If, like immature children, we steadfastly maintain our allegiance to the sinking, obsolete institutions of the past, then we will certainly go down with the ship. On the other hand, if we can come to understand this tumultuous period of change as a natural phase in the development of cross-cultural intimacy, then unprecedented pleasure awaits us. We must learn to see the new intrusions into our lives as a teenager experiences flirtatious gestures from an attractive suitor. We are not being invaded -- we are just being nudged.
As in any society in crisis, it is the children who first learn to incorporate the worst of threats into the most basic forms of play. When the Black Plague threatened Europe with anhilation, the children sang "Ring Around the Rosie," as they ritualized the appearance of rosey sores, stench-camouflaging "posies" and piles of burning bodies
