Xenophon
“The true test of a leader is whether his followers will adhere to his cause from their own volition, enduring the most arduous hardships without being forced to do so, and remaining steadfast in the moments of greatest peril.”
Xenophon (Greek historian, BC 431-350)
As a retired Military Intelligence guy, let me reassure you….The world is a terrible, nasty, scary place; not that it is naturally so, but because the evil of some few men (and women) ruin it for the vast majority of the basically good folks out there. In short, the nature of world we live in reflects the nature of the men (and women) who inhabit it. It is only because of ruthless, violent, selfish, and/or insane people that the kind, gentle, giving, and sane people need protection. In a town of honest men no one would need to lock their doors, however because some few are theives everyone needs a lock. Because some few individuals choose to use violence to commit criminal acts, everyone needs to be concerned with their safety.
For me, I am pro-sanity. If it is logically impossible, then its nonsense. Summed up quite beautifully by an ancient greek: Two mutually exclusive things cannot be simultaneously true without special qualifications. For two decades this has been the basis of most of the arguments I have made and nearly all of the decisions I have made. If things that are mutually exclusive *are* simultantously true without some special qualification at work then either 1) they *AREN’T* mutually exclusive and I need to reassess and/or study them to figure why I thought they were, or 2) the laws of basic reasoning upon which all western science and culture of the past 4,000 years are founded are totally false.