On Privileged Minorities

Governments, the economy, schools, everything in society, are not for the benefit of the privileged minorities. We can look after ourselves. If is for the benefit of the ordinary run of people, who are not particularly clever or interesting (unless, of course, we fall in love with one of them), not hightly educated, not successful or destined for success, in fact, nothing very special. It is for the people who, throughout history, have entered history outside their neighbourhoods as individuals only in the records of their births, marriages, and deaths. Any society worth living in is one designed for them, not for the rich, the clever, the exceptional, although any society worth living in must provide room and scope for such minorities. But the world is not made for our personal benefit. A world that claims that this is its purpose is not a good world, and ought not to be a lasting one. 

 -- (from a lecture given at the new Central European University, Budapest, reprinted in the New York Review of Books, 16 December 1993, Pp64)