A reader just sent me a lovely email about the review I wrote 11 years ago of Newt Gingrich's doctoral dissertation. I reread what I had written then and it was sprightlier, more cheerful, than what I have been writing lately.
Sixty years ago I was a very angry young man, constantly fighting about the threat of nuclear weapons and all the injustices of the world. It took many years and great effort for me to achieve a certain ironic distance and to let that become a part of my writing. Now, in my waning years, I am again consumed with anger at the evils of the world. But as I explained in my response to a question from one of the students at Georgia State during my zoom meeting with them last Thursday, we have no choice but to keep fighting. I must allow myself to be comforted by the fact that my world is not being blown up by incoming cruise missiles.
I recall an interview from a couple or so years ago where Yanis Varoufakis was asked if he was pessimistic. He replied to the effect that he was energized by the thought that there is so much that needs to be done; every day you can get up and fight for some good and against some evil. I was reminded then of the Patristic thought (Tertullian?) that the reason there is so much evil in the world is that God did not wish you to have to go far to find an opportunity for doing good.--Well, that's one way of thinking about it. But would it have spoiled some vast eternal plan if God had made human beings less violent and ecocidal?
ReplyDeleteMaybe there is no vast eternal plan. Humans choose to be violent. They are slowly learning to be less ecocidal
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