The Telephone Becomes An Instrument Of Torture

The Pre-scientific Age, Whatever Its Deficiencies, Had At Least Offered Its Members The Peace Of Mind That Follows From Knowing All Man-made Achievements To Be Nothing Next To The Grandeur Of The Universe. We, More Blessed In Our Gadgetry But Less Humble In Our Outlook, Have Been Left... Having No More Compelling Repository Of Veneration Than Our Brilliant, Precise, Blinkered And Morally Troubling Fellow Human Beings.

The Problem Isn't So Much Finding Good Ideas (there Is No Shortage) As Embedding The Ones We Have Into Everyday Practice.

We Study Biology, Physics, Movements Of Glaciers... Where Are The Classes On Envy, Feeling Wronged, Despair, Bitterness.

There Are Selections So Acute That They Come To Define A Place, With The Result That We Can No Longer Travel Through That Landscape Without Being Reminded Of What A Great Artist Noticed There.

A World Where A Majority Had Imbibed The Lessons Implicit Within Tragic Art Would Be One In Which The Consequences Of Our Failures Would Necessarily Cease To Weigh Upon Us So Heavily.