I think we need to take a look at the technology, but not depend on it for things that require humanity.
No civilization, no matter how mighty it may appear to itself, is indestructible.
So much of liberalism in its classical sense is taken for granted in the west today and even disrespected. We take freedom for granted, and because of this we don't understand how incredibly vulnerable it is.
For 500 years the West patented six killer applications that set it apart. The first to download them was Japan. Over the last century, one Asian country after another has downloaded these killer apps- competition, modern science, the rule of law and private property rights, modern medicine, the consumer society and the work ethic. Those six things are the secret sauce of Western civilization.
As a teacher, my strategy is to encourage questioning. I'm the least authoritarian professor you'll ever meet.
It's all very well for us to sit here in the west with our high incomes and cushy lives, and say it's immoral to violate the sovereignty of another state. But if the effect of that is to bring people in that country economic and political freedom, to raise their standard of living, to increase their life expectancy, then don't rule it out.
The West may collapse very suddenly. Complex civilizations do that, because they operate, most of the time, on the edge of chaos.
How thrilling to discover one had depths, how consoling to find them less polluted than the shallows, how encouraging to identify the enemy not as a fissure in the will but as a dead fetus in the specimen jar of the unconscious. My attention was being paternally led away from the excruciating present to the happy, healthy future that would be enabled by an analysis of the sick past, as though the priest had nothing to do but study old books and make bright forecasts, the present not worthy of notice.
Getting 10,000 listeners for a free podcast novel is a lot easier than selling 10,000 hardcover novels at $25 a pop.
[Rex] Tillerson is there to get these sanctions [against Russia] lifted. I believe it. Just watch him!
Education is still, in spite of private education, a state matter.