Migration

    I was reading about how the first humans developed in Africa and proceeded to travel to  Asia Minor, Asia, Europe.  Eventually populating the most remote of the Pacific islands and even the Arctic Circle.  I think Antartica was missed only because it isn't on the way to somewhere.
    I read about the travels of the Vidic Aryans and the rampages of the Golden Horde.  The Huns becoming Hungarians and some Romans becoming Romanians. Caesars becoming Tzars.  I thought about some Chinese becoming Japanese and Korean,  becoming the various tribes of the Asian South East. I wondered, along with everyone else, how the Abos got to Australia in a past so removed and dim no one remembers. The same is true of the Polynesians.  They don't know how they got there.  They found it so pleasant they didn't bother to remember?  Maybe.  Maybe when we (academics with a mania for such questions) asked, we dismissed the answers or garbled the intent. That happens often enough.
    That got me to thinking of Thor Hyerdahl and the Kon Tiki and the almost bizarre connection of Jacquline Beer and "77 Sunset Strip".  A pulled thread that begins in the Great Rift Valley and ends with  Edd (Kookie) Byrnes?  The spread and interconnectivity of people, ideas and concepts.  That brings up Salman Rushdie and "The Satanic Verses"  as a thorough examination of that cultural phenomenon and idea.
    Tribal migration as a continuous condition of the human experience. Endless comingling.  It's interesting that in the case of the Americas, the north was primarily resettled by the restless, northern European tribes and the south by the tribes of the Iberian peninsula. Settlement determined by the Atlantic Trade Winds  The fascinating introduction of dominant language and ethnic groups and pushing aside the discovered, established societies of an earlier wave of migration.
    I could go on and on. Believe me, if I had more whiskey, I would.  Rushdie pushed it to over 500 pages just examining a few aspects, mainly culture and religion but there is always that one underlying concept:  Migration. We can talk about the migration of concepts, ideas and values but ultimately people are the carriers of these conditions. We find that the underlying feature is endless movement. It's fundamental and as a result, migration is a fundamental human right.  As such, attempts to oppose that right are useless and doomed to ultimate failure. We've seen that failure over the last four years.

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Leadership

    Some time ago I wrote an essay about some of the origins of self-government.  That should probably be read as a preamble to these thoughts  https://stillpittsburgh.blogspot.com/2017/02/walk-like-athenian.
    There are a lot of terms for the system we have but it is not a pure democracy.  I prefer 'Representative Democracy'.  No matter: Here's what we try to do.  The issues our government faces on a day to day basis are complex.  No one with work or professional responsibilities could be expected to keep up with all of those issues in any kind of detail.  Looks like a job for the hired help to me.  The idea is to select outstanding members of our communities to go to the seat of government and inform themselves in our stead in order to make proper decisions for us, in our name.  In other words,  the guy is supposed to know more than you.  I have to think in the most egregious examples these guys actually do know more than the constituents they've chosen to appeal to and instead of trying to lead they've decided to drive these constituents. Our political process is designed to weed out the stupid, not turn them into a voting block.  That borders on evil.
    Trying to appeal to and motivate the lowest common denominator is not leadership, it's demagoguery and in the end, it never works. It always ends in dislocation, suffering of the innocent and great expense.  We will never adopt the system of the Athenians, more's the pity but we should work to make this system better.  That's up to us.
    Well, that's not very optimistic, is it?  Placing responsibility on our collective, narrow shoulders?  There is good news.  We no longer hear, " Johnny can't read."  You may not have to be able to spell but you do have to be able to read to text nonsense on the endless stream of social media.
    The truth is, change and progress are slow, incremental and very often, occur seemingly by accident.  Here's our accident.  Johnny can read and he carries in his hand the ready portal to all the world's information.  It's up to Johnny to divine wisdom from that mountain of information and he has a better chance than history has ever presented.  I sure ain't gonna bet against him.
    To tell the truth  I think we're witnessing something spiritual, affirming and amazing.  If you look at the emergence of people like David Hogg, Emma Gonzalez, Malala Yousafzia, Greta Thunberg, on and on thru the kids being given multiple scholarships at very young ages and the new crop of "mean girls" in Congress,  we're looking at the worldwide emergence of Tathagathas.  To quote Flounder in "Animal House", "This is gonna be great!"  In my opinion, it's an awakening and expansion of the human spirit and we have a front-row seat.
    People always talk about going back in time and having a chance to relive their lives, change one thing or another.  I never think that.  There's no reason to believe, if I had it to do over again, I'd be any smarter.  I would like to be born today though, so I could witness the next 60 years.  Oh Boy!  This is gonna be Great!