Thanks for the responses to my “all that glitters is not gold” conundrum yesterday. The concensus so far mirrors my own thoughts really - that the art should stand alone from the artist. But I’ve got a pal coming round who wants to talk about that blog as well. I’m interested to hear his take.

It’s not surprising that the difficult topics muster the most conversation. They always involve our lives together as humans and, as humans, the only way we can solve them is to talk about them.

In a podcast yesterday, I heard someone say that THE most important issue we face globally, outside of our ability to manage our own personal lives and mental states, is the need to learn the skills involved in cooperating with other people.

This might seem obvious. And we all recognise the achievements that come when people work together, despite and through their differences. They occur daily and many of them are truly amazing.

So we might think we’ve mastered The Art Of Cooperation.

But everything that is wrong in world society, as we experience it, is down to a failure to cooperate. There are some pretty tragic and global examples of this staring us in the face right now. And some of the examples could potentially be fatal to our survival as a species.

So, I’m with the lady on the podcast. Anything that helps us to cooperate better is a step in the right direction.

Talking about difficult subjects, with freedom and flexibility, is a vital one of those steps.