An important characteristic of cooperation is that while the benefits are typically shared among all, such public goods are costly. For example, maintaining internal peace and order, something that any decent society must do, requires a lot of work.
We can no more master the past than we can undo it. But we can reconcile ourselves to it.
The West today thus seems much more Huxley than Orwell: there is a good deal more corporate distraction than state brutality.
There were two things he [Eichmann] could do well, better than others: he could organize and he could negotiate.
Renewable energy as a replacement for fossil fuels seems plausible at first glance, but it also turns out to be a false hope if it involves the belief that renewable energy will allow industrial civilization to continue more or less as it exists today.
Language enables us to distinguish truth and falsehood; past, present, and future; possible, actual, and necessary, and so on. It is fair to say that we live in another world from nonlinguistic creatures. They live immersed in nature; we stand forever at its edge.
