In this Christmas season we are faced with a stark reality; the failure of so called 'progress' in all of its technological and political applications, with an accompanying disillusionment. It is deliriously funny that we are spending billions on a 'space station' while here on earth a person cannot walk safely at night through any city park in America; and while citizens of cities are buried up to their neck in garbage.
We thought computers were going to save civilization and here we are headed for the year 2000 and Y2K. Senator Bennett of Utah is the Chair- man of the Senate Committee on Y2K. He recently issued a statement with a wake up warning saying that "everything that is controlled by a computer or computer chip can malfunction in dangerous ways at the beginning of the year 2000." We need a new definition of 'progress'. Or maybe you think we have evolved in our concept of justice in the American legal system. The PITTSBURGH POST GAZETTE recently published an exhaustive l0 part series documenting that lying and perjury are "pervasive" throughout the entire judicial system and that, quote:
"federal agents and prosecutors have lied, hid evidence, distorted facts, engaged in cover ups, and paid for perjury in a relentless effort to win indictments, guilty pleas and convictions. Perjury by prosecution witnesses have put at least 75 inmates on death row." 75 that they know of, that is.
The word 'progress' today has become totally corrupted. Progress no longer means a higher degree of education and more enlightened tastes. The word no longer refers to the reduction of bigotry, ignorance and superstition. It has come to be identified with how many objects a person can own, or how many weapons a nation can possess; how many space vehicles a nation can put into orbit; how many telephones a person can carry around all day in their cars, briefcases and purses.
In this Christmas season may our prayer be that humankind rediscovers definitions of 'progress' that have to do with the unfolding and the evolution of the human spirit and all that it means to be human and humane.
Is it not true in this Christmas season that Jesus and Lao Tzu, the Buddha and Albert Schweitzer, Goethe and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, T.S. Eliot and Isaiah Berlin have far, far, more to say to us than all of the bulletins coming out of NASA or Bill Gates and Microsoft? This season reminds us that the 'progress' that makes us human is written in the lives of those who have dared, like Prometheus, to challenge the current trends and institutional gods of the day. They followed their vision with a daring courage knowing that however slow, the dawn of truth and beauty in their lives would flood more light into the darkness.