We know a young woman who got a prize from her high school for a story poem. Valuing her, we asked to see it. Her story began happily, but turned into a nightmare or horror story, putting her home in America into a war zone and destroying her family. I read it in tears. Tears because they’re such painful thoughts for a girl of her age. Tears for what such a discouraging view of reality might do to her. Tears because so many are experiencing just such tragedies around the world.
Her story has her grandparents come to comfort and care for her. That’s cold comfort in a devastated world, but her story tracks many survivors’ lives. There’s no end or closure to grief for the loss of loved ones. The anguish and depression are inescapable, and for many, also, survivors’ guilt. No words can make the pain of war go away, as so many of our returning soldiers know. Some bury their pain behind productive activity until it erupts again, but, for others, the scars of war stay dominant. Wartorn countries also need to rebuild, replace the contributions and blessings of those lost, rebuild their landscape and economic engines where possible.
We could complement the young writer, urge her to keep writing and tell her we look forward to talking about it. We could tell her that good people are working hard to keep her, her family and friends safe. What we cannot do is to tell her not to worry because it won’t happen. The brutality in this world make that confident prediction impossible. Steven Pinker says violent deaths are decreasing. But far too many are still killed, too many groups focus on making trouble and getting the guns and weapons to make it happen.
Pinker focused only on violent deaths, but environmental changes make earthly hells on all continents and force migration and emigration which themselves seed violent conflict. Our country isn’t immune: floods devastate communities on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, fires devastate the west and Canada, poisoned air spreads from the blazes, rising heat chokes our food crops, and threatens heat stroke to people all over.
It may seem like my weekly commentary addresses unrelated problems. But they all fit together. Our petty arguments about whether Africans and African-Americans, Hispanics and Hispanic-Americans, Asians, Muslims, Jews, and Native American citizens and immigrants deserve equal concern and respect, whether it’s OK to house and feed each other, or essential that we do, and our increasing purchase of armaments, all point toward disaster. None of us will survive if we’re too focused on fighting each other instead of joining forces to solve our common problems, fighting each other instead of climate change, jealously worrying about who else might also benefit by efforts to deal with our changing climate.
Nothing is more important for all of us than team work. There was a time when we prided ourselves on teamwork, imagining we learned it playing sports, but our politics doesn’t reflect that lesson. The grave is egalitarian. I can’t imagine God rewarding our petty behavior. God has been telling us to honor our neighbors and obey the Golden Rule in many languages and in many religious faiths, but humans show their overwhelming selfishness, ignoring God’s universal prescription.
— If you think I’m on target, please pass it on. For the podcast, please click here. This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on June 13, 2023.
Constitutionalism and Democracy 
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as G-d gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” A. Lincoln
“The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn’t the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. There can be no true goodness, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness.” A, Camus
In short, do the right thing carefully.
John Lennon said, “Question authority.” But I think that starts with questioning yourself.
John, you’ve quoted great literature. But would you care to explain the connection to my post?