But my dear, there are so many of us who don't have wings! You don't have any yourself, I notice. Would you like to try some?

Slowly, slowly, however, collectively we are changing, and the new theology speaks of "creation-centered spirituality." For many of us this means a return to the goddess—or the feminine aspect of the Godhead—fostering a love and appreciation of our planet and its creatures, and a new ecology. If any stone is the House of God, by extension, then Earth itself is mother to meaning, to consciousness itself. It makes me think of Shakespeare's words: Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head, And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in tress, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything. As You Like It, Act II Scene i, lines 12-17

The most dangerous things in the world are immense accumulations of human beings who are manipulated by only a few heads.

“We say that if a temple, or a symbol, or an image helps you to realize the Divine within, you are welcome to it. Have two hundred images if you like. If certain forms and formulas help you to realize the Divine, God speed you; have, by all means, whatever forms, temples, whatever ceremonies you want to bring you nearer to God. But do not quarrel about them; the moment you quarrel, you are not going Godward, you are going backward towards the brutes."     

War has contaned the seeds of its own demise all along. This primal form of zero-sum energy, through the very logic of history that it helped impel, was bound to grow more and more negative-sum until finally its downside was too glaring to ignore. In retrospect, it looks almost like planned obsolescence.

If war can indeed be turned into a relic, then the virtue of greed will recede further. From a given society's standpoint, one big upside of wanton material acquisition has traditionally been the way it drives technological progress—which, after all, helps keep societies strong. In the nineteenth century, Russia ans Germany had little choice about modernizing; in those days stasis invited conquest. But if societies no longer face conquest, breakneck technological advance is an offer they can refuse, and frugality a luxury people can afford.

God knows greed won't vanish. Neither will hatred or chauvanism. Human nature is a stubborn thing. But it isn't beyond control. Even if our core impulses can;t be banished, they can be tempered and redirected.