When I'm writing this column, it's usually a space for my jokes and lies. But this has been a month of thinking for me. Everything's fine personally, but sometimes one just thinks about the condition of the world.

"I foresee that man will resign himself each day to more atrocious undertakings; soon there will be no one but warriors and brigands; I give them this counsel: The author of an atrocious undertaking ought to imagine that he has already accomplished it, ought to impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past," Jorge Luis Borges, "The Garden of Forking Paths."

The quote below notes we're responsible for our actions, even when we're acting under instruction:

"And when the three officers who carried out the crime came to attention before him with the news general sir that his order had been carried out, he promoted them two grades and decorated them with the medal of loyalty, but then had them shot without honors as common criminals because there were orders that can be given but which cannot be carried out," Gabriel Garcia Marquez, "The Autumn of the Patriarch"

And that we have responsibility for the power we're given:

"Should a great man be judged according to different principles from other men? People have often answered this question with yes, but I think no. For a great man is great because he is a chosen instrument in the hand of God; But the moment he imagines it is he himself who is acting, that he can look into the future and with that in mind let the end ennoble the means -- then he is small," Soren Kierkegaard, "Either/Or"

When I think about our tendency to use people, to think of them only as instruments of our will, I think of this from Richard Nixon:

"Don't let the Secret Service get in the way of the photo car -- if anybody is going to shoot you, he'll shoot you," Nixon's advice to Vice President Spiro Agnew, as quoted in William Safire's "Before the Fall."

How should people be treated?

"When one treats people with benevolence, justice and righteousness and reposes confidence in them, the army will be united in mind and all will be happy to serve their leaders. The Book of Changes says: 'In happiness at overcoming difficulties, people forget the danger of death,'" "The Art of War," translated by Samuel B. Griffith.

And this has nothing to do with the train of thought, but this is my favorite saying from "The Art of War": "For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill."

If you've read this for a while, you'll notice I use other people's words when my own fail me. And usually people think I'm writing bad things about the government when I do that. I'm not. I'm much too self-centered to concentrate on the faults of our leaders.

And I leave you with this little poem. Not because it has special meaning for me, but because it has a special beauty in what it says:

"They caught a sweet-voiced bird, And tightly clutch the wildwood thing; Instead of song, but squeaks are heard - But they keep at it: 'Sing, bird, sing,'" -- "Plaint," by Gabriel Romanovich Derzhavin

T&D City Editor Gene Crider can be reached by e-mail at gcrider@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5570. Discuss this and other stories online at TheTandD.com.

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