Yesterday's brilliant vision
is today's conventional wisdom
is tomorrow's embarrassing fallacy.

The seven deadly sins are an embarrassment to every modern human.  Each of us learns the hard way that these instincts are fallacious promises of happiness. But they were established virtues until about 12,000 years ago, just before cows, corn, cops, and monogamy were invented.  When starvation and predation were everyday familiars, then Gluttony, Sloth and Wrath were eminently practical.  And any band would have considered a Lustful, Greedy, Proud warlord to be an Enviable boon.

The election of a half-African U.S. president would have been a doomsday scenario two hundred years ago. Today it chokes me up with patriotism. In two hundred years, that it was ever something to be proud of, will seem vaguely pathetic.  Was it a heroic finish line in the ten-generation exorcism of slavery?  Or a cynical hedge against Islam?  Or a shameful reminder of man's glacial progress toward a society that can invent itself.