David Smail

Science is about our passionate conviction that we are placed within a universe that is not simply the result of our imaginings, and our longing and determination to understand it. Ultimately, science is about reality, truth and freedom.

People can and often do ignore or deny their common humanity with others, or deny, at least implicitly, that their common humanity commits them to sympathy or compassion for those less advantaged than themselves. Indeed, such an attitude towards one's fellows can be represented as tough, uncompromising, positively heroic: the supermen versus the wimps. But just as this ruthless world may be chosen - as it is chosen by the current rulers of the globalised neo-liberal market - so if may also be rejected.

The social havoc wreaked by unfettered economic greed comes to be interiorised as the personal weakness and irresponsibility of those principally affected.

There is, I suggest, a strong positive correlation between a) the height of the rung occupied on the ladder of power, b) the strength of a sense of personal virtue, and c) the firmness of the conviction that those lower down could and certainly should act more responsibly.

Suffering is a form of knowledge. It tells us what is wrong with our world.

The principle locations of exploitation have moved, through the mechanism of 'globalisation', to where most of us can't see them and don't really care about them if we do.

It is incumbent upon us to do what we can, even if we cannot do much.