We need to see ourselves as agents of change, to see ourselves as capable of engaging and empowering fellow travelers overseas, as opposed to shrinking our presence and abandoning the powerful agents of change in the Arab world precisely when they need our friendship the most.
The corollary is believing that we ourselves are capable of nothing but good, and so failing to see where we also go wrong.
If our moral beliefs are dictated by our culture or way of life, he argued, then it is senseless to think of ourselves as capable of discerning objective moral truths; what room is left for such facts to make an impact on our consciousness?
Newton's system strongly encourages the Enlightenment conception of nature as an orderly domain governed by strict mathematical-dynamical laws and the conception of ourselves as capable of knowing those laws and thus plumbing the secrets of nature through the exercise of our unaided faculties.
Until we view animals, as we view ourselves, as beings capable of feeling pain and joy and as worthy of respect, human violence toward nature will continue unabated.
Peer Steinbrück, the German finance minister, said in February that if a euro-area country found itself in trouble, "we will show ourselves to be capable of acting".
