As the title suggests this is a collection of individual but interconnected reflections concerning humans and their surroundings. The book starts with a consideration of human 'world views' - the way that humans conceive of themselves in relation to their surroundings. The reflections cover topics such as the relationship between awareness, experience and qualia, the nature of hearing, the phenomenon of memory, the perception of objects, thought and freedom, the location of sensations, character and personality, evolution, technology, and the relationship between science and faith.

The natural workings of the Earth often lead to immense human suffering. Is this suffering inevitable? In this book Simon Saint makes the case that it isn't. He considers two events which are typically thought of as 'natural disasters' - the 2008 Boxing Day Tsunami and the current events in Japan (March 2011) - and explains why these events, whilst having natural causes, are actually 'human-made' disasters. The acceptance that these disasters are the results of human actions is useful because it means that humans can act so as to prevent such disasters reoccurring in the future.