imagined conversation

"You need to do this and this."

"Why?"

"What do you mean?"

"You tell me."

"What do you mean?"

"Maybe you shouldn't be giving orders about things you don't understand."

"Of what? This? Help me--I don't understand"

"And what do we do when we don't understand? Ask the gods of the city? of the hearth? Seek answers in the poems of our ancestors? Refuge in courts of law? In the words of the demagogue? Where do we begin?"

"And how shall we presume?"

"Now you're talkin' my language, brother--