8 highlights
-
If we do not love, if we do not let love condition our actual behavior, both expressive and material, I fear that we will not survive.
-
In my world as constructed by social media, I see a lot of self-righteous hatred. War becomes permission to hate. Sometimes, it even makes a virtue of hatred, even recasts basic sympathy and affection for the human beings who constitute “the enemy” as betrayal, even treason.
-
Countries can and should regulate the terms of their trade, should see to their own and their citizens’ material interests, precisely to ensure that economic collaboration is in fact mutually and broadly beneficial, and therefore a form of love.1
-
States have policies, which we may find agreeable or terrible. But we are all impoverished, and endangered, if we let critique of policy or political leadership spill over into disdain for or diminishment of publics.
-
Judgment is necessary, but judgment without love is a dangerous vice. It gives us license to harm, punish, coerce, and hate while pretending to do justice. Judgment then becomes a dagger garbed in a costume of virtue.
-
We seek justice for war crimes, but if a consequence of insisting upon pursuing those crimes is prolonging the war and ensuring more bloodshed and atrocity, is that really justice?
-
There are people who seem terrible, to us or in general. We must love them, even unilaterally. There are states that do genuinely horrible things. We must love the people even of those states.2
- We are living through difficult and dangerous times. It is my view, just my opinion, that unless we put love before the passions of self righteousness, they may be more difficult and dangerous yet.