Increasingly, voices from many quarters wonder from where our ethical principles should and actually do arise. Recent speculations from psychologists like Johnathan Haidt and Steven Pinker direct attention towards ages of incremental evolutionary adaptive changes to explain our present collective social and even moral psyches. But the hyperbolized science vs. religion cultural battle, in concert with almost daily headlines depicting some new shocking conflict between personal decision and societal norm, signals the need for a wider re-examination of the roots of our ethics.
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Category / Agora
Heavenly Choreography
“Lonely” Pluto’s been in the news lately due to the fly-by of the U.S. New Horizons probe. Startling images and geological questions have arisen, and two new moons have been photographed. But what piqued my interest was the pronounced wobble in Pluto’s motion, not a new discovery, which has to do with both the proximity and similarity in mass of it’s largest moon Charon. This led to a general investigation into how and why bodies are influenced by each other in space, according to conventional physics.
Meditation on Chalk
There is a subtle distancing effect which our numerous online devices and other technologies foist upon our minds regarding the world of everyday objects. Left unchecked, we develop a disregard and disinterest in things and their nature, reflected in the disposable stance many ‘movers and shakers’ adopt towards articles of utility. But imagine if the surrounding world of objects could be reunited with their rightful depths of significance, qualities, and history! Suppose you had to think ONLY about a piece of chalk, to take a mundane example, for 10 full minutes. How difficult would it be, and what could be recovered?
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||skirmishes|| ||with|| ||reality|| 