this crown"

What the ancients knew that contemporary society seems unable to grasp is that civilization is built upon the foundation of a public trust. When that trust diminishes or erodes the civilization built upon it, inevitably, collapses.

A much used analogy in present time is that of the Pyramid; to explain the various schemes of the money worshipers; what seems lost in translation, is the expendability of the capstone and the limitedness of the base. Maybe if those properties were accentuated we can eventually comprehend why Egyptian civilization had such a long reign and remains the only civilization with evidentiary proof of an external cause for its demise. Every so-called civilization which arose after the vaunted Egyptian civilization saw the genesis of its demise from within. Maybe we need to rethink that analogy of the prodigal son.

Recently, I caught a few frames of the movie tribute to the Mahatma, Mohandas Gandhi; on his march to the sea to make salt a reporter asked him of his purpose, Gandhi responded by telling him that his act of civil disobedience was to show the British Empire that the power was with the people, right after their exchange a second reporter asked the first reporter what Gandhi had said and he responded “He said: HE had the power.” The reason ‘the collective power’ got translated into ‘the singular power’ I imagine is the same reason Martin Luther King got to the mountain top and his associates remained at the foothill; no matter how far back in history we travel the same is true for humanity’s Heroes. They make themselves examples, in other words they become the sacrifice or scapegoat and we, the masses, generate Icons or Messiahs.

As Michael Joseph Jackson so aptly sung “that’s what you get for being polite;” and it’s sad that he died before his hope that every human start with the ‘man in a mirror’ was realized. Those who mourn, assuming they got the message, can take courage in the fact that he was not the first; and the truth is human extinction seems more probable than the probability of that dream.

According to the English language, ‘Polite’ is a synonym for civil and the word ‘Civil’ is the foundation of the word civilization; so if you’re impolite you’re uncivilized, no excuses. President Obama had as his campaign theme song Stevie Wonder’s ‘Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m yours.’ I love Stevie Wonder but the song always struck me as inappropriate. It seems the framers of his rhetoric understood all too well the human proclivity for scapegoating; whether we believe Obama to be the genuine article or not, he alone cannot solve the problems of this nation much less this world; the most he can do is as MJJ also sang in what might have been a more appropriate theme song, ‘Show you the way to go.’