This from 20th Century German-American social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist Erich Fromm.
A smart guy, to be sure, but to his point here, I’m with Socrates, who said famously, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
I’ll also quote myself: “Thought is cheap.” When my kids were younger, I tried to encourage them to be intellectually curious, reminding them that thinking is neither painful or expensive.
Please see this, and donate if you care to. More details on his Wikipedia page.
If I were to run out of gas, I’d rather push my car to the next gas station than fill it at Chevron.
The quote here from 20th Century physicist/mathematician Paul Dirac reminds us of the hundreds of attempts to reconcile faith and reason, religion and science, call it what you will.
This was the life’s work of Thomas Aquinas, btw, using nothing but Aristotelean logic to prove the existence of God. Here we are, 800 years later, still trying to resolve the issue.
Apparently, some people are unaware that U.S. foreign aid is focused on maintaining freedom and stability around the world.
Let’s face facts: Very few Trump supporters are going to throw tantrums when grocery prices fail to fall, or when any other campaign promise doesn’t come to fruition. That’s because the MAGA crowd loves Trump for his other “virtues,” e.g., racism, cruelty to immigrants, etc., while the amoral rich adore him for his trillion-dollar tax breaks; for them, the price of eggs is totally irrelevant.
A reader by the name of Paul Maunder sent me this, and answers the question: “Thanks for the compliment.”
Indeed, all decent people consider it a compliment to be thought of as “woke,” i.e., having a sensitive awareness of the needs of other people.
As suggested at left, some of us are not too keen on what’s happening in Washington D.C. right now.
Earlier in my life I was a libertarian, a viewpoint that I maintained until I realized the truth in what Naomi Klein say at left. In the absence of government regulation, corporations, whose sole duty is to turn a profit for investors, would turn this planet into a hellscape in a matter of just a few years.
And now, given what we know about climate change, part of that “hellscape” is an Earth that features droughts, desertification, ferocious storms and floods, loss of landmass, food shortages, ocean acidification, and loss of biodiversity.
There is no doubt that the United States is headed away from the most important experiment with democracy in the history of humankind, and its government of, by, and for the people.
But what happens next? Does this country become just another banana republic? I doubt it.
Will we ultimately be the force that enables the fossil fuel industry to bake our home planet?
Again, I doubt it. I believe that Americans, despite our massive ignorance due to our crumbling educational system, will eventually turn this disaster around.
I would guess that the percentage of Americans who believe that our system of justice is broken runs north of 90%. But many people tie our system of justice to whatever political party happens to be in power at the time.
I ran into an old friend the other day who is furious that Joe and Hunter Biden haven’t been prosecuted for taking bribes from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. I pointed out that a former FBI informant who fabricated a story about their accepting bribes that became central to Republicans’ impeachment effort was sentenced to six years in prison.
She laughed and said, “Just wait until the new Justice Department takes shape under Trump.” Her point is that Trump will make sure that Biden, and especially political rivals who called for him to be prosecuted for his crimes are punished.
Whether she knew it or not, her point is that the present-day United States has completely lost its sense of fairness and honesty.
