Locklands (The Founders Trilogy, #3)

by Robert Jackson Bennett

Aloneness is different from loneliness: loneliness is an emotional state, but aloneness is the intense awareness that you do not have support.

it is that the innovations of our species do not yield dividends on their own. They only bring prosperity when they are paired with a society, a culture, or a people who can use them to their utmost.

If we find ourselves unable to take advantage of the many gifts that our brilliance has bestowed upon us, then it is my suspicion that there is no tinkering that can make those gifts function as they ought. Rather, it is upon the people to change themselves: to reshape, reconfigure, and rearrange the architectures of our societies—perhaps in small ways, or large—to allow prosperity and abundance for all to flow through. This seems like pithy precept, but it is the natural tension of our species for there to be some gap between our brilliance and our wisdom. The question is how far we should allow them to diverge, and what works can close that gap, and how fast they can close it.