{"id":1817,"date":"2017-10-30T21:53:04","date_gmt":"2017-10-30T21:53:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/?p=1817"},"modified":"2021-01-07T18:20:30","modified_gmt":"2021-01-07T18:20:30","slug":"on-the-halloween-express","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/on-the-halloween-express\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Halloween Express"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Tomorrow is Halloween. I hope you have a good one.<\/p>\n

I mentioned St. Wolfgang of Regensberg, All Hallows’ and All Souls’ Day, and the autumnal equinox last year.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Also Gaelic and Welsh traditions, jack-o’-lanterns, and Easter eggs.<\/p>\n

Enjoying my culture’s traditions, within reason, makes sense. To me.<\/p>\n

It’s arguably better than bitter bewailing stuff I can’t change: and don’t want to.<\/p>\n

I haven’t run across anyone going ballistic over holiday-related rampant wantonness this year. Or is it wanton rampantness?<\/p>\n

Anyway, I haven’t seen any of the once-prevalent Halloween angst.<\/p>\n

I haven’t looked, either.<\/p>\n

There’s plenty of angst, dread and weltschmerz flooding my news feeds.<\/p>\n

I see some in social media, but it’s mostly at the edge of public venues I visit. Wading into political and social news is an option.<\/p>\n

So is seeking melancholic communities of earnest folks who apparently yearn for something they don’t have. That really<\/strong> doesn’t make sense. Some folks feel otherwise.<\/p>\n

What’s yearned for varies, judging from what I hear echoing into my haunts. I don’t know what others think or feel, but opinions and expressed interests give hints.<\/p>\n

<\/a>The ‘Good Old Days’ Weren’t<\/h4>\n

<\/a>Some apparently yearn for the ‘good old days’ as they imagine them. That’s generally before somewhere around 1950.<\/p>\n

I can sympathize with them, a little.<\/p>\n

Particularly the younger ones, who probably got their information from old coots. Folks like me, in other words, but with selective memories.<\/p>\n

That era actually was ‘happy days,’ at least for folks who look a bit like me.<\/p>\n

Carefully edited memories might focus on Harry Bellafonte’s “Calypso,” and universal harmony among Americans.<\/p>\n

That last might require deciding that all decent Americans supported the Truman Doctrine. Or bitterly opposed it, depending on which seems more harmonious.1<\/a><\/sup> That’s not how it was, and that’s another topic.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Still Not Perfect<\/h4>\n

<\/a>I remember those ‘good old days,’ and they weren’t.<\/p>\n

The ‘science and technology will solve all our problems’ lasted into my youth. I like tech, and enjoy reading ‘science’ news.<\/p>\n

When it’s written by someone who knows a little about science, anyway.<\/p>\n

Unbridled optimism made no more sense than today’s ‘we’re all gonna die’ lament, and that’s yet again another topic.2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Today’s America isn’t perfect, either.<\/p>\n

But in many ways it’s an improvement on the days when ‘she’s smart as a man’ was supposed to be a compliment.<\/p>\n

I really<\/strong> don’t miss those ‘good old days,’ and am glad they aren’t coming back.<\/p>\n

Remembering that attitude helps me sympathize with folks who don’t yearn for America’s halcyon days around 1950.<\/p>\n

Harry Bellafonte’s “Calypso,” and all decent Americans supported the Truman Doctrine. Or bitterly opposed it, depending on which memories get kept.<\/p>\n

Some less anachronous Americans may wish that we were back in other ‘good old days.’<\/p>\n

Theirs may run from around 1967<\/a> to 1991<\/a>. Or maybe 1972<\/a> to 1982.<\/p>\n

I’d be urging a return to the dear old days of yesteryear, if I thought we’d ever had a Golden Age. That hasn’t happened. Anywhere.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Forward<\/h4>\n

<\/a>Some societies supported the common good better than others. A few had laws and customs worth adapting to current needs.<\/p>\n

I think folks somewhere, a few millennia from now, will look at what America did.<\/p>\n

They may even name some of their new institutions after ours. That’s why we call part of our Congress the Senate.<\/p>\n

But what they’re cobbling together won’t be ‘America 2.0.’ I think, and hope, that they’ll have learned from our mistakes: and successes.<\/p>\n

That’s why I decided to talk about where we’ve been, not kvetching about stuff I don’t really dislike.<\/p>\n

<\/a>I don’t think we’ll ever make an ideal society, perfectly balancing individual freedoms and common needs.<\/p>\n

But I’m convinced we can do better than anything we’ve done to date.<\/p>\n

Trying to go back won’t work. Even if we could, there isn’t a perfect era behind us. The only direction is forward.<\/p>\n

It will take work, and working together.<\/p>\n

Keeping what is good and changing what isn’t in ourselves and in how we deal with others is never easy. If it was, we’d probably make fewer regrettable decisions.<\/p>\n

It will take generations, centuries, and we’ll never really finish the job. But I think build a better world for folks who haven’t been born yet is possible.<\/p>\n

I think we can make Pope St. John Paul II’s “civilization of love” become more than only a hope. I am certain that we must try.<\/p>\n

“…The answer to the fear which darkens human existence at the end of the twentieth century is the common effort to build the civilization of love,<\/strong> founded on the universal values of peace, solidarity, justice, and liberty….”
\n(“To the United Nations Organization<\/a>, Pope St. John Paul II (October 5, 1995))<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Serious posts, and one that’s not very:<\/p>\n