Page 23 - ThePhoenix1986-87

October 9, 19861Western Maryland CoUege!Page 5 60 Seconds on Campus What would you like to see in a new library? H I A more extensive col- Books from the twen- More quiet and study A snack bar and an A computer section lection and a comfort- tieth century. areas. ! • able environment. adult reading area is and student confer- ence rooms. essential. Charlene Cole Douglas Nolder Nancy McLaughlin Pat DiCola Kelly S. Connor t Father apologizes to unborn children continued from page 4 "business-as-usual." The survive we shall have to find trees are to continue to grow, if or for worse. you. and with which you must try religions of humankind have been alternatives to head-on conflict. human life is to flourish along So what can I tell you? That 'J to live... or should I say survive? warning us for two or three . creative, constructive, dialogical with its companion species, then in my generation homo maniacus- You probably wonder why, if thousand years that we'd better ways to deal with the irreducible we are going to have to learn--and -the crazy fellow--is busy we could see all this coming, why shape up.: or else, but we diversity of the human family. learn damned quickly-to scribbling the epitaph for homo in the name of sanity we didn't generally don't take free advice. It Peace is not just an accident, a collaborate with the Eanh, to sapiens. the supposed1y wise II get together to do something is no hideous, homed monster lull between wars ..• peace is a become responsible partners with fellow with six thousand years of .J about it. People struggling under that has arisen in the latter half of hard-won achievement, a creative all the rhythmSland dynamisms of accumulated human experience to ' totalitarian regimes have the Twentieth Century. It's just act, a societal walk of art. It is the living Cosmos. This means draw from? That all the beauty sufficient evil tocope with day-by- the same old vices 'of the also an imperative. Nuclear that we are going to have to rely . and wisdom and dignity that day; you might be able to excuse squabbling, petty, self-centered, weapons leave us no choice: less on mechanisms of force, and human life has painfully but them for not worrying overmuch bad-tempered, cantankerous Either we human beings learn to more on the vital connections we steadily acquired over millennia about the morrow. But what human species ... but the effects live with people who disagree share with the entire Creation, and will be squandered by a single, about those of us living in have been hugely magnified by with us, or else we all go to hell with one another. mindless generation in a wild relative comfort and security in our new technologies, magnified in a handbasket, For human life Along the same lines, - we frenzy of destruction? I dom stable democracies? We've been and projected directly to you. It is in its entirety to endure, we are know also that human know. asserting our right to govern not a birthright we've left you, going 10 have to shed some of our civilization, however high its I certainly hope not, but it ourselves for a couple of centuries it's a "binbwrong": You have deeply-rooted cultural biases and technical or aesthetic attainments, often seems like a hope against now, but our worst tendencies- been grievously wronged long pretensions. We are in the midst is peculiarly vulnerable to its own hope. I hope our generation can paranoia, mistrust, deceit and before the day of your birth. And of discovering, for example. that garbage--Athens,medievaiEurope see the alternatives and make the belligerency, for example--still I am ashamed to admit that you Western Technocracy is not the and Elizabethan EngJand all responsible choices ... livingry subvert our best intentions. ' are going to have 10 judge our only way 10 live a human life. succumbed to plague spawned in instead of weaponry, creation Now for all these misdeeds generation by its worst and most and that it is plain wrongheaded to streets that ran with raw sewage, instead of destruction, life instead and many more, our generation destructive elements. try to solve global human And our new techniques of bio- of death. I wish I knew the owes yours an apology ... but You won't see the other side dilemmas from within the chemical interference are likely to outcome, but only you can know not without explanation. The of it, of course. But there is structures and strictures of a be far more devastating than the that for sure. Only you, my explanation, however, is going to another side. It must seem single civilizational model-one, occasional rat-infested ship. We unknown and nameless be harder for you to comprehend. incomprehensible to you that we be it noted, which seems rightly fear that we shall be grandchild, can properly judge I can tell you what it is, by and of the 19805 could foresee all increasingly prone to flirt with its poisoned, buried, and your parents and grandparents and large, but yOUI will probably be these things, and yet collectively own total destruction. memorialized by our own the world they've handed over 10 unable to accept it. I'm alive and individually squander our last We are also well aware that garbage. you, the life they've passed on to now, I'm witnessing the genesis best moment to tum the world we've taken the Earth for granted And I think we do know, you. As for me, I only wish I of your terrible world, and I can around and leave a habitable far too long. Things have above all and despite all, that Life knew whether we are even going scarcely believe it myself. It's all planet for our progeny. So let me changed rapidly for the worse on is a gift, a miracle, really, that it to allow you to exist ... the old human follies, writ large. tell you a little of what we might our crowded planet; we've worn is fitting to celebrate and pass on Hollowly, Its greed, and smpldiry, and self- havedone,hadwegivenourselves-- out our welcome in the old enhanced to our descendants. interest and all the banal and and you--half a chance. homestead. These are the signs of And, slow as we are to Scott Thomas Eastham, routine evils that go unnoticed as After Hiroshima. we know our times ... if the air is to be acknowledge it, we know that this Visiting Professor of we singlemindedly conduct our very well that if humankind is to fit to breathe, if the grass and the gift is in our hands now-for better Intercultural-Communications