These lines by a Nigerian poet in his twenties are characteristically West African, but they have a universal message. We all have forebodings about the world’s future and would all concede that the way to avert disaster must be by common action — within the nation and between nations. But what about common reflection? Those of us concerned with adult learning must, by the nature of our concern, be interested in reflection. But all too often, we still forge our concepts in isolation and then assume either that others share those idiosyncratic concepts or that common action is possible among people starting from a whole variety of different principles.