Hawthorn Hill Journal by Richard deRosa

Wondering, Will the Center Hold?

Will the center hold? Good question. Ever since Yeats posed that question in his great poem, “The Second Coming,” I have felt that, yes, despite there being so many reasons for pessimism, the argument in favor of optimism held greater sway. That is still the only reasonable alternative. The competing choice leads down too dark a road to contemplate. Stephen Pinker argues that we have the intellectual and technological skills we need to solve even the most urgent problems that we confront. Having tools, however, is only one part of the equation. Using them and using them well is the existential challenge of our times. The most recent paranoia, certainly justified, about the dangers posed by advances in AI, is just one of many manmade afflictions that face the world today. In many ways we are a species too smart for its own britches. We create things aimed at improving our lives and then watch as they become weapons of senseless destruction. We seem unwilling to rein in the most unsavory aspects of human nature.

Look at what’s happening in Ukraine. A peaceful nation is attacked for no good reason at all. Whole cities are laid to waste. Millions have to flee their homes; countless innocents are slaughtered in the name of what? Lay a city to waste, bomb the hell out of it, in fact kill a place in every way possible and then feel good about having done it? That is madness. And in the end what do you have? Nothing at all worth having, except for the giddy feeling of having won a battle that reaps nothing but emptiness and moral corrosion of the most despicable sort.

Then there is this love affair with AR15s. One hesitates to characterize it as a love affair since one normally associates love with affairs of the heart. But too many people take to heart this bizarre notion that the Second Amendment somehow sanctions the possession of any firearm whatsoever, however lethal, and is certainly anathema to any sane notion of the sanctity of our civil and moral obligations to one another. Unfortunately, too many among us equate freedom with a blank check. Far too few understand that true freedom, a la Locke, requires the forfeit of certain liberties. What is it about humankind’s penchant for devoting so much of its inherent ingenuity toward things that destroy rather than those things which just might improve the lives of millions and restore the planet to some acceptable semblance of health. At any rate, the time is long overdue for prohibiting the manufacture of assault-style weapons. How about manufacturing stuff that promotes life rather than enhances our capacity to destroy it.

We have the resources to alleviate all manner of suffering around the world. Yet, look at the silly and ultimately catastrophic things that we do instead. Here in the U.S., we spend so much time vilifying one another when that energy could be put to mutually productive uses. Maybe there is reason for some optimism. Not long ago, both houses passed bipartisan legislation that forestalled a potentially catastrophic default which would have upended the lives of millions, many already barely scraping by. One hopes that sets the stage for more compromise, more willingness to set aside personal grievances for the common good. It is but a small light, barely visible at the other end of a very long tunnel, but enough to give one cause for continued optimism. Perhaps our better angels are around some not-so-distant corner waiting to save us from ourselves.

I do not know the best way to convince Russia that its invasion of Ukraine has been a big mistake and that withdrawal would be the moral move of choice. I do not know how to convince China that its greed for Taiwan is just that, a wanton land grab rooted only in greed and a lust for dominion over another. I do not know how to convince North Korea that the way to prosperity for all its people does not depend on scaring the hell out of the world with its insane development of more nuclear missiles. I do not know how to convince zealots on the left and right to cool their jets. I do know that the restoration of civility in our relations with one another would be a start. Incivility has gotten us nowhere.