I BELIEVE

I'm a man given to fits of outrage and indignation. I was not well-educated, but have read just enough Plato, Socrates and Nitche to believe all the great insight there is to be found has already been located and reduced to language. That makes it accessible to all human beings, so I read as much as I could and, frankly, I am apalled at what I have read.

In a song long ago, Frankie Lane sang, "I believe for every drop of rain that falls a flower grows." It's a sweet thought, but we'd all be wading through flowers wherever we went if it were true. Frankie sang, "I believe that someone in that great somewhere hears every word." I like that too, but in all the wishing and hoping of a hundred centuries nowhere, ever has anyone produced so much as a shred of evidence to suggest anyone's listening. Sweet thoughts create magnificent images, but it was not the search for beauty that led us from the caves on earth to the craters of the moon -- it was the search for truth.

I believe. I do. I believe in logic and reality. I believe in the ugly truth and despise the glorious fantasy. I believe in justice even when it serves my enemy. And I believe in the America that never was, but should have been. I believe the function of all law is the abbreviation of freedom. I believe the greatest enemy of global peace is patriotism. I believe the engine which drives us toward apocolyptic extinction is powered by the notion that Man has a responsibility to die by fire and be sorted out at the feet of God. I believe. I do.

I once believed the essence of greatness was within each man. Now, it's plain only a tiny microcosm of men have known the call to challenges of consequence. The rest are like cows on a hill, grazing through life with no ambition above comfort and amusement; suffocating in a sea of bullshit.

Mankind is not great, but now and then there comes a great man. Great men die misunderstood by the rabble around them, villified by those they failed to vanquish and celebrated by those they conquered. In the end, the essence of greatness rests not with what discoveries men make, but with how well they are able to communicate their discoveries to the mob which defines them. Greatness is an architectural achievement. It is the building of bridges between ignorance and understanding. Such bridges are not fashioned by blades of steel, but by words and phrases, and even when that is done they must be open to the public. They must find a venue where they can be considered. They must be reduced to ink on a page, carved in stone or borne on the air for all to hear.

I believe a life without purpose is an empty vessel. I believe each man must create his own purpose. And I believe the purpose of great men is to illuminate those who may walk upon the bridges they build.