There are many pitfalls on the pathway of progress, most we create for ourselves!

We wanted progress on environmental preservation. Businesses responded with biodegradable products. We assumed this meant that the product would become harmless to nature. Wrong! A biodegradable product is any that will change its chemical or physical properties when exposed to the environment. The constituents may be more harmful than the original package. Misconstruing the term biodegradable allows us to evade our responsibilities while smugly believing that we are caring for the planet! Similar self-deceptions allow us to substitute swearing oaths, flag ceremonies, voting and celebrating national holidays for protection of our democratic institutions. Our 2016 presidential election confronts us with the results of our neglect. We have spent too much time celebrating and too little time taking care of business.

When progressive impulses get derailed two elements are often present: an initiator who will profit from the fraud and a co-conspirator. The payoff for our complicity is often an opportunity to appear as being on the side of the angels without flapping our wings. Meaningful progress will not be served up as a free lunch by leaders who are threatened by change and who are clueless as to how we might extricate ourselves from the glut of goods in which we suffocate. We are justifiably afraid of accepting the responsibilities that devolve on us when we admit that the status quo is broken, but we must not allow ourselves to be paralyzed.

Faced with our dilemma we must sidestep pitfalls and build civilization guided by our Declaration of Independence, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the New Testament. Adolescents take refuge in Viagra or mind-numbing activities repudiating “The Challenge of Man’s Future.”

There is no assurance that idealists’ efforts will be successful, only that they are deserving of success.

 

John E. Gibson

Owatonna