They had me at Woolf's description of Mirrlees. A pertinent observation for the main course: "Western society at a certain point in its history moved from an u

They had me at Woolf's description of Mirrlees. A pertinent observation for the main course: "Western society at a certain point in its history moved from an understanding of the human self as essentially porous—open to the divine and the demonic—to an understanding of the human self as buffered—self-enclosed, neither vulnerable in the way that the porous self is nor capable of exaltation either." And for dessert, a pointer to Gore Vidal's acerbic take - "Will anything sensible be done? Of course not." - on the war on drugs, written in 1970 before it was a thing: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/01/home/vidal-drugs.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/01/h...