Two cities, each very distant from the other, sat on the same side of a great river. The river was wide and deep, with a powerful and fast current. Crossing the river was dangerous and difficult, but those few who crossed returned with stories of an unknown country full of mysterious wonders.

The first city was named Hammon, and the second was called Sophrete.

In Hammon, few citizens had ever crossed the river. Everyone generally agreed that reaching the other side would be good in theory, but they were occupied too much with trivialities, such as sporting contests, entertainment, gossip, and intellectual and cultural fads, to spend much time considering how to connect to the other side.

Most citizens in Hammon expected that someone else would solve big problems for them. The power-obsessed, the hypocrites, and the depraved thus found it easy to slip into positions of authority and offer their own self-serving solutions, which most people apathetically accepted. Those in charge in Hammon did everything they could to publicly humiliate, demonize, and ostracize the few who questioned them, to neutralize the potential threat to their power (and also discourage future challengers).

Hammon’s leaders did not care about the other side of the river, but they used the people’s interest in it to serve their own ends. They promised a great bridgebuilding project, but drew out the process and ran up expenses to divert money to themselves and their cronies. When those in charge inevitably lost power and a new group of miscreants took over, the new leaders canceled the prior leaders’ bridge project and started a new one, to more easily divert new spending to themselves. This process repeated yet again with a third set of leaders.

Hammon never completed a bridge, having only the eyesore of three incomplete bridges jutting out partially into the river. Hammon’s townspeople found utility in the unfinished bridges—they used the open space on them for social gatherings, for picnics, and for fishing, but the bridges never served the purpose for which they had been built, and the meager uses to which they were put hardly justified the expense of building them.

In Sophrete, the citizens concerned themselves not just with trivialities, but also with weightier matters. Their leaders were good men who tried to do the right thing, because the citizens tirelessly worked to discover the power-obsessed, the hypocrites, and the depraved, and to keep them out of power.

A small, but growing number of Sophrete’s citizens had braved the waters and crossed the river. Many others wished to cross, but doing so was beyond their capacity. When the citizens realized the potential value of building a bridge to connect to the other side, they trained themselves how to take on such a project. They responsibly managed it and paid for it themselves. The bridge’s construction took time, but it was done well, and done right. When completed, it was beautiful and became Sophrete’s pride. It firmly established their connection to the other side. Through it, the townspeople found many treasures and great knowledge.