Hells Canyon Dam | 3 MINIATURES

WHEN RIVERS BURN

Fundamentalism is to Democracy what a slick of gas
is to a living river. With Fundamentalism, rigid, absolute
belief—whether in a god, or some other theory—must
prevail above all else, so each spark of controversy
could be easily enough to send a great republic
up in flames.

THE ART OF STOPPING

It is always easier to simply drive an addiction
headlong into the wall of your own self-destrction
than it is to stop. Both for the individual and the
collective, the energy of insight, of actually seeing
the facts of what one is doing, is evidently the only
force strong enough to end the forward momentum
of the addiction.

BALANCE

For a vibrantly healthy Science, Art and Religion,
both skepticism and mysticism must be kept on
something like a cultural leash. Too much skepticism,
and we'll lose all contact with, and our theories will
no longer be informed by, the spark of the wild, the
unknown, and perhaps, the divine; Too much mysticism,
and we'll no longer be able to deal with the hardnose,
rugged, yet neutral reality, of untying knotty contradictions,
and the generational labor of taking down all the dams.