Franklin Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945 and on August 6th that same year, his successor Harry Truman authorized the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later a second bomb was exploded over Nagasaki. Together these bombs effectively ended hostilities during World War II--but Franklin Roosevelt never knew who won the war or how it ended.
On April 14, 1865, five days after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses Grant, thus ending the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated--without ever knowing how the post-war peace would work out, what America would look like after the long war that claimed 625,000 American lives, both Blue and Gray.
My father died in 1970 without knowing if I would finish graduate school with the Ph.D. I was working on at the time and that I would finish seven years later.
This goes from the sublime to the ridiculous, but it points out that we are all destined to die without knowing the outcome of something important to us at the time of our death--and that used to trouble me no end.
The more I think of it, however, the less it troubles me. And the reason is because the history of mankind is different from and greater than the history of men. Collectively we have come a long way--scientifically, technologically, and artistically--since our first ancestors began walking upright about six million years ago, just yesterday compared to the four and a half billion years the planet has been circling the sun.
During our six-million-year history, we have made spectacular advances that have rightly been described as the Ascent of Man--and yes, thinking metaphorically is one of the advances of our species. In spite of the daily headlines and those who see us as a depraved race of sinners, we should be proud to be human, proud of our species, proud to take our places on the planet for the few years we have.
So what does it matter in the end that we will not know at our deaths exactly how our children's lives will work out, what our reputations will be in the future, whether we will be remembered at all, or how long the republic will last. This is our common destiny. But in the larger view there is consolation in the knowledge that we have added a little of ourselves to the working out of human history, for every life in its own peculiar and tiny way changes the universe.
This goes from the sublime to the ridiculous, but it points out that we are all destined to die without knowing the outcome of something important to us at the time of our death--and that used to trouble me no end.
The more I think of it, however, the less it troubles me. And the reason is because the history of mankind is different from and greater than the history of men. Collectively we have come a long way--scientifically, technologically, and artistically--since our first ancestors began walking upright about six million years ago, just yesterday compared to the four and a half billion years the planet has been circling the sun.
During our six-million-year history, we have made spectacular advances that have rightly been described as the Ascent of Man--and yes, thinking metaphorically is one of the advances of our species. In spite of the daily headlines and those who see us as a depraved race of sinners, we should be proud to be human, proud of our species, proud to take our places on the planet for the few years we have.
So what does it matter in the end that we will not know at our deaths exactly how our children's lives will work out, what our reputations will be in the future, whether we will be remembered at all, or how long the republic will last. This is our common destiny. But in the larger view there is consolation in the knowledge that we have added a little of ourselves to the working out of human history, for every life in its own peculiar and tiny way changes the universe.
Seen from that angle, our lives have meaning, and it is our duty to do something with them, to make our contribution, no matter how small, to the Ascent of Man--even though we are destined to die without knowing how it will all turn out. It is together, collectively, that we as a race of thinking men, homo sapiens, make our mark on the universe. It's an uplifting thought, better than heaven.
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