Human Solidarity
Can the human community imagine and create a more constructive sense of solidarity when no obvious common enemy presents an imminent existential threat to civilization’s survival?
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A Human Project
It’s important to remember that our self-discovery is a human project.
Vox Populi in Zuccotti Park
The proverb “Vox populi, vox Dei” – “The voice of the people [is] the voice of God” – can be traced back to the eighth century, though earlier origins are probable. Yet the eighth-century version, considered in its entirety, actually meant the opposite of what most people think today. In a 798 A.D. letter to…
Retroactive Xenophobia
The Ten Commandments appear three times in the Bible. Each entry is different. The Jewish, Protestant and Roman Catholic versions of the Ten Commandments are similar but not identical. The precise intention of the original text was subject to interpretation as the sacred words of the Ten Commandments were translated into new languages and cultures….
Pascal’s Wager and Climate Change
Industrialists, politicians and propagandists in their employ dismiss reports of destructive climate change caused by human activity as mere speculation. If you can’t conclusively prove your claims, they say, your theories are worthless and should be ignored. In order to protect their own commercial and political advantages, they reject suggestions that civilization may be severely…
Redux: Scary Halloween
Fear comes alive on Halloween. Halloween costumes are practical technology designed to simplify our joking about frightening subjects. The ghosts and the goblins are the outside joke. The inside joke is death. Halloween is the night when death walks around our neighborhoods dressed like a common Joe as if to remind us of its inevitability….
Excerpts from The Federalist, No. 10 by James Madison (1787)
So Much Alarmed Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous…