… nothing new under the sun
T
unisia – Egypt – Libya – Syria – Yemen…. there’s turmoil and change in the Middle East. Young people are shrugging-off their dictators and autocrats but then what? I just finished reading the excellent recent biography of Lawrence of Arabia entitled Hero. In it author Michael Korda quotes from Lawrence’s own Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Although he was writing this looking back at the turmoil and change in the Middle East during and immediately after World War I, these lines could easily be written today.
“… we lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves yet when we achieved and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to re-make in the likeness of the former world they knew. Youth could win, but had not learned to keep: and was pitiably weak against age. We stammered that we had worked for a new heaven and a new earth, and they thanked us kindly and made their peace.”