The Unclad Soul

In general, but not in particular, because there are many opposite examples, but generally speaking, we are a nation of lazy, greedy citizens. Our laziness resides in the fact that we continue, year after drubbing year, to tolerate a Congress that is 98% corrupt and in the pockets of huge corporations, including Wall Street banks and the giant tech companies, not to mention the entire network of media communications. Our indifference to the blathering incompetence and the arrogant disregard of representative government by so many senators and House members in both parties is staggering. That we as a people allow this says something alarming about our character. Leo Tolstoy, the brilliant Russian novelist, once wrote in one of his many essays, “ If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”...

In Ray Bradbury’s troubling futuristic short story, “The Million-Year Picnic,” a family takes a trip to Mars. The father calls it a vacation, but without telling his wife and sons, he is leaving planet Earth for good and taking them with him. Not long after they land and start their journey on the red planet, their rocket ship self-destructs in the background, and the family realizes they won’t be going home. The father is a practical and sensitive man and he had lost hope in Earth’s potential. He later takes his three boys fishing and while two of the boys are busy at the edge of the water, the other son notices his father’s behavior. He sees him distracted, nervous, lost in his thoughts, standing upright and looking   across   the sky, not realizing his father is thinking of Earth and the wars there, the hate, the endless killing and disorder, the ruined cities and the broken people.  The son moves toward his father: “What are you looking at so hard, Dad?” ...

I was watching these beautiful young people from Greece being interviewed on the news the other night. They were so bright and articulate and attractive, so full of life in the midst of the harsh austerity measures and turmoil going on in their country. They seemed caught in looks of not exactly fear but of hesitation, of simply not being sure what will be next for them. The world is going through a turbulent time of change and transition. So much of Europe is caught in furious winds of upheaval. The economies of Greece, Germany, England, Italy, and others are, like our own, shaky and unpredictable at the moment. We’re all facing enormous challenges. People in countries like Egypt, Syria, Russia, and Libya are demanding a new way of life. The past for them is obsolete, intolerable. They want more freedom, a fairer economy, cultural renewal, and a political system that is open and without the domination of cruel and corrupt dictators and demagogues. Africa, in spite of smal...