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"Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.":
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) German Dramatist
You may have noticed my love of quotes. I love them because there is just so much distilled wisdom to be had in them. That quote doesn’t just pop out of someone’s head. It’s the end result of years of enquiry, thinking, and resolve to impart that wisdom to others. You really have to admire those people. They point the way to those who follow.
Yet, there comes a time when we can no longer look to others for guidance. Sure, we can distil their accumulated wisdom and be grateful for it, but we eventually arrive at a point where that accumulated wisdom can take us no further. The wise men have reached their own brick wall. All that they can do is show us the many paths that lay before us, and let us choose which path to follow.
Which brings me to cosmic consciousness. No-one knows if there is such a thing. No-one can say that there is not such a thing. It is up to us whether we choose to go down that path, or not.
I have chosen to go down that path. I look to those whom I admire, and am guided by their thoughts. Last week I posted Neil de Grasse Tyson’s wonderful essay on the Cosmic Perspective. In particular, I asked readers to note this comment:
The cosmic perspective not only embraces our genetic kinship with all life on Earth but also values our chemical kinship with any yet-to-be discovered life in the universe, as well as our atomic kinship with the universe itself.
I think we too often think of ourselves as distinct from the
universe. We’re not. We’re part of that universe. And we’re alive. Could it just be that the
universe itself is the yet-to-be-discovered life of which Neil de Grasse Tyson speaks?
Einstein has this to say about our relationship to the universe:
A human being is a part of the whole, called by us, "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.
“a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness”. I see no reason why we must assume that we don’t share that consciousness with the universe.
I read somewhere that Abraham Maslow had contact with Richard Bucke who was the first to write about cosmic consciousness. To my way of thinking, Bucke’s cosmic consciousness is a continuation of Maslow’s self actualisation. It is for me, anyway. I don’t know where the cosmic consciousness path will take me. It may not take me anywhere at all.
But that’s this fascinating thing we call "life", isn’t it.
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http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/06/28/2610649.htm?section=justin
Priest blames holy wine for drink-driving
An Italian priest caught driving over the alcohol limit pleaded to police that it was only because of the Holy Wine he had drunk as part of the mass, Ansa news agency reported yesterday.
Police rejected the priest's excuse and revoked his driving licence anyway.
Now the 41-year-old priest is set to appeal against the ruling, saying his alcohol consumption was not "voluntary" since it was part of the Catholic ritual in the four masses that he had celebrated during the day.
He was caught coming off the Milan-Turin motorway with a blood alcohol content of 0.8 grams - above the authorised limit in Italy of 0.5 grams.
- AFP
http://www.alternet.org/story/140914/why_do_atheists_have_to_talk_about_atheism_/
Why Do Atheists Have to Talk About Atheism?
Whenever the subject of atheism comes up, anywhere that isn't an atheist discussion group or something, one sentiment almost inevitably comes up:
"I wish atheists wouldn't talk so much about atheism."
The sentiment gets worded in many different ways. "The new atheists are so evangelical." "This atheist criticism of religion is just intolerant." "You atheists are just as close-minded as the hard-line religious believers you're criticizing."
But the essence of it is the same: The fact that many atheists are talking publicly about our atheism, and are trying to persuade people that we're right about it, shows that we're ... well, evangelical, intolerant and close-minded. So today, I want to explain why so many atheists think it's important to talk about atheism ... and why many of us try to persuade other people that atheism is correct.
The first answer is the most obvious: Anti-atheist bigotry. Atheists talk about atheism because there's a lot of misunderstanding and hostility toward us. It's nowhere near as severe as racism or sexism; but it does exist, and it has real-world consequences.
Parents are denied custody of their children for being atheists; people are harassed and and their homes vandalized by their neighbors for being atheists; teachers are suspended for being atheists; teenagers are harassed and suspended from school for being atheists; politicians whip up anti-atheist fear to try to get elected. (And that's just in the U.S. I'm not even talking about parts of the world where atheism is a crime punishable by imprisonment or death.)
Making ourselves visible, coming out about who we are and what we do and don't believe, is the best way we have to counter that.
That's only a small part of the story, though. Another part -- and probably more important -- is that many atheists see religion not just as a mistaken idea but as a harmful one. We see it as a serious social problem, a type of belief that on the whole does significantly more harm than good ... and one that, because of its ultimately unfalsifiable nature, has little or none of the reality checks that other belief systems eventually have to measure up to.
We see people bombing buildings, abusing children, committing flagrant fraud, shooting political dissenters, etc., etc., etc., all behind the armor of religion ... and we feel a need to speak out.
Even that, though, is missing the crux of the issue. The crux of the issue, the most important answer to the question, "Why do atheists have to talk about atheism?" is this: Why shouldn't we?
Thinking you're right, and trying to persuade other people you're right, is not intolerant or close-minded -- it's a cornerstone of democracy. That's how it works: people explain their ideas, debate them, make arguments to support them, revise or refine or drop them in the face of valid criticism, make snarky jokes in the face of stupid criticism.
The marketplace of ideas won't flourish if people don't bring their ideas to the market. Being close-minded doesn't mean thinking you're right; it means refusing to reconsider your position, even when the evidence suggests that you're wrong. And being intolerant doesn't mean thinking other people are wrong; it means refusing to listen to them, and dismissing them entirely as stupid or wicked, simply because you disagree with them.
Think of it this way. Is it intolerant or close-minded to say that single-payer is the best plan for the American health care system? That public funding for solar power will reduce our dependence on foreign oil? That global warming is real? That the theory of evolution is right? Is it intolerant or close-minded to try to persuade people to come around to any of these points of view? And if not ... then why is it intolerant or close-minded for atheists to explain why we don't believe in God and to try to persuade people that, of all the ideas people have about religion, atheism is the most plausible?
See, here's the thing, atheists see religion as a lot of things. But for many of us, religion is, above all else, a hypothesis about how the world works and why it is the way it is.
Obviously, we think it's a mistaken hypothesis: inconsistent with itself, inconsistent with reality, unsupported by any good evidence. We can't prove our case with 100 percent certainty -- that's pretty much impossible, especially when you're trying to prove a negative -- but we think we can make a pretty good case.
But more to the point: We see no reason to treat religion any differently from any other hypothesis about the world. We think it's valid to ask it to support its case just like any other hypothesis ... and just like any other hypothesis, we think it's valid to poke holes in it in public.
And we think one of the main reasons religion has survived for so long is that it's so impressively armored against criticism and indeed against the very idea that criticism of it is an acceptable thing to do.
So we therefore think criticizing religion is not only valid, but important. It doesn't just chip away at religious beliefs themselves. It chips away at the idea that religious beliefs should be immune to criticism. It chips away at the armor that religion has used so effectively for so many centuries to shield itself from any and all questions and critiques.
Now, playing devil's advocate for a moment: Some may argue that I'm being hypocritical; that I'll decry the evangelism of evangelical believers, but am willing to defend it in atheists.
But I don't, in fact, have a problem with evangelical believers trying to persuade others that they're right. Don't get me wrong: I think many of their specific beliefs are mistaken. I think many of their specific beliefs are bigoted, hateful and harmful. I have serious problems with many of the methods they use to persuade, with their reliance on fear and false promises and, in some cases, outright lies.
And I think far too many of their rhetorical devices simply deflect legitimate criticism instead of answering it. But I don't think it's wrong of them to express their beliefs and to try to persuade others that they're right. Again -- that's the marketplace of ideas. And I'm in favor of that. I can disagree passionately with someone's ideas without thinking they're jerks simply for wanting to share them.
I think a little historical context may be in order. This "I'm so tired of hearing about (X), proponents of (X) who advance their views in the public eye are intolerant" trope has been used against every major social-change movement I can think of.
Queer activists were "in your face"; civil rights activists were "hostile"; feminists were "strident." And now atheists who make our case are "intolerant" and "evangelical." When people speak out, not against atheism, but against the very idea of atheists persuasively expressing their views, I always want to ask if that's really the side of history they want to end up on.
Besides, it's not like we're standing outside anyone's window with a bullhorn at 3 a.m. We're not holding a gun to anyone's head and making them read Pharyngula. We're not even knocking on people's doors at 8 o'clock on Saturday morning to share the good word about Darwin. (Well, except for that one guy...)
If people don't want to hear what atheists have to say, there is a wide, wide world of blogs, newspaper articles, magazine articles, YouTube videos, movies, TV shows and oodles of other media available with just a flip of the page or a click of the remote or the mouse. If someone is seriously angered because they occasionally see the word "atheist" in a headline, or have to change the channel if Richard Dawkins is on, then I have to wonder if what's upsetting them is not the evangelical intolerance of atheist activists, but the very idea of atheism itself.
Now, if someone disagrees with us, then by all means, I want them to say so. If someone thinks that there's solid, reliable evidence supporting religious belief, or that the good done in the name of religion outweighs the harm, then I strongly encourage them to bring their ideas to the conversation and to make their case.
But there's a world of difference between, "Here's why I don't agree with you," and, "You are a bad person for even opening your mouth." The former is an attempt to engage in the conversation. The latter is simply an attempt to shut us up.
If someone comes to the marketplace of ideas and the only thing they have to offer is, "How dare those atheists set up a stand here! They're trying to convince us that we're mistaken and that their ideas are better! That's so intolerant!"... then I don't see any reason why I should take that seriously.
http://www.couragecampaign.org/SupportDan
Lt. Dan Choi, from Orange County, California, is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and an Iraq War veteran. On Tuesday, he will face a panel of colonels who will decide whether or not to fire him -- to discharge him from the military for "moral and professional dereliction" under the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.
An amazing 141,262 people signed Lt. Choi's letter to President Obama a few weeks ago. Now he needs your help again. Please sign the letter of support and add your own (optional) personal message.
To Members of the Board:
We, the undersigned, urge you not to discharge Lt. Daniel Choi from the Army National Guard.
Lt. Dan Choi, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and an Iraq War veteran, is a capable soldier and leader who can continue to play a vital role in this time of war.
As a member of the military who is fluent in Arabic, Lt. Choi's skills are especially needed at this critical time
in
our nation's history. America's national security is dependent on the
service of soldiers like Lt. Choi, who is ready to deploy again if his
country calls on him.
Lt. Choi's dedication to West Point and the Army brings credit to the military. His fighting spirit on behalf of
his
country -- and on behalf of supporting the freedom of gay and lesbian
Americans to serve -- demonstrates the values of honor and duty so
vital to our nation's military.
Please do not discharge Lt. Choi and deprive him of the right to serve his country.
Sincerely,Be in a TV Ad -- and Call Senate Democrats Out on Health Care Reform
PCCC co-founder Stephanie Taylor, over at Daily Kos:
Last Friday, over coffee, Adam Green and I started talking about health care reform. And once we started talking, we couldn't stop. We couldn't believe that so many Democratic senators have the audacity to oppose the public health insurance option.
Polls show that 76% of Americans support the public option. But many of the same health and insurance interests that oppose the public option have given $80 million to sitting Democratic senators. $80. Million. Dollars.
It's easy to feel powerless on big issues like this. But we decided to do something about it. We made a TV ad calling them out. And now we're inviting you (and your friends) to put your name in the ad before we air it in Washington DC!
Click WeWantThePublicOption.com to see the ad -- and add your name.
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee will air this ad on CNN, MSNBC, The Daily Show, and other places that these senators and their staffers will be sure to notice. We'll continually rotate new names in. Please help this idea grow by recommending this post and emailing it on to anyone you think would like to add their name.
Together, we'll make the Senate listen to the vast majority of Americans who say: "We want the public option!"
Join the fun...WeWantThePublicOption.com
AlterNet is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed by its writers are their own.
Tagged as: congress, health care reform, public option, adam green
Adam Green is cofounder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), dedicated to helping progressive candidates run progressive campaigns and win.
He is also interim CEO of Change Congress, a reform group formed by Prof. Lawrence Lessig and Joe Trippi to reform congressional elections and special-interest influence on Congress.
Adam formerly served as Director of Strategic Campaigns and Civic Communications Director for MoveOn.org.
No less than the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Max Ehrmann. "Desiderata"
I've written some of my thoughts about cosmic consciousness, and I have to say they would appear a bit far out to anyone who doesn't see life from the cosmic perspective. So, you're going to have to do some homework. Below is Neil de Grasse Tyson's Cosmic Perspective. In particular, note his comment:
The cosmic perspective not only
embraces our genetic kinship with all life on Earth but also values our
chemical kinship with any yet-to-be discovered life in the universe, as
well as our atomic kinship with the universe itself.
The Cosmic Perspective
Universe: The 100th Essay
by Neil deGrasse Tyson
From Natural History Magazine, April 2007
Of all the sciences cultivated by mankind, Astronomy is acknowledged to be, and undoubtedly is, the most sublime, the most interesting, and the most useful. For, by knowledge derived from this science, not only the bulk of the Earth is discovered . . . ; but our very faculties are enlarged with the grandeur of the ideas it conveys, our minds exalted above [their] low contracted prejudices.
Long before anyone knew that the universe had a beginning, before we knew that the nearest large galaxy lies two and a half million light-years from Earth, before we knew how stars work or whether atoms exist, James Ferguson's enthusiastic introduction to his favorite science rang true. Yet his words, apart from their eighteenth-century flourish, could have been written yesterday.
But who gets to think that way? Who gets to celebrate this cosmic view of life? Not the migrant farmworker. Not the sweatshop worker. Certainly not the homeless person rummaging through the trash for food. You need the luxury of time not spent on mere survival. You need to live in a nation whose government values the search to understand humanity's place in the universe. You need a society in which intellectual pursuit can take you to the frontiers of discovery, and in which news of your discoveries can be routinely disseminated. By those measures, most citizens of industrialized nations do quite well.
Yet the cosmic view comes with a hidden cost. When I travel thousands of miles to spend a few moments in the fast-moving shadow of the Moon during a total solar eclipse, sometimes I lose sight of Earth.
When I pause and reflect on our expanding universe, with its galaxies hurtling away from one another, embedded within the ever-stretching, four-dimensional fabric of space and time, sometimes I forget that uncounted people walk this Earth without food or shelter, and that children are disproportionately represented among them.
When I pore over the data that establish the mysterious presence of dark matter and dark energy throughout the universe, sometimes I forget that every day—every twenty-four-hour rotation of Earth—people kill and get killed in the name of someone else's conception of God, and that some people who do not kill in the name of God kill in the name of their nation's needs or wants.
When I track the orbits of asteroids, comets, and planets, each one a pirouetting dancer in a cosmic ballet choreographed by the forces of gravity, sometimes I forget that too many people act in wanton disregard for the delicate interplay of Earth's atmosphere, oceans, and land, with consequences that our children and our children’s children will witness and pay for with their health and well-being.
And sometimes I forget that powerful people rarely do all they can to help those who cannot help themselves.
I occasionally forget those things because, however big the world is—in our hearts, our minds, and our outsize atlases—the universe is even bigger. A depressing thought to some, but a liberating thought to me.
Consider an adult who tends to the traumas of a child: a broken toy, a scraped knee, a schoolyard bully. Adults know that kids have no clue what constitutes a genuine problem, because inexperience greatly limits their childhood perspective.
As grown-ups, dare we admit to ourselves that we, too, have a collective immaturity of view? Dare we admit that our thoughts and behaviors spring from a belief that the world revolves around us? Apparently not. And the evidence abounds. Part the curtains of society's racial, ethnic, religious, national, and cultural conflicts, and you find the human ego turning the knobs and pulling the levers.
Now imagine a world in which everyone, but especially people with power and influence, holds an expanded view of our place in the cosmos. With that perspective, our problems would shrink—or never arise at all—and we could celebrate our earthly differences while shunning the behavior of our predecessors who slaughtered each other because of them.
Back in February 2000, the newly rebuilt Hayden Planetarium featured a space show called Passport to the Universe,
which took visitors on a virtual zoom from New York City to the edge of
the cosmos. En route the audience saw Earth, then the solar system,
then the 100 billion stars of the Milky Way galaxy shrink to barely
visible dots on the planetarium dome.
Within a month of opening day, I received a letter from an Ivy
League professor of psychology whose expertise was things that make
people feel insignificant. I never knew one could specialize in such a
field. The guy wanted to administer a before-and-after questionnaire to
visitors, assessing the depth of their depression after viewing the
show. Passport to the Universe,
he wrote, elicited the most dramatic feelings of smallness he had ever experienced.
How could that be? Every time I see the space show (and others we've produced), I feel alive and spirited and connected. I also feel large, knowing that the goings-on within the three-pound human brain are what enabled us to figure out our place in the universe.
Allow me to suggest that it's the professor, not I, who has misread nature. His ego was too big to begin with, inflated by delusions of significance and fed by cultural assumptions that human beings are more important than everything else in the universe.
In all fairness to the fellow, powerful forces in society leave most of us susceptible. As was I . . . until the day I learned in biology class that more bacteria live and work in one centimeter of my colon than the number of people who have ever existed in the world. That kind of information makes you think twice about who—or what—is actually in charge.
From that day on, I began to think of people not as the masters of space and time but as participants in a great cosmic chain of being, with a direct genetic link across species both living and extinct, extending back nearly 4 billion years to the earliest single-celled organisms on Earth.
I know what you're thinking: we're smarter than bacteria.
No doubt about it, we're smarter than every other living creature that ever walked, crawled, or slithered on Earth. But how smart is that? We cook our food. We compose poetry and music. We do art and science. We're good at math. Even if you're bad at math, you're probably much better at it than the smartest chimpanzee, whose genetic identity varies in only trifling ways from ours. Try as they might, primatologists will never get a chimpanzee to learn the multiplication table or do long division.
If small genetic differences between us and our fellow apes account for our vast difference in intelligence, maybe that difference in intelligence is not so vast after all.
Imagine a life-form whose brainpower is to ours as ours is to a chimpanzee's. To such a species our highest mental achievements would be trivial. Their toddlers, instead of learning their ABCs on Sesame Street, would learn multivariable calculus on Boolean Boulevard. Our most complex theorems, our deepest philosophies, the cherished works of our most creative artists, would be projects their schoolkids bring home for Mom and Dad to display on the refrigerator door. These creatures would study Stephen Hawking (who occupies the same endowed professorship once held by Newton at the University of Cambridge) because he's slightly more clever than other humans, owing to his ability to do theoretical astrophysics and other rudimentary calculations in his head.
If a huge genetic gap separated us from our closest relative in the animal kingdom, we could justifiably celebrate our brilliance. We might be entitled to walk around thinking we're distant and distinct from our fellow creatures. But no such gap exists. Instead, we are one with the rest of nature, fitting neither above nor below, but within.
Need more ego softeners? Simple comparisons of quantity, size, and scale do the job well.
Take water. It's simple, common, and vital. There are more molecules of water in an eight-ounce cup of the stuff than there are cups of water in all the world's oceans. Every cup that passes through a single person and eventually rejoins the world’s water supply holds enough molecules to mix 1,500 of them into every other cup of water in the world. No way around it: some of the water you just drank passed through the kidneys of Socrates, Genghis Khan, and Joan of Arc.
How about air? Also vital. A single breathful draws in more air molecules than there are breathfuls of air in Earth's entire atmosphere. That means some of the air you just breathed passed through the lungs of Napoleon, Beethoven, Lincoln, and Billy the Kid.
Time to get cosmic. There are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on any beach, more stars than seconds have passed since Earth formed, more stars than words and sounds ever uttered by all the humans who ever lived.
Want a sweeping view of the past? Our unfolding cosmic perspective takes you there. Light takes time to reach Earth's observatories from the depths of space, and so you see objects and phenomena not as they are but as they once were. That means the universe acts like a giant time machine: the farther away you look, the further back in time you see—back almost to the beginning of time itself. Within that horizon of reckoning, cosmic evolution unfolds continuously, in full view.
Want to know what we're made of? Again, the cosmic perspective offers a bigger answer than you might expect. The chemical elements of the universe are forged in the fires of high-mass stars that end their lives in stupendous explosions, enriching their host galaxies with the chemical arsenal of life as we know it. The result? The four most common chemically active elements in the universe—hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen—are the four most common elements of life on Earth. We are not simply in the universe. The universe is in us.
Yes, we are stardust. But we may not be of this Earth. Several separate lines of research, when considered together, have forced investigators to reassess who we think we are and where we think we came from.
First, computer simulations show that when a large asteroid strikes a planet, the surrounding areas can recoil from the impact energy, catapulting rocks into space. From there, they can travel to—and land on—other planetary surfaces. Second, microorganisms can be hardy. Some survive the extremes of temperature, pressure, and radiation inherent in space travel. If the rocky flotsam from an impact hails from a planet with life, microscopic fauna could have stowed away in the rocks' nooks and crannies. Third, recent evidence suggests that shortly after the formation of our solar system, Mars was wet, and perhaps fertile, even before Earth was.
Those findings mean it's conceivable that life began on Mars and later seeded life on Earth, a process known as panspermia. So all earthlings might—just might—be descendants of Martians.
Again and again across the centuries, cosmic discoveries have demoted our self-image. Earth was once assumed to be astronomically unique, until astronomers learned that Earth is just another planet orbiting the Sun. Then we presumed the Sun was unique, until we learned that the countless stars of the night sky are suns themselves. Then we presumed our galaxy, the Milky Way, was the entire known universe, until we established that the countless fuzzy things in the sky are other galaxies, dotting the landscape of our known universe.
Today, how easy it is to presume that one universe is all there is.
Yet emerging theories of modern cosmology, as well as the continually
reaffirmed improbability that anything is unique, require that we
remain open to the latest assault on our plea for distinctiveness:
multiple universes, otherwise known as the multiverse,
in which ours is just one of countless bubbles bursting forth from the fabric of the cosmos.
The cosmic perspective flows from fundamental knowledge. But it's more than just what you know. It's also about having the wisdom and insight to apply that knowledge to assessing our place in the universe. And its attributes are clear:
- The cosmic perspective comes from the frontiers of science, yet it is not solely the provenance of the scientist. It belongs to everyone.
- The cosmic perspective is humble.
- The cosmic perspective is spiritual—even redemptive—but not religious.
- The cosmic perspective enables us to grasp, in the same thought, the large and the small.
- The cosmic perspective opens our minds to extraordinary ideas but does not leave them so open that our brains spill out, making us susceptible to believing anything we're told.
- The cosmic perspective opens our eyes to the universe, not as a benevolent cradle designed to nurture life but as a cold, lonely, hazardous place.
- The cosmic perspective shows Earth to be a mote, but a precious mote and, for the moment, the only home we have.
- The cosmic perspective finds beauty in the images of planets, moons, stars, and nebulae but also celebrates the laws of physics that shape them.
- The cosmic perspective enables us to see beyond our circumstances, allowing us to transcend the primal search for food, shelter, and sex.
- The cosmic perspective reminds us that in space, where there is no air, a flag will not wave—an indication that perhaps flag waving and space exploration do not mix.
- The cosmic perspective not only embraces our genetic kinship with all life on Earth but also values our chemical kinship with any yet-to-be discovered life in the universe, as well as our atomic kinship with the universe itself.
At least once a week, if not once a day, we might each ponder what cosmic truths lie undiscovered before us, perhaps awaiting the arrival of a clever thinker, an ingenious experiment, or an innovative space mission to reveal them. We might further ponder how those discoveries may one day transform life on Earth.
Absent such curiosity, we are no different from the provincial farmer who expresses no need to venture beyond the county line, because his forty acres meet all his needs. Yet if all our predecessors had felt that way, the farmer would instead be a cave dweller, chasing down his dinner with a stick and a rock.
During our brief stay on planet Earth, we owe ourselves and our
descendants the opportunity to explore—in part because it's fun to do.
But there's a far nobler reason. The day our knowledge of the cosmos
ceases to expand, we risk regressing to the childish view that the
universe figuratively and literally revolves around us. In that bleak
world, arms-bearing, resource-hungry people and nations would be prone
to act on their low contracted prejudices.
And that would be
the last gasp of human enlightenment—until the rise of a visionary new
culture that could once again embrace the cosmic perspective.
How well do you think you know yourself? How well do others think they know you? Which is more important?
Submitted by SearchingForThatOnePerson.
Too well, in both cases. Most important? Knowing others.
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mad-tante said:
[this is good]Well, I much prefer your view. I love dogs and think dogs are better than people most of the time... read more
on Friday Night Philosophy. -
mad-tante said:
I was born here, ran away to another country and came back only because they didn't let me stay. :)... read more
on Friday Night Philosophy. -
I'm also a big fan of quotes. So many people have said such good things over the years. Their wit... read more
on Friday Night Philosophy.