Human consensus does not generate reality. Were it able to do so, the Sun would have taken to orbiting the Earth some time ago. - Ursula Wiltshire Goodenough

While I agree… that indifference is indeed our most dangerous capacity, I actually do believe that it's on the wane. When I scroll back to my 1950's Connecticut girlhood and recall how clueless everyone was about just about everything, how we mindlessly parroted concepts like "Better Dead Than Red" and the "Domino Theory," how my friends were all lily-white and Koreans were gooks and I would have had no idea where to find Nigeria on a map – when I go back there and then think about Adam's students and my students and my kids and what they've come to understand and care about, it gets a whole lot better.

Law is necessary, but in a more functional culture, it would presumably be less necessary than it is now, because people would know what to do.

Sex without death gets you single-celled algae and fungi; sex with a mortal soma gets you the rest of the eukaryotic creatures. Death is the price paid to have trees, and clams and birds and grasshoppers, and death is the price paid to have human consciousness, to be aware of all that shimmering awareness and all that love.