Opinion/Editorial
COMING DOWN FROM THE CLOUDS ABOVE
The lofty heights of idealism were notably absent from any kind of open discussion or real consideration during the last election process. The campaigns only talked of improving life by either keeping things the way they are or mildly improving things by cutting taxes, increasing the military budget, slashing benefits for all kinds of people, removing millions from medical insurance rolls and building a wall to compete with the Great Wall of China. Those are the improvements put forth by the party that won, represented by the man that won. How is it possible that the most negative mind-sucking and belittling prattle of a few regressive intellects sprinkled across the land could amass enough followers to get the majority of Americans (through delegates) to favor a man almost every person in the country knows has both personality and mental agility problems of the first order?
When asked why anyone would want to fly, Orville Wright once said that it would allow people to look down and see where they were. How could this man have been so prophetic, and how could mankind have vaulted into the air, flying everywhere with a freedom and abandon never envisioned by those brothers, when it has become apparent that mankind cannot, indeed, look down and see where he is? Man, including women and children, does not look down, in reality or metaphorically, to see where they are or where others are. They are told where they are, and where everyone else is. Joseph Campbell wrote of the power of myth to create, mold and change not only societies, cultures and nations, but humankind itself. Mankind’s slow rise from the ooze, and the moving about in trees, the savannah and plains, has not been an easy path, despite following the course of scientific study, and the results of successful experiments. No, this species ‘advancement’ has come primarily through the process of shedding flawed beliefs, and belief systems that have been invented for them to fail, and while failing profit a small minority on the side of the big show.
Right now, just days before the inauguration, the president’s new advisors, selected from one anti-science group after another, are planning to pull back on supporting vaccinations that saved most humankind from small pox and polio. Today fear of those diseases almost doesn’t exist, unless vaccinations disappear. Sustainable clean energy is almost a reality, thanks to great progress in science, but these new advisors have been chosen to return America’s energy to the coal mines of our past, leading us to a nightmare future for the environment. The environment will not be an issue of concern to this new batch either, as they do not believe in global warming, although they really do. They simply know that the wealthy one percent has little or nothing to fear from its effects. Not during their lifetimes, anyway, and that’s fast becoming what life is all about.
With respect to this new administration and its merry band of men, little can be done to effect what is coming in the short term. It’s almost like the nation has elected what they believe are the mythical crews of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland, but are about to get a rude reality awakening. How is it that America’s vision has been lost, that very vital and special talent that for many years was used to describe almost any American abroad, or any element of the American presence? It’s as if America is a great airliner sitting at the end of a runway that’s fast being run through with potholes and cracks. Aboard that airliner are the not discussable elements of hope, striving, compassion, care and generosity to be distributed for the benefit of all. Because they are one of us. Because the universe out there, and back here, is so hostile to intelligent life. That airplane cannot take off.
What can be done in the long term? Observational acceptance of the way things are, and then organizational action to move others to see what might be seen if the grand airliner of hope can be launched into the air, and flown just below the billowing clouds. Nothing of substance, or of lasting significance, has ever been built by the hand of one man alone. Difference, referring to advancement of the human condition, is predicated on human group behavior. It is only attributed to be predicated upon personal brilliance and action. The soon to be former president once spoke about that to the complete derision of the mass media. No company makes it on its own. There are roads built by the community, trains by national agreement, Internet lines thrown down by committees and communities, or allowed by them. Cars, trucks, bridges, roads and even cell phone towers have been built by men and women working together. But if those things can be attributed to the work of one person, then the work of the group can be discounted into meaninglessness, and the work of the group may decay. As it has today.
America has lost its’ hope and no single man or woman can bring it back. Only men and women coming together can bring it back, and only men and women working together using the scientific method can divine a new course back toward the redevelopment and redoubling down on the building of civilization, back into the future.
~ James Strauss
