Redtree Times

The Heart Warms— Now at West End Gallery

All who are not lunatics are agreed about certain things. That it is better to be alive than dead, better to be adequately fed than starved, better to be free than a slave. Many people desire those things only for themselves and their friends; they are quite content that their enemies should suffer. These people can only be refuted by science: Humankind has become so much one family that we cannot ensure our own prosperity except by ensuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.

— Bertrand Russell, The Science to Save Us from Science, New York Times (19 March 1950)

Read that again: Humankind has become so much one family that we cannot ensure our own prosperity except by ensuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.

I started writing a whole thing on Russell’s words this morning but realized, he didn’t require anything from me to get the point across. It is plain and simple.

If everybody is not safe and secure, then nobody is safe and secure. Nobody is free unless everybody is free.

I think that it might very well sum up what is at stake in the election here and in the elections that have taken place around the globe in recent days that seem to refute the assertion of power by strongmen leaders that have bedeviled and threatened us in recent years. I believe the people are calling out for leaders who will work to protect all people and not simply serve in the best interests of the ultrawealthy or of one religion or race.

It seems too obvious to even write this, but recent years have taught us that far too many of us think that so long as we get ours, we can turn our backs on others. It might seem that this works in the short run for some, but eventually there is a reckoning.

Perhaps we are at the beginning of such a reckoning?

I don’t know. I sure hope so. But I don’t put too much stock on hope alone.

Vote. Not just for your own self-interest but for others, as well.

Read that sentence one last time: Humankind has become so much one family that we cannot ensure our own prosperity except by ensuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.

Here’s a song from 1967, Get Together, from the Youngbloods. I was surprised I hadn’t shared this song her before. Its message is much Russell’s. Plain and simple, almost naively so. But that might well be its greatest strength.

Art, after all, is meant to reveal and clarify, not to complicate and obfuscate.