How many of those classic books just sit on shelves and coffee tables gathering dust in ordinary homes. Some people obviously care about aborted fetuses spliced into each other and zombie clones walking the planet. The mother squeezing fruit in the local supermarket has a right to know what her hands are touching. And, it is not all a mad dash by the pulpit-pounders and the terrorists for media coverage. However uneasy I may feel about queuing with some southern charismatic, I have to blow my tribune's horn before I sit down to my evening meal.
Some facts are indisputable.
The world is getting very crowded, and, surprisingly, not always where the prime farmland is. I am not so cynical to believe, that every adult is a self-serving predator, and, that altruism is genetically impossible. Some percentage of the adult population wants to do good, however that may be defined. Helping a majority of human beings, living and yet to be born, though, to the niceties of middle-class living just might be beyond the capabilities of the scientific magic wand. We just may have to depend upon the dismal science for salvation.