Dalton Roberts, Guest Blogger

LONG-RANGE OPTIMISM
By Dalton Roberts
My Sunday Journal
IPS Features
6-27-10

James Baldwin said, “I’m optimistic about the future but not about the future if this civilization. I’m optimistic about the civilization which will replace this one.”

This long range optimism is about the only comfort I find and that means we are in for more suffering. You would think we have suffered enough to learn our lessons but I doubt that is true.

I am not optimistic that nuclear bombs will not be used. Too many idiots have them or are close to having them. Timothy McVeigh merely considered the death of children “collateral damage”and those who are insane will consider the death of anything, including themselves, as nothing but collateral damage.

If a lifetime of observation has taught me anything it is to never underestimate the damage that can be done by an idiot with a wrong idea.

Looking at our last quarter century of leadership in America, I am not optimistic that we will learn to skillfully pursue peace and become the moral leaders of the world, as we did for a brief period after WWII. But I am optimistic that we will eventually come to see that raining down bombs on iwomen and children is a sure path to more terrorism. We will suffer great losses but pain will eventually teach us that our actions are self-destructive.

It will take more Vietnams, Iraqs, and Afghanistans but at some point we will see that we have no right to impose our will on other nations and cultures. There is no way to bomb away world diversity. At some point, we will have to start looking for areas of common interest with all nations and cultures rather than flaunting our “values” as if they are superior. No culture is superior. We are all just different. The values adopted by the whole need to be those that provide the most good for the whole.

I am not optimistic that Christianity is headed in the right direction. It is not seeking to live by and disseminate the higher teachings of Jesus but to force its forms and rituals on the world. I am optimistic that Christians will ultimately realize the true power of Christianity is in the Sermon on the Mount and hat it will become he driving force of the church. There is no real power in Christianity outside of the Sermon on the Mount and related teachings.

When we are finally so weary of war and killing and realize it will never work, we will throw ourselves into peace-making and human progress with enough commitment to make the world work for all nations.

Will this new civilization have to arise out of nuclear ashes or will it spread like leaven from hearts all over the world and finally permeate the whole? Only time will tell but one thing is certain: each of us has the chance now to start the leaven of hope and peace in our own hearts. Each one can really read the Sermon on the Mount and live by it in our daily lives. Each of us can find at least one beautiful truth in each of the word’s religions and philosophies to have points of communication with everyone we meet.

I can hear it now: “You are just a dreamer.” Everything good was first dreamed.

For a starter, we can realize that the world is chiefly populated by other people.
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Boats on the beach on Grand Manan Island, NB.