We have entered a new Middle Ages, a time of plague, famine, violence, extreme class disparity, and religious fanaticism—and also (as in the late Middle Ages) a time of profound discovery and change.  A time when it is terribly important, and often dangerous, to preserve values and knowledge—to stand up for visions that most of this crazed world can’t comprehend or tolerate.

The value of having an inner map of the world as it is (not as it’s broadcast) is this:  it allows you to know that your task is larger than yourself.  If you choose, just by virtue of being a decent person, you are entrusted with passing on something of value through a dark, crazy time—preserving your integrity, in your way, by your acts and your very breathing for those who will build again when this chaos exhausts itself.  People who assume the burden of their own integrity are free—because integrity is freedom, and (as Nelson Mandela proved) its force can’t be quelled even when a person of integrity is jailed.  The future lives in our individual, often lonely, and certainly unprofitable acts of integrity, or it doesn’t live at all.