Miller's Planet Quotes

Your nearness is the nearness of planets. I am the void between you. If I withdraw there will be no void for you to swim in.

I always knew it would come down to you and the big blue school boy. Planet's too big for the BOTH of you. When it all comes down, I want a piece of him. A small piece, will do? For OLD TIMES, sake, you know..it still hurts when its cold.

Slowly, it came into focus. This small web of people keeping one another afloat. All these minuscule interactions- a friendly wave, a pencil sketch, some plastic beads strung up a nylon cord- they might not look like much from the outside, but for the people caught inside that web? They might be everything, the very tethers that keep one bound to this planet.

Before I had kids, I always found it funny how people would talk about their children like they were the cutest things on the planet and how every little thing they did was endlessly fascinating. Now that I've had kids, I can say with certainty that, my children really are the cutest things on this planet and every little thing they do is endlessly fascinating...

The incredible women around the world who do stand up for justice can in fact transform the planet.

There seems to be at least one common denominator to all intelligent life: it was bipedal and bimannual. Four legs was the most practical number for any animal on any planet, and it seems that nature has nothing else to work with. When she decided to give intelligence to a species, she taught him to stand on his hind legs, freeing his forefeet to become tools of his intellect. And she usually taught him by making him use his hands to climb. As a Cophian biologist had said, "Life first tries to climb a tree to get to the stars. When it fails, it comes down and invents the high-C drive.

There is a theory that when a planet, like our earth for example, has manifested every form of life, when it has fulfilled itself to the point of exhaustion, it crumbles to bits and is dispersed like star dust throughout the universe. It does not roll on like a dead moon, but explodes, and in the space of a few minutes, there is not a trace of it visible in the heavens. In marine life we have a similar effect. it is called implosion. When an amphibian accustomed to the black depths rises above a certain level, when the pressure to which it adapts itself is lifted, the body bursts inwardly. Are we not familiar with this spectacle in the human being also? The norsemen who went berserk, the malay who runs amuck—are these not examples of implosion and explosion? When the cup is full it runs over. but when the cup and that which it contains are one substance, what then? There are moments when the elixir of life rises to such overbrimming splendor that the soul spills over. In the seraphic smile of the madonnas the soul is seen to flood the psyche. The moon of the face becomes full; the equation is perfect. A minute, a half minute, a second later, the miracle has passed. something intangible, something inexplicable, was given out—and received. In the life of a human being it may happen that the moon never comes to the full. In the life of some human beings it would seem, indeed, that the only mysterious phenomenon observable is that of perpetual eclipse. In the case of those afflicted with genius, whatever the form it may take, we are almost frightened to observe that there is nothing but a continuous waxing and waning of the moon. Rarer still are the anomalous ones who, having come to the full, are so terrified by the wonder of it that they spend the rest of their lives endeavoring to stifle that which gave them birth and being. The war of the mind is the story of the soul-split. When the moon was at full there were those who could not accept the dim death of diminution; they tried to hang full-blown in the zenith of their own heaven. They tried to arrest the action of the law which was manifesting itself through them, through their own birth and death, in fulfillment and transfiguration. Caught between the tides they were sundered; the soul departed the body, leaving the simulacrum of a divided self to fight it out in the mind. Blasted by their own radiance they live forever the futile quest of beauty, truth and harmony. Depossessed of their own effulgence they seek to possess the soul and spirit of those to whom they are attracted. They catch every beam of light; they reflect with every facet of their hungry being. instantly illumined, When the light is directed towards them, they are also speedily extinguished. The more intense the light which is cast upon them the more dazzling—and blinding—they appear. Especially dangerous are they to the radiant ones; it is always towards these bright and inexhaustible luminaries that they are most passionately drawn…

Individuals who do not want to know their own truth collude in denial with society as a whole, looking for a common "enemy" on whom to act out their repressed rage. But as the inhabitants of this shrinking planet near the end of the twentieth century, the danger inherent in self-deception is growing exponentially- and we can afford it less than ever. Fortunately, at the same time, we now have the tools we need to truly understand ourselves, as we were and as we are.

You've never been to another planet, have you Aimee?" "No, but I've been to Disney World.

People need to get outside more. I’m already in paradise. I wake up in heaven every single day. Our planet is perfect: a sapphire and emerald gem brimming with everything we could ever want or need, powered by a sun that is neither too hot nor cold, hurtling through an equally amazing universe filled with an infinite number of solar systems and planets that put on a spectacular light show, every single night, just for us.

All this gave way to my first encounter with guilt, which is still something entirely inscrutable to me, as if aliens were sending transmissions from another planet, telling me there is a right and a wrong in the universe.

All these miniscule interactions—a friendly wave, a pencil sketch, some plastic beads strung up a nylon cord—they might not look like much from the outside, but for the people caught inside that web? They might be everything, the very tethers that keep one bound to this planet.

Whereas our young in years see with a dim, blurred vision; they are filled with fear and fright. The thought which haunts them day and night is—will this world be snuffed out before we have had a chance to enjoy it? And there is no one who dares to tell them that even if the world were snuffed out tomorrow, or the day after, it would not really matter—since the life they crave to enjoy is imperishable. Nor does any one tell them that the destruction of this planet, or its preservation and everlasting glory, hinges on their own thoughts, their own deeds.

Then there is Annileen. I was tempted to call her 'the Intrepid Annileen' just now - because she seems to be able to deal with whatever horror this planet can imagine. That's what I need to become: absolutely familiar with all the dangers here. She takes them in stride. Not because she's fearless, but because she knows she has to go on, to take care of all the people in her life.

Todd wrapped his arm around her. They stood together in silent awe, watching the sunset. All Christy could think of was how this was what she had always wanted, to be held in Todd's arms as well as in his heart. Just as the last golden drop of sun melted into the ocean, Christy closed her eyes and drew in a deep draught of the sea air. "Did you know," Todd said softly, "that the setting sun looks so huge from the island of Papua New Guinea that it almost looks like you're on another planet? I've seen pictures." Then, as had happened with her reflection in her cup of tea and in her disturbing dream, Christy heard those two piercing words, "Let go." She knew what she had to do. Turning to face Todd, she said, "Pictures aren't enough for you, Todd. You have to go." "I will. Someday. Lord willing," he said casually. "Don't you see, Todd? The Lord is willing. This is your 'someday.' Your opportunity to go on the mission field is now. You have to go." Their eyes locked in silent communion. "God has been telling me something, Todd. He's been telling me to let you go. I don't want to, but I need to obey Him." Todd paused. "Maybe I should tell them I can only go for the summer. That way I'll only be gone a few months. A few weeks, really. We'll be back together in the fall." Christy shook her head. "It can't be like that, Todd. You have to go for as long as God tells you to go. And as long as I've known you, God has been telling you to go. His mark is on your life, Todd. It's obvious. You need to obey Him." "Kilikina," Todd said, grasping Christy by the shoulders, "do you realize what you're saying? If I go, I may never come back." "I know." Christy's reply was barely a whisper. She reached for the bracelet on her right wrist and released the lock. Then taking Todd's hand, she placed the "Forever" bracelet in his palm and closed his fingers around it. "Todd," she whispered, forcing the words out, "the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you and give you His peace. And may you always love Jesus more than anything else. Even more than me." Todd crumbled to the sand like a man who had been run through with a sword. Burying his face in his hands, he wept. Christy stood on wobbly legs. What have I done? Oh, Father God, why do I have to let him go? Slowly lowering her quivering body to the sand beside Todd, Christy cried until all she could taste was the salty tears on her lips. They drove the rest of the way home in silence. A thick mantle hung over them, entwining them even in their separation. To Christy it seemed like a bad dream. Someone else had let go of Todd. Not her! He wasn't really going to go. They pulled into Christy's driveway, and Todd turned off the motor. Without saying anything, he got out of Gus and came around to Christy's side to open the door for her. She stepped down and waited while he grabbed her luggage from the backseat. They walked to the front door. Todd stopped her under the trellis of wildly fragrant white jasmine. With tears in his eyes, he said in a hoarse voice, "I'm keeping this." He lifted his hand to reveal the "Forever" bracelet looped between his fingers. "If God ever brings us together again in this world, I'm putting this back on your wrist, and that time, my Kilikina, it will stay on forever." He stared at her through blurry eyes for a long minute, and then without a hug, a kiss, or even a good-bye, Todd turned to go. He walked away and never looked back.

The number one job of a leader is to wake up every morning, point to the horizon, and let everybody on the team know where the organization is going. The number two job of a leader is to explain, in clear and simple terms, why the story of going to and arriving at that specific destination matters. The number three job of a leader is to analyze the skills and abilities of each team member and find them an important role to play in that story. All human beings long for a mission. We are all born self-identifying as heroes in a story and we know, even as children, that our existence on this planet matters. Not only this, but as communal beings, every person longs to join a team on a serious and important mission. This is why dynamic leaders are able to attract top talent. Every dynamic leader you know or have ever heard of had a mission burning inside them that other people wanted to join. Great leaders become great because their mission makes them great. There are no exceptions.

The breath had become as much a trick as breathing. Things were not dual merely, but multiple. I had become a cage of mirrors reflecting vacuity. But vacuity once stoutly posited I was at home and what is called creation was merely a job of filling up holes. The trolley conveniently carried me about from place to place and in each little side pocket of the great vacuum I dropped a ton of poems to wipe out the idea of annihilation. I had ever before me boundless vistas. I began to live in the vista, like a microscopic speck on the lens of a giant telescope. There was no night in which to rest. It was perpetual starlight on the arid surface of dead planets. Now and then a lake black as marble in which I saw myself walking amidst brilliant orbs of lights. So low hung the stars and so dazzling was the light they shed, that it seemed as if the universe were only about to be born. What rendered the impression stronger was that I was alone; not only were there no animals, no trees, no other beings, but there was not even a blade of grass, not even a dead root. In that violet incandescent light witihout even the suggestion of a shadow motion itself seemed to be absent. It was like a blaze of pure consciousness, thought become God. And God, for the first time in my knowledge, was dean-shaven. I was also clean-shaven, flawless, deadly accurate. I saw my image in the marble black lakes and it was diapered with stars. Stars, stars... like a clout between the eyes and all remembrance fast run out. I was Samson and I was Lackawanna and I was dying as one being in the ecstasy of full consciousness.

So he’d done more of the same. He’d drunk to forget. He’d brawled to let off steam. He’d taken the dangerous jobs to fund his lifestyle – and then began it all again. He wasn’t some chivalrous nomad, skulking from planet to planet doing good deeds and leaving when things got too hot. No, left when the bar-owner’s daughter suddenly wanted to marry him. Kanan didn’t leave because the Empire moved in: He’d stared down Imperials like Vidian before and lived. They knew he was something to ignore. No, he left because where the Empire went, fun usually died.

The Father and his Troubadour sat down Upon the outer rim of space. "And here, My Singer," said Earthmaker, "is the crown Of all my endless skies-the green, brown sphere Of all my hopes." He reached and took the round New planet down, and held it to his ear. "They're crying, Troubadour," he said. "They cry So hopelessly." He gave the little ball Unto his Son, who also held it by His ear. "Year after weary year they all Keep crying. They seem born to weep then die. Our new man taught them crying in the Fall. "It is a peaceless globe. Some are sincere In desperate desire to see her freed Of her absurdity. But war is here. Men die in conflict, bathed in blood and greed." Then with his nail he scraped the atmosphere And both of them beheld the planet bleed. Earthmaker set earth spinning on its way And said, "Give me your vast infinity My son; I'll wrap it in a bit of clay. Then enter Terra microscopically To love the little souls who weep away Their lives." "I will," I said, "set Terra free." And then I fell asleep and all awareness fled. I felt my very being shrinking down. My vastness ebbed away. In dwindling dread, All size decayed. The universe around Drew back. I woke upon a tiny bed Of straw in one of Terra's smaller towns. And now the great reduction has begun: Earthmaker and his Troubadour are one. And here's the new redeeming melody--The only song that can set Terra free. The

Here I should issue a caveat. In origins-of-life research (and probably in most other disciplines as well), scientists gravitate to models that highlight their personal scientific specialty. Organic chemist Stanley Miller and his cohorts saw life’s origins as essentially a problem in organic chemistry. Geochemists, by contrast, have tended to focus on more intricate origins scenarios involving such variables as temperature and pressure and chemically complex rocks. Experts in membrane-forming lipid molecules promote the “lipid world,” while molecular biologists who study DNA and RNA view the “RNA world” as the model to beat. Specialists who study viruses, or metabolism, or clays, or the deep biosphere have their idiosyncratic prejudices as well. We all do it; we all focus

I was most pleasantly surprised, with this chart, to see a Yod pointing at the Moon. After all, what other planet influences changeable behaviour and creates a strong magnetic pull? I am tempted to say that the problem of the Bermuda Triangle has been solved: it was the Moon all along! But it is obviously more complicated than that. For one thing, there is a theory that there is an energy vortex operating through the earth, with a corresponding ‘problem’ area on the other side of the world, based near the west coast of Australia in the Indian Ocean. I noticed when I was looking at my Atlas that these trouble spots are on, or near, the Tropic of Cancer in the north, and the Tropic of Capricorn in the south. Being that these circles are the northern-most and southern-most positions of the Sun as it passes over the earth at the summer and winter solstices, there must be a residue of magnetic energy along those lines. To create a vortex, another energy line must be intersecting each tropical line at a right angle (90°). We can see this energy line on the chart: the Pluto-Midheaven opposition would be operating at full strength, as the critical degree is within 45’ of true (meaning, that the difference between the position of Pluto and the Midheaven, directly overhead, is almost exactly 180°). Because Mars is conjunct to Pluto, also opposite to the Midheaven, stormy weather, previously noted in this book, was raging: a potent combination.

I wondered why nobody realized what a crazy experience we all were having. I'd be lying in bed, or walking down a hallway in college, and the realization that I was alive would startle me, as though it had come up from behind and slammed two books together. I suddenly realized I was breathing air and stuck to the planet and temporary. And that realization felt as though I had come from some other existence and was experiencing this magical life for the first time. If you think about it, we get robbed of the mystery of being alive. It's a fairly amazing thing, you know. Even if you believe life is an accident, that we are all here by accident, it's still an amazing thing. It might even be a more amazing thing if we are really here by accident. What are the chances, honestly? Still, I think we get robbed of the glory of it, because we don't remember how we got here. When you get born, you wake up slowly to everything. Your brain doesn't stop growing until you turn 26, you know. So from birth to 26, God is slowly turning on the lights, and you are groggy and pointing at things and saying ‘circle’ and ‘blue’ and ‘car,’ and then ‘sex’ and ‘job’ and ‘healthcare.’ The experience is so slow, you can easily come to believe life isn't that big a deal, that life isn't staggering. What I'm saying is, I think life IS staggering, and we are just too used to it. We are all of us like spoiled children, no longer impressed with the gifts we are being given. It’s just another sunset, just another rainstorm moving over the mountains, just another child being born, just another funeral. When I was writing myself into a movie, I felt the way God feels as he writes the world, sitting over the planets, placing tiny people in tiny wombs. If I have a hope, it’s that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me specifically into the story. And He put us in with the sunsets and the rainstorms as though to say, ‘Enjoy your place in My story. The very beauty of it means it’s not about you, and in time, that will give you comfort.

President Pitzer, Mr. Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley, and Congressman Miller, Mr. Webb. Mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen: I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture will be very brief. I am delighted to be here and I'm particularly delighted to be here on this occasion. We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a State noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds. Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation's own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far out-strip our collective comprehension. No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only 5 years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than 2 years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than 2 months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power. Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight. This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward. So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this State of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward-and so will space. William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage. If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space. Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it - we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace...

My home is a place where everything grows and all spills are forgiven, where anyone is welcome at any time of day. My family is four planets orbiting in the same small universe. If we had a slogan it’d be, Feel free to do your own thing. Home is unconventional. Home is warmth. Home is closeness while maintaining independence. Home is where darkness could not get in. I was determined not to let it.

We are living creatures, to be sure, one species among countless millions that have come and gone in our planet’s lifetime. But we are also uniquely the creatures of music and art, of poetry and laughter, of science, reason, and mathematics. We are the children of evolution in every sense, but we are children of the universe as well, and from that realization comes a new and exhilarating way to see our place among other living things and our home among the stars.

Great,” she muttered, and swallowed the last of her brandy. “As if comm viruses and signal jammers and super ion cannons aren’t enough, now we’ve got bioweapons. What’s next? A planet killer?

BOOKS THAT GREATLY INSPIRED ME AND THAT YOU SHOULD CONSIDER READING (in no particular order) Beyond the Culture of Contest by Michael Karlberg A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neihardt The Family Virtues Guide by Linda Kavelin Popov, Dan Popov, and John Kavelin The Second Mountain by David Brooks High Conflict by Amanda Ripley The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture by Gabor Maté and Daniel Maté Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet by Thich Nhat Hanh The Seven Mysteries of Life by Guy Murchie Viral Justice by Ruha Benjamin The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible by Charles Eisenstein The Story of Our Time by Robert Atkinson Global Unitive Healing by Dr. Elena Mustakova What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck How Should We Live? by Roman Krznaric The God Equation by Michio Kaku Einstein’s God by Krista Tippett What We Talk About When We Talk About God by Rob Bell Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff Help, Thanks, Wow by Anne Lamott See No Stranger by Valarie Kaur Plays Well with Others by Eric Barker Narrow Road to the Interior by Matsuo Bashō The Soul’s Code by James Hillman The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss by David Bentley Hart The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton The Awakened Brain by Lisa Miller, PhD The Hidden Words by Baha’u’llah

If we could actually see the current digital work world encircling us, it would leave us breathless, given its reach, depth and moving parts; it would be not just a new continent but a new planet (only digital).

The first planet that Cooper and his crew visit is Miller’s. The most impressive things about this planet are the extreme slowing of time there, gigantic water waves, and huge tidal gravity. All three are related, and arise from the planet’s closeness to Gargantua.

Because you're the most beautiful and mesmerising girl that I've ever met. I doubt there's a man on this planet who could say no to you.

The planets still existed, for sure; she doubted Chancellor Palpa-whoosit or anyone he was fighting had the power to change that.

Oh, the airport’s not far from downtown. It’s just a little over an hour commute each way, thanks to this amazing Seattle traffic. The hotel’s not much, but it’s all we need. There’s ten channels’ worth of cable on the TV, and clean sheets on our twin beds, and a picturesque view of the gentlemen’s club next door.” Jimmy thought he saw Agent Miller’s left eye twitch. Jimmy said, “I’m sure that’s very entertaining.” Miller couldn’t take anymore. “It might be,” he said, “if we had a view of the inside, but all we can see is a parking lot full of desperate, lonely men, all of whom seem to look in our window. They seem to be fascinated by the sight of two middleaged men lying in twin beds like Ernie and Bert, watching The Weather Channel because it’s the most exciting thing on. It’s like being an exhibit in an alien zoo, on the planet of the scabby pervs!

Oh, the airport’s not far from downtown. It’s just a little over an hour commute each way, thanks to this amazing Seattle traffic. The hotel’s not much, but it’s all we need. There’s ten channels’ worth of cable on the TV, and clean sheets on our twin beds, and a picturesque view of the gentlemen’s club next door.” Jimmy thought he saw Agent Miller’s left eye twitch. Jimmy said, “I’m sure that’s very entertaining.” Miller couldn’t take anymore. “It might be,” he said, “if we had a view of the inside, but all we can see is a parking lot full of desperate, lonely men, all of whom seem to look in our window. They seem to be fascinated by the sight of two middleaged men lying in twin beds like Ernie and Bert, watching The Weather Channel because it’s the most exciting thing on. It’s like being an exhibit in an alien zoo, on the planet of the scabby pervs!

Arthur Miller noted that the shadow of a cornstalk on the ground is lovely, but it is no denial of its loveliness to see as one looks on it that it is telling the time of day, the position of the earth and the sun, the size of our planet and its shape, and perhaps even the length of its life and ours among the stars.251

There’s a damaged piece of the system ahead,” Miller continued, “and I’d hoped we’d be able to get around it. No such luck. We’re on foot from here.” “Your fancy alien train is broken?” “My fancy alien material transfer system has been sitting unused for over a billion years and half the planet just exploded. Your ship was built less than a decade ago and you can barely keep the coffee pot running.” “You are a sad, bitter little man,” Holden said as he climbed to his feet and pushed against the train door. It didn’t open.

When the Emperor and his notorious apprentice, Darth Vader, find themselves stranded in the middle of insurgent action on an inhospitable planet, they must rely solely on each other, the Force, and their awesome martial skills to prevail.

The point I am making is that most of that extra consumption you fear will destroy the planet is not actually going to come from what you can claim to be surplus consumption, the hair gel and the jacuzzis. It will come from the provision of basic services that no one can call over-consumption. And we need to confront those, since they are a lot harder to curb.

When someone with no reason and no compassion is given the power and resources of the strongest nation on the planet—well, I shudder to think what will happen.

They dump their bulky backpacks, weighed down with tools, food, poisonous chemicals, plastic piping, and tents, and begin cutting trees and clearing the ground, manually and with herbicides. Then they set to work laying out waterlines, building check dams, and digging into the soil before planting thousands of cannabis seeds.

I thought about heaven, about how if we were shooting a movie about heaven, at the airport, we would want to shoot it there, and how in the movie, people would be arriving from earth and from other planets, and when the angels picked us up, they’d put us in their cars and drive a million miles for a thousand years, and it would be miserable until you got to where you were supposed to stay, where you would see your family and the girlfriend you had in the second grade, the girl you always believed was the only one who really loved you.

Who literally just threatened to take me out of this planet’s rotation, and stepped on my hand when he realized I intended to stab him the same as I did my attacker.

I sat on the Advisory Board of the Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit. IT was during a board meeting in 2012 that I first heard about B Lab and its innovative business model, the B Corporation (B Corp). There were about 600 companies who were in the B Corp community at that time; today there are more than 2,000 in 50 countries from 130 industries. They have one unifying goal: people using business as a force for good™. This has been a passion of mine since I worked at Henry Miller in the 1980s and back then felt we were all alone. Many of our peer executives from other companies disagreed with our people-centered participative management system, our commitment to be good stewards of the environment, and our engagement in communities; some went as far as calling us socialist. They believed that the single aim of business was maximizing shareholder value and they were slaves of that aim. So I was elated to talk with Jay Coen Gilbert, a cofounder of B Lab, and learn more about B Corps and his personal story that led him to commit to going on this journey.

but most of them had never worked with captive populations before. They didn’t know how to cuff someone at the wrist and elbow so that the perp couldn’t get his hands out in front to strangle them. They didn’t know how to restrain someone with a length of cord around the neck so that the prisoner couldn’t choke himself to death, by accident or intentionally. Half of them didn’t even know how to pat someone down. Miller knew all of it like a game he’d played since childhood. In five hours, he found twenty hidden blades on the science crew alone. He hardly had to think about it. A second wave of transport ships arrived: personnel haulers that looked ready to spill their air out into the vacuum if you spat on them, salvage trawlers already dismantling the shielding and superstructure of the station, supply ships boxing and packing the precious equipment and looting the pharmacies and food banks. By the time news of the assault reached Earth, the station would be stripped to a skeleton and its people hidden away in unlicensed prison cells throughout the Belt. Protogen would know sooner, of course. They had outposts much closer than the inner planets. There was a calculus of response time and possible gain. The mathematics of piracy and war. Miller knew it, but he didn’t let it worry him. Those were decisions for Fred and his attachés to make. Miller had taken more than enough initiative for one day. Posthuman. It was a word that came up in the media every five or six years, and it meant different things every time. Neural regrowth hormone? Posthuman. Sex robots with inbuilt pseudo intelligence? Posthuman. Self-optimizing network routing? Posthuman. It was a word from advertising copy, breathless and empty, and all he’d ever thought it really meant was that the people using it had a limited imagination about what exactly humans were capable of. Now, as he escorted a dozen captives in Protogen uniforms to a docked transport heading God-knew-where, the word was taking on new meaning. Are you even human anymore? All posthuman meant, literally speaking, was what you were when you weren’t

Over the long term, our species, like every other, has just two possible evolutionary fates over the long term: extinction, or further splitting apart into a number of daughter species—each of which will either go extinct or split again. If we avoid extinction, each of our daughter species will probably develop distinctive styles of courtship display, and different ways to channel their sexual competitiveness into various forms of physical, artistic, linguistic, intellectual, moral, and economic display. Some may continue to live on our home planet, and some may move elsewhere. Some may shape their own evolution naturally through sexual selection, while others may shape their evolution consciously through genetic technologies. We cannot imagine the minds that our far-future descendants might evolve, any more than our ape-like ancestors could have imagined ours. That does not matter. Our responsibility is not to speculate endlessly about the possible futures of our daughter species, but to become, with as much panache as we can afford, their ancestors.

Anderson Dawes,” the pocked man said. “I’m the Ceres liaison for the Outer Planets Alliance. I think we can help each other. May I come in?” Miller

The capital of the new planet—the one, I mean, which will kill itself off—is of course Detroit. I realized that the moment I arrived. At first I thought I’d go and see Henry Ford, give him my congratulations. But then I thought—what’s the use? He wouldn’t know what I was talking about.

In many organizations, vision is their source of inspiration and meaning. Here are a few vision statements that fit this definition. You can decide for yourself how inspiring they are. IKEA: “To create a better everyday life for the many people.”2 Whole Foods Market: To nourish people and the planet.3 Amazon: To be Earth’s most customer-centric company.4 CVS: To help people live longer, healthier, happier lives.5 Habitat for Humanity: A world where everyone has a decent place to live.

An advance by the Outer Planets Alliance was the constant bogeyman of Ceres security. Living in the tradition of Al Capone and Hamas, the IRA and the Red Martials, the OPA was beloved by the people it helped and feared by the ones who got in its way. Part social movement, part wannabe nation, and part terrorist network, it totally lacked an institutional conscience. Captain Shaddid might not like Havelock because he was from down a gravity well, but she’d work with him. The OPA would have put him in an airlock. People like Miller would only rate getting a bullet in the skull, and a nice plastic one at that. Nothing that might get shrapnel in the ductwork.

Port bars were always volatile. Miller was careful not to bump into anyone if he could help it. When he had to choose, he’d run into Belters before inner planet types, women before men. His face was a constant mild apology.

Ceres, the port city of the Belt and the outer planets, boasted two hundred fifty kilometers in diameter, tens of thousands of kilometers of tunnels in layer on layer on layer. Spinning it up to 0.3 g had taken the best minds at Tycho Manufacturing half a generation, and they were still pretty smug about it. Now Ceres had more than six million permanent residents, and as many as a thousand ships docking in any given day meant upping the population to as high as seven million. Platinum, iron, and titanium from the Belt. Water from Saturn, vegetables and beef from the big mirror-fed greenhouses on Ganymede and Europa, organics from Earth and Mars. Power cells from Io, Helium-3 from the refineries on Rhea and Iapetus. A river of wealth and power unrivaled in human history came through Ceres. Where there was commerce on that level, there was also crime. Where there was crime, there were security forces to keep it in check. Men like Miller and Havelock, whose business it was to track the electric carts up the wide ramps, feel the false gravity of spin fall away beneath them, and ask low-rent glitz whores about what happened the night Bomie Chatterjee stopped collecting protection money for the Golden Bough Society. The primary station house for Star Helix Security, police force and military garrison for the Ceres Station, was on the third level from the asteroid’s skin, two kilometers square and dug into the rock so high Miller could walk from his desk up five levels without ever leaving the offices. Havelock turned in the cart while Miller went to his cubicle, downloaded the recording of their interview with the girl, and reran it. He was halfway through when his partner lumbered up behind him.

One of the biggest factors in the growth of independence movements in the 21st century has been the spread of globalism. Globalism seeks total economic integration across the planet. It is, at its core, Soviet-style central economic planning on an unprecedented scale. The effects of globalism have created poverty, unrest, and destruction around the world as the global elite seek to remake the world in their image.

Parenting is the most important job on the planet next to keeping Gary Busey off the nation's highways.

of that was done just to turn it into a power station?” “Why not? They didn’t need it for anything else. Not a particularly good planet, rare metals aside. And be glad they did. You think you can have an underground rail system last two billion years on any planet with tectonic action?” Holden was quiet for a moment, riding the Miller-bot through the material refining plant as it throbbed around him. “It’s too much,” he finally said. “That level of control over your environment is too much. I can’t get my brain around it. What could kill these guys?” “Something worse.