Tuesday, August 12, 2014

I Hope I Die Before I Get Wise

If I live long enough, I'm going to end up pretty discouraged. Not about myself, but about the human race. I was born into a bubble of optimism and egocentricity that has been deflating steadily ever since. When I was a boy, I didn't understand much about the world. Now I do. It has not been an altogether pleasant awakening. I bit from the apple of knowledge and realized I am naked.

I was at a dinner table with a young man from Bulgaria recently. He said it was rough there in the 1990s. I, showing I still have a lot to learn, asked why. He patiently and poignantly explained the descent into political and economic chaos after the dead hand of communism released its grip. Corruption, thuggery, oligarchy.


He was born in Bulgaria and lives there now, but he spent his teen years in Pittsburg when his mother came to the United States after the Wall fell to try to make a better life for her children. He said that in high-school in Pittsburg he was struck by how little was taught about the history and affairs of Europe and the rest of the world. I guess I come by my egocentricity naturally; apparently it’s a national trait.


It wasn't just the common struggle to find a new way of governing and a new way of organizing business that made things so difficult in the Bulgaria of his youth. Amid the new statelessness, ethnic and nationalistic hatreds dating back to the Ottoman Empire revived. Even today, he said, if you get a Bulgarian and a Macedonian together in a bar and get them drinking, there will be a fight.


As he was talking, I thought of the oligarchs in Russia, the bitter business and national rivalries in Asia, the sectarian wars in the Middle East, the tribal slaughters in Africa and Central America. Considering the durability of provincial antipathies, and the murders committed in their name, even the Tea Party begins to scare me.


I knew about the Cold War when I was a kid. During nuclear war drills, I ducked and covered under my desk with the rest of my grade-school classmates. But I didn't really feel it. I was in my little bubble. In many ways I still am. But it's getting harder and harder to be oblivious to the problems in the rest of the world. I read more about world affairs than I ever have, that's part of it, but the world is just smaller now. With the Internet and constant global reporting, it's like living in my small hometown when I was a boy, where I couldn't hide from scrutiny. Everyone seemed to know what mischief I was up to; now I know what mischief everyone else is up to.


Honestly, I think I liked it better the other way. I'm not sure I want to know as much as I do. The notion that as a species we are unlikely to kick the habit of petty brutality is depressing. I liked it better when I thought I, or at least we, could change the world. I won't say I’m wise yet. I'm a long way from it. I'm just not sure I want to know more.

* With apologies to Pete Townshend, who said that by old he meant rich, like the Queen Mother, who had his old Packard hearse towed because she didn’t like to see it on the street and inspired him to write "My Generation”.

7 comments:

  1. Don't be such a pessimist. I don't know about the world, but the U.S. is certainly a better place than when I was growing up-- cleaner, more open minded, and more diverse. Perhaps brutality will never go away (we are animals), but we can always work towards peace.... and wisdom.
    Carol

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  2. "Good morning, Pooh Bear," said Eeyore gloomily. "If it is a good morning," he said. "Which I doubt," said he.

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  3. The Who had another great tune: "We won't get fooled again". Unfortunately, each new generation can get fooled the first time.
    David

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    1. You are so right, David. If the Masters of War had listened to the folk and rock singers of the sixties, we might be better off.

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    2. Yes! And let's not leave out Rap and Hip Hop. We all should bask in their wisdom and inclusiveness.
      David

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