“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.”
The Roman poet Horace (65 BC-8 BC) wrote these words in Book III of his Odes in 23 BC. One translation is “How sweet and fitting it is to die for one’s country.”
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
“This is my own, my native land!”
In this poem, a portion of “The Lay of the Last Minstrel,” written in 1805, Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) goes on to praise heartfelt patriotism, and condemn the selfishness of the person who is indifferent to the fate of his country.
Who will provide the grand design?
People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed
Bob Dylan says “Things Have Changed.” What has changed? They say the world’s population in Sir Walter Scott’s day was about 1,000,000,000. It’s slightly over 7,000,000,000 now, and growing at 1.2% per year. That doesn’t seem like much, but by the Rule of 72, that’s a doubling time of 60 years. Can you imagine the stress that a world with 14,000,000,000 people will experience? You may not be around for it, but your children might, and their children will.
The Great Waves of Change says the human family as a whole must unite and gather together to deal with these great challenges. Here is a paragraph which elaborates on this idea:
“In a world of ever-growing population and declining resources, humanity will face a great decision, a fundamental choice in which direction to go. Do nations compete and challenge each other for the remaining resources? Do they fight and struggle over who will control these resources, and who will have access to these resources? For indeed, all the great wars of humanity’s turbulent past have been a struggle, fundamentally, over gaining access to and control over resources.”
Someone is reading this and thinking, “This is all easy for you to say, Mr. Kum Ba Yah, Mr. Uniting-the-warring-tribes-of-humanity.” Ah, would that it were! The creation of the image at the top brought up various stresses for me. There are 196 countries in the world, and readers from 188 of them are going to look at this image and say “Why didn’t you include my country?” I don’t think the United States and Saudi Arabia share very many values. On what basis will these two countries join? This could be tricky. A voice in my head said “Why make Brazil the head of the snake? What has Brazil done for the world besides give us ‘The Girl from Ipanema?!?'” My answer for that voice is “Brazil hasn’t been in a war since 1966. They’re doing something right.” After finishing the image, I had to go lie down for a while. I found merely thinking about this to be difficult.
Welcome to Mystery of Ascension! We are students and advocates of the the New Message from God. We are members of a worldwide community. We seek to assist the world in successfully navigating difficult times ahead. We seek to assist the world in successfully emerging into a greater community of intelligent life. You will also find some poetry. Find out more about us here. Contact us here.