Genesis

by Bernard Beckett

Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism. It is the belief that problems can be solved, differences resolved. It is a type of confidence. And it is fragile. It can be blackened by fear, and superstition.

It is possible, I believe, to be both shrewd and competent, yet still be overrun by circumstance.

Conspiracy theory fails because it assumes people have within them the means to achieve their ends.

The only thing binding individuals together is ideas. Ideas mutate, and spread; they change their hosts as much as their hosts change them.

Many scholars have complained of our tendency to see history only in conflicts, but I am not convinced they are right. It is in conflict that our values are exposed.

Thought, like any parasite, cannot exist without a compliant host.

This is always the problem with building heroes. To keep them pure, we must build them stupid. The world is built on compromise and uncertainty, and such a place is too complex for heroes to flourish.

“It is possible to know without understanding,” Pericles had told her once. “Knowing starts as a feeling. Understanding is the process of excavation, of clearing a path from feeling to daylight.”