Photo by the author<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>Lately it\u2019s becoming clear to me that society is crippled by irrationality and complacency. A few days ago an interview aired on the radio with a police officer who described an incident during which police felt forced to kill a man who was aggressively brandishing a gun. The fellow being interviewed was a former U.S. soldier who explained that the domestically trained police, had they handled the situation more skillfully, could have \u201cdeescalated\u201d the man, who could well have ended up in handcuffs rather than a body bag. The producers included audio from the incident with the interview, including what I recall were the girlfriend\u2019s hopeless screams as her man was slain.<\/p>\n
We like to think that in the situation of police guns pointed at us with the command to \u201cDrop your weapon,\u201d we would put the weapon down, throw our hands above our heads, and choose the gigantic inconvenience of arrest, trial, and probably some time behind bars over the immediate and lethal alternative\u2014unlike the man described above.\u00a0 But consider how often a given person\u2019s powers of reason are overwhelmed by irrationality and blinded by the hot glare of emotion. Reflecting on the episode made me realize a grim possibility: it really could happen<\/em> that the human race collectively succumbs to an irrationality that spells its doom. The creature who learns and transmits language, who builds civilizations, and who can manipulate physical reality in profound ways is an experiment of the universe, and all experiments risk failure.<\/p>\nThis morning walking to work through San Francisco I passed numerous homeless persons asleep on the sidewalks and curled up on the exterior window sills of buildings. I looked down at one fellow, whose photo appears with this reflection, and meditated on his reality: has he become a thrown-away person? And the sobering reality is that he\u2019s one of unimaginable millions of people who are thrown-away persons, often found surrounded by thrown-away objects\u2014torn plastic bags, bottle caps, soiled bedding, wet cardboard, and crushed Styrofoam cups. Increasingly swathes of the planet look like trash heaps, and people in large cities and third world countries are so inured to it that even the sight of people-turned-trash leaves passersby unmoved.<\/p>\n
Our species suffers from a level of complacency that we can only hope is not terminal. Problems right before our eyes and under our feet we assume will be addressed by someone else at some future time. Any one of us may not be directly culpable for the issue at hand, but the perpetual passing on of responsibility\u2014which is the definition of complacency\u2014brings to mind the patient who every day makes the empty promise to himself that he\u2019ll give up excessive drinking, smoking, or some other vice only to be hit with organ failure and collapse in the middle of an otherwise \u201cnormal\u201d day.<\/p>\n
I do not agree with those who believe that our species is bound for divinity or higher-consciousness or expansion to and colonization of other planets; such a belief is presumption. The human species\u2014the human experiment\u2014really might<\/em> fail. But neither do I agree with the jaded pessimists who point to every world problem\u2014notably climate change and the threat of nuclear war\u2014and assume all is lost regardless of our actions now.<\/p>\nWe are together walking a delicate path that may well promise higher consciousness and future flourishing human civilizations but only if\u2014as persons, as communities, and as a planetary body\u2014the virtues of reason, initiative, humility, and hope overtake the forces of irrationality, complacency, presumption, and despair.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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