Joseph L. Kagle, Jr. Peace Essays

Enter Here the Timeless Spirit of Mankind

Enter here the timeless spirit of mankind in search of knowledge,” was the statement above the doorway into the University of Colorado at Boulder Library. Another ingredient to the peace journey is the study of mankind’s history. What we have gone through does not help us see the future but it does slow us down in our thinking so that there is the possibility that we do not make the same mistakes again. History was “what was” and peace, hopefully, will be “what is possible!”

Turning around fragmented world    

         It was Labor Day, therefore I did extra labor.  A few days earlier the Rapoport Foundation promised a substantial bundle of money to held Waco move into the 21^st century.  It was a bold move to help our leaders plan for the future. Maybe it is time to examine how we have struggled to make sense of our world in the past.

     My reading this day found history divided into six epochs:

• Man emerges from Nature (4,000-500 BC) - cave man to the Egyptians.

• Man fashions security with reason and faith (500 BC-1453) - Greek, Roman, and Medieval times.

• Man rediscovers his freedom (1453-1650)-The Renaissance, humanism revisited, sciences, absolution and neoclassicism, the age of DaVinci and Shakespeare.

• Man attempts to order his world (1650-1780) –baroque and rococo times.

• Man explores the internal world (1780-1900) - Romanticism, realism, naturalism, impressionism, Marxism, and neoclassicism.

• Man fragments his world (1900-1980) – modernism, the advent-garde, abstraction, symbolism, cubism, expressionism, futurism, and the information explosion. Man moves from process to systems.

      A female friend of mine corrected me the other day and said that “man” in these epochs should be written as “(hu) man.”  Today this is true.  It was not when the theory of epochs was first put forward.

      In the 19^th century, Mary Shelley was suspicious about the role of science taking the world apart and putting it back together in a new form.  She was worried that we would create out-of-control Frankensteins. She was right to a strong degree.

     In the 1960’s, the six million-dollar man and woman made us more comfortable with interchangeable, improved human parts.  In the ’70’s the Transformers schooled a generation of children on the importance of man learning to live with the machine.  Earlier, we had been conditioned to “turn on and turn off, tune in and tune out” in the Beat Generation. For much of the 20^th century, we became the machines of the future.  Workers in industry were interchangeable parts.  “Downsizing” became a term for changing those parts in the 1980s and 1990s, rearranging those human parts, and discarding those human beings as parts when the company’s profits were threatened.  Mankind became the “parts salvage yard” for world business.  We really have not progress very far through all the epochs.

     But that is not surprising.  It is surprising that we did not see it coming when “man fragmented his world in the early 20^th century.  And what about now?  “What’s up, Doc?”

     Is the fragment becoming reality?  Is the fragment becoming a world unto itself?

     The “trial of the century” stated out about O.J. Simpson.  But his legal experts were masters in turning fragments into content.

     Now-is it the Fuhrman trial?  Is it a racist trial?  What happened to the murder trial?  Have we forgotten the victims?  Have we forgotten any “big pictures”?

     Each day the electronic media make the fragment in the real world.  They are paid to make the fragments real.  Each decision that Congress makes is put to a yes or no vote on television.  Party pools are held before a congressman can make a decision.

   As (hu)mans, we have come full circle.  Everyone is protecting his or her turf (with or without concealed guns).  Just maybe, man has climbed back into the primordial slime, his base human nature.

     Even so, maybe our town, Waco, with the help of the Rapoport Foundation and others, can find a collective good, a collective self-interest that places the epoch of the 21^st century in line with the building blocks of epochs of the past.  I hope that we can.  I hope that the new epoch is not” (hu)man explodes his world and calls the pieces whole.”  As Dennis Miller says, “At least, that’s what I think.”

When nothing else works and history seems to repeat itself, what can you do to find peace? What I do is go to my imaginary friend, Bubba Jay the Third, to discuss my consternation with the world and its emerging history: a history in America where celebrities are treated like royalty who can, at times, get away with murder. Bubba Jay reminds me to laugh instead of crying.

Recalling a time of innocence when O.J. was orange juice

   Swimming the 15^th lap of the pool with only the evening stars above, the water felt cool, although I knew that is was just in contrast to the oppressive heat of the day.   It had been another scorching 100-plus day in Waco, Texas (in Spanish, it is “Tejas”).

     Bubba Jay 3 came by, returning from a late Boy Scout meeting. “You are wearing trunks”, he called to me.  “I expected you to be skinny-dipping at this time in the evening.”

     My wife called from the shadow, “It is called fatty-dipping at this time in the evening.”

  “Who likes accuracy when weight is mentioned?”  I asked, getting into my robe, relishing an evening talk.  Nothing is so clear or unclear as when the stars come out.

     “Been watching the ongoing saga of a so-called “innocent wife beater on the tube”. Bubba said.  “Are you going to write about it?  Everyone at Kmart is talking about O.J.”

    “Maybe”, I answered.  “Swimming clears the mind, clears the sprit.  I write about things to fill in the cracks of the world.  O.J. is too much with us now.  O.J. is getting too much publicity.  As I swam tonight, I realize that I miss the innocence of the world.  Media-hyped information is all we seem to hear about.”

    “Innocence is alive and well.” said Bubba.  “My son, Alijha Blue Jay, remarked that I needed a chin.  No one can see mine with my beard.  In fact, it has been so long since I saw it myself that I forget what I look like without facial hair.  Anyway, Alijha Blue and my daughter made me a ceramic chin. They gave me the chance to return to a time of innocence.  If you can’t see a chin, it is not there.  If you need one, make one.”

     I told Bubba about my experience in the South Pacific and the miracle of elevator.

     “Did we ever tell you about the Micronesian friend who came to visit us on Guam when we taught there?”  my wife asked Bubba.  “We took him to the best island hotel for dinner.  The restaurant was on the second floor.  We had to take the elevator and this friend has never seen an elevator.  He asked us, “Where does it go?” when we stopped at the second floor.  We had to take him out to the balcony to explain that the box we entered had moved.  We envied his innocence. The sad thing about showing him what had occurred is that he would probably never be innocent about elevators again.”

     “I hear the same kind of innocence when the fans of Buffalo speak of O.J.,” Bubba said. “They talk of marvelous touchdowns, breaking away, setting records and almost bringing home a championship.” There was an ocean of a pause between us as we thought about what had been said. “This is not innocence,” he continued. “This is blind rationalization for a city that needs sports to define itself.”

     “Life is like a banana,” my wife said.  “Once you peel away the covering, there is little mystery to the inside.”

      I told Bubba that my wife came up with that kind of wisdom all the time.  She always surprises me. She was like her Jewish grandmother who escaped from the Nazis during WWII.  I told him the story of traveling in a car to Pittsburgh and listening to the Sunday broadcast of opera. We listened to a New York broadcast because my wife’s grandmother loved opera so passionately and she surprised me when it was over.  She applauded there in the car.  She was actually, for all realistic purposes, at the opera.  We were only there in the car casually listening and watching.  She was really there at Carnegie Hall. She heard the others around her applaud.  She was moved to stand and applaud. She did not but it was obvious that she was moved to stand. The opera was a part of her innocence. It was the way that she left the world outside and hugged beauty.

“It was a show of innocence,” I said later.  “She listened with innocence.  She heard the pure golden sounds.  I can do it with painting, but opera is not a part of my innocence, yet!”

     Bubba told the story of attending a breakfast birthday for a retarded friend.  All the friend wanted as a birthday present was for Bubba to make him breakfast.  It was the best present that Bubba had ever given.  The friend received it with joy and innocence.

     Sports is an interlude of innocence.  Nothing complicated- you hit the ball or you do not, you make the sport beautiful like Michael Jordan or you do not (as we saw with the New York Knicks the night before).

    We sat talking with Bubba into the wee hours of the morning, beside the swimming pool, watching and marveling at the stars, and reliving our times of innocence.

    We journeyed to our childhood (whenever that was).  We talked of the value of the arts as a way to recapture our innocence.  We talked of the joy of the sun coming back in the morning, the smell of freshly cut grass, the wonder of walking and the mystery of love.  We talked of a future filled with peace, understanding and love. We talked of innocence when O.J. was just orange juice.