Even if we can agree that the current welfare regime doesn’t encourage virtue, we have to give a constructive account of one that will. We have to describe a way back more comprehensive than “quit whining and find a job.”
.. Relationships discipline as well as support, and good behavior often comes from good neighbors.
.. because such extraction decreases the concentration of good neighbors, explicitly favoring a geographical arrangement that segregates the best and the brightest into places where they can maximize their wealth and time. If we actually want to deal with the cultural malaise that has fueled the messianic politics that threatens our republic, then we will have to reverse the trends that create more distance between the disciplined and the undisciplined.
.. A pundit castigating my patient to “rent a U-Haul” (as Kevin Williamson would do), is about as useful as me scribbling “get a job” on a prescription pad.
Judge Roy Moore on Sean Hannity Show: ‘We Have Some Evidence of Some Collusion’ Against Me in WaPo Smear
HANNITY: “Let’s take you out of this for a second. Let’s say, if any Senate candidate who was 32 at the time had done this to a 14-year-old girl, to me it’s disgusting. To me, it would be despicable. To me, that is a predator.”
MOORE: “Yeah.”
HANNITY: “Do you agree with me, that no such person who ever does that should ever be in the United States Senate?”
MOORE: “Of course. Nobody who abuses a 14-year-old at age 32 or age 17—it doesn’t matter—if you abuse a 14-year-old you shouldn’t be a Senate candidate. I agree with that. But I did not do that.”
HANNITY: “Let’s go back to it one more question, because I didn’t understand this. If you were 32, and you do date a 17 or 18 year old—that’s a pretty big gap for a pretty young girl—is that something that you did when you were dating? I’m not talking about the 14-year-old in that specific allegation. Would it be normal behavior back in those days for you to date a girl that’s 17 or 18?”
MOORE: “No. Not normal.”
HANNITY: “My daughter is 16 years old. If she’s 17 or 18, I don’t want her dating a 32-year-old.”
MOORE: “I wouldn’t either.”
HANNITY: “And you can say unequivocally that you never dated anybody that was in their late teens like that when you were 32?”
MOORE: “It would have been out of my customary behavior, that’s right.”
HANNITY: “In other words, you don’t recall dating any girl that young when you were that old?”
MOORE: “I’ve said no.”
HANNITY: “And you think that’s inappropriate, too, that’s what you’re saying?”
MOORE: “Yes.”
Richard Rohr Meditation: Love at the Heart of the Universe
Quantum physics is based on the primacy of energy and the interconnectedness of all that exists. . . . Being is intrinsically relational and exists as unbroken wholeness. Each part is connected with every other part. . . . We are, fundamentally, wholes within wholes. [David] Bohm wrote:
The notion that all these fragments are separately existent is evidently an illusion, and this illusion cannot do other than lead to endless conflict and confusion. Indeed, the attempt to live according to the notion that the fragments are really separate is, in essence, what has led to . . . pollution, destruction of the balance of nature, over-population, world-wide economic and political disorder and the creation of an overall environment that is neither physically nor mentally healthy. [1]
The properties of the parts are not intrinsic properties, but can be understood only within the context of the larger whole. What we call a part is merely a pattern in an inseparable web of relationships. [Shifting from viewing parts to the whole requires us to transition from thinking about each thing around us as an object to seeing relationships. Everything around us is held in a system, which is, as Ilia describes,] . . . an integrated whole whose essential properties arise from the relationships between its parts. Nature is an interlocking network of systems, an “unbearable wholeness of beings,” as Steve Talbott wrote. [2] Nature is more flow than fixed, like a choreographed ballet or a symphony. Life evolves toward ever-increasing wholeness and consciousness, and something more—love. . . .
Richard Rohr Meditation: Don’t Co-Exist. Coalesce!
it’s crucial that we humans make the evolutionary shift from “individuals” to “persons.”
What’s the difference?
We typically use these terms interchangeably, but for Teilhard they denote distinctly different, progressive evolutionary stages. An individual lives as an autonomous unit, subject to the old-order laws of “survival of the fittest” and planetary indifference. A person has come to understand themselves as belonging to greater relational field. They now sense their identity from a sense of wholeness in an entirely different order of coherence: a whole greater than the sum of its parts. In this greater whole both unity and differentiation are preserved; meanwhile the whole begins to be infused by a supremely personal tincture or essence. The universe is no longer random, but a system of relationships to which we all belong and are participating in!
.. As more complex forms emerged in unified units on our planet, consciousness was able to emerge with it. From this we can gather that the future of spirituality will not be found in the “enlightenment” of a select number of individuals, but will arrive through us collectively as a new “unit,” in the emergence of what we might call the mystical body of Christ.