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"My friend's second part of Euphrates is just as profound, Peter. The greatest challenge that we face in this second element of her Euphrates is a too small sense of ourselves and of our power as human beings. She calls this challenge 'a state of mortal thought, the only error of which is limitation; finity; the opposite of infinity.' She seems to suggest that the greatest challenge in the advancement in civilization is to mater our sense of finity and embrace our power to create a richer physical world with the power of the resources of our mind. Therefore she links this river with the sunset, the Golden Shore of Love and the Peaceful Sea of Harmony.
"Every one of these dynamically unfolding concepts of profound principles, from my friend's concept of Pison to Euphrates, takes us far beyond the level of simple constitutional principles, such as the principle of the general welfare that the professor recognizes too. It takes us beyond that into the realm of active ideas and dynamically unfolding concepts that all should come to life in society as they alone assure by their own imperative that the constitutional principles will be met. That is what society must place its focus on. We can't escape from that responsibility, Peter, and hide behind the fences of limitation that we place before us. Civilization isn't a gift that has been handed down to us by some magical deity on a silver platter. It is a man-created construct built with the resources of our humanity as divinely-reflective beings. Once that profound fact becomes apparent, then the power of those profound ideas stands behind everything that has become known as civilization. Thus civilization reflects ultimately nothing less than society's advancing self-discovery. If that is lacking the best constitutional principles tend to fall by the wayside and become meaningless, America looses its heritage, and mankind looses its soul, and sex then becomes cheap. "
"Wow! Now I know that I've been blind," I interjected. "And I agree it was all just scientific blindness. This I hadn't realized. I had fully agreed with Erica on an issue that turned out to be an aspect of poverty. And all this happened just a few hours ago. Isn't it amazing how fast ones world can change. She was wrong on that issue, and neither of us could seed this. Drawing a line across the path of progressive unfolding isn't the way to go."
"That's not important," said Helen. She pointed out that countless people look to the past and moan. Mostly, though they look to the past and their emptiness within to justify fascism. Many people in leading positions in government do this. Many of those find in their own 'poverty' in the past an excuse to re-launch the antihuman atrocities that should have been long forgotten. The war-philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, is being kept 'alive' by the forces of empire for this purpose and is therefore still admired by many leading people in today's world. The Hobbesian ideology has lingered on for the simple reason. Though he was just of many such 'fascists, Hobbes came to be chosen as the state philosopher of the British Empire, perhaps for his special zeal. He is sometimes regarded as the father of 20th Century geopolitics of the new Anglo/British Empire that is presently emerging. This means that his strong banning of love from world-affairs into the smallest personal domain, hasn't ended by any means. Many more wars will likely be fought under this banner, unless of course, we kill each other more completely with nuclear weapons the next time around, or manage to banish Hobbes before that happens and reactivate love as a universal principle. "The important thing is," said Helen, "that we do not look back, but look ahead. We can learn from the past, but we must look ahead and embrace the future and uplift it with what were are committed to in the present."
I felt greatly inspired by her to join the human race. I was beginning to look ahead. But then I remembered the professor. What hope was there? Where would it all end? He saw no hope.
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