With the renewed tension in the Middle East, we’ve seen the return of familiar themes from the past few years. Rising costs, inflation risks, and the creeping sense that we may not be as far removed from it all as many had hoped. Most prominent in people’s minds is the immediate impact on fuel prices and the expected pass through into broader energy costs.

I’m not sure whether philosophy is having a resurgence over recent years or I’m just seeing things through my own somewhat biased filter. I tend to listen to a lot of podcasts and content that drift into philosophical musings, so perhaps it’s self-selection bias rather than a cultural shift underway.

With every passing day, it feels like we’re finding it more and more difficult as a society to discuss real, complex issues with the depth and nuance they demand. Not just to understand the challenges we face but also to understand each other.

Money should, in theory, be a relatively easy thing to understand. We interact with it every day after all. Unfortunately, it’s not quite as simple as just ‘the money in your account’. That being said, just because something isn’t straightforward doesn’t mean we should seek to make it harder than it needs to be.

It feels as though as more time passes, we’re drifting further into an age where true independent thinking is quietly fading away. It’s not that we’ve lost intelligence or the capacity to think, at least, not yet.

I hadn’t planned on writing about this topic, but in light of the recent government proposal to introduce digital ID’s, and the social chatter that followed, I wanted to put down a few of my views.