Seeing ourselves as we are

Another rainy day, perhaps the last before the summer high pressure system establishes itself in the Gulf of Alaska. Despite the call for showers for the rest of the day, a thin line of cloud edge appears this morning out over the Strait and a robin is singing plaintively in the tree tops. It's that moment when it isn't clear if it is still rain or if the sounds coming from the trees are the drippings of the canopy. For the forest floor, it doesn't matter. This morning I have been reading the latest issue of the London Review of Books featuring articles on Einstein, the deployment of Panantir across the British public service, and a review of two books on medieval mental and physical health. One, Self-help from the Middle Ages: A journey into the medieval mind by Peter Jones starts by reflecting on the author's own "acedia." I like that term better than "sloth," the deadly sin that it is describing. Sloth implies a kind of contemptuous avoidance of things, but acedia is a state of…