The Few Thousand

This won't take long...

Athens, at its height during the Greek city-state empire, had about 160,000 inhabitanta, a large minority of them slaves.

Rome, during its imperial heyday, had about one million inhabitants in the city and surrounding plains, with half of those (or more) being slaves.

Florence under the Medicis never topped 150,000 inhabitants.

Silicon Valley launched itself with barely 400,000 residents. And Singapore, that island-nation global economic powerhouse, has 4.4 million inhabitants.

Or about 300,000 more than We do.

It doesn't take millions of people to make a huge, historical difference on the global stage. It can take as few as one--in the right place at the right time--but more often it takes a few thousand. Not everyone in Athens, Rome, Florence, Silicon Valley or wherever was directly involved in making the historical impact; it happened because a dedicated subset aimed at a loftier set of goals than just mere subsistence and comfort.

Puerto Rico has roughly 4 million inhabitants, so where are the few thousand that are capable of coming together to make a historical difference on the world stage? Cynics would say 80% of those are living in Orlando or some other Stateside suburban park. Cynics are often wrong.

The few thousand that can make a historical difference are still here. They have to be: they are committed to Puerto Rico. By definition, they are the ones who choose Puerto Rico, so they are the ones who can--potentially--make a difference.

Are they a few thousand, several thousand, or merely a few hundred, maybe too few to ever make a difference? We don't know. Yet.

Are they scattered too loosely to effect change, are their efforts too small to reach critical mass or is there direct sabotage/opposition of their efforts? Yes, to all three.

Will it take an abrupt event to bring the few thousand together and open the future to what could be Our historical difference on the world stage? Yes.

But only if We know what We want to do on the world stage. And for that We need to understand that there is a world stage and that We definitely can be an effective actor upon it.

Yes, My friend Alfredo, that is a matter related to education. How We--We few thousand--are going to bridge that yawning (literally) chasm is the vital mission of Our Future.

The Jenius Has Spoken.