Caring can be learned by all human beings, can be worked into the design of every life, meeting an individual need as well as a pervasive need in society.

Human beings tend to regard the conventions of their own societies as natural, often as sacred.

A suprising number of physicians manage to continue to care about persons even after the rigors of medical training.

The human species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.

Caring can be learned by all human beings, can be worked into the design of every life, meeting an individual need as well as a pervasive need in society.

Orthodox Judaism is a thicket of detailed injunctions, Biblical commandments elaborated during centuries of prohibited proselytizing, functioning to limit interaction with outsiders. At the opposite extreme, Islam, still the most rapidly expanding of faiths, demands little immediate knowledge from those who would convert. The convert is permitted to enter and then to learn by participation, although there are plenty of detailed regulations and abstruse theological ideas to be pursued later, and the regulations do effectively separate believers from nonbelievers.

Of any stopping place in life, it is good to ask whether it will be a good place from which to go on as well as a good place to remain.