The People of Tomorrow

The people of tomorrow will misinterpret us here and now as we misinterpret those who came before us and so on.  The crux of the problem arises when we think we know what they knew, felt or what they saw.  We cannot know our ancestors unless we dig deeply into what remains of their surroundings and then assemble their images and words to explain their actions.  


What happened to them?  A good starting point is to ask what is happening to us.  How have our American characteristics evolved or devolved?  What characteristics have survived as virtuous?  Who do we emulate now?  I’m struggling to name a person we or at least some of us would know or know of and respect.

Maybe the probing glare of t.v. has exposed too many frailties, but character has little to do with appearances.  Naming a living exemplar reveals almost everything about you and me.  Some individuals contain within themselves I would say a sacred cohesion, a firmness that is its own value and cannot be commodified.


These people always represent a profound knowledge of life consistently displaying traits like compassion, generosity, and perspicacity.  Within them characterological value is asserted.

At aga noe en shadow

Crystalized in the present

the past is never far from here

but to live in the past is a kind

of insanity.

We must be like the mad parents

of the children who dove

off cliffs rather than starve to death:

Parents who were amazed

at their children's exuberance.

Except for the young, most of us

are sustained by the past.

Sculpted by time

to be a living embodiment

of the past.

This ranting about courage,

Don't give up the faith; 

Persistence through struggle 

masks this sorry feeling of incompentence

and destructiveness.

If politics is the art of patronage

and the skillful dissemination of power, 

then we are screwed. 

As in the arts, there are brief moments in politics when sanity and light prevail 

but those golden years are quickly replaced by contracting reactions. 

The beauty of an effective political structure 

is its astonishing ability to absorb and neutralize what it is tormented by.