Here’s a link, Andrea.  It’s long and winding like writings were…with a lot of man this and mankind that as wuz the times.  In 1837, Emerson was lecturing the unbounded importance of free thinking to the Phi Beta Kappas or some such of Harvard. I figure he had to puff it up a bit to keep their highbrow attentions, so it’s rife with la-di-da speak…but there are many jewels of thought…which have been forever chuffed-off  by AFLUENT society’s grandiose pecking order, the movers and shakers & country club makers, & now here we all are in 2006…with our collective azzes in a sling.  I only picked this piece out of thin air, maybe it’s not the best illustration, & likely everyone here can site an example study with parallels &/or the antithesis of which [maybe] you or I might see as lost ideals to a hopeful existence.

I just feel, daily/hourly, that we’re losing ground fast.  The people that is.  & for whom?  & as I continue to get older, years flying by, I’m trying not to forget how important THESE days are to our offspring at large.  It’s so easy to acknowledge the end of times when our mortality is looming, but it’s a crutch.  & your post, although maybe I’ve gone way off track, is an example of why we just keep going round & round and getting nowhere as a whole & all for the sake of the least needy, most prosperous, people on every continent…& their associates?  These arguments of our most comfortable…while the whole of the planet suffocates. 

Shakespeare was so right in portraying life as a tragic comedy, …what else is it?

Even the Atlantic Ocean looked a little disheartened this week.

http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/essays/amscholar.html