Religion

In the early decades of the 18th century, America was in the throes of an identity crisis. The new American lifestyle had earned New England the nickname of “the new English Sodom.”

When I was 20, my spiritual life felt like an exam where I had been given a topic I hadn’t prepared for.

Although they are constantly improving their preparedness for crises and disasters, modern societies find themselves powerless in the face of a growing threat: transnational crises.

God's decision to reveal His intentions regarding Sodom and Gomorrah to Abraham is one of the most memorable moments in biblical history.

Doing things the way you've always done them is the most convenient choice. I realized this on the eve of my birthday, when it became clear to me that snowballing into the same pattern of celebrations begins to gradually, but surely, lose its flavour.

When war kills not one but three of your children, what is there left besides hatred?

"Most of us now living have a chance for personal, physical immortality." This is the sentence French biologist and philosopher Jean Rostand (son of the writer Edmond de Rostand) used to begin the preface of a book on cryonics, The Prospect of Immortality, by the physics professor and science fiction writer Robert C. W. Ettinger.

It is not the environment or the circumstances, but the concept of the meaning of life that is fundamental to the course of our lives. Life remains dependent on the value it holds in the mirror of the mind. The way we live is the visible messenger of the invisible inner man. Every form of action is born of faith, and every form...

In 1991, authors William Strauss and Neil Howe published Generations, theorising that every 80 years (one generation cycle) would consist of four “turnings”. Beginning after a crisis, the first turning would involve a feeling of recovery, or “high”. The second would be a spiritual awakening, while the third would see the dissolution of institutions and the rise of individualism. And finally, a crisis...