The Better Angels of Our Nature
The better angels of our nature are there, at the heart of our humanity. Like muscles, you need to flex them. When you do, the world is a better place.
#TheBetterAngels
Shall Advance the Species
What better symbol of a great biological and/or anthropological leap forward than a pig that’s learned to smoke?
#ShallAdvanceTheSpecies
A Sign of Intelligent Life
If an alien species came to Earth, our intelligence is one characteristic that would convince them they had found E.T. not the Alien xenomorph (or the Great Gazoo and not the Arachnids of Starship Troopers).
#SignofIntelligentLife
Another Thumb Could Be a Good Thing
Change can be gross. It can be frightening. And where it leads is not always clear. But the new, the different, the chaotic, and the possibly grotesque can sometimes be for the better.
#4thumbs
Nice Try but This Amoeba’s Cooked
A new idea or leap for higher ground deserves praise when done with noble intentions, even if, as it climbs out of the primordial soup, it fries on the sidewalk. Thanks little amoeba, we hardly knew ya.
#CookedAmoeba
Neutral to the Gene Pool
The story this minute dominating Facebook and Twitter, leading the nightly news and morning shows, racking up clicks… is ultimately not going to amount to a bloody thing by tomorrow. Paying attention for more than a minute is a waste of time, possibly mind rotting, but only sometimes harmless. It’s good to put such things in perspective.
#NeutralToTheGenePool
Jekyll Moment
The seemingly beneficial, the seemingly well-intentioned, maybe even those developments of ours that have some positive spinoffs can go… wrong. With Jekyll, you often get Hyde.
#JekyllMoment
Killer Fun
There’s a good time to be had everywhere: on the wing of a biplane or on a volcano’s caldera, at the edge of the atmosphere or inside a microbiology lab. But whether it’s fun for fun’s sake, smart fun from smart people or dumb fun from dumb people, fun can be killer.
#KillerFun
Is This Natural?
We cannot know what path nature might have taken in our absence. We are now central players in evolution, and our choices affect its direction. But when making those choices, our disposition can be the difference between disaster and triumph. Are we guided by humility? Do we recognize the interconnectedness of life and the long-term implications of our actions? Or are we guided by hubris? When it’s hubris, when we see ourselves as the director and not a player among many more, we end up with abominations.
#IsThisNatural
The Idiots are Mating
Idiots are trouble. More idiots are more trouble. Such outbreaks are existential threats to life as we know it.
#IdiotsAreMating
At the Precipice
Willful blindness, cultivated ignorance, and love of violence are not worthy means or justified ends. They’re one-way tickets to devolution.
#AtThePrecipice
Doomed to Extinction
A signpost on the way to doom.
#DoomedToExtinction