We know a young woman who got a prize from her high school for a story poem. Valuing her, we asked to see it. Her story began happily, but turned into a nightmare or horror story, putting her home in America into a war zone and destroying her family. I read it in tears. Tears because they’re such painful thoughts for a girl of her age. Tears for what such a discouraging view of reality might do to her. Tears because so many are experiencing just such tragedies around the world.
Her story has her grandparents come to comfort and care for her. That’s cold comfort in a devastated world, but her story tracks many survivors’ lives. There’s no end or closure to grief for the loss of loved ones. The anguish and depression are inescapable, and for many, also, survivors’ guilt. No words can make the pain of war go away, as so many of our returning soldiers know. Some bury their pain behind productive activity until it erupts again, but, for others, the scars of war stay dominant. Wartorn countries also need to rebuild, replace the contributions and blessings of those lost, rebuild their landscape and economic engines where possible.
We could complement the young writer, urge her to keep writing and tell her we look forward to talking about it. We could tell her that good people are working hard to keep her, her family and friends safe. What we cannot do is to tell her not to worry because it won’t happen. The brutality in this world make that confident prediction impossible. Steven Pinker says violent deaths are decreasing. But far too many are still killed, too many groups focus on making trouble and getting the guns and weapons to make it happen.
Pinker focused only on violent deaths, but environmental changes make earthly hells on all continents and force migration and emigration which themselves seed violent conflict. Our country isn’t immune: floods devastate communities on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, fires devastate the west and Canada, poisoned air spreads from the blazes, rising heat chokes our food crops, and threatens heat stroke to people all over.
It may seem like my weekly commentary addresses unrelated problems. But they all fit together. Our petty arguments about whether Africans and African-Americans, Hispanics and Hispanic-Americans, Asians, Muslims, Jews, and Native American citizens and immigrants deserve equal concern and respect, whether it’s OK to house and feed each other, or essential that we do, and our increasing purchase of armaments, all point toward disaster. None of us will survive if we’re too focused on fighting each other instead of joining forces to solve our common problems, fighting each other instead of climate change, jealously worrying about who else might also benefit by efforts to deal with our changing climate.
Nothing is more important for all of us than team work. There was a time when we prided ourselves on teamwork, imagining we learned it playing sports, but our politics doesn’t reflect that lesson. The grave is egalitarian. I can’t imagine God rewarding our petty behavior. God has been telling us to honor our neighbors and obey the Golden Rule in many languages and in many religious faiths, but humans show their overwhelming selfishness, ignoring God’s universal prescription.
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
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