Climates Don’t Change People, People Do. Thank God.
The saying goes:
We learn from the past, but we don’t live in it
But the reverse is also true:
If we don’t learn from the past, then we live in it
In other words
If we try to act like it never happened
Then it’s always happening
Which is why repressed is always short for
The return of the repressed
And why Faulkner said
“The past is never dead
It’s not even past”
What, then, is the lesson we have failed to learn?
What have we pretended never happened?
One clue I’ve found as a new Jew
Is that Jews pray several times a day
In gratitude for the exodus from Egypt–
For being freed from the bonds of slavery
This tells me that it must be easy and tempting
To act as if that slavery never happened
And, going one step further
Forgetting is the one necessary step towards being re-enslaved
As Jews learned at Sinai when we received the Torah
With great freedom comes great responsibility
And the first responsibility
Is never forgetting the gift of freedom
I’d hazard one more speculation in noting that
Slavery in the United States was abolished
Just as the power of fossil fuels was beginning to be harnessed–
Others have suggested that this is no mere coincidence
And that human beings were only able to turn away
From enslaving the other
Given this newly found power
Thereby completing the triad:
Freedom, power, and responsibility
And, manifestly
It is our responsibility
To manage the freedom and power
Unleashed by fossil fuels
Needless to say
A manager’s work is never done
And it is up to us to meet the moment
By learning from the past
And living wisely in the present
Or we can just abolish fossil fuels
But that would be forgetting
The lesson we have learned:
We can’t abolish fossil fuels
And abolish slavery
At the same time
We must choose
To me the choice is as clear as the
The path from Egypt to Sinai
Which is the path from freedom to responsibility
There lies a power
That can be had by all
