Truth, Part 2

EVOLVING IN A PLACE CALLED EDEN

IS A PROMISING YOUNG CIVILIZATION...

Look at the headlines seriously this past week. Observe the magnitude of the issues in play, in the history of civilization:

• The White House and Congress are locked in battle over the economy with Democrats unwilling to cut social programs, and their counterparts stubborn refusal (gasp!) in realizing that not increasing taxes on the wealthiest 5% of America will make the other 95% REALLY ANGRY.
• The first "city in space" is compete
• War, famine, plague.    *****   Where's the GOOD NEWS?
• A single European currency has begun its life, sort of.
• Uneasy truce remains between Catholic and Protestant, Jew and Muslim, and so forth.
• Peace or war between Arab and Jew to be deterined by a tiny strip of land.
• Confrontation with a dictator has the world watching.
• Earth's climate change can no longer be ignored as 'fantasy'.
• Rise and fall of modern national economies here and abroad troubles the world.
• Brutal weather patterns and systems continue to circle the globe. Earthquakes, tornadoes and drought worsen with each passing day.

Sound all too familiar?

You are participating in all of this, every concept, person, event, headline, and consequence as the Cosmos unfolds time.

Richard P. McBrien in his book Catholicism has related in striking metaphor the radical degree to which human history has changed in the last tiny fraction of our human existence.  He notes that if the last fifty thousand years were divided into periods of sixty-two year life spans, we’ve enjoyed eight hundred lifetimes.  "Six-hundred and fifty were spent in caves.  Only during the last seventy lifetimes has it been possible to communicate through the written word, and only during the last six lifetimes has the human community had access to the printed word."

We traveled by camel caravan before the Christian era, at about eight miles per hour.  This form of travel was common for just under eight thousand years, until the chariot, which pushed human travel to 20 mph.  Steam locomotion of the early nineteenth century allowed speed of only thirteen miles per hour, and the sailing ships, before and after, were slower still. By the latter part of the nineteenth century, with improvements in the steam engine, we reached speeds of 100 mph.  As McBrien notes, it had taken this hominid species millions of  years to be able to communicate with each other and travel to each other.  Then, in a revolution during the last part of the last one of our eight hundred lives of the last fifty thousand years, we have seen planes, jets, rockets, and space travel with astronauts and space capsules and the capacity to reach Neptune and one of its moons, and send back computer-enhanced photographs from celestial bodies at the edge of our solar system.

And during just the last lifetime, we have seen the rise of literacy, telegraph, telephones, radio, television, transistors; and computers, microchips, and the Internet; and radio telescopes and space probes with the capacity to send and receive messages to the outer reaches of space. Perhaps the most haunting and emotive of all advancements in communications recorded in our lifetime are the images from the Hubble Space Telescope -- humanity’s first clear-vision eye peering into the secret places of the history of the heavens.

Clearly we live in an important time.

    Despite all this noise, or perhaps because of it, this new generation is    more resonant with the soft, subtle, true qualities of life than any before.   

But what knowledge of history has the culture of the United States, the bastion of Western idealism, left in the minds of its children?  Instead of McBrian’s yardstick of time at 800 lifetimes in 62 year units, let us resolve further to human generations, for simplicity’s sake let’s say averaging just over 20 years from time one gives birth to the next. By that reckoning, what is the state of mind of our newest generation, the last in 2400 human generations over 50,000 years?

Circling recently on the Internet was a simplistic but wonderful answer to this question, adapted below.

The people who left high school last spring across the U.S. were born before the year 2000. They have no meaningful recollection of the Reagan era and did not know he had ever been shot. They were prepubescent when the Persian Gulf War was waged. Black Monday 1987 is as significant to them as the Great Depression. There has only been one Pope.

They can only really remember reading about one president. They were 11 when the Soviet Union broke apart and do not remember the Cold War. They have never feared a nuclear war. "The Day After" is a pill to them, not a movie. CCCP is just a bunch of letters. They have only known one Germany. They are too young to remember the Space shuttle blowing up, and Tienamin Square means nothing to them. They do not know who Momar Qadafi is. The New Deal is most likely a rebate on a new VW Beetle.

Their lifetime has always included AIDS. They never had a Polio shot and likely do not know what it is. Bottle caps have not only always been screw off, but have always been plastic. They have no idea what a pull top can looks like. Atari pre-dates them, as do vinyl albums. The expression "you sound like a broken record" means nothing to them. They have never owned a record player. They don’t enjoy playing Pac Man and have never heard of Pong. Star Wars looks very fake, and the special effects are pathetic. There have always been red M&M's, and blue ones are not new. What do you mean there used to be beige ones?

They may have heard of an 8-track, but chances are they probably have never actually seen or heard one. The Compact Disc was introduced when they were 1 year old. As far as they know, stamps have always cost about 32 cents. Zip codes have always had a dash in them. They have always had an answering machine. Most have never seen a TV set with only 13 channels, nor have they seen a black and white TV. They have always had cable. There have always been VCR's, but they have no idea what Beta is. They cannot fathom not having a remote control. They were born the year that the Walkman was introduced by Sony.

Rollerskating has always meant inline for them. They have never heard of King Cola, Burger Chef, The Globe Democrat, Pan AM or Ozark Airlines. The Tonight Show has always been hosted by Jay Leno. They have no idea when or why Jordache jeans were cool. Popcorn has always been cooked in a microwave. They have never seen and remember a game that included the St. Louis Football Cardinals, the Baltimore Colts, the Minnesota North Stars, the Kansas City Kings, the New Orleans Jazz, the Minnesota Lakers, the Atlanta Flames, or the Denver Rockies (NHL hockey, that is). They do not consider the Colorado Rockies, the Florida Marlins, the Florida Panthers, the Ottawa Senators, the San Jose Sharks, or the Tampa Bay Lightning "expansion teams."

They have never seen Larry Bird play, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a football player. They never took a swim petrified by the idea of Jaws. The Vietnam War is as ancient history to them as WWI, WWII or even the Civil War. They have no idea that Americans were ever held hostage in Iran. They can't imagine what hard contact lenses are. They don't know who Mork was or where he was from. They never heard the terms "Where's the beef?", "I'd walk a mile for Camel", or "de plane, de plane!". They do not care who shot J.R. and have no idea who J.R. is. M.A.S.H., The Cosby Show, The Facts of Life, Silver Spoons, The Love Boat, Miami Vice, WKRP in Cincinnati, and Taxi are shows they have likely never seen.

The Titanic was found? They didn't know it was lost. Michael Jackson has always been white. They cannot remember the Cardinals ever winning a World Series, or even being in one. Kansas, Chicago, Boston, America and Alabama are places, not groups. McDonald's never came in Styrofoam containers.

Very few have felt the deep emotion from the hand-me-down memories of World War II and the Holocaust. Fewer still have any recollection of the basis for the Cold War. Almost none can personally relate the two World Wars together, distinguishing or even remembering their teachings for the future of the world. The term appeasement doesn’t ring a bell for them. Neither do they admire Churchill as a hero, if they even know why they should.

Do you feel old now? Remember, the lucky few of the people who don't know these things will be in college this year.

And in four years, they'll be part of the workforce. I hope college teaches them well.

Ungrounded in technical history they may be, this new generation is the most innately conscious of all before it. It has been barraged with the loudest, most, biggest, brightest, strongest, tastiest, foulest, best and worst that western marketing can offer, all delivered in THX sound, with digital fidelity, on widescreen,  over a cable modem. To the older generation, if you don’t know what those words mean, let it be your clue to the vast, valuable and potent new advanced culture now leaping up on its own two feet, as the very skeletal and nervous system of our future civilization.

Despite all this noise, or perhaps because of it, this new generation is more resonant with the soft, subtle, true qualities of life than any before. Their culture reveals it in the way they talk, dress, eat, work and socialize. They have no desire for war. They have an intuitive concern for the world, a concern that leaves some depressed, others lost, some on a returning path to religion, and a few motivated like crazy to save the Earth from humanity. Most of them feel powerless in a society where the only thing that seems to have power is money. They have the least desire for amassing wealth since their great-grandparents’ generation, which, incidentally, was in the previous 62-year life span. Sometimes the best advances can come only after funerals for arthritic minds.

It is this new generation that will carry our world into the future, perhaps through some of our greatest crises, certainly through some of our most painful challenges, and hopefully into the grandest of discoveries. Let us teach these young men and women well, for we are entrusting the future of the world to them, and humanity’s future across the Cosmos.

Next:

WE GROW MORE DANGEROUS...