guiding such disclosure. Indeed, the self revealed in action is more than likely concealed from the person acting, revealed only in the story of her action. Action is the means by which we distinguish ourselves from others as unique and unexchangeable beings. With humans, unlike with other beings, there is not just a generic question of what we are, but of who each is individually. Action and speech are always between humans and directed toward them, and it generates human relationships. Diversity among the humans that see the action makes possible a sort of objectivity by letting an action be witnessed from different perspectives. Action has boundless consequences, often going far beyond what we could anticipate. The Greeks thought of the polis as a place where free people could live together so as to act. Philosophers like Plato, disliking action's unpredictability, modeled the ideal polis on the household. In it, the philosopher king produces the lasting work of legislation, and the people labor under him. Against attempts to replace action with work and labor, Arendt offers two solutions to the two greatest problems action creates: forgiveness to temper action's irreversibility, and promises to mitigate its unpredictability. “Human plurality, the basic condition of both action and speech, has the twofold character of equality and distinction. If men were not equal, they could neither understand each other” (175) VI – The Vita Activa and the Modern Age Arendt thinks that three great events determined the character of the modern age: "the discovery of America and the ensuing exploration of the whole earth; the Reformation, which by expropriating ecclesiastical and monastic possessions started the two-fold process of individual expropriation and the accumulation of social wealth; the invention of the telescope and the development of a new science that considers the nature of the earth from the viewpoint of the universe." None of these events could have been foreseen. They happened suddenly and had repercussions their instigators never intended. One effect of each of these events is to increase our alienation from the world, which Arendt thinks is far more characteristic of our age than alienation from the self (as Marx thought). The shrinking distances brought about by exploration and transportation technology makes us more an inhabitant of the Earth than of our particular place within it. The process of expropriation kicked off by the Reformation expropriated people from their land and place in