The Need for Moral Universals in Democracy

Working societies — if they are to endure, grow, and cohere, if they are to prosper, hang together, and really mature — need moral universals. Moral universals are simply things that people believe everyone should have. In the UK, those things — those moral universals — are healthcare and media and welfare. In Germany, they are healthcare and media and welfare and higher education. And so on. Moral universals anchor a society in a genuinely shared prosperity. Not just...

 Earthseed 36-40

36. We give our dead We give our deadTo the orchardsAnd the groves.We give our deadTo life. ∞ = Δ 37. Darkness gives shape DarknessGives shape to the lightAs lightShapes the darkness.DeathGives shape to lifeAs lifeShapes death.The universeAnd GodShare this wholeness,EachDefining the other.GodGives shape to the universeAs the universeShapes God. ∞ = Δ 38. Chaos ChaosIs God’s most dangerous face—Amorphous, roiling, hungry.Shape Chaos—Shape God.Act. Alter the speedOr the direction o...

 Shape God

God is Power—Infinite,Irresistible,Inexorable,Indifferent.And yet, God is Pliable—Trickster,Teacher,Chaos,Clay.God exists to be shaped.God is Change.   Any Change may bear seeds of benefit.Seek them out.Any Change may bear seeds of harm.Beware.God is infinitely malleable.God is Change.   God is ChangeAnd hidden within ChangeIs surprise, delight,Confusion, pain,Discovery, loss,Opportunity, and growth.As always,God existsTo shapeAnd to be shaped.     A victim of God may,Through learning...

 Expanding the Scope of School Subjects

We should not retreat to a curriculum advisory committee and ask, “Now where should we fit this topic into the already overloaded curriculum?” Although we cannot discard all the fragmented subjects in our present school system and start from scratch, we can and should ask all teachers to stretch their subjects to meet the needs and interests of the whole child. Working within the present subject-centered curriculum, we can ask math and science teachers as well as English and social studie...

 The Silos in "Wool"

The silo was something she had always taken for granted. The priests say it had always been here, that it was lovingly created by a caring God, that everything they would ever need had been provided for. Juliette had a hard time with this story. A few years ago, she had been on the first team to drill past 10,000 feet and hit new oil reserves. She had a sense of the size and scope of the world below them. And then she had seen with her own eyes the view of the outside with its phantom-like sh...

 Science is Conservative

A discovery in science, or a new theory, even when it appears most unitary and most all-embracing, deals with some immediate element of novelty or paradox within the framework of far vaster, unanalysed, unarticulated reserves of knowledge, experience, faith, and presupposition. Our progress is narrow; it takes a vast world unchallenged and for granted. This is one reason why, however great the novelty or scope of new discovery, we neither can, nor need, rebuild the house of the mind very rapi...

 Carl Sagan on the Audacity of John F. Kennedy's Moon Miss...

Once upon a time, we soared into the solar system, for a few years. Then we hurried back. why? What happened? What was Apollo really about? The scope and audacity of John Kennedy's May 25th 1961 message to a joint session of Congress on "Urgent National Needs" -- the speech that launched the Apollo program--dazzled me. We would use rockets not yet designed and alloys not yet conceived, navigation and docking shemes not yet devised, in order to send a man to an unknown world--a world not yet...

 The Use of Gold for Money Leads to Efforts to Inflate Its...

Gold is abused and made into vessels of dishonour, and abolished from ideal society as though it were the cause instead of the instrument of human baseness; but, indeed, there is nothing bad in gold. Making gold into vessels of dishonour and banishing it from the State is punishing the hatchet for the murderer's crime. Money, did you but use it right, is a good thing in life, a necessary thing in civilised human life, as complicated, indeed, for its purposes, but as natural a growth as the bo...