Precious Habits

"We live in a world that has many strong assumptions built into it. We assume it's a good idea to examine nature microscopically and to voyage out into space. We believe in quantitative studies and polls and laboratories. We believe that human beings develop and nature and society evolves. We trust medicine that is based on research and evidence. We think it's all right to build roads anywhere and everywhere. We want children  to have a standardized education, and we think that prisons are an effective way to deal with crime. We have had a century of remarkable success with these values. Still, I question each of them and ask if we really are better people because of them.

Compare contemporary America, which is a case study in all these assumptions, with societies that still hold to the old ways, and you find in those more "backward" places an important role for the family in all activities, time set aside for celebration and the preparation of food, and the presence of religion in the heart of life. We have made progress at the physical, material level, but we have lost precious habits that would serve the human soul and spirit."

-- Thomas Moore