When dreams are thoughtcrime

I dream that our children will live in a world where secular and humanist democracy still exists.

A world where everyone is free to have a religion and to change from one religion to another or none at all.

Free to think, to believe, to speak and most importantly to dream.

That dream seems distant some days, unachievable others. We live in an age of dark age theofascists howling at the gates of civilization determined to tear them down. Our votes are all that stand in their way. As a wise man once said, there may not be someone you want to vote for, but there is almost always someone you want to vote against.

Good and Evil

For every Saint there is a murderous psychopath, for every Inspiring Teacher, there is a thug in a gym uniform. Unfortunately the alternative is a kind of bland stepford world of safe suburbs and vaguely smiling PTA members. Like sorrow permits us to feel joy, the capacity for evil is what gives us the capacity to do good.

Each of us faces choices every day, those choices define us. What matters is not what we think in our heart of hearts, but what we *DO*. The impulse to kill lurks in all of us, acting on it is what makes a very few of us murderers.

The impulse to commit kindness also exists in all of us, that so few of us act on it is what prevents us living in a paradise.