To the editor:

One would think that since the era of ancient Greece, humans would finally understand reality. Unfortunately, absolutely nothing has changed.

The ancient writer Homer describes the journey home of Odysseus at the end of the Trojan war. Odysseus must sail between the Straits of Messina that hold two sea monsters. On the left is the six headed monster Scylla represented by jagged rocks. On the right is the monster Charybdis that is represented by a whirlpool. This story is the origin of the saying of being between a rock and a hard place.

My point and re-telling the story is that we find ourselves in the exact same position today as Odysseus was nearly 3,000 years ago. The difference is that our Scylla is the Maga Republican Party while Charybdis represents the Democratic Party.What Homer is telling us is that either too much hardness (Scylla), or too much softness (Charybdis), can bring our downfall.

While working in conflict resolution for several years, I learned the idea of the dialectic. I learned that the truth is rarely found at the edges but usually resides somewhere in the center. It is a tough undertaking to give up of one’s extremism in favor of a solution that brings comfort to all parties. To do so requires that one goes beyond one’s ego and self-interest so to achieve a common good.

Civilizations generally fail for the same reason. They don’t fail from the outside, instead, they rot from the inside. I am always drawn back to the ideas of Iain McGilchrist who has studied the collapse of societies such as Greece,Rome,the enlightenment and currently our own civilization. He paints a picture of internal decay causing the demise of entire cultures as opposed to external enemies.

We are always seeking the answer to our problems as being somewhere out there or up there. We need to realize that truth always lies within us. It is we who need to change and only then will the world around us also change

Richard Greene-

New Ulm