But Our Culture Is In

Call It 'nationalism' When You Affix A Flag To Your Car, And Leave The Word 'patriotism' For Your Efforts To Make This Country A Kinder, More Egalitarian Place, And One That Is Less Dangerous To The Rest Of The World.

The Question Is Why One Should Be So Inwardly Preoccupied At All. Why Not Reach Out To Others In Love And Solidarity Or Peer Into The Natural World For Some Glimmer Of Understanding? Why Retreat Into Anxious Introspection When, As Emerson Might Have Said, There Is A Vast World Outside To Explore? Why Spend So Much Time Working On Oneself When There Is So Much Real Work To Be Done?

There's More Pressure On Women To Be Chirpy And Perky.

Our Great Common Challenge ... Is To Free People From Religion, Get It Out Of Our Laws, Our Schools, Our Health Systems, Our Government And, I Would Add, Also Our Sporting Events. I Would Really Like To See Some Separation Of Church And Stadium, If We Could Work On That.

I Don't Know When The Cult Of Conspicuous Busyness Began, But It Has Swept Up Almost All The Upwardly Mobile, Professional Women I Know. Already, It Is Getting Hard To Recall The Days When, For Example, 'let's Have Lunch' Meant Something Other Than 'i've Got More Important Things To Do Than Talk To You Right Now.