Home

About

Contents

Guidelines

Glossary

Contacts

Discussion

Recent Discussion

Create New Topic

Membership

Join Now

Login

Why write this book?

Author:		Stephen Waters
Posted:		4/23/04; 2:39:07 PM
Topic:		Why write this book?
Msg #:		92 (top msg in thread)
Prev/Next:		91/93
Reads:		6077

Each of us our own protection. Those who can see The Way as Confucius calls it and those who might not deserve protection from damage from the whims of those who cannot see The Way. If it is evolutionarily an advantage to see The Way, it will catch on if both the time and the circumstances are favorable. If not, then perhaps someone in the future may find this book the way I found Seneca, 1900 years after he wrote; Montaigne, 300 years after he wrote, and others.

Retire into yourself as much as you can. Associate with people who are likely to improve you. Welcome those whom you are capable of improving. The process is a mutual one: Men learn as they teach. And there is no reason why any pride in advertising your talents abroad should lure you forward into the public eye, inducing you to give readings of your works or deliver lectures. I should be glad to see you doing that if what you had to offer was suitable for the crowd I have been talking about: but the fact is, not one of them is really capable of understanding you. You might perhaps come across one here and there, but even they would need to be trained and developed by you to a point where they could grasp your teaching. `For whose benefit, then, did I learn it all?' If it was for your own benefit that you learnt it you have no call to fear that your trouble may have been wasted.¹ 

Why would it be possible to succeed now when we have not before?

Certainly, ordinary people have access to more information than ever before. However, it is beyond most of their skills to decide what to extract from it and how to use it.

Information without the skill to process it can be dangerous. Information can foster weakness. Today at war, everyone is exposed to war's grisly nature. People see atrocity. Atrocity is unacceptable. So war is unacceptable. If there was war, even if we had the equipment and manpower to fight, we haven't the stomach for it. Militant nations have traditionally motivated their forces through ignorance, coercion, myths, religion, idealism and misused patriotism. Our country can no longer rely on such methods. This is well understood around the world and is a dangerous perception. The United States is not, after all, impotent.

     --------------------
¹ Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. Letters from a Stoic. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1969. Pg. 43.

[Macro error: Can’t call the script because the name “commentIt” hasn’t been defined.] [Macro error: Can’t call the script because the name “commentIt” hasn’t been defined.]