Society and science advances by discovering new things, re-evaluating old ones and developing new ideas. One thing we have learned over the ages is that few truly news ideas are developed without abandoning old ones first.
Just look at segregation in Arkansas a scant 50 years ago. At that time a majority of our white citizens were just fine with the concept, or at the very least tolerated its existence. The theoretical physicist Max Planck observed, "A new ... truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
Lately we have seen our state besieged with new ideas ranging from education reform, medical insurance rights and equal rights for lesbian, gay and transgender people. While it is not my intent to wade into those murky waters, I do want to focus on some other ideas I think are ready for retirement. So let's not wait for a funeral and kick these clunkers to the curb.
• We live in the most dangerous time in world history -- This old chestnut seems to follow every generation for the past 2,000 years. One candidate for president this past March made the statement that "The world is on fire!" which famously terrified a little 3-year-old girl in the audience. While some might say this candidate reached his intended level of discourse, he is hardly alone. Another candidate this month said, speaking of America, "You know, we're on our deathbed." A popular news channel ran the promo last year that said: "Ebola, ISIS, Illegal immigration, are we headed toward the end?" Finally a recent poll by the Barna Group found four in 10 Americans who were at least age 18 agreed "the world is currently living in the 'end times' as described by prophesies in the Bible." The only problem with all of this is the facts simply don't support this view. Quite the opposite is actually true.
Dr. Steven Pinker, Pulitzer prize-winning Harvard professor, writes, "Today we may be living in the most peaceful era in our species' existence." He acknowledges: "In a century that began with 9/11, Iraq and Darfur, the claim that we are living in an unusually peaceful time may strike you as somewhere between hallucinatory and obscene." Wars make headlines, he notes, but there are fewer conflicts today, and wars don't kill as many people as they did in the Middle Ages, for instance. (These rates were determined by statistical death rates per 100,000 people estimated for the past 3,000 years.)
Pinker comments that the reasons for these advances are complex but certainly the rise of education and globalization has played its part.
Dating back to the Roman times, enemies weren't just defeated, they were annihilated, and so it has followed right up to the end of World War II. Want a real candidate for end times? How about the Black Death that wiped out one-fourth of Western civilization, the fall of Rome, or the world in 1941 at the zenith of Nazi expansion and destruction? More facts: The FBI reported last November that America's violent crime rate fell to its lowest point in 37 years. New York City's homicide rate is now at a 52-year low.
Let's have Jesus, as quoted in Matthew 24:36, have the final say: "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only." Personally, I think he meant it.
• It would be more economical to move the Benton County courthouse from downtown Bentonville -- Sure, but that is not the point. The scholar Angel Rama writes how Spanish monarchs, to impose order on a vast New World empire, created carefully planned cities where institutional and legal powers were administered through the center of the town. Without it, they found unity and order dissipated rapidly. It's an ideal that remains to this day. Think of downtown as the grandmother who holds the entire disparate family together.
County leaders, don't make me call your mama.
• It would be smarter just to build a modern bridge at War Eagle Mill -- Let's see, close perhaps the most iconic historical structure and popular tourist attraction in the county to save money? This one is easy. As Nancy Reagan would say, "Just say no."
NAN Our Town on 05/20/2015