A Self-Interrogation on the Joys and Ills of This Age

              A Self-Interrogation on the Joys and Ills of This Age

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 12/17/17

Q:  Hines, do you actually believe there are “eternal verities,” that is, eternal truths that never change and cannot be changed?

A: Yes.  Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly.  Though I won’t be surprised if, before the end of 2018, somebody will argue that fish can live out of water – given a few trillion years.  Some are already arguing that there is a third human gender.  Such an idea expresses a weird wish, not a scientific possibility.  We are male and female.  I do pity (sincerely, not condescendingly) those who want to be something other than what they are.  Transgenderism is mutilation, pure and simple. Human sexuality, our maleness and femaleness, is one of those absolutes.

Q: Are there any other “verities”?

A: Tons of them.  Human nature is one.  The human race is plagued by evils that have always plagued us.  The oldest history and oldest stories show men fighting and killing to rule over others.  The insecurities of those who would rule over us are illustrated by today’s politics.  Human nature hasn’t changed.  We all still want what our great grandparents wanted:  affirmation, self-worth, something to eat, and a house on the hill.  Of course super-evolutionists say that humans will one day be … something different from what we are now.  You know …  from apes to us now, to some ugly looking creature in a movie.  If so, I betcha these “beings”  will have the same problems we have today.

Q: You’re touching evolution.

A:  Yes.  Evolutionary theory is a million miles wide and a quarter inch deep.  Not all smart people are evolutionists. Many scientists embrace cause and effect.  Every effect (a wrist watch, a building, the universe) has a cause, and the cause is bigger than the effect.  I’ve observed geological evolution in my back yard, but wait and see if “human evolution” ever changes us. (If you can wait a trillion years, that is.  Undecipherable, unimaginable amounts of time are what super-evolutionists stand on for support, you know.)

Q: You’re refuting Darwin.  I suspect you would also refute Freud.

A: Marx, too.  But  Freud is just wrong.  Sex is not the strongest, most fundamental drive in humans.  Love is.  I’m talking about love that would drive a man to risk his life to save the lives of his wife and children, or the woman who would keep her cancer secret because she has a loving husband and children to care for, or the soldier who truly loves his homeland and is willing to die for it.  Territory probably is next.  Read Robert Ardrey’s “Territorial Imperative” in which he argues that the drive to have a place in the sun is far more powerful than the sex drive.  Hollywood, libertines, and advertising are the entities that have elevated sex to the throne it now perches on.  We have not always been as sexualized as we are now, and it seems to me some things are coming home to roost.  Seen the news lately?

Q: You keep saying “probably.”

A: Well, because I don’t know everything.  But I know what I believe.  And I do have two eyes,  two ears, and at least half a brain.  I also had precious, common sense parents who knew right and wrong and taught it.

Q: What is the biggest problem facing our nation now?

A: It is what one of my intellectual heroes, Melvyn Fein, has called “the disloyal opposition.”   In the past, losers of an election accepted defeat, worked with the winners when they could, while anticipating victory in the next election.  Consequently they were called the “loyal opposition;” opposed, but still loyal to the nation.  Today, losers of the last presidential election are working day and night to overturn the last presidential election.  Their actions forebode street fighting and bloodshed which certainly can happen in America, turning our politics into a third world brawl and abandoning our historic example to the world of peaceful transfer of power.  Those who lose an election should accept it and work to win the voters’ favor during the next election.

Q: Where is the joy in all of this?

A: There’s joy in knowing that in spite of a negative press, the jobs picture is looking good, the stock market is soaring, working people are voting, my liberal friends and I still love each other, my two atheist friends and I talk regularly, and Christmas is just around the corner.

Roger Hines

12/13/17