Editor’s Note
BLACKSBURG
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Professional Park Drive
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Recently, there was much ado about
a woman in North Dakota, who called
a radio station to comment about deer
crossing signs. She complained that
they were misplaced. In her view, they
were installed at the most inopportune
locations, and seemed to result in more
rather than fewer deer collisions.
Her position was that the deer
crossings should be moved to areas
where the deer could cross more safely,
thus resulting, in her mind, in fewer deer
strikes, and a corresponding reduction in
injuries and property damage. The audio
of this call-in went viral on the internet,
making this woman an object of national
ridicule.
Listening to her speak, one gets the
impression that this woman is of sound
mind and at least average intelligence.
Yet her stance on this particular issue
evokes profound disbelief. How could
a seemingly rational human being
possibly embrace the false concept that
your average woodland creature pays
a t t e n t i o n
to road signs,
m u c h
less has the
intellectual capacity to discern their
messages?
At the risk of sounding patently
cliché, I believe that society is to blame.
My argument is that this woman has
been conditioned by society to become
disconnected from logic and analytical
thought. This is the result of the
increasingly popular notion of applying
governmental solutions to all of life’s
problems. I’m reminded of a line from an
old television commercial from the 70’s,
in which an imposing ersatz-authority
figure intones, “It’s not NICE to fool
Mother Nature”. In truth, it isn’t really
possible. Man acts, and nature reacts.
Man’s attempts to “fool” Mother Nature
are really only stimuli to which nature
reacts. Nature is what it is.
So, in between guffaws, we uneasily
affirm to ourselves that deer really cannot
read signs, even if the message is pictorial
rather than in text.Moreover, we reassure
ourselves that we understand that the
signs were intended to warn drivers,
rather than to direct animals to an area
where it’s safe to cross. Nevertheless, how
many times do we less obviously fall prey
to the same flawed conceptual thinking?
The failing usually occurs when we try
to separate ourselves fromnature.Human
conceit has a large portion of our
society believing that somehowwe
are immune from the concept
of natural tendencies, merely
because we are human. Our
elevated sense of our power
and ourselves frequently leads
us to foolhardiness of thought.The
Spanish-born American philosopher
George Santayana is most often quoted
thusly:
Those who cannot remember the past
are condemned to repeat it.
Rarely have so few words carried
so much meaning; rarely have such
profound words been so often repeated
in vain. The sin of human pride, conceit,
is the vehicle by which we allow ourselves
to believe that we have superiority over
nature and its laws.
Try to imagine a youthful generation
that reveres the wisdom of its elder
generations. While such a paradigm no
doubt exists in the world, it is outside the
sphere of dominant culture. Youth, by its
nature, is rebellious. Woe to the parent
who is not prepared for this eventuality.
Indeed,woe to the culture that imbues
its youth with unprecedented credibility,
as our own culture surely has. Lack of life
experience endows young people with an
inordinate sense of their own wisdom,
for in their own limited universe, many
of their “enlightened” notions have never
previously existed, and are therefore
“
new”.
Few would dispute the claim that
hindsight has 20/20 vision. Fewer still
seem to connect that idea with the
aforementioned Santayana quote. It is
easy to look back on events in the past
and pass judgment, since the outcome of
those events is undeniable.
When we look back at the darker
moments in our history, such as the
Spanish Inquisition, or the Holocaust,
our hindsight immediately grasps the
concept of the abject horror of these
events. It fails to apply the inherent
lessons of history, because people have
a tendency to rush to the judgment that
“
we are more enlightened now.” That’s
easier to accept than it is to realize that
tyrants do not market themselves as such.
Some mask their insidious intent behind
noble intentions in order to gain power,
and others become corrupted by the
power that they later acquire.The answer
lays not so much in choosing leaders
wisely, as it does in denying them the
power to control us.
The truth is that to be truly
enlightened, one has to embrace the
concept that we are not. Human nature
is what it is, and despite our fantasies
to the contrary, it will always be what
it is. Tragically, one component of
human nature is the notion that we as
individuals, or in our own select groups,
are clearly superior to other individuals
and groups. This manifests itself in our
view of preceding generations. We cluck
our tongues and chide our forbears for
their human weaknesses, as if somehow,
we are immune to them ourselves.
Yet, despite our self-aggrandizing
spiritual evolution, we all need to be
“
brought up”, or “raised”. New babies are
born every day, and they develop all of
the normal human traits over time. Not
all of these traits are good and noble; else,
there would be no need for parenting.
New parents who fancy themselves better
equipped to raise a child than those who
have spent years refining the process
often amuse me. They shun the advice
of their parents and grandparents, who
somehow managed to raise them in spite
of overwhelming ignorance.
This is not to say that parents of adults
are perfect; it is just to point out that
their progeny tend to believe more highly
of themselves.Therefore, the new parents
approach their job with an inflated sense
of their own enlightenment, and the
inherent goodness of their own child.
Eventually, they get a huge dose of reality.
The sad truth is that we are all
composites of both good and bad
thoughts, feelings, and intentions. We
deny this at our own peril. Good people
(
with the exception of the Virgin Mary
and Jesus himself ) are not born that
way. Their character is the result of their
own conscious decision to choose to be
good, assisted by many environmental
influences. Even at that, they all are
subject to the temptation to act badly. To
err is human.
In fairy tales, the monster is pure evil
and ugly in appearance. In the real world,
there are beautiful monsters everywhere.
They have a tendency to flourish in
environments where some people believe
that their leaders can effectively use road
signs to tell wild animals where to cross
a highway.
~Tim Ernandes
Discover Smith Mountain Lake |
www.discoversmithmountainlake.com
Discover Smith Mountain Lake | Spring 2013
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