims of some powerful group over the whims of some other powerful group. The dead are just the sparks that fly from the metal as they grind it down.

The silver lining of Brexit and Trump is that it has undermined the perception that globalization is an unstoppable force, whether or not we think it is a good thing or a bad thing. There have always been losers and as well as winners in this process, and cultural minorities have been among the most vulnerable losers. Now that sizable numbers of people in the most advanced economies have made their grievances felt in a fashion that is hard to ignore.

She sat one of the fluffy cats in my lap and stuffed the other down my shirt. She turned and left. 'There,' said the large man. 'The kittens will make your sad go away.