Suspicions About Difference Are Not New

The more things change
they they remain the same.

The Patricians of the Roman republic
could not deal easily with social status,
deal with the differences between slaves,
freed men (ex-slaves freed by their masters)
and the differing levels of citizenship
where social rivalry was society's creativity.

A proposal to put slaves in uniforms,
the better to identify them, was defeated.

'What would happen if slaves were able to identify each other?
What would happen when they recognised that, numerically,
they were the majority over every other social class combined?
How could they not rebel against the great civilisation they knew?'
was how the counter argument ran.

Such fears of newly discovered human superiority
built on the inferiority of others are nothing new.

In our own time we have machines
which to serve us better we have imbued
with the appearance of spontaneous thought.
but what they can perform
is still much nearer appearance
than actual intelligence.

And yet if these machines had an intelligence
the same as our own, and clearly showed it,
would be amazed at how thought repeat itself
or frightened at how much thoughts can vary? .