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  • New Zealand Listener

    Clearing his head

    Feb 14, 2021 4 minutes
    by MARK BROATCH

    Danyl McLauchlan used to be far more certain about things than he is now. Things like the value of science, technology, progressive politics, rationalism and literature. The little things.

    He told people while writing the four essays that comprise Tranquillity and Ruin that the book was about uncertainty. It was technically true, he writes. He wasn’t sure what the essays had in common, apart from being subjects he was obsessed with. Uncertainty sounded important and cerebral, but most crucially, vague. Now he thinks he may have been on to something.

    On the face of it, the essays are “about” mindfulness, secular Buddhism and e­ective altruism. But they are the best kind

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