Michael Lissack and the fads and fashions of changing lifestyles and styles of work. The call is to feel the ground swell underneath the events and perceive the direction they are taking: to perceive the evolutionary trend as it drives social change in our world. As we each bear some piece of this responsibility, our govern- ing institutions bear it more. The call is for a new and urgently needed form of thinking -- for a new model of governing organized and defining itself around the central goal of improving the quality of life. Charles Taylor phrased it best, “a society can be organized around a definition of the good life, without this being seen as a depreciation of those who do not personally share this definition. Where the nature of the good requires that it be sought in common, this is the reason for it being a matter of public policy. According to this conception, a liberal society singles itself out as such by the way in which it treats minorities, including those who do not share public definitions of the good, and above all by the rights it accords to all of its members. But now the rights in question are conceived to be the fundamental and crucial ones recognized as such from the very beginning of the liberal tradition: rights to life, liberty, due process, free speech, free practice of religion, and so on.” “One has to distinguish the fundamental liberties, those that should never be infringed and therefore ought to be unassailably entrenched, on one hand, from privileges and immunities that are important, but that can be revoked or restricted for reasons of public policy - although one would need a strong reason to do this - on the other. A society with strong collective goals can be liberal, on this view, provided it is also capable of respecting diversity, especially when dealing with those who do not share its common goals; and provided it can offer adequate safeguards for fundamental rights. There will undoubtedly be tensions and difficulties in pursuing these ob- jectives together, but such a pursuit is not impossible, and the problems are not in principle greater than those encountered by any liberal society that has to combine, for example, liberty and equality, or prosperity and justice.” Picking up from Taylor, what is essential is that our society has a goal or set of goals to espouse and that it conducts its public life accordingly. To me the goal -- the overriding goal -- is for a continual improvement in our
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