Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small.

– Virginia Woolf

After neutering, your male dog or cat will continue to have his own unique personality.  He will be less likely to roam and will enjoy staying at home more.

Oh, wait, no; that’s from “What is neutering?” in the American Animal Hospital Association’s handy brochure, Spaying or Neutering Your Pet. My bad.

We’d lose our bearings in a world without threat, for prickly encounters with others sharpen our sense of self.

So writes Kaja Perina in her Editor’s Note “In Defense of Jealousy” in the July/August 2009 issue of Psychology Today.

But is this true?  I suspected otherwise when I first read these lines, as they’re circled in No. 2 and in the margins I once wrote:

But that assumes a self - a false assumption. The self is illusory - as is the notion of an other. These are Western constructions and fail to acknowledge interconnectedness that Buddhism accepts as a truth.

But is this true?

• George Bernard Shaw, la Bible, and the distribution of wealth
• Good questions for creative types
• Sam Tsui, ‘1Y1, a cappella sensation