Decadent Wyverns

In the decade 1997-2007, a few things became clearer, a few things became murkier. I would have said, "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times," except that someone has already used those lines. The thing is that this is a tale of two city-states that are the same city-state. By now, readers of this blog know that I'm referring to both the mythical Atlantis and the legendary Temasek, both lions of the sea, island kingdoms, centres of regional trade and power.

In 1997, when the Undertaker undertook to revise the philosophical underpinnings of this state towards greater creativity, greater entrepreneurship, greater mastery of thinking skills, he gave a great speech. That speech can be found here.

What is not so commonly known is that the Syndic also gave an equally powerful speech, perhaps even more so, on that occasion. In the West, this second speech was given much wider circulation, for it asked a deeper and much more searching question. In fact, the question got so deep and spawned so many sequelae that it was made into a book. An interview with the Syndic about all this can be found here.

But this all brings me to the fact that my thesis is called Brave New World: The Atlantean Educational Response to Globalization 1997-2007. I chose that title because I was genuinely interested in whether the city-state had done anything in response to all these powerful speeches (for the two I've mentioned were not the only ones). Specifically, the school that made the most noise about everything, and that decided to go the most Internationalist route — what did that school actually do?

Can wyverns think? If you look at the original question, it becomes obvious what question I am really asking.