Tenser, said the Tensor. Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun.
Real equality is immensely difficult to achieve, it needs continual revision and monitoring of distributions. And it does not provide buffers between members, so they are continually colliding or frustrating each other.
As a global community, we face a choice. Do we want migration to be a source of prosperity and international solidarity, or a byword for inhumanity and social friction?
Morality arose largely as an empirical defence of the individual and society. Ever since intelligent beings began to be in contact, and consequently in friction, they have felt the need to guard themselves against each other's encroachments.
Manners are the lubricating oil of an organization. It is a law of nature that two moving bodies in contact with each other create friction. This is as true for human beings as it is for inanimate objects.
In a culture, manners are the lubrication that ease the frictions of social contacts.
To be right with God has often meant to be in trouble with men. This is such a common truth that one hesitates to mention it, yet it appears to have been overlooked by the majority of Christians today.
We are a multicultural society in a continuous state of abrasion.
You could take any four people, no matter how wonderful they are, and if you make them live together on a tour bus for eight years and don't give them any time off, after a while everybody gonna start going crazy.
Etiquette is the grease that makes it possible for all of us to rub together without unnecessary overheating.
Those people who are uncomfortable in themselves are disagreeable to others.
Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.
Lying increases the creative faculties, expands the ego, and lessens the frictions of social contacts.
In the big factory of perfecting human souls, the Earth was kind of tumbler. The sale as the kind people use to polish rocks. All souls come here to rub the sharp edges off each other. This isn't suffering. It's erosion.
If you are a human being, you might as well face it. You are going to rub a lot of people the wrong way.
