Man's inhumanity revisited
Who will buy-the soul's salvation?
Years ago, there stood a giant of giants. For two thousand years it overlooked the vast Pacific Ocean. It made a mockery of time. It defied the violent forces of nature's anger.
Even the beast of the dark forest must have paused in reverence of its mighty silhouette cast against the red sky of the setting sun.
Only the great wisdom of God, only the firm, but gentle hand of contradicting nature could give life to the largest and oldest of living things—the Giant Sequoia.
AND THEN a man came. He had a great vision. He hacked, and he chopped, and he sawed. The old giant trembled, then staggered, then plunged to the ground — 300 feet below.
The man wiped his brow, and gleamed with pride for his great contribution to the most holy concept of pragmatic progress. And what a contribution—300 million feet of "Ooooh! The most softest, two ply, delicately scented" toilet paper.
This, however, was but one of the great accomplishments of the pragmatist. He saw the more practical/economical uses of Huckleberry Finn's river, and Thoreau's pond.
"HUMBUG." Who cares about a wild adventure down the moonlit Mississippi on a raft. Who cares about catching that "big one," or plunging into the cool depths on a hot July day. Who cares about the tranquil stillness by a flowing stream or a small pond. After all—all that toilet paper and so forth has to go somewhere.
And given time, that pragmatist may have a vision for that big hole in Arizona, called the Grand Canyon. What a perfect place to dump tons and tons of garbage.
BUT THE pragmatist really is not so crude in everything. He has a new insight in words that defies the tongue even to pronounce some of them. Who can oppose such ultra-scientific words as dichlord - didhenyl-trichloro-ethane, heaptchler, dieldrin, chlor-dane, and also arsenic. Only a blubbering, emotional slob would dare call these words poison.
Too many flies, too many roaches, too many elm bark beetles-Kill them! Load some airplanes up with a couple million gallons of all that stuff and slop it over the cities, the fields, the lakes, the rivers, the woods. Easy, quick solution.
What of it, if a blind and dying trout, or salmon is seen floating downstream, or a robin or a cardinal lies on a sidewalk going into convulsions and then dies? What of it, if their numbers are multiplied into the thousands?
DOES IT all really make a difference in an age where billions of dollars are spent to keep the magnificent homo sapien head in perfected, absolute, cool beauty? Does it make a difference when
*****
the brain is turned into a glob of jelly watching millions of hours of Aunt Fanny in "As the World Staggers," and all those people sitting around a table, smacking their lips, reaching, moving their jowls, with just enough room left in their gut—sacks for a bowl of blob
*******
Where is the Moses that led his people into the wilderness to seek freedom and God? Where is the rough, raw spirit of the roaming Viking that sailed the raging sea in search of some unknown thing? Where is the spirit that stood in
awe atop an Aztec temple awaiting the great sun god to rise from the land of darkness? Are they no more?
ARE THEY now to be found in the rows and rows of box dwellings, reading the words of wisdom of a 40-year-old "playboy"? But the spirit is not dead, for now it races along the slabs and slabs of concrete in little toy cars, to seek out some "cool" haven in the heaps of concrete buildings, amidst the sewage smells. Each day trivia takes on added importance.
If man must continue to be so pragmatic, so involved with his magnificent self, so confident that the great god the computer and the government can provide all answers, then his end may be short in coming. Man's occupation of Earth is but a few puny seconds compared to the very extinct era of the dinosaur.
Where are the thundering herds of the great buffalo? Where are the great silent spaces where man could seek some identity with his Maker?
Orwell and Huxley dreaded the fate of mankind. They did not fear the physical destruction of man, but something worse—the death of that unknown thing called the soul. Perhaps that is what the plea for the rational preservation of nature is all about.
By JOHN LOVEKIN
! Daily Kansan editorial page Monday, December 5, 1966
---