Sublime

The Corrective Lens

Right action, in other words, depends not on the pre-existence of right knowledge – a map of the streets or a hierarchy of virtue – but on context, thoughtfulness and care.

I also referred to the phenomenon of traffic to explore how the yearnings and uses of transcendence migrate to ostensibly secular spaces.

The ideals of the Enlightenment are products of human reason, but they always struggle with other strands of human nature: loyalty to tribe, deference to authority, magical thinking, the blaming of misfortune on evildoers.

do strive as individuals, but we are also part of something larger than ourselves, with a complex physiology and mental life that we carry out but only dimly understand.

There is a pattern to the universe and everything in it, and there are knowledge systems and traditions that follow this pattern to maintain balance, to keep the temptations of narcissism in check. But recent traditions have emerged that break down creation systems like a virus, infecting complex patterns with artificial simplicity, exercising a ci

Part III is about the third principle: Morality binds and blinds. The central metaphor of these four chapters is that human beings are 90 percent chimp and 10 percent bee. Human nature was produced by natural selection working at two levels simultaneously. Individuals compete with individuals within every group, and we are the descendants of primat

This work is also a quest for answers to a personal question, which, it turns out, is close to Simmel’s question. What causes certain people – often at different stages in their lives – to undertake altruistic, if not saintly, activity, whether through philanthropy, social work, NGO activism or political resolve?