Most of our institutions are in various states of collapse. Can we rebuild a Jeffersonian civil society that tolerates and celebrates diversity, despite rising fundamentalism, media concentration, and decades' neglect of civics?
Is it possible, as Dee Hock is attempting, to devise and propagate a beneficial "social virus"--an organizational pattern that takes over the governing mechanisms of failing institutions, redirects their metabolisms to more fruitful ends, and replicates itself?
Encouraging movements toward sustainability are emerging in the private sector, whose dynamism probably makes it a more important source of innovation and implementation than the public sector. How can this potentially radical change best be nurtured?
In my lifetime, two technologies have emerged--nuclear energy and genetic engineering--that are fit, in Bob Sinsheimer's words, "for a wise, far-seeing, and incorruptible people." Here comes a third--nanotechnology. How can people of lesser quality live with such unforgiving technologies' shadow side?
How can people steeped in an abiotic, mechanical, and fragmented worldview relearn to treat nature as model and mentor (in Wes Jackson's phrase) rather than as a nuisance to be evaded or eliminated? How can cultures weaned on Descartes and Limbaugh learn sacred connectedness from Thoreau and Leopold, from Rachel Carson, Wendell Berry, and Lewis Thomas?
How can we, as Dana Meadows asks, learn to satisfy nonmaterial needs in nonmaterial ways?
How can we make everything, as Einstein advised, "as simple as possible--but not simpler"?
If, as Abba Eban remarked, "People and nations behave wisely--once they have exhausted all other alternatives," are we getting pretty near the bottom of the list?
What are the questions we should now be asking but haven't yet thought of?
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