In the aftermath of the elections in the US we found ourselves wondering, not for the first time, whether Abe Lincoln made a mistake in going to war to keep the United States of America together. For those who do not know, nearly as many American soldiers died in the Civil War (1861 – 1865) as in all subsequent wars combined. It wasn’t a case of riding off into the sunset afterwards either. Take a look at a documentary like Aftershock: Beyond the Civil War (National Geographic), for example, and be appalled by the hardships which followed the war!
Mitchell translates some lines from an ancient Chinese text, the Tao Te Ching, to read:
“Trying to grasp things, you lose themForcing a project to completion, You ruin what was almost ripe”
It is speculative, of course, to wonder how history would have been different had a more organic development between the differing north American states been allowed. We will never know. The anger that has followed the conclusion of the 2016 elections (it would have been the same had Clinton won) makes one feel that there are at least two countries between Canada and Mexico. In life, people can speak past each other, leaving it to bystanders to notice that the belligerents are hardly on the same page! Dr Helen Schucman notes that we make an ego for ourselves as well as for everyone else we meet. Go through the election reports before and since the elections and – but for its being so tragic – you would have to chuckle. Perhaps there are as many USAs as there are people living in that country. Perhaps that is the point. Move ever deeper into multiplicity and you lose touch with an original unity, a basic impulse of friendship and co-feeling. You can believe that belittling opponents is the way to victory, and target Republican and Democrat alike. You can even win the battle for strategic votes and the race to the White House. And then? Be surprised about the animosity you face? Your country is more divided now than when your campaign began. A few decades after the American Civil War, at a time when the world we knew was entering its greatest ever conflict, one of our greatest poets penned the lines of “In Time of ‘The breaking of Nations’”. Something survives the disunity and calamity of war, says Thomas Hardy, something which finds its perfect expression in tilling the soil (agriculture) and the love between a woman and a man.
We make mistakes and will continue to make mistakes (how else do we grow?) The penny seemingly takes a long time to drop though that when we encourage partisanship it leads inevitably to hardship for all, especially the people excluded from our club (how long does it take for us to learn that one!)
Was Hardy right? I for one pin my hopes on it. And on the belief that for as long as love and agriculture continue, we will have a breathing space to sort ourselves out.
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