"The unexamined life is not worth living," postulatedSuggested or hypothesised. SocratesConsidered by some to be the greatest philosopher in history, Socrates is credited with developing the whole notion of critical reason.. From the dawn of time, humanity's main enterprise has been in developing ideas, and 2022 was no exception.

Modern Matrix. 2022 has been the year of virtual realityA 3D world that someone can interact with inside of a computer. . We are closer than ever to realistic submersion in the virtual world. That is, if we are not already in one. This year, philosopher David Chalmers wrote a book which argues that if creating a perfect simulationA model representing a situation. is possible, somebody in the universe has probably already done it, and we are probably already living in it.¹

Giving (far) forward. This year, philosopher William MacAskill published the first major manifesto of a controversial theory called "effective altruismA philosophical and social movement that suggests using evidence and reason to work out the best way to help as many people as possible. ". According to the book, called What We Owe the Future, our moral duty to the unborn future human race is greater than to current, local causes - so, in other words, stop giving money to local animal shelters or homeless charities and start investing it in a long-term solution to climate changeLong-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. Human action is a major cause of climate change..

Celebrating dying. 2022 marked the end of the life of Shatzi Weisberger, a representative of the "positive death movement", which aims to dispel our silent fear around death. The movement argues that the Western world's fear of death is a result of tabooForbidden due to social rules of behaviour., and that to live life without being scared of dying we need to talk openly about it.

Dark matter. This year, a group of scientists challenged a well-accepted theory about "dark matterA hypothetical substance that can not be detected by scientific instruments. Its existence is inferred from evidence that the universe consists of more mass than we can perceive." and gravity. They looked at special galaxies called "disc galaxies", which work in unexpected ways that appear to challenge the theory of gravity.² Scientists used to explain it using dark matter, but a new group wants us to rethink everything we know about Newton's laws of physics.

Yes: History will remember the thinkers who drove our world forward, not the individual actions we choose. We represent and commemorate our time through ideas.

No: Thinking too hard inhibitsStops. action, which is one of our main problems today. We spend so much time arguing about how to deal with problems that we never get around to actually solving them.

Or... Ideas power action and action powers ideas. It is impossible to separate these two things: they are the oppositional forces which drive the world forwards.