Purpose is popular.  How times have changed.  And science can't take the credit.  People can. But is responsibility popular?  Is it obvious to you that purpose and responsibility are very nearly the same thing?

Probably not. (But correct me by commenting below!) As a result, I can't help but notice that this emergence of purpose into consciousness has not yet got very far.  Let me explain.

Purpose is like a three-sided coin.

On one side, purpose is More...

Good action counts for a lot.  But once a person has the ideology of power fixed in their head, they can never feel safe enough. Goodness flies out the window. There is never enough power, never enough wealth.  It is not the imperative of greed, it is the imperative of survival.  Technology now allows us to survive without willful cruelty and domination, but that does not make sense to power-driven individuals.  They want the power and the glory.

So what do we do about the callous power-centred leaders of most countries whose desire for control and personal wealth is unrestrained?

That’s a trick question.

“We” never do anything. 

If “we” have any influence at all, it is to sustain and support the existing social system. “We” are responsible for those leaders … for the way they think, how they got into such positions, and why they stay there.  So the British “we” is responsible for UK atrocities not the PM and cabinet; the German “we” was responsible for Nazism in Germany not Hitler; More...

One of the ideas of the website, was that the essential work of being critical of formulations and properties could be partly taken up by others—by at least a few, perhaps tens, even hundreds of others.  However, I now realize that the Internet doesn’t work that way.  Creativity, we are told again and again, depends on not criticizing ideas.  Common politeness respects personal autonomy and demands restraint—there is something in that.

But, oh dear, does that mean the evolution of ideas based on competitive battles, necessarily red in tooth and claw, must give way to consensus on the lowest common denominator of expedience, fashion or what feels good?  Not really.  It just means that I have to be my own biggest enemy.  So I am playing the role of hitman today on More...