Why We Will Win - Democratic Underground

H2O Man

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Sun Mar-08-09 07:51 PM
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Why We Will Win

I spent three of the last four days in a hotel in a major American city, which is unusual for me. It is far more comfortable in my isolated, rural home. However, three things beckoned me to the temporary stay: a large book store; the opportunity to meet with a good friend who I have not seen in twenty years; and one of my daughters attending a national conference in the same building.

My interest in books resulted in my getting a fairly wide range of "new" reading material. I bought: three books on prehistoric archaeology (by an author I knew casually, and who was friends with one of my cousins, who is in one of his books); two books one former heavyweight boxing champions, Jack Johnson and Charles "Sonny" Liston; a couple of books by authors on the dark side – Charles Manson and Patrick Buchanan; and two light books by a couple of my favorite authors, Viktor Frankl and Erich Fromm.

While all of what I’ve read from the books thus far is interesting, I am most interested in Fromm’s book ("The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness"; 1973). As with all of his books, it is easy to apply it to today’s world. In the past six months, in conversations with my normal brother about the state that our society is in, I’ve found myself quoting passages from Fromm’s works, and my brother has begun reading a number of his books. The Frankl book is important to me, in part because in the past three months, one of my relatives and two of my friends have each had a son die unexpectedly.

My friend and his wife both have had careers in human services, and been active in politics. For a number of years before working in human services, he was employed by a then state politician, who has since become one of the more powerful members of the House of Representatives.

Later, for a period of about six years, although we worked for different agencies, our offices were next to each other. We enjoyed having lunch together, and discussing/debating the issues of the day. In our spare time, we got together to do things ranging from running campaigns for people running for local and regional political office, against the republican machine; volunteering with area youth programs; and the two of us located one of the more important archaeological sites (from the Hunter’s Home phase) in central NYS.

He and his wife, while certainly more conservative than the "average" DUer (if there is such a thing), are open-minded and highly intelligent people. They are horrified at what has happened to our society in the past eight years. Though they are city dwellers, they own a small camp about an hour away from my home, where they have stocked up on dry goods, etc., because they are convinced that our country has been brought to the brink.

I understand and appreciate their positions. As Fromm points out in the new book, our species has issues with violence, that are self-destructive. Future archaeologists may recognize, from the artifacts they find on our occupation sites, that our technology was far in advance of our ability to exercise a wholesome control over it.

I am also fully aware that many people are suffering, from a range of terrible circumstances that are in part the human experience, but which are also made far, far worse by the inhumanity of many of the people who are seated in positions of power.

Yet, I am confident about the future.

At the ceremony ending the national youth leadership conference that my daughter attended, my wife and I had the opportunity to talk with the lady that supervised my daughter’s group. She said that she had really enjoyed her time with my daughter – they exchanged e-mail addresses – and mentioned that this was the last time she would be involved with one of these conferences. She is going to be working as an attorney with a group that represents low-income folks who normally cannot access adequate legal representation within our system of justice.

And, to open the ceremony, another group leader began by quoting from Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s famous speech in South Africa. He noted that they had begun the conference by discussing this quote, and wanted to end on the same note:

"Let no one be discouraged by the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills – against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence …. Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.

"It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples form a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."