All Along the Watchtower
In Bob Dylan's semi-apocalyptic song All Along the Watchtower, two riders are seen approaching the castle in which the princes and their servants are keeping view. At their approach a wildcat growls in the distance as a howling storm gathers.
Lately, however, the newest reports from the watchtower have announced that there actually appear to be four riders approaching, and it is not just reports from the looney fringe of the Christian "end times" mob, but from serious and reflective historians and social scientists.
To effect this end, societies have evolved four institutions, which are four special or formal modes of speech, as guardians of one of the four fronts of time and space. State and Church, (or politics and religion), address the future and past respectively. They correspond to destiny and origin, or anticipation and memory. Art and Science, (or song (poetry) and mathematics), address the inward and outward spatial fronts, the fronts the point toward the Soul or toward Nature. The decay of any one of these institutions can imperil society, by opening the door to one or more of the four enemies.
http://www.darkage.ca/blog/_archives/2005/2/10/313364.html
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