Times Change

It's hard to take. Things, we're told, are better than ever. But I don't believe it. The weather is getting worse, retail stores are empty and jails are full. The Democrats are fighting with the Republicans – as they have since the Republican Party was organized in 1854. Abraham Lincoln was their second nominee for President (John Fremont was the first, in 1856), but hard as the battles were then (John Breckinridge, John Bell, and Stephen Douglas were the opposition in that campaign), current politics is worse than it's ever been. There has to be a way to forget the present and the disputes that the media thrusts in our faces and move into the future. But there isn't. So my solution is to focus on the past.

And what comes to me is an image of Abraham Lincoln. Not that we were contemporaries, but he was an example for us of a true and a great American – what we should all be like. So, back in the middle of the twentieth century, when heroes were heroes and villains villains, what did they teach us?

They taught us that Abe Lincoln studied his law books by candle light.

Shouldn't he have turned on the fluorescent lights? Or used the internet? Or kindled his Kindle rather than the candle wax? But if I didn't have these things as a child, certainly he never had them. Those things weren't available to him a century earlier. Electricity, although it existed and had even been discovered, hadn't been put to much use. There was no internet and there certainly weren't devices based on wireless technology. However useful those items may be to us, Abe Lincoln, or anyone of his time, wouldn't have even dreamed of them.

A few centuries earlier – before Gutenberg – there weren't easily accessible books, especially law books. Even after him it took a while for the spread of his printing press and its products. And before Prometheus stole fire from the gods, man – even the greats like Lincoln – wouldn't have even been able to light candles. But, of course, that was then. And we have since learned how to make fires and even burn books. To that degree there was “progress.”

Times change (or so “they” want us to believe). Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Our lives are very different from those of our forebears. Certainly medicine has progressed since my childhood, and movies, and electronics, and a wide variety of “things.” But people are the same.

We're quick to quote Santayana. We admonish those who follow us not to ignore history for fear that they will repeat it. But by emphasizing the remembrance of things past we forget the future. What our parents liked, what worked for them, is not necessarily what we need if there is to be progress. We may be cautioned not to waste our time reinventing the wheel, but sometimes a wheel is not what we need. Perhaps the reason we cannot solve our problems is that our “solutions” are little more than rearrangements of those problems and of past solutions. Too often we fiddle with the wheel when we need an entirely new approach.

Unfortunately, all our changes are superficial. Song styles may differ, language may change and prices may rise (when I had my first car the goal was to find a filling station at which I could get gasoline for 16.9 cents a gallon), but we accept these as evidence of progress without any real alteration in the causes of our difficulties. A computer only increases our ability to recognize those problems more quickly, it does not change human nature. We're as involved with ourselves and our own ways as we've always been. History doesn't repeat itself, it simply persists. Repetition would suggest that are points of progress from which we return to the past – that where we are is different from where we once were. And, unfortunately, there's nothing new under the fluorescents.

So, it grieves me to say, however much we may need it, real change is improbable. We might as well accept that. The technology will improve, but no matter how we tweak the world around us nothing will really be different. Our science and electronics will make quantum leaps and we'll live longer allowing us to take advantage of them, but we and our children will never understand each other. Things past will continue to be irrelevant. I may be entitled to pass on my wisdom, however no one is obliged to listen. So however much I may yearn for change, I know that it's unlikely to come.

Politicians, being human (more or less), will continue to fight. Like the rest of us, they've learned nothing. And our children will repeat our mistakes. Even though there may be new twists, there will be old attitudes and old vanity. Our words won't change anything. Abraham Lincoln said: “As our case is new, we must think and act anew.” But we won't. Maybe I hope for too much. Perhaps the generations, notwithstanding our attempts to engage our offspring, weren't meant to communicate. Nothing in the future is likely to be fundamentally different. But who cares? That won't be my problem.

January 26, 2017

If I Were A Rich Man

A certain kind of rich man afflicted with the symptoms of moral dandyism sooner or later comes to the conclusion that it isn't enough merely to make money. He feels obliged to hold views, to espouse causes and elect Presidents, to explain to a trembling world how and why the world went wrong. -Lewis H. Lapham, editor and writer.

Unfortunately, that's not the whole story. Too often he begins to believe that he actually knows something. Something beyond what it was that helped him make (or inherit) money. And others believe it, too. His self-delusion is shared by those yearning to be like him.

The most important men in town would come to fawn on me!
They would ask me to advise them,
Like a Solomon the Wise.
"If you please, Reb Tevye..."
"Pardon me, Reb Tevye..."
Posing problems that would cross a rabbi's eyes! (From Fiddler on the Roof, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick)

That's the problem. If you're rich, people think you know something, and so do you. And if you're rich you can afford a platform from which to proclaim your message.

That's not the only platform of course. Friends, Romans and countrymen eagerly lend their ears to those whom they admire – very often stars in entertainment, or heroic athletes. For some reason we automatically attribute wisdom to those we idolize, even if for reasons completely unrelated to the issue in question.

What's in a name? Everything. People buy Air Jordans^®; they take beauty advice from super models, and political advice from movie stars. Sometimes a familiar name and an admired personality can attract followers. We're a wannabe society and we imitate those who are rich or beautiful or famous. Sometimes, though not very often, the famous are also wise. Ronald Reagan's popularity won him the governorship of California and, with the experience and platform that office gave him, he moved up to the Presidency, and did reasonably well for our country in that position. Most of the time, however, prominence or stardom is unassociated with good sense. (Think Sean Penn, Jane Fonda, and Dennis Rodman.)

And, while also often lacking good sense, the media control people's thinking on a wide variety of subjects. They have the broadest platform of all, and even though most people claim that they don't trust journalists and the press, their sources of information – right or wrong – sway voters. As do those with loud voices.

We're easily influenced. We may claim to be independent thinkers, but if we hear something often enough and loud enough we believe it. And if what we hear is something we already believe, if our biases are confirmed, we become deaf to counter-arguments, no matter how logical they may be. In a time of dissatisfaction, a populist with a loud voice becomes the spokesman for the disillusioned; and the means for advertising his opinion – money, notoriety, and a loud voice, for example – trump experience, tact, and wisdom. He thinks he has all the answers, and his followers believe him.

And it won't make one bit of difference if I answer right or wrong.
When you're rich, they think you really know!

Sheldon Harnick was as much a philosopher as a lyricist. And he was certainly a perceptive viewer of human nature. Hidden in his homily about the situation in eastern Europe so much earlier, he described a danger to American society; indeed, a reality about all societies. It is our assumption that those who succeed – or are believed to have succeeded – know everything, and that we know nothing. But some of those “successes” are the know-nothings. And if we can get beyond our own disillusionment, we can see that.