Clifford D. May wrote a column in which he
reviews a just published book that was written by George Will. I have not read
the book, and given my current circumstances, I doubt I'll ever have the time
to read a book of that size (538 pages long).
May reveals that the book is about
“Western political philosophy and tradition, and the specifically American
vision of the Founders.” He goes on to explain that of the 10 chapters that
make-up the book, only one grapples with foreign policy, though it is packed
with ideas.
What interested me about the Clifford May
article––enough to prompt me to discuss it––is that I know the author to be a
pessimistic individual. And yet, he apparently discovered a level of affinity
in the George Will worldview that he was motivated to take up the subject. I do
not believe that George Will is anywhere near Clifford May's level of
pessimism, but the article's thrust has given the debate the allure of the
pessimism-versus-optimism argument of a different era; a topic that has
interested me for a long time.
The Clifford May article came under the
title: “George Will and American Power,” and the subtitle: “How his
conservative sensibility informs his approach to foreign policy.” It was
published on October 8, 2019 in The Washington Times. As to the George Will
book, it came under the title: “The Conservative Sensibility”.
As you might have guessed, what I want to
discuss falls within the purview of the pessimism-versus-optimism argument as
it relates to the current situation in the world. I must warn at the outset
that my definition of those two words, might be different from anything you've
seen before. In fact, I do not even use declarative sentences to define optimism
or pessimism; I use examples to illustrate what I mean.
Here it is: Because no one can do
anything, such as construct a monument or launch a probe into space or write a
masterpiece that will enchant millions of readers, without first learning the
basics that relate to the endeavor and engaging in experiments that fail
repeatedly before the craft is mastered, we must accept the principle that
success is built on a solid foundation of multiple failures. And so, if you
want to know from where my optimism is coming, it comes from the acceptance
that I must fail before I can succeed.
This being the case, do I ever become
pessimistic? The answer is yes, I do. It happens when I finally realize that
something I thought could be done, proves to violate a law of nature (in
science or the humanities) I was not aware of. This means that the project, as
I conceived it, can never be completed. However, it is easy in such cases to
work on turning pessimism into optimism. That's because understanding what laws
of nature cannot be violated, motivates us to work on realistic alternatives.
This in turn, causes us to experience failures, learn from them, and try again
till we succeed. Such is the joy of life.
Now you can see why I totally reject
notions such as the one advanced by Clifford May, which goes like this: “The
approach led to the League of Nations, a failed experiment as everyone knows,
and the United Nations, a no less a failed experiment as everyone should know.”
The pessimism expressed by these words, is deliberate and self-generated. It is
based on the premise that the laws of nature are not ironclad, thus can be
violated. One such law pertains to the fantastical belief that Jews are the
favorite children of a God who promised to give them ownership of the planet
and all its content. That simply does not compute.
Given all of that, where do I believe
we're going as a species? Well, I begin with the notion that organic evolution
has been in the making for more than half a billion years on this planet.
During that time, nature has gone through all kinds of experiments to produce
species that have survived, and species that did not. Of those that survived,
some have been around unchanged for millions of years, living within the
confines of a naturally produced culture we must consider to be near perfect.
In addition, nature has had a great
success producing our species and giving us a brain with the power to
circumvent, even override its own work. But we've had this privilege––known as Civilization––for
only ten thousand years, and we find ourselves emulating socially what nature
has accomplished biologically. This suggests that we may survive as a species
and score successes we can't even begin to imagine at this time. Alternatively,
however, we may perish by our own doing or by events we won’t be able to
control.
If we do survive, and we open an entire
universe for us to enjoy, the shenanigans that give us heartburn today will
sound so trivial, no one will want to talk about them in the future, and no one
will spend as much as a moment wondering what the disputes were that brought
our species to the brink on several occasions.