A wonderful book about Adam Smith's less feted masterpiece "The Theory of Moral Sentiments". Saves reading all 97 thousand words of the original whilst communicating his timeless ideas about how we should live our lives. Especially during this week of crisis in my home town of Barcelona the chapter on how to make the world a better place resonated deeply. As I walked around the city on Monday morning I felt that perhaps everyone felt a bit of guilt about what had occurred the previous day. Perhaps we are all a bit culpable either through action or inaction for how this situation has come about. And then I read about it in the ideas of Adam Smith this week.

"Our accumulated actions create the standards of loveliness.. It’s a small role, almost negligible. But together, our combined actions are decisive. Each step we take away from loveliness is a step away from civilization. As more and more of us take those steps, our seemingly negligible actions are no longer negligible. Through our actions, we create the norms and rules of what is attractive and what is unattractive."

If we are turn away from the brink our individually negligible, but collectively powerful actions all need to take a step back towards loveliness.