The consolations of philosophy

We are told that we should encourage our children to grow vegetables and learn to cook. I discourage my children from growing vegetables because my garden is my shed, my man-cave, my man-alone time.

Cooking, yes. Excellent, a great idea. But when the nine-year-old wanted to make carrot muffins at the weekend her mother who usually (i.e. always) does this was tired so I volunteered. Do you know how long it takes to grate that many carrots? I do. The nine-year-old doesn’t. Apparently the muffins were a success. I wouldn’t know. They were all eaten by others.

This afternoon the nine-year-old decided to make French toast for visiting friends. She can crack an egg, get milk and butter out of the fridge, cut bread, all the basics. But guess who actually made the six slices of French toast?

While I was doing this, I thought back to my days at Auckland University doing maths and philosophy and reading Berkeley, Locke, Hume, Marx and Popper – not the fun stuff like The Open Society but the hard stuff, The Logic of Scientific Discovery.

And I thought, how did I get here from there? Where did it all go right?