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Street Philosopher

Floating Over Fallowfield

Seán Moran takes a bird’s-eye view of risk.

Well, would you? I like the idea in principle; but I’m sure that the cold reality of signing a legal disclaimer against death or injury and being strapped into a balloon harness would make me think again. Imagine the sense of freedom, though. We’ve been locked down for all this time, so the chance of escaping up – whatever that means in practice – is an attractive one.

For some of us, this upward flight is to the life of the mind. Louisa May Alcott, the American author of Little Women (1868) said: “My definition of a philosopher is of a man up in a balloon, with his family and friends holding the ropes which confine him to earth and trying to haul him down.

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