The silver lining of Brexit and Trump is that it has undermined the perception that globalization is an unstoppable force, whether or not we think it is a good thing or a bad thing. There have always been losers and as well as winners in this process, and cultural minorities have been among the most vulnerable losers. Now that sizable numbers of people in the most advanced economies have made their grievances felt in a fashion that is hard to ignore.

War 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.

Globalization in part means that a lot of people are walking into the room and in some cases becoming influential or even dominant voices in the conversation. Sometimes they are like party-crashers coming in and pushing people around, scooping up the valuables and eating up the food in the frig - bribing political leaders, undermining traditional economies and the ways of life that are interwoven with them, replacing them with new economic models that effectively exploit developing countries for their labor and resources.

The Confucians paid a great deal attention to ritual, highlighting the ones that expressed the sorts of affective attitudes one wants to cultivate, engaging in them with keen awareness of their value for shaping and reshaping the self, and insisting on the need to be emotionally present to their significance for one's relationship to others. If we Americans want to rebuild our capacities for a shared life, we would do well to pay attention to all this.

My melon soul Crushed by your Gallagher of apathy

I wanted to curl up into a fetal position and start sucking my thumb, let my tears and dripping saliva pool under me. Sorry. I tried living, tried being sentient. Can't do it. Can't live in the same universe with that.

We depend for so much on those we love that of course we want them to have desirable personal qualities and to believe that we do too. But if we pin our love for another, and theirs for us, based on personal qualities, it confers an unacceptable conditionality and substitutability on love: we don't want to be exchanged for a better model of whatever our lovers deem to be desirable, so there is a strong tendency to want: to be loved for no reason at all, simply be loved.