If There Were A Better, Clearer, Shorter

I Want To Find A Way Of Speaking To Fellow Human Beings That Will Be Cool Rather Than Heated, Philosophical Rather Than Polemical, That Will Bring Enlightenment Rather Than Seeking To Divide Us Into The Righteous And The Sinners, The Saved And The Damned, The Sheep And The Goats.

The Idea Of Writer As Sage Is Pretty Much Dead Today. I Would Certainly Feel Very Uncomfortable In The Role.

To The Last We Have Learned Nothing. In All Of Us, Deep Down, There Seems To Be Something Granite And Unteachable. No One Truly Believes, Despite The Hysteria In The Streets That The World Of Tranquil Certainties We Were Born Into Is About To Be Extinguished.

One Thought Alone Preoccupies The Submerged Mind Of Empire: How Not To End, How Not To Die, How To Prolong Its Era. By Day It Pursues Its Enemies. It Is Cunning And Ruthless, It Sends Its Bloodhounds Everywhere. By Night It Feeds On Images Of Disaster: The Sack Of Cities, The Rape Of Populations, Pyramids Of Bones, Acres Of Desolation.

What Is Miraculous About The Past Is That We Have Succeeded--god Knows How--in Making Thousands And Millions Of Individual Human Beings, Lock Well Enought Into One Another To Give Us What Looks Like A Common Past, A Shared Story.