Words&Dirt

“‘When loyalty is freely chosen, based on conscious decisions, we find it is fluid and dynamic. When loyalty is fear induced, as in many repressive regimes, it is deeply damaging. We are learning the kinds of strengths and skills we may need to determine the difference between the two for ourselves, so that we can make positive decisions about our own commitments as we mature. I may find out I am wrong when I am older, but in my personal experience I have found that most very young children are idealistic. They can tell the good from the bad, and, mostly, want to emulate the good, to be good people. When we are children, we are powerless, and, being plastic, we emulate the behavior of those around us and mirror their emotions. Thus, even in families where you might expect a happy result, unhappiness and resulting unpleasant behaviors are a part of life. Perhaps the gray areas of human behavior––lying, cheating, stealing––and most definitely the black areas of psychopathology––may be deviations from the norm that are actually sicknesses, illnesses that can be healed by the proper application of OPEN and optimal experience of empathic states, so that it will become almost psychically impossible to hurt others and look on without feeling remorse, pity, sorrow. However naive it may be, most children believe that a perfect world is possible.”

––Hieroglyph: Stories & Visions for a Better Future, “Girl in Wave : Wave in Girl,” by Kathleen Ann Goonan, pg. 66

“Throughout the centuries of the Republic’s history, its great men had sought to win glory, and to bring their enemies down. Nothing had changed over the years save the scale of opportunities on offer and the scope for mutual destruction that they had brought. To the Romans of a later age, mourning the death of their freedom, this was to be tragically clear. ‘By now,’ wrote Petronius of the Republic’s last generation, ‘the conquering Roman had the whole world in his hand, the sea, the land, the course of the stars. But still he wanted more.’ And because he wanted more, he took more; and because he took more, he wanted more. It was almost impossible for appetites so monstrous to be sated within the ancient limits of custom or morality. Pompey and Caesar, Rome’s greatest conquerors, had won resources for themselves beyond all the imaginings of previous generations. Now the consequences of such obscene power were becoming grimly apparent. Either man had the capability to destroy the Republic. Neither wished to do so, but deterrence, if it were to have any value, obliged both to prepare for the worst.”

––Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic, by Tom Holland, loc. 4527-34