When you mention that name, “Arthur”, in Ireland, everybody thinks of the person who invented the black stuff that really made the country (apart from St. Patrick and Shamrocks in a bowl in the White House).

If you’re into philosophy, and more specifically, if you are into German philosophy, you might think of another person. The one who left Kant behind and became, in the first half of the 19th century, a well-know representative of ‘philosophical pessimism’.

Why would all that be of interest at all at all?

Well, Schopenhauer had really great insights into the world and captured them in bite-sized quotes. Like this one:

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

In his ‘pessimism’ he gives hope to those who have the stamina and perseverance not to give up when they’re ridiculed. Those who are able to withstand violent opposition to the truth they believe in. Because, in the end, their truth will be accepted as self-evident. – To me, it sounds like a chapter from the Dreamboater’s survival handbook.

Schopenhauer also said: Compassion is the basis of morality.

You could turn that quote around and help you to understand the apparent lack of morality in a society that only reacts to inconvenient truths, to long-known wrong-doings, to medieval treatments of the voiceless, defenceless and sick – once it attracts sufficient publicity, preferably on Primetime Investigates.
I haven’t got a clue about how to get onto Primetime.
But if it takes that in order to end the lack of action, to end the willingness to change, to end the indifference to the daily inhumane treatment of persons with severe acquired brain injury – I promise that it’ll be there. On Primetime.
Which is the moment when I start thinking of the ‘other’ Arthur and start reaching out for the ‘black stuff’.
Good night. Get some rest. For tomorrow will be the beginning of real change. And that will require all the strength that can be gathered.