We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. - Edward O. Wilson

If there is danger in the human trajectory, it is not so much in the survival of our own species as in the fulfillment of the ultimate irony of organic evolution: that in the instant of achieving self-understanding through the mind of man, life has doomed its most beautiful creations.

Those that do best for their citizens in quality of life, from education and medical care to crime control and collective self-esteem, also have the lowest income differential between the wealthiest and poorest citizens. Among twenty-three of the world’s wealthiest countries and individual U.S. states, according to an analysis in 2009 by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, Japan, the Nordic countries, and the U.S. state of New Hampshire have both the narrowest wealth differential and the highest average quality of life. At the bottom are the United Kingdom, Portugal, and the remainder of the United States.

In America, for example, it is possible in most places to openly debate different views on religious spirituality — including the nature and even the existence of God, providing it is in the context of theology and philosophy. But it is forbidden to question closely, if at all, the creation myth — the faith — of another person or group, no matter how absurd. To disparage anything in someone else’s sacred creation myth is “religious bigotry.” It is taken as the equivalent of a personal threat.