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?
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?
Before Thanksgiving weekend 2011 passes into history, let us be thankful for people who pay their taxes, because they are supporting the people who don’t. Benjamin Franklin famously wrote that “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Indeed, civilization cannot exist without taxes, by which we pay for…
An overwhelming majority of people living on Earth believe their god offers them an afterlife. The accuracy of this statement is based on the number of people who belong to a religion that claims life after death is a certainty. Among the many existing religions featuring some form of afterlife are Christianity (2.5 billion adherents),…
Women in Saudi Arabia will be given the right to vote and run in future municipal elections, which are the only public polls in the country, the BBC reports. The BBC’s world-affairs correspondent, Emily Buchanan, says it is an extraordinary development for Saudi Arabian women, who are not allowed to drive or to leave the…
Antebellum’s Subjugation Messages
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…
So now we know that early humans bred with Neanderthals and Denisovans. We know this because genome sequences from these “evolutionary cousins” make up from 4% to 6% of the genomes of some humans. And we’ve recently learned that some of the genetic material introduced by this cross-breeding included an upgrade of our immune system’s…