There’s a phrase in Latin that refuses to let us hide: hic et nunc—here and now.

Whatever your story—your religion, your cosmology, your philosophy of where souls come from or where they’re headed—today you are a human among humans. You woke up inside this species, on this planet, with agency. That is enough to give you a duty.

Respect the origin story. Respect the destination. But protect the present.

I’m convinced of something simple: if, by whatever cosmic lottery, your consciousness ended up in a living human, then you are responsible for what happens to us—now. Not responsible for everything, but responsible to someone. Responsible for the choices you touch, the systems you influence, the harms you prevent, the goods you can advance.

This isn’t a rejection of belief. Believe in heaven or samsara, in providence or probability. Believe that we are partly spirit, that our souls are made of something infinite. Fine. But if those beliefs lead you to neglect the person in front of you, you’re missing the assignment. The assignment is the human being in your blast radius—today.

No Royalty, No Exceptions

It doesn’t matter the story you tell about your past lives or future destinies. You are not royalty from yesterday, nor guaranteed glory tomorrow. Here, you are flesh. Here, you will die. Strip away the myths, and we are the same stuff—bodies that bruise, hunger, break, and heal.

The great equalizer is mortality. If we can’t act as equals in the face of that, no mythology will save us.

Tolerance, With a Spine

We should honor pluralism. I will fight for your right to worship, to doubt, to reason, to dance with the mystery. But there’s a hard edge to this: we cannot tolerate ideologies that aim to erase people. If an idea celebrates the degradation, starvation, dispossession, or extermination of humans, it is not “just another perspective.” It’s a demolition plan.

Tolerance requires boundaries. Otherwise it becomes complicity dressed up as virtue.

Across many traditions, people imagine a final separation—hell, annihilation, eternal death. Hold your doctrine if you must, but never be at peace with the idea of another person’s ruin. No believer should accept, with a calm heart, that the neighbor is headed for hell and leave it at that. A faith that doesn’t ache for every soul has misheard its own song.

If your story says some are destined for darkness, then your duty is to make sure no one meets that darkness because of your hand, your policy, your product, or your silence. Refuse anyone’s damnation and you will refuse to build hell on earth. Don’t outsource compassion to the afterlife; protect the living now so there are fewer wounds to judge.

This is the link we’re missing: a posture that cannot be okay with another’s eternal loss—and therefore refuses their earthly abandonment. Grief becomes fuel; conviction becomes solidarity; doctrine becomes a demand to serve.

The Minimums We Owe Each Other

Let’s draw a bright line around the minimum a decent society provides—no mysticism required:

  • Education: so people can think, decide, and build.
  • Food: so no one is bargaining with their conscience on an empty stomach.
  • Shelter: so a bad month doesn’t become a bad life.
  • Healthcare: so the unlucky are not also the abandoned.
  • Contribution: so everyone who can work, does—because someone must teach, heal, build, and grow.

These are not luxuries. They are the operating system that lets freedom and responsibility actually run. Without them, talk of “choice” is marketing copy.

Giving Must Flow Both Ways

Receiving is not the end of the story—contribution is not optional. A society of dignity is not one where some only give and others only take. Everyone has something to offer, and everyone has something to receive.

From the top down, generosity should flow. And from the bottom up, gratitude and contribution—of time, energy, creativity, solidarity—should rise. This is not about forcing symmetry, but about cultivating reciprocity.

Charity without participation breeds dependency. Participation without generosity breeds exploitation. We need both: a circulation of care, a loop of responsibility.

Responsibility Scales

Responsibility is fractal: it looks the same at every zoom level.

  • Personally, it’s how you speak, what you share, what you buy, who you help, what you refuse to normalize.
  • Professionally, it’s how you build systems—secure by default, humane by design, efficient without dehumanization.
  • Civically, it’s how you vote, what you fund, which leaders you hold to account, which policies you insist must meet the threshold of human dignity.

No one can do everything. Everyone can do something. The aggregate of small refusals and small protections adds up to culture.

Respect the Stories, Guard the People

Origins and destinations matter. They give meaning and courage. They hold grief. They sing hope. Keep them. Share them. Let them shape the best of you.

But when a story demands that you look away from a hungry child, from a bombed hospital, from a neighbor priced out of shelter, from a friend rationing insulin—that story has become an idol. Break it. Keep the love; lose the cruelty.

Here and Now

We are temporary, but our choices echo. The point of life is not to pass the test of a doctrine while failing the test of compassion. The point is to leave fewer wounds than we found, to widen the circle of “us,” to make it easier for the next person to breathe.

So: respect the origin. Respect the destination. But do what is best for humanity here and now. Do not tolerate the intolerant. Educate. Feed. Shelter. Heal. Build systems that make those things default. Give and receive in a loop of dignity.

Period.