In the beginning Chronogram had a subtitle. It was “A Magazine of Events and Ideas.” In time it changed to the simple, rhythmic: “Arts. Culture. Spirit.” Then the subtitle disappeared, absorbed into the being of the magazine.
In youth, nature provides idealism. In this early stage of life we are given vital energy to take on strident beliefs like the yolk a chick eats until it’s ready to hatch. This force of inquiry into beliefs and experience, with its inherent struggle and suffering, opens the way to understanding and perhaps wisdom.
I think ideas are like seeds. Some are viable, meaning they possess a germ of life. Some will never grow but may metastasize. With this sensibility, I begin to be able to discern good ideas from bad ones.
For example, during the Axial Age teachers and philosophers from diverse cultures taught the Golden Rule. Confucius, Buddha, Zoroaster, Aristotle, Mahavira, Lao Tzu, Rabbi Hillel—all said we should treat others as we wish to be treated. A little later Jesus went further and said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
This is a big idea because it bears continual and unreasonable practice. Everything in life is against it. “Love your neighbor as yourself” is a seemingly impossible ideal. It is like the Buddhist Bodhisattva vows which begin with “sentient beings are numberless, I vow to save them.” The ideal too easily becomes a pleasant and unrealistic platitude easy to ignore.
I see that as I am, unconditional love is inconceivable. Too much fear, conceit, and self-concern is in the way. But I wish to be able to love. If the wish is strong enough, the idea of the Golden Rule may become a serious aim requiring a lifetime of effort and no guarantee of success.
But that is precisely what makes the Golden Rule a good idea. It gives a target beyond this life, an ideal to strive for that circumstances cannot mitigate. Rather its realization is assisted by the very difficulties it aims to overcome. They provide a source of resistance, something to engage and transform. Without this resistance, no work of transformation takes place. At the same time, the feeling of the reality of the ideal serves as a beacon.
In this sense, the true purpose of the mind is to keep attention on the image of the ideal. This is the map and compass, so that no matter where I find myself, I still know where I am going. The Greek word from which idea is hatched is ennoia, “act of thinking,” and its extension metanoia, “great discernment.” It implies a different use of the mind in which we work to employ the faculties of imagination, thought, and attention for a conscious purpose.
I don’t think the formulation “love your neighbor as yourself” is a simile. The ideal it points to is the understanding that other people are in actual fact, myself. This sounds impossible, naive, stupid even. But what if it were possible to have a sense of self that extended beyond one’s own skin? This is a different mode of consciousness.
I am invited to relax, to sacrifice the unnecessary suffering of trying to be someone and have things. Self-contractive impulses provide precisely the means to burn away the dross of separation and perhaps become able to love.
This idea that one could not only perceive but even love another as oneself points to a radically different worldview. In this view, we are part of a singular body of life, and our brief existence is part of a life too vast to comprehend.
The Golden Rule is but one example of a good idea. And I think there are other connected ideas (or ideals) that can serve a similar purpose. And there is a simple rubric for assessing the ideas. Does their application and elaboration lead to a sense of wholeness and love? If so, the idea in question is good.
This big idea provides a means of striving: germinating and growing a seed of viable knowledge into understanding. The striving is to struggle with the delusory and limiting ideas so as to see over the wall into the real world. These are the husk of the seed that has found fertile ground in the loam of my being. Sprouted, the idea strives toward the ideal as the seed strives toward the sun.
This article appears in June 2026.
