2004.07.25 Political Wisdom?

It's a terrible thing to be an angry young person, with the solutions for all the world's problems so obvious and so obviously not being pursued. It's frustrating to be growing wise, and realizing that every pearl of wisdom shows how ideals are at least one step further from possible and how we might be walking in the wrong direction.

It's difficult to realize how much we don't know, particularly when it's so easy to fill in the realms of knowledge with convincing guesses. It's painful to recognize how much of what we do know was gleaned, too late, from our mistakes and weaknesses and shames.

It's a dangerous thing to be righteous when we're wrong. It's a Darwinian thing to know we're wrong, and to not correct it.