“The abilities of man must fall short on one side or the other, like too scanty a blanket when you are abed. If you pull it upon your shoulders, your feet are left bare; if you thrust it down to your feet, your shoulders are uncovered.”
-Thomas Paine

We’re a social animal, more or less. It is through collective effort the we survive and thrive; a selection of evolution that helped us to spread across the planet and populate it with six-and-a-half billion people.

Almost every one of those billions of people depend on at least one other to survive. No man is an island, and when he pulls the cloak of solitude and sufficiency around him, a chill wind still blows.

Through the cooperation and assistance of others, we can build a fire against the cold night and survive another day.

“I am apt to think that the wisest men dream the most inconsistently. For as the judgment has nothing or very little to do in regulating the circumstances of a dream, it necessarily follows that the more powerful and creative the imagination is, the wilder it runs in that state of unrestrained invention; while those who are unable to wander out of the track of common thinking when awake, never exceed the boundaries of common nature when asleep.”

A mysterious, yet essential, aspect of life; whose meaning is at all times open to the widest interpretation.

We dream to allow the inner life free reign to explore the world, unfettered by the constraints of the physical world. It is the imagination at play.

And it is those that allow for a playful imagination that will probably save the world.

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“Every person of learning is finally his own teacher, the reason of which is that principles, being a distinct quality to circumstances, cannot be impressed upon the memory; their place of mental residence is the understanding and they are never so lasting as when they begin by conception.”

Others can only show the way toward true knowledge; present concepts, facts and figures, perhaps inspire the imagination and encourage the soul, if we’re lucky.

But the real lessons in life and true knowledge must come from within, an internal understanding; for then it takes root and becomes a part of us, even as a hand or a heart.

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“The action of spinning upholds a top.”

It is not a particular domain of any one party; “spin” is the modus operandi of all politics. The art of the possible through manipulation of language, distortion of meaning, and manipulation of opinion.

Sometimes it is called leadership; other times nothing more than a falsehood foisted upon the Body Politic

It is not new, but it seems at can always be taken to new heights. And the larger the top the faster the spin in order to keep the whole thing from toppling over.

Such is the nature of governments and human affairs.

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“The mind of man is not sufficiently capacious to attend to every thing at once, and while it suffers itself to be eaten up by narrow prejudices or fretted by personal politics, it will have neither relish nor appetite for public virtues.”

The decision thus becomes what it is we allow our minds to dwell upon.

Something to remember when considering the true nature of a divisive public discourse that panders to fear and the selfish politics of personal bigotry and prejudice.

We must guard against such a thing from happening, and when it does, have the insight to realize it and the will to do something about it.
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“…the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.
But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants is the liberty of appearing.”

When we stop thinking for ourselves, whether through fear or laziness, truth is often the first casualty.

But as Thomas Paine states in Rights of Man, the truth will pay no heed to such frailties and only awaits its discovery; patient and wanting nothing more.

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