For Baldwin, the ultimate hatred that white people need to overcome is the hatred they feel for themselves as mortal and vulnerable beings.

In his essay ‘Of Superstition and Enthusiasm’ (1741) he described how ‘the mind of man’ is ‘subject to an unaccountable elevation and presumption’. In this state of mind, humanity gets above itself, thinking it has within it the divine. This gives rise to a form of ‘false religion’ in which ‘no sublunary beauties or enjoyments can correspond’ and ‘every thing mortal and perishable vanishes as unworthy of attention’. The best prophylactic against this is to fully embrace our humanity and, with that, humility, accepting our limitations. Secular enthusiasts who elevate human rationality and nobility too highly make the very same mistake, creating a kind of godless religion of humankind which is just as pernicious.

I think experience supports his model of morality better than the main competitors. The best human beings have not been driven by ideology, moral philosophy, and certainly not logic. They have always been people who have put the response to human need above creed or doctrine.

We behave well to others for no other reason than that we see in them the capacity to suffer or to thrive, and we respond accordingly. Someone who does not feel such sympathy is emotionally, not rationally, deficient.

ultimately everything that we are and do is just a cosmic interplay between seemingly separate manifestations of consciousness. Most people never realize it’s a game. As a result, they are slaves to the ebbs and flows of what’s played.But there are people who slowly realize that it’s just a game. Some of these people find out by refusing to play. Some find out by simply stopping and paying attention. Some find out by almost being removed from the game. Some realize it by watching others being removed before their eyes. But in the end, for whatever reason, they realize it’s just a game. And because it’s just a game, they have no reason to be worried or afraid, ever, because it’s just a game. And whoever wins or loses doesn’t matter because it’s just going to start all over again.

If we’re going to truly evolve, we do so by including and integrating what came before into something greater, not by wiping it out.

There’s tremendous value in coming into yourself as a person. Why wouldn’t that be true online, too? Recognizing that my online self was lacking, I decided to learn how to be myself on the internet.

I blogged every day.

Did we meet on MySpace, Tinder, or LinkedIn? Does it matter?

the lines are blurred. Our society relies on goods and services that depend on fossil fuels and extraction, and reinventing these systems means changing cultures in fundamental ways. And it’s become something of a truism that people resist change, especially the more radical they are.

reflected the organic desires of local communities defined and led by their people.

sent field organizers into contentious communities, encouraged them to act, trained them in various tactics, helped them to establish their own independent organizations, and left them to pursue self-identified goals via self-defined strategies