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Sept 5, 2003 I remember a conversation that I had around a campfire in Yosemite. There were several of us there, but primarily, the conversation was between myself and an older gentleman who had been out in the woods alone for about a month. He was holding forth on the benefits and future of creating a ‘hemp-based’ society that would utilize a wide range of alternative hemp based fuels, fabrics and any number of other, utopian ideas. I knew that the polite, campfire protocol called for me to sit there and quietly listen to his proclamations in rapt attention, like many of the teenage members of the fire circle were doing. I suppose that I would have done just that, had I still been an idealistic teenager sitting around that circle. But at 42, I was a long way from being a teenager, and an even longer way from the kind of idealism that would allow me to sit there without comment. Instead, I found myself having to interject reality into his exhortations…something that I don’t think he really appreciated. Point by point, I found myself asking him “What is your proof?”, “Where is the evidence?”. I found myself repeatedly telling him that if people only heard his theories and conclusions regarding energy company conspiracies to shut down alternative energy technologies, about the government’s efforts to squelch anything ‘hemp- based’ for the government’s own nefarious capitalistic purposes, without also offering hard evidence and concrete facts, then those same people would dismiss him as a lunatic. I actually used that word, lunatic. So why am I boring you with this story? Why am I presenting a scenario wherein many of you would have done much the same thing as I did? What’s the big deal, you may ask? After all, I was just correcting another loony liberal right? What’s the harm in that? It’s great that you all ask so many great questions. Well, the problem is that I knew that inside, I agreed with much of what he was saying. I used to have that kind of idealism and that kind of passionate belief in my ideals, and it made me very sad to realize that I had shoved aside so many of those ideals in the face of the crushing reality of human nature. You see, youthful idealism relies heavily upon a belief that humans are capable of change, that humans are basically good and willing to embrace that, which is pure and noble and altruistic. That people, are intelligent enough to rise above their more base emotions and aspire to a greater good for themselves and humanity as a whole. And I guess, that within any kind of sheltered environment (which youth, blessedly is) it is easy to believe in these things. It is easy to stave off the incipient cynicism that creeps in over the years, as the daily mundane struggles for existence give way to the eroding drudgery of life. It is easy to believe that people are good and noble and worthy of hope, when one has not had many years of experiencing examples wherein those beliefs are proven wrong. Until, like a sad and dark cloud that washes through the spirit, one day you find yourself sitting around a campfire, telling some dreamer that he is a lunatic and resigning yourself to a kind of internal self-loathing for betraying your own youthful idealism. Oh, there are those of you who will pounce on my words as justification for your own perspective that such idealism, as it is portrayed politically, represents immature thought. That your own sensible, responsible perspective represents the adult and mature way of viewing the world and thus the reason why you and the followers of your political philosophy are justified in thinking that you have the only correct way of governing the world. Basically, “Times are hard and what we need is sensible, fiscally responsible leadership. There’s no room for any of this pie-in-the-sky idealistic clap-trap!” OK, maybe you wouldn’t say ‘clap-trap’. But I think that the rest of it is pretty close to what is being said right about now, so I have to ask you, do any of you feel that same twinge of regret that I felt sitting there next to that camp-fire? That same, sad, realization that a part of you, a part that you used to take for granted would always be there, had somehow shriveled up and disappeared into a darkened corner of your soul? Certainly, youthful idealism is not always appropriate for dealing with the day-to-day harsh realities of adult life, but it should not be so easily dismissed and discounted either, because when you do that, you dismiss and discount the very energy and life blood that drove our founding fathers to sit down and hammer out a constitution for this new idealized country called the United States of America. This energy is the same force that has driven the visionaries and leaders throughout time, and it is the same energy that is at the core of fueling the fires of our soul. It is also the energy that will keep the gathering gray clouds of cynicism and bitterness from consuming our hearts and minds. We exist in a time that demands much of us. There are challenges facing all of us, spiritually, morally, politically, financially and personally, and it is easy to be overwhelmed, or to fall back on the more powerful emotions such as anger, fear and intolerance in order to shield us from the challenges that we are facing. But tolerance, compassion and patience are virtues that we cannot abandon in our ‘grown-up’ world, for if we do, then we abandon that which has truly made us great: a balance between a reasonable mind and a compassionate heart. ------------ Email Scott Jones: rosenquill@rocketmail.com Comment on this column in the forum. Tell a friend about this site! ------------ |
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