So this is one reason, a structural reason, why we get stuck inside this feeling of rightness.

This attachment to our own rightness keeps us from preventing mistakes when we absolutely need to and causes us to treat each other terribly.

This internal sense of rightness that we all experience so often is not a reliable guide to what is actually going on in the external world.

All empires, by definition, are bumbling, shambolic, bullying, bureaucratic affairs, as certain of the rightness of their cause in infancy, as they are corrupted by power in their dotage.

However, far from adopting a defeatist attitude, the Saharan people, being convinced of the rightness of their cause and the legitimacy of their struggle, had achieved in the camps what they had not achieved in Western Sahara.

Through these world conferences it has been possible to reach women in all walks of life in every corner of the globe and to awaken in them an awareness of the rightness of empowerment and equality and their entitlements.

And to me, if you really want to rediscover wonder, you need to step outside of that tiny, terrified space of rightness and look around at each other and look out at the vastness and complexity and mystery of the universe and be able to say, Wow, I don't know.

If many of those same viewers who have been impressed by China s successes in Beijing now also find themselves recoiling at the idea of a stronger and more prideful China, that is understandable. For strength unalloyed by checks and balances and by a capacity for self critical reflection about the rightness and wrongness of state action can be unnerving.