Re: Fw: [osint] Reflections On 'Containment'

A wonderful friend from Malaysia, (younger than I in years and older in
understanding in many ways), with whom I have lost contact, once said to me:

"There are no unrealistic goals. There are only unrealistic timelines."

Something the "advanced, modernized West" doesn't seem to grasp, as they
lurch back and forth between believing that history has ended and there is
nothing more to be achieved, and then grasping desperately at crisis-driven
militaristic/fascist schemes.

Alan S.

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----- Original Message -----
From: "Sabri Oncu" <soncu@pacbell.net>
To: "WSN" <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2002 5:29 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: [osint] Reflections On 'Containment'


> Steve wrote:
>
> > For a more 'realistic' assessment of the world left than
> > that offered by Wagar in the last post, see Wallerstein's
> > current commentary.  I have to say, considering that
> > something like a 'world party' is now emerging (allowing
> > for the inevitable differences in organization, the result
> > of communication and consciousness transformations that have
> > made bureaucratic structures seem a lot less modern than
> > they used to), he seems awfully gloomy.
>
> I also find Wallerstein's assesment more realistic. Moreover, not
> all of us in the "movement" dream of an imminent salvation.
>
> Below is a Nasrettin Hodja joke for Warren. Nasrettin Hodja was a
> great Turkish humorist and public intellectual from the 13th
> century Seldjuk era.
>
> What if it should!
>
> One day Hodja was washing his yogurt pot in the Aksehir lake.
> When some people saw Hodja pouring the yoghurt that remained in
> the pot into the lake,  they wanted to make fun of him.
> - Hodja, what are you doing? one of them asked.
> - I am turning the lake into yogurt, Hodja replied.
> - Can a little bit of yeast ferment such a large lake? the man
> asked while others laughed at Hodja.
> - You never know perhaps it might, Hodja replied, but what if it
> should!
>
> Pessimism of the mind, optimism of the will,
>
> Sabri
>