connect, combine, commune
"Self-Discovery, Skills of Mind, Generosity of Heart"
"At Your Side" — a reminder of partnership, reliability, and loyalty — worthy traits to practice! – slogan of Brother Industries Ltd, the international corporation founded in Japan in 1908
"We all know people, I hope, who bring out the best in us, people in whose presence we would be embarrassed to speak or act from unworthy motives, people who glow. In their presence we feel elevated. We are pushed, or nudged further along a path of development and perfection; rather, we are inspired to move ourselves along, in the direction shown. [….] We want to find a way of living whereby our best energies and talents are poured out so as to speak to and improve the best energies and talents of others. We want to utilize our highest parts and energies in a way that helps others to flourish.”
- ... Universal Flourishing — Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations, Chapter 5
... how might you contribute to humanity, and even deeper, to the well-being of the world ...? Such a question is not possible to answer in a purely intellectual way, because the effects of our actions go far beyond our understanding. We are deeply social and deeply instinctual animals, so much that our well-being depends on many things we do that are hard to explain in an intellectual way. That is why you do well to follow your heart and your passion. Bare reason is likely to lead you astray. None of us are smart and wise enough to figure it out intellectually. ...
... The world does not suffer from an oversupply of clarity and understanding (to put it mildly). ...
... [Our world] only exists in a living community ... that spreads understanding and breathes life into ideas both old and new. The real satisfaction ... is in learning from others and sharing with others. All of us have clear understanding of a few things and murky concepts of many more. There is no way to run out of ideas in need of clarification. The question of who is the first person to ever set foot on some square meter of land is really secondary. Revolutionary change does matter, but revolutions are few, and they are not self-sustaining – they depend very heavily on the community ...
- ... Clarity, Understanding, Community — Bill Thurston, writing about mathematics and life in response to the question "What's a Mathematician to Do?"; see also Thurston's 1994 paper "On proof and progress in mathematics"