Re: Pitch for excerpts

If we acknowledge that things are not what they are because they should be, but rather simply because they are, we might go on to conclude that that which happens to be is not necessarily that which would be best. The totality of human society, being one such thing, may be expected to exist in something less than what we would deem to be a state of perfection. The reader is invited to confirm this for himself.

We are aware, then, that society has suffered from imperfections in the past, the past being the only thing available for our review. We may extrapolate from this that society suffers from imperfections in the present insomuch as that the present is simply the past in gestation, and does not seem to go through any radical transformation in becoming the past, which is to say that we may find great similarity in the now as compared to, say, the now minus ten years. Still, portions of the past may differ in some respects from the present - the past contains the Ottoman Empire, for instance, whereas the present does not. This is reassuring, as it would seem to indicate that the future may differ from the present as well, particularly if we give it cause to do so. Of course, we cannot help but give the future cause to take a certain form, as we influence it merely by existing in the present, which is the future's raw material. The present is the unconscious conspiracy of the past; it does not come to us through design. The exception is that small portion of a given present - breakfast, a cigarette, an overthrow of some flawed institution - which is the result of conscious planning by self-aware beings. To the extent that we are able and willing to do so, then, we may conspire against the future in such a way as to bring about such things as these. To have breakfast later, one makes the appropriate preparations.

Ah, but "one" is the sticking point, is it not? The reader may object that it is all well and good to point out that things are not perfect and perhaps ought to be changed, but that there is a great difference between pointing out flaws and eradicating them. The difference, our objector continues, is akin to the difference between breakfast, cigarettes, and institutional overthrows; the first two may be successfully pursued by individuals whereas the third tends to require some degree of collaboration, which itself is more difficult to set into motion than are the individual actions necessary to obtain food and tobacco. Certainly these differences are real, and certainly the overthrowing of institutions is a business best pursued in . But in a more fundamental sense, an institutional overthrow can be set in motion by way of an individual action just as fixing breakfast or obtaining a cigarette can be. If, for instance, an individual is able to devise a plan by which such an overthrow may be successfully accomplished, and is able to convince others to adopt the plan in such a way as that the plan is perpetuated to the extent necessary to achieve the intended change, then, yes, an individual may cause an institution to be overthrown, perhaps even within the same time frame as it would take for that same individual to smoke a cigarette.