The Aspen Institute

A weekly series reimagining a better society post COVID-19. Over the last six months we have looked broadly at the social contract, narrowly at the changes we’d like to make within ourselves, and consistently at the changes we’d like to see in society. What we inherit from the past is often familiar and comforting, even if the reasons for the habits of thought and action are unknown or un-thought. How rational should we be in judging the ways the past informs the present? Is reason the only criterion by which we judge what we have inherited as we work for a better society?