First Blog

What’s good about the world?   We’re not looking for miracles or final results. We are looking for improvement.   Let’s not look at the world we don’t have now, but look more at the far and recent past where almost nothing was possible, available, accessible, and the like.  Our list does not include everyone everywhere.   Progress is not constant nor uniform.   In some places forward steps come in leaps while in others backward steps seem the rule.   With all we hear daily of riots here, wars there, violence in the streets, intrigue in the palace, assassinations,   subversions, perversions, and all others, we take a pause and consider what we have is far, far beyond the situations of almost all only a century or two ago.       We now live in a world where most people --- Have some civil rights. Have basic schooling. Have machines to make life easier. Have food produced by an agricultural bounty. Have some rights to practice a religion of choice. Are neither s

Euphoria and Utopia.  Similar sounding but these very different words are related.  For if you have visions of Utopia, you are imbued with a sense of euphoria.  If you have Euphoria as related to society, it may well be you have some utopia in mind. Utopias, BTW, encompass all forms of socialism including communism, even some devoid of politics.  However, did you know there were quite a number of Utopian regimes begun with Martin Luther’s Reformation? All failed. Indeed, with the demise of kingship, many utopias have emerged from time-to-time.  Utopian concepts seem not to work in practice, but that does not deter novices who cannot learn from the past.  Their default position is, “This time we’ll do it right.”  I wonder if Plato really understood with publication of his seminal “Republic,” the first entry to Utopian worlds, he had opened a Pandora’s box of perpetual conflicts.  I suspect he did, and with a smallish grin unleashed it to the world.  

Dangerous Quotes – the talking points of our world. Many if not most Americans are moved by quotes, in fact simple quotes.   Here are three that may resonate. What’s good for General Motors is good for the country. Power to the people. In God’s name … (fill it in) Today we consider a quote from Cervantes’ Don Quixote . “ When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!”   Persuasive? Yes.   Articulate? Yes. Simple? Yes. Accurate?   Well, maybe but…   It is completely open ended, without any indication of what “should be”   should be.   It leaves to the reader the full imagination of possible worlds that could be.   It is attractive to a spectrum of opinion.   The most ardent Nazi and most dedicated Communist can both rally around. This is one problem today in the USA and