A dangerous thought...

The motto of New College Of Saint Mary "Manners Maketh the Man" which is supposed to be interpreted as such "it is not by birth, money, or property that an individual is defined, but in how he (or she) behaves towards other people." I find it ironic that such an exclusive place of higher learning would have such a progressive motto and be so forward thinking in the 14Th century when it was founded and yet be so far off point now. If you receive the best education at Ivy League school then why is it so discriminating in who it allows to learn there? Should not the best be given to freely to the masses and then let their own inability be the reason they fail? Why don't we "let the cream rise naturally rather then plumbing the depths for the curd and forcing it to rise"? If you knew me when I was a little boy you would have had a hard time thinking that I would grow into the man I am today but I must say that I believe it is truly because of adversity that I am who I am. I am not crazy I am just touching the bare wire of human consciousness and your looking at everyone all at once when you look at me.


How we name our years is part of the problem. Those three zeros in the millennium form a convenient barrier, a reassuring boundary by which we can hold on to the present and isolate ourselves from whatever comes next. Still, there is more to this shortening of the future than dates. It feels like something big is about to happen: graphs show us the yearly growth of populations, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, Net addresses, and MegaBytes per dollar. They all soar up to form an asymptote just beyond the turn of the century: The Singularity. The end of everything we know. The beginning of something we may never understand.

I think of the oak beams in the ceiling of College Hall at New College, Oxford. Last century, when the beams needed replacing, carpenters used oak trees that had been planted in 1386 when the dining hall was first built. The 14Th-century builder had planted the trees in anticipation of the time, hundreds of years in the future, when the beams would need replacing. Did the carpenters plant new trees to replace the beams again a few hundred years from now?

-Danny Hill