The Same Only Different

I guess it all depends on how you define "better". You seem to be saying that Christianity is better now than it used to be, mainly because it's bigger. I think it was better before because there was more diversity and personal freedom. If you didn't like the church in your neighborhood, you could just walk down the street a couple blocks and find a different one, kind of like the way our parents chose to send us to Elsdon Methodist instead of St. Gall's Catholic. I know that you weren't happy at Elsdon, but do you think you would have been any happier at St. Gall's?

Historically, loyalty to your religion was equated with loyalty to your state or empire. If the king changed his religion, so did everybody else, if they knew what was good for them. Although Christianity spun off of Judaism, it wasn't long before it became a stateless religion. The Romans wouldn't have minded that if the Christians had acknowledged the Roman gods as being supreme, which they refused to do. This made the Christians suspect in Roman eyes as being disloyal to the empire, which is why the Romans fed the Christians to the lions. Before long, however, there were more Christians than the lions could eat, so the Romans figured that, if they couldn't beat the Christians, they might as well join them. That still left the loyalty question to be solved, which the Romans tried to do by putting all the Christians in the same box.

I think you're right, though, about that butterfly flapping its wings. There is no way of knowing how everything might have turned out if that one thing had gone the other way.

Your comments about the "new man" being essential to KBW, got me to thinking. Would everybody in KBW have to be the new man, or would there be room for some diversity? I always thought that diversity was a good thing, in spite of what my conservative colleagues might say to the contrary. You may remember that I have said I have no problem with individual minority people, it's the minority groups that make me nervous. The trouble with any group is that, the bigger it gets, the more it tries to "take over" and marginalize the other groups. I guess I can't blame them for that, since one or more of the other groups did the same to them when they were in charge. I think it was Abraham Lincoln who said, "As I would not be a slave, I would not be a master." Now why can't everybody be like that?

Okay, we've got two schools of thought here, diversity and mono culture. While diversity seems to be the natural order of things, when humans get involved they usually try to make a mono culture out of it. Mono culture is probably the best way to get the most bushels of corn per acre, but it's a lot of work to maintain. Then, if some new corn bug blows in from somewhere, you stand to lose the whole crop for that year. Diverse plantings are hard to maintain too, in their own way, if you want to do everything with big machines, which you pretty much have to do if you want to make any money nowadays. It's a puzzlement, but maybe we're on to something here. Lets think about it for awhile and see where it leads us.