2 January

To go back to Spinoza, a great example of how being popular with your own community is fraught with having to live a life devoted to appeasing others, rather than facing reality. Exactly 369 years, 5 months, and 7 days ago, his own community excommunicated him. This included: • curses “by day and by night” • exclusion from all contact, and • prohibition on reading his writings or speaking to him. To this day, he is not forgiven and the excommunication is not lifted. The power of social conformity is not felt by most, they live inside the comfort of never challenging it.