| | I still owe you a super-post on Europe, but I've decided to do a little local news before that. Or maybe a lot of local news. This post is rather long.
However, first I owe you, mes chers lecteurs, an explanation. It's been quite a while (nearly two weeks now) since I ended my travels, and up untill now I haven't posted. What have I been doing with my time? Well...very much and nothing at all.
Now, I'll tell you right now (for those who haven't observed it) that I detest the whole idea of "being busy", and it takes immense personal discipline for me to not be angry at being pestered. I don't how common such a character trait(flaw? for I feel that it isn't inherently, yet often becomes, just that--but then again, that's true of every aspect of humanity) is, but at least I know I'm not alone: C.S. Lewis nailed the sentiment perfectly with his self description in Surprised by Joy as one who has "always been more violent in my negative than in my postive demands. Thus in personal relations, I could always forgive much neglect more easily than the least degree of what I regarded as interference...In the course of life I could put up with any amount of monotony far more patiently than even the smallest disturbance, bother, bustle...Never at any age did I clamor to be amused; always and at all ages (where I dared) I hotly demanded not to be interrupted." It's really one of the most important aspects of my personality. Now, with that little personal insight, you can why I didn't feel up to writing lately, when the majority of my time since coming home has been given to the very worst breed of such "interruptions"--the kind where you have been occupied constantly for quite some time, but can't point to a single achievement to show for it. I just wanted to light everything on fire then sit down without distration to read my book by the light of the blaze.
And it is just that--fire--that I have been meaning to get to after that rediculously long explanation for not posting (an explanation, I will note at my own expense, is not an excuse).
The part of my title line, "Of Hell and Hell Fire", comes from a chapter name in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, which I am reading right now. GREAT book. I strongly recommend it to all of you (who can stand a 1000+ page novel). You see, after I wrote that paper-of-mega-death on Dostoevsky I became very interested in his writing. the stuff he deals with is exactly the kind of stuff we need to be thinking about, considering the state of things in our society right about now(and again, I know it's been a while, but I'm sure you can remember that I'm not exactly happy with the way things are these days).
And that brings me to my second part, about whether I think things can change. And it leads me to a story....
About three centuries ago, almost to the day, a little French fort and fur trading colony called Fort Pontchartrain du Detroit (Ponchartrain on the Strait) was established. A century later that city (population: 600), newly American and called simply Detroit, was burnt to the ground--only one house survived. But a Catholic priest named Gabriel Richard established a vision for rebuilding the city, which was crystalized in his statement that became the city's motto: Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus--"We Hope For Better Things; It Shall Rise From the Ashes".
And it did. Add another century, and the city (poulation 314,000) was a center of trade and manufacturing, and was just creating its automobile industry. At the bicentennial celebration, a time capsule was buried, not to be uncovered for another 100 years. In it was a letter expressing "one supreme hope" for the city's future--"that whatever failures the coming century may have in the progress of things material, you may be conscious when the century is over, that, as a nation, people and city, you have grown in righteousness, for it is this that exalts a nation. "
As this next century progressed, the city experienced phenomenal success, and within fifty years it had become the Motor City, 2 million strong, the industrial capital of the world. But the success didn't last, and the next half of the century it fell to pieces. A few years ago, when that time capsule was dug up, the city had certainly not grown in righteousness; rather, it had been torn to pieces by entrenched corruption, racial conflict, and violent crime.
But it didn't have to be that way. And more importantly, it doesn't have to continue this way. And there is a chance for change. The auto industry has fallen with the city, but there's an opportunity for the biggest of the Big Three, General Motors, to be rebuilt. There is talk of a possible merger with Nissan-Renault. Now, it's no fun to think of a French company having a stake in GM, but there CEO Carlos Ghosn revived Nissan and may be able to do the same for them. And, as irksome as it is that I have to look at a giant picture of this German guy  in an add for his website that's platstered on the side of the Chrysler HQ, everyone has to admit that Chrysler is benefiting from the Mercedes partnership.
It's not a cure all, it only adresses on of the city's problems, but it's a start.
So what's my point in all this? (besides that it's creepy to see that mustachioed man taking up the whole side of this building , and that Fr. Gabriel Richard's escape from France during the Reign of Terror was proof yet again that France has a tendency to exile it's best citizens)
Well, it is that for my city, state, country and culture, I will continue to hold on to the motto Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus. Our efforts may be to little, the West may continue to fail, to be burnt to the ground. But we will continue to "Hope For Better Things", and work for the day that we can see it "Rise From the Ashes."
Well, that's all, mes amis.
'Later |
