Most Germans who cooperated with the Nazis did so out of the careerist ambitions and insecurities that are everywhere in plain sight today. They were just obeying directives, pleasing superiors, looking for promotions and raises, protecting their jobs, and trying to get through the day.

Goodness is something much larger and more important than a list of rules. Mainly, it is a vision of the world as it has been and can be, a vision of people living in all the little and big ways that support happiness. Fully realized, the vision is a vast and complex ecological order, quite beyond the comprehension of children.

Many commercial landscapes have much in common with silk and plastic flower bouquets that present an image of flowers without quite capturing the essence of flowers. The dimension of time–the unfolding, developing, blossoming, fading, drying and decaying–that inform the gardener’s vision is, as far as possible, absent, leaving an aesthetic dimension somewhat emptied of meaning. Though such plantings are alive they are somewhat not living.

If Congress wanted to take care of the first responders in New York but also adhere to the rule of law, they would have specified the criteria that needed to be met for the law to apply: responding in the line of duty, suffering harms not already provided for in existing health benefits, etc. To pass such a law, it is necessary to think through what principles we are choosing to be governed by, because once the law is passed, it will apply to everyone who meets whatever criteria the law establishes.

One of the signs that often accompanies the action of a good person is that all the creeps and goons begin howling and screeching like monkeys in the trees when a jaguar passes below. . .