it’s an enormous and very rare privilege
to have lived in the days of good
government across nations and centuries
few people have ever done so by a rare
bit of luck certain groups in a few
corners of the globe tasted decades of
this remarkable anomalous blessing they
might foolishly especially if they
traveled little seldom read history
books or had a very higher station of
their own populations they might even
have started to assume it was a natural
or god-given norm yet the default state
of almost all nations is quite other
it is authoritarianism bullying
demagoguery corruption monopolies racial
segregation and state-sponsored
aggression and murder
we will not now it seems be living in
dramatically unusual times it was the
years before that will be remembered as
unusual a daring bet against the facts
of our nature we aren’t sliding into a
new age of darkness we are reverting to
a mean civilization was always simply an
unlikely concept those who are afraid
are typically reassured by optimism all
will eventually be well but kindly tell
them but we need stiffer darker counsel
we should explore not what might ideally
happen which leaves us oscillating
painfully between hope and despair but
what will happen if the worst comes to
pass we need to make ourselves entirely
at home with catastrophe looking at it
squarely in the eye so is not to keep
catching glimpses of it here and there
and so taking frighten you every time we
stand to see that whatever comes to pass
will in a desperately reduced and
pitiful form still be survivable a home
could be built among the ruins there
might be some sort of life to be led
despite everything nothing is ever
properly unbearable not least because we
always retain access to the best escape
route
the stoic philosophers of ancient Rome
those poor souls agitated beyond compare
by the antics of their hysterical
thin-skinned murderous Emperor’s were
known to calm themselves down by holding
up their veins to the light and calling
out freedom knowing it could if it came
to that all be over in minutes we
shouldn’t be surprised by our fellow
citizens this is what the human animal
is really like very sweet at points from
close up usually generous to small
children and the elderly hard-working
but highly prone to delusion tribal
offended by strangers unning climbed to
rational analysis and with a fondness
for slaughter and reckless messianic
plans the elite routinely derided as out
of touch and not so on the basis of
forgetting how much milk or the rent
costs rather on the basis of forgetting
how dark and broken human nature really
is there’s a natural longing to do
something quickly and angrily there’s an
equal longing to give up and hide the
Council of quietism neither feels quite
right neither endurance nor explosion
the only true Avenue is to commit
ourselves to years of careful adroit
plotting to bring about a renewal of
that now evermore implausible dream a
land governed for a little while longer
by a spirit as fragile as crystal of
wisdom and tolerance [Music]
to have lived in the days of good
government across nations and centuries
few people have ever done so by a rare
bit of luck certain groups in a few
corners of the globe tasted decades of
this remarkable anomalous blessing they
might foolishly especially if they
traveled little seldom read history
books or had a very higher station of
their own populations they might even
have started to assume it was a natural
or god-given norm yet the default state
of almost all nations is quite other
it is authoritarianism bullying
demagoguery corruption monopolies racial
segregation and state-sponsored
aggression and murder
we will not now it seems be living in
dramatically unusual times it was the
years before that will be remembered as
unusual a daring bet against the facts
of our nature we aren’t sliding into a
new age of darkness we are reverting to
a mean civilization was always simply an
unlikely concept those who are afraid
are typically reassured by optimism all
will eventually be well but kindly tell
them but we need stiffer darker counsel
we should explore not what might ideally
happen which leaves us oscillating
painfully between hope and despair but
what will happen if the worst comes to
pass we need to make ourselves entirely
at home with catastrophe looking at it
squarely in the eye so is not to keep
catching glimpses of it here and there
and so taking frighten you every time we
stand to see that whatever comes to pass
will in a desperately reduced and
pitiful form still be survivable a home
could be built among the ruins there
might be some sort of life to be led
despite everything nothing is ever
properly unbearable not least because we
always retain access to the best escape
route
the stoic philosophers of ancient Rome
those poor souls agitated beyond compare
by the antics of their hysterical
thin-skinned murderous Emperor’s were
known to calm themselves down by holding
up their veins to the light and calling
out freedom knowing it could if it came
to that all be over in minutes we
shouldn’t be surprised by our fellow
citizens this is what the human animal
is really like very sweet at points from
close up usually generous to small
children and the elderly hard-working
but highly prone to delusion tribal
offended by strangers unning climbed to
rational analysis and with a fondness
for slaughter and reckless messianic
plans the elite routinely derided as out
of touch and not so on the basis of
forgetting how much milk or the rent
costs rather on the basis of forgetting
how dark and broken human nature really
is there’s a natural longing to do
something quickly and angrily there’s an
equal longing to give up and hide the
Council of quietism neither feels quite
right neither endurance nor explosion
the only true Avenue is to commit
ourselves to years of careful adroit
plotting to bring about a renewal of
that now evermore implausible dream a
land governed for a little while longer
by a spirit as fragile as crystal of
wisdom and tolerance [Music]
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