Mr Cakebread's Writings

         Or is it? Existing is easy, but living is hard. Existing is a selfish enterprize, guided foremost by self-preservation. It obeys social and intellectual conformity, because dissent is perilous and lonely. One cannot pursue truth in the constraints of their peers' likeness, when the questions that face them as individuals, demand the most moral character. If most of the group takes the easier and immoral path, it becomes dangerous for the individual to pursue truth and live, lest he risk his comfortable place in the social order.            It is here that one begins to understand that living is harder than existing. It brings less pleasure and more discomfort. People who exist are more likeable, they enable pleasure and never threaten the social order. People who live, they make things awkward and they have less fun. On the surface in fact, it doesn't make much sense at all to live, but to exist ins...

            It may come at a strange time to be reviewing this book, when the world descends into tyrannical health & safety measures in response to the bio-political catastrophe of COVID-19, of which there are endless things to write. But I have been meaning to summarize my thoughts on this book since I read it, one year ago. The four books I have read since have not surpassed it, which is no detriment to them, because this book is fantastic. I received this book as a gift from a close friend, who was aware of my interest in the author; whom prior to his unsuccessful campaign for Tory leadership, wrote a couple of documentaries on Lawrence of Arabia, which I had watched while trundling through the dense and epic ‘Severn Pillars of Wisdom’.           For those unaware, Stewart, inspired by T.E. Lawrence’s archaeological walks through Arabia during the writing of his thesis, ‘Crusader Castles’, embarked on his own solo ...