In recent times we have abandoned the idea of an orderly, perfect, eternal universe in exchange for an expanding universe where order, disorder, and organization are at play in a complementary, competitive, agonistic dance, and we have learned that our Earth is a tiny top revolving around a star that wanders at the periphery of a small suburban galaxy.

The cosmic epic of organization endlessly subject to forces of disorganization and disperion is also the epic of connection [reliance] which kept the cosmos from dispersing or disappearing as soon as it came into being.

In the heart of the cosmic adventure, at the furthest point of the prodigious development of a singular branch of living self-organization, we pursue the adventure in our own way.

Ethics cannot be taught as a moral lesson. It must take shape in people’s minds thorugh awareness that a human being is at one and the same time and individual, a member of a society, a member of species.

A new conscience is emerging: humanity is swept up in an unpredictable adventure. Awareness of being united in life and death connects us to each other in our community of planetary fate.

Citations from Seven complex lessons in educatin for the future. Paris, UNESCO, 1999.