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06594_Field_TCUM T159.txt
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1996-04-10
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16 lines
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