We are radically different
and radically alike.
We are extensively differentiated
yet bound together.

…that of the strong
protecting and standing for the weak.
..because most people cease to believe
[this] its conceit.

—excerpt The Ignoble Lie
By Patrick Deneen

“They use this phrase to refer to the mushroom cloud over the whole earth. ‘Sic transit mundus.’ I wonder how the spaceship could have escaped in time.”

—excerpt Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.

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Read an essay this morning, The Ignoble Lie by Patrick Deneen.  The essay is a consideration of an idea from Plato’s Republic.  The idea is that a society must be founded upon a myth, a story that serves to blend the contradiction between the observed, hard-edged difference between us as individual humans, and the common origin which is of equal mandate that we recognize.  Only as we are able to hold both in a productive tension, and uneasy, discomfited balance—are we able to avoid “a war of all against all.”  An open ended arms race either politically within a society, or materially, actually, in terms of technology and arms buildup between nations —can only have one ending.

I remembered reading Walter Miller’s great work of science fiction, Canticle for Liebowitz, many years ago.  The story affected me deeply and I’ve not been able to forget the pathos of the tale.

In these days, in the aftermath of the election of the wanna-be-despot President, Miller’s story has renewed relevancy.