of achieving security under tyranny and oppression of any kind 
has an attendant danger. Perfect adaptation to any 
environment is achieved by a total channeling of energies and 
vital force that amounts to a kind of static terminus for a 
creature. Even slight changes in the environment of the very 
well adjusted find them without any resource to meet new 
challenge. Such is the plight of the representatives of 
“conventional wisdom” in any society. Their entire stake of 
security and status is in a single form of acquired knowledge, 
so that innovation is for them not novelty but annihilation.

     A related form of challenge that has always faced 
cultures is the simple fact of a frontier or a wall, on the other 
side of which exists another kind of society. Mere existence side 
by side of any two forms of organization generates a great deal 
of tension. Such, indeed, has been the principle of symbolist