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These
are really the thoughts of all men
in all ages and lands,
they are not original with me,
If they are not yours as much as mine
they are nothing
or next to nothing
If they are not the riddle
and the untying of the riddle
they are nothing,
This is the grass that grows wherever the land is
and the water is.
This is the common air that bathes the globe.
—Walt Whitman
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These are particular manifestations or expressions of the eternal
vision and the immortal message for the balanced evolution of humanity,
individually and as a whole. For the purpose of morality or ethics is
to create ever-increasing balance and harmony within and among people,
from which spring forth happiness and fulfillment, the pursuit of which
is the univeral purpose of human life.
The Twilight Club is an ethical movement dedicated to the
realization of this universal purpose of human life, to pursue happiness
and fulfillment through the creation of ever-increasing balance and
harmony within and among people, and thereby to achieve the balanced
evolution of humanity, individually and as a whole.
Evolution is cogently defined by the evolutionary systems theorist
Erich Jantsch as the process of "self-realization through
self-transcendence." The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead viewed
evolution as the manifestation of "creativity," the cosmic
drive towards the endless production of new syntheses. The philosopher
Herbert Spencer, founder of the Twilight Club, who was one of the first
thinkers to apply the theory of evolution to philosophy and ethics,
presciently saw that ethics is an integral part of the successful
evolution of human society, and that the trend of moral decline would
therefore precipitate its devolution.
The trend of moral decline exists today, as it did when the Twilight
Club was first established. It was against this trend that Herbert
Spencer, along with other philosophers and poets, founded the Twilight
Club. It is against this trend that we now establish the new Twilight
Club. However, the Twilight Club is not merely against the trend of
moral decline, which would simply make it a reactionary movement, but,
more importantly, it is for the creation of ethical society and moral
community. Study of history shows that all successful societies had
strong moral bases, and that social morality and economic prosperity
are indissolubly linked.
As the world moves ever deeper into the Information Age, necessitating
a radical reconfiguration of social, economic, and political
organizations, humanity is confronted increasingly with an
unprecedented yet inescapable challenge: to transform its basic modes
of thinking and action in accord with emerging technologies and the
resultant societal reorganization, while establishing a strong moral
foundation upon which to build a new civlization.
Where there is no evolution, there will be devolution; where there is
no self-transformation, there will be self-dissolution. In the receding
shadow of the Industrial Age, in the dawning light of the Information
Age, humanity faces a crisis and an opporunity, unprecedented in both
their nature and scope, that is, a crisis of
self-devolution/dissolution, and an opportunity for
self-evolution/transformation. And though it is primarily technology
that drives the outer transformation of the world, it is the inner
ethic that makes that transformation succeed.
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