I wonder, though, whether “hate” and even “bigotry” may not be too broadly applied in some of these cases. Certainly, the media have been guilty of that in recent years. Those words lose their force when applied to every incidence of prejudice.

Perhaps empathy, too, would hurt neither the doctor nor the patient. Do unto others. See yourself in everyone and everyone in yourself.

Freddie: You are right to be suspicious.

Apologies for the delay in posting these — Blogger stopped informing me of comments, perhaps knowing that I really am done.

As regards this final post, I think I'd frame its (absolutely right, I think) central point slightly differently, and locate it in the distinction Marx makes between a tool and a machine. The former extends the worker's body and therefore his/her labour; the latter stands apart from the worker and introduces one degree or another of alienation into that labour … leading, Marx says, to that Metropolis-style dystopia in which the worker serves the machine rather than the other way about. Your Biblically-minded friend is wishing for a sort of magic machine to tend their Eden, which might facilitate indolence but is also going to be a little alienating, I think.

The day is soon coming when the last soldier of the Second World War will die, and that will be a momentous and much-noted event. But not that long afterwards, an event of even larger significance will occur, and it won't even be noticed: the death of the last person who has adult memory of the world before the internet. How much that went before will become incomprehensible to the new cro-magnons on that day!

I have to insist on grid lined notebooks, which aren't as proliferate as ruled so it limits my options.