“We can’t be the world’s policeman.”
That was the exclamation I overheard which set in motion an essay to answer the dilemma of safety and responsibility in an unsettled world.
This is a largely abstract work, one relying heavily on the application and ballast of common sense. On one hand, there is little patience in me for voluminous empirical observations that are, really, exponents of one unifying phenomenon, much as a score of spokes pleonastically describes the radius of a wheel. Why comment on all of them? On the other hand, I do not claim to be a proper academic, so I do not propose to satisfy for any reader the formal dissection of one thesis or another. Intellect is a resource, not a refuge. A vision can only be birthed with ideal but the power of a vision is only as strong as its practical application, and it cannot remain an ideal. It is my experience that one should become very suspicious of the well-learned man who appears more a caretaker of his theories than a philosophical navigator for his fellow man. We should all be humbled by those of few words who are doing what others only speak of, and but reconditely.
This essay is the response to a much shorter, informal exploration of the topic that was typed up in about an hour on the evening of February 23rd of this year. The five months necessary to complete a thorough address are in part due to inevitable research and editing, but also to confront reasons for undertaking what is, for me, a somewhat terse writer, by far the largest dialectical project in or out of academia.
When I earned a Bachelors degree three years ago, I vowed never to attend graduate school for various reasons - not the least of which being a lack of need for progressive education reserved for the lawyer or the doctor - though I now additionally see I have since learned much without the artificial impetus of coursework and grading. Mere interest in matters and their edifying pursuit have propelled me instead. In a sense, this essay can be seen as a culmination not unlike a Masters thesis, and so less, in my eyes, an authoritative challenge to the debate at large than an account of knowledge and its employment. This essay is only an introduction. I am then most eager to, through experience and insight in coming years, refine my reasoned speculation on the forward course of mankind.