Victor Hugo wrote, “Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.”

I say:  game on!

What about mighty armies versus an idea that can be expressed in only 18 minutes?  I mean, even if it’s time has come?

After all, the tread of mighty armies is not exactly a pushover in terms world-changing power.

The Persians under Xerxes, the Greeks under Alexander, the Romans under Caesar, the hordes of Genghis Khan, and many, many great military powers that followed, indelibly shaped the world we live in today.  Nobody can argue that some big stuff happened and even continues to happen in the world today because of the treading of those mighty armies.

But I think it’s worth pointing out that much of the durable change brought on by these armies had to do with the spread of ideas and cultures that were carried along with the soldiers.  Indeed, even the might of these armies was often at the imprimatur of an idea, like the discipline of the phalanx, the adoption of cavalry, or the advent of siege engines.

And in the other corner, the contender:  The “idea whose time has come.”  And here we have some more interesting examples of world-changing brute force: harnessing fire, agriculture, religion, writing, democracy, the light bulb, the Internet…

I don’t want to call the game too early, but at least in these early skirmishes, it looks like “idea whose time has come” is beating the pants off the tread of mighty armies.  Hugo is resting easy in his grave, his reputation, so far, unmarred.

But, come on now, can an idea articulated in 18 minutes really beat out the nuclear warhead bristling, satellite-eyed, computer-brained beast of the military-industrial complex?

Yes it can.

And the reason it can is because an idea, even one as quickly formed and articulated in as little as 18 minutes, does not live in the brain of a single human.   Once spoken, it does it does not live bounded in the time it takes to speak.

Ideas have the capacity to become “viral” and spread from host to host over great distances, and with great speed.  And in the age of the Internet, that speed has increased by incalculable factors.

So, yes, mighty armies have come a long way in their ability to wield devastating firepower.

But they have not yet come near so far as the ability of ideas to move through all of humanity in almost the blink of an eye.

If we are realistic, the tread of mighty armies might yet win the day and blot out our very existence from the Earth.  But I have great hope that this will not happen.

Because for an idea whose time as come, nothing is impossible.

 

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