The Illahee Institute has Ronald Wright up to bat at the lectern tomorow night. How exquisitely, perfect at this point in History. Wright argues that our modern predicament is as old as civilization, a 10,000-year experiment we have unleashed but seldom controlled. Only by understanding the patterns of triumph and disaster that humanity has repeated around the world since the Stone Age can we recognize civilizations's inherent dangers, and, with luck and wisdom, shape its outcome. As we embark on the 21st century we have the opportunity to examine the consequences of past shifts in power, and look at scenarios in which progress - political, economic, and social - contributes to human welfare. Concentrations of raw power - America, Chin and the rest...Israel - take shape the same way a coral reef grows its three dimensional fractal self. But, alas, the tiny human creatures inhabiting their ossified halls still think in two dimensional ways. Thus, power, instead of flowing throughout the structure to the benefit of all the tiny human creatures, has aligned itself on opposite sides of a Flat Earth and unleashed the hounds of war.
So it is that we find ourselves reporting on the 95th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, the continuing Israeli campaign of terror, the deadly thunder of American ignorance...
- KBOO