Re: Discovery of a 5,500 Year-Old Shoe

I enjoy hearing about such discoveries. It puts everything else that we allocate so much editorial space to in perspective. Interesting too is the current drive by tea partiers - many of whom are said to carry a set of our founding documents in their breast pockets - to reacquaint us with our founding. It is an attempt to connect and revive the potency of past building blocks while avoiding present realities. Aside from the fact that it is never possible to rewind time, it is also fallacious to assume that said (hallowed) building blocks did not in themselves contain the seeds of what now constitutes our present.

Clearly, America’s train has gone off the rails. Perhaps there were never any rails to begin with. The late sixties, early seventies produced a sea-change in the way those who would become the elite of our generation thought of themselves. No longer were truth and goodness of primary concern in the positive formulation of a life; instead, the degree of enlightenment that can be attained or, at the very least, demonstrated with gestures of intent became key.

The effects have been huge. Freed from the bonds that religion-based societies have traditionally imposed, the gates were now thrown open to new and unconventional arrangements that propelled economies to produce wealth at an unprecedented rate and allowed its (elite) beneficiaries virtually unlimited freedoms.

Despite this - the thrill of being able to cradle practically infinite potential in the palms of one's (now often) arthritic, cyber-assisted hands - a palpable unease has settled over the land, particularly among the elite, who now increasingly find themselves under the gun. Clearly, the only strategy we have thus far identified as being even remotely compatible with our Utopian global designs, enlightened tolerance, remains at risk.

We invariably escape to the politics of blame. Since the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon and subsequent spill, the overriding theme can be summed up by the term ‘man-made’. Suppose for a moment that the tectonic plates had shifted of their own accord and caused a rupture, releasing a never-ending geyser of oil into the waters. The result would have been the same: fouled beaches, imperiled wildlife, shocks to our economy. Entire populations would have had to shift in order to find jobs and build lives elsewhere. As John points out, such things have happened before – many on a much grander scale.

Instead of cooperating, we choose to blame BP, Obama, Bush, whoever… hoping against hope that after the dust has settled it will somehow pay off in our favor. We scour recent histories for flaws, for someone to crucify or offer as a blood sacrifice to our current accredited, omnipotent ‘isms’. Throughout, we take care to avoid the cutting edge of history’s scythe. We take pains to re-write our own stories, choosing only facts which logically absolve us (on academic paper) while conveniently discarding any material that might condemn us.

70,000 years is a long time. Not much to be gained from diddling on the fringes except, perhaps, the assurance that we will survive even this. My question concerning the above clip is: What happened to the other shoe? - thrown at Bush, no doubt.