June 17, 2025

As a feast to which all the guests contribute is better than a banquet furnished by a single man, so a multitude is a better judge of many things than an individual. Again, the many are more incorruptible than the few…The individual is liable to be overcome by anger or by some other passion, and then his judgment is necessarily perverted; but it is hardly to be supposed that a greater number of persons would all get into a passion and go wrong at the same moment.

Aristotle (384–322 BC), Greek philosopher and polymath, Politics, 1286a28

What would Aristotle make of social media—and its capacity for attention-getting, undiminished by the fact that often the contents are economical with the truth!

While a pot luck dinner has a sort of appeal—particularly when those to be fed are finicky eaters and want the maximum of choices, the prospect of a meal composed of a variety of dishes selected and prepared by an experienced chef is not short of appeal to those who “know food”. But then that sounds like an argument for dictatorship, doesn’t it? Skip it!