Publius <m.publius@nospam.comcast.net> wrote in message

Nemesis_2@hotmail.co.uk (nemesis_2@hotmail.co.uk) wrote in
news:8bad7b6f.0502101403.bf07b33@posting.google.com:

Change in conditions of freedom may often be ephemeral and trivial.
Change under enlightened direction - not always despotic - may be
enduring and dramatic. Might I mention a few names: King, Mandela,
Gorbachov, Lincoln, Gandhi, Ataturk, Nightingale, Darwin, Asoka,
Bolivar...and many more.

There is a difference between "leaders in a field" and "leaders of the
people." The former are innovators who attract willing followers. The
latter are sheepherders, despots who typically lead at gunpoint. The

appear under conditions of frredom; the latter under conditions of
despotism.

Really, good Publius, you are disappearing further up a certain part
of your anatomy. There are all kinds of leaders and they appear in all
kinds of situations. My wish is both for opinion-formers and for your
quaintly titled leaders of the people. As already obsrved I call this
age Humanisation, an age when the natural dynmaic of human society is
finally made possible. I don't see anything hugely unreal about this.
We are a species possessed of a particular range of abilities. These
abilities were constrained by ignorance and oppression down the years.
Finally, after prolonged struggle, we may express ourselves as we want
to express ourselves. Not all of us yet - but more and more of us.

This is no utopia I promise. Our expressed lives are really quite
banal. That's because most of us are really quite banal. The benefits
of the recognition I advocate will not be seen in a rush of sonnets
and symnphonies - but in some enhancement of our own self-image as a
species; also, I hope, in some enhancement of our capacity to live
together. After all, our coming together in so-called Globalisation is
no more than a grand meeting up after millennia of wandering apart.

The species is meeting up again after that sad parting in some glade
in Kenya or somewhere. We meet up at last, bringing with us all our
new learning and our advanced concepts of freedom and much else too.
In such an exciting age - an age, certainly, of vast freedom - we
need wise leaders and intelligent opinion-formers. Not George W.Bush.
Anybody but Bush.

You must support those views, good Publius.

After all, our coming together in so-called Globalisation is
no more than a grand meeting up after millennia of wandering apart.
The species is meeting up again after that sad parting in some glade
in Kenya or somewhere. We meet up at last, bringing with us all our
new learning and our advanced concepts of freedom and much else too.
In such an exciting age - an age, certainly, of vast freedom - we
need wise leaders and intelligent opinion-formers. Not George W.Bush.
Anybody but Bush.

Nemesis_2@hotmail.co.uk wrote:

Did I say that?

I call our age Humanisation: the natural global dynmaic of human
society unfettered by ignorance or oppression.

Plenty of ignorance still about. How can you be so blind? Plenty of
oppression too. How can be so indifferent to the suffering of

Indeed, sir, you are so right. And there will always be ignorance
about. If you can conceive of a global population of 7 billion people
without a ration of ignorance than you are a better man than I, Gunga
Din. It's a question of degree.

This is not a "value"

call. I'm not saying our age is "great" or anything like that -

merely

that it represents the natural expression of human capacity, a
capacity we, or our forebears, developed during the latter stages

of

our evolution.

The natural expression of human capacity? How can you know what

is? How can you be sure that we are anywhere near our capacity?

arrogance!

Our "natural capacity" should not be confused with what we may do,
create, invent, discover etc in the next million years. It's a

of our intellect, our - so-called - emotional i.q., our responses etc

in other words what makes us human. I believe we evolved with a
particular quite finite range of abilities. Some ignorance (see

much error, much oppression, much superstition...curbed our

of these abilities for millennia. Now, however, most of us may

our faculties fairly freely. It's a modest claim, really.

But...I think that recognition of this salient fact will impart

value.

Recognising our natural abilities and recognising how far we have

come

will impart a sense of worth that we lack today.
And there are other qualities we possess. i say we are "the mind

matter, the eyes, ears and voice of the known universe". There is

role there, a role profound enough for anybody.

The mind of matter? What nonsense!

If you say so. Matter, in the form we know it, has been around 12
billion years, or so. We are the only creature we know (itself, of
course, a weakness) who may analyse the nature of matter, who may
describe its composition, who may delineate and categorise its many
forms, who may trace its "expression" in the form of a universe, who
may
celebrate that universe, who may monitor such events and phenomena as
occur in it. All such activities are cerebral, i.e. are expressions

the mind. In that sense - and probably also in some symbolic sense

in "he is the heart, or the piller, or the soul, of his community") -
we might be said to be the mind of matter.