quarterly-report.com Political Commentary by James R. Audet

December 31, 1999

Does anybody remember laughter?

Speed is the paradigm for the 21st Century.  In this light wave driven world -- given to us by digital communications and fiber optics -- productivity has replaced emotion.  The stock market sprints to levels that cause any previous measure of gains to be thrown into the scrape heap of incredibility.  An analyst makes a recommendation and a stock is quickly taken to its target price.  Once it crosses the finish line, Wall Street turns its attention to the next candidate for radical surgery.  We have no time for the stumblers, those than can not keep their shoelaces tied.  You either stay at the front of the pack or get trampled to death.  Lurking amongst the speed demons -- so delicately counterpoised -- are the technologists who master the deployment of the light wave apparatus.

To the electronic media, we owe much for the pace of our lives.  Our three dimensional, molecular databases are bombarded on the hour with a director's cut of the momentous events of the day.  We are sensitized to remember events not by any measure of pathos, nor by how deeply they may have individually touched a soul.  In this super fast age, human misery is pigeonholed to 30 minutes on the nightly news.

We accept the media's proffered tunnel glasses so willingly.  We see the world as if cut from a painting, a view continuously repeated as though the image stands in the stead of the horses of a carnival carousel.  The image spins across our field of view, and we remember by how many times we see the same horse.  In the training rooms that hold our mental chalkboards, we watch the maniacal eraser -- less a contraption more an institution -- wipe the board clean before each class.  Afterwards, we see but a ghostly image of yesterday's lesson.  Whited out by the present, we distinguish but a few extensions of a letter here and there in the smudge of yesterday's news.  Why was that lesson so important?  Was there something I was supposed to remember?

We acknowledge that the media will distort the truth, but that seems of little consequence.   We want to recall the moment, if not the emotion of the historical record.  Sometimes, we remember where we were when an event took place.  More often, the precision of our memories cause the event to fade into mythic lore as time intercedes and the database grows tired, distorting the emotion of the recalled moment.

If the truth be known, it must be told.

Friday, December 31, 1999 provides the electronic media the greatest day of its short life.  The hysteria they have created to excite the "fight or flight" emotions of viewers to the "Y2K" computer bug provides them a swan song to showcase the musings of their lying eye.  The ABC television network, with personnel stationed in the government's Y2K command center, plans 24 hour coverage as the terminator spins across the face of the globe.  Why?  The answer lays not with the grandeur of the celebrations they expect to see, nor the finite variations of the mandatory firework displays they wish to capture on tape.  Nor does it lay with some unexpected breakthrough in human relationships, nor some heretofore unattainable solution to a regional conflict.  No, ABC waits with cameras positioned on high to capture a rolling blackout in some major metropolitan area, some incident of sabotage, some wanton act of terrorism.  They profess that we need this information.  It will speed us on our way in the next morning's conversations.

Placed in the trash is our ability to enjoy fully the change of the century. Thank you ABC.  We wait ponderously, anxiously for something to happen, brought to our attention at the speed of light.  If you wish to watch art, view instead the PBS network presentation of the New Year's activities.

As we fall into the next century, we seek comfort in where we have been by reducing one hundred years of history to the life of a single person, or a single event.  This is a challenge to the mind if not to the heart.  We first seek a person whose life defines the human spirit -- that represents what we believe is the unbounded curiosity of man and his ultimate goodness.

To aid our intellectual process, Time Magazine proclaims Albert Einstein as its "Person of the Century."  Why?  His contribution -- a bane to Christian fundamentalists -- was to create a new model for universe, one where curved space rules the motions of matter.  Though Einstein's work with space-time is well known, his General Theory of Relativity fails to mathematically relate gravity to electromagnetism, fails to predict the outcome of a "Big Bang" start to the universe.  His theory does not peacefully coexist with quantum mechanics which is the basis for many of the advanced technologies of the late 20th Century.

After publishing his General Theory in 1916, Einstein would spend the remaining 39 years of his life trying to make his equations work.  When he died in 1955, he had not produced a "Unified Field Theory."

Why, with so many other deserving candidates from which to chose -- persons whose contributions to art, science and humanity are clear -- did Time chose a man whose contributions to the world are so nebulous?

Realistically, Time Magazine had no choice but to constrain the time period to a century.  It would have been utterly preposterous to select any one man from the past 1000 years as a "Man of the Millennium."  For to elevate a man to such status, the process of selection must include the men of the great religions of the world.  To the beloved, the life of the religion's founder is the starting point for life.   Consequently, to make the selection process fair, we must step back in time more than five thousand years to evaluate all the fathers of the world's religions.  This, of course, violates the integrity of the exercise.  However, in the interest of intellectual honesty we consider and evaluate all the great men of the world's religions.  Though a religious figure is safe choice for those wishing an easy selection, we are left with the unanswerable question as to whose God is the right one.  By what name shall we call him?

A large group photograph would be the best way to capture the spirit of those persons who contributed to the welfare of man in the twentieth century.  However, if we are to chose a solitary figure, an appropriate choice for the Man of the Century would be Franklin D. Roosevelt.  He led America out of the Great Depression and led the world in defeating the evil regimes of Germany, Italy and Japan during the Second World War.  By today's standards, FDR would be classified as handicapped under the Americans With Disabilities Act.  Here is a great man.  Case closed.

We now turn our attention to events and are confronted with a problem as difficult.  Notwithstanding the wars, the calamities of nature, the economic upheavals that have affected hundreds of millions, we seek to identify one moment in time that left such a profound mark on the world that nothing henceforth was the same.

What falls out of the nomination process is the costliest war that ever took place on this orb, the Second World War.  But then, who is to judge that one war was more significant, more deadly than any war that preceded it?  To the friend of a soldier or non-combatant lying in state, the issue is not the past but the present.  No, war stands as a monumental failure of civilization, not a defining moment of human history.

Since the dawn of man, there has been one clearly unmistakable object that could be seen but not touched -- the moon.  Therein lays Einstein's greatest contribution to humanity.   It caused man to look to the heavens once again.  The moon landings brought to light an unknown that had coursed through the veins of countless souls.  Today, that first step on the lunar surface does not loom as large as it did in 1969 because of the speed of technological change.

In spite of man's fallibility to destroy himself, his drive to achieve, his need to answer the sometimes trite question, Why, cannot be crushed.  Man and his technology, the desire to want better for himself and others, will march ahead in spite of the occasional misstep.  The explosive financial growth of companies in the last 10 years is because money once spent to prepare for global thermonuclear war is now being spent on the infrastructure for life.

Nature has no idea that a new century will dawn, yet it remains harmonious with time.  Likewise, it maintains its grip on gravity.  As man rushes forward at the speed of light, he often forgets that gravity is part of the master equation.  Matter falls back to a centrum.  Whether we care to acknowledge it or not, we will always fall toward each other as though we live on a map of Einstein's curved space.

In the third millennium, it will be man's discovery of intelligent life beyond the boundaries of the earth's ether that will be the defining moment.  How well man integrates himself into this universe of souls will be his challenge.

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