To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility

We are here to make a difference, to mend the fractures of the world, a day at a time, an act at a time, for as long as it takes to make it a place of justice and compassion where the lonely are not alone, the poor not without help; where the cry of the vulnerable is heeded and those who are wronged are heard.

They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.6

Each generation, said the sages, has its own seekers and search, its own leaders and challenges.17 So each of us has our own task, our unique gifts, our singular contribution to make. For each of us there is something no one else could do, and it is not least for this that we were created.

Homo sapiens is the meaning-seeking animal, Frankl argued. But to preserve meaning in desperate circumstances we must be able, or be helped, to do a number of things. First is the refusal to believe that we are victims of fate.

That is what is wrong with the will to power. I purchase my freedom at the cost of yours.

The Hebrew contains an extraordinary play on words, untranslatable into English.

‘Sanctifying the name’ is no mere marginal addendum to the script of Jewish life but its very point: to bring God’s presence into the world by making others aware that God’s word sanctifies life.

in the long term under such conditions. Morality is the history of humanity’s attempts to construct a common life on the basis of shared codes, conventions and convictions.

Happiness, as opposed to pleasure, is a matter of a life well lived, one that honours the important, not just the urgent.

believe it stems from the rejection of the blame culture.