sw00088rs-s2letter.may.1970

Rooted Sky 2007
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                                        II.  Dancing in the Void

Letter (May, 1970)


    Recently, Arthur C. Clarke, a well-known 
scientist and science fiction writer, quite
intelligently speculated that those beings
of other planets who have advanced much
beyond our stage of development must be
peace-loving, for their only alternative is 
annihilation.  If this is so, we are living  
in the most critical era of our race and, 
undeniably, our most needed virtue is wisdom,  
the allying of ourselves with the forces of  
life.  Yet, ambiguous creatures of polarities 
caught up in change, we are constant mysteries.  
No philosophy, no ideology of ours has ever
fully sufficed: Plato's Republic, Communism,
Democracy.  Just keeping close to Balance,
our one Utopia, takes all the awareness we
can command.

    But this awareness--what is it, and how
does one know he has it?  Purely, no human has
it, but let me approach this negatively.  A man
in the United States says the Communists are
atheists and must be killed; a man in Russia
or China says the Americans are imperialists
and must be killed.  Neither of these men is
aware.  A college student thinks he is superior
and calls a policeman a "pig"; a white worker
thinks he is superior and calls a Negro a
"nigger".  Neither of these is aware.  War and
violence are allies of fear and death, and this
little planet cannot sustain them.  Our bellies
and our self-centered pride must not hold sway.
Yet I know, as who does not, the power of the
flesh and emotions, that no thought sparks in a
corpse.  Food, shelter, gods.  A person who
thinks property is more sacred than human life;
a person who cannot weather criticism and
respect differences, is not aware.  A person
convinced that patriotism means being a sheep
before the government, that the United States
is necessarily and forever the greatest country
in the world and that any country or minority
thinking otherwise should be subdued, is not
aware.  A person who thinks that having a
"decent" job or having enemies is ultimately
more practical than having a fulfilled life or
having friends is not aware.  The stones he
throws will bury him.  Awareness begins in
knowing one is not aware.

   "We must love one another or die."





[ "Letter" was previously published/ in several newspapers,
   one of them being the Eastern Illinois University paper. ]



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Brian A. J. Salchert