I travel so much and am always living out of a suitcase, so my favorite saying is 'Wherever you go, there you are'. I love it because it's reassuring to me that you have to live in the moment wherever you happen to be.
I shall go further and say that even if an examination of the past could lead to any valid prediction concerning man's future, that prediction would be the contrary of reassuring.
Say 'Toronto' or 'Ontario,' and the immediate thought associations are with a somewhat blander version of North America: a United States with a welfare regime and a more polite street etiquette, and the additionally reassuring visage of Queen Elizabeth on the currency.
It is often said that definitions of Islamic government are imprecise. To me, however, they seemed to have a clarity that was completely familiar and also, it must be said, far from reassuring.
Often, these downplay the power of cultural imperialism - in that sense, playing the game of US interests - by reassuring us that the global success of American mass culture is not as bad as all that.
