An ethic that emphasizes relationship and community can be concerned with protecting the individual's interests, but always with an eye to trying to reconcile those interests with those of others. An ethic emphasizing rights and autonomy should be concerned with promoting enough community to foster a motivating concern for everyone's rights, not just one's own.

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.

Son, the greatest trick the Devil pulled was convincing the world there was only one of him.

I do fear that global capitalism is making us more like each other in regrettable ways, e.g., more people are increasingly captivated by spectacles of violence and aggression or of conspicuous consumption that are the subjects of the most commercially viable films across countries precisely because they don't depend for their appeal on cultural fine points; and more people are prone to deal with others on a purely instrumental and impersonal basis.

The things we call cultures are dynamic, internally diverse, and their interpretation is internally contested among its members. Cultures are like ongoing conversations with many voices, often telling stories about who "we" are.

I once saw Arnold Schwarzenegger kill a man in a movie by grabbing his head and twisting it until the neck broke. Was that difficult? Could a man do it without a lot of practice?

Kittens will make your sad go away