It was the period of the renaissance when Leonardo da Vinci was born on 15, April 1452. I have long felt it was proper to designate this day in honor of his life and Genius. As a tribute to Leonardo, I published volume one of UnCommon Sense—We Can All Win! on this day three years ago. That first volume provides the basic principles of synergic science as applied to human relationships. It discloses the scientific proof that it is possible for humanity to live together without war or conflict. (04/15/02)
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August Steiner-Zehender writes: Facts  and  knowledge  are functions of the temporal. Truth and wisdom are  functions  of  the  spiritual.   Facts  change  with new and more extensive    knowledge.     Truth   never   changes.    More knowledge does not mean more wisdom, but you already know that. … What   is  lacking  is  love.   What  proceeds  from  love  needs  no justification  and  does  no  harm.  Only that which is wrong requires justification.   Love  does not recognize race, religion, nationality. Love  does not seek to increase anything other than love.  No monetary gain,  no  national  interest,  no  creedal  adherence.  Love requires neither  laws nor rules.  What proceeds from love is only good and all love is the same thing and comes from the same source.  The difference is  only social relationship and cultural conditioning.  Name and form change  but  the  thing  remains the same.  The love you have for your parents, your children, your spouse, your neighbors and friends is not separate and different.  Only  how it is exhibited changes.  (And I am not  speaking  of  carnality here.  Sex may either be an expression of love or merely a physical act.)  Love requires at least 2 things.  The first  being  selflessness  and  the  second  service to ones fellows. Perhaps more, but at least those two things. (04/15/02)
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Wendell Berry writes: My hope, I must say, subsists on an extremely meager diet-a reducer’s diet. It takes some strength from the knowledge that we may be looking doom squarely in the face, from the knowledge that human beings, let alone human societies, cannot live indefinitely by poison and fire. It takes some strength from knowing that more and more people seem to have this knowledge; more and more people seem to know that we now have to choose consciously, perhaps for the first time in human history, between doom and something better. My hope feeds, however uneasily, on such a phrase as “the forest commons” that has recently floated up into public discussion. I think I know the worry and the hope from which that phrase comes. It comes from a growing awareness of the mutuality of the health of human beings and the health of nature, and this is encouraging. I am uneasy about it because I think I know also what the word “commons” means. It means a property belonging to a community, which the community members are free to use because they will use it with culturally prescribed care and restraint. I do not think that this even remotely applies to us. (04/15/02)
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