18 March

In my experience, there is again only one true indicator of understanding - a feeling of surprise and joy. If you feel anything else, you’re not understanding something. Take politics, which many despair about, and feel outraged by. Add a dollop of Walter Lippmann - below - and see if it helps reframe the despair and outrage. “But even these differing tendencies are very small as compared with the immense area of agreement, established habit and unavoidable necessity. In fact, one might say that a nation is politically stable when nothing of radical consequence is determined by its elections. There is, therefore, a certain mock seriousness about the campaigning for votes in well established communities. Much of the excitement is not about the fate of the nation but simply about the outcome of the game.”