HeyJaredDesperately Seeking Wisdom by Craig Oliver
A place for people looking for guidance on how to stay sane in a complex and confusing world. What is the wisdom that can help us?
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 13
- Latest publication
- Sep 27, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 5, 2026
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When we sell ourselves cheap (opens the original)
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It started with a hotel room.A recent last-minute trip to New York meant a scramble to find somewhere to stay. I needed to be central - and the price was eye-watering. The shock was what you got for that number - a room that felt as if it had been costed to death, with every comfort traded away…When I checked in, very few staff were visible. There was a minibar - but it was completely empty. No kettle - no tea or coffee. There was a reusable plastic water beaker but next to it was a sign saying
If AI could destroy us, why aren’t we screaming? (opens the original)
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Some situations are so big, so threatening, we simply act as if they aren’t there.AI is the latest example.That’s not to say it isn’t in our faces. It is. I can’t look at the news or my social media feed without seeing another terrifying claim. The most worrying is very serious people warning there is a ten per cent chance the technology will destroy us. Some put the figure as high as one in four.Round and round the journalists go - recounting the same information about “swarms” of AI agents att
Old and Better, Not Old and Bitter (opens the original)
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I am not an old man - yet. But at my stage of middle age you start to look towards ageing. Not constantly - but it is there, at the edge of things, like morning light creeping round the edge of curtains.The warning signals have always been there for me. My mother’s mother had a hard life. In her late fifties she looked at least twenty years older. In her mid-seventies she would sit down opposite me, sigh hard and say, “I’m just done.” Looking back as someone who loved her, I find that heartbreak
A Little Rain (opens the original)
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One of my strongest memories of childhood is boredom. Spirit-crushing, desperation-making, mind-scrambling boredom.It wasn’t unusual to find myself stuck in a parked car, waiting for hours as my parents went on one unexplained errand or another that seemed to go on forever.There’s only so much entertainment that can be found in leafing through your father’s AA handbook, or poring over a dog-eared map, in the hope that it might provide some stimulation. I don’t think it ever occurred to my parent
The Hardest Thing (opens the original)
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I am fascinated by what people choose as tattoos - images and words that are there for good. They are sometimes funny, sometimes bizarre, very occasionally profound. Two friends have theirs placed where they will be deliberate, permanent reminders of what matters most. One has an image of himself and his mother, seen from behind, arms round each other, looking across the Thames at the Houses of Parliament. It is a moment from a visit she made to London before she became ill with cancer and died.
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