PER 2015
President. However there is still evidence that a minority of Americans remain stuck in the mind-set of the 1950s. For example President Obama himself has said he was once “mistaken for a waiter” at a black tie gala. Nevertheless the cultural shift caused by resistance to marginalisation has been significant and is ongoing.
It was Lord Byron who wrote in 1812 that “History…hath but one page” 58 . To a large extent he is correct, the tension between liberty and authority highlighted by Mill has always been, and will always be, a repeated presence in human history. However in one major respect I consider him to be wrong. This cycle of freedom and tyranny has the power to bring immense change, as seen in Athens, America, France, Russia and countless others. This change can usher in a better system, or a worse one, but it is this which keeps our economics, our politics and our philosophy from stagnating. The revered economist Joseph Schumpeter in 1942 coined the phrase ‘creative destruction’ – “A process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionises the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one” 59 . It is this that is witnessed time and time again throughout human development, not limited just to economics. It is this which defines where we are today and where will be a hundred years from now. I believe resistance of oppression has shaped history but I also believe it hasn’t finished.
“There is the moral of all human tales; 'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past, First Freedom, and then Glory - when that fails, Wealth, vice, corruption, - barbarism at last. And History, with all her volumes vast,
Hath but one page, - 'tis better written here, Where gorgeous tyranny hath thus amass'd All treasures, all delights, that eye or ear, Heart, soul could seek, tongue ask - Away with words! Draw near” 35
References and further reading: Byron, G. G. (1812). Childe Harolde's pilgrimage.
Dedman, B. (1988). The color of money. The Atlanta Journal Constitution . Definition of tyrant . (2015, June). Retrieved from Encyclopaedia Britannica: http://www.britannica.com/topic/tyrant Democracy: Tyranny . (n.d.). Retrieved from Agathe.gr: http://www.agathe.gr/democracy/tyranny.html Locke, J. (1689). Two treatises of government. Mill, J. S. (1859). On liberty. Obama: I've been mistaken for a waiter . (2014, December). Retrieved from New York Post: http://nypost.com/2014/12/17/obama-ive-been-mistaken-for-a-valet/
58 – Byron, G. G. (1812). Childe Harold’s pilgrimage . 59 – Schumpeter, J. (1942). Capitalism, socialism and democracy.
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