Can The Human Venture Prevail?

September 9, 1979
Lakeland

Can The Human Venture Prevail?

If you read New Yorker magazine perhaps you saw the cartoon in the August 13 issue. Two saurian monsters, perhaps a dinosaur and brontosaurus [sic] are lifting their massive reptile heads above some rocks looking at two stereotypical cavemen with their fur coverings and their clubs. These two prehistoric men are in panic and running for daylight along a canyon. One of the saurian beasts comments, “Evolution sure goofed there. Those guys aren’t particularly good at anything.”

Can the human venture prevail? One can glibly respond, “of course. The dinosaurs are gone and we’re still here.” One can also respond, “Maybe” or “prevail, how, in what social, physical, political, and economic context?” Now it may well be that my own inner curiosity has been exposed to a negative overload. In recent months the input of news, attitudes, feelings seems foreboding and discouraging. I would not be comfortable with myself if I could not face up to what’s happening. I would not presume on your time and patience just to indulge in unrelieved, glum, pessimism. There’s bad news and good news.

Even a partial list of formidable problems and dilemmas would take hours, so the following is abbreviated and incomplete:

Energy – it seems unarguable that there are still no accepted plans, planning, or national consensus. There are several plans, but the House, Senate, and President cannot seem to come to agreement. The lines at gasoline stations have diminished. But they may and probably will re-occur.

Furthermore, it seems that any measures taken to provide more energy inevitably weaken the gains made by those organizations and individuals who have struggled to preserve and maintain standards for clean air, water, and the natural environment.

Nuclear power will continue to be developed in spite of the scare at Three Mile Island and other occurrences. Few, if any persons in a position of national political leadership have objected to its development. We are told that any substantial development of solar energy, wind energy, or varieties of biological energy are too many years in the future.

Yet it seems widely known that accidents [and] leakage at nuclear plans present only part of the danger. The disposal of nuclear waste seems only lightly touched although the coming generation must confront a huge problem. A technical research group (MHB Technical Associates) suggests that radioactive waste disposal from nuclear plants could increase utility bills 10-20%. They also estimate that by 1995 there will be 60 metric tons of nuclear waste to dispose of at a cost of 40 billion.” (Washington Spectator, 8/15/79). And you know who will pay that billion. The alternative is reprocessing – produce fuel for nuclear bombs.

Consider inflation, taxes – the economics of our system. I’m not an economist but it is quite clear that the interest on my modest savings account is less than half the rate of inflation. Millions are in more distressed circumstances than they ever .... A friend of mine, a retired banker, was talking about the proposed windfall tax on ... company profits. He chuckled cynically at those who advocated this tax. Then he said, “When will you understand that corporations are not tax-payers, they are tax-collectors. They are remittance exchanges between you and the government – federal, state, local. Taxes are part of the cost of doing business and just add to the price of the product or service that you buy. So soak the corporations in the tax structure if you want but recognize that you are the one who will get wet.”

More and more I perceive the wisdom in Mark Twain’s words, “Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to.”

Another contribution to the negative overload in my circuitry is the limited focus of the vision of what extermination wars would be. [note in margin: US Dept. of Interior tells ... “In case of enemy attack, to to nearest P.O. and ask for a Fed Employm. Emerg. Reg Card CSC 600. Fill out and mail.”] I have listened to much testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on the SALT II treaty. There is much technical discussion about throw-weights, multiple war heads, B1 bombers, our Triad system, the Soviet system, and on and on. [note in margin: In last couple weeks Soviet brigade Cuba (17) years ... get tough. 20 million Soviets died in WW2. ] Only rarely is the reality alluded to that a nuclear war equals we are all dead. Maybe there will be remnant bands wandering with their radiation-mutated offspring scavenging the poisoned fields and ruined waters.

But the threat of Communism is apparently so appalling that generally speaking, or national opinion-makers seem afraid and threatened if we fail to possess a 5 or 10 to 1 overkill. Here's a statement that would receive applause in many or most gatherings, even today:

“The streets of our country are in turmoil. The universities are filled with students rebelling and rioting. Communists are seeking to destroy our country; Russia is threatening us with her might and the republic is in danger. Yes, danger from without and within. We need law and order.”

If you do not know the source, would you guess the author? Robert Welch of the John Birch Society? Spiro Agnew in his speech-making days? Richard Nixon? The late Senator Joe McCarthy? Those were Adolf Hitler’s words, October, 1932.

I could go on with jolts that add to the negative overload.

The increasing cynicism that our government – legislative, executive, judicial – has the will to grapple authentically with the problems.

The pressure of single-issue advocates who seem to have no incentive to deal with the general good for all. We seem to have a government of lobbyists and unfathomable bureaucracies. A political reporter asked the White House press after the traumatic cabinet reorganization what new approach was planned. “Part of it is to get at the larger social attitudes and issues. I’d be the first to confess I’m not sure how you go about doing it.”

In the minds of some of you, there may be creeping some notion like this: If the negative overload is going so low on the dial, what’s Carl doing here? Why isn't’ he up on top of a mountain in Tibet contemplating his navel? Or staying in bed and refusing to get up? [Who wants to spend an hour Sunday morning (with) glum Jeremiah?] Well, there’s good news too.

In my collection of Murphy’s and other laws, there is Miksch’s law: “If a string has one end, then it has another end.”

A book that has enriched my reading in recent months is Barbara Tuchman’s A DISTANT MIRROR. The author, a distinguished historian, tells the story of the 14th century in Europe, a time of disaster for most people. In her foreword she cautions about negative overload – XVIII –

She names her book A DISTANT MIRROR because it suggests a reflection of our own 20th century of wars and woes. But, not identical, a far away image. In that period there were insane wars of conquest, pillage, and suffering. The so-called 100 years war between England and France ravaged Europe. The villages and towns were sacked and looted again and again as the armies shifted back and forth.

There were roving bands of soldiers, sometimes fighting for one side, sometimes fighting for another, and sometimes just fighting for loot on their own, living by the sword.

The governments were corrupt. Taxes were cruel. There was insurrection and schism in the Roman Catholic church which had been the bastion of authority, and to some extent, at least, the monitor of conduct individual, social, and political.

Then there was the Plague, 1348-50, with some re-occurrences. The people called it the Black Death. We know it was the bubonic plague, transmitted by fleas or by rats who were infested by fleas. The author calls the Black Death the most lethal disaster in recorded history (4,000 years). The Plague killed an estimated 1/3 of the population between India and Iceland. Perhaps 20 million died, although the exact number can never be known. Villages and towns were depopulated, some abandoned, never [re-]occupied.

“It was a period of anguish when thee was no sense of an assured future ... people felt subject to events beyond their control, swept like flotsam at sea, hither and thither in a universe without purpose.”

Despite malaise it was not a static time. For the loss of confidence in the kings, trust in the lords, faith in the Church, let to demands for change.

During the worst of these times, and hardly noticed, there were the beginnings of the recovery of learning, the flowering of art, architecture, learnings which as it developed during the ensuing century or so, we know now as the Renaissance.

In about the same period, the Age of Exploration and Discovery opened up new worlds: the Americas, Africa, India.

In 1453-54, Gutenberg produced the first printings from movable type – and the rapid spread of the printing press radically changed communication, learning, religion, economics, and politics.

In 1517, Luther’s 95 theses marked the beginning of the Protestant Reformation – inaugurating sweeping change in religion that affected all areas of living, then and since.

Interlocked with all these was the rising middle class which turned around the nature of both economic and political power.

An age of utter anguish and despair was succeeded by the beginnings of an age of confidence and hope. New worlds opened up! [Inserted note: On July 4, 1776, King George III - “Nothing of importance happened today.”]

Can there be such a turn-around? Can the human venture prevail? [Inserted note: The only thing we learn from the last – one does not learn from the past.]

The human venture does prevail in what may be called the meanings of the moment. The joy and warmth of being with friends and loved ones. The satisfaction of a good meal. The relaxed tiredness of having done well the day’s work. The stimulation of physical activity. Watching the young grow in wisdom and strength. The crash of the ocean waves. The wind in the pines. These never lose their charm and when we reflect on these experiences life is so fine.

But the human venture will continue to prevail as we look to the future too. Make our voices heard for change. None of us can struggle on all fronts with all issues. But some of us can be heard and known for some issues, even one. For if we do not we are giving up our faith in the future.

Around us there have been trees and shrubs planted. They will not attain full growth in the lifetime of many of us. But does that make the planting useless? Where I live, I think of that every month or so when I cultivate and fertilize some trees I’ve planted.

Maybe the orange and grapefruit trees will have a good harvest in my lifetime. Maybe, maybe not. For sure, the Norfolk Island pine will never be anything but small while I live, but some day, someone will look up to a 100 foot tall straight trunk with good feeling. That good feeling cuts down on the negative overload. I’d rather not that these trees and those who who might one day enjoy them be incinerated in nuclear war or sickness and die in biological war.

Such are meanings for the future. That is why we must put an end to war.

Do you remember the old story from the pre-ERA days: a five-year-old Betty who “unwittingly tried to promote her older sister’s chances one evening when her boyfriend called unexpectedly. ‘My sister isn’t home,’ Betty told him, ‘She wants to get married so she’s going to night school to study domestic silence.’”

Can the human venture prevail? Not with domestic silence.

Can the human venture prevail? The late Reinhold Niebuhr, eminent Christian theologian minister and social activist, stated the conditions:

Nothing worth doing is completed in a lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope.
Nothing true or beautiful makes sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love. – Reinhold Niebuhr

Truth is one; the wise describe it in many ways – Rig Veda