I love people who have a shocking message—Isaiah, Messiah, Nietzche, Martí—that contradicts the norm, the status quo, when it is so spot-on. When Jose Martí, Cuban nationalist in the mid to late nineteenth century, wrote his diatribe against the paternalistic policy of the United States, it was dead on in so many ways, in so many places … but his call to arms for the warring factions of Latin America to unite went unheeded.

Why is it that so many of the good ones, even the prophets, speak to deaf ears? It’s maddening. What do you think?

I love people who have a shocking message—Isaiah, Messiah, Nietzche, Martí—that contradicts the norm, the status quo, when it is so spot-on. When Jose Martí, Cuban nationalist in the mid to late nineteenth century, wrote his diatribe against the paternalistic policy of the United States, it was dead on in so many ways, in so many places … but his call to arms for the warring factions of Latin America to unite went unheeded.

Why is it that so many of the good ones, even the prophets, speak to deaf ears? It’s maddening. What do you think?