Editor’s Note: This book, written in the mid-1960s, profoundly provides a construct for what is going on sixty years later. Gardner’s theme revolves around the need for self-renewal individually and as a society. The most consistent frustration I have with politics today is that all sides seem to believe we should go back to a better time. My Roman Catholic church organization seems strained to try to do the same. Gardner’s point is due to change, all people and communities must constantly adapt to change. And the most genius system ever designed to protect that is our republican democratic system.
Favorite excerpt:
[our founders seem to answer the question] “How can we design a system that will continuously reform, i.e. renew itself, beginning with presently specifiable ills and moving on to ills we cannot now foresee”.
“There may be a point at which raw young vitality and mature competence and wisdom reach an ideal balance, but there is no possibility of freezing change at that point as one might stop the motion in a home movie. There is nothing static in the process of balance and self-renewal”.
Peace,
Tim McCarthy
