With so much of our attention focused on decline of world order, are we over emphasizing the negatives? What would a just world look like and what steps might be taken to achieve it?

The annual Winter Lecture Series is free and open to the public. Lectures will be held from 7-9 p.m. on Sunday evenings from February 18 through March 25 at the Unitarian Church of Lincoln, 6300 A Street, Lincoln, Neb. The series is sponsored by the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UNL and the Unitarian Church with programming funded in part by the Humanities Nebraska and the Nebraska Cultural Endowment.

There has been much gloom and doom lately, stimulated by continuing terrorism, the resurgence of narrow nationalism, continuing economic inequalities, evident racism, global warming, and the displacement of refugees from conflicts and from inadequate economies.

With our attention there, we sometimes overlook countervailing patterns such as the decline of war among great powers, increasing attempts to manage other forms of violence, greater international scientific cooperation, less global poverty, less hunger, lower child mortality, etc.

Have we over emphasized the negatives? Within the limits of five lectures and a concluding panel, the 2018 Winter Lecture series have selected the following issues, paying special attention to progressive steps in each.