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

Hierarchy is is much reviled in the present day.

Our technological infrastructure alienates us from each other. No need to form a workplace community, everybody there will be out in a year or two, and so will you, looking for a better place.

Where there is dirt there is system. Dirt is the byproduct of a systematic ordering and classification of matter.

The natural response of the old-timers is to build a strong moral wall against the outside. This is where the world starts to be painted in black and white, saints inside, and sinners outside the wall.

If we can abstract pathogenicity and hygiene from our notion of dirt, we are left with the old definition of dirt as matter out of place. This is a very suggestive approach. It implies two conditions: a set of ordered relations and a contrevention of that order. Dirt then, is never a unique, isolated event. Where there is dirt there is a system. Dirt is the by-product of a systematic ordering and classification of matter, in so far as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate elements.

I have increasingly, over the years, felt that religion today does our civilization more harm than good.