I fear that our loss of a sense of connection with, and duties to, each other leaves us unable to effectively address growing inequality and the bitter antagonism between different communities in American society. We've been at our best when we've felt in significant degree that our fates bound up with each other, where we've had a very inclusive sense of the other, and that's now very much not the case.
David WongAll of society is built to prop up that lie, the whole world a big, noisy puppet show meant to distract us from the fact that at the end, you'll die, and you'll probably be alone.
David WongWar is about remaking the world to suit the whims of some powerful group over the whims of some other powerful group. The dead are just the sparks that fly from the metal as they grind it down.
David WongThe Daoist appeal to simplicity can be very appealing to the many of us who feel that contemporary life is overwhelming. "Less is more" can be a call to identify what it is we really need and appreciate doing for its own sake, as opposed to what we have been socialized into wanting, often to our detriment, or becoming consumed by activity that we would never do for its own sake but only for the sake of something else.
David Wong... life is a flickering candle we all carry around. A gust of wind, a meaningless accident, a microsecond of carelessness, and it's out. Forever.
David WongDifferent moralities must share some general features if they are to perform their functions of coordinating beings having particular kinds of motivations. Morality is a cultural construction in something like the way bridges are. There would be no bridges unless human beings used them to move across bodies of waters or depressions in the earth, but a good bridge cannot be designed according to whim, but rather according to what would adequately fulfill their function and the nature of the materials that are available for their construction.
David Wong