Pretensions to moral superiority are devastatingly destructive.

Every year the progress of advanced capitalist society makes our population consist of more and more isolates. This is because of the infrastructure of the economy, especially electronic communications.

Without the letters of condolence, telegrams of congratulations and even occasional postcards, the friendship of a separated friend is not a social reality. It has no existence without the rites of friendship. Social rituals create a reality which would be nothing without them.

If people want to compete for leadership of a religious group, they can compete in piety. A chilling thought. Or funny.

Just in our lifetime our society has become looser and more private, it becomes extremely difficult to hold to any permanent commitment whatever, least of all to organized religion.

Inequality can have a bad downside, but equality, for its part, sure does get in the way of coordination.

Institutions have the pathetic megalomania of the computer whose whole vision of the world is its own program.