ITEM: “I was always an unbeliever, raised without religion….And I always tried to suppress nationalistic ardor…as something pernicious and unjust,” Sigmund Freud wrote in 1926. But when publication of his shocking views on human sexuality in the 1890’s led to his ostracism by Viennese society, Freud joined the Vienna lodge of B’nai Brith, the international Jewish fraternal order, to find people who would “receive me with friendliness.” Despite his rejection of Jewish religious and ethnic particularism, he told the members in a speech written for the seventieth-birthday celebration of the lodge, “there remained enough other things to make the attraction of Judaism and Jews irresistible – many dark emotional forces, all the more potent for being so hard to grasp in word, as well as the clear consciousness of an inner identity, the intimacy that comes from the same psychic structure.” –Charles Silberman
“Between 1305 and the early 1800’s. the House of Taxis ran a form of pony express service all over Europe…. Its couriers clad in blue and silver uniforms, crisscrossed the continent carrying messages between princes and generals, merchants and money lenders.” –Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave We may think we are the first generation consumed by rapid communication but we are not. Throughout our history it has been a priority. Of course, now in the 21 st century we must ask: are we better or worse for it?
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