on simple gifts

Global Creative Commons, originally uploaded by gurdonark.

I'm a simple-minded man, really, a man of lots of words, most of them sauntering here and galloping there. I like good books, don't fancy good cigars, and can think no thoughts more profound than, say, the Golden Rule or the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

I'm one of those great sauntering masses of people that one passes everyday, mutating species in the great Galapagos of society. i have my family,and my job, and my hobbies. Most of my values can be expressed in Sesame Street songs. Captain Kangaroo was my Yoda. I am more apt to name Roger Williams as a personal hero than Vin Diesel.

The evening news is full of projectiles being hurled. Last night we watched enrapt the John Adams opera "Dr. Atomic" on television, an amazing piece of work with a wonderful score. The dilemma posed by nuclear weapons is its theme, as told from the vantage of the Manhattan Project. I drifted in thought on the horror of Hiroshima, and the idea that my country used a weapon of mass destruction without a demonstration and a warning (to say the least).

As the news reveals to me one more episode of material excess contributing to the moral and financial ruin of segments of our society, I'm struck by the notion of how much could be avoided if people just cooperated a bit with one another.

It's no simpler, in my mind, than more or less "I wish people could just get along and share". But perhaps it's more than that, if I were more sophisticated about it. ( The writer Evelyn Underhill said it in this way )