This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The things in our civilization we most prize are not of ourselves. They exist by grace of the doings and sufferings of the continuous human community in which we are a link. Ours is the responsibility of conserving, transmitting, rectifying and expanding the heritage of values we have received, that those who come after us may receive it more solid and secure, more widely accessible and more generously shared that we have received it. Here are all the elements for a religious faith that shall not be confined to sect, class or race. Such a faith has always been implicitly the common faith of mankind.
Civilization | Faith | Grace | Mankind | Race | Receive | Responsibility |
Intemperate eating kills more people than tobacco and alcohol, because it is the most widespread fault… If people knew how to eat properly they would retain their youthful resiliency much longer.
The school system can’t make up for family failure. The total education of our children is a cooperative effort requiring community solidarity. Apathetic parents who foster a permissive home atmosphere create a problem for everyone.
Children | Education | Effort | Failure | Family | Parents | System |
If no charismatic emerges, people may be truly bereft and lost in a sea of forces and pressures beyond their adaptive capacity. The society may die. If someone does emerge, the people may understandably attribute his rise to “divine grace.” Indeed, if he exercises leadership, he may well save his community and help it to renew itself. First, he binds people together by powerfully articulating their values, hopes, and pains. Second, he weaves their hopes into some image of the future. And third, he provides energy, strategy, and faith that the vision can be realized.
Capacity | Energy | Faith | Future | Grace | People | Society | Vision | Society |
Social evolution is a resultant of the interaction of two wholly distinct factors: the individual… bearing all the power of initiative and origination in his hands; and, second, the social environment, with its power of adopting or rejecting both him and his gifts. Both factors are essential to change. The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
Change | Evolution | Impulse | Individual | Initiative | Power | Sympathy |
Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
There are two complementary parts of our cosmic duty – one to ourselves, to be fulfilled in the realization and enjoyment of our capacities; the other to others, to be fulfilled in service to the community and in promoting the welfare of the generations to come and the advancement of our species as a whole.
Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to dramatize the issue so that it can no longer be ignored.
Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
Knowledge creates doubt, and doubt makes you ravenous for more knowledge. You can’t get full eating this way. The wise person dines on something more subtle: he eats the understanding that the named was born from the unnamed, that all being flows from non-being, that the describable world emanates from an indescribable source. He finds this subtle truth inside his own self, and becomes completely content.
Doubt | Knowledge | Self | Truth | Understanding | Wise | World |
An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its justice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law.
Conscience | Individual | Justice | Law | Reality | Respect | Respect |
That government is or ought to be instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community; of all the various modes and forms of government, that is best which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety, and is most effectually secured against the danger of mal-administration, and that whenever any government shall be found inadequate, or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter or abolish it in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the weal.
Administration | Danger | Government | Majority | People | Reform | Right | Security | Government | Danger | Happiness |
David Eli Lilienthal, "Mr. TVA"
Out of the best and most productive years of each person's life, they should carve a segment in which they put their private career aside to serve their community and their country, and thereby serve their children, their neighbours, their fellow men, and the cause of freedom.
As Aristotle taught, people do not naturally or spontaneously grow up to be morally excellent or practically wise. They become so, if at all, only as a result of a lifelong personal and community effort.
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Morality is primarily a means of preserving the community and saving it from destruction. Next it is a means of maintaining the community on a certain plane and in a certain degree of benevolence.
Benevolence | Means | Morality |
Seven common obstacles that people seem to face in living their best lives: (1) Have difficulty putting themselves first. (2) Their schedule does not reflect their priorities. (3) They feel drained by certain people or things. (4) Feel trapped for monetary reasons. (5) Living on adrenalin. (6) Don’t have a supportive community in their life. (7) Their spiritual well-being comes last.
Difficulty | Life | Life | People |
We have not so much the privilege of intelligence, viewed as something above and against nonhuman nature, but the responsibility and necessity to convert our intelligence to the earth. We need to learn how to use intelligence to mend the distortions we have created and how to convert intelligence into an instrument that can cultivate the harmonies and balances of the ecological community and bring these to a refinement.
Earth | Intelligence | Nature | Necessity | Need | Refinement | Responsibility | Learn | Privilege |
Sisters of the Immaculate Heart NULL
What the world desperately needs is bridges, individuals and groups, like Christ himself, put an end to all the distances which divide men and which hinder their access to truth, dignity, and full human development. This is another way of saying that the world needs community; it needs models of community to convince it that the diverse and warring elements in the human family can be reconciled.