Letters

Without our humanity we remain unenlightened

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Monday, September 8, 2008 12:06 PM CDT

To the editor:

 There are some deep-seated drives in the human animal that have been the study of scientist in the fields of anthropology, geology, biology and paleontology for many centuries.

A quick overview might read like this: All animals, insects, mold spoors — even vegetation and trees — have in common a limitation to where they can survive and propagate. If we look at the major animal groups, it would include humans, birds, fish and reptiles. My daughter, the biologist, would probably have a longer list, but this one will serve the purpose.

All these groups have their own distinctive similarities biologically, but more important to us, they have other needs that are similar. They hang together in flocks, schools, pods, herds and families in locations suitable for protection, food, reproduction and leadership. For the human families, we formed clans, tribes and countries for the same basic reasons.

When we examine the needs of our specific genetic grouping, we find another important need. We call it “humanity.” The demands it sets on our race probably exist to some extent in the other groupings as well. I know domesticated animals care for each other, and I am sure wild ones do also. We have found that in our complex existence, the need for humanistic qualities reaches an essential of life or death.

To provide the complex needs of our society, we have built great systems in terms of government, religion and the military to support and protect us. But without the humanitarian factor, these great organizations will not be adequate for the survival of our human family.

Any degree of blindness toward leadership in our new “speed of light” communications provides an unbelievable opportunity for a small group in leadership positions to build a impenetrable rampart around their personal goals. If their goals are not really for the benefit of the many, but really for the few, who is there to challenge?

We did not have time to learn our responsibilities. We believed the “quick fix” calls of the purveyors of sound-bite solutions, the rapacious screaming of talk radio and TV hosts who set one of us against the other and called it “enlightenment.”

We were not aware of the shift in government to lifetime cushy jobs, insured by great gobs of money passed out in payment for the good times of the rich and powerful.

We did not install a system of checks and balances to insure equal opportunity for all citizens. We believed our economic gurus who pledged that the goodies for the rich and powerful would “trickle   down” to all.

They did not! A fair chunk did drop down to the “palace hangers-on” or the so-called new rich, many of whom were formerly middle class.

The majority of the middle class is now huddled in an ever-shrinking middle class, and we have a strong and growing lower middle class and poor.

In addition, we are less safe on our large island, because we must protect our dependency on our empires across the seas to finance our gargantuan lifestyles.

(This letter is a synopsis of the conclusion of Hoffman’s sold-out first edition of “When in the Course of Human Events.”)

Dick Hoffman

Menomonie