Month: January 2019

The necessity of “thinking differently”.

Here are a couple of new articles from the Opinion page of today’s New York Times that are worth our serious consideration. As I’ve mentioned before, if you want to get a good sense for how the Times‘ readership feels about an article, go to their comments section and click on Reader’s Picks. You might be surprised.

Time to Break the Silence on Palestine, Michelle Alexander, which explores an old controversy that doesn’t seem to budge from it’s firmly implanted beginnings. Or does it? The reader’s comments seem to signal a changing perspective on some fronts.

If 5G Is So Important, Why Isn’t It Secure?, Tom Wheeler. We’re at another “new beginning” with the Internet, and as Wheeler points out, we’re about to make the same old mistakes with a great new opportunity.

Here’s to a new year, and all of its grand possibilities.

“And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been, full of work that has never been done, full of tasks, claims, and demands; and let us see that we learn to take it without letting fall too much of what it has to bestow upon those who demand of it necessary, serious, and great things.”

Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892-1910, W.W. Norton & Company

The Sadness in Human Nature

As I watch Donald Trump sow confusion and chaos in a nation that heretofore has been known to the world as a standard in all that is good in human nature, and as I watch his own political party stand aside in silence in the face of his selfish and destructive behavior, I am reminded of two quotations that say a lot about Trump’s enablers.

“. . . in obedience to figures they see as ‘authoritative,’ people will do to ‘others’ what they would otherwise do to nobody.”

Seven Theories of Human Nature, p.140, Leslie Stevenson

And this quotation I’ve already used recently, but in this instance is worth repeating.

“The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”

Albert Einstein