History

Information overload humbles us, and may silence us.  In nature we can never know enough about the vital truths and matters of our lives.  Part of the problem is in the imbalance of our educations.  For example, we in the West are so taken with our explorers like Columbus, especially related to their best or major performances that we miss the events in other parts of the world that ultimately had large effect on life in North and South America.  By way of illustration, the Russians had explorers moving eastward while Europe had explorers moving westward.  Vitus Bering was exploring the coastline of Alaska claiming what he found for the Czar.  By 1806 Nicolai Rezanov had advanced to San Francisco and tried to work with the Spanish there, but was rebuffed.  Russian colonists were already settled in Alaska, and were beginning to penetrate southward – to milder climates.  The interesting story finally ended with the purchase of Alaska by Secretary of State Seward some months after the death of Lincoln.  What was then called Seward’s Folly has become known as one of the wisest moves found in diplomatic history, and likely assured American dominance in the ultimate order of things in the West.  Lewis and Clark gazed over the Pacific about the time that Rezanov was sailing to San Francisco.  The story of all their searches had glory in them, but also some chicanery, illegal conduct, conquistador processes.  One analyst stated the matter: Any historian who sets out to search for a hero will almost inevitably uncover something of a scoundrel.

This human contradiction and hypocrisy may be one of the reasons why God felt compelled to provide an authoritative document to reveal himself to mankind.  We are our own best/worst representatives – the inevitable conflict between the affirmatives and negatives of life and nature.  Currently the world is following the story in Iraq of one group of Muslims fighting to the death another group of Muslims, even destroying mosques constructed for the worship of the god claimed by both.  The heart of mankind has the ability to serve both righteousness and evil.  The evil spoils the good as an ink blot spoils the use of a page.  The blot distracts from any use of the remaining page.  News is full of reports of wrongdoing (negatives) some of which tempt the affinities of human beings, even radicalizing them, and short on the positives which can inspire others with affirmative spirit.  It is to be admitted that even the affirmatives may be radicalized, but usually with less ferocity and intensity understanding the uses of time, positive values and the natures of the enemies.  In most situations the wise and affirmative persons ultimately prevail, only to be faced with a new challenging issue.  Using illness as example, the scourges of tuberculosis and polio have been virtually eradicated in my lifetime, only to be replaced by other diseases that have increased to threaten health.  A publication recently noted the dramatic increase in Alzheimers, adding: No one has yet been cured of Alzheimers.  My father died of tuberculosis at 36 years of age when TB was the #1 killer in America.  Today he would have been easily treated and sent home.  The sanitariums have disappeared.

Our lives are mixtures of opposites – compounds of good and bad, of illness and health, of wealth and poverty, of love and hate.  That list also grows long, as do so many lists in our lives.  Persons managing their lives in knowledge to understanding to application in experience, the truth and directions of what is learned – become wise.  In short, wisdom is learned truth applied – both by the wise person or group, and those to whom it is directed.  Wisdom is not an experience until its truth is applied.  Wisdom needs a target.  It always seems inspirational and admired, but relatively useless without energy and will to apply it.  So admired was he for the sacrifice of his life by application of his wisdom in non-violent activism for the rights of African-American citizens in America – that Martin Luther King may have been awarded a holiday memorial in America faster than anyone else in history.  Some who admired him most have departed from the wisdom that made him so significant in the improvement of the concern for respect, rights and freedom for all persons.  The same differences appeared in India and Pakistan following the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.  Mankind appears to feel that physical force and angry confrontation is the way to gain the good for society, while extoling the courses of peace.