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The Window Across the City Imagine standing at a bus stop in the rain after a ten-hour shift. Your shoes are wet. Your rent has gone up again. Across the road, a screen the size of a building shows a billionaire stepping from a private jet, smiling as though the universe has personally arranged the weather for him. Resentment in that moment is not a moral failure. It is the mind registering an obscene contrast in freedom. The billionaire, you reckon, can choose where to live,

Suppose I say this: Every human action is motivated by pure self-interest. Most people hear selfishness. They imagine greed, manipulation, betrayal and the sort of person who eats the last piece of cake while explaining that morality is socially constructed: a hollow-eyed creature unable to recognise another person except as an opportunity or obstacle. But self-interest and selfishness are not the same thing. Selfishness means pursuing what matters to you at others’ cost. Sel

I recently had a conversation with ChatGPT in which I asked it to play the role of a therapist. I set up a fictional scenario with some interesting dynamics. I told it that I had stopped communicating with a group of people because I felt that they disliked me. There had been no explicit rejection. It was something I detected in the atmosphere—a “vibe” that made me want to leave. ChatGPT responded in a familiar therapeutic register. It validated the feeling, distinguished my