Too Late For 'Yes We Can'?
I was an early supporter of Mr. 'Yes We Can" and I don't know whether I like the first, middle or last name the best. He is, most came to realize, among the best of us in intellect, personality, patience, and judgment. The comparisons with Abraham LIncoln are not without merit. One day in his shoes, with his schedule, and with his responsibilities would require, for me, a week of rest. And of course, even at my best, my interrelationships with others would be more like the subtleties of a Terrell Owens.
One characteristic of God's evolutionary process is the slowness of it. Eons of time pass and there is no reason to believe eons more time will not pass as the process lumbers on, not in any straight line, but with spurts and plateaus, species eliminations, regressive lines, sudden catastrophes, and yet---when all is said and done---this process is the work of a creative genius, which in whatever form we imagine Him or Her or Whatever---is God.
The tragedy, as I see it, is that Obama may have arrived on the scene too late. He should have have arrived 20 years ago---instead we got Reagan. Not that I was any brighter back then than others, he was a likable chap, pleasant, folksy, and had this sing song manner about him which made all of us proud about the wrong things, indifferent to important matters, and could make mobs of people believe in fairy tales, like the trickle down theory and that people most inclined, with the most ability to make money, could be trusted to police themselves. The scam worked, with little dips here and there, for like 20 years with deft uses of smoke and mirrors.
The problem is, as we all danced to Reagan's folksy oral fiddle, all the problems now facing us slowly progressed, as evolutionary laws always do, and while the band played on, the seeds of catastrophe for more and more of humanity were spread. It became, by any measure, the best of times for some and the worst of times for more and more. There was a time in evolution when size mattered. It mattered a lot. The dinosaurs reigned and it seemed they would reign for ever. How could dinosaurs disappear? Well, they did. Today brains matter more than size. Humans have spread over the earth like locusts, devouring everything in sight, including natural resources and species in our way. In our wake we have left depleted natural resources, eliminated thousands of species, polluted our waters, our sky, our soil, and in the process tampered with our climate, species diversity, and generated human population levels which exceed the ability of our planet to enable all people to live a lifestyle now reserved for the few. The game is up. We know it now, at least some of us---not the Rush Limbaugh types---the troughs from which they voraciously feed have never been fuller and their oinking never so loud. They have this illusion that God has personally blessed them (for what is hard to imagine) and feeling possessed by God's spirit and understanding, they become pompous self serving pigs at the trough, feeling more than assured than ever that they have earned their blessings.
I can no more predict the future with any more exactness than anyone else, but I have written about all this coming down the pike for more than 20 years now. Not that I was alone with predicting this, and in fact, none of my thoughts were original. If I have shown any foresight at all it came through the eyes of those far more knowledgeable than I. Some people are original thinkers, I just steal from the insights of others via a lot of reading. To think a lot about life and 'big pictures' probably requires one to be a loner, to enjoy solitude, and nature, and observing things without the noisy clatter of company. I often remark that I never feel less alone than when alone in nature or tilted back in my recliner looking out from the 11th floor. So much of everything in life seems mysterious and beyond comprehension while maybe too much of life seems, upon labored reflection, too real. There is certainly more sadness than merry contentment, and increasingly more people living lives of quiet desperation.
When Obama say 'Yes We Can', I feel hope but down inside I fear it might be a stupid hope. I say this because it may be too late. We could stop the pollution of the atmosphere right now, today, on a dime, and the climate would still change. It took centuries for us to get to this point and it will take centuries to correct it. In the mean time climate will change and people will suffer. It took centuries for the world to become overpopulated with humans, and we could implement mandatory responsible reproductive practices today, and the world would remain overpopulated for a century or more. And therein lies the catch 22. All the human behavior traits which accompany overpopulation, including wars, genocides, terrorism, refugee camps, etc. will increasingly prey upon all of us until chaos prevails---and more and more people begin to live like those on the West Bank, in the hills of Afghanistan, the streets of Baghdad, the communities of our own urban and rural ghettoes, most of Africa, South American, the Middle East, the Near East, etc. We may finally know what we need to do, but where is the TIME to do this going to come from? Man is the first species with the theoretical ability to avert evolutionary disasters, but in reality, this ability may be too limited, too late, too little.
We may have played with fate too long and Mother Nature is now at bat. On the other hand the neatest thing about human preedictive intelligence is how limited it really is. So maybe, all these reasoned out fears I expound on can still be averted, at least for a remnant of the human species. Whatever, WE go---TIME stays. Say good-night Gracie.
