It Is High Time
The
following is just one example of so many well known messes around the
Earth over thousands and thousands of years one could not count them
in a lifetime. And that fact ought to stimulate a reader.
I am watching a film
about the movement west in the building of a nation called America in
the Nineteenth Century. This film is just like all the others I have
watched since childhood. It depends upon my willingness to pretend to
be stupid for its purpose.
Here is the story:
It was 1874. The nation was in a severe depression economically
because greedy railroads had gone bankrupt that had promised
prosperity to all who came to America to work hard to realize it.
Many were out of work. There were still many disastrous consequences
of the terrible Civil War that had just been over a short time. Lots
of hatred prevailed on both sides under harsh conditions. Politicians
believed the answer might lie in the movement of many people west as
soon as possible to get them busy and away from the memories of that
war with a chance for a new start claiming unsettled land where at
present only what were considered to be uncivilized Indians lived as
they had lived for centuries. The push was on.
Gold was discovered
in the Black Hills of Dakota. Problem was, the American government
had promised the Black Hills to the Indians as an undisturbed place
to live forever after having taken already by force from those
Indians much, much of the land that lies between the Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans, always with promises to take no more. Now, here is
the part that stands apart as ridiculous-the makers of the film want
me as a viewer to accept without question that the nation's best cure
for its existent economic woes had to be to get that gold from the
Black Hills; the only consideration being how best to accomplish
that. I am not to even ask myself the question: who made the mess? I
am not even to ask the question: what other ways might be open to the
people who at the time called themselves Americans
to address the needs of many
of them
to attain
the means of enjoying an adequate level of material prosperity? I am
to pretend I do not know there were many ways other than the option
to mine the gold of the Black Hills which had been given to the
Indians. I am to ignore the
obvious truth that to the Indians who had no hand in the bringing
about of the Civil War nor any share in the greed that brought on the
economic depression back East gold was of little or no value. In
addition, I am to ignore my
clear understanding that to see only one option is blindness of a
huge magnitude and the best
name for that is greed!
The
film blithely continues to unfold its story in ignorance of more very
important facts:
1.
The goodness within all human beings that will move them from greed
to love in a heartbeat.
2.
The resourcefulness of a free people to save themselves.
3.
The willingness, the desire even, of people to endure hardship
brought about by their own failures rather than to break a promise
made in good faith.
4.
A natural humility which is a human necessity to ask another for
mercy and receive alms. At some time everyone of us will be down and
in need.
5.
It was, and still is, the selfish interests of politicians and those
who own them who call the shots that make wars. Most of us want
peace. But, we are too weak and lazy to insist upon it.
I
am just saying it is high time we make a new beginning-all of us all
around the globe- and insist upon telling the truth about ourselves.
