Rebuilding Our Societies Quotes

Human rights' are a fine thing, but how can we make ourselves sure that our rights do not expand at the expense of the rights of others. A society with unlimited rights is incapable of standing to adversity. If we do not wish to be ruled by a coercive authority, then each of us must rein himself in...A stable society is achieved not by balancing opposing forces but by conscious self-limitation: by the principle that we are always duty-bound to defer to the sense of moral justice.

By rebuilding community, we become proud of our society, proud of our institutions, proud of our nations, proud of ourselves. By coming together we discover who we are. We ignite our capacity for empathy and altruism. Togetherness and belonging allow us to become the heroes of the story.

Even though it may look like the wicked is gaining ground, God is still in control. We need to pray for our nations, pray for others, pray for forgiveness and mercy over people. We need to love no matter who we are talking to, whether they are Atheist, Moslems, Lesbians, Homosexuals or Pagans. We need to love them and share the love of God with them and not judge and see if we can rebuild our broken nations.

The work of God requires stamina. Nehemiah sustained his stamina even through staggering difficulties. He persisted through both ridicule and discouragement, and he remained faithful when tempted to compromise. This tenacity is required of leaders who will make a difference. Will you crumble under the pressures, or will you face the trials with God’s strength? Many today question the possibility of revival. These naysayers see only the decaying moral condition of society and the disappointing lukewarm condition of churches. Revival, however, is not dependent on or the result of a flourishing spiritual condition. Some of the greatest revivals in Scripture came during the darkest times. Let us not look at the rubbish, but at Christ, the Rock, who can rebuild our country through revival. Let us be leaders God can use to bring revival. Nehemiah was not a man to sit idly by when there was tremendous need. Neither was he a man to attempt meeting such need in his own strength. God used Nehemiah to bring revival because Nehemiah began with supplication for God’s forgiveness and power. The task of rebuilding the walls could never have been completed by one man alone; it needed a leader who understood the power of synergy. Nehemiah’s willingness to be personally involved in the work, as well as his ability to convey the need to others, resulted in a task force that completed this enormous building project in a mere fifty-two days—to the glory of God. Like any godly leader, Nehemiah did not go unchallenged. Yet, he sustained his stamina in the face of every opposition. Nehemiah’s life proves that revival is possible, even when it appears the most unlikely. God sends revival through leaders willing to make a difference.

Timothy Keller notes just a few of the many ways in which Christianity contributed to the emergence of the modern economy, such as the dignity of the human being as the basis of economic freedom, and generous service to others as the basis of an economy that serves customers with excellence: The Christian worldview has made foundational contributions to our own culture that may not be readily apparent. The deep background for our work, especially in the West—the rise of modern technology, the democratic ethos that makes modern capitalism thrive, the idea of inherent human freedom as the basis for economic freedom and the development of markets—is due largely to the cultural changes that Christianity has brought. Historian Jack Sommerville argues that Western society’s most pervasive ideas, such as the idea that forgiveness and service are more important than saving face and revenge, have deeply biblical roots. Many have argued, and I would agree, that the very rise of modern science could have occurred only in a society in which the biblical view of a sole, all-powerful, and personal Creator was prevalent.2 Christianity was not the only factor that helped the modern economy emerge, but it was a very important one.

Times of transition are difficult times, times of crisis. But in these times of crisis, with their woes, a new time is already being born. It is precisely in such times that every individual is burdened with an unprecedented, heavy but glorious responsibility: it depends on every individual what comes forth out of this time. It depends on the statesmen, what becomes of the atom bomb, whether it is a curse or a blessing to humanity; and it depends on every single "little" man, the "man in the street," what comes of his life and that of his family in the next few years and decades. Every stone that-literally and figuratively-is laid for today for the purposes of rebuilding, will need to lie there in future decades-and it depends on the way in which it is laid whether the next generation will be able to keep building on this foundation. That is the glorious responsibility of such a time, that we know how many difficulties we have to bear, and yet at the same time how many opportunities we hold in our hands! "He who as a why to live for can bear almost any how," Nietzsche once said. The consciousness of our unprecedented responsibility, which encompasses the future of one's own life, or that of a family, of a work, of a larger society, or of a people, a state even, of humanity, this true "historical" consciousness of responsibility will allow the man of today to bear the "how" of his difficult life circumstances, to shape them, to surmount them. In our struggle full of duties and responsibility every single one of us is indeed called upon. Accordingly nobody has the right to wait "until things become clearer" and to continue to live only provisionally. As soon as we try to shape the provisional, it is no longer provisional! Whether it is the provisional in the big things or the small things-each one of us has to reshape our own "provisional" life into a definitive one. Nobody is allowed to wait any longer-each of us must pitch in-each of us must ask ourselves, as a wise man asked sixteen centuries ago: "If I do not do it-who else will do it? And if I do not do it now-then when?

One of the great dangers of our time is the illusion that moral obligations are somehow weaker if they’re not chosen. We are blessed with the freedom to make choices that people in most times and places don’t get to make. The special temptation of living in a society where we have personal liberties is the seductive idea that obligations are less binding, or not binding at all, if we came under them through birth or other circumstances beyond our control.

Wealthy societies, for reasons largely well-intentioned but now producing unintended consequences, are making it easier for their teens to avoid the rigors and responsibilities of becoming a grown-up. Arnett calls those years the “self-focused age,” when there are few real responsibilities, few “daily obligations,” limited “commitments to others.” In a stage when young people were once supposed to learn to “stand alone as a self-sufficient person,” they find themselves increasingly paralyzed by over-choice. There are nearly unlimited personal-social options yet too few concrete work-related accomplishments. A

Who are “they”? It’s the afflicted, brokenhearted, captives, prisoners, mourners, burned-out ones, and the fainting ones because of weakness described in verses 1-3. Think about this. The most broken in society, the ones the Church often rejects, and society certainly rejects, are the ones anointed by God to rebuild our cities that have been destroyed through devastation. They are the builders. Seeing their significance before they have earned it is actually what positions them for their own breakthroughs in ways that are valuable to entire cities. How we treat these disenfranchised, considering their significance in God’s eyes, becomes key in seeing our cities restored to God’s design and purpose.

To paraphrase Robin Williams’s compelling teacher character in Dead Poets Society: We don’t study poetry to get an “A,” to graduate, to get a job, to make money, to meet material needs. Rather, “we read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. So medicine, law, business, engineering . . . these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love . . . these are what we stay alive for.

Here's the difference between knowledge and wisdom, if I told you to go grab a big bag of knowledge and bring it back to me you would find it will contain some truth and a lot of untruths. But if I told you to go grab me a big bag of wisdom and bring it back to me you would find that it's full of nothing but the truth. Knowledge does not require truth, but wisdom is always universally true. When you gain wisdom, you get a sense that you've truly only learned something that you already knew was true. This is why...Knowledge is of the past, Wisdom is of the future. We find Tribal Existence when we Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Our collective wisdom is an antidote to a society gone mad, Rules often fail us, and incentives often backfire, But our collective wisdom can and will help rebuild our mad world.

Yet when I wake up and look out the window, I am energized. I have hope. I see the possibilities—how, despite the darkness, this is also a time when we can rebuild our societies, starting with what’s right in front of us: our areas of influence. The world we once knew is decimated. Now we have to decide what we want to create.

For example, consider one of Intuit’s flagship products. Because TurboTax does most of its sales around tax season in the United States, it used to have an extremely conservative culture. Over the course of the year, the marketing and product teams would conceive one major initiative that would be rolled out just in time for tax season. Now they test over five hundred different changes in a two-and-a-half-month tax season. They’re running up to seventy different tests per week. The team can make a change live on its website on Thursday, run it over the weekend, read the results on Monday, and come to conclusions starting Tuesday; then they rebuild new tests on Thursday and launch the next set on Thursday night. As Scott put it, “Boy, the amount of learning they get is just immense now. And what it does is develop entrepreneurs, because when you have only one test, you don’t have entrepreneurs, you have politicians, because you have to sell. Out of a hundred good ideas, you’ve got to sell your idea. So you build up a society of politicians and salespeople. When you have five hundred tests you’re running, then everybody’s ideas can run. And then you create entrepreneurs who run and learn and can retest and relearn as opposed to a society of politicians. So we’re trying to drive that throughout our organization, using examples which have nothing to do with high tech, like the website example. Every business today has a website. You don’t have to be high tech to use fast-cycle testing.” This kind of change is hard. After all, the company has a significant number of existing customers who continue to demand exceptional service and investors who expect steady, growing returns. Scott says, It goes against the grain of what people have been taught in business and what leaders have been taught. The problem isn’t with the teams or the entrepreneurs. They love the chance to quickly get their baby out into the market. They love the chance to have the customer vote instead of the suits voting. The real issue is with the leaders and the middle managers. There are many business leaders who have been successful because of analysis. They think they’re analysts, and their job is to do great planning and analyzing and have a plan.

Jupiter, I know this is all quite difficult to accept,” she paused. “It wasn't until the 1980s that we had to start seeking out people from the human race to join our societies.” She sipped her coffee before continuing, looking older by the second. “The number of naturally born beings has declined over the past four decades and in order to rebuild the societies, we've had to seek out humans. I know this is hard to understand and deal with, but we've been watching you since birth. We actually expected you to have talents because your mother's family has a history of paranormal beings. Unfortunately, you weren't born a paranormal being, but you do possess some talents that we find useful.” “Like

did you ever consider that lsd and color tv arrived for our consumption about the same time? here comes all this explorative color pounding, and what do we do? we outlaw one and fuck up the other. t.v., of course, is useless in present hands; there’s not much of a hell of an argument here. and I read where in a recent raid it was alleged that an agent caught a container of acid in the face, hurled by alleged manufacturer of a hallucinogenic drug. this is also a kind of a waste. there are some basic grounds for outlawing lsd, dmt, stp – it can take a man permanently out of his mind – but so can picking beets, or turning bolts for GM, or washing dishes or teaching English I at one of the local universities. if we outlawed everything that drove men mad, the whole social structure would drop out – marriage, the war, bus service, slaughterhouses, beekeeping, surgery, anything you can name. anything can drive men mad because society is built on false stilts. until we knock the whole bottom out and rebuild, the madhouses will remain overlooked.

And Burke, could he see our century, never would concede that a consumption-society, so near to suicide, is the end for which Providence has prepared man. If a conservative order is indeed to return, we ought to know the tradition which is attached to it, so that we may rebuild society; if it is not to be restored, still we ought to understand conservative ideas so that we may rake from the ashes what scorched fragments of civilization escape the conflagration of unchecked will and appetite.

The Reestablishment said they would help us. Save us. Rebuild our society. Instead they tore us all apart.

Part of the problem is that our politicians, media, and criminal justice institutions too often equate justice with revenge. Popular culture is suffused with revenge fantasies in which the aggrieved bring horrible retribution down on those who have hurt them. Often this involves a fantasy of those who have been placed on the margins taking aim at the powerful; it’s a fantasy of empowerment through violence. Police and prisons have come to be our preferred tools for inflicting punishment. Our entire criminal justice system has become a gigantic revenge factory. Three-strikes laws, sex-offender registries, the death penalty, and abolishing parole are about retribution, not safety. Whole segments of our society have been deemed always-already guilty. This is not justice; it is oppression. Real justice would look to restore people and communities, to rebuild trust and social cohesion, to offer people a way forward, to reduce the social forces that drive crime, and to treat both victims and perpetrators as full human beings. Our police and larger criminal justice system not only fail at this but rarely see it as even related to their mission.

I have hope. I see the possibilities —how, despite the darkness, this is also a time when we can rebuild our societies, starting with what's right in front of us: our areas of influence.

We have got to provide meaningful work at decent wages for every employable citizen. We must guarantee an adequate income for those unable to work. We must build millions of low-income housing units, tear down the slums, and rebuild our cities. We need to build schools, hospitals, mass transit systems. We need to construct new, integrated towns. As President Johnson has said, we need to build a "second America" between now and the year 2000. It is in the context of this national reconstruction that the socioeconomic fate of the Negro will be determined. Will we build into the second America new, more sophisticated forms of segregation and exploitation or will we create a genuine open, integrated, and democratic society? Will we have a more equitable distribution of economic resources and political power, or will we sow the seeds of more misery, unrest, and division? Because of men like Martin Luther King, it is unlikely that the American Negro can ever again return to the old order. But it is up to us, the living, black and white, to realize Dr. King's dream.

We can rebuild our architecture and infrastructure – the kind, unlike under capitalism, that can largely withstand extreme weather – (largely) out of hemp; we can build a high-speed fully automated system of production from durable, lightweight bioplastic and graphene, out of hemp and other plants, powered by biofuel and hemp batteries, while – because of hemp’s ability to revive soil and absorb CO2 – healing the soil and stabilising the climate in the process. This reconstruction of society, which would raise living standards exponentially for everyone, is not an ideal or a fantasy, it is a necessity both historically and ecologically. But it can only be realised through socialism.

The journey ahead demands compromise and resilience, but with thoughtful action, we can rebuild security and responsibility in our society. (Unloading the Gun Laws)

If we're serious about rebuilding and restoring what was lost in our communities, in our families, in society, it really does start here. (Reclaiming the Black Church: A Call to Restore Leadership, Unity, and Purpose – blog)

The discomfort of pregnancy prepares us for the discomfort of birth, and the discomfort of birth prepares us for the discomfort of motherhood. As a society, we are so uncomfortable with being uncomfortable. We desperately try to bypass discomfort, and we measure our success by how well we are able to do so. I see this happening in both medicated and unmedicated birth spheres. Whether you plan to medicate OR meditate yourself into a pain free birth, we are making the avoidance of pain the goal. By making the avoidance of pain the goal, we are missing the point. Pregnancy requires us to stretch. Birth requires us to shatter. Postpartum requires us to sort through the pieces and rebuild. It is uncomfortable for a reason. This discomfort is where the growth happens - it's part of the perfect design. When we think we can't be any more pregnant, our babies decide to wait a few more weeks. And we continue on. When we think we can't handle another contraction, another contraction comes anyway. And we breathe through it. When we think we can't be any more tired, our babies call out for us. And we answer their call. When we think we have reached capacity, our capacity expands. As you move through pregnancy, dream about birth and prepare for postpartum, plan for discomfort. The discomfort is where the transformation takes place. The pain is where we meet our truest selves. Let it crack you open.