Last Sunday I hit a homerun with “Super Bowl 2021.” Or so several of my readers said. Maybe so. But one homerun doth not a career make. You still have to bat again. Or write another piece.
And sometimes you have to bunt. Small ball wins games too.
“Super Bowl 2021” was a dream. The International Corn Hole Games. A woman president. The budget for the Pentagon and NIH swapped.
I wish it were so.
I wish our nation would get off its high horse.
I wish our nation’s bigotry against people of color and women would end.
I wish our nation would demilitarize and invest at least half its defense budget in education, arts, medical research, and the promotion of health through nutritional eating (whole food, plant-based diets). An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Big Pharma and Big Ag think otherwise. (Greed will not end tomorrow.)
I wish. But if wishes were horses…
No wish, no dream, no messiah will save us.
Ingenuity, courage, and perseverance might.
Work the dream.
Plant an olive tree. Install solar panels. Build a bridge.
Over the past several centuries, through the concerted efforts of scientists and engineers, perennial threats have been mitigated (mitigated, not eliminated.) Far fewer starve to death. The lame walk on prosthetics, the blind see, the deaf hear, the dumb speak, the sick receive antibiotics, the tormented receive therapy, wars subside.
If you see the world through headlines, you won’t see those signs. If you see the world through statistics, you will.*
Can we pat ourselves on the back and rest on our laurels? Not yet. Not for a long time.
Polar caps are melting. The oceans are rising. The rich get richer. The poor get screwed. Viruses mutate.
Greed mutates too. (Scientists and engineers can’t cure everything.)
My venerable metalworking friend tells me he’s laid down his hammer to tend seedlings. His work now is to make life in a green home happen—to design a living environment that will make it possible to engage nature more directly, to raise some of his family’s food inside the home by using renewable energy and more passive systems. For the first time, I feel I might be part of the answer!
That may be a bunt. But it moves the game along.
* * *
*Steven Pinker makes the case in Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress.
_______________________
Check out Paula’s bird photo montage on the home page.
