Healing terra infirma

Published: Monday by John Kaminski, 22 October 2018 12:13 
 

The way each person ought to be

‘A GOOD SHEPHERD FOR ALL OF LIFE’

I’ve been frequently accused of mistaking my own wishful thinking for reality. In my idealism, I rue the way the world — and particularly this enigmatic country of mine — seems to have lost its sanity in search of profit. We could have been the benefactor of humanity, the righteous big brother, with plenty of money to spare, rather than the alienated brute, the barbaric overseer of less developed nations we consider beasts, as we consume enough nonessential munchies in a day the cost of which would support a rural Third World tribe for a year.

We actually could have been the light of the world everyone hoped we were, but instead we chose another route, the tired routine of ruthlessness, flexing our biceps to intimidate everyone into doing our will. We played the role of Hollywood tough guys swaggering down a phony path of inauthentic prerogatives, practicing coercion and intimidation, of superiority and manipulation of those not quite as lucky as ourselves, though just as deserving. We thought our guns and our bombs made us better than the real human heroes who cared for their parents until the very end, cultivated their own crops, and raised their children to be resourceful, respectful and honest.

I actually said all that to a popular writer. I was helping her write a book about extraterrestrials — this was many decades ago — and she looked at me funny. I forget her exact words, but her look seemed to say, "You don't understand the way the world really works, do you?" I replied, or maybe I just imagined I replied: "It nevertheless is the way I wish the world to be, and there is no chance it can ever be that way if people like me don't imagine it actually could be the way we wanted it to be.”

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