I’m having another birthday. Nothing unusual about that. There have already been more than four scores and seven. But it set me thinking about how much the world has changed, and yet remained the same, and what a contradictory creature ‘man’ is.
It was the Great Depression! Much of the country was hungry and without a job. It would take a global war to replace widespread fear with flag-waving patriotism. But it was the images of that war that seared into the brain and remained there decades later. Chinese babies being hoisted on bayonets by Japanese soldiers. Jews being herded into box cars. German soldiers piled one on another along the Neva River, stopped by Russian determination and an icy, unrelenting winter. Worse of all, the bodies of radiated women and children that followed a huge mushroom cloud rising miles into the sky. Memories of man at his most primeval level.
And yet, in the face of such horrors, other men arose and said we can do better. They expressed those unique human qualities…hope and resiliency. They stood amidst the rubble and shouted, ‘tomorrow will be better.’
And it was! Hope was in the United Nations building along New York’s East River. It was American bombers carrying tons of food into a besieged Berlin; the Marshall Plan; soldiers tenderly caring for the thousands of broken souls released from Auschwitz and Dachau. Man’s better side. The war was over! Democracy was victorious! Surely peace will reign forever. One hoped.
But fear and avarice arose once again. The Iron Curtain drew across Europe and a nuclear arms race began. Countries under the yoke of 19th century colonialism demanded freedom. Gandhi led India to independence only to see more than a million Hindus and Muslims kill one another, unable to coexist.
At the bottom of Africa, 15 million blacks were disenfranchised by 5 million whites. Cries of nationalism filled the air, often accompanied by rifle fire. Israel was established, followed immediately by attacks from 7 of its closest neighbors. War broke out on the Korean Peninsula at the same time it simmered further south in Vietnam. A determined Chinese peasant army chased Chiang Kai-shek and his followers off the mainland, blocked from further pursuit by the U.S. Navy. Uganda, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Chile…across the globe people hoped for something better and set about to achieve it.
Closer to home things were changing as well. A million American Blacks, having fought bravely in the war, were being denied the prosperity whites were enjoying. They were excluded from decent schools and Universities, good paying jobs and homes in the white-picket fence suburbs to which Baby Boomers were settling. Marches, riots, and lynchings fed the decades side-by-side with a plethora of new creature comforts…television, microwaves, computers, vaccines, space travel, social media, pills to enhance sex, others to prevent pregnancies…change was the only constant.
Relationships that had been unorthodox were now acceptable. We finally understood that all forms of discrimination were evil and that not all societies embrace the same form of government.
Our resiliency is again tested as we watch radical climate threaten our planet’s future. We continue to hope that the anger in our body politic won’t endanger our republic.
Man is both Alpha and Omega, good and bad. He is capable of creating great structures, medical advances, and machines that think, but his ability to harness these developments for good is often suspect.
As I slice a thin piece of birthday cake, I am optimistic, for man has, since he first walked upright, proven that he is resilient, ever hopeful, and capable of surviving whatever barriers arise.
Come, have a piece of cake, share my optimism…tomorrow will be better!