Popular Science and Popular Mechanics used to publish (maybe they still do) lots of articles about the grand new world that will soon be ours. Cars that double as airplanes…as boats...rocket packs that let us jet from home to our offices without ever having to sit in traffic jams. Food that can be prepared in a minute or less and satisfy like thanksgiving turkey… On and on the list goes but great as those ideas are, we have new realities that change our hopes…at least mine. What if our electricity was produced by a solar panel on our own roof by a system that WE OWN? What if that electricity were all we needed to power the vehicle we use to get to work? What if there were no massive and filthy oil tankers crisscrossing the oceans-leaking and burning oil?
Many years ago we started hearing advice that we should avoid two subjects during dinner: politics and religion. I wish our progenitors had ignored that advice because then we might have resolved the issues that now confront us so painfully when we had a society that knew what was in the Constitution and were civil enough to let others talk in their turn. What if people were courteous to each other?
We are a terribly fragmented society. Those who recognize any authority over them are few and far between. We live under the illusion that we are a FREE people but the reality is that we are constrained in ways that our founders would not have endured for five minutes. And while we are right to protect and relish our freedom we have sadly lost our understanding that it has an essential companion virtue without which it becomes a tawdry trinket of little value-self control.
If we refuse to govern ourselves then we invite the state to do it for us and everybody finds that oppressive. (Example 1: We know that we need to clean our rooms but we don’t appreciate anyone demanding that we do it and standing over us to make sure we do. Example 2: We know that we NEED health insurance but we sure as h… don’t want the government penalizing us if we fail to do so.) What if we just do things that are right, just, and compassionate as a matter of course then…amazing most ills of society are cured overnight?
In his first letter to the Corinthian church, Paul told them that everything was permissible for him but that not everything was beneficial and that he would not allow himself to be mastered by anything. His warnings against sexual immorality would (if applied) benefit every segment of the world today. Morality and good judgment have to do with many more issues than sex alone and we are told that the man who can govern himself is more to be praised than a man who can capture a city. General Washington prayed that the citizens of this country would cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to government, act justly toward each other, love mercy and act with the humility and peaceful disposition of Jesus “without an humble imitation of whose example in these things we can never hope to be a happy nation.”
What will our future look like? What do you want it to look like? Do you want to live like a god while everyone else struggles to get by? Sometimes such societies have lasted for generations but as you know globalization of media and computerization have sped up all commerce and societal factors to the point that you can’t really depend on enjoying such a privileged position for even a decade. Most who oppress the masses are soon destroyed by them without pity. I’ll spare you the details of the Romanovs of Russia. Yes as our own declaration of independence states, men “…are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed”, and it is well that such is the case or we would always be in turmoil and distress. God-like wealth and selfish indulgence at the expense of the poorest ALWAYS ends in revolution and this time may end the ability of the biosphere to support all life.
What if our elected officials opened their eyes and realized that the paper they were using to clean their backsides was the very guarantee of their liberties – and ours? What if we realized that we still have a tenuous hold on those liberties and we could by the merest effort of - learning what really contributes to the general welfare and which candidates are most likely to strengthen that form of government most conducive to our welfare - vote wisely and pass on this treasure to our children?
What if investors (of every wealth level) ceased demanding MAXIMUM profits each and every quarter but instead were more realistic and humane so that managers could plan for long term growth and sustainable practices with ecological impacts factored in? What if we had to let the whole earth lie fallow every 50 years? Some day it may lie fallow for ages because men destroyed the only planet within a hundred light years with clean water and clean air and an ozone layer that holds back the devastating infrared radiation.
