Hope?

 

The sky seems like it’s falling, doesn’t it? 

Doesn’t it seem that civilization as we know it is entering some great cataclysmic era of power and suffering?  Where has all of the idealistic optimism gone that we once had as Americans, that our future was secure and our hopes for world cooperation with our country at the helm were realistic?  Many still claim that we are continuing to do good by the world, but a great many more are realizing that America isn’t always impeccably noble, is capable of grave errors in judgment, and is highly corruptible.  Those who still cling to the old ideals scream treason and foul play against our nation, and the rest of us simply mourn that high that we’ve lost.

We seem more at odds with each other than ever before, with a great schism forming between the truths that each of us hold.  I now find myself frightened to bring up the subject of politics with just about anyone.  It used to be a comfortable discourse on social issues versus money management that we could all feel safe talking about, with enmity toward political enemies somewhat of an afterthought in the daily routine.  But now the great rift has taken form, and it has become a black-and-white, epic firefight, with the warriors sharpening their weapons of mind, heart, and steel.  Though so many of us have a multidimensional plate of political movements and ideas to bring to the table, two gigantic poles are drawing us all into subservience to the major party that represents us best (or more accurately, that which doesn’t represent us the least.)  I am certainly no exception, since I know that this ultra-important election will steer short term human history into one eerie, dark tunnel or another eerier, darker one, and I must get that rudder moving to shunt us into the right one.  It is turning into a classic showdown between darkness and the light, as I see more people inflamed and involved in politics than I ever have in my short lifetime.  Dialogue between imposing viewpoints is more incendiary than that to which I have borne witness.  This election season is going to be full of surprises, with power playing full strength on all sides to control this crucial slice of American history.  I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t exciting as hell.

But it can also be disheartening to see such powerful anger, bitterness, and cutthroat banter taking hold of our ever-busier airwaves, and it makes one wonder whether human beings can ever have a destiny free of war and injustice.  I hold my head high as I wend my way through these dark times.  I understand that in the course of events, these great, passionate separations between people just happen.  This certainly isn’t the first time humanity has been divided so sharply.  We need these great tribulations to throw a kink into the hose of our daily lives, so that we can learn how to undo the kinks, and possibly to make a better hose.  Indeed, the very epiphanies to which we have come over the ages have been forced into the mainstream by boisterous iconoclasts who grabbed institutionalized depravity by the balls and threw those ancient, obsolete ways of thinking out the window of time.  They chipped away slowly; building from the bottom up until enough people came around, until they had a minority voice powerful enough to countermand the powers that be from maintaining a society that perpetuates the unjust status quo.

Despite our irretrievable stupidity and ignorance as a culture, we have achieved real progress in spite of ourselves.  There really hasn’t been much time to figure it out, after all.  We are so very young as a race, only having recorded our history for a few thousand years.  We only gave the female gender the right to participate in government 85 years ago.  We collectively implemented racial equality under the law a mere forty years ago.  In this century, such ideas are no-brainers, and the righteousness of those causes is so blindingly obvious that to suggest otherwise would classify one as a primitive, an obsolete thinker lost in the corridors of forgotten lies.  It’s almost inconceivable that in those times, people were hotly divided about these basic, entry-level human rights.  And in the millennia to come, as our species evolves just a smidgen further, we will have an even more advanced collective consciousness about human dignity.

Yes, there have been calamities, brutalities, holocausts, atrocities, and incalculable bloodshed in our pockmarked, disastrous history.  As a friend of mine points out, the seven deadly sins are alive and well within the heart of the individual, and they have always been.  But you can take some comfort in knowing that despite all of that, the direction of human civilization has always been upward.  Though the immediate future may look bleak, we will come through all of this smarter and wiser.

Humanity is constantly at the cutting edge of technological advancement, with the tools for collaboration between all of our greatest minds only recently beginning to take full flight.  Most of us now have the entire compendium of human knowledge on our desktops, and that ought to count for something.  I choose to put my faith in the foggy future, in the promise of social progress light years more advanced than this sloppy, hurried bloom of a civilization.  New inventions and scientific breakthroughs will make hunger, disease, and needfulness unnecessary.  It may take centuries, and it may get a lot worse before it gets better, and entirely new sets of ethics may need to be ironed out.  But we will find ways to solve our problems, the simple yet seemingly unsolvable ones that have made us take arms against each other since time immemorial.  And once we have satisfied the basic needs of everyone on this rock, we can help people through genuine altruism and not just because it’s economically convenient.

Have a great election year, one and all, and live your tiny section of civilization well.