Water, Water, Every Where

That so many of us are eager and willing to embrace ignorance is not a new thing. Willful ignorance is what gives power to the powerful; makes us vulnerable to injustices of every kind; and enslaves us in a narrow world of our own unwitting creation. That letting others do our thinking for us is easier, cannot be further from the truth; we need only look at the results. It is not easy to live in poverty, or, even worse, on the street; it is not easy to have no medical care, or to become bankrupt because we have had medical care; it is not easy to bury our victims of gun violence, so many of them children; it is not easy to be singled out because we are superficially different from others. Through ignorance, and laziness, this is a society that we have created. Except in terms of privilege, those who call themselves leaders are no different. History tells us that without an enlightened few, and a hardworking many, we would forever be hunting witches and hating geniuses; every last forest would be gone; there would be, in the words of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Water, water, every where, nor any drop to drink. Time and again, we throw away lessons we have learned in the past, despite having ways to preserve them and pass them along. Never again! becomes This time we’ll get away with it. And another tree comes down. Never mind if it is the family tree. There are always new people to hate, and there is always money to be made — until

Therefore, as important as it has always been, it has never been more important to embrace the time-honored culture of books; we need to read, and to expose ourselves to a broad spectrum of thoughtfully written science, history, biography, poetry, and literature. We need music. We need the arts. We need to ponder a wide range of views. We need Mary Wollstonecraft, Einstein, Dickens, Beethoven, Leonardo da Vinci. How much we need them is revealed in the narrowing views evinced in our public discourse, and the combative, resentful, entitled attitude in which we defend them. We are afraid to be wrong, when we should be delighted we are learning. If we open our minds, even a little, This time we’ll get away with it, becomes, I didn’t know that. How beautiful! Thank you!

[ 1948 ]