Timeless Advice

Evolutionists like to talk about the nature of man and how we are constantly improving. I'm not a big fan of evolutionary theory and this is probably a reason why. When I was still in college, my advisor had these six mistakes on his website:

1. Individual advancement is made by crushing others
2. Worrying about things that cannot be changed
3. Insisting things are impossible because we cannot do them
4. Refusal to set aside trivial preferences
5. Neglecting development of the mind
6. Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do

Sounds familiar? While you may not agree with all of these, many of them come up in modern politics. What is funny is that this list is attributed to Marcus Tullius Cicero, a Roman orator who died 43 B.C. Cicero moralized about how divorce, and specifically no-fault divorce, was destroying the Republic. Sound familiar?

While they are not quite so timeless, the songs of Tom Lehrer hold up quite well too. Most of these were written in the late fifties and early sixties. Kim du Toit makes reference to his song Folksong Army:

We are the Folksong Army
Everyone of us Cares
We all hate poverty, war, and injustice,
Unlike the rest of you squares...

Sounds familiar to the recent Live8 concert? It should. I find myself referring to several of his songs a lot like the Vatican Rag, MLF, and National Brotherhood Week. What is funny is that Lehrer is a democrat, but of the older pre-Vietnam mold. Lehrer stopped performing because of the shifts in the political landscape cause by that war, as he put it politics stopped being funny.

Oh and on a completely different note: Have you noticed that despite the fact that third world debt relief has been advocated by many of the G8 leaders (like George Bush) Live8 is taking the credit.